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More than 60% of Americans believe President Trump’s phone call to the leader of Ukraine asking him to launch an investigation into a 2020 Democratic political rival is a “serious” matter, a poll released Sunday shows.
Forty-three percent said Trump’s outreach to President Volodymyr Zelensky about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter was “very serious,” while 21% said it was “somewhat serious,” according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll. It found that 19% of respondents believe it was “not so serious” and that 17% said it was “not serious at all.”
The poll was conducted Friday and Saturday, after the whistleblower’s report and the White House’s rough transcript of the conversation between Trump and Zelensky were released.
Getty Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shake hands in New York two months to the day after the phone call that became a central part of the Aug. 12 whistleblower complaint released this week.
Asked how closely they’ve been following developments about Trump and the Ukrainian leader, 24% said “very closely,” 40% said “somewhat closely,” and 20% said “not so closely.” Another 17% said “not closely at all.”
But 51% said they were “not surprised at all” to learn Trump urged Zelensky to investigate Biden, 32% said they were “not so surprised,” 3% said they were “very surprised” and 13% were “somewhat surprised.”
The survey did not ask whether respondents thought Trump should be impeached.
The Democrat-controlled House has begun an impeachment inquiry into the president following the release of the whistleblower’s report and the rough transcript of the July 25 call last week.
See: Trump aide Stephen Miller says whistleblower ‘does not deserve [that] honorific’
Trump has denied he did anything wrong in calling on Zelensky to look into Biden, claiming that he was just trying to root out corruption in the eastern European country.
The Bidens have said they did nothing wrong.
The survey polled 504 adults and has a plus/minus margin of error of 4.8 percentage points.
Plus: Pelosi expresses alarm at Trump suggestion of retaliation against whistleblower
