New U.S. public-opinion surveys show that President Donald Trump's approval ratings, already the lowest ever for an American president early in his White House tenure, are continuing to fall.
Quinnipiac University said Wednesday that Americans, by a 61-to-33 percent margin, disapprove of Trump's performance six months into his four-year term in the White House. Gallup, with its three-day tracking average, said its latest surveys show the real estate mogul turned Republican politician has a 60-to-36 negative standing.
Trump's latest Quinnipiac approval rating is worse than the 55-to-40 percent disapproval mark recorded in its last survey in late June. The pollster said that Americans by a 54-to-26 percent margin said they are embarrassed rather than proud to have Trump as president. Nearly three out of five voters said they think Trump is abusing the powers of his office; asked if they believe the president thinks his authority supersedes U.S. law, they agreed, 60 to 36 percent.
The polling was done over the last several days, a particularly volatile time for the White House. During that time span, Trump dismissed both his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and his communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, while the Senate rejected a Trump-supported effort to repeal the national health care act signed into law seven years ago by former President Barack Obama.
'Deepening concern'
"It's hard to pick what is the most alarming number in the troubling trail of new lows for President Donald Trump," Quinnipiac pollster Tim Malloy said in releasing the survey. "Profound embarrassment over his performance in office and deepening concern over his level-headedness have to raise the biggest red flags.
"The daily drip drip of missteps and firings and discord are generating a tidal wave of bad polling numbers," Malloy said. "Is there a wall big enough to hold it back?"
Quinnipiac recorded two favorable assessments of Trump's performance: Nearly two out of three voters (58 to 39 percent) said the president is "a strong person" and, similarly (55 to 42 percent), they said they believe he is intelligent.
However, the pollster said large percentages of those who were surveyed said they do not think Trump is honest, that he does not have "good leadership skills," that he "does not care about average Americans," and that he "does not share their values."
The key vote in the U.S. Senate that rejected the health care repeal bill came between midnight and dawn last Friday. Republican Senator John McCain, recently diagnosed with brain cancer, cast the "no" vote that doomed the repeal effort Trump has championed.
Quinnipiac said its polling showed that the 80-year-old Arizona senator, who lost the presidential race to Obama in 2008, now holds a 57-to-32 percent favorable rating among American voters.
