Progressive strategist Ruy Teixeira on Friday said that there could be damaging political fallout for President Trump if he moved to pardon his former associates that have been convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference.
“I think given the data we just looked at, how overwhelmingly the sentiment is that he should not pardon these people, I think it would probably push the needle a little farther in the direction away from Trump,” Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons on “What America’s Thinking.”
Teixeira cited a new The Hill-HarrisX survey, which found that 78 percent of Americans said they do not believe Trump should issue pardons to his former associates who have been convicted in the probe.
Along party lines, 84 percent of Democratic respondents and 56 percent of Republicans surveyed said they did not believe Trump should issue the pardons, while 74 percent of independents said the same.
“The independents … are very much opposed to this, and this was a group that Republicans got hammered among in the 2018 elections, so we could have some fallout,” he continued.
— Julia Manchester
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