Pollster: Support for ‘Space Force’ could drop once public sees price tag

Pollster Dan Cox says public support for President Trump’s proposed “Space Force” will ultimately depend on the cost of the program. 

“I think with any big initiative, you run into the problem that the public largely thinks the government can’t do anything really well and efficiently,” Cox, the research director at the Public Religion Research Institute, told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball on “What America’s Thinking” on Tuesday. 

“I think once we see the price tag on that, you may see public opinion starting to turn against it a little bit,” he continued. 

Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said the cost of the Space Force could end up backfiring on Trump, citing the cancellation of his proposed military parade in Washington, D.C. 

“Trump does this all the time. ‘Let’s have a military parade.’ And then the military says it’s going to cost [$92] million,” Greenberg, who is a partner at Greenberg Quinlan Rosener, told Ball. 

“So now he’s going to march around on Andrews Air Force base. He has these ideas. He doesn’t have any idea how they work. He doesn’t have any idea how much they cost. He throws them out, and suddenly people are like ‘wait, that costs a lot of money,’ and then suddenly it’s someone else’s fault that it can’t happen,” she continued. 

“This is not the first time that he’s had some big idea that costs a lot of money that kind of goes away.”

Trump officially directed the Pentagon in June to establish Space Force as the sixth branch in the military.

A new American Barometer survey, conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company found that 57 percent of Americans polled approved of creating the force, while 42 percent said they disapproved. 

 — Julia Manchester