Almost half of Americans believe that President Donald Trump has already violated the Constitution, a new survey has indicated. Responding to a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute released Friday, 47 percent said that Trump has acted in a way that contravenes the supreme law of the United States. Just 46 percent said they thought Trump had so far acted in accordance with the Constitution.
Discussions about Trump’s possible Constitution violations have existed since before he was even sworn into the White House last month. His efforts to divest himself from his business interests have been widely decried as insufficient. Particular controversy has centered on the emoluments clause of the Constitution which prevents the president from taking payments from foreign governments.
A group of constitutional scholars, Supreme Court litigators and former White House ethics lawyers filed a lawsuit last month claiming that Trump is acting in violation of that clause based on the fact that his hotels and other business interests accepted payments from foreign governments. Trump’s lawyers have claimed that the clause does not apply to fair-market payments.
The businessman has also faced repeated scrutiny over his possible ties to Russia. Michael Flynn was asked to resign as national security adviser last week over the subject of his discussions with Russia’s ambassador.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation was “highly likely.” And the Democratic National Committee released a statement claiming that the affair was “already bigger than Watergate,” which brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon in 1974.
President Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Feb. 24, 2017. Photo: Reuters
However, the PRRI survey indicated that only 30 percent of Americans would support impeaching Trump. That figure is similar to the number that supported impeaching Barack Obama and George W. Bush, although those polls were taken at much later stages of their presidencies.
To little surprise, the numbers for Trump were vastly different based on party affiliation. While 58 percent of Democrats supported impeaching Trump, the figure dropped to just 4 percent for Republicans.
On the question of whether Trump had violated the Constitution, there was also a significant split based on gender. Thirty-nine percent of males said they believed the president had violated the document, compared to 55 percent of females.
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