More than a third of American voters already back the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump, according to a new poll.
The Public Policy Polling survey has 35 percent backing impeachment, with 50 percent opposed and 15 percent not sure.
Trump has been in office a week, you will note.
The erosion of credibility comes from two different directions – the personal and political.
First, to the personal. Fifty-nine percent think Trump needs to release his tax returns, and 61 percent think he needs to fully divest from his business interests. Neither will happen, of course, because Trump, but the ethics questions will continue to dog the president as he continues to resist.
The perception of close ties with Russia and its dictator, Vladimir Putin, will also be an issue with a public that gives Putin just a 10 percent favorable rating, and the Russian government just a 13 percent favorable rating.
The ongoing nonsense over inauguration crowds is also crippling the Trump forces from within. Even among Trump voters, only 34 percent think his inauguration crowd was the biggest in U.S. history, and to illustrate the significance of that low number, 38 percent of this group thinks the millions who took part in women’s protest marches this past weekend were paid by liberal billionaire George Soros to do so.
Yeah, wow.
Now to the political. For starters, 34 percent of voters want to build a wall on the southern border, compared to 53 percent who don’t. Trump has obviously prioritized the wall, to the point of taking the first steps toward launching a border and trade war with Mexico to prove his point.
Next to the Affordable Care Act, which has the support of 45 percent, to 41 percent who are opposed. This is a high-water mark for the ACA, and just 30 percent think the best plan of action is repeal and replace, with 61 percent preferring Congress and the president keeping it in place and fixing the parts that aren’t working.
Which won’t happen, as we know. Because politics.
The PPP poll also surveyed voters on their thoughts on Trump in relation to past presidents, where we get one interesting nugget: Democrats think, by a 62 percent to 14 percent margin, that George W. Bush will turn out to be a better president than Donald Trump.
Let that one sink in.
Republican voters, for their part, give Trump big majorities over the most recent GOP presidents, aside from Ronald Reagan, who wins out by a relatively narrow 45 percent to 31 percent.
As if we didn’t know this already, this country is divided, not just Democrat and Republican, but even within the Republican side.
One other tidbit from the poll: 42 percent of Trump voters think he should be allowed to have a private email server, to 39 percent who think he shouldn’t.
So, we can guess that the chants at Trump rallies about locking Hillary Clinton up weren’t so much about her private email server, right?
Story by Chris Graham
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Chris Graham
