Morning Joe Confronts Jen Psaki Over ‘Precipitous’ Drop in Biden Polls: ‘Higher Than Trump But Lower Than Almost All Others’

Morning Joe co-host Willie Geist confronted White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki over the “precipitous” drop in President Joe Biden’s approval ratings, which Psaki chalked up to one main factor.

On Thursday morning, Geist wrapped up what had been a largely friendly and dry policy-focused panel interview by asking Ms. Psaki about the decline in the president’s approval rating — which hit a new low in the latest Gallup survey.

“The president’s approval rating was up at 56 percent in a Gallup poll. As we see here this morning, he’s down to 43 percent, very low even historically for a president at this point, higher than Donald Trump, but lower than almost all the others,” Geist said, and asked “How do you assess that? What happened? Why did he drop so precipitously? Is it because Covid seems to have reared its head again?”

“We think that’s a big factor,” Psaki said. “It’s impacting millions of Americans across the country, as you know, and people were mentally ready to be through the pandemic a couple of months ago.”

Those people included the president, who gave a speech on July 4 entitled “Remarks by President Biden Celebrating Independence Day and Independence from COVID-19.”

“And a lot of data showed that … the Delta variant was about one percent, at that point in time, of cases across the country. Now we know how transmissible it is. It’s far and away 90, more than 90, about 99 percent of cases in the country. That’s obviously had an impact,” Psaki said.

Psaki went on to say that “People are tired, they’re exhausted. They want to go back to normal life. We recognize that. That’s one of the reasons, Willie, that the president took such bold steps a couple of weeks ago and put in place requirements and mandates for businesses over a certain size. And but that’s really how we feel we’re going to help the country heal and get through this period of time.”

There’s a decent set of data to support Delta as a big driver of Biden’s slide. Many attribute it to the fallout from the Afghanistan withdrawal, but his approval dropped to 50 percent in the Gallup poll before the withdrawal, and while the latest survey covers the period following the chaotic withdrawal, it also reflects a period in which the Delta surge continues to rage.

Watch above via MSNBC.