Special counsel Robert Mueller’s approval rating has dropped over the last few months after a series of relentless public attacks from President Trump, according to a CNN poll released Tuesday.
Overall, 43 percent of adults approve and 40 percent disapprove of Mueller’s handling of the probe. That’s down 5 points from October, when 48 percent approved and 36 percent disapproved.
Mueller’s drop was a bit bigger than Trump’s, who saw a 4-point decrease in his approval rating over the same period.
Mueller’s December approval was close to his all-time low in the same poll, which was 41 percent in June.
Just last week, Trump accused Mueller of being “best friends” with former FBI Director James Comey, and asked if Mueller’s “big time conflicts of interest” would ever be explored in the report he’s preparing.
….Will Robert Mueller’s big time conflicts of interest be listed at the top of his Republicans only Report. Will Andrew Weissman’s horrible and vicious prosecutorial past be listed in the Report. He wrongly destroyed people’s lives, took down great companies, only to be……..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2018
Independents were a big reason for Mueller’s declining approval rating, as support among that group fell 10 percent. Seventy-one percent of Democrats approve of Mueller, but just 21 percent of Republicans.
Half of adults believe it’s very or somewhat likely that the Mueller investigation will implicate Trump in wrongdoing. More Democrats (78 percent) say it’s likely, compared to 23 percent of Republicans who think he will be personally implicated, and 47 percent of independents.
But while Mueller’s approval rating has fallen, so has Trump’s. Just 29 percent of U.S. adults say they approve of Trump’s handling of the investigation, a drop from 33 percent in October.
The poll was conducted late last week when prosecutors in cases involving Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen alleged the two men lied publicly or to investigators. Trump claimed Friday that the Cohen filings clear him of any wrongdoing, even after his former lawyer implicated the president in hush-money payments that were in violation of campaign finance laws. The Manafort case suggests he lied about his contacts with the White House this year.
The poll said 51 percent of Republicans approved of his handling of the investigation — a small decrease — and 15 percent of Democrats approved — a small increase since October. Twenty-six percent of independents support his handling of the investigation, a new low.
The poll, which surveyed 1,015 adults, was conducted Dec. 6-9 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
