Donald Trump Is Extremely Unpopular In Western Europe

The chart above reflects the results of the YouGov Poll's European Tracker. The results are from August 6th through 23rd. 

Trump Is Unpopular In Europe - Even With Right-Wing Populists

 

This edition of The POLITICO Poll was conducted from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9, surveying 10,510 adults online, with at least 2,000 respondents each from the U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany. Results for each country were weighted to be representative on dimensions including age, gender and geography, and have an overall margin of sampling error of ±2 percentage points for each country. 

Exposing Trump's Outrageous Lie About Aid To Ukraine

The truth about Ukraine aid from Steven Rattner: 

As he often does, the president has been wildly misrepresenting the facts around Ukrainian war aid. He claims that the United States has provided around $350 billion in aid; the actual figure is $120 billion. He has said that Europe has provided about $100 billion; the correct figure is $138 billion. (It is true that some portion of the European aid is in the form of loans.)

As a share of gross domestic product, the U.S. is roughly in the middle of the pack, well below small countries like Estonia and Denmark that are geographically close to Ukraine but roughly in line with larger countries like France and the U.K.

Against that backdrop, it is not clear why Trump believes that the U.S. is entitled to his requested $500 billion of compensation from Ukraine’s critical minerals industry, large resources of titanium, lithium, uranium and others.

It’s also important to note that the European Union and its members have promised an additional $121 billion in assistance while the U.S. has only pledged an additional $5 billion.

Moreover, an estimated 70% of what we provide to Ukraine is spent in the U.S. on things like equipment and ammunition or on U.S. forces.

Nearly Half Of Europeans Think The U.S. Is Unreliable

 

The chart above is from the Institute for Global Affairs / YouGov Poll.

This survey was developed and commissioned by the Institute for Global Affairs. The survey instrument was written — and analysis conducted — by Mark Hannah, Lucas Robinson, and Olivia Chilkoti. It was distributed online by YouGov to a sample of 3,360 adults in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France — 840 respondents in each country — between April 8 and April 15, 2024.

A nationally representative sample in all four countries were surveyed and statistically significant findings are reported with a margin of error of 1.8%.

Views On The Ukraine War In U.S. And Europe

 These charts are from the YouGov Poll.

9 Charts Showing European Countries No Longer Trust U.S.

 The charts above are from a Datapraxis / YouGov Poll -- done in November and December of 2020 in 11 European countries. Here is the methodology:

A public opinion poll in eleven EU countries carried out for ECFR by Datapraxis and YouGov in late November and early December 2020.

This was an online survey conducted in Denmark (n = 1,037), France (n = 2,013), Germany (n = 2,060), Hungary (n=1,001), Italy (n=2,017), Netherlands (n = 1,005), Poland (n = 1,002), Portugal (n=1,004), Spain (n=1,017), Sweden (n = 1,010), and the GB (n=2,031). The results are politically and nationally representative samples.

The general margin of error is ±3% for 1,000 sample, and ±2% for 2,000. YouGov used purposive active sampling for this poll.

The exact dates of polling were: Denmark (20-25 November), France (25-26 November), Germany (25-27 November), Hungary (24 November – 2 December), Italy (24 November – 3 December), Netherlands (24 November – 2 December), Poland (24 November – 7 December), Portugal (24 November – 7 December), Spain (20-25 November), Sweden (24-27 November), and the GB (24-25 November).

Trump Puts New Tax On U.S. Consumers To Punish Europe

Trump's tariffs have been playing hell with the stock market, and several other economic signs signal they are the reason for a weakening U.S. economy that could slip into a recession. If the recession does come, most economists agree it will be largely due to Trump's tariffs.

But Trump doesn't care. He still seems to think that tariffs are the answer to any economic problem. Now he is placing a new round of 25% tariffs on several European nations. Why? Because he thinks it's unfair that the European Union is subsidizing Airbus (which builds large commercial airplanes).

The new tariffs (of about $7.5 billion) will go into effect on October 18th, and will affect products from several European countries. And there's a good chance it will hurt the economies of both those countries and the United States (by making those products more expensive to buy for consumers). It will also just further alienate our best allies, and likely will result in them retaliating against American exports.

Here are some of the products subject to the new tariffs:

sausage & pork products (except ham)
camera parts
industrial microwave ovens
Parmesan Reggiano
Romano & provolone cheese
printed books
sweet biscuits
waffles
coffee
sweaters & pullovers
cashmere & wool clothing
olives
cookies
salami
butter
yogurt
blankets
single-malt Scotch whiskey
French wine
fruits
clams

Study Shows Europeans Don't Trust The U.S. Under Trump

The charts above are from a study of citizens in Europe by the European Council on Foreign Relations. Basically, they asked those citizens who they trusted to defend them in their own country. A few years ago, the United States would have been trusted the most by the bilk of Europeans, but that is no longer true.

The top chart shows that very few would pick the U.S. now over the European Union. Only between 3% and 19% would trust the U.S., while between 25% and 60% would trust the E.U. more.

The charts below that are even more troubling. One asks whose side their country should take in a conflict with Russia, and the other asks the same of a conflict with China. In both instances, the overwhelming majority says their country should side with neither.

Europeans don't trust the United States under Trump to back them in a conflict, so they see no reason why their country should back the U.S. That's scary, because it shows that Trump, in just a couple of years, has destroyed the trust Europeans had in this country.

GOP Is More Extreme Than Conservatives In Other Countries

I have called the U.S. Republican Party extremists on this blog. Is that true? Yes! They are more extreme than mainstream conservative parties in other countries -- so extreme that they more closely resemble the far-right fringe parties in those countries. Consider this chart and post by Sahil Chinoy in The New York Times:

The Republican Party leans much farther right than most traditional conservative parties in Western Europe and Canada, according to an analysis of their election manifestos. It is more extreme than Britain’s Independence Party and France’s National Rally (formerly the National Front), which some consider far-right populist parties. The Democratic Party, in contrast, is positioned closer to mainstream liberal parties.

These findings are based on data from the Manifesto Project, which reviews and categorizes each line in party manifestos, the documents that lay out a group’s goals and policy ideas. We used the topics that the platforms emphasize, like market regulation and multiculturalism, to put them on a common scale.

The resulting scores capture how the groups represent themselves, not necessarily their actual policies. They are one way to answer a difficult question: If we could put every political party on the same continuum from left to right, where would the American parties fall?

According to its 2016 manifesto, the Republican Party lies far from the Conservative Party in Britain and the Christian Democratic Union in Germany — mainstream right-leaning parties — and closer to far-right parties like Alternative for Germany, whose platform containsplainly xenophobic, anti-Muslim statements.

The Republican platform does not include the same bigoted policies, and its score is pushed to the right because of its emphasis on traditional morality and a “national way of life.” Still, the party shares a “nativist, working-class populism” with the European far right, said Thomas Greven, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin who has studied right-wing populism. These parties position themselves as defenders of the “traditional” people from globalization and immigration, he said.

The difference is that in Europe, far-right populist parties are often an alternative to the mainstream. In the United States, the Republican Party is the mainstream.

“That’s the tragedy of the American two-party system,” Mr. Greven said. In a multiparty government, white working-class populists might have been shunted into a smaller faction, and the Republicans might have continued as a “big tent” conservative party. Instead, the Republican Party has allowed its more extreme elements to dominate. “Nowhere in Europe do you have that phenomenon,” he said. . . .

The Democrats fall closer to mainstream left and center-left parties in other countries, like the Social Democratic Party in Germany and Britain’s Labour Party, according to their manifestos’ scores.

And the United States’ political center of gravity is to the right of other countries’, partly because of the lack of a serious left-wing party. Between 2000 and 2012, the Democratic manifestos were to the right of the median party platform. The party has moved left but is still much closer to the center than the Republicans.

Why Should Refugees/Migrants Respect Our Borders, Since We Did Not Respect Theirs?

(This image of Syrian refugees is from qasioun-news.com.)

Donald Trump, and his Republican cohorts, don't think we have any responsibility to accept refugees or immigrants into this country. They are wrong! The truth is that both the United States and other Western countries created much of the conditions that forced those refugees and immigrants to leave their country to save their families.

Here is part of an excellent and thought-provoking article by Suketu Mehta in The New York Times:

There is a lot of debate these days about whether the United States owes its African-American citizens reparations for slavery. It does. But there is a far bigger bill that the United States and Europe have run up: what they owe to other countries for their colonial adventures, for the wars they imposed on them, for the inequality they have built into the world order, for the excess carbon they have dumped into the atmosphere.

The creditor countries aren’t seriously suggesting that the West send sacks of gold bullion every year to India or Nigeria. Their people are asking for fairness: for the borders of the rich countries to be opened to goods and people, to Indian textiles as well as Nigerian doctors. In seeking to move, they are asking for immigration as reparations.

Today, a quarter of a billion people are migrants. They are moving because the rich countries have stolen the future of the poor countries. Whether it is Iraqis and Syrians fleeing the effects of illegal American wars, or Africans seeking to work for their former European colonial masters, or Guatemalans and Hondurans trying to get into the country that peddles them guns and buys their drugs: They are coming here because we were there. 

Before you ask them to respect our borders, ask yourself: Has the West ever respected anyone’s borders?

A vast majority of migrants move from a poor to a less poor country, not a rich one. Immigration quotas should be based on how much the host country has ruined other countries. Britain should have quotas for Indians and Nigerians; France for Malians and Tunisians; Belgium for very large numbers of Congolese. 

And when they come, they should be allowed to bring their families and stay — unlike the “guest workers” who were enticed to build up the postwar labor force of the colonizers and then asked to leave when their masters were done exploiting them.

The Dominican Republic, where the United States propped up the dictator Rafael Trujillo for three decades, should be high on the American preference list. So should Iraq, upon which we imposed a war that resulted in 600,000 deaths. Justice now demands that we let in 600,000 Iraqis: for each death we caused there, someone should get a chance at a new life here.

Some 12 million Africans were enslaved and carried across the Atlanticby European powers. Should not 12 million people from Africa be allowed to live in the countries enriched by the toil of their ancestors? Both will be better off: the African still suffering from what slavery has done to his country, and the host country that will again benefit from African labor, but this time without enormous pain and for a fair wage.

Just as there is a carbon tax on polluting industries, there should be a “migration tax” on the nations who got rich while emitting greenhouse gases. The United States is responsible for one-third of the excess carbon in the atmosphere; Europe, another one-quarter. A hundred million refugees fleeing hurricanes and droughts will have to be resettled by the end of the century. The United States should take a third, and Europe another quarter.

A huge bill would come to the West, but it is one it should look forward to paying. Without immigration, America’s economic growth would have been 15 percent lower from 1990 to 2014; Britain’s would have been a full 20 percent lower. Immigrants are 14 percent of the American population, but they started a quarter of all new businesses and since 2000 earned over a third of the American Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine.

Migrants are 3 percent of the world’s population but contribute 9 percent of its gross domestic product. Their taxes prop up the pension systems of the wealthy nations, which are not making enough babies of their own. 

If you want to help the poorest people in the world, the fastest way to do so is to ease barriers to migration. Migrants sent back $689 billion in remittances last year, which amounts to three times more than the direct gains from abolishing all trade barriers, four times more than all the foreign aid given by those governments and 100 times the amount of all debt relief. . . .

There are no serious arguments that demonstrate long-term economic damage to countries that accept immigrants, even in large numbers. During the age of mass migration, a quarter of Europe moved to the United States, which went on to replace Europe at the pinnacle of wealth and power.

A world with more open borders would have a brief spasm of mass movement, and then migration might actually decrease, because money and happiness would be more equitably spread around, and more people would stay home.

To avoid paying the “migration tax,” the rich countries would have to stop propping up dictators, stop starting savage and unnecessary wars, restrain their multinational corporations from ripping off mineral wealth of poor countries and make sure that global trade is more equitable. Or else the migration bill from the devastated country would be prohibitive. . . .

History is what has happened and can never un-happen; history is happening right now. Attention needs to be paid. So does the bill.

Percentage Of Highly Religious People In U.S. And Europe

The top chart, from the Gallup Poll, shows the percentage of Americans that are highly religious. The second chart, from the Pew Research Center, shows the percentage of highly religious people in the 34 countries of Europe.

I think it's the general consensus of many in the United States that their country is a very religious one, while Europe is not. That's not strictly true.

As the top chart shows, only about 37% of Americans are highly religious. There are nine countries in Europe that have as many or more highly religious people as in the United States (37% to 55%). The other twenty-five European countries do have a smaller percentage of highly religious people than the United States -- many of them a much smaller percentage. The range is from 7% to 32%.

However, the percentage is shrinking in both the United States and Europe.

Racist Trump Encourages Europe's Right-Wing Racists

(Cartoon image is by Marian Kamensky at cagle.com.)

Most Americans know Donald Trump is a racist. He built his presidential campaign on a racist view of immigration -- and since taking office, he has doubled-down on that. He wants to change immigration law to encourage immigration by whites, and to do that he has demonized immigration from others by labeling them -- Mexicans (rapists, drug couriers, criminals), Central Americans (gang members, murderers), Middle Easterners (muslim terrorists), Africans (shit-hole countries).

One would have to be deaf, blind, and illiterate to deny Trump's racism, especially after he excused the behavior of white supremacists and nazis in Charlottesville.

That was bad enough, but now he has decided to export his racist views. Tired of being the only racist leader in a democratic country, Trump is now giving aid and assistance to Europe's rather nasty brand of right-wing racists and white supremacists.

In a press conference with British PM May yesterday, Trump said immigration had been bad for Europe -- calling it a very negative thing. He said:

“I know it’s politically not necessarily correct to say that, but I’ll say it and I’ll say it loud.” 

“I think they better watch themselves because you are changing culture. You are changing a lot of things, you’re changing security. It’s a very sad situation. It’s very unfortunate but I do not think it’s good for Europe and I don’t think it’s good for our country.”

Of course, he's not talking about the white cross-migration in Europe or from the Americas. He's talking about immigration from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Trump doesn't believe in the power of diversity. He sees nonwhites as somewhat inferior to whites, and wants to return the U.S. to a time in the past when whites ruled the roost -- and he sees that as a path for the European nations also.

He's wrong, of course. Creating odious and restrictive immigration laws for the U.S. is not going to stop the demographic change that is happening, as the U.S. morphs from a majority white to a majority nonwhite nation. I suspect the same can be said of Europe, where past colonialism has created the modern immigration patterns. And after Hitler's attempt to create a white-only country, I doubt most Europeans want to follow that path again.

Europe would be smart to turn their backs on Trump and his racist views. And Americans would be smart to get the racist liar out of the White House as soon as possible. He's not only an embarrassment, but a danger -- to this country and the world.

2017 Saw Trump Damage U.S. Reputation In The World

The chart above is from the Pew Research Center. It shows that by the end of his term, Bush had damaged the U.S. reputation in Western Europe (specifically in Germany, France, United Kingdom, and Spain). It took several years to tank the U.S. reputation, but by the end of his second term, Bush had it at a very low level.

The election of Barack Obama immediately re-established that respect, and he maintained it at a high level for the eight years of his term. The Trump was elected, and it took him only moths to damage that reputation even worse than Bush had.

The chart below shows that is not only the opinion of those four Western democracies in Europe. It is a global average. It shows confidence in the U.S. has plunged globally since Trump was sworn in, and an unfavorable view of the U.S. has climbed sharply.

"America Alone Is Not America First"

(This image of Donald Trump is from CNN Money.)

The following is an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News. It was written by Robert Hutchings -- professor of national security at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas (Austin). He writes:

President Donald Trump's tweets and foreign policy moves have made him a laughingstock, but the damage they have done to our standing in the world and to our own interests is no laughing matter.

Trump is not the first American leader to lecture the Europeans about military spending, just the least informed. It is a fundamentally flawed position. Europeans don't spend for defense the way we do, but not because they lack seriousness or political will, or because they are free riders who refuse to shoulder their share of the defense burden. They spend less on defense because they do not agree with the over-militarized approach to foreign policy that they see from the United States, whose military spending is already larger than that of the next eight highest-spending countries combined.

We would do well to study rather than condemn the European approach to foreign policy. And the American public needs to understand that more spending for defense does not mean more security. As the Afghanistan and Iraq misadventures have demonstrated, the exercise of military power can make us less secure. I made this point more than a decade ago when I was chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, warning (all too accurately) that Iraq under U.S. occupation would prove to be the breeding ground for the next generation of terrorists.

I take Trump's crude remarks on Germany personally. In 1989-92, I was part of the diplomatic team under President George H.W. Bush that helped negotiate German unification and the collapse of the Soviet empire. We and the Germans forged the closest possible partnership, and our successful management of the end of the Cold War enabled the U.S. to draw down its huge military presence in Europe, leaving it to our allies, led by Germany, to take the lead in Europe.

The Germans stepped up to the task, even while maintaining the historic partnership with the U.S. that Trump is throwing this away. He seems to think there is another "deal" out there and that this one can be discarded. No, President Trump: There is only one NATO, only one trans-Atlantic partnership, the work of more than a dozen U.S. administrations before you. If you throw these achievements away, we are left with nothing.What is needed is not America-first bluster or infantile tweets but a sustained effort to reinvigorate and modernize the alliance. Here's a start: We should restore and then increase the budgets for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, and we should signal our readiness to re-enter the Paris agreement. In return the Europeans should step up their timetable for meeting the agreed commitment to increased defense spending.

The trans-Atlantic alliance, the strongest and most enduring in history, is much more than a defense pact. It has endured despite periodic disputes because it is built on the solid foundation of shared values and common interests. Alliances, like marriages, prosper when both sides respect that their partners have different priorities and when they understand that compromise and adjustment are keys to a successful relationship.

The alliance is also more than an arena for economic competition. The global trading system, with the U.S.-European trade relations its driving force, has been an enormous benefit to America's prosperity and well-being. Of course, we, like Germany, will defend our own economic interests and protect our citizens, and we have ample means of doing so — most of them domestic measures that have little to do with trade imbalances. Instead, Trump is focusing on things he can do with the stroke of a pen — like backing out of the Paris agreement and the Pacific trade pact — with disregard for the consequences. This is not leadership. This is not strength.

We are at a turning point in our nation's history. There are few signs that Trump will change, so we must place our hope in America's institutions and look to the enablers — his foreign policy team, which has gone along with too much already, and Republicans in Congress — to show some political courage by putting America first.

Trump's Touted $110 Billion Saudi Deal Is Just "Fake News"

(This photo of Trump arriving in Saudi Arabia is from the White House website.)

We know that the second leg of Trump's foreign trip -- the European part -- was an unmitigated disaster. All it accomplished was to convince our European allies that while Trump is president, the United States cannot be trusted to meet its obligations or to continue its role as leader of the free world.

But some still tout the first leg of his trip -- to the Middle East -- as a success. One of the things they use to sell this is the $110 billion contract with the Saudis to buy American weapons. There's only one problem with that. There is no contract for the Saudis to buy more weapons. The Saudis did develop with Trump a wish list of weapons they might buy in the future, but no contract was signed and they are not under any obligation to actually buy those weapons.

Here is how Bruce Riedel puts it at the Brookings website:

Last month, President Trump visited Saudi Arabia and his administration announced that he had concluded a $110 billion arms deal with the kingdom. Only problem is that there is no deal. It’s fake news.

I’ve spoken to contacts in the defense business and on the Hill, and all of them say the same thing: There is no $110 billion deal. Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts. Many are offers that the defense industry thinks the Saudis will be interested in someday. So far nothing has been notified to the Senate for review. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arms sales wing of the Pentagon, calls them “intended sales.” None of the deals identified so far are new, all began in the Obama administration.

Moreover, it’s unlikely that the Saudis could pay for a $110 billion deal any longer, due to low oil prices and the two-plus years old war in Yemen. President Obama sold the kingdom $112 billion in weapons over eight years, most of which was a single, huge deal in 2012 negotiated by then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates. To get that deal through Congressional approval, Gates also negotiated a deal with Israel to compensate the Israelis and preserve their qualitative edge over their Arab neighbors. With the fall in oil prices, the Saudis have struggled to meet their payments since.

You will know the Trump deal is real when Israel begins to ask for a package to keep the Israeli Defense Forces’ qualitative edge preserved.

The other part of the trip that was touted as a success was Trump's speech in which he called for unity in the Arab world to fight terrorism. That much bragged about unity barely lasted until Trump got back to the United States. Riedel continues:

Finally, just as the arms deal is not what it was advertised, so is the much-hyped united Muslim campaign against terrorism. Instead, the Gulf states have turned on one of their own. Saudi Arabia has orchestrated a campaign to isolate Qatar. This weekend Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt broke relations with Qatar. Saudi allies like the Maldives and Yemen jumped on the bandwagon. Saudi Arabia has closed its land border with Qatar.

This is not the first such spat but it may be the most dangerous. The Saudis and their allies are eager to punish Qatar for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, for hosting Al-Jazeera, and keeping ties with Iran. Rather than a united front to contain Iran, the Riyadh summit’s outcome is exacerbating sectarian and political tensions in the region.

It looks now like Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia was as unsuccessful as his trip to Europe. The idea of a successful foreign trip is nothing more than a figment of Trump's imagination -- another in a long list of lies he has told. There is no arms deal, and there is no unity. There is only Trump's continuing incompetence.

Trump Convinces Europe's Leaders He Can't Be Trusted

(Photo of Angela Merkel and Donald Trump, from Talking Points Memo, is by Evian Vucci of the AP.

Donald Trump's recent trip abroad was supposed to make him look presidential, and like a world leader. Unfortunately it had the opposite effect.

The trip went way downhill when he spoke to NATO. All the European members of NATO wanted to hear was that the United States would honor article 5 of the NATO treaty -- the article that says if any member is attacked, then all the other members would come to their defense. In the past, all American presidents have assured Europeans that America could be trusted to come to their defense.

But Trump didn't do that. He chewed most of them out, but never said the U.S. would honor article 5. He left the NATO members with the impression that the United States might not come to their aid when needed.

Then he went on to the G-7 conference. At that conference, six of the members wanted to discuss how to further their fight against global climate change. One didn't -- Donald Trump. In fact, Trump even refused to assure them that the United States would honor the Paris global climate change accord. He left them with the impression that the U.S. was getting ready to pull out of the Paris accord -- which would be disastrous for those wanting to curb global climate change (since the U.S. is the largest user of fossil fuels and the world's biggest polluter).

Republicans can try to tell themselves that Trump's trip was a success, but they are just deluding themselves when they do. The truth is that all Trump accomplished was to convince our best allies that he cannot be trusted -- either as an ally or a world leader.

The trip was an unmitigated disaster, and it left the world a more chaotic and more dangerous place.

U.S. Has A Lower % Of Middle Class Citizens Than Europe

The charts on this page (from the Pew Research Center) reflect the middle class in the United States and in various European nations. The chart above shows the percentage of citizens that are in the middle class. Note that the United States trails all of the other nations in size of the middle class, and leads all those nations in the size of lower income people.

This is due to the "trickle-down" economic policy instituted in the United States. This policy favors the rich, and has contributed to a shrinking middle class. And it's a policy that none of the European nations adhere to.

The chart below shows the range of incomes in each country considered to be a middle class income. They define middle class as having an income that is between two-thirds and double the median income of the country. In the United States, that would be an income between $21,257 and $105,881.

What Makes A Person An American ?

This chart is from the Pew Research Center. They asked 1,003 people in the United States what was important to make a person an "American". The survey was done between April 4th and 24th of 2016, and has a margin of error of 3.4 points.

The quality deemed most important was the ability to speak English. That was considered at least somewhat important by 92%, and very important by 70%. About 84% said sharing American customs and traditions was important (with 45% saying it was very important).

Finishing far behind were being born in the U.S. and being a christian. About 55% said it was important to be born in this country, but only 32% said it was very important. And while 51% said being a christian was important, only 32% said it was very important. About 44% said it was not important to be born in the U.S. and 48% said it was not important to be a christian.

The charts below show the results of the same questions in Europe, Canada, and Australia.

Western Nations Say War Is More Likely Than Peace

The election of Donald Trump hasn't made people in the Western nations feel safer. In fact, they think a new World War is more likely than peace (and that includes 64% of Americans).

This chart is from a survey done by the YouGov Poll. It was done between November 21st and December 9th of 1,000 adults in the U.S., 1,001 in France, 1,014 in Germany, 1,018 in Denmark, 1m026 in Sweden, 1,004 in Finland, 1,005 in Norway, and 1,693 in Great Britain.

Trump Says NATO Is Obsolete - Most In U.S. Disagree

During his campaign, Donald Trump had disparaging words about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and even inferred that the United States might pull out of the organization. That bothered many, both in the U.S. and Europe, but it was thought that if he became president he would temper his views, and realize how important NATO is to defending the West.

That hasn't happened. Just a few days before his inauguration, Trump gave interviews to a German newspaper (Bild) and a British newspaper (The Times) -- and he told both that he thought NATO was obsolete. That has many Europeans worried that the United States (under Trump) might not fulfill its obligations to NATO (and the defense of Europe) -- especially since in that same interview, Trump had good things to say about Russia and talked about removing the sanctions on that country.

Is Trump going to abandon Western Europe and embrace Russia? It certainly looks like a real possibility (especially considering the help he received from Russia in the presidential campaign).

The real question at this point is -- what do the American people think? Are they ready to let Trump abandon NATO? The YouGov Poll did a survey on American attitudes toward NATO on January 18th and 19th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults (with a margin of error of 4 points).

They found the American people are much more supportive of NATO than Trump -- with only 15% opposing NATO (& 47% supporting it), only 16% believing NATO doesn't have an important role in defending the West (& 46% saying it does have an important role). Those are pretty large pluralities in favor of NATO.

The third chart shows what the American public thinks NATO should be focusing on -- military attacks or terrorist attacks. A majority agrees that NATO should put equal emphasis on both. And that seems to be exactly what NATO is doing these days.

The American people disagree with Trump. They think NATO is important. If Trump tries to abandon it, he will just create more trouble for himself.