Polls show the US is still divided on Trump

and our new ABC News ipsos poll shows just over half of Americans believe Trump should be charged for his alleged attempts to overturn the election nearly two-thirds say those charges are serious ABC News political director Rick Klein joins me now for more on this Rick what do you make of these numbers well they're striking to me in part because there's a lot more people dialed into this as a serious matter than were the previous indictments we asked similar questions after the Stormy Daniels related indictment after the classified documents indictment and yes the majority of the country thought it was serious but not quite as strong and in this case you have that two-thirds of the country saying it's serious you also have a little more than half saying he's right to face criminal charges and almost as much 49 saying he should actually drop his candidacy suspend his campaign entirely so it is possible that people view this differently even though so much of this might be mixing together in the minds of everyday Americans Rick what does this poll tell you about how this could impact the presidential race for 2024 well look if you're looking for signals about how the country is reacting to Donald Trump you see them here people remember January 6 they know what happened they remember the Trump presidency and there's been a number of polls recently that show essentially a dead heat between Joe Biden and Donald Trump but I think that misreads an important factor which is that uh president Trump goes into a general election with a whole lot of baggage and if these trials are still ongoing or the legal issues are still unsettled or maybe even if he's convicted uh before we get to uh the the point where you're you're nominating a candidate you have to take this into account as a Republican primary voter and ultimately it's a general election voter um yes it's true that he's a lot stronger than the Republican primary than his opponents but no voting has happened yet we're still five months away and that's going to mean a lot of court dates in between Rick how crucial will the timing of these cases be for Trump as he runs for president again well look it's fascinating to juxtapose the political calendar and the legal calendar in part because his legal defense and his political defense are basically the same thing but yeah we've got that first court date that Aaron katorsky just reported on that's just five days after the first Republican primary uh the sorry the Republican debate you've got then primaries that overlap with court dates and various jurisdictions all through January February March and Beyond it's very possible that he is on trial in multiple jurisdictions at the same time even as voters are actually voting right around the time that a nomination is made formal next July in Milwaukee and that just inserts a whole degree of uncertainty into the process to say nothing of the fact that one of the potential Witnesses in this case is his former vice president who's also an active candidate for president himself Mike Pence has been saying that he's got an uptick in donations as a result of the attention the last few days and he is leaning in on his argument that Donald Trump is flatly unqualified to be president again given what was alleged in these indictments so Rick what are you watching for in the next few weeks well Iowa State Fair is the big event uh starting next next Thursday and it's an opportunity for all the candidates to show that they can break through there's been some controversy with Trump uh around his uh lack of respect he's shown to the Iowa Republican Governor pulled out from the New York Times today showing his lead in Iowa significantly uh smaller than his lead nationally so I think that's going to kind of juice the competition into thinking they've got an opportunity to stop him and and how far they go on this indictment and the distractions that uh that it brings will be one critical question all right ABC News political director recline thanks Rick hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

Views: 60,137

Keywords: abc, court, democrats, federal, indictment, judiciary, letter, news, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-102021214, politics, trials, trump

Id: t-1LUjLulpA

Length: 3min 34sec (214 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023