Two new polls show that a large majority of Americans are unhappy with the president’s performance in his summit with the Russian president in Helsinki on Monday. But Trump’s supporters are still standing by him.
A CBS News poll this week found that 55 percent of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the summit, where the president sided with Putin on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. (Trump later made an unconvincing effort to walk back his remarks.) That figure included 83 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of voters who described themselves as independent.
Among Republican voters, however, Trump’s support remains largely unchanged. In the CBS poll, 68 percent of Republicans said they approved of the president’s handling of Putin. A new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll found similar results: 58 percent of Americans overall disapproved of the summit, but 79 percent of Republicans sided with Trump.
The results track with what we know about Trump’s bond with Republican voters. The president has long enjoyed considerable support with the party’s deeply conservative base, and none of his words or deeds since entering the White House have significantly disrupted it. This week’s polls, coming immediately after the president publicly humiliated himself before a hostile foreign power, are perhaps the starkest reminder yet of that hold.
The polls also suggest that Trump may be able to weather worse storms to come. “Every piece of data, and virtually every public action of elected Republican officials, shows Trump will have overwhelming and probably unbreakable party support, regardless of what Robert Mueller finds with his Russia probe,” Axios’ Mike Allen concluded.