Trump Approval Rating Hits New Low: 34 Percent
President Donald Trump’s approval rating reached a new low Sunday amid condemnation for his initial reaction to the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in one person dead.
The Republican president’s job approval rating hit 34 percent Sunday compared with a 61 percent disapproval rating that put Trump in an unenviable historical class, according to Gallup’s most recent numbers.
Earlier this month, Trump experienced a slight bump to 38 percent approval but has since declined to the lowest point in the early months of his presidency. The billionaire’s previous low was 35 percent approval on March 28. Other polls around that time indicated that the gap between Trump’s approval and disapproval ratings had been the worst of any president through 69 days in office, according to FiveThirtyEight.
In fact, only one other president, George W. Bush, has reached such a poor disapproval rating, and the 43rd commander in chief did not reach that dubious milestone until well into his second term.
The historical significance, as well as many comparisons between the Trump-Russia and Watergate scandals, has put Trump only 10 points ahead of former President Richard Nixon’s personal all-time low approval rating. Nixon plummeted to 24 percent approval before he resigned from office in August 1974.
The all-time low under Gallup’s approval rating is still currently held by President Harry Truman, who garnered a 22 percent rating in February 1952, just months before he would leave office.
Trump was heavily blasted for his initial response to Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville, when he did not specifically condemn white supremacist groups. "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides," Trump said.
That led critics to question whether Trump had deliberately failed to mention racist groups, and some called for the dismissal of the president’s top political adviser Steve Bannon—who previously ran Breitbart News, a website of the "alt-right" white nationalist movement—and national security adviser Sebastian Gorka.
On Monday, Trump made a more direct statement and specifically called out white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups for both violence and their political views.
"Racism is evil—and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups, are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans," Trump said during a press conference at the White House.
The poor approval ratings could also be a reaction to Trump’s strong rhetoric toward North Korea for its missile and nuclear defense tests. The president said Kim Jon Un’s regime should no longer threaten the United States, or it could face “fire and fury” that the world had never seen.
The threatening remarks, which Trump backed up by tweeting that the military was “locked and loaded,” worried many around the globe over a possible war on the Korean Peninsula or a potential nuclear strike by either side.
Related Articles
