Republicans prefer an unrestrained president

Washington — About half of Republicans say the US needs a strong president who is not unduly restrained by courts or Congress, a possible sign of support for Donald Trump’s pitch that if re-elected he should be empowered to operate with minimal legal constraint, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll has found.

The week-long poll, which closed on Tuesday, found Trump’s Republican Party apparently divided on where to set the limits on presidential power that helps define US democracy.

As many as 46% of Republican respondents agreed with a statement that “the country is in a crisis and needs a strong president who should be allowed to rule without too much interference from courts and Congress”, while as many disagreed. The rest were unsure.

Among Democrats, 25% agreed with the statement, while 64% disagreed and the rest were unsure.

Trump, facing dozens of charges for crimes allegedly committed during and after his 2017-2021 White House term, is arguing in federal court that he should be largely immune to prosecution for actions taken while in office. His lawyer told a panel of judges this week that a president who used commandos to assassinate a political rival could be prosecuted only if he had first been impeached by the House and convicted in the Senate.

While the poll question did not name Trump, 47% of respondents who said they would vote for him today agreed with that statement.  About 23% of people who said they would vote for Biden said they agreed.

Prosecutors accuse Trump of using fraud to try to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump claims innocence on all counts, and says criminal cases against him are “witch-hunts” engineered by political foes including Biden.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Biden and Trump, frontrunner for the Republican nomination, are neck-and-neck, each with 35% support and the rest saying they are undecided or will vote for someone else or not at all.

Trump’s many legal challenges are his big risk as he tries to win back the presidency. About 49% of independents say they would not vote for him if he is convicted and 12% say they would still back him. Another 35% said they don’t know and 3% didn’t answer the question.

Conviction could even cost Trump Republican votes. About 28% of Republican respondents wouldn’t support Trump if he were convicted, compared with  43% who said they would and 28% who said they aren’t sure.

Trump has long cultivated a strongman image, and he told supporters in December he won’t be a dictator if re-elected except “on day one”.

The significant slice of Republicans seeking a largely unfettered president signals a potential weakening in US democratic institutions, said Matthew MacWilliams, a political scientist at pro-democracy consultancy Comms Hub.

“It’s hard to have a democracy when that attitude is afoot,” said MacWilliams, who does research on public opinion and authoritarianism.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll also showed Republicans strongly embrace a hardline proposal for immigration policy that has been tied to Trump’s campaign. Sixty-nine percent of Republicans said they agreed with a statement that “illegal immigrants should be arrested and put in detention camps while awaiting deportation hearings”, compared with 21% of Democrats.

Trump has promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history if re-elected and a former aide for immigration policy, Stephen Miller, recently advocated for immigrant detention camps in an interview with the New York Times.

Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller would not comment on the Reuters/Ipsos poll findings on presidential power and immigration, repeating campaign positions that the US is in decline under Biden in part thanks to “open borders and the weaponisation of our justice system”.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted online on January 3-9, surveyed 4,677 randomly selected US adults and had a margin of error of about two percentage points.

Reuters