Large Majority Now Say Trump Dividing the Nation and Elevating Level of Hatred and Prejudice
Only 3% of Americans Say Trump Has Discouraged White Supremacist Groups
On the heels of his political campaign style rally held Tuesday evening in Phoenix, during which an obviously angry and bitter President Trump attacked the media and his opponents, a new poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University shows more than six out of 10 voters (62%) say Trump is diving the nation. Just three in ten (31%) say he is doing more to unite the country.
Polling results show that 59 percent of voters say that the president has encouraged white supremacist groups, while only three percent say he has discouraged these groups and 35 percent say he has had no impact on them with his public statements. Asked if the white supremacist groups pose a threat to the U.S., 64 percent agreed while 34 percent disagreed.
According to the Quinnipiac researchers, six out of 10 American voters also disapprove of Trump’s response to the events in Charlottesville, with a meager 32 percent approving and saying his handling of those events was correct.
Many also believe that Trump’s public statements and behavior during and after the two press conferences, in which he addressed Charlottesville and the ongoing debate over removal of Confederate statues and memorials, has not only encouraged but given cover to white supremacists.
Many Americans (65 percent) also feel that Trump has elevated the level of hatred and prejudice in the country since his election. 32 percent however disagree, saying no change at all. On the question of whether or not there is too much prejudice in the nation today, 55 percent of respondents say yes while 40 percent say there is too much political correctness, the widest margin for prejudice since the question first was asked in June 2016 according to the university. The university’s poll also found “prejudice against minority groups is a “very serious” problem, 50 percent of voters say, while 31 percent say it is “somewhat serious,” a new high for these numbers.â€
On other questions the poll found:
“President Trump does not provide the U.S. with moral leadership, American voters say 62 – 35 percent. Voter opinions of most Trump qualities remain low:â€
- 61 – 36 percent that he is not honest;
- 61 – 37 percent that he does not have good leadership skills;
- 57 – 40 percent that he does not care about average Americans;
- 68 – 29 percent that he is not level headed;
- 59 – 38 percent that he is a strong person;
- 55 – 43 percent that he is intelligent;
- 63 – 34 percent that he does not share their values.
The president’s job approval rating remains negative with only 35 percent of voters stating that they approve of the way he is handling his office while 59 percent of voter disapprove. These numbers reflect a downward spiral from 39 – 57 percent rating in an August 17 survey. Every party, gender, education, age and racial group disapproves except Republicans, who approve 77 – 14 percent; white voters with no college, approving 52 – 40 percent, and white men, who approve by a narrow 50 – 46 percent.
On questions related to media coverage of the president, American voters disapprove 55 – 40 percent of the way the news media covers Trump, and disapprove 62 – 35 percent of the way the president talks about the media. Contrary to Trump’s claims, voters trust the media more than Trump, 54 – 36 percent, “to tell you the truth about important issues.”
Brody Levesque is the Chief Political Correspondent for The New Civil Rights Movement.
You may contact Brody at Brody.Levesque@thenewcivilrightsmovement.com
To comment on this article and other NCRM content, visit our Facebook page.
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
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President Donald Trump is under fire over a report that claims he is proposing that the U.S. recognize Russian control of parts of Ukraine, including Crimea, which Russia has unlawfully annexed, as a means to end the war.
“The Telegraph understands that Donald Trump has sent his peace envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to make the direct offer to Vladimir Putin in Moscow,” the news outlet reported. “The plan to recognize territory, which breaks US diplomatic convention, is likely to go ahead despite concerns among Ukraine’s European allies.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin “on Thursday said Washington’s legal recognition of Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as Russian territory would be one of the key issues in negotiations over the US president’s peace plan,” according to The Telegraph.
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Critics are blasting President Trump.
Shaun Pinner, a former British soldier who served as a contracted Marine fighting in Ukraine’s armed forces, responded to the report:
“I’ve lived through the cost of losing ground. I’ve seen the bodies, the destroyed homes, and I’ve been tortured by Russia like so many others. Land is never ‘just land.’ It’s people. Families. Lives shattered.”
“So yes, watching Trump casually bargain away territory that isn’t even his to give feels like a deep betrayal,” he added. “It’s a lesson I wish none of us had to learn the hard way, and one far too many are being forced to relive again because one of our so-called allies is now suggesting we reward genocide.”
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Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, remarked, “Trump would be rewarding imperial conquest, thereby encouraging other autocrats to do so, resulting in a very unstable world.”
Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, co-founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative, issued a warning:
“If the US recognizes territory taken by force, just replace ‘leader of the free world’ with ‘for sale’. Xi can come up with more cash than Putin for Trump and his pals to do the same for Taiwan.”
Marko Mihkelson, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Estonian Parliament, remarked, “If this is true, then we have a major problem, Houston.”
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Image via Reuters
A Trump administration order to keep an aging and unneeded Michigan coal-fired power plant open and online reportedly is costing taxpayers about $615,000 per day, or $113 million to date. Closing the plant would save taxpayers about $640 million by 2040.
“The Trump administration in May ordered utility giant Consumers Energy to keep the 63-year-old JH Campbell coal plant in western Michigan, about 100 miles north-east of Chicago, online just as it was being retired,” according to The Guardian.
“The costs of unnecessarily running this jalopy coal plant just continue to mount,” Michael Lenoff, an attorney with Earthjustice, which is suing over the order, told The Guardian.
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President Donald Trump signed a national energy emergency order on his first day in office this year, rolling back regulations.
In court documents, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that the administration’s latest order is “arbitrary and illegal.”
Consumers Energy, the operator of the plant, did not ask the Trump administration for the order to keep the coal plant running, and the Trump administration did not consult local regulators, a spokesperson for the Michigan public service commission (MPSC), told the Guardian in May.
“The unnecessary recent order … will increase the cost of power for homes and businesses in Michigan and across the midwest,” the chair of the MPSC, Dan Scripps, said in a statement at the time.
Reporting on what it called Trump’s “pro-fossil fuel agenda,” The Guardian in January quoted the president:
“We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it – let me use it,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”
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Image via Reuters
Legal and national security experts are responding to what the White House is calling, “one of the most important messages ever released” by President Donald Trump, a 511-word broadside attacking 53 million immigrants in America, vowing to not only end immigration from certain countries but to foster “reverse migration,” a term used in white nationalist circles.
In his Thanksgiving remarks, President Trump denounced the U.S. being “divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being ‘Politically Correct,’ and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration.”
He claimed that there are 53 million people in America born outside the U.S., most of whom, the president claimed, “are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.”
The president condemned what he called the “refugee burden,” stating that it “is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America.”
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He specifically targeted the “hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia,” and alleged that “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.”
Trump vowed to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country.”
He also promised to “end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
The Associated Press called it Trump’s “most severe social media post against immigration since returning to the Oval Office in January,” and noted that it “came after the shooting Wednesday of two National Guard members who were patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital under his orders. One died and the other is in critical condition.”
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The Washington Post reported that “the tenor of Trump’s posts was a significant escalation in his rhetoric around immigration and appeared to be a vow to make life so difficult for many immigrants to the United States that they eventually opt to depart.”
Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, remarked that the rhetoric in the president’s statement “is indistinguishable from the stuff you hear coming out of white nationalists. Completely identical language.”
Reichlin-Melnick rejected Trump’s “outrageous claim that ‘most’ immigrants, which include over 25 million U.S. citizens, ‘are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.'”
He also noted that “immigrants use LESS federal benefits per capita than native-born U.S. citizens; and the most common is Social Security (after they paid into it for decades like everyone else).”
The Steady State, a group of more than 360 former U.S. national security officials, in a statement warned that, “Trump is now describing millions of immigrants, refugees, and even naturalized citizens as ‘invaders,’ ‘non-compatible with Western Civilization,’ and candidates for ‘reverse migration,” which they called, “a blueprint for total authoritarian population control.”
“If he can revoke citizenship based on his personal judgment of who ‘loves America,” they asked, “the question becomes: who is next?”
Professor of law Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer, commented that “The United States should enforce immigration laws passed by Congress, but this proclamation is racist and far exceeds the power of the president.”
Bill Neely, a former Chief Global Correspondent for NBC News, wrote that Trump’s remarks were “filled with hatred & virtually an incitement to violence against not just immigrants but settled US citizens of a different colour from him.”
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