My1sttoday: Half of Americans in new survey says history will view Trump as a ‘failed’ President, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Thursday.
When asked how they think history will assess Trump’s tenure, just over 50 percent of those polled say he will be viewed as a “failed” president. About 30 percent say he will be judged as either a “good” or “great” president, and 16 percent say he’ll be viewed as a “fair” president. Just over 4 percent of those surveyed are undecided.
The results are split along party lines, with 87 percent of Democrats saying he’ll be judged as a “failed” president and 67 percent of Republicans saying he’ll be viewed as either “good” or “great.”
“The last four years have been lacking in compassion and empathy, lacking in anything other than advancing the personal interests of President Trump and his friends and allies and family,” Babette Salus, 60, a retired attorney from Springfield, Ill., who voted for President-elect Joe Biden, told USA Today as part of the survey. “There have probably been worse presidents, [but] I’m not sure there has been a worse one in my lifetime.”
The survey’s release comes as Trump continues to rail against the results of last month’s election even though the Electoral College earlier this month affirmed Biden’s win. The president and his allies have launched a legal campaign to try to overturn the election, claiming widespread fraud cost him a second term, though virtually all of their lawsuits have been dismissed for lack of evidence or standing. This week, voting machine company executive sued Trump allies for conspiracy theories, against baselessly accused of swinging the election results.
Roughly 70 percent of Americans in the new survey said Trump should concede the race to Biden, which he has thus far refused to do, while 26 percent say he should not. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans said he should not concede.
The USA Today/Suffolk University poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters from Dec. 16-20 and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.