More than half of all Americans have branded President Donald Trump a “dangerous dictator,” who needs to be reined in before he destroys American democracy.
Fifty-six percent of respondents to the latest American Values Survey, released by the Public Religion Research Institute on Wednesday gave that answer.
That’s up from the 52% who responded the same way in March.
Forty-one percent of respondents told pollsters they believe Trump, who has dispatched soldiers to American cities amid a hardline immigration crackdown and launched prosecutions of his political opponents, is a “strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness.”
However, pollsters found some pretty sharp partisan divisions in the way respondents answered those questions.
More than nine in 10 Democrats (91%) and two-thirds of independents (65%) agreed that Trump is a “dangerous dictator,” while Republicans (82%) were more inclined to agree that the second-term president is a “strong leader.”
Seven in 10 white evangelicals (73%), who comprised a key part of Trump’s base, also agreed he was a strong leader, as did 54% of white mainline Protestants and 55% of white Catholics.
Majorities of other religious groups said they viewed Trump as a dangerous dictator. That includes 53% of self-identified Hispanic Protestants, pollsters found.
A majority of all respondents (54%) said they agreed that “what Trump is doing to the federal government is an assault on constitutional checks and balances and the rule of law.”
That’s compared to the 43% who said they agreed to the premise that Trump’s policies represented a “long-overdue correction of disastrous policies pushed by elites at the expense of ordinary Americans.”
