With each successive revelation since the FBI's search of former Republican President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence on August 8th, Trump and his surrogates have worked overtime to cast Trump as an innocent victim of government overreach.
And a new poll shows it isn't working very well at all.
A new poll by YouGov and The Economist magazine reveals that a majority aren't being swayed by Trumpworld's spin, and actually approve of the FBI's actions.
The poll was conducted between August 13 and August 16, well after news of the raid's focus on retrieving top-secret classified nuclear weapons documents had broken and after portions of the search warrant itself had been unsealed.
Asked if they approved of the Department of Justice's actions, 54% of respondents said yes. Just over one-third of respondents disapproved, with 36% saying no.
The poll pulled similar numbers when asking respondents if they approved of Trump taking the documents in the first place: 52% disapproved, while 30% thought Trump caching classified documents in his office safe was perfectly fine.
But when the questions were asked specifically about the top-secret nuclear weapons documents the FBI was focused on finding, the numbers changed substantively, with 57% disapproving.
And among actual Trump voters, the question proved divisive: 35% said they approve and 36% disapproved. Another 19% were unsure of their feelings. Perhaps they're still waiting for instructions on how to think from their dear leader.
The poll is an improvement on the most recent poll taken in the days immediately after the search, which showed 49% of Americans agreed with the FBI's actions--more evidence that Trump and Republicans' continued spinefforts aren't landing.
On Twitter, the poll numbers left many people cheering, while others pointed out how out of step the GOP seems to be with the American people on this issue.
Trump and his cohorts in politics and media have tried a laundry list of justifications for his cache of documents, most of which are fully out of touch with reality, including the claim that Trump had a "standing order" to declassify any documents he took from the White House, or that a President removing documents automatically declassifies them.
That is emphatically not a thing, nor are his other defenses, and it seems voters are mostly not falling for the former President's antics this time around.
