Global poll busts 'rhetorical staple' of Trump’s reelection campaign: analysis

17 June 2024

One of former President Donald Trump's talking points on the campaign trail has been that respect for the United States in other countries plummeted after he left the White House on January 20, 2021 and Joe Biden was sworn in as president.

That talking point has been echoed repeatedly by Trump's supporters at Fox News and Fox Business, while many pundits on MSNBC — including Joe Scarborough, a Never Trump conservative and ex-GOP congressman — have countered that the United States' North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies dread the possibility of Trump returning to the White House if Biden is voted out of office.

Similarly, Washington Post columnist Max Boot, another pro-Biden Never Trump conservative, has been quite critical of the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden's watch but overall, considers Biden a vast improvement over Trump on foreign policy.

In his June 17 column, MSNBC's Steve Benen cites some polls countering Trump's talking points on Biden and foreign officials.

"This has been a rhetorical staple for the presumptive GOP nominee for quite a while," Benen argues. "In fact, as recently as April, Trump told a Pennsylvania audience, referring to his White House tenure, 'We were the most respected country in the world. We were the most respected that we were ever respected. We were never more respected than we were four years ago.'"

But polls on other countries, Benen emphasizes, don't bear that out — including a Pew Research survey released on June 11.

"There's quite a bit of data to review in the report, which gauged public attitudes in 34 countries, across several continents, but there were a couple of key takeaways," Benen observes. "First, internationally, more people have confidence in Biden to do the right thing regarding world affairs, as compared to Trump. And second, while confidence in the White House slumped badly, during Trump’s presidency, those numbers have rebounded under Biden."

Pew's poll, Benen notes, is "consistent with other data from the last few years."

"Revisiting our earlier coverage," Benen explains, "a Gallup report in 2021 found that approval ratings of U.S. leadership around the world had 'largely rebounded from the record-low ratings observed during the Trump Administration.' Around the same time, the Pew Research Center released a related report documenting 'dramatic' improvements in the United States' international stature once Biden replaced Trump in the Oval Office."

The liberal MSNBC columnist continues, "A year later, Gallup released another report on the United States’ standing among NATO members, concluding that U.S. leadership in the Biden era 'was stronger across much of NATO than it had been in years, after languishing at low levels during the Trump Administration.'"

Steve Benen's full MSNBC column is available at this column.

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