What’s more, that finding holds true across partisan groups. Most Democrats think presidents shouldn’t have immunity, as do most Republicans.
Well, except for one president.
Polling released Thursday by CBS News shows that there is an exception to Republican opposition to presidential immunity: Donald Trump. While most Americans and an overwhelming majority of Democrats think that Trump, too, should not have immunity from prosecution, most Republicans — two-thirds, in fact — think that the former president should have that protection. It’s just all the other presidents who shouldn’t be granted that power.
Particularly remarkable here is that the question about Trump preceded the question about every president. So Republicans who supported that protection for Trump might be expected to have understood that they were being hypocritical in rejecting it for presidents overall. Perhaps some of them suddenly recognized the slippery slope. It’s safe to assume, though, that most were simply applying a different standard for the president they like.
We’ve seen this a lot recently. Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported on polling showing that while most Republicans said in April that they would not vote for someone who had been convicted of a felony for president, that changed … after Trump was convicted of a felony.
Then, on Thursday, we looked at polling on the guilty verdicts handed down against Trump and against President Biden’s son Hunter. Americans overall, including most Democrats and Republicans, said they approved of the verdict in Hunter Biden’s case. Most Americans and a large majority of Democrats also approved of the Trump verdict, but most Republicans didn’t.
Over and over, Republicans hold Trump to a different standard. They were 57 points more likely to say they’d vote for someone convicted of a felony after it happened to Trump. They’re 69 points more likely to approve of the Hunter Biden verdict than the Trump verdict. And they’re 22 points more likely to say that Trump should have immunity than they are to say that presidents should overall.
Those divergences are unique. The views of Americans overall are more consistent. A majority opposed voting for someone convicted of a felony both before and after the Trump verdict. A majority supported both trial verdicts. A majority opposes granting presidents immunity. Those are all true of Democrats as well.
This is instructive in part because it gives the lie to the idea that some new development in Trump’s criminal trials or indictments will shift the presidential race against him. His conviction should have turned his party against him, according to that April poll — but instead, the party changed to accommodate him. In the unlikely-but-not-impossible event that the Supreme Court grants presidents broad immunity from prosecution, Republicans might be expected to oppose it — except that the case centers on immunity for Trump personally.
About two-thirds of self-identified conservatives told YouGov that they supported broad immunity for Donald Trump’s actions as president. The right didn’t change Trump. Trump changed the right.
