A majority of American voters are generally disappointed with the people President Donald Trump has appointed to posts in his administration, according to an NBC News poll earlier this month — a record share in a question NBC News has measured at the start of four previous administrations.
The survey was conducted March 7-11, before The Atlantic published a story Monday revealing that a number of senior Trump administration officials — including Defense Secret Pete Hegseth, national security adviser Mike Waltz and others — participated in a Signal chat thread about plans to launch airstrikes against Houthi militants, in which Hegseth shared plans including the timing and types of aircraft used. The Signal thread included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, as well as Hegseth, Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secret of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and others.
But before the issue of Trump officials’ handling of sensitive information became public, voters already had concerns about the people Trump was putting into his second administration.
Earlier this month, 52% of those polled said they were generally disappointed with the people Trump had appointed to lead federal agencies and departments, while 45% said they were generally pleased with his selections. The numbers are fairly close to Trump’s overall approval rating, with 47% of registered voters approving of his job performance so far and 51% disapproving.
That’s a higher share of voters who are disappointed with Trump’s picks to lead federal agencies and departments than those who said the same in December 2016, shortly after Trump was elected to his first term. And it’s significantly higher than the share who were disappointed near the beginning of the presidencies of Barack Obama, rge W. Bush and Bill Clinton. (The NBC News poll did not test this question at the start of former President Joe Biden’s administration, instead asking a more general question about how people were judging Biden’s presidential transition efforts.)