Living in the Dumbest Time in History, you get to learn a thing or two about polls. The most important thing to know is that Real Polls show the president Winning. Any poll that is negative towards the president—say, it shows poor ratings of his job performance, or that he may lose to a prospective election opponent—is Fake. This is a similar phenomenon to Fake News, a term that the president has openly admitted encompasses any report that he doesn't like. Things like "reality" or "what's actually happening out in the world" are not relevant. Do they like me, or do they not like me?

Once you've digested that, it will be far easier to understand what happened Wednesday night on the television show hosted by Lou Dobbs, the fashy Benjamin Button. According to the Washington Post's Robert Costa, the view among some Trump allies is that "the most influential person in the president’s ear is Lou Dobbs, through the TV each night." This is somewhat concerning considering Ol' Lou recently urged Trump to declare a (phony) national emergency to "simply sweep aside the recalcitrant left in this country" after Congress would not give him money for his Big, Beautiful Wall. Sweep aside Congress and do whatever you want, My King, Constitution be damned.

Dobbs may primarily have Trump's attention on the issue of immigration, since the president already has a shadow chief-of-staff who speaks to him through the teevee in the form of Sean Hannity. Yes, this is the world we live in, where the world's most powerful man waits for guidance to arrive via the television cable. He certainly can't be expected to read. Anyway, Ol' Lou promoted a poll that was so Real the president just had to tweet a screenshot:

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Wow! 55 percent approval!

It didn't take long for everyone and their political-reporter brother to point out that the actual Georgetown Politics poll did not show this. That includes Mo Elleithee‏, the director of the institute, who logged on to say that while the 58 percent approval number on the economy is right, Trump's overall approval was actually 43 percent—about where he's been throughout his presidency. 52 percent disapprove.

So what's that 55 percent number? That's the percentage of people who have an "unfavorable impression" of the president. They don't like him. In fairness, he's doing better than Nancy Pelosi. But the poll doesn't really improve for El Jefe from there: just 38 percent say he deserves reelection, and 57 say it's time to give someone else a chance. Of course, this will matter exactly squat once it's a one-on-one matchup between him and the unknown Democratic nominee.

This episode remains instructive, however. Here is one of the president's most cherished propagandists pushing blatantly false information that paints him in a better light. Because it is a nice thing about the president, the president amplifies it regardless of truth value. This is the Symbiosis of Stupid at work in its most basic and easily deconstructed form. More often, the misinformation is subtle: a twisting of words, a removal from context, or the elevation of the worst example of some group—say, an undocumented immigrant who committed murder—as representative of that group in defiance of the statistics on immigrant crime. This is how it will go from now on, until it gets worse.

Oh, and don't hold your breath waiting for Dobbs to correct the record on his show tonight. The truth is whatever you can get enough people to believe.

Update (1:30 p.m.): During a segment on the arrest of Julian Assange this morning, Fox Business issued a correction in which reporter Blake Burman spoke while the camera panned over a still photo of the president.

It’s been a quite start to the day for President Trump, though he did send out a tweet this morning from the Lou Dobbs show last night on Fox Business. That tweet featured a poll that was not entirely accurate, which Fox Business would like to correct. According to a poll from Georgetown University, 58 percent of respondents approved of the president’s handling of the economy. That portion of the graphic was right. However, the graphic also showed that 55 percent of the respondents approve of the president, that number is not correct. The 55 percent number was those who have an unfavorable impression of President Trump.

While there were no graphics and it may not have been particularly easy for viewers to follow, that was indeed a correction. Fox News issued a similar one, so credit where due. The president's tweet remains up.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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