president s agenda, and those are people who are really going to be misespecially at a time when it is not easy to find people to fill any of those positions. there are a lot of empty desks. and so the question now who are they going to find fill those positions and what s their competence level going to be? it s not like working for other administrations. i m going to quote your favorite writer, bryan bennet of time magazine and we ll talk about your writing as soon as i m done with quote. from your cover story this week. and it s on the over arching topic of russia. trump is bruised by the idea that russian election meddling tants his victory. those close to him say and can t concede the fact that russia did try to interfere in the election, regardless of whether it impacted the outcome. frrts it s a notable quote, bryan, because here we are in the position of kind of hoping we find out from the it russian
stick with him following this summit in helsinki. and according to last night s round of polls, the meeting wasn t enough to shake their confidence, but here s the question. what if there is more to the numbers than meets the eye presently? with us at the big board is the only man who can answer that question, steve kornacki, our national political correspondent. stay hay, steve. hey, brian. how are you? well, it s interesting, because as you said, the numbers we ve seen on the republican base tell a story we ve kind of become familiar with. but remember, he s been getting criticism this week from quarters, unanswered questions about how this all shakes out. sort of the instant readout. two polls that are throughout so far this week. and these are conducted basically the day after, two days after that summit, that press conference. why disapproval? and this one is from axios, 40 to 58. again, if you look at the next one we have, this is from cbs news. same story, 55% disapprove, 32%
journal poll, going to come out sunday. maybe a more comprehensive look at this question about the views on the summit and how they re affecting the overall assessment as trump as president. that s the question. approval rating, does it go down, does it go up? does it stay the same sning we re going to get a look at that on sunday. thank you so much for that. that really does change how the story is reported. a huge chunk of the population. steve kornacki at the big board force. another break. we re back with another one of the poorly covered stories of this past week.
it can comes way down. it s tell itting us among independents when you push them on the issue they move the disapprove side. when you ask them it third option, not sure, how confident are you? but you start to get waffling there. but it does raise the with question how much will this linger? and that gets to my tease for sunday because we got a brand new wall street journal poll, maybe more of a comprehensive look at this question about the views on the it summit and how hair it rr assessing the overall assessment. does it go down? does it it go down? does it stay the same? i think we re knowing to get a look at that on sunday. that really does change how the story is reporting. another break. we re back with one of the poorly covered stories, let s say, of this past week. who would have guessed? an energy company helping cars emit less.
wide gap among democrats. look at overwhelming 91%, 83% disapproving of the president s conduct. republicans the flip side. 79. 60, and a little lower when you get down to 68. you usually see the president s number with his own party closer to 79 even higher. so a little bit of dissent there. but, again, what really was hurting trump here in these numbers we ve seen this week, independents, 2-1 disapprove there when you get the wide gaps overall, that s what s driving it. the question here, you look at media coverage, how is that going to shake out. the other question is how deep? how deeply held are these views, how deep are these reactions. is this the kind of event given the media coverage we ve seen, given that s it a foreign country, given that it s russia, it s putin, is this the kind of event that s going ling were people? one of the things we want to know. another poll, new one here, the huffington post, they gave authorities a third option. do you approve or disapprove or