Democrat President Joe Biden is “angry and anxious” about his struggling reelection campaign, NBC News reports.
Things are so bad inside the White House that, at one recent meeting where advisers informed Biden of his falling poll numbers in battleground states like Michigan and Georgia, Biden then began yelling and cursing at staffers.
“President Joe Biden was seething,” NBC’s Peter Nicholas, Courtney Kube, and Carol E. Lee wrote on Sunday. “In a private meeting at the White House in January, allies of the president had just told him that his poll numbers in Michigan and Georgia had dropped over his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas. Both are battleground states he narrowly won four years ago, and he can’t afford any backsliding if he is to once again defeat Donald Trump. He began to shout and swear, a lawmaker familiar with the meeting said. He believed he had been doing what was right, despite the political fallout, he told the group, according to the lawmaker.”
President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on March 13, 2024. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
White House spokesman Andrew Bates told NBC News about the incident in January: “President Biden makes national security decisions based on the country’s national security needs alone — no other factor.”
But whatever spin the White House and Biden’s campaign puts on the situation, the facts are clear: Biden is losing this election right now. Biden has only fallen worse since January. Polls across nearly every battleground state show former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024 and Biden’s general election opponent, leading the current president significantly.
What’s more, Biden campaign officials this weekend elevated yet another fake attack on Trump, claiming Trump was calling for a “bloodbath” in America if he does not win in November. Biden’s campaign and top Democrats and their establishment media allies have used the term that Trump used at a campaign rally in Ohio this weekend to describe what would happen to the auto industry should Biden win as a bludgeon to bluntly push their contrived narrative that Trump represents a threat to democracy. This latest hoax has collapsed as fast as the Delawareans who created it could get it going, but it seems to signal a desperation from team Biden that nothing is breaking their way — and everything is going Trump’s way this year. Biden officials are constantly clamoring to get on offense and to put Trump on defense, but top allies of the Democrat president told NBC News they are running into a brick wall with voters.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally, March 2, 2024, in Greensboro, NC. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)
Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), for instance, is quoted in the story saying it is time for Biden to step up and prove he can lead the Democrat Party.
“Biden stood up in front of the whole world and said, ‘I’m ready. I’m the guy who can take down Donald Trump,’” Smith said. “So, he goddamn well better do it. We don’t have time for him to be worried about whether or not people are saying things right or the poll numbers are where they should be. I want focused energy and not defensive anger.”
Other Democrats like Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and former Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), while effusively praising Biden, seemed to strike the tone in quotes to the NBC News crew that they understand Democrats have not been effective in messaging on behalf of the administration and that the White House has done a poor job communicating what Biden’s team sees as wins on policy matters.
President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol, Thursday March 7, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Some other anonymous Democrats are quoted too, suggesting that Biden is angry with himself for not being “more forceful” with White House staff.
“He’s probably a little mad at himself for not being more forceful with the staff,” one person said.
But top campaign advisers signaled to NBC News they are hopeful that now that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are hitting the campaign trail a bit more that things might turn around for them.
“The president and his advisers have all been eager for him to be out there more and planned for that to take place at the start of the election year, as has been the norm for past incumbents seeking re-election,” one person said.