President Donald Trump said Tuesday “George Washington would have had a hard time beating me” before the coronavirus pandemic struck the US and hurt the economy.

"I don’t know if you’ve seen, the polls have been going up like a rocket ship. George Washington would have had a hard time beating me before the plague came in, before the China plague. And then, you know, like every other nation, like other countries, when you get hit, it affects you, and we went down a little bit," Trump told Hugh Hewitt in an interview with Salem Radio Networks.

Even though Trump blames the media and China for tanking poll numbers, the RealClearPolitics average for the president’s job approval rating is at 43 percent as of Tuesday. At the beginning of the pandemic, Trump’s average rating was at 47.4 percent on April 1, indicating that Americans’ overall disapproval of the president has increased amid the pandemic. 

RealClearPolitics also reported a drop in approval for Trump’s handling of the coronavirus at 38.9 percent — a figure that’s steadily declined since the end of March.

Due to the growing disapproval of Trump's handling of the virus and the economy with the unemployment rate now in double digits, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is leading in the polls. Biden currently holds a 7.2 percent margin over Trump, with 49.1 percent of support. At the beginning of June, Biden led Trump by more than 10 percent, as Biden grasped 51 percent of overall support.

Next month, the two will go head-to-head on the debate stage for the first time in a series of three debates, with Trump calling to request a fourth. The Commission on Presidential Debates, however, squashed the president’s demand.

During the radio interview, Trump said he knows “what I’m up against” since “Joe was never smart.”

"If [Biden] goes and debates, if he said 'Yes, I had a wonderful breakfast, thank you for asking the question,' they’ll give him, they’ll say it was one of the greatest answers in history. So you know, I know what I’m up against, and I had a smaller dose of it with Hillary. But Hillary was smart. Joe was never smart. Joe wasn’t smart in prime time," Trump said.

The first debate is scheduled for Sept. 29 at the University of Notre Dame, with a vice presidential debate roughly one week later at The University of Utah.

Rachel Bucchino is a reporter at the National Interest. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and The Hill.