With just days to go until his high-stakes sit-down with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, President Donald Trump appears to be fixated on yet more television advertisements airing in the United States.
Just minutes after Air Force One landed in Japan for the second leg of his trade-focused trip to Asia on Monday, Trump took to Truth Social with a seemingly unprompted screed in which he falsely claimed to have won the 2020 election (which he lost to now-former president Joe Biden) and alleged that his approval ratings are higher than at any point in his decade atop the political scene.
“After winning THREE Elections, BY A LOT, I am now getting the best Polling Numbers that I have ever received,” Trump wrote before rattling off a list of purported accomplishments on the U.S. economy, immigration, and social issues.
Continuing, the president alleged that “radical left losers” are “taking fake ads, not showing REAL Polls, but rather saying that I’m Polling at low levels.”
“These are the people that I’ve been beating for years, and am continuing to do so, but by even bigger margins. These ads should not be allowed to run because they are FAKE!” he added.
It was not immediately clear what advertisements or polling Trump was referencing in his social media post and the White House did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request to clarify what the president was addressing.
But Trump’s claim to be enjoying the highest polling numbers of his political career is patently false.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month showed the president underwater on a range of key issues ranging from the economy, crime and immigration — traditionally his strongest areas — to inflation, jobs, cost-of-living and the rule of law.
According to statistician Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin average of public polls, the president’s approval rating average peaked shortly after he took office at 52.4 percent and has fallen to a current 43.8 percent.
Trump’s call to ban commercials that highlight unflattering polling data is not the first example of him being triggered by political advertisements in recent days.
On Friday, the president hit out at a television spot that had been commissioned by the Ontario provincial government which excerpted a 1987 radio address by then-president Ronald Reagan in which the 40th president criticized the indiscriminate use of tariffs as market-killing and counterproductive.
Trump slammed the advertisement as “fake” and declared that he was calling off ongoing trade talks with Ottawa as a result. He later suggested it had been generated by artificial intelligence even though the audio track of Reagan’s voice had been sourced from a public-domain recording of the April 1987 radio address that had been made at Camp David.
The president doubled down on his fit of pique a day later when he announced a 10 percent hike in the import taxes he has levied on Canadian goods after the television spot aired during World Series games between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays on Friday and Saturday.
He later accused the Ontario government of airing the ads to influence the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear arguments in a case that could see most of not all of the tariffs Trump has imposed since taking office struck down.
“Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” he wrote.