Trump gets defensive as he's fact-checked on 'fake polls'

Donald Trump hit back when fact-checked about his unfavourable polling, declaring them to be "fake" and insisting he's got "the best poll numbers I’ve ever had.”

During the tense exchange via phone call on CNBC with Squawkbox host Joe Kernen, he also continued to peddle the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was "rigged."

“But what they did in the 2020 election is grotesque... I mean, that was a rigged election, a 100 per cent,” Trump said.

"I say it all the time. It was a rigged election. A 100 per cent rigged.”

Despite Kernen insisted: "We can’t relitigate that. We can’t relitigate that here."

At one point, the talk then turned to polling, where Trump claimed he had "the best poll numbers" he's ever had.

"You know why? Because people love the tariffs, and they love the trade deal, and they love that foreign countries aren’t ripping us off anymore. For years, they ripped us off, friend and foe," the president said.

That's when Kernen stipulated that Trump has had good approval ratings from Republicans, not anywhere else.

“I have the best poll numbers I’ve ever had,” Trump insisted. “I have poll numbers where I’m 71 percent.”

“Those are among Republicans," the anchor pointed out, and remarked how "your haters cite polls that have you down in the 30s."

CNBC Television

In a UMass poll of 1,000 respondents released July 25-30, Trump's approval rating dropped to 38 per cent and his disapproval rating increased to 58 per cent, Forbes reported. Meanwhile, Fox News had him at negative 30 percent on pricing and inflation, but more recent polls have Trump down 26 points.

Then came the long-winded defence from Trump, where he ripped into Fox's polling...

"Yeah, but they’re fake polls, Joe. I had a lot of fake polls. You also have me in the 70s. I have fake polls… Fox gives me terrible polls all the time, you know, they do nothing, but they… I’ve never had a good poll with Fox. And then I win an election and I go through the roof.

"Because look, I won every swing state, did I not? I won every swing state, Andrew, I won the popular vote by millions of votes, even though they tried like hell to cheat. I won by millions. The votes. I won. The counties and the all of the counties. I won 7,000 to know I won 2,750 to 502 and I won the election in a landslide."

He added: "And obviously that’s only... we’re only six months in, but my poll numbers are better now, much better than during the election. And now part of that, then part of that is because the Democrat Party is self-destructing."

Elsewhere, 'Seems a little needy': US government copies American Eagle ad, and White House's latest Trump claim has everyone asking the same thing.

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