Majority of Americans say Trump should be convicted, barred from holding federal office in impeachment trial: POLL - ABC News
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Senate is set to begin Trump's second impeachment trial on Tuesday.
With his impeachment trial set to begin this week, a narrow majority of Americans say they support the Senate convicting former President Donald Trump and barring him from holding federal office again, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday.
Compared to public attitudes in the early days of his first impeachment trial, support for the Senate convicting Trump is higher now. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll published in late January 2020, when the first trial was ongoing but before senators had voted, 47% of Americans said the Senate should vote to remove Trump from office and 49% said he should not be removed.
But in this latest poll, 56% of Americans say Trump should be convicted and barred from holding office again, and 43% say he should not be. The new poll was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.
Meanwhile, the attention on Capitol Hill last week focused more on the fate of a new Republican member of Congress who has faced backlash for espousing extremist views and support for the QAnon conspiracy theory in her past. That focus, which followed the deadly insurrection on the U.S. Capitol that Trump is accused of inciting, seems to have taken a toll on the public's perception of the party. By a 17-point margin, Americans say there are more radical extremists within the GOP than the Democratic Party.
On Jan. 13, Trump became the first president ever to be impeached by the House of Representatives twice, when a majority of the body's members voted in favor of charging Trump with "incitement of insurrection" for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A key difference between this trial and the first is that Trump is no longer president and therefore cannot be removed from office. All but five Republican senators have gone on the record saying they think the trial is unconstitutional because of this fact. Still, Democrats have argued that failing to hold Trump accountable would signal to future presidents that they can evade punishment for their actions, as long as they come at the end of their term in office.
It would take 67 senators to vote to convict Trump, meaning 17 Republicans would need to be on board, assuming every member of the Democratic caucus votes to convict. If enough senators vote to convict, the chamber could hold a second vote on whether to bar him from holding federal office again. That would only take a simple majority.
A few Republican senators have said, or have reportedly said, that they think Trump committed an impeachable offense. Yet, none have said definitively that they will vote to convict the ex-president. But unlike the first impeachment, when no Republicans voted to impeach Trump in the House, 10 Republicans joined Democrats this time, including the chair of the House Republican Conference, Liz Cheney.
Support for conviction among Republicans was low in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, but slightly higher than it was ahead of Trump's first Senate impeachment trial. In the January 2020 ABC News/Washington Post poll, 9% of Republicans said the Senate should vote to remove Trump from office. In this new poll, 15% of Republicans say they support the Senate convicting and barring Trump from office.
MORE: Democrats call Trump to testify in upcoming impeachment trial
Among Democrats, support for Trump's conviction is nearly universal in the ABC News/Ipsos poll, with 92% in favor. Independents mirror the full population, with 54% in support of the Senate convicting Trump and prohibiting him from holding office, and 45% against.
Although the Senate trial begins on Tuesday, freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, not Trump, is who captured lawmakers' attention in the lead up to it. The rebuke of the Republican's past extremist comments may have contributed to how Americans are viewing her party in the new ABC News/Ipsos poll.
Twenty-five percent of Americans say they think there are more radical extremists in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party, but 42% of Americans say the opposite; another 32% say they think there are about the same amount of extremists within both political parties.
On Thursday, the House voted to strip the Georgia congresswoman of her new committee assignments after the Republican conference, under pressure from Democrats, did not, even though there was widespread condemnation within the conference for her past comments. The House vote was bipartisan, with 11 Republicans joining Democrats to boot Greene off the two committees.
The push to remove Greene from committees, in particular the House Education and Labor Committee, came after media outlets reported on Greene's conspiracy-ridden and sometimes violence-promoting social media activity before she ran for office. In one video, Greene questioned whether a plane flew into the Pentagon on 9/11, and in another she implied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be executed. She also falsely suggested that the Sandy Hook and Parkland mass school shootings were staged.
Arguing that committee assignments should be handled within their party's conference, Republicans also accused their colleagues across the aisle of failing to hold their own members similarly accountable.
MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene declares she is 'freed' after being booted from House committees
"While I'll continue to be consistent in my condemnation of offensive comments and inappropriate actions, I'm patiently awaiting Speaker Pelosi's resolution to remove Congressman [Eric] Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee over his ties to a suspected Chinese Spy and Congresswoman [Ilhan] Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for her shameful anti-Semitic comments," Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said in a statement about her vote to remove Greene from her committees.
In the ABC News/Ipsos poll, however, Republicans and Democrats don't view each other equally in terms of extremism within the parties.
Among Democrats, 8 in 10 said that there are more radical extremists in the Republican Party than in their party, and 13% said there are about equal numbers of extremists in both parties.
However, among Republicans, 33% said there are about the same number of extremists in both parties while 57% said there are more extremists in the Democratic Party.
This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs' KnowledgePanel® Feb. 5 to 6, 2021, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 508 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.8 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 31%-26%-36%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll's topline results and details on the methodology here.
ABC News' Dan Merkle and Ken Goldstein contributed to this report.
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Among thoughtful people, there is an overwhelming belief that Trump should be convicted. I say that because we know that about 33% or so of the 43% that say he should not be convicted are the Trump diehards who would say it was alright if he shot someone in "the middle of 5th Avenue".
It is time for the Republicans in the Senate to do the right thing for a change.
They won't, because it is still in their political interest to do nothing.
Further, the House Republicans are, as I predicted, using the fact that one of "their" members was disciplined by removing from committee assignments to push for Democratic members of House committees to be removed.
The country is fractured because of Trump., but not enough people are willing to stick their necks out while he still lurks in the corner.
Marjorie Taylor Greene PROMOTED THE IDEA that Hillary Clinton skinned the flesh off childrens faces and wore it on her own face in order to frighten the child into producing more of the hormone that supposedly gives eternal youth , at which time Hillary Clinton would eat such children in order to get the hormone.
If you want to overlook that because you are leery of the political ramifications of punishing Greene, have at it.
I am overlooking nothing. MTG is a kook and a fraud, just like Trump. If you think that doubling down works, look at Trump.
How do you test for thoughtfulness? Is it just people who agree with you?
People who would make excuses for Trump if he shot someone on 5th avenue are not "thoughtful". Trump himself glories in the fact that he DOES have followers with that mindset.
43% of people in this poll say he should not be convicted. It is not a leap to think that most of those are die hard Trump followers no matter what. Unless you think some of his most die hard followers do think he should be convicted.
So that leaves a small number of "thoughtful" people who think he is innocent.
Why actually "In Hell" would we want Trump again?
I certainly don't want to see anymore of Trump, for the reasons I have previously mentioned.
But it appears that the Democrats are scared to death of his ever coming back, which is why this impeachment clown show continues to dominate the headlines and liberal minds.
But the process is doomed from the start since this amounts to nothing more than a left wing partisan publicity stunt which sole purpose is to establish sound bites and false narratives.
The Dems failed to interview witnesses and gather evidence before sending the whole mess over to the Senate. Since the House Dems failed to do their due diligence to gather the facts, the Senate will have nothing of substance to vote on. The Republicans, joined by a few Democrats, will not vote to convict, since the point is moot anyway, since Trump is out of office. In other words, they will have done the "right thing"?
What will come next in this silly shit show? The midterms are only a bit over a year and a half away. The Dem dummies need to get with reality and govern responsibly..
They have to do something to distract people from China Joe's massive overreaches using EO's; and the economic pain they will be inflicting.
This impeachment circus falls completely on the Democrats. They can take their calls for unity and cram them where the sun won't shine and the rain won't go. Unity is not capitulation; no matter how hard the Democrats, their media shills, and their sheeple scream.
If you know another way to insure Trump will never, ever be elected to office again, I'd like to hear it.
The Dems failed to interview witnesses and gather evidence before sending the whole mess over to the Senate.
Really, Mr. False Narrative? Did Speaker Pelosi call you up and discuss it with you, or what? Besides, the entire world was watching that day. You want witnesses? Pick a phone number at random and call it.
You simply don't get it, [deleted]
[deleted]
Trump won't show up, and the Senate will fail to convict because the House Dems failed to produce a credible case.
What will the Dems do next? I would suggest they get over Trump soon or they will risk losing their temporary numerical advantage in both the House and Senate.
Because he knows he's guilty, and;
because he is a coward.
If he is subpoenaed and does not show up, he no longer can hide behind the title of POTUS and blow the subpoena off. He could and should be arrested for contempt of court if he is a no show, dragged into court in cuffs and declared a hostile witness.
Here's a way: Govern better than he did. And if you think that's easy, then you have nothing to worry about.
Good answer.
Whoever thinks it's easy means nadda.
I agree 100% but sadly, they won't subpoena him..
They may have no choice. But if not and it goes against Trump, he will bitch, moan, and declare it to be a fraud just like he did with the election. If he refuses to testify on his own behalf, then he will have only himself to blame for the outcome. If he does show up, there needs to be people fact checking every statement he makes because he will lie in an attempt to cover his fat ass.
That should be up to the American voter, not a bunch of loon leftists or hyper partisan politicians.
They don't like relying on the system or on the free exchange of ideas. They want to guarantee the result they seek and the best way to do that is by eliminating all possible competition. We see it over and over in so many ways.
Bull shit, since Gingrich, it applies to the GOP first and foremost.
In excuse after excuse, huh, Tacos?
They're just making a show because they know it's going to fail. The only thing they have is hate, they have no actual evidence that Trumps intention was that the crowd storm the Capitol Building. They could never get a conviction in a Court of Law because everything Trump said has been said thousands of times by politicians of either party to fire up a crowd. It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with why the rally was happening because disagreeing with and protesting a legal procedure isn't grounds for impeachment or a criminal offense. In Court they'd have to prove Intent but to Impeach they just need to foment enough hate to get the votes but they don't have what it takes to do either. They'd probably have a better chance in court against Rudy Giuliani for his "trial by combat" line. I tried to find something in Trump's speech that day that could be construed as meaning storm the building but it was pretty typical stuff that's been said by thousands of other politicians.
Banana oil.
I can't put much stock in polls like this. The media has been telling its viewers for months - years even - that Trump is a criminal. Then they poll the audience, and the fact that a bunch of people have accepted the media's message is supposed to reveal something. A certain percentage of people on both sides of this already have their minds made up no matter what evidence you show (or don't show) them. I suspect a relatively small number of people will look at this dispassionately with an open mind.
Being a criminal doesn't matter to Americans - after all, damn near half the voters still supported him. Maybe America LIKES criminals - some are kind of folk heroes, are they not?
I guess it depends on what you mean by "criminal." I generally consider it someone who has been convicted in a court of law. I think if you are going to say a specific person is or is not a criminal, there should be some kind of objective standard like that. Instead, we have a lot of people claiming this or that person is a criminal and they've never even been charged with a crime.
Stepping away from that frequently misused term, there have been many politicians who have done something the public might consider "wrong." Sometimes, it is totally disregarded. Other times, it ends a career.
I admit that you are correct. A "criminal" is a person who has been convicted of a crime and Trump has never yet been convicted of a crime - but "there is still time, brother", as the evangelists might say. I should have used a worse word to describe him.
I mean if you had said "being a boorish dick" doesn't matter, I would say you are correct.