Only About 3 In 10 Highly Confident In Trump's Ability To Pick Qualified People: Poll

Americans don't have high confidence in Trump's ability to choose well-qualified people for his Cabinet or effectively manage government spending and the military.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans may have recently elected Donald Trump to a second term, but that doesn’t mean they have high confidence in his ability to choose well-qualified people for his Cabinet — or effectively manage government spending, the military and the White House, according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

As Trump names his appointees for key posts in his administration — some of whom could face difficult confirmation fights in the Senate even with Republicans in control — about half of U.S. adults are “not at all confident” in Trump’s ability to appoint well-qualified people for his Cabinet and other high-level government positions.

The appointment process and its breakneck speed have represented a manifestation of Trump’s pledge to voters to be a disruptive force in the country and a return to the chaotic era of governance that defined his first four years in the Oval Office. But only around 3 in 10 Americans are “extremely” or “very” confident that Trump will pick qualified people to serve in his administration. A majority of Republicans say they do have high confidence.

Trump has promised to shake up Washington with an aggressive approach that includes the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a nongovernmental task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations, to be helmed by billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Beyond his appointments, though, the survey finds a similar level of confidence in Trump’s ability to manage government spending and perform other key presidential tasks, including overseeing the military and the White House — which, in Trump’s first term, experienced significant high-level staff turnover, particularly in its early days.