Trump brushes off record low approval rating: ‘Not bad at this time’
President Trump reacted to a new poll that shows his approval rating has slipped to 36 percent — the lowest of any president at six months into his presidency.
According to an ABC News/Washington Post survey released Sunday, Trump’s approval rating is down 6 points since his 100-day mark, with 58 percent now disapproving of his job as commander in chief.
The president dismissed his dismal approval rating in a tweet.
“The ABC/Washington Post Poll, even though almost 40% is not bad at this time, was just about the most inaccurate poll around election time!” Trump tweeted.
The ABC/Washington Post Poll, even though almost 40% is not bad at this time, was just about the most inaccurate poll around election time!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2017
Trump is wrong to suggest that the ABC/Washington Post survey conducted prior to the 2016 election was inaccurate.
That poll, released on the eve of the vote, showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump by 4 points (47 percent to 43 percent) nationally. Trump won the presidency by capturing the Electoral College, but Clinton won the popular vote by almost 2.9 million votes, 65,853,625 to 62,985,106 — a margin of 2.1 percent and well within the ABC/Washington Post poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. Most of the other final national polls taken before the election showed Clinton with a similar lead.
– ABC/Post poll missed the net margin by less than 2 pts
– 36% is not "almost 40%"
– it's the worst approval at this time in seven decades https://t.co/7RDV8IBHV6— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) July 16, 2017
The poll released Sunday shows Trump’s slump has been driven by several factors: his stalled agenda, particularly when it comes to health care; his temperament, particularly on the global stage; and his inability to contain the fallout over the ongoing investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia, led by the latest firestorm surrounding of his son’s pre-election meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer.
According to the survey, just 38 percent of respondents say Trump is making “significant progress” toward his goals; 55 percent say he is not.
Two in 3 Americans (66 percent) say they do not trust Trump to negotiate with world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the country’s behalf.
And just 27 percent say U.S. leadership on the world’s stage has gotten stronger while 48 percent say it has grown weaker under Trump.
The poll was conducted July 10 through July 13 amid revelations that Donald Trump Jr. took a meeting at Trump Tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer with alleged ties to the Kremlin and its spy agency — revelations that sparked yet another firestorm for the Trump administration. Campaign chief Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a top White House adviser, also attended the June 9, 2016, meeting.
During a press conference in Paris on Thursday, Trump insisted that “most people would have taken that meeting.”
But according to the ABC/Washington Post poll, 63 percent of respondents said it was inappropriate for them to have done so.
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