Donald Trump insists that the polls showing his support collapsing are not the real polls.

He has better numbers.

His “real poll numbers,” the president claims, place his approval rating above 60 percent—even as major surveys cited by political analysts Sean Wilentz and Sidney Blumenthal measured his support closer to 30 percent.

When Blumenthal repeated Trump’s preferred figure during their podcast, The Court of History, Wilentz reacted instantly.

“Oh my God.”

But the historians said Trump’s fixation on alternative polling is only part of a more disturbing pattern.

As his political position becomes increasingly precarious, the president has repeatedly compared himself with earlier occupants of the White House. Two names in particular have captured the analysts’ attention:

Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon.

Wilentz called the habit a revealing “little tic.”

The comparison is ominous because neither predecessor offers the heroic legacy most presidents would choose to invoke.

Hoover became the symbol of governmental failure during the Great Depression. His administration’s treatment of the Bonus Army—World War I veterans who gathered in Washington seeking early payment of promised compensation—remains one of the darkest episodes of his presidency.

In 1932, federal troops violently cleared the veterans’ encampment.

Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal after his administration became synonymous with political espionage, obstruction and abuse of presidential authority.

Trump’s recurring interest in those presidents may therefore reveal how he understands power, failure and survival.

According to Wilentz, Trump does not look at Nixon as a warning against corruption.

He sees a man who failed because he did not go far enough.

“He’d like to construct a government that goes beyond what Richard Nixon would have wanted to do, as horrible as it was,” Wilentz said.

“He thinks that Nixon was a wimp. He thinks that Nixon was a wuss, and that’s why he fell—and that he is going to outdo him.”

That is an interpretation by a historian and political analyst, not a confirmed statement of Trump’s private intentions. The supplied reporting does not quote Trump explicitly declaring that Nixon was weak or announcing a plan to exceed Watergate.

But Wilentz believes Trump’s conduct supports the inference.

Nixon ultimately yielded to constitutional pressure. Faced with almost certain impeachment and removal, he resigned.

Trump has built his political identity around never conceding, never apologizing and treating institutional limits as attacks to be defeated.

To Wilentz, that difference explains the foreboding future hidden inside the comparison.

Trump may have concluded that Nixon’s mistake was not abusing power.

It was surrendering when he was caught.

Blumenthal said Trump’s constant comparison with historical presidents also suggests he is psychologically removed from the immediate reality of his second term.

That claim should be treated carefully.

Neither Blumenthal nor Wilentz was presented as a physician who had personally examined Trump. Political behavior, unusual comparisons and disputed polling claims cannot establish a psychiatric or neurological diagnosis.

There is no verified medical evidence in the supplied reporting that Trump has a mental illness or cognitive disorder.

But his use of supposed “real poll numbers” raises a legitimate political question independent of medical speculation:

Is the president receiving accurate information—or demanding numbers that protect him from bad news?

Leaders insulated from reality can make dangerous decisions even without suffering from any illness.

If advisers fear presenting unfavorable polling, Trump may underestimate voter anger, misread the midterm environment and respond to electoral losses as though they were impossible without fraud.

The gap described by the analysts is enormous.

An approval rating above 60 percent would indicate a commanding public mandate. Support near 30 percent would represent profound political weakness.

Both cannot accurately describe the same electorate at the same moment.

Polling methodologies differ, individual surveys contain margins of error and approval can fluctuate. But methodological variation does not ordinarily explain a 30-point gulf.

Trump’s insistence that only favorable numbers are “real” mirrors a broader pattern in which he accepts elections, courts and institutions when they validate him—and attacks their legitimacy when they do not.

That makes the Nixon comparison especially significant.

Watergate became a test of whether constitutional institutions could restrain a president who misused power. Congress investigated. Courts enforced subpoenas. Members of Nixon’s own party eventually told him that his position was untenable.

Trump governs a Republican Party far more personally loyal to him than Nixon’s party was to Nixon.

If he believes Nixon’s fall resulted from weakness, he may respond to future investigations or electoral defeat by applying greater pressure to institutions and demanding deeper loyalty from subordinates.

Hoover’s legacy offers a different warning.

The use of federal force against protesting veterans demonstrated what can happen when a government treats public grievance as a security threat rather than a democratic demand.

Trump has repeatedly advocated aggressive responses to protesters and deployed federal forces in politically charged settings.

Again, resemblance is not proof of a predetermined plan.

But historians study the leaders presidents choose as reference points because those comparisons reveal the past they fear, admire or hope to surpass.

Trump could compare himself with Washington’s restraint, Lincoln’s preservation of the Union or Eisenhower’s military leadership.

Instead, according to the analysts, his attention repeatedly returns to Hoover and Nixon.

One crushed desperate veterans.

The other left office in disgrace.

Wilentz fears Trump has drawn a lesson from both—not about what a president must never do, but about how to do it without losing power.

The “little tic” may sound like another strange habit.

The future it suggests is anything but little.