Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Friday, August 20th. I'm Nyla Boudou. Here's

what we're covering today. The view on the ground from Haiti. Plus, the case for starting

holiday shopping now. But first, today's one big thing. How America feels about President

Biden after a turbulent week? It's an interesting moment for President

Biden right now. As the American public reacts to his decisions around Afghanistan, alongside

his handling of the Delta variant surge and the economic impacts of COVID-19. And while

it's hard to say exactly where American opinions fall right now, polling shows the approval

ratings honeymoon is over for the president. On Fridays, we often talk politics with Margaret

Talib Axios' managing editor for politics. And she's with me to talk about what we know

and do not know about President Biden's path ahead. Hey, Margaret.

Good morning, Nyla. First things first, what do we know about how Americans are reacting

to President Biden's leadership in this moment? I don't think that this news has settled

yet in most Americans' minds. We know from an associate of press, NORC poll, that was

taken August 12th through 16th, that a little bit more than half approve of the president

and national security issues, 52%. And we know that about two out of three in that survey

say that they don't believe the war in Afghanistan was worth fighting. But you asked how

Biden's doing. Real clear politics keeps a national polling average. This is an average

of many polls that are out there that RCP tracks. It was 55 and a half percent for Biden

when he took office. It's most recently at 49.6%. So that tells us exactly as you said that

the honeymoon is over. But what we don't know yet is how much all of this will change.

How will opinions settle as we see the images from Kabul of people passing their babies over

fences jamming onto aircraft, perhaps images of death, people being hurt or killed by the

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