Trump touts having the best numbers of any president, despite his dismal approval rating

Donald Trump claimed once again that he had the “best numbers” of any president, even as his approval poll ratings continue to slide and Americans are feeling serious economic pains stemming from the war in Iran.The president was in Denton, Texas, on Thursday at a manufacturing plant on Thursday as part of a two-state swing that will also include a visit to Choctaw tribal lands in Oklahoma. He spoke to a crowd of a few hundred people as he tried — not for the first time this week — to convince voters that it was merely an image problem from which the GOP and his presidency are suffering."We have the greatest numbers of any president in the history of our country, and I can't get the word out,” the president complained. “The only thing we’re doing bad at is public relations.”It’s far from the first time he has said this. Going back months, Trump has insisted that the country’s economic numbers are better than at any point in history, even as interest rates remain high and wages remain just barely ahead of inflation, and not enough for many Americans to deal with surging prices in several key areas, including food prices and gasoline.The president said at his event on Thursday that Americans worried about affording those commodities were wrong.Donald Trump spoke about his efforts to revitalize manufacturing in Texas on Thursday (Reuters)“They say, ‘yes, but affordability?’ And everyone thinks that the prices are high because of me, but they're not. We're the ones bringing down the prices. I just hope you can know. The one good thing about [the president’s critics] is, they have a great line of bull***t.”“You know, they came up with the word affordability. So from day one, they said, ‘what about your prices?!’ And then they came up-- you know, they always come up with these words.”Though the crowd was cheering for his early remarks, it had largely grown silent by the time Trump made his remarks about affordability, in part due to the length of the president’s speech, which began 40 minutes late and lasted a full hour. His remarks were punctuated with calls for voters in the state to support Ken Paxton, a sign that the president sees a real possibility that Paxton will lose his upcoming Senate election against James Talarico, his Democratic opponent. Talarico led Paxton by 51 percentage points to 49 in a Fox News poll released this week, a devastating sign for the Republican candidate in Texas and a worrying sign for the GOP in other areas as well.Trump faces a 41 percent approval rating in the state of Texas, where Paxton is running to preserve a Senate seat for the GOP that has now cost the party more than $100m in total in advertising and other expenses, thanks in part to the bloody primary fight between Paxton and the Republican incumbent, John Cornyn. The senator has not endorsed his would-be replacement and has already said he won’t campaign or fundraise for him.Ken Paxton looks on at Donald Trump's rally in Denton, Texas (AFP/Getty)Paxton’s own spotty record also makes the race harder to win for Republicans, and those Republicans aligned with Cornyn spent the duration of the primary highlighting those issues for voters. The attorney general of Texas, Paxton, was nearly impeached by the state legislature for abusing his office amid reports of affairs and a messy divorce battle with his wife, Angela Paxton, who is a Republican state senator.His controversies aren’t the only problem weighing down his candidacy, though, as Trump’s war with Iran has become staggeringly unpopular and by far the least popular of Trump’s stances among his own voters. Three in four Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of relations with Iran in a recent CNN/SRSS poll, and other surveys have shown that Americans broadly doubt that the president has a solid strategy for extracting the U.S. from the conflict.Trump has pledged to spend much of October on the road campaigning for Republican candidates. Democrats are hoping to win Cornyn’s seat as well as three others to obtain a Senate majority, and polling suggests that the party is competitive in as many as a half dozen or more seats currently held by Republicans.