President Donald Trump, pointing to his approval ratings, said Thursday he hopes Republicans like Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake do mount presidential campaigns against him in 2020.
"I hope so," he told Fox News' Harris Faulkner Thursday. "I think I have the greatest base in the history of politics. I have people who love me, frankly. That includes a lot of women. I got a tremendous percentage of women last time."
A new poll shows Trump at 46 percent approval rating, and complained that he still gets bad news press.
"When you tell me I'm at 48, last time it was at 50 percent at Rasmussen," he said. "When I am a 50 percent, and when I open up China like I'm doing right now, nobody reports it."
Trump said he is particularly pleased with his support among women, as he didn't think he would get one woman's vote while running in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.
"Hillary wished she had my numbers," said Trump. "She got trounced with women. I will tell you something, the news and polls are really fake, but I have the greatest base in history, because the 46 and 48 percent, those people never waivered. In fact, it was your pullback. Fox News has always given me a bad poll but other than that, they treat me fairer than most. I don't know why that is. But the poll has already been lousy."
He also spoke about his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying that there is still a way to go but China is opening its trade to other countries because "they want to please President Trump.
"I think we are going to work a fantastic deal for both to a countries, and fantastic for us," said Trump. "We will get them to open up."
But China's economy is "only in trouble because of me," he said. "We never made any money with China, we lost money with China. In the last four months, we've taken in almost $11 billion of taxes paid nobody has ever heard of that, nobody knows that. People don't report on that. They only report on nonsense."