A former spokesperson for first lady Jill Biden has called for for heads to roll at the White House in response to President Biden’s increasingly bleak polling numbers.
Michael LaRosa, who served as the first lady’s press secretary from January 2021 to August 2022, faulted the 80-year-old commander-in-chief’s team for falling down on the messaging front.
“New CNN Poll: Trump has higher favorables+Biden has higher unfavorable. This is inexcusable for man universally known for his character+intregity. It’s a result of failing to respond to smears, lies, conspiracies, and disinfo for months allowing a void of info to be filled,” LaRosa wrote in an X thread Tuesday night.
The former White House staffer was referring to a newly released CNN/SSRS poll in which Biden scored a 36% to 59% favorable-to-unfavorable rating, while Trump recorded a 38% to 56% favorable-to-unfavorable rating.
Trump also beat Biden 49% to 45% among registered voters in that poll.
“I’ve been a squeaky wheel for months arguing this is the wrong approach to GOP attacks on Biden’s integrity, reputation, + family,” LaRosa added. “Poll after poll validates everything I’ve been saying+writing for months. Changing his team now will look like he actually cares+sees same #’s [sic] we do.”
LaRosa, a former MSNBC producer, has been publicly fretting from the sidelines for months over Biden’s communications strategy, calling for a more strident defense against Republican criticism.
Some prominent Democrats went into panic mode over the weekend after a New York Times/Siena College poll of six battleground states found Trump leading Biden in five of them.
On Oct. 27, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) announced a long shot primary challenge in which he highlighted both Biden’s dismal polling numbers and widespread public concerns about the president’s age.
However, many allies of the president were breathing a sigh of relief after Tuesday’s off-year elections saw Democrats secure the Kentucky governorship, both houses of the Virginia legislature and a Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat — while Ohio voters enshrined the right to an abortion in the state Constitution.
“Voters across the political spectrum once again showed up and voted for our agenda and rejected the dangerous MAGA extremism that has come to define today’s Republican Party at every level,” Biden 2024 campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.
“We are confident the American people will send President Biden and Vice President Harris back to the White House to keep working for them.”
The Democratic successes follow a better-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterms, which also served to briefly quell concerns about the president’s political capital heading into 2024.
Some analysts have pointed out that former President Barack Obama’s polling numbers were similarly underwater around this point in his presidency before his re-election victory in 2012.
Biden and Trump are overwhelming favorites to square off in a rematch of their 2020 presidential contest.