Most Americans Believe Trump Profited Illegally or Unethically From Presidency, Poll Finds
A new AP-NORC poll indicates a majority of Americans perceive the president as prioritizing personal business interests over the country's well-being.
Most Americans believe that Donald Trump has profited from the presidency either illegally or unethically, according to a new AP-NORC poll. The findings, published Tuesday, also indicate that the president is perceived as prioritizing his business ventures above the country.
A majority of respondents (56%) said Trump has prioritized his personal business interests "a lot," while only 23% said he has prioritized the country overall. Just 11% said he has prioritized "people like them," while half of respondents said Trump has not prioritized people like them at all.
According to the poll, which surveyed 2,140 adults from Sept. 24 to 28, 4 in 10 respondents believe he has done something illegal, and another 18% see his actions as unethical but not illegal.
Republicans were more likely than Democrats or Independents to say that the president prioritized the country overall. However, they were not without criticism. Only about 1 in 10 Republicans said Trump had done something illegal; most said he had done nothing wrong or that they did not know enough to judge.
"It's fairly unprecedented how much wealth increase this President has gotten in the past two years," Raymond La Raja, a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst and the co-director of the UMass Poll, told TIME. He pointed to last year, when a business tied to the royal family of the United Arab Emirates invested half a billion dollars into Trump’s crypto ventures, raising conflict-of-interest questions.
According to his latest annual financial disclosure from June 30, Trump earned more than $1.4 billion from these ventures last year alone. His total reported revenue for 2025 was $2.2 billion, a significant increase from approximately $622 million in 2024. This spike is largely attributed to a $1.4 billion windfall from his family’s crypto venture, including more than $550 million from World Liberty Financial token sales.
Trump's family business, the Trump Organization, has also expanded its real estate, golf, and licensing footprint in the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These deals alone garnered around $14 million, according to filings from July 2026.
"It's really a structural conflict-of-interest that he is regulating policies that directly benefit his family—and it's also incentivizing not just Americans, but foreign entities, like the United Arab Emirates, to invest in his family's projects," La Raja said. "So that's really worrisome."
A separate UMass Amherst poll, conducted in August, indicated broader concerns about government corruption, with 75% of respondents noting a "great" amount of corruption in the federal government. Fifty-three percent ranked the presidency as the "most corrupt institution in government."
A majority of respondents in the AP-NORC poll (54%) said it was "definitely" corrupt for a public official to use their office to benefit themselves or their family financially, even if doing so was legal. Another 29% said it was "probably" corrupt.
La Raja argued that the public's concern about a politician's enrichment often depends on the overall state of the country's economy. "If you look at other countries when there's some time when there's somebody who's perceived as corrupt, people are more likely to tolerate it if the economy is booming," he said, adding that when economic prosperity is not realized by the electorate, "then they start to say, 'What's going on?' And that's when corruption looms larger."
Just 28% of 2,275 respondents approved of Trump’s handling of jobs and the economy, according to a Financial Times/Focaldata poll released Tuesday. Consumer prices were up 3.4% in August from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Sources of price pressure include Trump’s tariffs and the U.S. war with Iran. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimates that tariffs added 2.9 percentage points to consumer goods inflation by February 2026, while the war has driven up fuel prices.
"[Trump] promised a better economy, and now inflation is up," La Raja said. "There’s a war, and importantly, the war is linked to inflation."
The AP-NORC poll comes less than a month before the midterm elections, where the Republican Party is seeking to maintain its majorities in the House and the Senate. Experts view the midterms as a referendum not just on Trump, but on whether Republican candidates' connections to him will help or harm them on Election Day.
"Presidential approval often serves as a political anchor in midterm elections—meaning dissatisfaction with Trump could extend to Republican candidates down the ballot, particularly among independents and suburban voters," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. "Even Republicans who are personally popular may find it difficult to separate themselves from perceptions of the President."
Concerns around "presidential self-enrichment" are not unique to Trump, Rottinghaus noted. However, "Trump's extensive business interests have made the issue particularly visible." Historically, he added, voters have often judged presidential ethics through a partisan lens, with supporters more willing to excuse questionable conduct and opponents more likely to interpret it as evidence of broader problems with presidential accountability.
Plans have been proposed to build a retreat for future presidents on land beside Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. The club would pay for lodging and provide government access free of charge, while Trump’s family business would operate the adjoining golf course. Local officials are considering the plan, which could make the private club a destination for influential political visitors long after Trump leaves the White House.