Trump Claims the Epstein Story Has Boosted His Approval Rating to ‘Best Numbers I’ve Ever Had’

Screenshot via C-SPAN.

At a reception with members of Congress Tuesday, President Donald Trump claimed that the festering scandal regarding the Epstein files had made his poll numbers improve five points. Multiple recent polls contradict this claim.

Trump has sought to downplay his friendship with deceased convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell as his administration faces growing criticism over the failure to produce the “Epstein files” his cabinet appointees repeatedly promised. Trump has furiously denounced Epstein and claimed the two were never very close. Meanwhile, media reports have continued to unearth photos, videos, and witnesses who were around them years ago that paint a different picture.

During his remarks Tuesday evening, Trump scoffed at his critics and asserted that the controversy was actually helpful to him.

A transcript of Trump’s remarks (relevant section starts around 47:26):

So we’ve achieved incredible things in a very short period of time, and in polling released just last week it was announced that the approval for congressional Democrats under Hakeem Jeffries has reached the lowest ever recorded, 19%. And Republicans are doing well.

And I have the best numbers I’ve ever had. You know, it’s amazing, I watch people on television, “Well, what about Donald Trump’s polling numbers?” Yeah, they’re the best numbers I’ve ever had.

And with this made-up hoax that they’re talking about, my numbers have gone up four and five points. They want to do anything to get us off the subject of making America great again, and we’re not gonna put up with it.

Trump did not specify what polls he thought had these results, but they do not match with recently reported surveys of his approval numbers.

Gallup’s poll shows Trump’s approval rating throughout the slightly more than six months of his second term on a slow and steady decline, starting at 47% and sliding to 40%, the lowest for this term.

That number is close to his overall average of 41% from his first term, which started at 44%, dropped to 39% during the first summer of the Covid pandemic, was at 43% around the 2020 election, and then dropped to its historic low of 34% in the wake of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Screenshot via Gallup.

Echelon Insights’ July poll showed Trump’s approval at 45%, the same number he got in June.

CNN’s Poll of Polls reports on the average numbers from a group of polls, including CNN’s own polls, Gallup, Reuters/Ipsos, and more. The most recent Poll of Polls from July 22 shows Trump’s approval rating took a slight downtick from five days ago, 42% to 41%; overall the trend for his second term so far shows a similar slow and steady decline as just the Gallup poll did.

Screenshot via CNN.

When looking at the polls CNN’s Poll of Polls included, two showed no change in Trump’s approval ratings and one showed a 3-point drop (just slightly outside the +/-2.5 point margin of error). Two of the polls used both showed a 1-point gain, but that is well within the margins of error from those polls (+/- 3.5 and +/- 3.6 points for AP-NORC and CNN, respectively).

Watch the video above via C-SPAN.