President Donald Trump's approval ratings have been underwater since February — but it's not just within America that his image is struggling. Around the globe, his behavior has caused a rapid deterioration of the entire country's global image, Politico reported on Wednesday.
"Pew Research Center surveyed people in 24 countries, including 10 in Europe, from late February through early April. It found that the share of respondents who view the U.S. favorably has dropped in most of them compared to the spring of 2024," said the report. Additionally, "Respondents have little confidence in Trump as a world leader or in his ability to address global challenges, from wars in Ukraine and Gaza to climate change and U.S. immigration policies."
Just about the only good news for Trump in the poll is that a majority of respondents worldwide also see him as a "strong leader" — they just don't agree with his policies on virtually anything, and also view him as "dangerous" and "arrogant."
Trump beat out China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin for confidence, at 34 percent vs 25 percent and 16 percent, respectively, for the authoritarians. But Emmanuel Macron, the French president and the leader of a fellow democracy, vastly outperformed him with 46 percent.
The numbers echo what happened when Trump took office in 2017, when the United States also saw a global erosion of trust and confidence.
For his part, the president has raged about polls that show him underwater, publicly attacking the surveys recently done by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
"The Failing New York Times and the Washington ComPost, two 'papers' that have ruthlessly fought me for years, have each done Polls where a vast majority of those sampled are Democrats," he wrote last week on his Truth Social platform. "In other words, the Polls, just like their writings, are RIGGED - It is not possible for a Republican to do well in such a Poll! They are 'corrupt as hell.'"