A sign of mental illness...

Trump: My approval rating is the same as Obama’s was in his first year

By LOUIS NELSON

Lamenting the media’s coverage of his “so-called low approval rating,” President Donald Trump on Friday pointed to a poll that shows him with first-year numbers similar to those of former President Barack Obama, who Trump argued was not hampered by “massive negative Trump coverage & Russia hoax!”

“While the Fake News loves to talk about my so-called low approval rating, @foxandfriends just showed that my rating on Dec. 28, 2017, was approximately the same as President Obama on Dec. 28, 2009, which was 47%...and this despite massive negative Trump coverage & Russia hoax!” Trump wrote on Twitter, citing coverage from the Fox News morning show where he receives almost unflinchingly positive coverage.

The poll to which Trump referred was released Thursday by Rasmussen, showing him with a 46 percent approval rating and a 53 percent disapproval rating. Obama, on Dec. 28 of his first year in office, had almost identical numbers, according to Rasmussen: 47 percent approval, 52 percent disapproval.

The Rasmussen poll is somewhat of an outlier, though. Of the 12 polls that go into the RealClearPolitics polling average of the president’s approval rating, the 46 percent in Rasmussen’s poll was the highest score Trump earned, 3 points better than his next best score.

Overall, the RealClearPolitics polling average shows Trump with a 39.3 percent approval rating and a 56.2 disapproval rating, historically poor numbers for a president at this point in his first term. Obama, in late December of his first year in office, had an average approval rating of 49.9 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, and a disapproval rating of 44.5 percent.