At the beginning of the month, we saw that the honeymoon for Joe Biden was well and truly over in an Economist/YouGov poll that showed Joe Biden’s numbers, artificially pumped up by constant praise from media, finally start crashing to earth when reality began to set in with his many crises including the border and inflation.

As we reported, several of those numbers have special significance given the disaster currently unfolding in Afghanistan.

38% were confident “in Joe Biden’s ability to deal wisely with an international crisis,” while 46% are “uneasy.” 41% thought Joe Biden was “honest and trustworthy” but 42% thinks he is not. While his approval was still on the positive in the poll, it dipped under 50% with 46% having any approval to 44% disapproving.

But perhaps one of the most troubling numbers for Biden was in response to “Is Biden a strong or weak leader?” 53% said he was somewhat weak or very weak, 47% said he was strong or somewhat strong.

By August 12, in a Fox poll, 79% were also blaming Biden’s government policies for the spike in inflation. That’s a huge number, and it showed 86% of Americans were concerned with inflation, another huge number. He was also underwater on his handling of the economy — 47% approving to 49% not.

Now, Biden’s weakness has just been exposed before the world with the horror show that is unfolding in Afghanistan. He had months to engineer some kind of a withdrawal and it’s hard to believe that it could have unfolded any worse than is happening now.

In the backdrop of that, the poll numbers are getting even worse for Biden.

President Biden has just slipped below 50% approval for the first time in https://t.co/qbjOFfwniL polling average
https://t.co/Lo2TyBa1pW

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 16, 2021

538 has the average poll numbers for today and for the first time, the average has dipped below 50%. The polls were before the fall in Afghanistan, so that’s probably not even really factored into the numbers yet.

Under 50% pic.twitter.com/1ZOxdIzbcN

— Dr. Nickarama (@nickaramaOG) August 16, 2021

Here are some of the polls that are part of the average, where you can see Rasmussen and Trafalgar have him underwater.

https://mobile.twitter.com/nickaramaOG/status/1427289501823549443

Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter said this wasn’t looking good for Biden.

Even before the Afghanistan debacle, approval ratings for Biden were already on the decline. In this polarized era, I don’t expect to see a significant sudden drop, but given that he was already on a downslope, this isn’t going to help. https://t.co/Ocdftwbzsm

— Amy Walter (@amyewalter) August 16, 2021

Once the Afghanistan numbers are factored in, expect a further big dive. Even Democrats on social media are having a hard time trying to justify Biden’s actions on this one.