Poll: Quarter of Republicans don’t think Trump has sufficiently distanced himself from white nationalists

A quarter of Republicans surveyed in a new poll from Pew Research Center do not believe President Trump has done enough to distance himself from white nationalists.

According to the survey, 26 percent of respondents who are Republicans or lean Republican said Trump has done too little to distance himself from such groups, compared to 56 percent who said he had done the right amount and 6 percent who said Trump had done too much.

{mosads}Among the broader population, 56 percent of all respondents said he has done too little compared to 29 percent who said he had done the right amount and 7 percent who said he had done too much.

Eighty-three percent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning respondents said Trump had done too little, while 8 percent said he had done the right amount and 7 percent said he had done too much.

The poll was conducted March 20-25 among 1,503 adults, but its results are “virtually unchanged” since December 2016, shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Pew said.

Trump has repeatedly been criticized for his handling of white supremacist violence, particularly his claim that there were “very fine people” present at the 2017 Unite the Right rally that killed a counterprotester in Charlottesville Va., in 2017 and his remarks after the mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques this month that such violence was not a major problem and originated from a “very small group of people.”   

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a presidential candidate, said this week that Trump and Vice President Pence played a part in resurgent white nationalism, accusing them of “what seems at best to be a level of negligence if not encouragement from the highest office in the land.”

Fellow Democratic candidate Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), said Wednesday night that Trump’s failure to condemn such violence made him “complicit.”