A new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll shows that just 29% of Americans support President Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey.
In other news, the sun will set in the west tonight and rise in the east tomorrow.
Just 29 percent of Americans say they approve of President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, while 38 percent disapprove, according to results from a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Another 32 percent of respondents don’t have enough to say on the matter.
Yet among those who say they have read, seen or heard “a lot” about the firing, 53 percent say they disapprove, versus 33 percent who approve.
How’s that for counter-intuitiveness? The more people hear the hysterical blatherings of Democrats and the media about “the worst scandal since Watergate,” the less they disapprove of the president’s action.
The NBC/WSJ poll — conducted May 11-13, after Trump’s dismissal of Comey — doesn’t show a significant change in the president’s overall standing.
Trump’s job-approval rating stands at 39 percent, which is one point lower than last month’s NBC/WSJ survey — well within the poll’s margin of error.
Thirty-eight percent of Americans hold a positive view of the president, while 52 percent have a negative opinion — again mostly unchanged from last month’s 39 percent positive/50 percent negative score. (By comparison, the FBI has a 52 percent positive/16 percent negative score in the new poll, and Comey’s is 18 percent positive/26 percent negative.)
And a combined 41 percent have a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in Trump as president, compared with a combined 57 percent who have no or “not much” confidence — again mostly unchanged from April’s poll.
Thirty percent say Trump’s decision to fire Comey has given them a less favorable impression of the president, versus only six percent who say they have a more favorable view; 61 percent maintain that the firing hasn’t changed their opinion of Trump.
By party, 58 percent of Republicans say they approve of Trump’s firing of Comey, while 66 percent of Democrats disapprove. Independents break 36 percent disapprove, 21 percent approve.
So, let me get this straight. The media and Democrats spend three or four days blasting President Trump for his “abuse of power,” connecting Nixon’s actions to Trump’s every which way from Sunday, hinting at impeachment, and ranting, railing, and shedding hysterical tears about the “threat to democracy” — and almost as many people have no opinion or don’t care about the Comey firing as oppose it?
The fact that 29% approve of the president’s action after this veritable torrent of hysterical media coverage is truly astonishing. That should be the lead to this story. Instead, the poll is supposed to “surprise” us with how few people approve of the president’s action.
Trump has handled the firing about as bad as any president has handled a controversial action since I’ve been alive. I can’t recall a president undercutting his own staff’s explanation for his taking a controversial stand, nor is there precedent for a president giving his opponents such a glorious opportunity to savage him due to his own stupidity.
But it hasn’t affected his approval rating, which either says the public is used to Trump’s unforced errors or simply doenn’t care.
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