President Donald Trump took to Twitter only hours after his appearance at the George H.W. Bush funeral to thank Americans for a recent boost in his approval rating.
Trump’s tweet Wednesday night was short on words but heavy on font size as he noted jumping to 50 percent on Rasmussen Reports, an outlet that has traditional been very friendly to Trump and his administration in recent months.
Working hard, thank you! pic.twitter.com/3SoWTkZjP6
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2018
The Washington Post noted the timing of Trump’s tweet was a tad strange, specifically on the day of Bush’s state funeral.
The Post’s Philip Rucker noted that Trump looked uncomfortable surrounded by all of his living predecessors for the first time. It was also his first face-to-face meeting with Hillary Clinton, who he beat in the bitter 2016 election.
The message also came strong during eulogies for the 41st president.
“His life code was: ‘Tell the truth. Don’t blame people. Be strong. Do your best. Try hard. Forgive. Stay the course,’ ” Bush biographer Jon Meacham said. The Post said that statement offered “something of a jarring contrast to Trump and his presidency.”
And other national pollsters were somewhat dubious about Bush’s polling claims.
According to FiveThirtyEight, which has been updating its calculation of the president’s approval rating from all major polls, Trump’s aggregate approval rating is around 42 percent, as of Wednesday. The aggregate average is almost the same on RealClearPolitics.com, where Trump is at about 43 percent, according to polling conducted between Nov. 14 and Tuesday.
The Post notes that Wednesday night’s tweet was at least the 13th time since October 2016 that Trump has promoted favorable Rasmussen data on Twitter.
In 2018 alone, Trump has posted at least seven other status updates about how his Rasmussen approval rating was between 49 percent to 51 percent, according to Twitter data. In almost all those tweets, Trump compared his data to that of President Barack Obama — “Just hit 50%, which is higher than Cheatin’ Obama at the same time in his Administration,” he said in April — or criticized the media. “Rasmussen just came out at 51% Approval despite the Fake News Media,” he said that same month.
