Is the Media Turning on Biden?
Journalists finally press Biden and refuse to accept his administration’s attempt to shift blame.
It must come as a bit of a shock to Joe Biden that even Leftmedia outfits have refused to simply imbibe his administration’s equivocating on the Afghanistan disaster. In fact, some of the president’s biggest defenders in the mainstream media have actually dropped their fanboy status to engage in actual journalism, pressing him and his administration with probing questions that drop the typical Beltway spin.
For example, CNN featured former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod, who argued: “You cannot defend the execution here. This has been a disaster. … [Biden] needs to own that failure.” And that was far from the only criticism CNN offered. The network’s presidential historian, Tim Naftali, observed, “This is the Saigon moment for President Biden, and this will be a legacy, an albatross around his neck for the rest of time.”
ABC’s Martha Raddatz called it a “massive intelligence failure.” She noted: “We have been there for 20 years. We know the Taliban. We have people on the ground, and yet the U.S. was caught unaware and completely off-guard.”
Even MSNBC piled on, with Richard Engel calling Kabul “100 times worse than the humiliating American pullout from Saigon.” Bloomberg op-ed board member Bobby Ghosh blasted Biden for blaming Afghans for the collapse, telling MSNBC’s Joy Reid: “Sixty-six thousand Afghan soldiers and policemen have died in the past 20 years. Sixty-six thousand have died fighting the Taliban. It is dishonorable to claim that they didn’t do their part. … It’s very distressing to hear.”
What has a usually compliant media hitting Biden over this Afghanistan debacle is the fact that mere weeks prior, he predicted that things would play out exactly the opposite of how they’ve gone. Biden infamously declared that Afghanistan would not be another Saigon — only for it to be even worse. Even partisan Leftmedia hacks can’t dismiss the reality unfolding before their eyes.
On the one hand, Biden blames Donald Trump for setting a timeline for exiting Afghanistan, as if his hands were tied by only this Trump policy when Biden undid so many others immediately upon taking office. At the same time, Biden changed and extended Trump’s exit deadline. Then the administration blames media criticism on supposed proponents of “endless war,” as if any really existed.
Finally, perhaps media figures are noticing that Biden himself appears entirely lost and his degenerating mind is increasingly hard to ignore. He demonstrates his puppet status by continually referencing his behind-the-scenes coaching with comments to reporters like “I was told to call on you first” or “I’m not supposed to take any questions.” Biden checked his watch while on the tarmac receiving the caskets of the 13 U.S. military personnel murdered in Kabul, which further demonstrates an astounding lack of self-awareness. That was also true of his walking away from a reporter’s question on Afghanistan while visiting FEMA headquarters.
Biden’s leadership (or lack thereof) has gotten so bad that even the MSM can’t help but notice. The trouble is that his would-be replacement, who is conveniently out of the country, wouldn’t be any better. And the other unfortunate truth is that we shouldn’t expect the Leftmedia to keep doing actual journalism for long.
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- Afghanistan
- Left
- Joe Biden
- Leftmedia