Poll: Americans Feel Obama Is Almost as Dangerous as Putin

However, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un wins the poll – 34 percent of Americans are afraid of him. Second-placed Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei scares 27 percent of Americans


The article originally appeared at German Economic News. Translated for RI by Anita Zalaldinova


A survey conducted in the U.S. found that Americans think their own president is almost as dangerous as Vladimir Putin. The Republicans may even find that Obama is a bigger threat to their country than the Russian president.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed a surprising result recently: 20 percent of the 3,000 respondents consider Russian President Vladimir Putin to be an immediate threat to their country. Only slightly fewer respondents — 18 percent — think that Barack Obama is also a threat. The negative attitude towards Putin, given the aggressive U.S. policy toward Russia, is actually amazingly low. But the fact that citizens chose, after all, to classify their own president that close to Putin is rather surprising.

The Republican voters think Obama is even more dangerous than Putin: more than a third — 34 percent — feel threatened by Obama. Only 25 percent feel uneasy at the thought of Putin.

The Guardian quoted a political observer who explained the result by the polarization in U.S. politics. Things will work better with fear, according to Barry Glassner, the newspaper reported. He expects the next election campaign to be a “fear” campaign because it has become customary to demonize the incumbent president.

Other demons, from the American perspective, are Islamic terrorists, North Korea and Iran. The North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un gets 34 percent, Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei gets 27 percent.


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