The date of inauguration is nearing, and PEOTUS Donald Trump is still being questioned by the media regarding the election. From CNN to the CIA, many organizations are raising queries that are getting the population to wonder whether Trump won the White House fair and square, and if not, what the implications of this could be.

The US Government has officially blamed the Russian Government for hacking the DNC and releasing information at key times to help Trump get elected, intercepting communications from senior Russian officials that showed a plot to do as much and a celebration when they succeeded. Adding further fuel to the fire was Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, who denied any cooperation with Russia surrounding the security breaches in the election.

With the evidence of Russia’s interference in the election growing day by day, the American population is losing faith in Trump’s changing words. In fact, he has the lowest approval rating of any incoming President in modern history. Simultaneously, the President-Elect is assuring US citizens of a “far better” US relationship with Russia -an outright enemy to many of our global allies and no friend of the US. And so, the question lingers: what does Trump have to do with Putin? How did this relationship impact the election and how will it affect American foreign policy during his presidency?

Many are skeptical and see this new scandal as damaging to President-Elect Trump’s reputation. For example, Grace Fan (9) says, “The more Trump holds off on the truth, the more it’s going to hurt his reputation. Many politicians don’t realize this, and try to hide the truth, thus ruining their career in the end.” Likewise, Lexi Doll (10), an AP Government student, believes in a similar idea. She explains, “I feel as though Trump doesn’t like to broadcast his mistakes, but this is a matter of accepting the truth. The more he avoids the truth, the more it can seem like he’s hiding his mistakes. That’s not a good presidential quality.” It’s evident the influence this incident has had upon the generations of the future. Both of the students mentioned, who don’t necessarily harbor similar political views, had nearly identical thoughts about the effects of Trump continuing the charade that not only does he not know anything about Russia’s hacks, but the intelligence community doesn’t, either. Not accepting or admitting the truth about this issue is not going to be beneficial to President Trump as he begins his term in office.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham even broke with his party’s PEOTUS by saying that he wishes that Trump would accept that Russia meddled with the election and step back, saying that Trump is “simply wrong” to question the intelligence community and attempt to undermine bi-partisan attempts to control Russia’s worldwide influence. Similarly, AP Government teacher John Fitzpatrick says, “Most Americans would recognize that information from the CIA is accurate, and accepting the information regarding Russia would allow him to become more acceptable.”

Whether he colluded with Russia or not, President Elect Trump is not doing himself any favors with the way that he answers the continuous questions everyone has about the heated election and Russia’s involvement. Time and again, he continues to champion Russia and criticize the US Intelligence community. He completely refuses to acknowledge that Russia has interfered in the US election, which goes against scholarly research from a variety of sources. He claims to have no connections with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, and also says in a video clip published by NBC News that he doesn’t even “know” Putin…yet his first official visit as President is scheduled to be to see the infamous Russian leader.

The impact of his first 100 days has yet to be determined, but the PEOTUS has a long way to go toward gaining the public’s trust if the time before his election is any indication.