As Donald Trump tweets relentlessly about how much people love him — and how much better his approval rating would be, if only that old meanie Robert Mueller would leave him alone — it got us to thinking: What kind of comparisons are out there between what America thinks of each of the two men? We already know what Trump thinks of himself:
Working hard, thank you! pic.twitter.com/3SoWTkZjP6
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2018
Without the phony Russia Witch Hunt, and with all that we have accomplished in the last almost two years (Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judge’s, Military, Vets, etc.) my approval rating would be at 75% rather than the 50% just reported by Rasmussen. It’s called Presidential Harassment!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2018
Big grain of salt for that number, of course — Rasmussen is a notoriously right-wing polling organization, and generally, actual numbers are ten or more points lower than they report.
But there HAS to be some polling on approval ratings for Mueller too, right? I mean, if we poll on how popular Trump is compared to getting a root canal, surely there’s a matchup for the legendary former FBI Director who now heads the Special Counsel and the former reality TV star who now heads to bed after his third Big Mac and his DVR’ed episodes of Hannity.
Luckily for us, not only is it out there, it’s recent: A new poll ending just two days ago is out from The Economist and YouGov, and it’s got the head-to-head you’re looking for.
It’s hard to lay them side by side, however: Numbers for Trump are easy to parse because everyone understands what his job is supposed to entail and American essentially has a baseline for what a “normal” presidency should look like. With Mueller’s job, approval ratings have more context because such a large number of Americans have no idea what he’s doing.
The best way to compare them is by net approval — that is to say, the percent who say they approve of the job Mueller (or Trump) is doing minus the number who disapprove. And according to this new poll, Mueller’s net approval is 7 percent; 38 percent of respondents approve of the job he’s doing (which seems like a low number, until you consider that 30 percent aren’t actually sure what Mueller does), while 31 percent disapprove.
Trump’s net? Negative five. That’s the number 5 with a minus sign in front of it. His approval is at 43 percent, but his disapproval is at 48 percent.
That’s got to hurt almost as much as knowing your presidency is about to go down in flames.
Featured image via screen capture
