Poll: 40% okay Trump’s handling of transition
President-elect Donald Trump will take office this week with an approval rating of 40 percent, sharply lower than any incoming US president in recent history, a new poll showed yesterday. The CNN/ORC poll showed Trump lagging more than 20 points behind the ratings of his three most recent predecessors and 44 points below that of President Barack Obama as he prepared to enter the Oval Office in 2009, CNN said.
Trump immediately slammed the poll findings. “The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before,” he said on Twitter. Forty percent of poll respondents said they approved of the way Trump has been handling the transition period heading into Friday’s inauguration, the poll said.
In comparison, Obama had an 84 percent approval rating ahead of his inauguration, Bill Clinton scored 67 percent approval in late December 1992 and 61 percent approved of George W. Bush’s transition in poll figures from January 2001, CNN said. Trump, a New York real estate developer working in government for the first time, has presided over a chaotic transition period since his election on November 8. The recent weeks have featured a drawnout search for top cabinet members, public feuds with the media, unsubstantiated allegations that Russia holds compromising material against Trump, and the presidentelect’s Twitter blasts against critics ranging from the CIA chief to late-night comedy show “Saturday Night Live.”
Young Americans
As Donald Trump approaches his inauguration, young Americans have a deeply pessimistic view about his incoming administration, with young blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans particularly concerned about what’s to come in the next four years. That’s according to a new GenForward poll of Americans aged 18 to 30, which found that the country’s young adults are more likely to expect they’ll be worse off at the end of Trump’s first term than better off. Such young Americans are also far more likely to think Trump will divide the country than unite it, by a 60 percent to 19 percent margin.
Fifty-two percent of young whites, 72 percent of Latinos, 66 percent of Asian-Americans and 70 percent of blacks think Trump’s presidency will lead to a more divided nation. “Minority people are very afraid of all the rhetoric that he ran upon (in) his campaign,” said Jada Selma, a 28year-old African-American graduate school student living in Atlanta. “Anytime he mentioned black people, he would talk about poor people or inner city. He would think that all of us live in the inner city and that we’re all poor.”
“If you’re not a straight white male, than I don’t think he’s looking out for you as an American,” she said.
GenForward is a survey of adults age 18 to 30 by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The first-of-its-kind poll pays special attention to the voices of young adults of color, highlighting how race and ethnicity shape the opinions of a new generation. The poll found that 54 percent of young people overall say life for people of color will be worse with Trump as president. About twothirds of young blacks, Asian-Americans and Latinos think things will get worse for people of color, and whites are also more likely to expect things to get worse than better for minorities, 46 percent to 21 percent.
Overall, 40 percent of young adults think they personally will be worse off four years from now, while just 23 percent expect to be better off. Young people of color are significantly more likely to think they will be worse off than better off, while young whites are more split in their personal expectations.
Kuinta Hayle, a 21-year-old African-American from Charlotte, said she is worried that Trump’s selection for attorney general, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, could roll back civil rights. She said Trump’s foray into “birtherism,” during which he propagated the lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, still bothered her.
“That was very meaningful. It still hurts,” Hayle said. “He doesn’t know anything about my life or the lives of people who aren’t like him. I feel Donald Trump is only for rich people. Obama was for people who didn’t have much.” Although he had a decisive win in the Electoral College, Trump lost the overall popular vote to opponent Hillary Clinton and has done little to reach out to those who didn’t support him in November’s election. He focused his post-election “Thank You” tour on states he won, settling scores on stage as he boasted about his surprising electoral victory. Over the weekend, Trump tore into Georgia Rep. John Lewis, among the most revered leaders of the civil rights movement, for questioning the legitimacy of his victory and saying he would not attend Friday’s inauguration. —Agencies