Politico reports President Donald Trump’s aides and advisers have made a habit of showing arguably the most powerful person in the world only positive polls to cheer him up.
Advisers to the president claim in the report they show him polls “designed to make him feel good,” usually polls focusing only his base.
Concerns grow in the White House when the support slides among voters who picked Trump in 2016, several senior aides and advisers said. Aides in Trump’s political affairs shop shrug off public polls that survey the general public. Most of the public pollsters are seen as “not understanding him,” one senior White House official said, a position carried over from the campaign, when many polls underestimated support for Trump and showed him losing in key counties that he won.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump adviser, said the president is still “in campaign mode” and closely tracks his polling numbers.
“I think he’s never really kind of gotten out of campaign mode and I thought he might,” Christie was cited as saying. Several senior aides and advisers said the Trump administration only becomes concerned when support slips in his base, while another official said public pollsters are often seen as “not understanding him.”
Two other White House officials were cited in the report said the strategy of focusing on polling numbers in Trump’s base was “just not accurate”. In fact, the aides also claimed to show President Trump these positive number is producing “delusional” ideas about the president’s support.
Politico also reports some advisers such as Tom Barrack have pushed President Trump to try and expand his base of supporters, not simply maintain it. Also, he often asks questions about polls to Kellyanne Conway, “who warns him to keep the base but also shows him other polls outside the RNC data”, according to several White House aides.