The impact of these dramatic actions on American public opinion was predictable, but still stunning. The amount of confidence that Republicans expressed in the FBI plummeted during Trump’s first year in office. Because the Republican Party has traditionally been the party of law and order, party stalwarts’ pre-Trump opinions of the bureau were very favorable. No longer. In a January 2018 survey, only 38 percent of Republicans expressed confidence in the agency compared with 64 percent of Democrats. Similar surveys taken around the same time a year earlier show that GOP support for the FBI
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