A straw poll taken at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest has singled out one member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet as by far the least popular with Republicans.
The event, held in Phoenix over the weekend, was the first since the murder of the organization’s co-founder, the conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“We wanted to get a real read on where the base is at after Charlie’s assassination, and a few things really jump off the page,” Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet told Fox News Digital on Monday.
The results were bad news for Attorney General Pam Bondi, with only 32.9 percent of those polled at the event saying they “strongly agree” with her performance.
By comparison, AmericaFest attendees voted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as the cabinet member doing the best job (83.3 percent), closely followed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (80.8 percent), and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (78.6 percent).
Transport Secretary Sean Duffy had the lowest disapproval rating, just 0.5 percent.
Bondi was the only member of Trump’s Cabinet to have negative ratings in the double digits. A combined 29 percent said they either somewhat or strongly disapproved of her work.
Bondi, 60, has angered MAGA loyalists this year by constantly fumbling the release of the Epstein files.
After drip-feeding some heavily redacted documents, with the latest batch arriving on Friday, a statement by 19 of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims called out Bondi and her department, stating, “We are told that there are hundreds and thousands of pages of documents still unreleased. These are clear-cut violations of an unambiguous law.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Justice for comment.
The poll asked their support base to rank their priorities, with winning next year’s midterms a clear winner at 63.9 percent.
“Defunding woke universities” was only voted as an issue by 1.1 percent, while the base was least interested in ending the war in Ukraine, which came last.
89.5 percent of voters also said they would support a moratorium on new immigration into the U.S.
The poll also saw the vice president blitz the choice of who Turning Point USA supporters would like to see succeed Trump in 2028.
“JD Vance won the 2028 nomination straw poll by more than Donald Trump won the 2024 one we did two years ago,” Charlie Kirk Show producer Blake Neff wrote on X.
Vance, who has regularly attended Turning Point events and spoken about his faith, scored 84.2 percent of the vote. Rubio took just 4.8 percent while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis earned a measly 2.9 percent. Donald Trump Jr. scored even less, with just 1.8 percent of the vote.
88.3 percent of poll respondents self-identified as Republicans and 94.7 percent identified as conservatives.
Kolvet said the Turning Point “movement” is “all-in” for Vance as the next Republican leader.
During the event on Sunday, Vance was cautious to fully condemn the rise of racism and antisemitism in the Republican Party.
The VP said conservatives should welcome everyone as long as they “love America.” He also said he was against using “purity tests” to work out who might be excluded from the religious movement over their beliefs, after questions arose over divisive figures such as Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens.
“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform,” Vance said during his closing speech on Sunday.
“We don’t care if you’re white or Black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring, or somewhere in between,” he said of Turning Point’s entry policy.
“We have far more important work to do than canceling each other,” he said.
Vance was more vocal about the Trump administration’s policies to end diversity and inclusion, telling the audience, “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.”
