By a nearly two-to-one margin, Americans do not want to see former President Donald Trump run for president again, a recent poll suggests – but Trump is still in a good position to secure the Republican Party’s nomination in 2024 should he choose to run.
According to a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted last week, just 35 percent of voters in the U.S. want Trump to run again, while 65 percent of voters oppose another Trump presidential campaign.
However, those numbers flip when looking only at data from Republican-leaning respondents. Sixty-nine percent of those respondents said that they want Trump to run again, while just 31 percent said that he shouldn’t.
Those numbers contrast with other polls, which show that Republicans may want their party to nominate another candidate. A CNN/SSRS poll conducted this month found that only 50 percent of Republican-leaning voters wanted Trump to run again, while 49 percent said he shouldn’t do so.
Regardless of the contrast in findings, the former president will likely become the GOP’s nominee should he choose to run.
Trump has not yet said whether he intends to run in 2024, but has hinted numerous times that he will do so, even referring to himself as the 45th and 47th president of the United States during a recent golf outing.
However, Trump currently faces a number of investigations into his finances, as well as his actions following his loss to current President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building is also looking into a scheme orchestrated by Trump’s campaign team to overturn the presidential election results.
The CBS News/YouGov poll found that most Americans disapprove of Trump’s attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.
In the days leading up to January 6, 2021, Trump pressured his former vice president, Mike Pence, to reject certain electors’ votes in the Electoral College — a power that the vice president doesn’t actually have, according to the U.S. Constitution. Pence ultimately refused to go along with the idea, and hours after the Capitol building was cleared of the mob of Trump loyalists that attempted to interrupt the certification of the election, Biden was certified the winner.
By a three-to-one margin, Americans disapprove of Trump’s pressure campaign against Pence, the poll found, with 75 percent of respondents saying that they disapproved of Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, while only 25 percent said that they approved.
The majority of the poll’s respondents said that they wanted the January 6 commission’s work to continue moving forward. Sixty percent of Americans in the survey said that Congress should investigate Trump-aligned representatives and other public officials for their actions leading up to the Capitol attack, while 40 percent said they should drop the inquiry.
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Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.
Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
Organizations like Truthout are also being threatened by legislation like HR 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill” that would allow the Treasury Secretary to declare any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip its tax-exempt status without due process. Progressive media like Truthout that has courageously focused on reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza are in the bill’s crosshairs.
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We’re preparing right now for Trump’s Day One: building a brave coalition of movement media; reaching out to the activists, academics, and thinkers we trust to shine a light on the inner workings of authoritarianism; and planning to use journalism as a tool to equip movements to protect the people, lands, and principles most vulnerable to Trump’s destruction.
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