Trump holding a mic

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President Trump most harmful White House spokesperson, poll finds

'It may simply be an impossible task to represent this president and come off as credible.'

 

Andrew Wyrich

Tech

Posted on May 31, 2017   Updated on May 23, 2021, 4:42 am CDT

It looks like President Donald Trump isn’t very good at speaking for his own administration.

A new poll from Monmouth University found that Trump hurts his own cause when speaking for the administration more than White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and counselor Kellyanne Conway.

The poll found 61 percent of Americans think Trump hurts his own cause by speaking on behalf of the administration, compared to 33 percent who believe he helps.

Meanwhile, Americans had a (slightly) more favorable view of Spicer and Conway. Forty-two percent of those polled said Spicer hurts the administration’s cause while 40 percent felt similarly about Conway.

Vice President Mike Pence is the only person who those polled believes helped the administration’s cause, with 53 percent of people thinking favorably of him.

“This is the epitome of a no-win situation. It’s not as if Trump’s appointed spokespeople are doing worse than the man himself. It may simply be an impossible task to represent this president and come off as credible,” Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

The favorability views tended to be skewered by party lines. Republicans saw all of Trump’s officials doing a good job making the administration’s case, according to the poll, while Democrats tended to think they were “hopeless” as spokespeople.

The poll was conducted over the phone from May 13 to May 17 and surveyed 1,002 adults. The results have a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.

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*First Published: May 31, 2017, 1:02 pm CDT