White House staff invited to ‘morale booster’ party as Biden bleeds support: report

News

By Victor Nava

White House chief of staff Jeff Zients on Wednesday invited hundreds of executive office staffers to a party intended to raise spirits as President Biden’s approval rating has plunged ahead of his 2024 re-election push.

The off-campus shindig will be held at a private venue in Northern Virginia later this month and is being described as a “morale booster,” according to Axios. 

Zients, who is believed to be the president’s wealthiest aide, is using his own money to throw the bash, according to the outlet. Disclosure forms indicate Zients’ net-worth is between $89.3 million and $442.8 million.

“To ensure we are able to include as many staff as possible, this invitation is non-transferrable and does not include a guest,” Zients wrote in his invite to White House staffers. 

The party comes as Biden, 81, enters the new year with a lower approval rating than any of his seven predecessors at a similar point in their first term, according to a Gallup poll.

Just 39% of Americans approve of the president’s job performance in the Oval Office, the survey found. 

Biden’s support among black voters – one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal voting blocs – has also plummeted to 63%, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Monday. 

Black voters overwhelmingly supported Biden over Donald Trump in 2020, by a 92%-8% margin, according to the Pew Research Center. 

The USA Today/Suffolk University poll has Trump, the Republican presidential primary front-runner, beating Biden in the 2024 general election, 39%-37%, with unnamed third-party candidates receiving  17% support. 

Trump’s lead grew by a percentage point when respondents were given the option to support seven named third-party candidates. 

Biden, already the oldest president in US history, would be 86 by the end of a second term, and his advanced age is a concern for voters, numerous polls show. 

A New York Times poll released in November found 71% of swing-state voters say Biden is “too old to be an effective president,” versus 39% who said so of the 77-year-old Trump.

A Wall Street Journal poll released in September found 73% of registered voters believe Biden is too old, versus 47% who said the same of Trump.

Biden has been warned by top aides and his wife Jill to rest more and be more mindful of his health going into 2024, Axios reported last month. 

“He is his own worst enemy when it comes to his schedule,” one ex-Biden adviser told the outlet, which reported in April that aides have trouble booking presidential events at certain times of the day because of the president’s usual 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule. 

“His age is clearly something voters are worried about, fairly or not,” another former White House official told the outlet, “and yelling, ‘Nuh-uh’ isn’t cutting it.”