A new poll finds even Trump supporters are wavering on his scandals

In counties that supported Trump heavily in 2016, voters are souring on the scandals surrounding Trump’s presidency.

According to a new NBC News/WSJ poll of 439 key Trump counties in 16 states, voters are troubled by the consistent drama involving his administration, including the refusal to release his personal tax returns, Trump’s frequent use of Twitter to document his every thought, the response to the Russian election meddling scandal, criticism of the media, and firing of James Comey as the head of the FBI.

Part of Trump’s appeal in his campaign for president was his “political outsider” personality, refusal to be politically correct, and say-it-like-it-is attitude. Trump promised to “drain the swamp” in DC, tweeting “I will Make Our Government Honest Again -- believe me. But first, I’m going to have to #DrainTheSwamp in DC.”

Now, this style seems to be less enchanting to the voters who initially supported it.

The poll, conducted July 8-12, surveyed 600 residents from counties where Trump got significantly more votes than Mitt Romney in 2012 or flipped the vote from President Barack Obama. In these counties, Trump’s approval rating is 50 percent, a full 10 percentage points higher than the national average.

On policy, 75 percent of those polled supported Trump’s promise to bargain with global companies to keep jobs in America; 68 percent backed his response to North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, along with 66 percent who supported his use of force to respond to Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

But his methods of carrying out these policies are where these voters flipped: 53 percent opposed his refusal to release his tax returns, 62 percent opposed his use of Twitter to express his feelings on policy issues, and 51 percent opposed his response to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The NBC/WSJ poll has an overall margin of error of plus/minus 4.0 percentage points.

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