WATCH: Psaki Bristles At Peter Alexander’s Suggestion That Biden’s Covid Measures Are ‘About Poll Numbers’

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki bristled at NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander’s suggestion that President Joe Biden’s latest round of COVID-19 measures are a response to plunging poll numbers.

At Thursday’s briefing, just hours before the president delivered a speech in which he announced a six-prong plan of attack against the Delta-fueled coronavirus surge that included some very broad vaccine requirements, Alexander asked Psaki about the motivation for the new measures.

Ms. Psaki did not take kindly to Alexander’s question:

ALEXANDER: As the White House knows well, the President’s poll numbers have dropped, according to polls from a variety of different outlets right now. Do you acknowledge that the public now has some doubts about the President’s handling of the virus? And is today’s announcement, in some ways, an effort to try to right that?

MS. PSAKI: This is not a political speech, and it’s certainly not about poll numbers. What we can acknowledge — and you’ve seen in a lot of these polls — is that the number-one issue, number-two issue, number-three issue for many Americans is COVID and what we’re doing.

And we have done a lot of work over the last couple of months, even as we’ve had conversations and talked about a range of other issues — whether it’s Afghanistan or Build Back Better or other issues — in this room and in many forms of media we engage with. So it’s an acknowledgement of that.

I’ll also note that in all of these polls, support for the President’s handling of coronavirus continues to be the majority of the American public, and that hasn’t changed.

Although the president’s approval has fallen in the wake of the Afghanistan withdrawal, his numbers began to suffer months ago as the Delta surge took hold.

Watch above via The White House.

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