TRUMP: 'Any negative polls are fake news'
REUTERS/Carlos Barria
President Donald Trump blasted negative polls as "fake news" in a series of tweets Monday morning, also accusing what he called the "FAKE NEWS media" of lying.
"Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting," Trump tweeted.
Trump won the presidential election despite many professional polls predicting a Hillary Clinton victory.
A recent CNN poll found that Trump had the lowest approval rating in recent history for a new president, with 53% of respondents saying they disapproved of the way Trump was handling his job.
Just 44% approved of the job he was doing two weeks into his presidency, according to the poll, 7 points below the previous low for presidents measured in the survey. Trump is the only president in recent history to hold a net-negative rating at this point in his tenure.
Additionally, the CNN poll suggested that Trump's actions aimed at national security had not been well received by Americans:
- 53% of respondents opposed the executive order Trump signed that temporarily bans travel to the US for citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries.
- 46%, a plurality, thought it made the US "less safe" from terrorism.
- A majority, 55%, viewed it as "an attempt to ban Muslims" from entering the US.
- 60% opposed building a wall along the US-Mexico border. Trump signed an executive order last week to begin formulating a plan for the wall's construction.
In mid-January, before his inauguration, the then-president-elect dismissed his low approval ratings as "rigged."
The president also said in a separate tweet Monday morning that he used data to "call my own shots" and accused what he termed the "FAKE NEWS media" of lying.
"I call my own shots, largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it. Some FAKE NEWS media, in order to marginalize, lies!" Trump tweeted.
Brett LoGiurato contributed reporting to this story.
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