Though President Donald Trump’s approval rating has remained underwater for nearly his entire presidency, his numbers have been ticking upward lately. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images Trump: ‘Media may be corrupt, but the People truly get it!’

President Donald Trump celebrated rising poll numbers Tuesday as a repudiation of two familiar annoyances: the press and special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“I now have my best Poll Numbers in a year,” he tweeted. “Much of the Media may be corrupt, but the People truly get it!”


Though Trump’s approval rating has remained underwater for nearly his entire presidency, his numbers have been ticking upward lately. FiveThirtyEight’s daily aggregation of popularity metrics has clocked Trump at 42.1 percent on five days this month, including Monday — his highest rating since May 8, 2017, the day before he fired FBI Director James Comey.

His numbers are still historically low compared to predecessors at this point in their terms.

Trump said on Twitter that his poll numbers were particularly noteworthy “with all of the made up, unsourced stories I get from the Fake News Media, together with the $10,000,000 Russian Witch Hunt (there is no Collusion).”

The White House has oscillated in recent days between slamming stories in the media for relying on unauthorized leaks and declaiming the stories themselves as fake or lacking sources.

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The “Russian Witch Hunt” references Mueller’s probe into Russian electoral interference and potential coordination with Trump’s 2016 campaign. His team is spending at a rate of roughly $10 million a year, which was projected to continue in the White House’s fiscal year 2019 budget.

The president has consistently insisted that his campaign did not collude with Russia during the campaign, though Mueller’s investigation has expanded beyond that question — much to Trump’s frustration.

Trump’s rising numbers have worried some Democrats anew about their prospects in the November midterm elections.