President Donald Trump's approval rating has sunk to just 36 per cent, according to a CNN poll – a drop of 6 points in just the last month.

Other polls in the field this month rate Trump's approval between 38 and 48 per cent.

But the number from CNN is the lowest inany national poll since early February.

One section of the network's polling report goes further, rounding the president's approval rating down to an anemic 35 per cent.

As with most polls measuring Trump's work in the Oval office, Republicans give him far better numbers than Democrats.

Eighty-two per cent of GOPers approve, compared with just 7 per cent of Dems.

But among self-identified 'independents' who aren't aligned with either major party, Trump's stock in CNN's poll is slipping fast.

President Donald Trump has seen his polling numbers dip in the days since The New York Times published an op-ed full of vicious insider criticism and snippets from an anti-Trump book by journalist Bob Woodward hit the Internet

CNN's pollsters found just 36 per cent of U.S. adults approve of Trump's job performance, a number dragged down by a 31 per cent showing with independents

A month ago 47 per cent of independents gave him a positive nod, a better-than-average showing among the contingent of persuadable Americans who can swing an election.

This month just 31 per cent said yes to the president, a new low for CNN's measuring stick.

The survey was active September 6-9, the three days immediately following the publication of an anonymous anti-Trump essay in The New York Times.

Nearly 20 million people have read the op-ed online, according to Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab.

It was written by a person claiming to be a senior administration official who is part of a behind-the-scenes resistance bent on saving the country and the president from his own worst impulses.

The result has been a public relations nightmare for the Trump White House: According to a Quinnipiac poll published hours before CNN's, 55 per cent of American voters believed it.

The White House has called the unnamed writer 'gutless' and 'a coward' for refusing to put his or her name on the 957-word takedown.

And a 58-percent majority of the adults in CNN's poll say the author should come out of the shadows.

Also contributing to Trump's weekend polling slide were the first reports of a book by journalist Bob Woodward – titled 'Fear' – which will hit bookstores Tuesday.

The 420-page tome paints the president as impulsive, reckless and uninspiring, qualities likely to bleed poll numbers into the doldrums if the public believes it's true.

Three current and former senior Trump administration officials have already disputed early accounts from the book that they called Trump an 'idiot' with a 'fifth- or sixth-grade' understanding of geopolitics who would end up in an 'orange jumpsuit' in prison if he agreed to be interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The White House declined Monday to release a list of what it says are a wealth of errors in 'Fear.'

Trump called Woodward 'a liar' in a tweet Monday morning.