Pollster Emily Ekins on Thursday said that partisan tribalism is at work in determining people’s views of how government officials, such as deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein treat President Trump.
“I do think that partisan tribalism is just in full effect right now,” Ekins, polling director at the right-leaning Cato Institute, told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking.”
She goes on to talk about how Democrats and Republicans look at the “same sets of facts” and come to completely different conclusions.
“People are interpreting these same sets of facts through that partisan lens where Democrats are going to say ‘this is proof he is unfit. He doesn’t have the temperament to be president,’ ” she continued.
“Republicans will view this with the lens of people are out to get him … ‘they never gave him a fair shot, even when the people that he’s nominated are disloyal to him,’ ” she continued.
“Very few people are really sorting through the facts logically,” she added.
Rosenstein has clashed with Trump over the special counsel investigation into Russian election meddling, which he oversees.
He came under scrutiny last month when the New York Times reported that he had openly talked about secretly recording Trump in the Oval Office, and had discussed the possibility of the Cabinet using the 25th Amendment to oust the president from office.
Rosenstein has denied the reports.
A new American Barometer survey, conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company found that 67 percent of Republicans said the comments disqualify the deputy attorney general, while 50 percent of Democrats said the comments do not.
— Julia Manchester
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