Trump fails to dampen public support for Ukraine
www.brookings.edu
Despite Trump’s actions, the level of overall American public sympathy with Ukraine has not changed since the summer of 2024.

Despite Trump’s decidedly critical tone toward Ukraine and its president and warm gestures toward Russia, the level of overall American public sympathy with Ukraine and the lack of sympathy for Russia have not changed since the summer of 2024. If the intent of the public spat with Zelenskyy was to sour the American mood toward Ukraine, the latest poll indicates that it was a failure, not only in the continued high level of sympathy with Ukraine but also in that more people rated Trump’s performance as inappropriate than said the same about the Ukrainian president’s performance in that unprecedented meeting.

With only about one-third of Americans supporting his decision to suspend aid to Ukraine, Trump may have helped himself by quickly renewing the provision of aid and getting Ukraine to reportedly agree to a 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia.

As one might expect, the president has had some impact on his core Republican constituency. But the drop in Republican sympathy with Ukraine from 58% last summer to 45% now is modest if one considers that the Republican president is still in his early honeymoon period.

Trump received more support from Republicans for his aid suspension, with about two-thirds supporting the decision, and 21% opposing it. But while favoring Trump, one might expect more support for a president from his own party on a top and high-profile policy issue this early in his term.

Of course, a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war could impact public attitudes moving forward, especially at a time when polls show more Americans favor a quick end to the war. For now, though, the bottom line is that the American public appears to have made up its mind on Ukraine and Russia and Trump is cutting against the grain.

  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 hours ago

    This article is like a case study in how to present data to support the conclusion you want. Sure, more people support Ukraine than Russia, and that question would be relevant if the question was “which side to support” rather than “whether to continue being involved.”

    The reality that the polls show is that it breaks down along partisan lines. 2/3 of Republicans support the suspension of aid to Ukraine, and of the 21% who oppose it, only half say the support should continue “as long as it takes,” with the other half saying either less than a year or 1-2 years. So only about 10% of Republicans are on board with supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” with the majority opposing aid entirely, and the rest either unsure or wanting it to be time-limited.

    This marks a significant departure from the start of the war when there was wide bipartisan support. Based on the actual numbers in the article, the headline is dead wrong - Trump has dampened support for the war, mostly just within his base.

  • xye@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    In the non-BS timeline (where we diverged from the Berenstein Bears/Shazam base reality) President Biden is selling Canada F-35s which they will use to help Ukraine, a NATO member, while ending the rising tide of authoritarianism and nationalism. In the BS timeline we’re in, we’d rather threaten Canada with annexation and help the dictators we once helped overthrow. With a former reality TV host and the richest person in the world. BS timeline.

  • prole
    2·
    8 hours ago

    How many morons still support him and the GOP, while also continuing to claim to support Ukraine?

  • Zerlyna@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    22 hours ago

    Sad to say this but long ago in school we were taught how war is good for the economy. Lots of American jobs go to making weapons for war.

    • prole
      4·
      8 hours ago

      Seems like maybe you had a bad teacher then… It might look good in the short term, but it’s is almost always bad for business (and literally everything else) in the long term.

    • notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world
      13·
      20 hours ago

      that might be canceled out by drops in foreign weapons orders given the new mistrust (see Portugal canceling their F-35 orders).

      • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
        2·
        13 hours ago

        I’m really happy about that one. They haven’t announced what the alternative is going to be, probably either Rafales or Typhoons.

    • NeptuneOrbit@lemmy.world
      15·
      24 hours ago

      Maybe Mexico should have invaded Texas after George Floyd.

      Its shocking how so much Russia defending sounds just like the Bush excuses for Iraq. “Well we didn’t find weapons of mass destruction, but the leader was just really awful so we had to, right?”

      • NimdaQA@lemmy.world
        2·
        22 hours ago

        The murder of George Floyd is not comparable to Azov and AFU being sent into a city and shooting at crowds of civilians.

              • NotLemming@lemm.eeEnglish
                5·
                20 hours ago

                Thanks that’s interesting! Another tactic is the ‘fake educating’, where they provide trash evidence and lots of it, and demand that you look at it otherwise you don’t want to learn the ‘truth’. There’s a tankie here who does that.

                • NimdaQA@lemmy.world
                  2·
                  18 hours ago

                  I mean not every video I have of the Mariupol Massacre is entirely pro-Russia biased.

                  One of them show a bad actor in the form of a anti-maidan separatist whom hid a gun, pulled it out and shot at Ukrainian troops before hiding behind a crowd forcing Ukrainian troops to fire into the crowd to get this bad actor but they end up accidentally shooting a unarmed civilian in the head, the photo of the dead body (or sometimes the video but with the bad actor suspiciously cut out iirc) is often sent out without any mention of bad actor and without context.

                  But videos that take place prior to this incident show Ukrainian troops have also shot at unarmed civilians with little to no provocation nor any bad actor being in play.

    • tired_n_bored@lemmy.world
      13·
      24 hours ago

      Lmaoo this guy up here accidentally forgot to mention that someone else is massacring Ukrainians right now.

      Also what you posted is the kind of “information” which is absolutely baseless or taken out of context.

      You better change side, those rubles ain’t gonna be worth much soon