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Majority of Americans support Mueller and Sessions over Trump

With the midterm elections looming ahead, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds a majority of the public has turned against Trump.

With the midterm elections looming, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds a majority of the public has turned against President Trump.

According to the poll, 53 percent of Americans believe Trump has interfered with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation in a way that amounts to obstruction of justice. Only 35 percent disagree.

Opinion on Mueller’s actual work, however, varies by political party, with 61 percent of Republicans opposing the probe and 85 percent of Democrats expressing support.

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The poll also finds that Americans believe the president should not fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as he's long threatened to do. In recent weeks, Trump has intensified public attacks on Sessions and consulted his advisers about firing the attorney general, whom he has viewed as disloyal ever since Sessions recused himself last year from overseeing the Russia investigation, citing a conflict of interest. (Sessions, an early supporter of the Trump campaign, made the announcement after a meeting he had with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. before the election was made public.)

But Americans are still backing Sessions. Sixty-four percent of the public does not think Trump should fire Sessions, with only 19 percent saying he should, and only 17 percent saying they have no opinion.

The Post-ABC poll was conducted among a random national sample of 1,003 adults reached on conventional landlines and cellphones with a margin of sampling error at plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The new poll was conducted between Aug. 26 and 29, the week after former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted of federal tax and bank fraud, and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty and implicated the president in illegal payments to silence women who had alleged sexual encounters.

Cover image: U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a rally in Evansville, Indiana, U.S., on Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018. Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images.