President Donald Trump is faced with a collapse in his polling numbers but outright lying about — and while his dishonesty is hardly new, this type of lie is hiding a darker, more "pernicious" mindset that puts the whole country in danger, wrote Zeeshan Aleem for MSNBC.

Trump entered office with numbers somewhat stronger than he did in his first term, but they are now cratering, especially with independents. But to hear Trump, those numbers are fake, and the real numbers show him at all-time highs. Over the weekend, he took to Truth Social to proclaim: “Except what is written and broadcast in the Fake News, I now have the highest poll numbers I’ve ever had, some in the 60’s and even 70’s. Thank you. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

This is of course not correct, wrote Aleem.

"The RealClearPolling average puts Trump deeply underwater, with 46 percent job approval (and 51 percent disapproval)," wrote Aleem. "That's nearly 5 points down from the 50.5 percent average approval he held when he returned to office in January. Polling analyst Nate Silver's aggregator puts Trump's average approval 2 points lower, at about 44 percent. While that's better than Trump was at at this point in his first term, it's worse than for any other presidents at this point in their terms, according to Silver. Even the polls with the most favorable results for Trump don't get anywhere remotely close to Trump's being approved of by over 70 percent of Americans."

Trump may have taken the "60's and even 70's" number from polls that sampled his approval among Republicans specifically, wrote Aleem — but that's beside the point.

"I find it harder to laugh off Trump's misinformation and disinformation about his purported popularity the way I once did. It's not just a project of narcissism. It's a narrative designed to frame all of his actions — including authoritarian ones — as backed by an incontestable popular mandate," wrote Aleem.

And it has real-world consequences; after all, Trump incited the January 6 riot partly out of a belief he couldn't possibly have lost and the numbers were fake.

"Now as Trump oversees an illegitimate military occupation of the nation's capital, he's claiming that there is clear popular appetite for an autocrat to lead America," concluded Aleem. "'A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator,’' Trump told the press Monday morning. The polls don't show that, either — but if Trump gets everything he wants, he won't need to care."