In their never-ending quest to hammer Donald Trump, reporters in the liberal Washington Post referred to an international poll conducted by the Pew Research Center not once, but twice in two days claiming that the Republican president “has alarmed citizens of the nation’s closest allies and others worldwide.”
In addition, the article posted on Monday by Post reporters Isaac Stanley-Becker and Scott Clement was followed the next day by an item from Aaron Blake, the newspaper’s senior political reporter, who quoted the four “most brutal numbers” in the survey that show how much the world hates Donald Trump.
Stanley-Becker and Clement started their article by slamming Trump with faint praise since “in the survey of 37 countries, Russia is a bright spot for Trump. As beleaguered as the president is at home, a majority of Russians say they have confidence in him. And Russians’ attitudes toward the United States have improved since Trump took office.”
“Elsewhere, though, and with remarkable speed,” they noted, “Trump’s presidency has taken a toll on the United States’ image abroad.”
The reporters then noted:
From Chile to Italy, from Sweden to Japan, majorities consider the president arrogant, intolerant, unqualified and dangerous. On the flip side, most view him as a strong leader. And many expect their country’s relationship with the United States to withstand his presidency.
It is perhaps unsurprising that a man who campaigned on a pledge to put American interests first would generate backlash in other parts of the world. Nor is it surprising that the negative reaction would carry over to opinions about the United States itself.
“The depths of disapproval registered abroad suggest that Trump has undone the progress [former President Barack] Obama made in burnishing the American brand,” Stanley-Becker and Clement asserted. “It took Bush eight years, and the quagmire in Iraq, to notch such dismal ratings overseas, according to Pew. It has taken Trump six months.”
“His unpopularity is the result of a mix of disagreement with his signature policy objectives,” they claimed, “such as building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and distaste for his character, according to Pew’s analysis of poll results.”
“Trust in the American president plummeted most in some of the United States’ closest allies in Europe and Asia, as well as in the countries it borders, Canada and Mexico,” the reporters indicated. “In only two countries, Russia and Israel, does Trump receive a higher score than Obama.”
Meanwhile, “Germany joins more than half of the 37 countries surveyed where approval for the United States fell by double digits this year,” they asserted. “In Mexico, positive views of the United States have been cut in half, from 66 to 30 percent."
“Women tend to see the United States more negatively than do men in 10 of the countries surveyed, and in 16 countries, older people are more distrustful than the young,” the Post writers claimed.
“At the same time, affinity for Americans remains intact, as does the popularity of American popular culture, Pew found. Most people think Washington respects the personal freedoms of Americans, yet there is growing doubt about American-style democracy in France and Germany, among other countries.”
“In Britain, a country seized by political uncertainty as it sorts out its relationship to Europe, “there’s incredulity about Trump,” even among many who supported the Brexit referendum, said Michael Borio, a local council member in London.
On Tuesday, Aaron Blake continued to pile on the president by pointing out four findings in the poll “that stood out to me.”
First, “the world distrusts Trump more than even Vladimir Putin.”
“According to the poll,” Blake asserted, “significantly more of the people surveyed in those 37 countries distrust Trump than distrust Putin. While 59 percent of people say they have no confidence in the Russian president to do the right thing, 74 percent have no confidence in Trump.”
Blake stated his second finding is: “In each of allied countries, nine out of 10 view Trump as "arrogant," seven in 10 as "dangerous." Many of those countries “are chief allies and leaders of the developed world.”
Third, “even nationalists don't love Trump” as indicated in the study that “right-wing populists in Europe aren’t … on the Trump Train.”
Finally, “Trump's reputation is already worse than George W. Bush's -- at the depths of his presidency” and the Iraq War.
The Pew Research Center survey was conducted from February to May among national random samples of 852 to 2,464 interviews in each of the 37 countries. The margin of sampling error for each country ranges from plus or minus 3.2 to 5.7 percentage points.
It will be interesting to see whether the liberal Post gives as much coverage to a poll that favors Trump as they did with this negative survey. Unfortunately, that's not likely
