US leadership in the world, healthcare and Russia scandal hurt president’s popularity
yesterday by: Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen in recent months over concerns about US leadership in the world, the way his party is handling healthcare reform, and the Russia scandal that continues to dog his White House tenure.
Six months into his presidency, only 36 per cent of Americans approve of the way Mr Trump is handling the job, a six-point fall from April, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. During the presidential campaign, Mr Trump pledged to make America a stronger player on the world stage, but the poll found that 48 per cent of people believe it has actually weakened.
Mr Trump has entered the summer with no big legislative or domestic policy victories, as Republican leaders in Congress struggle to secure enough votes to pass a healthcare reform bill to replace Obamacare. Meanwhile, the White House has been consumed with the escalating Russia scandal that this week drew in his son, Donald Trump Jr, who joined Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, in becoming the latest Trump family member to come under scrutiny.
Mr Trump has repeatedly dismissed suggestions that there were contacts between his presidential campaign and Russia. But that claim has been undermined by the revelation that his son met a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016 in the hope of obtaining damaging information about Hillary Clinton that had purportedly been provided by a top Russian official. The emails offering Don Jr, the US president’s eldest son, Russian information on Clinton has placed him in legal jeopardy
Appearing on Fox News this week to defend his actions, Don Jr — as Mr Trump’s son is known — told the anchor that “this is everything” related to the June 16 meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya. But two days later, it emerged that he had failed to reveal that Rinat Akhmetshin — a Russian-American lobbyist whose service as a young officer in the Russian army three decades ago included some counter-intelligence work — also attended the meeting.
The White House on Saturday announced that Mr Trump had appointed Ty Cobb, a high-profile Washington lawyer, to serve as a special counsel. The move came amid rising concern that his outside lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, was struggling to defend the interests of the president.
Mr Trump took to Twitter at the weekend to defend his son, writing that “HillaryClinton can illegally get the questions to the Debate & delete 33,000 emails but my son Don is being scorned by the Fake News Media?” He also hit out at the Washington Post-ABC News poll, saying that it was “just about the most inaccurate poll around election time!”
While Mr Trump is facing more scrutiny nationwide, a separate NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that his approval rating in the counties across America that propelled him to victory stood at 50 per cent.
The president is spending the weekend at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey, which was hosting the US Women’s Open golf tournament. Despite pledging during the campaign that he would not spend much time playing golf — a charge he levelled at Barack Obama — Mr Trump has spent many of his weekends playing golf and refusing to release the names of his partners.
His efforts to work with the GOP to replace Obamacare face a steep climb as a handful of Republican senators express reservations over a new compromise measure that was unveiled last week in the latest effort to placate the concerns of moderate and conservative lawmakers.
In another ominous sign for the president, Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who serves as Senate majority leader, postponed an upcoming vote because John McCain, the Arizona senator, was forced to remain in his home state to recuperate from surgery. Mr McConnell can only afford to lose two Republican votes in the Senate where his party has only a thin 52-48 majority. Two Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky — have already come out against the bill, while several others remain on the fence.
On foreign policy, Mr Trump is facing scepticism over his previous conviction that he could convince China to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programmes. While he has recently questioned whether China was doing enough, the Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 47 per cent of Americans did not trust his ability to negotiate with world leaders — despite his mantra during the campaign about being a great negotiator.