According to the latest Gallup poll, President Donald Trump's approval rating dropped from 44 percent to 40 percent during the week ending October 28, in the wake of his response to a period of pre-midterm violence including a series of mail-bombs to prominent Trump critics and a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
"The last week has been driven by Trump's response to the mail bombs and Pittsburgh, and now he's leaning into birthright citizenship," wrote political correspondent Steve Kornacki, observing that "the tone Trump seems to be closing" the year on is markedly different from "the home stretch" in 2016, after winning the presidential election.
Chris Lu, a former United States Deputy Secretary of Labor, called the poll "a first glimpse into how the public is reacting to Trump's divisive rhetoric after last week's violence."
The latest poll erases the gains Trump made in the previous four weeks. 54 percent of Americans now disapprove of the president's overall job performance. Trump and Congressional Republicans had enjoyed a boost in support from the confirmation of Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The Gallup poll is based on a survey of roughly 1,500 Americans from Oct. 22 through 28. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The president has been largely criticized for his response to these tense events.
“The president is trying to heal the country,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporter John Berman before accusing Berman of “cherry picking” the president’s words after Berman noted that Trump had referred to a Democrat who received a suspicious package in last week’s attempted pipe bombings “a lunatic.”
But the president quickly proved Conway wrong: He has often characterized the press as “the enemy of the people,” and he has not let up, launching new attacks from his Twitter account.
“There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news,” the president said, in part, adding that the press must “stop its open & obvious hostility.”
The president has often come under fire for his assertions that journalists are inherently dishonest. The president has often criticized news outlets for their coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. His attacks on First Amendment rights are well documented; he once infamously claimed that he would seek to amend libel laws and penalize journalists who’ve reported negative coverage about him and his associates.
Last week, the president, in a 3 AM tweet, tore into the media for allegedly “blaming” him for the attempted attacks.
The president’s critics have noted that he has not condemned these acts of violence, and that when he does, his words ring hollow The president has, to name just a few examples, called for violence against members of the press, and has repeatedly led chants at his rallies to “lock up” Hillary Clinton.
In what appears to be a bid to whip up support for Republican candidates (for whom immigration is a key campaign issue), the president, in an interview with Axios, announced his plans to sign an executive order that would seek to end the right to U.S. citizenship for children born in the United States to noncitizens.
“How ridiculous, we’re the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” the president said. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”
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