Only a quarter of those polled say they believe US Intelligence officials."
The problem here is that government should uphold the highest standards of integrity. And generally government workers do take their job very seriously, even if there are the unavoidable scandals from time to time.
But there is a saying: "A fish starts to rot head first". When people find out that presidents are rotten liars and politicians do their utmost best to call each other liars, and start to use lies and slander as a tool of trade, then it becomes harder and harder for people to have trust in government.
There has been a deliberate campaign to undermine trust in good and honest leaders in the US to bring the worst kind of people to power. Because people like Trump can only come to power if people believe everyone else is corrupt too. That is the game the evil always play, call the good guys hypocrites, and then say you are the honest one because you do not hide your crimes.
People should realize the Republican party is no longer the Grand Old Party of the past but became a victim of several hostile takeovers. First these TeaParty fanatics who ousted all the moderate sensible and honest politicians, they say this was directed and financed by the Koch brothers. Then by Trump. Another billionaire with total disregard of decency and truth.
The US is now controlled by an elite who is for a great part foreign. They control the US foreign politics and they care more for tax cuts and deregulation to make more profit than the interests of the American people.
People in the US have been deceived by endless propaganda that government is their enemy. This is a poisonous lie.
Government is the common good
In a society that is full of big and small predators, government is there to protect the common interests of the people, especially the little people, the people with little power. You need honest politicians devoted to the nation and common good to make that happen. But US politics has fallen into the hands of lobbyists with deep pockets who keep corrupting things. They do not want to pay taxes, they do not want government regulations that keep them in check, and they want all the juicy government orders. All money that taxes from people bring in, should not be redivided among the people, but go to them.
The elite now has managed to take full control over government. Meet you first emperor: Donald Trump. Meet the new royal family.
How did this happen? By destroying the idea of the common good and one nation and feeding endlessly the animosity between the two parties. Unity makes power, division creates weakness A divided nation with corrupt politicians is easily exploited by the elite. These endless conspiracy theories come from them to undermine trust to a point people vote for crazy candidates.
Bush undermined the common good, but Trump will finish it. The elite only want a police state, not a state taking care of its people. No they only want a state that protects them against the anger of the exploited masses, and that fights their wars against competitors abroad or helps them take over other nations to exploit.
Americans today are not a shadow of the people that created the constitution. These followed in the tracks of the French revolution that ended the centuries of exploitation of the people to the point that people were starving massively in the streets of Paris while an elite of 15.000 was having grand parties in Versailles spending one quarter of the national income. They invented the guillotine to get rid of these parasites. They created the statue of liberty and gave a copy to the Americans as a reminder.
But later generations of Americans forgot ...
Those who can not learn from the past,
are destined to repeat the same mistakes.