CNN’s Harry Enten Reveals Republican Voters Believe Only Trump Should Have Immunity, But Not Another President
The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling on presidential immunity on Monday, but what do actual voters believe when it comes to the power of the executive branch?
CNN anchor John Berman asked CNN data reporter Harry Enten this question, and Enten revealed that the answer depended on whether or not a name was attached. A group of voters from across the political spectrum were polled and asked if former President Donald Trump should have criminal immunity from his official acts as president. While 60 percent disagreed, 30 percent agreed — but Enten pointed out that the 30 percent who agreed identified as Republican:
Enten: “Should Trump have criminal immunity for his official acts as president?” We’ve been looking at this polling over and over and over again, as this case has made its way up to the Supreme Court. And what we’ve consistently found is that “no” — “no” is in the majority here. Sixty percent of Americans say no, just 30 percent say “yes.” This is true basically across the entire political aisle. Only Republicans believe in the “yes” on this particular one. Although I will note, John, that in fact, if you take Trump’s [name] out of the equation, you just say, “Should a generic president have criminal immunity for his official acts as president?” Even in that particular case, Republicans say “no.” It’s just right here when you attach Trump’s name to it, of course, Republicans are going to jump over and say “yes.”
Berman: Oh, that’s interesting. So this number is actually higher–
Enten: Yes.
Berman: With Trump in the equation.
Enten: Correct. Because Republicans all of a sudden say, “Well, I have to take Trump’s side.” But if it were a generic president, they would jump over.
Voters were also asked if they believed what Trump did was illegal. Enten explained:
Trump committed serious federal crimes among all voters, the clear majority have said “yes, yes, yes,” and that was true of The New York Times/Siena College poll that was out earlier this month. And you say, okay, how is it that Trump actually leads in this presidential race? Well, it turns out there’s a significant chunk of Trump voters, 15 percent, who believe that he committed serious federal crimes and yet — and yet! — he still leads because this 15 percent are still voting for him. He led in this poll by three points among likely voters, in large part because there’s a chunk of that Republican base, that Trump base who was just like, “You know what? He committed serious federal crimes? Meh, whatever.”
However, the whole reason presidential immunity ended up at the Supreme Court was related to Trump’s election subversion case, which, as Enten pointed out, “could very much be the end of Trump’s run for the presidency” if the Supreme Court did not rule in his favor:
If all of a sudden Trump got immunity for this, you’d basically be taking away the one case or the top case that voters think is the most serious. So if true, the charges would disqualify Trump from the presidency. Look at this — nearly a majority, 48 percent, say the federal January 6th charges, if true, would disqualify Trump from the presidency. That is very different from what we saw in that New York hush money case, right? Where obviously Trump was convicted, it was just 28 percent there. This is nearly double that at 48 percent. A lot of voters think these charges are very, very serious.
And if the court were, in fact, to rule that Trump somehow had immunity, this would just be another one of these rulings in which the court went against the public and took away what they think is something that, if true, could very much be the end of Trump’s run for the presidency. Of course, even if they did, in fact, find that he didn’t have immunity, I’m not quite sure that they’d be able to get that case underway in time for it to be determined by the election.
Watch the video above via CNN.
