A new poll shows most Republicans think Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer was fine

pulse

July 19, 2017 4:26 PM

In a poll, 52% of registered voters said Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer was inappropriate, compared with 23% who said it was appropriate.

Donald Trump Jr. in Nevada in November, 2016.

Most Republicans think Donald Trump Jr.'s decision during the 2016 presidential campaign to seek damaging information about Hillary Clinton by meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer was appropriate, according to a new poll.

In a Politico/Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday, 52% of Republicans said they thought it was appropriate for Trump Jr. to take the meeting with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, on the premise of obtaining dirt on his father's opponent in the presidential election.

The share of Republicans who thought the meeting was appropriate increased to 52% from 44% after pollsters told voters the purpose of the controversial meeting was so that Veselnitskaya "could allegedly provide official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary Clinton."

The poll showed that opinions on the meeting were divided along party lines — 53% of registered voters said the meeting was inappropriate, compared with 28% who said the meeting was appropriate. Just 9% of Democrats said the meeting was appropriate for the purpose of seeking damaging information about Clinton.

Conducted from Thursday to Saturday, the online poll surveyed 1,994 registered voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Recent polls have shown that President Donald Trump is on course to be the most unpopular president at this point in his term since the advent of modern polling. FiveThirtyEight's approval tracker of major polls puts Trump's approval rating at 39%, with a disapproval rating of 56%.

But while a series of revelations about the Trump campaign's ties to Russia have raised concerns among Democrats and much of the national-security community, it's unclear whether the issue will damage Trump further.

HuffPost noted earlier this week that the events surrounding the investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia, as well as Trump's decision in May to fire James Comey as FBI director, had barely moved public opinion of Trump.

The Politico/Morning Consult poll showed that just 12% of voters who said Trump shouldn't be impeached also said there would be grounds for impeachment if the special counsel leading the FBI's investigation found evidence of collusion.

Recent surveys have also shown voters split along partisan lines on whether they felt Trump benefited from Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

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