Majority Backs Donald Trump Impeachment Inquiry For First Time In New Poll, Including 1-In-4 Republicans
Just five days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that House Democrats would open an “official” impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s conduct, as The Inquisitr reported, a new poll shows that public support for the impeachment proceedings has skyrocketed, rising well into majority territory.
The impeachment push was sparked by Trump’s Jury 25 phone call with the Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump appears to have used the power of his office to strong-arm the foreign leader into digging for dirt on Joe Biden, a chief Trump political rival.
In the new CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday, a full 55 percent of Americans say that they approve of the impeachment proceedings, while 45 percent disapprove.
The poll shows, however, that there remains a sharp partisan divide in approval of the impeachment inquiry. Nonetheless, nearly one-in-four Republicans, 23 percent, said that they approved of the impeachment proceedings. That’s a significant change from an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released on Wednesday, the day after Pelosi’s announcement, which showed only 12 percent of Republicans saying the impeachment proceedings against Trump were “worth it.”
In that earlier poll, less than half — 47 percent — supported the impeachment inquiry, while 49 percent called the impeachment proceedings “not worth it.” Again, by contrast, the CBS News poll appears to show a quick rise in support for the impeachment inquiry into Trump.
Nearly nine out of 10 Democrats — 87 percent — support the impeachment inquiry, according to the CBS News poll.
As The Inquisitr reported earlier, an ABC News/Ipsos poll also out on Sunday showed that 64 percent of Americans — almost two of every three — say that Donald Trump’s actions in his phone call with Zelensky constitute “a serious problem,” with 43 percent calling the problem “very serious” and another 21 percent considering what Trump did in the call to be “somewhat” serious.
Between the NPR/PBS poll released Wednesday, and the CBS News poll released Sunday, two major events in the unfolding scandal took place. First, the White House released a partial transcript of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky, which clearly showed Trump responding to Zelensky’s request to purchase Javelin anti-tank missiles — which are essential for Ukraine in its ongoing war against a Russian incursion in the country’s east — by telling Zelensky that, “I would like you to do us a favor though.”
Trump then went on to make the request for Ukraine to “investigate” Biden.
One day after the transcript’s release, Congress released the full text of a report by an intelligence community whistleblower, who went into further details about Trump’s call with Zelensky, and about the White House attempt to cover it up.
That whistleblower, whose identity remains a secret, has now reached a tentative agreement to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, according to CNN, meaning that new revelations could soon be on the way, possibly increasing public support for impeachment to new levels, and causing big problems for Trump’s 2020 re-election effort.
