President Joe Biden’s approval ratings suffered early in his term and then drastically dropped after former President Donald Trump announced his candidacy for 2024.
Biden’s disapproval rating has reached nearly 60 percent as reports indicate he will drop out of the 2024 race as soon as this weekend,
From record-high inflation to unprecedented crime, one disastrous event plagued Biden’s approval rating and kept him from recovering: his botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
Axios reporter Alex Thompson revealed that Biden’s August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, in which 13 service members were killed in a bombing as American forces were evacuating from Kabul, cost him his entire presidency.
He called it a “self-inflicted error” on the president’s part, “And the reason has nothing to do with his advisers. This goes to the president himself.”
According to a Gallup poll, Biden’s approval rating was 49 percent at the beginning of August 2021. However, just one month after the botched withdrawal, it was 43 percent. A year later, the president’s approval rating was just 38 percent.
The poll indicates that the exit from Afghanistan had lasting effects on Biden’s standing with American voters.
“It’s not like things dropped and held where they were. They kept falling. A lot of other things we know are historically way more important to Americans were also unfolding,” Mohamed Younis, editor-in-chief of Gallup News, told Axios.
Thompson pointed out that Biden has always been defensive about his decision to abruptly pull out of Afghanistan, criticizing the president for not showing enough empathy toward the lives lost and their families.
He also noted how disgusted Americans were after the president checked his watch as the bodies of the fallen servicemen were delivered at Dover Air Force Base.
“He looked at his watch while people came off — like while the bodies came off that plane,” Thompson said. “Afterward, the families complained that he was talking too much about his own son, not about their sons. And in response to the criticism from those families, he did not reach back out.”
However, Biden’s Afghanistan pull-out was just the slippery slope. After that happened, the president’s approval rating continued to drop as his policies began to set in.
Inflation began to creep, his incompetence began to show, and his border policies caused a record number of illegal immigrants to enter the U.S.— which have all contributed to his record-low polling numbers.
On the contrary, Trump made efforts with the Gold Star families, meeting and spending time with them.
During the Republican National Convention (RNC) this week, the families criticized Biden for never publicly naming their loved ones.
“Joe Biden has refused to recognize their sacrifice,” Christy Shamblin, the mother-in-law of the fallen Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee said on Wednesday. “Donald Trump knew all of our children’s names. He knew all of their stories.”
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