Americans Say Donald Trump Should Keep His Businesses as President: Poll

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take the Oval Office, U.S. lawmakers and government ethicists may be worried about potential conflicts of interest, but a new poll shows Americans are far less concerned.

About two-thirds of American adults think Trump needs to choose between being president or a businessman, but nearly 70 percent believe it "goes too far" to require the president-elect and his family to sell their entire business empire to avoid potential conflicts of interest, according to a new Bloomberg survey released Wednesday.

The poll also shows that 51 percent of respondents are very or mostly confident that the New York businessman will put the country's best interests ahead of the family businesses when dealing with foreign leaders.

More than a quarter — 26 percent — said Trump should sell his businesses, while 5 percent remained unsure about what the president-elect should do.

Critics have said that Trump's expansive global business empire presents a serious conflict of interest for his presidency because there is the chance that he will — wittingly or unwittingly — make political decisions that are beneficial to his family's financial interests at the expense of American citizens and interests.

Last month, Trump said that he will leave his "great business in total" to focus on the presidency and has planned a Dec. 15 press conference to explain how that will be done. He is expected to turn over operations of his businesses to his children, though he hasn't provided details yet.

On Tuesday, a transition team spokesperson said Trump sold all of his shares in more than 100 companies in June — a move that may have created a cash influx for a costly campaign and later eased some of his potential conflicts of interest as he moves into the White House.

“The president-elect sold all of his stock back in June,” said Jason Miller.

As The Washington Post reported, the June sale coincided with a period in which Trump was filling his presidential campaign coffers with his own money as he prepared to take on Hillary Clinton in the general election. By Election Day, Trump gave his campaign $66 million, according to federal filings.

On Wednesday, during an interview on NBC's "Today" show in which he was announced as Time magazine's "Person of the Year," Trump offered a different explanation, saying he sold off his stock holdings because he expected to win and wanted to avoid a "tremendous" conflict of interest.

“I felt I was very much going to be winning, and I felt I had a tremendous, really, conflict of interest owning all of these different companies. I had a lot of different stocks before then too. What I did is I sold them,” he told NBC’s Matt Lauer.

He added: “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be owning stocks when I’m making deals for this country that maybe will affect one company positively and one company negatively. I just felt it was a conflict.”

Bloomberg conducted its latest survey of 999 U.S. adults via interviews by Iowa-based Selzer & Co. from Dec. 2-5. It has a 3.1 percent margin of error.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons