Exclusive: Half of Americans approve of Trump's handling of North Korea - Reuters/Ipsos poll
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Just over half of all Americans say they approve of how President Donald Trump has handled North Korea, but only a quarter think that his summit this week with Kim Jong Un will lead to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Wednesday.
In a joint declaration following their meeting in Singapore on Tuesday, the North Korean leader pledged to move toward complete denuclearization and Trump vowed to guarantee the security of the United States’ old foe. Forty percent of those polled said they did not believe the countries would stick to their commitments.
Another 26 percent said they believed the United States and North Korea would meet their commitments, while 34 percent said they did not know whether they would follow through.
Thirty-nine percent believe the summit has lowered the threat of nuclear war between the United States and nuclear-armed North Korea, slightly more than the 37 percent who said they did not believe it changed anything.
Trump, who returned to Washington early on Wednesday, hailed the meeting with Kim, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, as a success that had removed the North Korean nuclear threat. Their seemingly friendly meeting was in sharp contrast to their tit-for-tat insults and bellicose rhetoric late last year while Pyongyang carried out its biggest nuclear and missile tests.
Trump received a 51 percent approval rating for his handling of North Korea and also led the list of leaders who should take the most credit for the summit and the joint pledge. Forty percent say the former reality television star should take the most credit, followed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in
with 11 percent. Kim was third with 7 percent.
The Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll was conducted online in English, between June 12-13 in the United States. It gathered responses from more than 1,000 adults, including more than 400 Democrats and 400 Republicans.
It has a credibility interval, a measure of the poll’s precision, of 4 percentage points for the full sample and 6 percentage points for the Democrats and Republicans, meaning that the results could vary in either direction by that amount.
Writing by Mary Milliken,; Editing by Ross Colvin