Donald Trump has never been one for facts, figures, science, or math, especially when they run counter to his agenda, or rudely reveal that he is not the most popular president in the history of the universe whom voters would give 25 terms to if they could. As we head into 2020, that’s a problem, given that recent polls, including those conducted by his own campaign, show many a state wants to send the ex-real estate developer back to the gilded hellhole from whence he came. Luckily Trump has a solution that you probably could’ve seen coming, even if you only watched the first episode of this horror anthology: lie, lie, and lie some more.

Two days after the New York Times reported that he had instructed aides to deny internal polling that showed him trailing Joe Biden in “many of the states he needs to win, even though he is also trailing in public polls from key states like Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania,” Trump told reporters that he’s actually kicking ass. “We have great internal polling,” he said during a meeting in the Oval Office with Polish President Andrzej Duda. “We are winning in every single state that we’ve polled.” He added that polls that say otherwise are “made up by the newspapers,” calling the Times report “fake news” and telling Duda, a right-wing nationalist, “Much of the media in this country, unfortunately, is corrupt.”

Trump’s explanation for why his re-election prospects are actually the exact opposite of what data shows followed an early-morning Twitter tirade in which he claimed the media is actually in possession of positive polling numbers that it’s choosing to censor. “The Fake News has never been more dishonest than it is today,” he ranted. “Thank goodness we can fight back on Social Media. Their new weapon of choice is Fake Polling, sometimes referred to as Suppression Polls (they suppress the numbers). Had it in 2016, but this is worse. The Fake (Corrupt) News Media said they had a leak into polling done by my campaign which, by the way and despite the phony and never ending Witch Hunt, are the best numbers WE have ever had. They reported Fake numbers that they made up & don’t even exist. WE WILL WIN AGAIN!”

In May, Politico reported that a 17-state poll conducted by the Trump campaign “concluded the president trails Joe Biden in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.” On Tuesday a nationwide Quinnipiac poll showed Trump losing the White House to Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Cory Booker, with Biden beating Trump by 13 points. “The head-to-head matchups give this heads-up to President Donald Trump’s team: former Vice President Joseph Biden and other Democratic contenders would beat the president if the election were held today,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “It’s a long 17 months to Election Day, but Joe Biden is ahead by landslide proportions.”