Polls can mean a lot or very little, depending on who you speak to. But for someone who courts approval like President Donald Trump, polls assessing his popularity are extremely important.
Unfortunately for the President, he remains the least popular President in modern polling history. While other Presidents had historic dips in their popularity, Trump cannot seem to crack the 50 percent approval mark in anything but the admittedly conservative Rasmussen poll.
And even with Rasmussen, Trump only hit at or above 50 percent approval a few times since taking office and the majority of those occurred in the first weeks of his presidency in early 2017. But the President stated Thursday he knows why job approval eludes him, and it has nothing to do with Americans' approval of his job performance.
The President took to Twitter Thursday morning and posted:
"Without the phony Russia Witch Hunt, and with all that we have accomplished in the last almost two years (Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judge’s, Military, Vets, etc.) my approval rating would be at 75% rather than the 50% just reported by Rasmussen. It’s called Presidential Harassment!"
However, even Rasmussen shows only a 49 percent approval rating for the President, with a November average of 48 percent which is down a point from his 2018 high of 49 percent. Rasmussen tracks daily results, so it is possible Trump hit 50 percent approval on a single day.
Other polls set the President's approval levels even lower. Economist/YouGov and Harvard-Harris show a 46 percent Trump job approval rating, Grinnel/Selzer shows 44 percent, Reuters/Ipsos 41 percent, Gallup 40 percent and IBD/TIPP only 39 percent job approval for the President.
People had their own thoughts on what might be driving Trump's poor poll performance.
And they shared them with the President directly.
As well as thoughts on the "phony Russia Witch Hunt."
Sympathy for the President was lacking in the replies to his tweet from all but a handful of respondents.
The President failed to provide a link to the poll results that showed him at 50 percent approval and the Rasmussen website states only 49 percent approval. But the President did post this image to his Twitter feed.