Kevin Hassett dodged the question when asked whether Donald Trump was purposefully being fed only palatable polling data.
“I’m not the poll expert,” the National Economic Council director argued on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, when asked what information was being briefed to the president.
Host Jake Tapper confronted Hassett with a Trump Truth Social post percent about glowing poll results. Despite his enduring loyalty to the president, Hassett couldn’t quite reason out where Trump sourced his glowing approval figures from.
Tapper introduced the topic with one of Trump’s many social media outpourings from Saturday, reading in part: “I HAVE JUST GOTTEN THE HIGHEST POLL NUMBERS OF MY ‘POLITICAL CAREER.’ While my great work on the Economy has not yet been fully appreciated, it will be! Things are really Rockin’.”
The CNN anchor was quick to counter Trump’s enthusiasm. “I don‘t know what poll number he‘s referring to because CBS News-YouGov poll has 75 percent saying the president‘s not focused enough on lowering prices,” Tapper said to Hassett.
“Fox poll, Trump‘s lowest economic approval rating of his second term, just 38 percent—a plurality—saying he‘s actually making things worse.”
Tapper then added that in Kamala Harris’ book, 107 Days, she wrote that Joe Biden’s adviser Mike Donilon “would filter the data from the polls and present the numbers in soothing terms” during his presidency.
“Is that happening with President Trump, too? Is he only getting, you know, the most positively skewed polling information?” he asked.
Hassett maintained an awkward smile and obliquely responded: “Well, Jake, as you know, I‘m not the poll expert, but the people that are are briefing the president all the time.“
The economist sidestepped directly explaining why Trump felt so positive about his approval rating, but said instead: “The bottom line is that if you look at where the economy is moving, that there have been a lot of positive movements.”
Hassett then argued that real wages were higher under Trump than Biden, and theorized: “And so I think in the end, people are going to look at their pockets and decide, am I ahead or am I not? And I think that they‘re going to find that they‘re ahead.”
Despite not answering Tapper’s question head-on, Hassett did seem to suggest that public feeling was less promising than Trump’s post suggested—whether the president was being “soothed” with massaged data or not.
“There‘s one thing that we‘ve also noticed, if you look at sentiment—which isn‘t really polling—that sentiment tends to go really south when there‘s a government shutdown,” he said. “And that‘s something that just happened.”
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