On Sunday night, Trump released this tweet into the wild:
Over 90% approval rating for your all time favorite (I hope) President within the Republican Party and 52% overall. This despite all of the made up stories by the Fake News Media trying endlessly to make me look as bad and evil as possible. Look at the real villains please!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2018
Believe it or not, the 90% is actually backed up by real data from real polls (even though it’s not any kind of “all-time” record, and polls that reach 90 percent approval are rare). It’s the “52% overall” that’s puzzling—as The Week pointed out, there has been no recent poll that puts Trump close to those figures. Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star has a theory:
As you know, the 90% with Republicans is from legit polls. The 52% overall is fictional as far as I can tell. Best guess for any “basis” is that he took the 52% disapproval from the latest NBC/WSJ and made it his approval.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 27, 2018
Harry Enten of 538 agrees, and as far as anybody can tell, this is the most likely theory. Which, of course, leads to another debate—did Trump deliberately lie about the numbers, or did he mis-read them? Sadly, neither scenario feels far-fetched.