Chuck Todd's Surprisingly Brutal Reality Check for Joe Biden on His Afghanistan Legacy

As we previously reported, not only have Vice President Kamala Harris’ approval numbers taken quite a tumble over the last couple of months as she has bumbled through one disaster after another (the border crisis, which she’s supposed to be handling, and Afghanistan), but President Joe Biden is in hot water himself with voters as well just seven months into his presidency.

The big hits he’s taken are over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, and Afghanistan, as you can see in the graphics below:

New @NBCNews poll: Biden’s approval rating is 49% 👍 to 48% 👎, a decline from four months ago.https://t.co/mhw75EgBkx pic.twitter.com/wkjgAkLDUM

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) August 22, 2021

The numbers for Biden were so bad that not even noted Democrat apologist Chuck Todd – who also moonlights as the host of NBC News’ “Meet the Press” program every Sunday – could sugarcoat them.

During a segment yesterday in which he went into detail on the numbers and where Biden fared the worst in comparison to just a few months ago, Todd pointed out that the Afghanistan debacle was “threatening to be a forever stain on Mr. Biden’s presidency”:

“Look, politicians from both parties and four administrations have their fingerprints on America’s 20-year Afghanistan policy, but it is now President Biden who has become the face of this disastrous withdrawal. We have a new NBC News poll taken as Americans were witnessing this chaos in Kabul. Among all adults, Mr. Biden’s approval rating stands at a fairly mediocre 49%, 48% disapproving. In our polarized politics, that isn’t the end of the world, but if you compare that to last April, when the numbers were 53% approve, 39% disapprove, you start to see some erosion.

Now, not surprisingly, approval of Mr. Biden’s handling of the situation in Afghanistan as we’re watching all of this is extremely low, just 25%. But the president’s overall slippage is less about Afghanistan than about two other issues. Approval of his handling of the coronavirus is down a whopping 16 points — just 53% approve now, from 69% in April. And approval of his handling of the economy is standing at 47% — that’s upside down now because it was at 52. Mr. Biden has weeks to set things right in Afghanistan, and more than three years until the next presidential election. But let’s be honest, with headlines like this one in The Economist [“Biden’s Debacle”], the human tragedy at the end of this forever war is threatening to be a forever stain on Mr. Biden’s presidency.”

Watch:

Wow, @chucktodd reports on bad polling for Biden during Sunday’s @MTP, warns of “forever stain” on his presidency pic.twitter.com/btwLwPAE2n

— Kyle Drennen (@kjdrennen) August 23, 2021

I don’t think at this point that the human tragedy component of what’s taking place in Afghanistan is merely “threatening” to be a “forever stain” on Joe Biden’s presidency. I think it already is one. The scenes are just too heartbreaking, too brutal, whether they be from women pleading for help, young Afghan children and even babies being thrown over walls and barbed wire to get them to safety, Afghans falling to their deaths after clinging to U.S. transport planes, or stranded Americans desperately trying to get help and having to look beyond the Biden administration to get it.

That said, when you’re a Democrat and you seem to have lost even Chuck Todd – who rarely meets a Democrat he won’t cover for and a Republican he won’t demonize, that’s saying something.