Trump racks up strongest approval rating in months

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows President Trump emerged from a week of bipartisan criticism unscathed. In fact, his voter approval got a small boost.

Trump racked up a 45 percent approval rating, up one point from June, the poll found. That's mostly thanks to Republicans, 88 percent of whom approved of Trump's performance — the highest Republican percentage of his presidency so far.

Overall, 29 percent of voters strongly approved of Trump's performance, the highest percentage of the last year. Just 9 percent of Democrats strongly or somewhat approved of Trump, and 44 percent of all voters strongly disapproved of how he's doing.

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These numbers were gathered between July 15-18, which was a tumultuous time for the president. On July 16, Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and questioned Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He reversed course the next day, but not before Democrats and Republicans slammed his performance. Trump also faced intense scrutiny over his family separation policy in the time between June's survey and the new poll. A majority of Americans did disapprove of how Trump handled family separation and U.S.-Russia relations, the new poll found.

As for the November midterm elections, respondents listed the economy and health care as top issues, with Democrats indicating stronger interest in those races than Republicans.

The poll surveyed 900 registered voters over the phone, and has a 3.3 percent margin of error.