Support for Trump’s Policies Exceeds Support for Trump
A new poll found the public is sympathetic to the president-elect’s plans to deport migrants and reduce America’s presence overseas.Many Americans who otherwise dislike President-elect Donald J. Trump share his bleak assessment of the country’s problems and support some of his most contentious prescriptions to fix them, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Ipsos.
A little more than half of the country expresses some desire to see Mr. Trump follow through with his harshest threat to deal with illegal immigration: deporting everyone living in the United States without authorization.
And a large majority is sympathetic to efforts to strictly limit how doctors can treat children struggling with their gender identity — an issue Mr. Trump and other Republicans made central to their campaigns for office. Seventy-one percent said that no one under 18 should be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs or hormones. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on the matter later this year.
The poll tells the story of a country turning inward, where people are more aligned with Mr. Trump’s “America First” agenda than they were during his first term in office.
For a political figure so divisive — Americans view him more negatively than any other president about to take office in the last 70 years — the level of support for his ideas is striking. Most Americans say the United States has ignored serious problems at home while entangling itself in costly conflicts abroad, the poll found. A majority believe the government is sending too much money to Ukraine. And many are expressing less tolerance of immigrants overall.
Overall, 73 percent of Americans say they oppose the idea of Mr. Trump pursuing legal charges against his adversaries — with 49 percent saying they are strongly opposed.
The poll also revealed that Americans hold their government in exceedingly low esteem — far lower than during the Watergate era. Majorities across races, genders and partisan stripe say the political system is broken and that the economy works against them — a pessimism that tracks with some of Mr. Trump’s grimmer rhetoric.
There is a widespread belief, across parties, that Washington is corrupt, with two-thirds of Democrats and 80 percent of Republicans saying the government serves itself and the powerful over ordinary people. Two-thirds of Americans say the economic system unfairly favors the wealthy.
It is ironic that so many Americans correctly think the system is corrupt and rigged, but in their anger, frustration and resentments, they voted for the most corrupt candidate by far. Apparently, most DJT voters don't realize that he wants to neuter or completely get rid of the CFPB (consumer finance protections) and the NLRB (labor protections). Either that, or they want to get rid of labor and consumer finance protections. Project 2025 and DJT are all about rigging the system against average people even more than it is now and giving the elites even more wealth and power.
We live in such strange days.
