Brendan Smialowski / AFP
President Donald Trump turned to Hope Hicks in June 2017 when he wanted a "number" to back up his false claims that his approval ratings were "setting records" for a first-year president.
Hicks, a longtime aide who Trump sometimes called "Hopey," made Trump happy by offering up "seventy percent," wrote the Atlantic's Mark Leibovich, who witnessed the exchange.
Leibovich described the conversation — and his own confusion over the polling — in his new book "Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission," which comes out on Tuesday.
Seventy percent sounded high for a president whose approval rating on that day's Gallup tracker was just 36 percent, which Leibovich noted was "in record-low territory."
It turned out, it wasn't a national poll.
"Where was that poll from, Hopey?" Trump asked her.
Hicks said it was from Tennessee, and then added that it was of Republicans. That meant that the approval rating being cited was lower than Trump's ratings among Republicans nationwide, which was at 85%, Leibovich wrote.
But "Trump didn't seem to process this, only that his historic popularity had once again been affirmed by 'the data,'" Leibovich added.
Leibovich later asked Hicks what was happening with the Tennessee poll.
"I mean, I had to give him something, right?" she said. "Whatever."
Leibovich's invitation to the Oval Office came as a surprise that day when he showed up at the White House to meet with Hicks, he wrote.
He found Trump watching a DVR recording of "Fox & Friends" at 12:30 p.m., hours after it aired, and he resumed watching the show as Hicks walked Leibovich out.
