President Donald Trump says polls with ‘fraudulent’ figures need to be investigated as criminal offenses.
He claimed in a Truth Social post on Monday that results are intentionally skewed to sway public opinion or influence events – like the 2020 presidential election.
But the post may have been triggered by a deluge of bad numbers from an array of polling firms showing his popularity on a host of issues in free fall.
Trump’s approval rating is slipping, especially in the midst of the rising controversy over ICE operations. And his numbers are sliding even before the highly criticized killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota over the weekend by DHS agents.
Trump claims pollsters are ‘knowingly wrong’
‘Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense,’ Trump insisted in his post.
He said that pollsters were ‘knowingly wrong’ but that ‘they knew what they were doing’ by publishing these allegedly intentionally incorrect poll figures.
‘Something has to be done about Fraudulent Polling,’ the president went on, and concluded: ‘I am going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!’
A New York Times/Sienna poll released last week shows Trump with 56 percent disapproval and only 40 percent approval.
And a Rasmussen poll, which is usually more favorable towards Trump than other polling models, was taken January 19-25 and shows the president with 52 percent disapproval and 47 percent approval.
Net approval drops sharply since early months
No recent polling has Trump with higher approval than disapproval.
Tracking since the start of his second term shows Trump average net approval dropping a significant 26 points from approximately a positive 12 percent approval earlier last year to now a negative 14 percent approval.
Additionally, a YouGov/Economist poll released January 13 in the wake of the ICE shooting of Renee Good showed that only 34 percent of Americans think that ICE operations are making America more safe and 47 percent think the mission is making the US more unsafe.
The issue is highly polarizing, with 77 percent of Republicans thinking ICE is making the US safe and only 3 percent of Democrats feeling the same.
President shows little concern for DHS impact on ratings
But Trump didn’t seem specifically concerned with how DHS is impacting his approval. Instead he wants to criminally prosecute pollsters he thinks are fraudulently publishing results that show him in a bad light and those that he thinks caused him to lose the 2020 presidential election.
‘There are great Pollsters that called the Election right, but the Media does not want to use them in any way, shape, or form. Isn’t it sad what has happened to American Journalism,’ he posted to Truth Social on Monday.
The president also called out a list of news outlets he claims are conducting and publishing ‘fraudulent polling,’ including the New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN and MSNBC; as well as some of his more favorite outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.
Nearly half the country thinks it’s less affordable under Trump, poll claims
Donald Trump is facing a grim economic reality going into an important midterm election year – nearly half the country thinks everyday life is less affordable under his watch.
A December Daily Mail poll conducted by JL Partners found that 36 percent of registered voters believe the cost of living is much more unaffordable since he returned to office in January, with another 12 percent ranking it a little more unaffordable, totaling 48 percent overall.
Only 12 percent said it was much more affordable now that the President has taken the economy over from Joe Biden, while 19 percent said it was a little more affordable.
Those numbers come as Trump has pushed back that he’s losing on the affordability message after a Democratic sweep of recent off-year and special elections.
The President has told various audiences that affordability complaints are a ‘con job’ and a ‘hoax.’ The Republican was reelected last year after touting his economic prowess, promising to lower prices and curb inflation.
Trump has insisted that the economy is in good shape and that the GOP-backed tax provisions in the ‘big, beautiful bill’ and tariff income will enrich everyday Americans. But 44 percent of voters said they believed the economy is currently worsening.
That’s higher than the 38 percent of voters who said the economy was worsening in the Daily Mail’s January poll, conducted ahead of Trump’s swearing-in.
And that’s in contrast to the 32 percent who believe it’s in an upswing, the new survey found. Another 15 percent said the economy was already bad and wasn’t getting worse.
The economic headlines tell a strong story: Gross domestic product grew at a robust 4.3 percent annual rate during the third quarter, driven by solid consumer spending and surging AI investment.
The S&P 500 has climbed more than 17 percent this year, while November’s unemployment rate of 4.6 percent remains lower than it has been in roughly two-thirds of all months since 1948.
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