Less than three weeks after the White House claimed President Joe Biden’s approval ratings were on the upswing, an average of recent surveys show more Americans disapprove of his job performance than ever.
According to a RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls from May 18 to June 9, just over 39 percent of Americans say they approve of Biden’s job as president. That number marks a new low for Biden, who has not seen a poll showing his approval rating above 44 percent since the first week of May.
The poll stands in direct conflict with the claim put forth by White House chief of staff Ron Klain, a 2021 Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year, that Biden's poll numbers were looking up. "I hate to spoil the narrative but this poll shows @potus approval rating moving up," Klain wrote.
Klain celebrated a May 22 poll from CBS News finding that just 44 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the presidency. Despite 56 percent of respondents saying they disapprove of Biden's job performance, Klain tweeted that the poll showed "public confidence on the two biggest problems [Biden] inherited: COVID and jobs."
While Biden claims in interviews that he doesn’t follow or "believe" polling, his chief counselor Klain regularly remarks on and shares them on social media. In private, Biden "has expressed exasperation that his poll numbers have sunk below those of Donald Trump," Politico reported earlier this month.
By the end of Trump’s term in office, a RealClearPolitics average of polls found that 41.1 percent of Americans approved of his job performance. The last poll of his presidency commissioned by the Economist/YouGov on Jan. 19, 2021, found that 44 percent of voters viewed Trump’s handling of the presidency favorably.
Klain has emerged as the leading figure to track for understanding the White House's thinking on issues facing the country. Thanks to his Twitter antics, the public knows that the White House endorses a $23 an hour minimum wage and believes the inflation crisis is a "high class" problem.