Trump voters trust him more than their loved ones, religious leaders: Poll

US voters supporting former hawkish president Donald Trump are most likely to believe the criminally indicted 2024 Republican presidential candidate in telling them the truth than their own family members or religious leaders, a new survey has found.

Among those who intend to vote for Trump, 71 percent feel that what he tells them is true — higher than the results for the truthfulness of friends and family (63%), conservative media figures (56%) or religious leaders (42%), according to the poll conducted by CBS News/YouGov as reported by US media outlets on Monday.

Such beliefs have been expressed despite the former president’s over 80 criminal indictments handed down in American courts for lying, falsifying documents and threatening poll workers, among other charges.

The survey, however, notes that the percentage of those who consider Trump as truthful drops to 53 percent among all likely Republican primary voters, in a sign that some fellow party members remain skeptical of his political claims.

However, the latter percentage still reflects the opinion of the majority of Republicans and is higher than the 44 percent that trust religious leaders and the 32 percent who trust medical scientists — and far higher than only 10 percent who trust current US President Joe Biden.

The poll further discovered that Trump continues to dominate the 2024 race for the Republican Party nomination, with 62 percent of likely GOP primary voters supporting him, while only 16 percent said they would vote for fellow right-wing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

The new survey also sheds light on why Trump's support within the Republican Party base is so difficult for other GOP candidates to change.

Among those who are at least considering voting for Trump, a whopping 95 percent believe he "fights for people like me," while 99 percent further believe things were better during Trump’s presidency.

Trump: I won’t be in Republican debates since everyone knows me

“The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had,” Trump said on his social media platform.

Meanwhile, Trump's false claims about the results of the 2020 election are at the heart of some of the criminal charges he currently faces, though many Republican voters still believe the highly controversial ex-president was the legitimate winner.

The ex-president has so far appeared in court three times and denied all charges.

According to the CBS poll, 77 percent of likely Republican voters believe the charges leveled against Trump in Georgia over efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state are politically motivated.

Trump has alleged that the 2020 vote was rigged by the US establishment in favor of his Democratic rival Biden, describing the poll as “the greatest Election Hoax in history.”

The development comes amid intensifying divisiveness and rivalry among members and lawmakers of the two dominant political parties around issues such as persisting military funding of Ukraine in its war against Russia, the skyrocketing national debt and budgetary issues around social services versus increasing military spending. 

This is while the liberal Democrat Party is highly divided around issues such as Biden's candidacy for re-election despite his deteriorating mental and physical health as well as his demonstrated lack of competence in dealing with various domestic and foreign policy issues.

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