President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to credit his administration for a recently reported fall in US cancer-related death rates, an idea the American Cancer Society rebuked.

Trump said in a Thursday tweet: "U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest in Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration."

The American Cancer Society released a report Wednesday indicating that the rate of deaths caused by cancer in the US had dropped by 29% from 1991 to 2017.

The organization's CEO, however, told CNN this decline was not connected to the Trump administration.

Gary M. Reedy told CNN the figures in the report reflected "prevention, early detection, and treatment advances that occurred in prior years."

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President Donald Trump on Thursday credited his administration with causing a fall in US cancer death rates but was quickly rebuked by the American Cancer Society, whose CEO said a drop described this week had nothing to do with the current White House.

The American Cancer Society had released a report Wednesday that found the death rate from cancer in the US had declined by 29% from 1991 to 2017, figures that it said meant more than 2.9 million deaths were avoided.

It also found that the rate dropped by 2.2% from 2016 to 2017, the biggest drop ever recorded in one year.

The day after the report was released, Trump said in a tweet: "U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest in Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration."

Trump took office in 2017, but according to American Cancer Society CEO Gary M. Reedy, the report did not connect the drop in cancer deaths to the US administration.

"The mortality trends reflected in our current report, including the largest drop in overall cancer mortality ever recorded from 2016 to 2017, reflect prevention, early detection, and treatment advances that occurred in prior years," he told CNN in a statement.

He continued (emphasis ours):

"Since taking office, the president has signed multiple spending bills that have included increases in funding for cancer research at the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute — though the impact of those increases are not reflected in the data contained in this report."

According to an earlier report from Business Insider, Trump announced cuts to cancer-research budgets in March 2017.