French Media Gives Thoughts on What Might Be Behind Biden's Dwindling Popularity

Last month, Joe Biden's approval ratings hit all-time lows in at least three polls after the Taliban's* takeover of the Afghan capital Kabul on 15 August.

A host of crises this summer has added significantly to US President Joe Biden's plummeting popularity, Le Figaro claims in a new analysis.

According to the French newspaper, "a summer of freedom and joy" – as POTUS put it calling for faster COVID vaccination – finally turned into a series of crises that "left him [Biden] politically weakened, less than nine months after taking office".

The factors, Le Figaro notes, include a worsening situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, sparked by the highly contagious Delta variant and the slowdown in vaccinations, as well as wildfires, hurricanes, and floods that have ravaged the US over the last several months.

The newspaper points out that adding to Biden's dwindling popularity was the "chaotic" US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan amid the Taliban's takeover of the capital Kabul and the fall of the Afghan government on 15 August.

The Le Figaro analysis comes a few weeks after Biden chuckled when asked about a new poll revealing that some Americans believe POTUS is no longer "competent, focused, or effective at the job".

"I haven't seen that poll", Biden said during a press conference in late August following his address to the nation about the US evacuation effort in the war-torn nation.

A Rasmussen survey released last month revealed that a majority of likely US voters, 54 percent, disapprove of Biden's job performance while only 45 percent approve.

FiveThirtyEight also released poll results at the time that showed slightly less than half of respondents, 49.9 percent, approve of the president's performance while 43.9 percent disapprove.

A poll released by Reuters, in turn, similarly showed that the US president's approval had dropped by 7 percent to the lowest point of his tenure so far, likely due to criticism over his handling of the US troop exit from Afghanistan.

*The Taliban is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia and many other nations.