1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

The federal government still retains some credibility in the eyes of the public, despite the concerted efforts of President Donald Trump and his allies in the executive branch. And as things go badly in his second term — the economy is faltering, prices keep going up, and his crackdown on immigration is unpopular — Trump is looking for anything he can use to his benefit. With his approval numbers cratering across the board, the president seeks to exploit the public’s general trust in numbers that come from the government. In recent weeks, the president has repeatedly suggested that the problem isn’t him, it’s reality as measured by objective observers. Like pollsters. “When the real numbers start coming out, and the real pollsters start doing the polls,” he said at a White House event in December, “I think you’re going to see some really fantastic numbers.” This is a curious thing to say in the abstract, but it’s not that odd coming from Trump. He has long insisted polling that shows him to be unpopular or struggling is fake and biased. Unsurprisingly for someone with as few principles as he has, he’s also long praised positive polls as coming from the most respected pollsters in the land. It does raise the question, though: Who are these “real pollsters” Trump refers to, data from which we’ve been lacking? Well, we got a clue. One research firm the president’s team trusts is … the president’s team. On the social media platform he owns, Trump shared an image indicating that a staggering 91% of people had noticed that gas prices have gone down since he returned to the White House. The source for that impressive number? A “White House email survey.”