That same poll showed an uptick in President Donald Trump’s approval rating, | Getty Polls: Majority support missile strikes against Syria

A trio of polls out Monday show that a majority of Americans support President Donald Trump’s decision to launch missile strikes last week against the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans surveyed by CBS News and 51 percent of respondents to an ABC News/Washington Post poll approve of Trump’s decision Thursday to call for the deployment of 59 Tomahawk missiles, which targeted the Syrian airbase where U.S. intelligence believes the Assad regime’s chemical attack on civilians last week originated.


“I think by all measures the world and domestic reaction was highly laudable for the president’s action,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Monday afternoon.

American support for Trump’s military strikes, however, is historically low, according to a Gallup poll in which 50 percent of Americans surveyed supported Trump’s military move.

Trump’s Syria strike is the 12th military action Gallup has tracked, dating back to the 1983 invasion of Grenada, which garnered 53 percent approval. Seven U.S. military actions were met with at least 60 percent support, and all but the 2011 bombing of Libya had a higher percentage of approval than Trump’s Syria strike (47 percent approved of the military action in Libya).

The surveys indicate that there’s little appetite for additional military intervention beyond airstrikes, though. Three-in-10 CBS News respondents back airstrikes but no ground troops, 26 percent want only diplomatic talks with no further military action, and 15 percent want no more American involvement whatsoever. Eighteen percent, however, said they want full military involvement with ground troops.

Roughly a third (35 percent) of ABC News/Washington Post poll respondents back additional airstrikes. The same percentage support military action to remove Assad from power if diplomatic efforts fail (51 percent support a U.S. policy to remove Assad). But only 25 percent believe Trump’s strikes will dissuade Syria from using chemical weapons again, which could prompt further U.S. military action.

“If you gas a baby, if you put a barrel bomb in to innocent people, I think you will see a response from this president,” Spicer said. “That is unacceptable.”

The CBS poll showed an uptick in Trump’s approval rating, which climbed to 43 percent. Forty-nine percent of those polled said they disapprove of the president’s job performance.

Seventy percent said Trump must seek congressional approval before taking additional action against Syria. Of those polled who identified as Republicans, more than 50 percent said further military steps by the president should come with the say-so of Capitol Hill.

Almost 80 percent of Republicans expressed confidence in Trump’s ability to successfully handle the ongoing situation in Syria, while 84 percent of Democrats did not express confidence in the president’s ability moving forward.

The batch of polls were conducted April 7-9 via landlines and cellphones, with the CBS News and ABC News/Washington Post surveys carried out in English and Spanish. The CBS poll surveyed 1,006 adults, ABC News/Washington Post 900 adults and Gallup 1,015 adults. They each have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.