Sixty percent of those polled in a new survey disapprove of President Donald Trump's job performance, a new high for the president in polling conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News.
The poll, released Friday and conducted just days after special counsel Robert Mueller delivered a one-two punch to the Trump administration in federal court, found a little more than one-third of Americans approve of Trump's job performance. The poll was conducted last week, when former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on tax and bank fraud charges and Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts, including campaign-finance violations, in a Manhattan courtroom.
Trump's approval rating, according to the poll, was 36 percent. In the previous Washington Post-ABC News poll, conducted in April, Trump's approval rating was 40 percent and his disapproval rating was 56 percent.
The poll found most Americans would oppose Trump granting a pardon to former associate Manafort — 66 percent of respondents said they were against a pardon. Only 18 percent said they would support a pardon.
Lately, Trump has focused significant negative attention on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump has blamed for Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. In an interview with Fox News' "Fox & Friends," the president blasted Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe and criticized him for failing to seize control of the Justice Department. But a majority of Americans side with Sessions, with 62 percent saying they are on his side. A slightly larger portion, 64 percent, said Trump should not fire Sessions.
Special counsel Robert Mueller saw similar positive percentages — 63 percent of those polled said they support Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and 29 percent said they oppose it, according to the poll. Further, 53 percent of respondents said they think Trump tried to interfere in Mueller's investigation in a way that "amounts to obstruction of justice," while 35 percent said he did not try to interfere.
A similar portion of survey respondents, 61 percent, said they believe it would be a crime if Trump directed Cohen to make hush-money payments to two women who say they had affairs with Trump during the 2016 election. Cohen pleaded guilty to making payments of that nature, violating campaign- finance laws at the "direction of a candidate for federal office," meaning Trump.
But when it comes to the economy, Americans were more favorable in their evaluations of the president. Forty-five percent of those polled said they approve of Trump's handling of the economy, while 47 percent said they disapprove.
The poll, which included a sample of 1,003 adults, was conducted from Aug. 26 to Aug. 29 via landlines and cellphones. The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage points
