Nearly one year after his inauguration, US President Donald Trump’s approval rating sunk to 35 percent, according to a new poll released by CNN, a historic low for a president in the December of his first year in office.
The 35 percent approval rating is Trump’s worst mark yet in CNN polling. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they disapprove of the way Trump has handled his job as president.
Before Trump, no president dating back to Dwight Eisenhower ever had an approval rating lower than 49 percent in December of the first year in office.
The tax reform package championed by Trump that is currently nearing completion on Capitol Hill also polled poorly among respondents to the CNN survey. Fifty-five percent of those polled said they oppose the tax reform plan, a 10 percent increase over last month. One in three respondents said they support the measure.
The tax reform bill has faced stiff opposition from Democrats, who have suggested that it amounts to little more than a tax cut for wealthy Americans that will balloon the deficit. Republicans, poised to pass the measure without any Democratic support, have argued that the bill will stimulate economic growth and make the U.S. more globally competitive by cutting the corporate tax rate.The CNN poll on Tuesday was conducted among 1,001 adults nationwide via landlines and cell phones fromDecember 14 to 17 with a plus or minus 3.8 percentage points margin of error.
Last month, thousands of protesters marched in over 20 cities across the United States to denounce the policies of Trump and his administration.
In a separate opinion poll on the same day, the Gallup survey found that Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2016 presidential election, also suffered a new low in favourability rating with 36 percent of support. Sixty-one percent of respondents rated her unfavourable.
The poll marked a five-point decline in the former secretary of state’s favourability rating since June, when a poll of national adults showed 41 percent describing her as favourable.
The Gallup’s rating falls below Mrs. Clinton’s previous low of 38 percent in August to September of last year.
Trump stunned the world on November 8, 2016 by defeating Mrs. Clinton, sending the United States on a new and uncertain path.
Mrs. Clinton had been leading Trump throughout the campaign in most of the polls except for the last week of the election when she lost ground to Trump.
In her recent interviews, Mrs. Clinton has admitted that she is not entirely done with the election and still wonders why she lost to Trump.
Mrs. Clinton has, on numerous occasions, blamed Russia for losing the election to Trump, claiming that Moscow had colluded with her rival. The allegations, however, have been repeatedly denied by both Trump and Russia.
The recent low numbers for the former US Democratic presidential candidate come amid increased scrutiny on past accusations of sexual misconduct against her husband, Bill Clinton. New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said in an interview last month that Bill Clinton should have resigned as president over his affair with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Source: APP