Donald Trump viewed negatively by 7 out of 10 Americans, poll finds - Independent

In the latest sign Americans are dreading their general election options -- and particularly one of them -- negative views of Donald Trump have surged to their highest level of the 2016 campaign, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Trump's unfavorable rating, in fact, far surpasses Hillary Clinton's even as the presumptive Democratic nominee receives her worst ratings in more than two decades in public life.

The poll finds 70 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump, including a 56 percent majority who feel this way "strongly." Negative ratings of Trump are up 10 percentage points from last month to their highest point since he announced his candidacy last summer, nearly reaching the level seen before his campaign began (71 percent). The survey was conducted Wednesday through Sunday among a random national sample of U.S. adults, coming after last week's primary contests, but with the large majority of interviews completed before Sunday's massacre at an Orlando club.

Clinton is also seen negatively, with 43 percent reporting favorable impressions and 55 percent unfavorable. Attitudes have not significantly changed since last month, but negative views of the former secretary of state have technically ticked up to their highest level in all Post-ABC polls since 1992, when Clinton had yet to become first lady.

Unfavorable ratings toward both Clinton and Trump are higher than for any major-party presidential nominee in Post-ABC surveys from 1984 onward.

While interviews were conducted before and after the Orlando shooting, results from Sunday showed no significant differences from previous days, though it will take several days to know whether the attack and political aftermath impact candidates' standing.

Where Trump lost ground

But Trump's recent slide has reopened an advantage for Clinton, whose 55 percent unfavorable mark is now 15 points below Trump's. Among registered voters, Trump's unfavorable mark exceeds Clinton's by 13 points (69 percent vs. 56 percent), a break from a Post-ABC poll last month finding both candidates' standings even at 57 percent unfavorable among this group.

Negative views of Trump have risen among a wide range of groups, jumping by double digits among liberals and conservatives and among both Republican women and Democratic men. But his standing has also worsened among two key voting groups: independents and white Americans who do not have a four-year college degree.

Trump's net favorable rating (favorable minus unfavorable) among non-college whites has flipped from a plus-14 in May to slightly negative minus-7 in the latest survey. Among independents, Trump's net rating has shifted from from -19 last month to -38 in the latest survey, returning him to roughly the same standing as in April (-37).

Both groups widely dislike Clinton, setting up a hold-your-nose choice for many in November. Clinton's net favorable rating of -47 among non-college whites continues to be much worse than Trump's, while her -29 net rating among independents is slightly better.

Party unity? Maybe later.

Significant minorities of Democrats and Republicans continue to express reservations about their parties' presumptive nominees. One-quarter of self-identified Democrats say they have an unfavorable view of Clinton (25 percent) -- a number little changed from 21 percent in May despite Clinton clinching the party's nomination last week. Clinton's negative ratings peak among Democrats under age 50 (31 percent, vs. 18 percent for those 50 and older) who have been more supportive of Sanders in the primary contests this year; her image could improve if Sanders concedes the contest and endorses her candidacy.

On the Republican side, an even higher 34 percent express unfavorable views of Trump, reversing about half of the gains Trump made from April (42 percent unfavorable) to May (28 percent). Several Republican leaders have renounced Trump's complaints that a the federal judge presiding over lawsuit against Trump University is biased due to his Mexican heritage, with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan saying Trump's comments were racist.

Trump continues to be deeply unpopular with Hispanics, with 89 percent saying they have an unfavorable view of him, his highest mark in Post-ABC polling this campaign. Three-quarters of Hispanics see Trump in a "strongly unfavorable" light (76 percent), similar to 78 percent last month. Clinton has a largely positive image among this increasingly Democratic group -- 64 percent favorable vs. 34 percent unfavorable.

Clinton's biggest popularity struggles continue to be among men, where her unfavorable rating stands at 63 percent, rising to 75 percent among white men. Her standing with women is significantly better, at 51 percent favorable and 47 percent unfavorable. The barely positive mark -- almost identical to 50-48 one month ago -- is a reminder that Clinton's success at becoming the first woman to clinch a major-party nomination for president has come without widespread popularity among women nationally.

Copyright: the Washington Post

Trump bans New York Times from reporting his campaign - New Yor Times

Campaign officials for Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, have denied credentials to several news organizations, including The Washington Post.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
You never know what’s going to cause Donald J. Trump to officially ban a news organization from his presidential campaign events.
For The Washington Post, it was a headline on Monday saying “Donald Trump Suggests President Obama Was Involved With Orlando Shooting.” Mr. Trump said Mr. Obama’s refusal to say the words “radical Islamic terrorism” meant that, “there’s something going on.” He did not say what Mr. Obama’s secret agenda might be, leaving it to others to interpret. The Post later changed its headline to read that he “seems to connect” Mr. Obama to the shootings. Too late — banned! (And, of course, “SAD!”)
For the Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger, it was, apparently, a story about internal Trump dissension over his campaign manager’s “quick temper and heavy-handed leadership” that got his credentials revoked. For The Des Moines Register news team it was the editorial board’s call for Mr. Trump to exit the race. Then there was BuzzFeed News, The Huffington Post, Univision, The Daily Beast and so on.
There is no obvious consistency to it, from a candidate who can also be as accessible as any in history. After all, The Wall Street Journal’s similar headline, that Mr. Trump “Links Obama to Extremists,” didn’t cost that paper its official entree.
Only Mr. Trump knows whether the bans are the result of pique or some carefully thought-out strategy (he denies the latter).
But that doesn’t matter.
As of now, there is only this: The all-but-confirmed standard-bearer of one of the United States’s two major political parties is actively stripping credentials from news organizations that report things that he deems unfair or inaccurate. He has a black list and, unlike the one that Nixon kept, this is not a secret. Quite the opposite.
I called and sent email to the Republican National Committee a couple of times on Tuesday, to see whether the party Mr. Trump will soon be nominated to lead would carry out the same bans, but I did not get a return call.

I did get a call back from Mr. Trump, who said that he was exercising his right to choose whom he grants credentials to as he runs a campaign that he has mostly paid for himself. “I’m from a different world, other than politics,” he said. “In my world, when people don’t treat you fairly … ” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to: You cut them off.
“I don’t want good stories,” he said, “I want fair stories.”
To his mind, The Post had not been fair in its coverage of his speech, as evidenced by its decision to change its headline. But why, I asked him, was that the incident that led him to ban the paper. It was “the last straw,” he told me. At The Washington Post, he said, “virtually every article is negative even when I have big victories.”
The New York Times was not much better, Mr. Trump said, citing a recent article about his relationship with women over the years. He rebutted the article after it was published and his lawyer demanded, unsuccessfully, that the paper retract it. When I noted that Mr. Trump had not removed The Times’s credentials, Mr. Trump said, “You’re marginal, you’re marginal,” apparently meaning we, too, were close to losing credentials to cover him. He added, “It’s always possible, anything’s possible.”
I asked Mr. Trump what, exactly, will prompt a credential ban.
“If people don’t cover me fairly, or if they actually make things up, I don’t know why anybody should be allowed,” he said.
Fairness, and, increasingly, accuracy, is in the eye of the candidate and his or her supporters. That is worrisome, especially if Mr. Trump takes his strategy to the White House.
But Mr. Trump said he would not impose similar credential bans if he won the presidency. “That’s different from me taking something away — there I’m taking something away where I’m representing the nation,” he said. As for The Post, he said, “If they start covering me accurately, not even well, just accurately — I don’t want anything — they will get the credentials back.”
Martin Baron, The Post’s executive editor, said the newspaper was not going to change the way it covered Mr. Trump, which he described as “fair, honest and honorable.”
“I don’t think we have to seek a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from a presidential candidate — that’s true during a campaign and that’s true during a presidency,” he said.
There needs to be mutual respect between the media and the candidates, he said, and “in this instance, clearly no respect toward our role is being shown.’’ (Mr. Baron noted that The Post changed the headline of its own volition, to make it more accurately reflect Mr. Trump’s remarks, which happens frequently across the media).
“Anybody who aspires to be president of the United States should exhibit behavior as a candidate that he or she would display as president of the United States,” he said.
The idea of a presidential campaign, after all, is to give the public a sense of how a candidate will behave in office. And yes, Hillary Clinton’s resistance to news conferences does not exactly augur an open hand with the news media either, and I don’t add that as mere “false balance.” She should do more.
Republicans, more than Democrats, have used the news media as a foil for decades. And neither of the last two Republicans to hold the White House — George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush — loved the news media. But neither of them denied credentials to reporters covering them. A notable exception: Vice President Dick Cheney, who tended to not make room for New York Times reporters on his plane. I was personally was on the wrong end of that deal once.
But the campaign still gave us credentials for his events. And, either way, we made do, because it is the job of reporters to get the facts — and present them fairly and accurately — regardless of the obstacles. Mr. Trump made the same point, noting that reporters without official credentials were welcome to come to his events on their own, and report from the crowd should they manage to obtain entree.
“We’re not locking the doors where they can’t get in,” he said, though Mr. Schreckinger of Politico was recently escorted out of an event.
But doesn’t stripping credentials from out-of-favor reporters send a chill? “They send a chill by showing what a disgrace the media’s been,” Mr. Trump said.
Though Mr. Trump said his scraps with the media were not strategic, he noted they played well with some of his supporters. “Some people think they don’t like it,’’ he said. “Many people like it — they say, ‘They’re being punished for being dishonest.’’’
Brrrr.