I get that any corporate media poll needs to be taken with a giant grain of salt, but upon looking at some of the questions and answers from the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, I founds some interesting nuggets that help explain a lot of what’s going on in our increasingly demented political environment. Let’s begin with the Trump stuff.
First, the poll found that 36% of Americans approve of Trump, which seems consistent with where things have stood for a while now. What I found far more interesting were the reasons given by the larger group of people who expressed disapproval.
Here’s some of what we learned:
Americans who disapprove of Trump — 58 percent in the Post-ABC poll — offered a different range of responses focusing more heavily on his personal and character traits. Topping the list of non-policy criticism is the way Trump talks and acts (13 percent), laments about him not being informed or knowledgeable (12 percent), while an additional 12 percent mentioned concerns about lies, false statements or general dishonesty. Among disapprovers who named issues as their biggest criticism, the most common were immigration (8 percent) and health care (7 percent), the travel ban at 3 percent and others at 2 percent or less.