After gushing over Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, Wednesday’s New York Times “On Politics” newsletter featured a segment about how President Trump’s devastating strike on Iran’s nuclear capability is polling among Americans, under the subhead “A wary public isn’t convinced on Iran strikes.”
My colleague Ruth Igielnik, The Times’s polling editor, helps us dig into the numbers. Today, she looks at disapproval of President Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes against Iran.
The decision to attack Iran is broadly unpopular: 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, and 58 percent believe the action will make Iran more of a threat to the United States, according to a CNN/SSRS poll conducted on Sunday and Monday.
After admitting that “Trump’s base has gotten onboard,” Bidgood kept bringing the bad news, including fears of blowback.
Nearly all of Democrats and a majority of independents are opposed to the strikes.
Still, there is deep concern across both parties about the long-term consequences of the attack. Eight in 10 Americans -- including 74 percent of Republicans -- worry about the conflict growing, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. And 79 percent of Americans worry that Iran may go so far as to target American civilians.
Yet compare that embrace of the polls to the paper’s apologetic coverage of polling after President Barack Obama’s 2011 bombing intervention in Libya, in which the Times blamed the public themselves for not approving of the bombing, that helped oust Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
A March 2011 Obama-era story by reporter Kirk Johnson uncovered novel excuses as to why American’s didn’t approve of Obama’s fearless action (a Gallup poll showed that only 47% approve of the bombing strikes), including information “overload” that led them not to pay proper attention, “compassion fatigue,” even the NCAA basketball tournament. The very phrase “compassion fatigue” assumes the bombing was a worthy cause, an idea the Times didn't consider regarding Trump's action.
Unlike Trump in Iran, the Obama-era Times voiced no fear of “the long-term consequences of the attack” in Libya, though such fear was justified after the fatal attack on Americans in Benghazi.