Donald Trump Jr. on Thursday shared a doctored image on Instagram that suggests his father’s approval rating is higher than Barack Obama’s, The Hill is reporting.
Here’s what happened: on Monday night, host John King decided to fact-check the 45th president’s claim that he had higher poll numbers than Barack Obama at this point in his presidency, “by far,” as Trump claimed.
“Presidential Approval numbers are very good – strong economy, military and just about everything else. Better numbers than Obama at this point, by far. We are winning on just about every front and for that reason there will not be a Blue Wave, but there might be a Red Wave!”
Trump may have been referring to a recent Rasmussen Poll which, as the Inquisitr reported at the time, purportedly showed that Trump had a higher approval rating than Obama at this point in his presidency, to the tune of 10 points.
However, the poll, and indeed Rasmussen’s polling in general, have both been widely criticized, both for Rasmussen’s methodology and for the fact that the polling organization is admittedly biased towards conservatives. Other polling, such as by Gallup, does not support such lofty approval ratings for the president.
You can watch the segment below, complete with the original, non-doctored image showing the polling data.
The president’s son, however, used a doctored (and poorly) image of that infographic to suggest that his father’s approval ratings are higher than Obama’s, not lower.
Looking at the red box under the picture of Trump’s face, you can see clearly that the image has been subjected to photo editing, and amateurishly at that.
That is not to suggest that Donald Trump Jr. personally edited the photo that he shared. He could very well have gotten it from another source.
Twitter users were, of course, all over it.
As for Donald Trump Sr.’s approval ratings: at no point in his presidency has his approval rating ever exceeded 50 percent, according to Gallup polling. The highest it’s ever been has been 45 percent.
This is not the first time that Trump Jr. has posted something on social media that has elicited criticism – or at the least, confused eyebrow-raising. For example, as the Inquisitr reported at the time, back on July 4 Trump Jr. posted a photo of his father sprinkling stars, apparently representing freedom. He dubbed it “Freedom bae.”
https://instagram.com/p/Bk2cwr7Hx80/?utm_source=ig_embed
As of this writing, Trump Jr.’s spokespeople have not returned calls for comment.
