Joe Biden spoke today on the recently downgraded hurricane, Tropical Storm Henri, that was bearing down on the East Coast of the United States. He also spoke about Afghanistan.
Now, maybe he thought talking about the storm would be a distraction from Afghanistan. But, not so much.
Even his remarks about the storm were a bit messed up. He repeated the same thing twice — that Hurricane Henri had now been downgraded to a tropical storm — as though he had no idea he said it the first time.
Then, at a time when people would be primarily thinking about their personal safety, Biden, incredibly, was talking about making sure that people were social distancing and telling them they should get vaccinated during it. Is he kidding? It’s a major storm event; that really isn’t the thing that should be top on you list at this point.
He also seemed to not remember the name of the FEMA head, whom he supposedly had contact with.
So he didn’t exactly help himself, and it didn’t get any better when he moved on to the subject of Afghanistan.
Biden said that it didn’t matter when he pulled out — there was always going to be “pain and loss and heartbreaking images you see on television.”
I’m so tired of this repeated lie he tells. No, it wasn’t inevitable; it’s completely because of his failure to act earlier. There are now reports of twenty people dead at the airport since this started. People, including a little, two-year-old girl crushed to death because of the desperation.
Seven people were crushed yesterday after Joe Biden said no one was dying at the airport. That’s all on him and he keeps acting like the people are dismissible, collateral damage who would have died anyway. That’s sick. This is supposed to be the empathetic guy? Not to mention, the horrible way he dealt with the allies and how this looks to our credibility all around the world. Was that all inevitabl, too, Joe? Tony Blair and Boris Johnson don’t think so.
Whenever Biden is asked about how he went about the withdrawal, he tries to change the question to “should there have been a withdrawal?” He’s doing that because he knows that withdrawal was popular and he has a memorized answer. But, he’s also trying to avoid the question about his own failed actions.
Another reporter tries to ask him that again, in the context of asking about a poll that says Americans do not approve of how he’s handled the. The reporter asks him, almost apologizing. This time, instead of getting confrontational, Biden tries to laugh it off. Also not a good look, to be laughing when you’re told that America doesn’t think you are competent.
But perhaps the worst thing was when he appeared to take credit for the actions of “veterans groups” and other folks who have been doing incredible things to save people – because the Biden Administration is failing to do the job that they should be doing.
Yes, it’s the best of America that the military and all these other people are stepping up. But they shouldn’t have had to deal with this emergency. He not only put us in this situation, but now wants to glom onto what others are doing to pick up the pieces. He ended by saying he’s convinced he’d done everything right. That’s is just a little too much.
Let’s praise the actual people doing things here — the military on the ground from a variety of countries, and the veterans’ groups that he mentioned. This also includes an amazing coalition of thousands of people that Afghanistan war veteran Matt Zeller has been involved with.
It’s a network of “hundreds of thousands” of people, Zeller said, including analysts using satellite imagery to locate Taliban checkpoints surrounding the Kabul airport, who are now coordinating to help evacuate Afghan interpreters from the country.
He said it started as an “army of veterans” getting pinged by Afghans, but that the network has grown to include organizations for human rights, faith and political advocacy.
“It’s incredible,” Zeller said. “It’s not just veterans. Literally it’s pastors, it’s my mom, it’s my relatives, people who have never served in Afghanistan … widows, widowers, children of people who served.”
“We’ve had intel analysts who have come and started doing satellite imagery analysis and actually putting together products for people where they’re mapping out Taliban checkpoints in real time using social media data” to provide safe routes to the airport, Zeller told Fox News.
Zeller then turned his attention to the one thing missing in the effort.
Zeller said the campaign to evacuate the interpreters “is a whole of America effort … minus the one guy, the only guy, who can give the order to actually truly save these people,” referring to President Biden.
“I was appalled that the secretary of defense said he didn’t have the ability to guarantee the safe movement of Americans to the airport in Kabul,” Zeller told Fox News. “He absolutely does.”
“He has the United States military,” he continued. “What he doesn’t have is the orders to move those people.”