Survey Says: Trump Has Record Low Approval

Donald Trump has record low approval ratings for a new President, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

According to the poll 44% of respondents approve of his job performance to date, while 48% disapprove, and 34% of those will go so far as saying he is not up to the job.

That is a net 4% positive compared to Barack Obama's net 32% positive after his first month in office.

But among Republicans, Trump gets overwhelming positives (85%), while among Democrats the negatives are 84%.

Trump's personal favorability rating of 43% is on par with previous polls.

The poll was conducted Feb. 18-22 among 1,000 respondents. It has a margin of error for of plus or minus 3.1 percent.

The poll found that there was bipartisan anger at Washington, with 86% of those surveyed saying they believe "a small group in D.C. has 'reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.'"

The President may not have elaborated, but a surrogate, provided some insight on ABC's This Week according to the White House, which included this excerpt Sunday in an e-mail to B&C/Multichannel News/

"I think we all spend enough time around each other as it is. But look, this wasn't a President who was elected to spend his time with reporters and celebrities," said Principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders "This was a President who campaigned on speaking directly to Americans and that's exactly what he's going to spend his time doing. I think it's kind of naive of us to think we can all walk into a room for a couple of hours and pretend that some of that tension isn't there. You know, one of the things we say in the south: ’if a girl scout egged your house, would you buy cookies from her?’ I think this is a pretty similar scenario. There's no reason for him to go in and sit and pretend like this is going to be just another Saturday night. I think he's very focused on protecting our borders, national security, growing our economy, and instead of going and spending a night doing that, I think he'll spend the night focused on what he can do to better America.”

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.