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Just a week away from Donald Trumps inauguration, Americans are still expressing historically low approval for the president-elects handling of the transition.

According to a Gallup poll released Friday, more than half of people (51 percent of those surveyed) said they disapprove of Mr. Trumps transition performance. Just 44 percent expressed approval of the president-elect, who has faced a number of controversies in the weeks following his Nov. 8 win. Thats a drop of four percentage points from the 48 percent of people that approved of the president-elect in early December. Four percent of those polled say they have no opinion on the issue.

Those numbers are substantially lower than the ratings of other presidents-elect before him: In 2009, 83 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Obama in the days leading up to his inauguration. In 2001, 61 percent said the same of George W. Bush, while Bill Clinton had a 68 percent approval rate in 1993.

Republicans and Democrats had differing views of how Mr. Trump has handled the transition, with 87 percent of Republicans saying they approved. Only 13 percent of Democrats said the same.

Mr. Trumps Cabinet nominations -- several of whom have already weathered Senate confirmation hearings -- are also facing low approval ratings. In sum, Americans rate Mr. Trumps Cabinet as worse than those chosen by Presidents-elect Obama, Bush, and Clinton. Fifty-two percent of people believe the president-elects Cabinet nominees are average or better -- a low number compared to 83 percent that believed that of Mr. Obamas and Clintons, and 81 percent that thought that of Bushs picks.

Forty-four percent viewed Mr. Trumps Cabinet nominees as below average or poor. Just 13 percent of people believed that Bushs Cabinet was staffed with below average or poor picks. Twelve percent believed that of Clintons and ten percent of Obamas.

The Gallup poll was conducted from Jan. 4-8, 2017, with a random sample of 1,032 adults, The margin of error is four percentage points.

2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Poll: Donald Trump approval still low as inauguration looms ...

The Guardians of the Galaxy and Avatar star says that the Hollywood community became bullies in their treatment of candidate Trump.

Zoe Saldana rose to the A-list after her compelling turns as the communications officer Nyota Uhura in Star Trek, filmmaker J.J. Abramss space adventure about a multicultural crew spreading pluralism throughout the galaxy, and that of Neytiri in Avatar, a sci-fi epic about environmental preservation in the face of corporate greed. She is also a Hispanic woman (birth name: Zoe Yadira Saldaa Nazario) of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent, with African and Haitian roots.

All of these credits and traits seem to be at odds with President-elect Donald Trump, an orange-hued billionaire who spent the lions share of his campaign alienating minority groups, appointed a climate change denier as head of the EPA, installed a former Exxon executive as Secretary of State, and has expressed particular disdain towards the Hispanic immigrant community.

And yet, Saldanawhile not a Trump supporter herselfhas seemingly taken it upon herself to defend the indefensible, placing some of the blame for Trumps shock election victory on Tinseltown for bullying the worlds premier bully.

We got cocky and became arrogant and we also became bullies, Saldana told AFP of Trump, whos mocked a disabled New York Times reporter, called Megyn Kelly a bimbo, accused Ted Cruzs father of assassinating JFK, and has himself been accused of sexual assault by over a dozen women.

We were trying to single out a man for all these things he was doing wrong, she continued, and that created empathy in a big group of people in America that felt bad for him and that are believing in his promises.

There is this strange argument, one cooked up by the Trump campaign and propagated by the conservative media apparatus, that Hillary Clinton (and by extension her Hollywood surrogates) ran an ugly campaign against Trump. The reality, of course, is that virtually all of Clintons attack ads against Trump consisted of montages of Trump saying heinous things. Accusing someone of running an ugly campaign for merely highlighting the sexist, bigoted, hateful things her opponents said is textbook gaslighting.

Saldana is no stranger to controversy. The 38-year-old actress, who is currently starring in the Ben Affleck action-thriller Live By Night, came under fire last year for darkening her skin and donning facial prosthetics to play the iconic singer Nina Simone in the biopic Nina. Saldana and the filmmakers passionately defended the head-scratching decision, claiming that other actors who more closely resembled Nina had turned the project down, while large segments of the media and moviegoing public viewed it as another example of Hollywoods racist aversion to dark-skinned black actors.

The very fact that theres such a shallow pool of actors who look like Simone is not a non-racist excuse, but a sign of racism itselfthe same racism that plagued Nina Simone, wrote Ta-Nehisi Coates. Being conscious of that racism means facing the possibility of Simones story never being told. That is not the tragedy. The tragedy is that we live in a world that is not ready for that story to be told. The release ofNinadoes not challenge this fact. It reifies it.

Saldanas latest film, Live By Night, contains a sequence where Ben Afflecks bootlegger-gangster squares off against the Ku Klux Klana white supremacist organization that endorsed Donald Trumps presidency. The actress explained how if we all work together, we wont regress culturally.

Im learning from [the Trump win] with a lot of humility, she told AFP. If we have people continue to be strong and educate ourselves and stand by equal rights and treat everyone with respect, we dont go back to those times.

Continued here:
Zoe Saldana Believes Hollywood Bullied Donald Trump - The ...

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Updated: Saturday, January 14, 2017, 8:27 AM

The former British spy who compiled the unverified dossier on Donald Trump got so concerned by what he was learning about the President-elect that he worked without pay for months, according to a report.

Christopher Steele, a respected ex-MI6 agent, rocked the geopolitical landscape when a 35-page document hed written on Trumps alleged ties to the Kremlin was published in full earlier this week.

The document, which cannot be corroborated by the Daily News, contains salacious claims that Russian operatives collected damaging and sexually explicit information on Trump in order to blackmail him into obedience.

Initially, Steele was working on behalf of Trumps Republican opponents and later for Democrats, but after Election Day, those employers were no longer interested. Instead, Steele began disseminating his findings to both British and American intelligence officials pro bono, as he reasoned that this matter was of national security concern for both parties, security sources told The Independent on Saturday.

Ex-British ambassador to Russia alerted US intel to Trump dossier

Steele grew frustrated over the U.S. intelligence communitys apparent lack of action, and suspected that there was somebody on the inside blocking a thorough inquiry into Trumps record, instead focusing on the investigation into Hillary Clintons emails, sources said.

Glenn Simpson, a former investigative reporter with the Wall Street Journal, reportedly felt the same way about Steeles findings and joined him in his unprofitable crusade, according to people familiar with the matter.

Simpson who runs the Washington, D.C.-based Fusion GPS was contracted by some of Trumps Republican opponents in September 2015 and sources said he and Steele began working together last July.

8 photos view gallery

Over the course of that summer, Steele sent out several memos to both the MI6 and the FBI and eventually compiled the information into the dossier published earlier this week. But he wasnt making any headway particularly not with the FBIs New York office, which he claims seemed intent on focusing all its energy on Clintons email scandal.

Trump 'dossier' author's allegations backed up by fellow spies

In October, a disheartened Steele spoke to the Washington editor of Mother Jones about his findings, temporarily sparking a thread of public interest that quickly subsided.

After the election, Steele and Simpson doubled down on their efforts, hoping that the U.S. intelligence communitys consensus on Russia having interfered in the 2016 election would prompt further interest in their findings.

It was at that point that Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow, spoke with Arizona Sen. John McCain at a security conference in Canada. Wood told McCain about the dossier, which concerned the longtime senator to the point that he alerted the FBI about it immediately.

Trump and President Obama were subsequently briefed on the dossiers content as part of a larger intelligence report on Russias alleged interference in the election. The President-elect kept mum about it until the damning document was published in full, and has since denounced it as fake news.

Obama briefed on Trump claims amid fear leaks would become public

Simpsons current whereabouts were not immediately known and he did not return a request for comment from the Daily News.

Steele, meanwhile, has reportedly gone into hiding, telling British media outlets earlier this week that he is terrified for his safety.

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Ex-MI6 spy was so troubled by Trump findings that he worked ...

Did Trump mock a disabled reporter, or did your eyes, and the Hollywood elite make you think he did?

The questions are endless, and the answers, unless you're paying very close attention -- all the time -- can require significant effort to ascertain. Reality is becoming hazy in the era of Trump. And that's no accident.

The fact is Trump has become America's gaslighter in chief.

If you've never heard the term, prepare to learn it and live with it every day. Unless Trump starts behaving in a radically different way after he becomes President, gaslighting will become one of the words of 2017.

That's only the beginning. He uses a variety of truth-blurring techniques. His goal is to exert power and control by creating doubts about what is real and what isn't, distracting her as he attempts to steal precious jewels.

Now Trump has brought it to the United States. The techniques include saying and doing things and then denying it, blaming others for misunderstanding, disparaging their concerns as oversensitivity, claiming outrageous statements were jokes or misunderstandings, and other forms of twilighting the truth.

When Trump says something that outrages a portion of the population and pleases one segment, he can have it both ways. Voters eager for a tough guy president may be happy with the bully, while those who don't like it might be appeased by the denial. In the end, few people can keep up with all the facts all the time. And as he tries to undercut the credibility of serious journalists, he makes it even harder for everyone else to find an easy path to the truth.

He's just getting started, but compared with the man he admires so much, he's a rank amateur at gaslighting.

In Russia, the truth became a matter of opinion under a strategy implemented by a clever aide to President Vladimir Putin, Vladislav Surkov. Surkov, who has a background in the arts, orchestrated a kind of political theater in Russia, creating a gauzy faade where no one knew which group was a creation of the government and which wasn't.

The challenge will be a steep one for journalists and for all Americans, when so much of what comes from the next president has to be checked and double-checked. The first step is to establish when there is a gaslighting operation in progress.

Then comes the battle to hold on to the facts.

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Donald Trump is 'gaslighting' all of us(Opinion) - CNN.com

President-elect Donald Trump made a brief appearance in front of media cameras alongside Alibaba founder Jack Ma, but deflected questions about his meeting with U.S. intelligence officials about Russian interference in the 2016 election, on Jan. 9 at Trump Tower in New York. (The Washington Post)

As honeymoons go, Donald Trumps wasnt much to write home about. He was voted in as the most unpopular president-elect in modern history and got slightly less unpopular in the weeks that followed, as the goodwill flowed. Even then, though, he clearly remained the most unpopular president-elect in modern history. Again, that was the honeymoon.

And nowits over.

A new poll from Quinnipiac University suggests that Trump has reverted to his pre-election standing, with Americans having major concerns about his temperament and thedirection in which his presidency will lead the country. Trumps continued controversies seem to have put him right back where he was before he won the election.

Quinnipiac is the first high-quality pollster to poll on Trump twice since the election. And while its poll in late Novembershowed his favorable rating rising from 34 percent to 44 percent, that number hasdropped back to 37 percent, which is about where it stood for much of the campaign. Thats tied for Trumps worst favorable rating in a poll since his election. And a majority 51 percent now have an unfavorable view of him.

Likewise, the Quinnipiac poll shows a drop in confidence in Trump across the board. Although59 percent were optimistic about the next four years under Trump in November, today that number is 52 percent. While 41 percent thought he would be a better leaderthan President Obama, its now 34 percent. While 52 percent thought hewould help the nation's economy, its now 47 percent. While 40 percent thought his policies would help their personal financial situation, its now 27 percent. While 53 percent thought hed take the country in the right direction, its now 45 percent.

You get the idea. There are similar drops in views of his honesty (42 percent to 39 percent), his leadership skills (56 percent to 49 percent), his compassion for average Americans (51 percent to 44 percent), his levelheadedness (38 percent to 33 percent) and his ability to unite the country (47 percent to 40 percent).

And then it gets worse. Toward the bottom, Quinnipiac asked respondents whether they thought Trumps behavior since the election made them feel better or worse about him. Althoughbetter won out in late November, 36 percent to 14 percent who said they felt worse, that showinghas been flipped. Today, 28 percent say they feel worse about Trump since Election Day; just 23 percent feel better.

And clearly people still arent enamored of Trumps social-media habits and fight-picking; by a 2-to-1 margin (64 percent to 32 percent), they think he should give up his personal Twitter account as president bigger than the 59-to-35 margin in November.

Trump won the election, which in his mind and in the minds of many analysts would seem to have vindicated his brand of politics and many of the decisions he made on the campaign trail. He got elected, so it all must have been secret political genius!

Thats not really how things work, though. Trump squeaked his way into the White House with a very narrow win in which he got 46 percent of the vote, won the states he needed to by less than a point, and lost the national popular vote, asvoterstold pollsters said they hadhuge reservations about him.

People set aside those reservations a little after he was elected. This poll suggests that those concernshave returned, as real as ever. And thats bad news for Trumps political mandate 10 days before hes sworn in.

Further reading:

Donald Trump is rekindling one of his favorite conspiracy theories: Vaccine safety

9 questions reporters want to ask Donald Trump at his news conference

Donald Trumps first attempt to ignore the law

Why Donald Trumps selection of his son-in-law for a top White House job is a dicey decision

The Post's Ed O'Keefe explains how confirmation hearings in the Senate work. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

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This new poll has all kinds of bad news for Donald Trump ...