President Donald Trump’s approval, as measured by pollsters, is about 43 percent, but Donald Trump Jr. isn’t buying it.
The president’s son said Monday on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that he believes the constant barrage of negativity from the media has made people reluctant to admit their support of the administration.
“When these polls are saying 51 percent, guess what? He’s probably over 60 percent in reality,” he said.
Trump (pictured above) said the polling reminds him of the 2016 campaign, when most surveys showed his father trailing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. He said that was the case even in internal polling, except curiously, in surveys conducted online.
Trump said the campaign started asking respondents who their neighbors were voting for. The numbers for the Republican candidate shot up.
“They were willing to throw their neighbor under the bus because the neighbor is the person most likely to be them,” he said. “Once we started asking that question, the numbers came into alignment perfectly.”
Trump pointed to other measures indicating that his father is performing better. The so-called generic ballot question — in which pollsters ask which party people want to control Congress — has shrunk from a double-digit advantage for Democrats earlier in the year to just a few points.
Trump said it is a sign that his father’s policies are working.
“It’s common sense,” he said “People are actually starting to see the fruits of my father’s labors. They’re starting to see his policies coming through. They’re starting to see it in their paychecks. They’re starting to see it in the economy. They’re starting to see it in job numbers — across the board, whether that’s in any demographic you could list. Despite all the noise. The numbers just speak for themselves, and real people see it.”
People also see the “hysteria” from the mainstream media and the Left, and a rush to be “more socialist than socialists could possibly ever be,” Trump said.
But regular people are not interested in that, Trump added.
“They’re turning the most powerful man in the world into an underdog figure, because there’s not a single good story, despite all of these, frankly, ground-breaking, historic accomplishments,” he said.
Added Trump: “They’re things that wouldn’t be accomplished by regular politicians.”
“These people have to realize that Trump may not be on the ballot, but he’s on the ballot, because his policies are.”
Trump said he plans to campaign aggressively ahead of the midterm elections this fall, specifically targeting voters in Democratic-leaning areas that delivered victory to his father in 2016.
“These people have to realize that Trump may not be on the ballot, but he’s on the ballot, because his policies are,” he said. “All of these things, and all of the efforts that have been made, and all of the incredible accomplishments that have happened over the last few months, they could go away quite easily. Because that’s what the other side wants.”
Trump said the media no longer are driving the narrative because they’ve lost credibility.
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“They’ve been preaching nonsense for years, expecting people to buy it,” he said. “But now you have someone who’s willing to go out there.”
Republicans will make a particular effort to knock off Democratic senators in states that the president carried in 2016. Trump said the challenge will be drawing a contrast between how Democrats like Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia portray themselves and how they actually vote.
“You can’t show up on Fox News and pretend, ‘Well, we’re basically conservatives’ and then vote against tax reform,” he said. “OK, you can’t do those kinds of things and just say the soundbites but then vote against all of the things on the president’s agenda. That doesn’t work and, I think … [their] constituents need to see that.”
PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.
(photo credit, homepage and article images: Donald Trump, Jr. [1], [2], CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)
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