Nearly half of Americans believe US President Donald Trump should be impeached, a figure that increased by 8 percentage points during the past week as more people learned about allegations that Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to find damaging information about his top Democratic political rival Joe Biden, according to a new poll. RNA - The Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted September 26-30, found that 45 percent of adults believe Trump "should be impeached," compared with 37 percent in a similar poll taken last week.
Another 41 percent said the Republican president should not be impeached and 15 percent said they "don't know."
Among Democrats, 74 percent said Trump should be impeached, up 8 points over the past week, while 13 percent of Republicans said they supported impeachment, up 3 points. Among those with no political affiliation, it was unchanged at 37 percent.
The poll findings reflect several other recent surveys, which have shown that support is increasing among Americans for an impeachment inquiry into Trump.
Trump’s impeachment inquiry has become the focus of the American public following a whistleblower complaint about a July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The US House of Representatives initiated an impeachment inquiry of Trump last week after a whistleblower report raised concerns that Trump tried to leverage nearly $400 million in US aid in exchange for a political favor from Zelenskiy involving an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden, the leading Democratic presidential contender.
When asked what they thought about the news, 43 percent said Trump “is trying to smear Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign,” up 4 points from last week.
The poll also found that 66 percent of American adults said any elected official "should be removed" from office if they work with a foreign government to attack a political rival.
“The fact that a smaller number of respondents – 45 percent - said that Trump should be impeached, however, suggests that many of them did not believe allegations against Trump or had yet to conclude Trump had indeed worked with Ukraine to damage Biden,” Reuters said.
On Monday, Trump warned that the Democrat-driven impeachment proceedings and any move to oust him from office amount to “treason” and would spark a civil war in the US, prompting outrage from a Republican congressman.
US Representative Adam Kinzinger, a former Air Force pilot who represents an Illinois district Trump won in 2016, tweeted on Sunday, “I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. ... I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant.”
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