Biden approval on COVID handling plummets: Poll
Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel reacts to the COVID federal response under the Biden administration.
President Biden has been shredded by the media after a "week from hell" that has critics on both sides of the aisle condemning the "very big losing streak" the White House has experienced to kick off 2022.
This week alone, Biden gave a speech on his push to pass Democratic voting bills comparing opponents to segregationists, the Supreme Court blocked his mandate to force large employers to vaccinate or test their workers, and Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin, W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, Ariz., announced they wouldn’t vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster despite the president urging them to do so.
President Biden is taking heat from both sides of the aisle after a "pretty rough week." (AP Newsroom)
"The commander-in-chief coming to the Senate for a final push on rules changes couldn't shake the resistance of Manchin and [Sinema]," Politico pointed out.
BIDEN WHITE HOUSE REELING AFTER WEEK OF DEFEATS, SETBACKS, AND POLICY FLOPS
In addition to the fizzling legislation and court defeat, polling shows the public’s approval of Biden’s job performance continues to crater as COVID surges despite his promise to "shut down" coronavirus – and the media has taken notice of the president’s struggles.
CNN’s Brianna Keilar spoke Friday after the network ran a graphic that labeled it a "week from hell" for the president.
"Biden has had a very tough week with setbacks for his agenda, COVID complications, and the Supreme Court blocking his vaccine mandate, inflation and international turmoil just to name a few," Keilar said.
CNN’s John Berman then admitted the president is "on a very big losing streak," and the liberal network’s chief national correspondent John King agreed.
"I’m reminded of an old saying, John McCain used to mangle this quote from Chairman Mao, he used to say, ‘It’s darkest before it turns completely black.’ That’s where Joe Biden is right now," King said Friday. "Schools are closing, people around the country have COVID exhaustion, here in Washington the president is disappointing his own base … It is black. It is very dark for him right now."
CNN also aired an on-screen chyron, "BIDEN’S REALLY BAD WEEK: SETBACKS ON VOTING RIGHTS, COVID, ECONOMY," on Friday morning.
Journalist Nellie Bowles called it a "pretty rough week for Biden" and rattled of a laundry list of the recent debacles for the president for her newsletter.
"The Supreme Court blocked his vaccine mandate effort. His approval rating dropped to 33%. Krysten Simena, the moderate Democratic senator from Arizona, said she will not support changing the filibuster rules. Without changing filibuster rules, Democrats have little chance of passing their voting rights bills," Bowles wrote on Bari Weiss' Substack, noting that Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t have the best week, either.
"Hasn’t been a good season for Biden’s powers of persuasion. He couldn’t convince the Senate to pass Build Back Better or voting rights, the Supreme Court to sign off on his vaccine plan or the Russians to back off Ukraine," New York Times reporter Peter Baker tweeted Thursday. "What will be Plan B?"
President Biden failed to convince Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to eliminate or weaken the filibuster. (AP/Getty Images)
Axios published a piece titled, "Biden’s epic failures," which called out "baffling COVID messaging," his "failed" trip to the Hill this week, and the challenge of feuding with both parties in an election year.
"In the two months since signing the $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law, President Biden has by almost every measure bombed big time on the things that matter most," Axios’ Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei wrote. "It's rare for a president to be at odds with Republicans, moderate Democrats and liberal Democrats — all at once. But that's where Biden finds himself at the start of an election year that many Democrats believe will result in the loss of the House and maybe the Senate."
CNN’s website featured a Friday headline, "Inflation, vaccines, voting rights: Biden faces brick walls."
The Associated Press penned an analysis concluding Biden had overpromised on a fundamental campaign pledge of simply getting things accomplished.
"Days before he hits his one-year mark in office, a torrent of bad news is gnawing at the foundational rationale of President Joe Biden’s presidency: that he could get the job done," the AP wrote Friday.
KAYLEIGH MCENANY ON BIDEN'S STUNNING POLL NUMBERS: 'THIS IS A FIVE-ALARM FIRE'
The devastating week began when Biden was crushed for "race-baiting" comments made during a controversial speech Tuesday in Georgia about Democrats' proposed voting rights laws. The president asked a crowd in Atlanta on Tuesday whether they were on the side of reviled figures like segregationist Gov. George Wallace and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, or on the side of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and the late John Lewis.
New York Post columnist John Podhoretz penned a scathing piece about the "hypocritical, demagogic" speech, while Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said Biden was "splitting the country in half with divisive, earsplitting rhetoric."
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote in a piece headlined, "Biden’s Georgia Speech is a Break Point," that while attempting to appeal to his base, he might have united the rest of the country against him.
"The speech itself was aggressive, intemperate, not only offensive but meant to offend. It seemed prepared by people who think there is only the Democratic Party in America, that’s it, everyone else is an outsider who can be disparaged. It was a mistake on so many levels," Noonan wrote.
"By the end he looked like a man operating apart from the American conversation, not at its center. This can be fatal to a presidency," she added. "This week in Georgia Mr. Biden damaged himself. And strengthened, and may even have taken a step in unifying, the non-Democrats who are among their countrymen, and who are in fact the majority of them."
The Washington Post awarded President Biden its harshest fact-check rating of "Four Pinocchios" over his false claim this week that he was "arrested" for the first time as a teenager while attending a civil rights protest in Delaware. (Reuters)
The speech also resulted in the Washington Post handing Biden its harshest fact-check rating of "Four Pinocchios" over his claim that he was "arrested" for the first time as a teenager while attending a civil rights protest in Delaware.
In a Thursday piece headlined, "Biden claims yet another arrest for which there’s little evidence," Glenn Kessler, the Post's resident fact-checker, wrote that Biden was "not always a reliable source" when it came to his "exaggerated" stories, and that too many elements of his claim didn't add up.
The president’s approval rating stands at just 33% and disapproval at 53% among Americans in a Quinnipiac University national poll conducted Jan. 7-10 and released Wednesday. Biden’s approval is down three points from Quinnipiac’s previous survey, which was conducted in November, with disapproval remaining unchanged.
According to the Quinnipiac poll, the president is deeply underwater on his handling of three top issues – the economy (34%), foreign policy (35%) and the coronavirus pandemic (39%).
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Meanwhile, Harris was compared to fictional buffoons such as Steve Carell’s Michael Scott from "The Office" and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer from "Veep" when confronted over former administration health officials urging Biden to change his pandemic strategy.
"It’s time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day," Harris told NBC News’ Craig Melvin.
Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie, David Rutz and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.
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