Biden flees Washington as documents scandal engulfs White House and its approval rating plummets to 40%: He travels to Northern California to see how devastating storms have caused damage
- Biden is taking a day trip to California on Thursday to look at storm damage
- This allows him to escape the scandal surrounding his handling of secret files
- He made no public appearances at all at the White House on Wednesday
President Joe Biden flies to California’s central coast on Thursday to look at areas devastated by extreme weather events.
Though billed as an opportunity to meet with first responders and conduct survey recovery efforts, it offers a chance to escape Washington, DC, where its administration is under fire for handling a documents scandal.
On Thursday, it emerged that his popularity had dropped to 40 percent, almost the lowest level of his presidency.
Karine Jean-Pierre, his publicist, was bombarded for days with questions about who knew what and when after government documents were found first in a private office used by the president and then at his Delaware home.
President Joe Biden faces a barrage of questions about the documents scandal in the White House. He escapes Washington for a whistlestop visit to California on Thursday
Workers are clearing the remains of a tree after it fell at a mall in Los Angeles, California this week. The state has been pounded by an ongoing series of atmospheric flows, bringing heavy rains, winds and widespread flooding
And Biden has ignored shouted questions on the subject in every White House for the past several years.
He did not appear in public on Wednesday. And on Thursday he was to be joined by a small, traveling press pool at events not open to the general press.
A Portal-Ipsos poll found that just 40 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s performance as president.
The three-day poll was conducted as the fallout from the documents scandal swept the White House and Biden’s rating was near its lowest despite improving economic numbers and decent interim results.
Meanwhile, Biden is expected in an area of California that has been swamped by rain and snow since late December, downing trees, triggering landslides and cutting power out of thousands of homes.
Weeks of extreme weather meant even a relatively benign system was enough Monday to trigger fresh flood and mudslide warnings as the state remains saturated.
In total, nine consecutive rainstorms have hit the state since December 26, killing at least 20 people.
Their intensity was so great that meteorologists call them “atmospheric fluxes”.
Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday that Deanne Criswell, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will accompany the president to California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom will join the tour.
How the government documents scandal has played out since secret records were found in Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center on Nov. 2