A new poll conducted in the wake of two explosions in Afghanistan finds that a majority of registered voters say President Joe Biden deserves blame for the attacks.
According to a YouGov poll, 40% of registered voters say Biden deserves a “great deal” of blame, and 16% say he deserves a “fair amount.”
Meanwhile, 16% say he does not deserve much blame, and 20% say he deserves no blame.
Thirty-two percent of Democrats say the president deserves a “fair amount” of blame for the attacks, while a majority, 60%, say he does not deserve much or any blame.
However, 59% of independents and 89% of Republicans say Biden deserves blame for the explosions.
40% of voters place “a great deal” of blame on President Biden for the attack on service members at the Kabul airport.https://t.co/1uNHYsRh84 pic.twitter.com/8Ypha4sP2O
— YouGov America (@YouGovAmerica) August 27, 2021
The poll also found that 47% of voters believe it is right for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan, while 38% say it is wrong.
The survey comes after two explosions in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed at least 170, including 13 U.S. service members and Afghan civilians.
Biden was asked after the attacks on Thursday, “You said the buck stops with you. Do you bear any responsibility for the way that things have unfolded in the last two weeks?”
“I bear responsibility for fundamentally all that’s happened of late, but here’s the deal,” he responded.
Biden noted that former President Donald Trump struck an agreement with the Taliban “that he would get all American forces out of Afghanistan by May 1.”
He added, “In return, the commitment was made – and that was a year before. In return, he was given a commitment that the Taliban would continue to attack others but would not attack any American forces.”
The president has previously defended the decision to withdraw all U.S. forces as he argued that there would never be a good time to leave the country.
“No one can name for me a time when this would end. And what constitutes defeat of the Taliban? What constitutes defeat? Would we have left then? Let’s say they surrender like before. OK. Do we leave then? Do you think anybody… the same people who think we should stay would’ve said, ‘No, good time to go’? We spent over $1 trillion, George, 20 years. There was no good time to leave,” he told ABC News last week.
