A new INSIDER poll shows most conservatives are OK with Trump pursuing a Trump Tower Moscow deal during election
- Most conservatives are seemingly OK with President Donald Trump's apparent attempts to build Trump Tower in Moscow amid the 2016 presidential campaign, according to a new INSIDER poll.
- Last week, Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his involvement in a plan to build Trump Tower in Moscow.
- Cohen said the discussions on the plan lasted well into the 2016 campaign season.
- Trump had long maintained that he had "nothing to do with Russia," but after Cohen's guilty plea tweeted that he "lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia."
Most conservatives are seemingly OK with President Donald Trump's apparent attempts to build Trump Tower in Moscow amid the 2016 presidential campaign, according to a new INSIDER poll.
Half of the poll's respondents were asked a generic question about candidates for higher office pursuing financial deals where they stood to personally gain. The other half were specifically asked about Trump's dealings.
Roughly half of the conservatives who saw the generic question said they disapprove or strongly disapprove of a candidate for office pursuing business deals where they stand to make a financial gain during their campaign. Only 3% of "very or somewhat conservative" respondents strongly approve.
But when asked about Trump, those who identified as conservative were quite fine with pursuing a real estate deal in Moscow during the campaign. A third of conservatives strongly approve or approve of Trump's actions, and nearly half neither approved nor disapproved.
The vast majority of liberals who participated in the poll expressed disapproval to both circumstances.
Last week, Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his involvement in a plan to build Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen said discussions on the real estate deal lasted well into the 2016 campaign season, and that he communicated with Trump and his family members about it multiple times.
Trump had long maintained that he had "nothing to do with Russia," but after Cohen's guilty plea tweeted that he "lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia."
Read more: Here's a glimpse at Trump's decades-long history of business ties to Russia
This came after Cohen entered a new plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign's alleged collusion.
SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn't try to weight its sample based on race or income. Total 1,037 respondents, margin of error plus or minus 3.11 percentage points with 95% confidence level.