A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that 46 percent of likely voters want ABC News host George Stephanopoulos removed from his high-paid anchor chair and banned from coverage of the 2016 presidential election.
Their reaction comes in the wake of Stephanopoulos' on-air apology for his ethical lapse in donating $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation but never disclosing multiple gifts, even as he grilled a TV guest about a book that was critical of foundation donors, Rasmussen said.
The poll of 1,000 likely voters, taken by telephone May 17 and 18, also found that 36 percent oppose the well-known anchor being removed from news coverage of Clinton, while 18 percent said they remained undecided, Rasmussen said.
Support for the
former White House spokesman, who joined ABC in 1997 and serves as chief anchor and host of the network's "This Week" program, breaks along party lines, Rasmussen found.
Two-thirds of Republicans say Stephanopoulos should be kept away from presidential election coverage, while 30 percent of Democrats agree. Half of all Democrats, however, don't agree with such an ouster.
A little more than a third of all voters in the poll said ABC's credibility has been diminished by the conflict-of-interest scandal, while 42 percent said it would have "no impact" on how they viewed the objectivity of the network's coverage.
Stephanopoulos renewed his contract with ABC last year,
TheWrap.com reported. It is reportedly worth $105 million.
He apologized to viewers for not being open about his donations,
the Daily Mail reported. He also said he will not moderate a scheduled GOP presidential debate.
"In hindsight, I should have taken the extra step of personally disclosing my donations to my employer and to the viewers on the air during the recent news stories about the foundation," he said.
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