If you had to wonder why President Joe Biden’s handlers want to keep the media from asking him questions, you need only look at his interv...
If you had to wonder why President Joe Biden’s handlers want to keep the media from asking him questions, you need only look at his interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt, which aired Thursday.
There were plenty of moments to draw on as proof the president was outmatched. Biden told Holt he was “being a wise guy” for asking about inflation. He claimed to Holt “no one told me that” Afghanistan was about to fall, even though embassy staff were reportedly packed and ready to go.
And then there was the fact he had trouble even coming up with the name for Afghanistan during one part of the interview.
In a clip that’s going viral in a bad way, Biden took three tries to name the country from which his administration withdrew in disgrace, leaving Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie to wonder what would happen if the president tried to call a bingo game.
The awkward moment came as Biden tried to explain why keeping America in Afghanistan, even at low levels, wasn’t a tenable solution.
“There is no way we were ever going to unite Ukraine,” Biden said. Then: “I mean, excuse me, Iraq — Afghanistan.”
Unfortunately, three tries is only good in Wordle, not when naming which country your administration abandoned in an anarchic rush.
On Twitter, Massie — a Kentucky Republican with a noted libertarian streak — ridiculed Biden for the gaffe.
“Imagine the chaos that would ensue if he tried calling out bingo numbers at the nursing home,” he tweeted Thursday night.
Here’s a better thought: Imagine the chaos that might have been averted in Afghanistan had Joe Biden been calling bingo numbers in a nursing home, not calling the shots from the White House.
He wasn’t the only one who had a negative reaction to the clip, either:
Biden’s argument has always been that ending America’s longest war was always going to be painful. Perhaps, but what’s become clear is that it didn’t need to be this painful.
The Biden administration ignored warning signs that the country was going to fall. He acted against advice that would have kept a minimal U.S. force in the country to support Afghan troops — particularly in providing air cover, which they desperately needed.
But, according to him, he never heard about any of this — at least when Holt asked him about an Army report which blamed administration inaction for the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul last August, which was the wider context for this clip. The report included one military leader who said the administration “ignored the handwriting on the wall.”
“Another described getting folks in the embassy ready to evacuate and encountering people who were essentially in denial of the situation. Does any of that ring true to you?” Holt asked.
“No. No. That’s not what I was told,” Biden said.
“You were told that the U.S. administration officials were prepared, they knew it was time to get out?” Holt asked.
“No, what I was told — no one told me that,” Biden said. “Look, there was no good time to get out. But if we had not gotten out, they acknowledged that we would have had to put a hell of a lot more troops back in. It wasn’t just 2,000, 4,000,” Biden said.
He went on to reject the “conclusions or the accounts” in the Army report. How are we supposed to believe his recollections, however, when he can barely even remember the name of the country in question?
It’s clear evidence that it’s time for the president to be presiding over that bingo game, no matter how sloppy his number-calling may be.
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