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Call in the experts that know how to beat the heat conditions apply. See website for details. Hello there. I'm Kristen Welker.
I just wrapped up this week's broadcast of Meet the Press where I interviewed former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican candidate for president, and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal. Plus, Steve Kiernacki joined me to break down our new NBC News poll that shows President Biden's approval rating at the lowest level of his presidency. 40% strong majorities of voters disapprove of his handling of foreign policy and how he's handled the Israel Hamas war in particular. The president is also losing some of his core constituencies.
Notably, younger voters are breaking away. 70% of voters age 18 to 34 say they disapprove of President Biden's handling of the Israel Hamas war. Our numbers show a lot more about the state of public opinion one year out from the election. You can read all about it on NBC news.com for more on sitting here with NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles, who helped me break down some of these numbers on today's Roundtable and even broke the news of his own.
We'll have more on that in a moment. Ryan, welcome to Post Game. Thank you for having me, Kristen, it's a pleasure. It's great to have you here.
Let's start with these numbers because I know you've been talking to some folks within Biden world in the Biden campaign to get their reaction. The real stunner in these numbers are it's really twofold. One, that for the first time in the history of our poll, the former President Trump beats President Biden. And then, number two, he's getting low marks on foreign policy.
This is a signature issue right now. Voters and younger voters in particular are abandoning him on this issue. And I think it demonstrates more than anything the divide between younger and older voters when it comes to the situation in the Middle East. And Biden certainly comes from an era of American politics where the United States supported and defended Israel regardless of the situation.
And that's not to say that most Americans don't believe in defending Israel, but there is certainly a large swath of the country that's concerned about the humanitarian crisis that's taking place in Gaza right now, and particularly these young voters who have a real concern about it and in particular in some really important states for president by Michigan being probably the most obvious example. It's a great point. And one of our pollsters said that they were just so surprised by these numbers in part because they can't remember a time when a foreign entanglement that didn't involve U.S. troops had the capacity to transform the electorate.
And this is a moment where we're seeing that happen, Ryan, where foreign policy is a major issue in this poll. It comes as you have this new reporting, the urgency that lawmakers feel to get something done on this issue when they return from Thanksgiving break. Yeah, I mean, Israel's part of Ukraine is part of it. What's happening in the South Pacific is part of it.
What's happening at the southern border is part of it. And that's why, you know, we kind of fanned out to congressional leaders here right after they left for Thanksgiving to find out what the urgency is going to be. They've got a really short window of time to try and push through a major supplemental package that's directly aimed at these conflict zones. And there is not a broad consensus about the best way to package all these things together.
I think that if you it's interesting for president, I think three things can be true. A, most members of Congress support aid to Ukraine, Israel, support fixes at the border, including funding for the border, and support something to support Taiwan. Most members of Congress support that. Most Republican members of Congress support this.
But there's still the real possibility that it doesn't pass simply because there is that small faction of conservative Republicans and House of Representatives that carries so much sway over what does and does not get to the floor of Congress. And so, I mean, if you just said up and down vote, you probably see this package sail through without any issue. But because of that divide within the Republican Party on the House side, it's going to make it that much more difficult to do. It's so interesting in the divide on the Republican side is you have those conservative members you're talking about saying we don't want to write a blank check to Ukraine, kind of the easiest language to boil it down.
And that's where the sticking point becomes, does this get done in one package? Does it get done in two packages or even more? But a lot of folks who support aid to Ukraine, a lot of those lawmakers, the president, the White House believe if Ukraine is not tied to Israel. Right.
That the chances that it is going to get done in the near term or at all are really done in jeopardy. Yeah. And leverage is such an important part of the negotiating process when it comes to Congress. And I think what you're, you're going to see the administration hope to do and probably led by the Senate majority of the, even to a certain extent the Senate minority leader, Mitchell Connell, who is as strong as anybody on capitalism relates to Ukraine, is trying to convince these conservatives that have concerns about the continued funding to Ukraine by saying let's put together some sort of border package that increases funding for border security but also changes policy at the border.
And that I think is something the White House is going to be open to because as our poll shows, as that work club you showed on the broadcast today show, the border is an issue that not just Republicans are concerned about anymore. It covers a wide swath. So if he can pass a package that gets Ukraine and Israel done well at the same time doing something to alleviate the stress on the border, that could be one issue for him in the general election as well. So that's what they're trying to do is find that sweet spot where they get all those things together and get it over the finish line.
It's such a great point that for Democrats, including being able to say they did something on the border, which is one of their frankly, areas of vulnerability, they will acknowledge could be significant, could be significant for President Biden as he tries to turn these poll numbers around. I do want to talk about Israel. Obviously we're talking about today this breaking news that they're closing in potentially on a deal to release some hostages in exchange for pausing the fighting. John Finer, the deputy national security adviser, said to me that they're closer than ever to a potential deal.
You very clearly laid out on the show that the pressure for the president right now is to show he can get something done. And if he were to get, and not just he, if US Israeli Hamas negotiators were to reach some agreement that could be significant. And then I guess the question becomes what happens next? How long is that cause in fighting?
Because there's so much pressure to stop the fighting and intimidate the civilians, it doesn't always seem to come back to the hostages. I mean, obviously there's a much broader long term issue that needs to be solved in the Middle east, but the short term issue really hinges on the hostages. The reason that Israel is so unwilling to let up on these constant bombardment of Gaza is because they want those hostages brought back securely. And there is a sense that if they can negotiate some sort of release of most of or all these hostages, that alleviates pressure on every level.
Right. That gives Israel the ability to take a step back and say we don't need to continue putting all these innocent Palestinians at risk. And that is going to win President Biden a lot of goodwill, not just with these supporters where he's leading these young voters that are concerned about innocent Palestinians, but also with Jewish Americans and supporters of Israel. They just want to see those hostages brought home.
So that is something that they have to solve in the interim. Now, you know, that's obviously an opportunity for them, but it's a huge risk as well, because if something goes wrong with the hostages, if there's more loss of life, if that becomes a flashpoint, and then Israel's forced to even increase the amount of bombardment and increase their military presence in Gaza, that makes the situation a lot more complicated. So this is a high stakes moment for the Biden administration to try and fix that. It's a really important point, Ryan, that this is yet another major test within the task that the administration is already facing as handling of this.
And of course, it comes against the backdrop of something that we talked about on the show and you had some really important comments about, which is the rise in anti Semitism, the rise in Islamophobia and frankly the rise in hate speech that we are seeing online. The concern that Congress feels about this, the concern that US Lawmakers feel that the White House feels. They've obviously taken this action to try to stem the flow of this on college campuses with tensions rising all across the country. Yeah.
And you know, there been a long, for a long time there's been a conversation. Right. About the Israeli government and whether or not they're too heavy handed as it relates to the Palestinian people. And that was done in more of a policy conversation.
And you could, there was a safe space to be critical of the Israeli government in a way that you could have conversation about it in a nuanced way as soon as the bullets started flying and as soon as hostages were taken, as soon as the bombs started flying, that the nuance evaporates. Right. And, and you know, whereas human beings were inclined to immediately retreat to a corner and say, I'm all for this side and we're all for that side, especially when violence is part of it. And unfortunately it's not that simple.
It is not a black and white issue. And unfortunately, the worst place to have a nuanced conversation is on TikTok. And, and I think, I think you saw the. It was a peer research earlier this week that said that 40, that young people in men respect on 80 to 35 are getting 45% of their news from TikTok.
So that means any short bursts that provide no opportunity for nuance and that, I mean, imagine being a lawmaker trying to craft policy and get reelected every two years in an environment where someone on TikTok can undermine your complete foreign policy philosophy. And so, yeah, I mean when I talk to lawmakers on this on a regular basis, there's a real frustration there that they can't just talk about these things in a way that can actually solve the problem because it's basically just going from one viral moment to the next. Yeah. And you lay out so well and the concern that this is potentially a real national security threat as well.
And this week, and it's hard to believe that we're even talking about this, but the resurfacing of a letter from Osama bin Laden that was shared by young people. One of our colleagues, Kendallinian, said that the national security community was really worried about this letter, concerned about the national security implications and concern frankly, that it was a failure of all of us who were alive during 911 to pass those lessons down. Yeah, I mean I was thinking about it as we were preparing for the show this week and you know, 911 was more than 20 years ago. So that means that there is a whole crop of voters who are active in this political process, process right now, are registered to vote who weren't alive when 911 happened.
Now I'm in my late 40s, I'm late 40s. So am I. And so you and I as young journalists were facing, I mean, living with this, starting our career. So for us it's visceral.
Right. The idea that anyone could excuse the acts of 911 just seems like completely foreign concept. But if you didn't live through that, if you don't understand what that was like, it makes it that much easier to open the door to read some letter by a terrorist and actually accept that point of view. And that's what we're dealing with in this current environment.
Now when we were in high school, there wasn't TikTok. So we learned about Pearl, we learned about Auschwitz and learned about all these things in a responsible through books. Right. I think Colleen Cooper said that on the set that she banning books is part of this problem.
Right. Because these young people are this information from reputable, credible sources. They're getting it in 15 to 20 second bursts on social media. Such an important point.
I do want to finally just ask you about something else that you will be working on after Thanksgiving, which is the move to oust Congressman George Santos. Of course the Ethics committee came back, Ryan, with this damning report about Congressman Santos and what was interesting to me is that a lot of his colleagues said we're not going to weigh in, we are going to give him the benefit of the doubt until this ethics report comes out. We want to see what it says. Well, here's the report.
And now of course some of his colleagues are taking action to have him removed. What are you going to be watching for and do you anticipate it's going to happen? It was funny I was thinking about this. It's been such a drawn out process, you know, from.
I mean, yes, it has been. There are people calling for him to even was sworn in when that first New York Times report came out about the inconsistencies in his biography. And since then the pile of allegations of him keeps growing. Seth Meyers picked on me the other night because I called the report shocking.
How could this be shocking given everything we know about Dorset doesn't fair point. I miss that. I'll have to go back and watch. But I think what was shocking about it was that it's hard to believe that there was even so much more.
How come that he was using campaign funds to be on the adult website OnlyFans and was going for these designer clothes and all that. But I think while the point I'm trying to make here is that while it seems like a kind of long drawn out process, it's going to move really quick. Interesting. I mean I think there's the possibility now that he's gone before the second week in December, certainly I think before the new year because the critical mass has now been met.
Every excuse that his fellow members of Congress have made to not vote to expel him has been met. And I think Ken Buck, who he was on Andrew Mitchell's program this week right after the ethics report came out. He's one of these kind of Bulgarian institutionalists. It's like process, we gotta let this process play out.
And then he read the report, he's like, nah, this is a bridge too far. So I think it probably moved pretty quickly. And when you see that type of a shift you get the sense of where the wind is blowing. Yeah.
And the other thing too is that Speaker Johnson put out a statement that didn't say much. But the fact that it didn't say much, spoke said everything. You know, vote your conscious basically which you know. And for somebody who this is going to be difficult for him, right.
He's going to lose an accountable Republican vote and there's a real possibility that a Democrat fills that seat once we get to that point. So the stakes here are high for him to just allow his members to vote any way they see fit on this. But I do think that that's probably the strongest signal that Santos dates are numbered. That is high stakes.
Most important question, right. Are you ready for Thanksgiving? It's probably a better question for my wife Gary. So it's a better question for my husband John since we work so much.
But I will say I floated the idea my wife a week or two ago. What would you think about having all my family come to town and that and that's how many people. So that's my parents. I have two sisters and a brother and it's a total of nine grandchildren with my kids and my sisters.
So we're have a very full house at our house for Thanksgiving. But we're thrilled. It's going be so much fun And I think it's the first time like my entire nuclear family has been together Thanksgiving in like five or six years. My wife's got a huge.
I was going to say your wife sounds like an amazing superwoman. Obviously she has on many levels. But I got to give my brother in law Nathan Ashley, who's my sister's husband, he is going to team up and cook with her. So they got a whole they've been texting each other and they got working on the menu and getting everything together.
That's great. Well there are only about five of us so people just come over to your house please. Could you imagine that be great. It sounds absolutely wonderful.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thankful for you Chris. Thank you. I am thankful for you really.
I just really enjoy having you with Friendly Valley. Thanks very much. Yeah, thanks for being here.