Trump Resurrects Dubious Claim To Prop Up His Own Ego

The president has had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad last few days in the news cycle — so, while speaking at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, he chose to praise the way his administration handled the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

“We did a great job with COVID, but that was a horrible thing for the whole world,” Trump said. “The whole world suffered. Your countries suffered. Everybody suffered.”

Trump then noted how the pandemic affected him in unique ways, especially when it came to his poll ratings. The president told the audience that the day before he was told about the incoming pandemic, his pollsters shared some incredibly positive news.

“They said, sir, if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln came back from the dead and they aligned, and they went for the president, vice president as a combination, you’d be beating them by 25 points,” Trump said.

But things changed quickly, according to the president.

“And then the next day I was told that something strange is happening,” Trump said. “There’s a lot of death being reported in a certain country. I won’t tell you which one because that country is well represented here.”

You can see him make the claim below.

Although it’s theoretically possible that pollsters told Trump he was more popular than Washington and Lincoln, a CNN analysis noted in 2019 that if Trump is heard telling an anecdote where someone calls him “sir,” it’s “very likely to be wrong.”

That hasn’t stopped him from making the Washington / Lincoln claim a few times, such as in 2021 and in 2022.

But while Trump keeps singing the same old song, it doesn’t seem to be landing with the same impact it might have four years ago, based on social media responses.