NEW YORK - US President Donald Trump is losing the support of Republican millionaires and billionaires, who were among the biggest beneficiaries of his tax breaks, a new survey from CNBC, an American business news TV channel, has found.
Just 34% of America’s millionaires including just 62 percent of Republican millionaires — would vote to re-elect Trump, a Republican and a billionaire himself, CNBC reported as part of its twice-a-year Millionaire Survey. That’s down sharply from the 45 percent of millionaires who said in the 2017 survey that they had voted for Trump in 2016.
The latest poll also found that a significant chunk — 20 percent overall, including 18 percent of Republlicans — dont even think Trump will be on the 2020 ballot. About eight percent said it would be Ohio Governor John Kasich, and seven percent said it would be Vice President Mike Pence.
Possible 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden received the plurality of hypothetical votes—about 38 percent from the Democratic millionaires surveyed. Fifty-four percent of the Democrats surveyed and 28 percent of independents said that “voting President Trump out of office” was their number one political issue.
The results of the semiannual survey, which included the thoughts of 750 American millionaires, came as markets crashed into bear territory and top economists warned of an imminent recession.
The president, who has long hinged his success in the White House on the success of the stock market, has attempted multiple times to deflect the blame for recent drops to his Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, for raising rates.
In a bizarre occurrence on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced a call with the heads of the six largest US banks to make sure that they all had enough liquidity to function. Such a call would typically be made by the Federal Reserve, and only in the midst of a large economic downturn. Although Mnuchin assured all the bank heads said they were well-off, the action caused market panic on Monday.
The Dow, S&P and Nasdaq all fell more than two percent on one of the final trading days of 2018. Mnuchin’s statement, which was posted while the former Goldman Sachs executive was vacationing in Cabo, Mexico, said that executives told him they have ample liquidity available for lending to consumer, business markets, and all other market operations.
The executives, he added, told him that they have not experienced any clearance or margin issues and that the markets continue to function properly. News of the call took many investors, analysts and elected officials by surprise. Rumors in new media reports that the president was looking for a way to fire Powell, whom he personally nominated to head the Federal Reserve, also sent markets into turmoil. Markets broke the record Monday for their worst Christmas Eve performance in history.