According to NBC News, Biden lost it during a meeting with his allies in which he was informed that his polling in Michigan and Georgia, two critical battleground states, was dropping, mostly over his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Sources who spoke to NBC News said Biden “was seething” during that meeting and even “began to shout and swear.”
One of Biden’s central problems, from his perspective, is that he feels constrained by his aides.
Surrounded by protective aides who want to minimize the chances of a flub, the 81-year-old president has chafed at restraints that he sees as counter to his natural instincts as a retail politician, another person familiar with internal discussions told NBC.
He has felt cocooned at times and has been eager to get out more, meet voters face-to-face, and take the fight directly to Trump, said this person and a fourth also familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss campaign strategy and the president’s private views.
“[Biden is] probably a little mad at himself for not being more forceful with the staff,” one person told NBC News.
Unbeknownst to Biden, the problem isn’t that Americans aren’t receiving his campaign message about the direction of America and his argument that his policies are the solution to a better future. The problem is that Americans simply don’t believe it.
That’s why Biden’s job approval rating is more than 15 points underwater, in a dangerous territory where one-term presidents reside. A significant majority of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and they not only do not believe Biden is the one who can turn it around, but they believe he is the reason it’s headed in the wrong direction in the first place.