Nation & World: Poll: Americans are split on Trump’s impeachment

photo by: AP File Photo

In the Nov. 6, 2020, file photo, shades of red and blue light of dawn fills the sky behind Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A majority of Americans say former President Donald Trump bears at least some blame for the Capitol insurrection, and about half say the Senate should vote to convict him at the end of his impeachment trial.

That’s according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that also finds many Republicans continue to believe — contrary to all evidence — that President Joe Biden’s election was illegitimate.

It’s the latest sign that Trump’s monthslong disinformation campaign could have long-lasting ramifications for Biden as he tries to govern a fractured country and underscores the deep partisan divides that will outlast Trump’s presidency. But it also shows some degree of consensus, with even many Republicans saying that Trump was at least partially responsible for his supporters’ deadly storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a bid to overturn the results of the November election.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that Trump bears at least a moderate amount of responsibility for the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including half who say he bears a great deal or quite a bit. Just over a third say he bears little to no responsibility.

Most Republicans absolve him of guilt, but about 3 in 10 think he bears at least a moderate amount of blame for the events.

Fewer Americans, 47%, believe the Senate should vote to convict Trump after his impeachment trial, which begins next week. Another 40% say he should not be convicted, and 12% aren’t sure. Trump last month became the first president in the nation’s history to be impeached twice by the House, but it appears unlikely Democrats will have enough votes to convict him in the upper chamber.

Opinions on the trial fall along partisan lines, with more than 8 in 10 Democrats saying the Senate should convict, versus only about 1 in 10 Republicans. While those who believe he bears a large amount of responsibility generally believe he should be convicted, among those who say he is only moderately responsible, significantly more say the Senate should vote against than for conviction, 54% to 19%.

“I think it’s kind of ridiculous. Are we going to start impeaching all the past presidents we don’t like?” said Bill Stokes, 67, who lives in Casper, Wyo., and voted for Trump in November, describing him as the “lesser of evils.”

While Stokes allowed that Trump “perhaps” bore some responsibility for the events of Jan. 6, he said, “I don’t think it warrants impeachment. Maybe a censure, if that.”

“I really don’t feel like he incited a riot. He asked them to go down there for a peaceful protest. Maybe he didn’t understand mob psychology, but I think his responsibility there — they’re trying to put more on him than there really is,” he said.

In interviews, other Republican respondents faulted Trump for egging on the crowd — and some felt he should be held accountable in some way — but didn’t think impeachment was the answer given that Trump has already left office and, they said, was unlikely to ever be elected again.

At the same time, the poll finds that many Republicans agree with the idea, championed by those who stormed the Capitol, that Biden’s election was illegitimate. Overall, 66% of Americans say Biden was legitimately elected president, but 65% of Republicans say he was not.

They include Dolores Mejia, 71, who lives in Peoria, Ariz., and maintains that, had all the votes been counted, “I think Trump would have won, I really believe that.”

A lifelong Democrat who switched her party registration to vote for Trump in November, Mejia cited everything from debunked conspiracies to friends’ accounts to explain her reservations.

“I don’t care what the Democrats say. They stole the election. There’s just no way, with the amount of support we were seeing, watching the rallies on TV, things like Truckers for Trump … there is no way they did not steal the election,” she contended.

Others were more ambivalent. Mark Richardson, a Republican who lives in High Point, N.C., and voted for Trump twice, said he understood why measures had been taken to allow for mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic but argued they should never be used again.

“It leaves too much room for questions,” he said. But Richardson, 39, who works in the electric vehicle industry, said the question of “legitimacy” is more nuanced.

“So I guess it depends on how you frame the question,” he said. “Do I think every vote he received was legitimate? No. But do I think he’s the president, legitimately? Yes.”

“Joe Biden’s the president,” he said. “And that’s a-OK with me.”

GOP officials in several battleground states that Biden carried, including Arizona and Georgia, have said the election was fair. Trump’s claims were roundly rejected in the courts, including by judges appointed by Trump and by his former attorney general, William Barr.

In general, the poll shows that Americans have a more negative than positive view of Trump’s presidency and its impact on the country, but opposition is limited among Republicans. Only 36% of Americans overall say Trump was a great or even a good president, while 50% say he was a poor or terrible one.

By contrast, in late 2016, as Barack Obama was leaving office, 52% of Americans called him a good or great president, while 28% said he was poor or terrible.

While most Republicans say Trump was a good or great president, 15% call him just average and 11% say he was a poor or terrible president.

Americans are more mixed about how the Trump years impacted them personally. In fact, more call themselves better off than worse off than they were when Trump took office, by a margin of 38% to 27%.

— The AP-NORC poll of 1,055 adults was conducted Jan. 28-Feb. 1 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

BRIEFLY

Pentagon plans to deploy troops to help with vaccine drive

Washington (ap) — The Pentagon will deploy more than 1,100 troops to five vaccination centers in what will be the first wave of increased military support for the White House campaign to get more Americans inoculated against COVID-19.

President Joe Biden has called for setting up 100 mass vaccination centers around the country within a month. One of the five new military teams will go to a vaccination center opening in California. Other centers are expected to be announced soon.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked the Pentagon to supply as many as 10,000 service members to staff 100 centers. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved the initial five teams, but the others will be approved in separate tranches as FEMA identifies the other site locations.

Only about 2% of Americans have received the required two-dose vaccination regimen that confers optimum protection with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines currently available. To reach widespread, or “herd” immunity, the U.S. must vaccinate 70% to 85% of its population, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert.

That would be roughly 230 million to 280 million people, compared to 6.9 million who are currently fully immunized with two shots.

Oscar winner, ‘Sound of Music’ star Plummer dies

New York (ap) — Christopher Plummer, the dashing, award-winning actor who played Captain von Trapp in the film “The Sound of Music” and at 82 became the oldest Academy Award acting winner in history, has died. He was 91.

Plummer died Friday morning at his home in Connecticut with his wife, Elaine Taylor, by his side, said Lou Pitt, his longtime friend and manager.

Over more than 50 years in the industry, Plummer enjoyed varied roles ranging from the film “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” to the voice of the villain in 2009’s “Up” and as a canny lawyer in Broadway’s “Inherit the Wind.” In 2019, he was in Rian Johnson’s whodunnit “Knives Out” and in the TV suspense drama series “Departure.”

But it was opposite Julie Andrews as von Trapp in 1965 that he first became a star. He played an Austrian captain who must flee the country with his folk-singing family to escape service in the Nazi navy — he lamented the role as “humorless and one-dimensional.”

The role catapulted Plummer to stardom, but he never took to leading roles, despite his silver hair, good looks and ever-so-slight English accent. He preferred character parts, considering them more meaty. His memoir in 2012 was titled “In Spite of Myself.”

Plummer had a remarkable film renaissance late in life, which began with his acclaimed performance as Mike Wallace in Michael Mann’s 1999 film “The Insider” and continued in films such as 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind” and 2009’s “The Last Station,” in which he played a deteriorating Tolstoy and was nominated for an Oscar.

Virus cases drop at U.S. homes for elderly, infirm

Birmingham, Ala. (ap) — Coronavirus cases have dropped at U.S. nursing homes and other long-term care facilities over the past few weeks, offering a glimmer of hope that health officials attribute to the start of vaccinations, an easing of the post-holiday surge and better prevention, among other reasons.

More than 153,000 residents of the country’s nursing homes and assisted living centers have died of COVID-19, accounting for 36% of the U.S. pandemic death toll, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Many of the roughly 2 million people who live at such facilities remain cut off from loved ones because of the risk of infection. The virus still kills thousands of them weekly.

The overall trend for long-term care residents is improving, though, with fewer new cases recorded and fewer facilities reporting outbreaks. Coupled with better figures for the country overall, it’s cause for optimism even if it’s too early to declare victory.

“We definitely think there’s hope and there’s light at the end of the tunnel,” said Marty Wright, who heads a nursing home trade group in West Virginia.

Fox Business cancels ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’

Los Angeles (ap) — Fox Business Network’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” whose host has trumpeted unfounded assertions of voter fraud in the 2020 election, has been canceled.

In a statement Friday, Fox News said the move was part of routine programming alterations that it had foreshadowed in an announcement last fall.

Whether the cancellation ends Dobbs’ career with Fox News wasn’t addressed, and the company had no further comment. The former CNN host started his show at Fox in March 2011.

The statement appeared to distance the show’s end from a multibillion-dollar defamation suit filed against Fox and three of its hosts, including Dobbs, by the election technology company Smartmatic. In a previous statement, Fox News said it would “vigorously defend against this meritless lawsuit in court.”

Runaway cow escapes slaughter, roams the streets in Rhode Island

Providence, R.I. (ap) — A 1,600-pound steer has been reported roaming the streets of Rhode Island’s capital.

Workers with Rhode Island Beef & Veal told WJAR-TV that a wholesaler lost control of the cow while unloading it for slaughter.

The animal was first spotted by an Uber driver in Johnston, about 10 miles west of Providence.

“It was about 2 a.m. I was on my way to pick up a passenger, and I look to my left, and there was a cow there, just hanging out, waiting for the red light! When it turned green, the cow goes! I was like …” Tho Xaykosy said, shaking his head.

The steer eventually made it to Providence, where local authorities contacted the Department of Environmental Management and animal control. Neither agency had the resources to capture and transport the animal, according to a police report.

Johnston police said the animal was still on the run as of Thursday night.

Rep. Greene says ‘morons’ voted to boot her from committees

Washington (ap) — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene lashed out Friday at “morons” in both parties who voted to kick her off her committees, a day after the House meted out the unprecedented punishment that Democrats said she’d earned by spreading hateful and violent conspiracy theories.

Underscoring the political vise her inflammatory commentary has clamped her party into, all but 11 Republicans voted against the Democratic move on Thursday but none rose to defend her lengthy history of outrageous social media posts.

The chamber’s near party-line 230-199 vote was the latest instance of conspiracy theories becoming pitched political battlefields, an increasingly familiar occurrence during Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump faces a Senate trial next week for his House impeachment for inciting insurrection after a mob he fueled with his false narrative of a stolen election attacked the Capitol.

U.S. trade deficit rises to 12-year high of $679B

Washington (ap) — The U.S. trade deficit rose 17.7% last year to $679 billion, the highest since 2008, as the coronavirus disrupted global commerce and confounded then-President Donald Trump’s attempts to rebalance America’s trade with the rest of the world.

The gap between the value of the goods and services the United States sells abroad and what it buys climbed from $577 billion in 2019, the Commerce Department said Friday. Exports skidded 15.7% to $2.1 trillion, and imports fell 9.5% to $2.8 trillion.

As president, Trump sought to narrow the gap by imposing taxes on imported goods on a scale unseen since the trade wars of the 1930s. The deficit narrowed slightly in 2019 but then ballooned last year as coronavirus restrictions hammered U.S. exports of services such as tourism and education.