One world leader, tends to tell a lot of lies — so much so, that US media outlets are now awarding him “Pinocchio” ratings for each speech he makes.
The other world leader has a bad habit of serving a nasty cup of tea to his rivals — their last cup of tea, in fact.
And then, we have Xi Jinping … (sigh) … the man who has squandered all of China’s international goodwill in a single year.
So, who do you trust?
It appears Russian President Vladimir Putin is the clear winner.
According to the latest Pew Research Center poll published Tuesday, Putin maintains a higher level of global trust than US President Donald Trump, The Moscow Times reported.
Respondents in 13 mainly European countries voiced the highest confidence in German Chancellor Angela Merkel (76%), French President Emmanuel Macron (64%) and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (48%).
Putin comes in fourth, with 23% of global respondents saying they have confidence that he would “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” according to Pew.
The Russian president is four points ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping (19%) and seven points ahead of Trump (16%), the report said.
In contrast to the European leaders, Pew’s respondents voiced a higher lack of confidence in Putin (73%), Xi (78%) and Trump (83%).
“Ratings for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are overwhelmingly negative, although not as negative as those for Trump,” Pew said.
Putin’s trust gap with Trump has widened somewhat from last year, when 33% of Pew respondents from 33 countries expressed confidence in him compared to Trump’s 29%.
The driving force behind the slump in attitudes toward Trump was a response to the coronavirus that has left nearly 200,000 Americans dead and more people infected than anywhere else, CNN reported.
In fact, people in all 13 of the major countries surveyed considered the American response to the Covid-19 pandemic worse than that of China, the World Health Organization, the EU or their own governments.
Fewer than 1 in 6 people surveyed thought the US had handled the outbreak well, with majorities in most countries saying it had done “very badly.”
In the US, Trump has been unable to improve his popularity less than two months before the election.
His approval rating hovers around 40% in most polls, below Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton at this stage of their re-election bid, and about on par with George H.W. Bush, who lost his re-election bid.
Pew conducted the phone survey among 13,273 respondents from nine European countries, Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea between June 10 and Aug. 3, the report said.