Thirty-nine percent of respondents say President Trump is the most responsible for toning down the heated partisan rhetoric in the U.S., according to a new American Barometer survey of registered voters.
Twenty-eight percent say it’s the media that is most responsible for toning down the rhetoric, while 24 percent said Trump’s critics are most responsible, the poll conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company found.
Nine percent said there was no need to lower the rhetoric.
The results come days after a gunman entered a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 people. The suspect, Robert Bowers, had social media feeds filled with anti-Semitic statements.
The violence in Pittsburgh came just a day after the arrest of a man suspected of sending pipe bombs through the mail to a number of prominent Democrats, including former President Obama. Suspect Cesar Sayoc Jr. was photographed at a Trump rally wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat and had a Twitter feed full of political vitriol.
The American Barometer survey was conducted on Saturday, when the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh took place.
Trump’s critics have been quick to link Trump’s rhetoric to the incidents, blaming the president for setting a tone that leads to acts of violence. Trump has blamed the media, which he ripped for saying he was responsible for division in the United States.
“The Fake News is doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me for the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our Country. Actually, it is their Fake & Dishonest reporting which is causing problems far greater than they understand!” Trump tweeted on Sunday.
Conservative political analyst Henry Olsen told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking” that it was surprising that despite his high disapproval ratings, only 39 percent of those people said Trump was responsible for toning down the rhetoric.
“What I found most interesting about the poll was how few people blamed Trump. We have a world where 50 or more percent of people in almost every poll disapprove of him, the vast majority of them strongly,” Olsen said.
“But yet, in the poll we just saw, fewer than 40 percent thought that Trump was to blame. That by implication means that a lot of people who don’t like Trump actually put the blame someplace else in the poll,” he continued.
The American Barometer was conducted on Oct. 27 and 28 among 1,200 registered voters. The sampling margin of error is 2.83 percentage points.
— Julia Manchester
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