A slim majority of Americans say the former president, Donald Trump, should be convicted by the Senate in his impeachment trial of inciting an insurrection and then be barred from holding public office, a new opinion poll shows.
Unsurprisingly, the new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows a sharp partisan divide over the issue.
The House of Representatives plans to deliver the article of impeachment – effectively the charge against Trump – to the Senate on Monday, which triggers the trial in the Senate although currently there is no agreed date for when that will begin or how long it will last.
Senate Democrats are keen to begin the trial asap, even as soon as Tuesday, confident they can work on Joe Biden’s agenda and cabinet confirmations in conjunction with a trial (which is surely a tall order). Senate Republicans, led by now-minority leader Mitch McConnell, are pushing to delay until perhaps mid-February. New York Democratic Senator and now-majority leader Chuck Schumer has slapped that idea down.
They’re expected to thrash out some sort of an agreement by/on Monday.
But here’s a reminder of what the president, Biden, said in response to a question shouted to him at the end of his executive order signing ceremony earlier, tweeted by the Guardian’s senior political reporter Lauren Gambino:
Lauren Gambino
(@laurenegambino)Asked whether he supports McConnell’s February timeline for Trump’s impeachment trial, Biden seems to suggest he does: “I haven’t seen the details of it … the more time we have to get up and running to meet these crises, the better.”
Meanwhile, that new national public opinion poll, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, found that 51% of Americans think Trump should be found guilty for inciting the deadly storming of the US Capitol on January 6, Reuters reports.
Another 37% said Trump should not be convicted and the remaining 12% said they were unsure.
When asked about the former Republican president’s political future, 55% said Trump should not be allowed to hold elected office again, while 34% said he should be allowed to do so and 11% said they were unsure.
If the Senate votes to convict Trump, it would need to hold a second vote to bar him from holding office again.
The responses were almost entirely divided along party lines. While nine out of 10 Democrats say Trump should be convicted and barred from holding office again, less than two in 10 Republicans agreed, the poll showed.
The poll also found that 55% percent of Americans approved of the new president, Joe Biden, who was inaugurated on Wednesday.
In comparison, 43% approved of Trump during his first week of office in 2017, and Trump’s level of approval never rose above 50% in weekly polls conducted throughout his four-year term.
