U.S. President Donald Trump told a crowd during a campaign-style rally in Florida Tuesday that “polls are fake” before going on to boast about a recent poll about his popularity.
Addressing supporters in Tampa, Trump slammed “fake news” while discrediting polls about his approval rating.
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“If the fake news did a poll, they’re called suppression polls, you know polls are fake just like everything else,” Trump said. “If the fake news did a poll they would show that I’m only getting 25 per cent with the 401(k) people even though they’re up 44 per cent.”
The president was referring to those Americans investing in employer-sponsored retirement plans.
“They just came out with a poll, did you hear?” Trump asked the crowd. “The most popular person in the history of the Republican Party is Trump. Can you believe it?”
The president paused before adding: “Does that include honest Abe Lincoln? He was pretty good.”
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Trump went on to say that he can be “more presidential than any president in history,” except for Lincoln, “with that big hat.” Trump has claimed in recent days that he has higher poll numbers than Lincoln. But he doesn’t mention that there were no scientific opinion polls in the 1860s when Lincoln was president, or which poll mention such numbers.
On Sunday Trump claimed he had the “highest poll numbers in the history of the Republican Party.”
“That includes Honest Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. There must be something wrong, please recheck that poll!” the president tweeted.
Trump was in Florida to campaign for Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s bid for a U.S. Senate seat and U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis’ campaign for governor.
The president spent considerable time talking about his trade policies, including tit-for-tat tariffs with China that he said would eventually pay dividends for the United States.
Trump also spent time advocating for voter ID requirements and wrongly claimed that the only time people don’t need ID is when they want to vote.
“If you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID,” Trump told the crowd. “You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture.”
–with files from the Associated Press