Donald Trump is an unpopular president. After six months in office and several scandals involving himself and his family members, his approval rating continues to plummet. The latest survey said his approval rating is now down to 36 percent, The New York Daily News reported.
It is the lowest approval rating for any American president in the last 70 years. He beat the record of 39 percent set by President Gerald Ford in February 1975. Ford took over the position from President Richard Nixon, who resigned after the Watergate scandal.
Lower rating
The poll result from the ABC News/Washington Post, released on Sunday, actually is not the lowest on record.
In early June, Trump got a 34 percent approval rating in a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University among 1,361 voters. His disapproval rating, however, in the ABC News/Washington Post poll is higher at 60 percent compared to 59 percent in the Quinnipiac survey.
When it comes to specific issues, 48 percent of respondents in the ABC News/Washington Post poll said U.S. leadership became weaker under Trump, while 27 percent said it became stronger. Amid the president’s push for a new health care act, the survey said 50 percent of those surveyed favored Obamacare over the 24 percent who approve any replacement so long as it was created by Republicans.
Most inaccurate poll
As expected, because the numbers do not favor him, the real estate billionaire blasted the survey for not being accurate.
He did not, however, use his favorite excuse that it is fake news because Trump attempted to use the ABC News/Washington Post poll to hit rival Hillary Clinton, The New York Post reported. He said the November survey showed Clinton was up by 49 percent, but he won the Electoral College vote.
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
A lot of issues explain why Trump’s approval rating continues to go down.
One major issue is the suspicion that he won the election only because of Russian meddling. The survey found that 60 percent of respondents believed that Russia tried to influence the election, while 67 percent think members of his campaign deliberately helped Russia meddle. Another 63 percent said the meeting among Donald Trump Jr.
, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was inappropriate.
The only issue in which Trump got a relatively high approval rating was his handling of the economy which got a 43 percent approval rating, while an almost equal 41 percent disapproved, Fortune noted. Because of his declining popularity, as well as the possibility that his son, son-in-law, and himself will be prosecuted for colluding with Russia, a Colombia University professor predicted Trump will eventually resign following a constitutional crisis.
