US President Donald Trump has never had a high Approval Rating. In fact, during the first 100 days of his Presidency, Trump had the worst ever approval rating of any new President. And now, as things are heating up between the White House and James Comey, the FBI Director who Trump fired, his approval rating is getting even worse.
The Russian connection could be to blame
A huge contributing factor in Trump’s dodgy approval rating is definitely the allegations that his ties to Vladimir Putin and the government spies of Russia gained him the election win, accusing Trump of getting in bed with Putin and Russia to illegally meddle with the election result to make sure he would win.
Trump has profusely denied having any connection with Russia, but then he would do that, wouldn’t he? He’s already had to fire Michael Flynn from his Cabinet for being a “foreign agent” with ties to Turkey. The President also denies having any prior knowledge of that. He’s told a lot of lies and several deceits of his have come to light over the course of his election campaign and later his Presidency.
Also, the majority of the American people did not vote for Trump – he simply won the Electoral College vote. So, all of these things have combined (the lies, the deceit, the shady foreign ties etc.) to make almost every American hate their President, giving the star of The Apprentice an abysmal approval rating.
There are many other factors at play
Of course, the Russian connection isn’t the only thing making people hate Trump. There are a lot of other factors that contributed to that. He promised to upend his predecessor’s Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, in favour of his own inferior healthcare policy, Trumpcare (or “the American Health Care Act” as it’s known to Congress), and it blew up in his face in spectacular fashion.
And Trump’s almost daily rants about journalists and the media for accurately representing him certainly aren’t helping, nor are the all-caps tweets every couple of hours. Plus, Trump isn’t a very likeable guy in general. People liked George W. Bush because he was a country boy from midland Texas. They liked Barack Obama because he loves his wife and his daughters and he’s a family man.
But Trump isn’t like that. His wife is putting on a thinly veiled act during public appearances and he bragged about grabbing women by the p*ssy when they don’t want him to (because why the hell would they?). Oh, and let’s not forget his Islamophobic foreign policy and repeated attempts at a Muslim travel ban, which he still refuses to let go and thinks would’ve stopped all the recent terrorist attacks that were carried out by domestic terrorists anyway so a travel ban would’ve been useless.
Only 40% of Americans approve of President Trump
Gallup’s daily polling worked out Trump’s approval rating after the milestone of his first 100 days in the Oval Office. The polls showed that only 40% of Americans believe he’s doing a good job as President, which usually takes a lot longer.
It normally takes US Presidents at least a year or so before their approval ratings dip below 50%, and Trump’s already got 55% of his country disapproving of him. Bill Clinton, the husband of Trump’s fierce election rival Hillary Clinton, holds the record for longest amount of time in the White House before earning a majority disapproval rating: 573 days.
With Trump, it was pretty much right off the bat, so he may hold the other record, the one for quickest majority disapproval rating. In fact, Gallup’s polls reported that by 28 January, his eighth day in office, 51% of Americans already disapproved of him. Compare 573 with eight – it’s ridiculous.
