Survey: Majority in US Believe Government Corruption Has Risen Under Trump

A new survey in the U.S. shows that nearly six in 10 Americans believe that the level of government corruption has risen in the year since President Donald Trump was elected.

Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-corruption group, said its poll of a thousand people in October and November showed that while Trump was elected on a vow to make government work better “for those who feel their interests have been neglected by political elites,” the opposite has happened.

“Rather than feeling better about progress in the fight against corruption over the past year,” the group said, “a clear majority of people in America now say that things have become worse.”

Transparency International said 44 percent of Americans believe that Trump and White House officials are corrupt, up from 36 percent recorded in a similar survey in early 2016 at the start of former president Barack Obama’s last year in office. It said nearly seven out of 10 of those surveyed believe the government is failing to fight corruption, up from half in 2016.

​Issue widespread

The survey said 38 percent of Americans believe members of Congress are corrupt and 33 percent say government officials are. The poll said 32 percent think business executives are corrupt, 23 percent of local government officials and 22 percent of religious leaders. Judges and magistrates fared the best, with 16 percent of Americans believing they are corrupt.

The survey showed that close to a third of African-Americans believe police are corrupt, compared to a fifth of those polled overall. Slightly more than half said they feared retaliation for reporting what they believe to be wrongdoing, up from slightly less than a third in 2016.

Transparency International said its survey showed “people are now more critical of government efforts to fight corruption. From just over half in 2016, nearly seven in 10 people in the United States now say that the government is doing a bad job at combating corruption within its own institutions. This is despite widespread commitments to clean up government.”

Those surveyed said that while public protests and speaking out on social can be effective in fighting corruption, the best way is to vote out of office politicians they believe to be corrupt.

 
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