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Did Donald Trump Just Out-Stupid Himself?

Did Donald Trump Just Out-Stupid Himself?
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses an audience at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, June 15, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Aluka Berry
Christopher Aluka Berry / Reuters
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses an audience at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, June 15, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Aluka Berry

Donald Trump -- Twitter's resident expert on racist memes, lame insults, terrible dog metaphors and everything "Sad!" -- appeared to lower the bar for himself on Friday by proudly tweeting out a poll that showed him trailing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

It seemed like a surprising lapse in judgment for Trump, who regularly tweets polls that show him in the lead, regardless of how credible they are.

But was it a stupid mistake? Did he (or some intern) upload the wrong screenshot? Does he not know that 51 percent is higher than 49 percent?

It's certainly possible. But perhaps this is part of a broader campaign strategy.

During a phone interview with The New York Times on Thursday, Trump candidly admitted that he was losing to Clinton in the polls, while suggesting he had room for improvement.

"I’m four down in one poll, three and a half in another that just came out, and I haven’t started yet,” he said.

In true Trump fashion, even when he's losing, he spins it as a victory.

According to the HuffPost Pollster polling average, which aggregates all publicly available polling data, Trump is trailing Clinton by about 7 percentage points, at 38 percent to her 45 percent.

While a few polls showed Trump ahead of Clinton in mid-May -- when the primary was still in play and Clinton was not yet the presumed Democratic nominee -- he has trailed the former secretary of state in all 14 polls conducted so far in June, including the one he tweeted.

Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.

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