Donald Trump has found a new way of self-soothing—by swapping around his approval and disapproval ratings to make himself sound more popular.
In a Sunday night Truth Social post, the 80-year-old president boasted about his “59 percent” approval rating, which he attributed to “prices coming down along with the lowering of oil and gas.”
However, there are no reputable polls showing Trump with anything close to a 59 percent approval rating. In fact, several surveys published over the last few weeks show the president’s disapproval rating is closer to 59 percent, and in some cases even higher.
There have been repeated warnings that Trump’s poor approval rating and handling of the economy are likely to have a disastrous effect on the GOP in November’s midterms, with Republicans facing a potential electoral wipeout in the crucial nationwide elections.
According to Silver Bulletin, Nate Silver’s polling and election-forecasting Substack, Trump’s current national average approval rating is a dire 40.1 percent, while his disapproval rating stands at 56.5 percent.
The last time Trump’s average approval rating was above 50 percent was in February 2025, with the deeply unpopular war in Iran and rising gas prices helping drive the president’s national average down into the high 30s at times.
Multiple polls published in June and July, which are included in Silver Bulletin’s average, show the president with approval ratings that do not come close to the 59 percent Trump claimed.
A TIPP Insights survey of 1,473 U.S. adults, published on July 6, found Trump with just a 38 percent approval rating, compared with a 54 percent disapproval rating.
A July YouGov/The Economist survey also revealed similarly dire numbers for the president, with 35 percent of Americans approving of Trump’s job performance and a whopping 61 percent disapproving.
There has not been a single poll within 10 percentage points of the 59 percent approval rating Trump claims to have recorded since early June.
The closest is a Zogby Analytics survey from early July, which found Trump with a 47 percent approval rating and a 57 percent disapproval rating.
Even Rasmussen Reports, one of Trump’s favored polling firms that often skews results to favor GOP candidates, cannot mask how unpopular the president is with Americans.
Rasmussen’s latest numbers put Trump’s approval rating at 45 percent and his total disapproval at 54 percent, including 43 percent who said they “strongly disapprove” of his performance as president.
Whit Ayres, a leading Republican pollster, warned that historical precedent suggests the GOP is likely to lose control of the House in the midterms because of the president’s poor approval ratings.
“We know that the party in power tends to lose House seats in a midterm election, but the number of seats lost is highly correlated with the president’s popularity,” Ayres told The Hill.
“When presidential job approval is above 50 percent, the average loss of House seats for his party is 14. When it’s below 50 percent, the average loss of House seats for his party is 32.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
