Mr Biden was asked by a reporter during a press conference how he planned to win back the moderates and independent voters who supported him in 202
Mr Biden was asked by a reporter during a press conference how he planned to win back the moderates and independent voters who supported him in 2020 but appeared to be abandoning him in recent opinion polls. A Gallup poll released on Wednesday revealed that four in ten American adults approved of his handling of the presidency.
This reflects the general consensus in approval ratings during the last few months, although a Quinnipiac poll last week showed a much lower figure.
The poll placed his approval rating down at 33 percent, but was brushed off by the White House as an anomaly.
Dismissing the findings in an almost Trump-reminsincent manner, Mr Biden replied: “I don’t believe the polls.”
In the poll, almost half of registered voters said the president is not “stable”, with 43 percent believing him to be stable.
The president, who is marking his first anniversary in office, was asked by a reporter to comment on the results of a new poll questioning Mr Biden’s mental welfare.
In a delicately-phrased question, James Rosen put to Mr Biden: “A poll released this morning by Politico-Morning Consult found 49 percent of registered voters disagreeing with the statement ‘Joe Biden is mentally fit.’”
He continued: “Not even a majority of Democrats who responded strongly affirmed that statement.”
Mr Rosen then asked the president his thoughts on why “such large segments of the American electorate have come to harbor such profound concerns about your cognitive fitness.”
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He denied “overpromising” with election commitments and claimed he has “outperformed” expectations during an exceptionally turbulent first year as president.
He also reiterated his defence of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, saying he would not apologise for the decision.
He called Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires”, adding that the $1 billion America was spending in Afghanistan was unsustainable.
He said: “There is no way to get out of Afghanistan after 20 years, easily.
“Not possible, no matter when you did it.”
He continued: “I make no apologies for what I did.
“We can’t solve every problem and so I don’t view that as a competence issue.”
Mr Biden also conceded that the US was “not as unified as it should be”, but that it was a more unified country than before.
He added: “We’re going to see more change in the next 10 years as we saw in the last 15 years.
“I think you’re going to see an awful lot of transition.
“The question is whether we can keep up with that.”
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