With a Straight Face, Speaker Johnson Claims Trump Has a ‘90% Approval Rating’ 

Speaker Mike Johnson claimed on Friday that President Donald Trump’s approval hit 90% this week.

The speaker appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box, where he slammed a Wall Street Journal report that said Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein a birthday letter in 2003 featuring a drawing of a nude woman and an odd imaginary dialogue between Trump and Epstein. The president, a former associate of the dead child sex trafficker, denies the report and is suing the Journal, its parent company News Corp, and Rupert Murdoch, among others involved in the publication of the story.

Johnson told CNBC’s Joe Kernen that the story is “ridiculous” and pointed to Trump’s denials.

“They’re literally making things up,” the speaker continued. “He’s so frustrated by it, and he’s gonna wind up, I think, suing some of the media outlets that have put all this out there because they informed them that it was totally contrived.”

Johnson went on to say that this president is the “most maligned” figure in American political history before making a wild claim about Trump’s approval rating.

“And you see, at the same time, his approval ratings are skyrocketing,” he claimed. CNN had a story, I think a day or two ago, he was at 90% approval rating. There’s never been a president that high. So, the more that they attack him, the more the American people see through it.”

Kernen offered no pushback to Johnson’s claim.

The speaker appears to be referencing a poll that CNN conducted between July 10 and July 13. According to that survey, just 42% of Americans approve of the job Trump has done, compared to 58% who disapprove. A deeper dive into the poll, however, shows that 88% of Republicans approve of Trump’s performance. This may be what Johnson was talking about, though he did not specify. Instead, he made it seem as though 90% of all respondents approved of the president.

Johnson has previously dismissed the views of Trump’s opponents as invalid or manufactured. In February, he baselessly alleged that the angry constituents who appeared at Republican lawmakers’ town halls across the country were paid agitators.

“]T]he videos you saw of the town halls were for paid protesters in many of those places,” he claimed while offering no evidence.

Watch above via CNBC.