He is very popular as well.
This article originally appeared on
Media Matters.
There are lots of ways the political press continues to
normalize President-elect Donald Trump’s often radical behavior. From regurgitating his vague tweets as news while he refuses to grant press conferences, to
shying away from calling the serial prevaricator a liar, journalists continue to play nice.
Here’s another way Trump’s getting the benefit of the doubt: He’s a wildly unpopular political figure, yet the press continues to gloss over that fact while granting him soft coverage.
In terms of polling data, there’s virtually no good news for Trump. The results generally point in the same direction: He’s widely disliked and inspires little confidence in his presidential abilities.
This stands in stark contrast with characteristically stronger bipartisan approval for presidents-elect in recent decades. For instance, in 2008, “50 percent of John McCain’s voters approved of Barack Obama’s handling of his presidential transition,”
noted an NBC News report. And as NPR
reported, “Even after a prolonged recount and Supreme Court decision, George W. Bush received 29 percent approval from Democrats in 2001.” This is 14 percentage points higher than the
same Pew statistic for Trump.
Trump’s contrast with Obama in late 2008 is stunning: Obama
entered 2009 with a 68 percent favorable rating. Today, Trump’s favorable rating stands at an anemic
43 percent. And if history is any indication, that rating is almost certain to go down once the new president takes office.
A
plurality of Americans think he will be a “poor” or “terrible” president. His cabinet picks
enjoy historically little support, and 54 percent of adults say
they’re either “uncertain (25 percent) or pessimistic and worried (29 percent) about how Trump will perform during his presidency.” Meanwhile, 68 percent would describe the president-elect as “
hard to like,” and less than half of Americans
are confident in Trump’s ability to handle an international crisis.
Those numbers are off-the-charts awful for an American president-elect. On average, 71 percent of Americans were confident that Presidents Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton could handle an international crisis, when polled after each was newly elected. Today, just 46 percent are confident about Trump’s ability to handle such a crisis.