Americans Disapprove

The second impeachment trial of Trump started this past week. Americans clearly disapprove of Trump’s behavior which caused the insurrection. Trump’s Senate loyalists — including Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham — criticized his lawyers’ case as ineffective. However, the defense lawyers’ problem is that they cannot defend the indefensible. They know it; we know it; Republican senators defending Trump know it.

Most Americans believe the Senate should convict Trump and disqualify him from holding office again, according to multiple polls.

In a CBS News poll released before the trial even started, 56 percent of respondents said they supported conviction. In the CBS poll, 21 percent of Republican voters said Trump had encouraged violence during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

In an ABC/Ipsos poll, 56 percent said he should be convicted and barred from future office. Gallup found people favored conviction by a margin of 52 percent to 45 percent — which is the average of all recent polls.

The trial did not go well for Trump.  Any reasonable view of the evidence should lead to conviction. Most Americans believe that Trump incited a violent mob to attack Congress. He should never hold office again. His lawyers didn’t do much to change that fact this week.