Donald Trump Says His Approval Rating Is "Not Bad" — But a Poll Suggests Otherwise

Donald Trump addressed a new poll that indicates his approval rating has been declining pretty steadily — and plummeting to historic lows — since he took office in January. The Washington Post-ABC News poll, released on July 15, found that 36 percent of Americans approve of the president. On Twitter the following day, Trump criticized the poll for being inaccurate and shrugged off the dismal approval rating as "not bad at this time."

Since his inauguration, Trump's approval rating has dropped a full six points. In addition, 48 percent of Americans polled say they are dissatisfied and "disapprove strongly" of his performance thus far. The same percentage of Americans also think the nation's leadership in the world has weakened. The poll randomly sampled 1,001 adults from July 10 to July 13.

So how bad is that approval rating, really? Well, pretty not not bad, to put it in Trump's own terms. At the six-month mark, Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president in 70 years. According to a graph provided by ABC News, the last president to have such a historically low approval rating was Gerald Ford in 1975. His approval rating at the six-month mark was 39 percent. By comparison, Barack Obama's approval rating at the same point in his presidency was 59 percent.

Though the president thinks the numbers are "not bad at this time," one can't help but wonder what would constitute as "bad" in his mind.