Despite President Donald Trump’s critical review of the press, which he repeatedly assails as “dishonest” and calls “fake news,” voters trust the media more than Trump. | AP Photo Trump's disapproval rating keeps creeping up

A majority of voters disapprove of Donald Trump’s handling of the presidency, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

Less than five weeks into his presidency, Trump has an approval rating of 38 percent and a disapproval rating of 55 percent.


Trump’s approval is a slight uptick from where it stood in Quinnipiac’s Jan. 26 survey, but 4 points lower than just two weeks ago. Meantime, his disapproval rating has climbed steadily from 44 percent days after he took office to 51 percent on Feb. 7 and 55 percent Wednesday.

A majority of respondents said Trump is not honest (55 percent), doesn’t have good leadership skills (55 percent) or care about everyday Americans (53 percent), isn’t level-headed (63 percent), doesn’t share their values (60 percent) and is doing more to divide the country than unite it (58 percent). However, a majority also said they believe Trump is a strong and intelligent person (64 percent and 58 percent, respectively.

“President Donald Trump’s popularity is sinking like a rock,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll. “He gets slammed on honesty, empathy, level-headedness and the ability to unite. And two of his strong points, leadership and intelligence, are sinking to new lows. This is a terrible survey one month in.”

Congress doesn’t fare any better. Republicans, who hold majorities in both chambers of Congress, have a 31 percent approval rating and 62 percent disapproval rating. And Democrats’ approval rating is 32 percent, while their disapproval rating is 59 percent.

Half of respondents disapprove of the media’s coverage of Trump, but more than 6-in-10 disapprove of how the president responds. Sixty-one percent said they disapprove of the way Trump talks about the news media, which he tweeted last week is “the enemy of the American People!”

Despite Trump’s critical review of the press, which he repeatedly assails as “dishonest” and calls “fake news,” voters trust the media more than Trump. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they trust the media to tell the truth about important issues, while just 37 percent said the same about the president.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to bring much-needed change to Washington, but, according to 45 percent of respondents, he’s bringing the wrong change. Nearly 40 percent dispute that, though, insisting that Trump is bringing the right change, while 14 percent said Trump hasn’t brought much change at all.

One segment of voters is largely split on how often they can trust Trump to do the right thing: Eighteen percent say almost all the time, 20 percent most of the time and 21 percent some of the time. A whopping 40 percent, however, said they can hardly ever trust the president to do what’s right.

And while Trump gets warm marks on his handling of the economy, he faces high disapproval on foreign policy (56 percent), terrorism (49 percent), immigration (58 percent), Russia (57 percent), his currently blocked executive order travel ban — 53 percent oppose suspending travel from the seven predominantly Muslim nations and 60 percent oppose halting the entry of refugees (68 percent for Syrian refugees, specifically).

But, according to Trump, who has said he inherited "a mess," voters should cut him slack because the country’s woes aren’t his fault.

“In all fairness,” Trump told reporters earlier Wednesday, “I’ve only been here for four weeks, so I can’t take too much of the blame for what’s happened.”

The national survey of 1,323 voters was conducted Feb. 16-21 via landlines and cellphones. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.