Joe Biden delivered one of the worst speeches in modern presidential history Monday afternoon after the political pressure of his Afghanistan failure became too much to continue hiding from. The President spent 15 minutes blaming everyone else, including Afghanis who helped US forces, for the current disastrous withdrawal effort before he proclaimed “the buck” stops with him. It was a surreal scene in which what he was saying was quite literally the opposite of reality.
As to the specific chaos we’ve seen the last several days, Biden essentially pretended it wasn’t happening, choosing to only focus on the issue of withdrawal, not how the withdrawal was being incompetently carried out.
Unsurprisingly, MSNBC’s Brian Williams was very impressed by it all, asserting that Biden had taken full responsibility for what was transpiring even though he clearly didn’t. That’s when U.S. Army veteran Matt Zeller was brought on to respond.
What transpired was one of the most brutal beatdowns I’ve ever witnessed on cable news. Just watch it. You won’t regret it.
It’s probably good that they cut away from Williams because his face couldn’t have been projecting anything good as his guest countered everything he had just said with cold, hard facts.
Zeller opens by busting Williams’ chops, saying that it’s like they watched “two different speeches.” He further noted the intense gaslighting that was present in the claim that Biden “owned it” in regards to the current crisis. The president did no such thing, instead, blaming Trump, the Afghanis, and everyone in-between. At one point, Biden claimed the problem was that the qualifying Afghanis had not left sooner, but that absconds from the fact that the administration was giving assurances that it would be safe to remain in the country until just a week ago.
Zeller, who runs an organization dedicated to rescuing Afghanis who helped U.S. forces during the war from certain death, further lit into Biden, noting that he had given lists of names of people ready to leave and be processed. He also provided the administration with multiple plans on how to accomplish that feat at the beginning of the year. Zeller says he was ignored time and again.
Later in the clip, the issue of blaming the Afghani armed forces is addressed, with Zeller landing more blows, talking about the lack of logistics that ultimately led to the collapse of the ASF. While the Afghan forces had fought bravely for years, including 60,000 dead, the situation had become untenable for most of them. Soldiers were not getting paid, they lacked ammunition, and they had been left in locations without the possibility of resupply. Because Biden disallowed foreign contractors from remaining to help, an inexplicable decision, equipment wasn’t being maintained and the Air Force was essentially grounded.
Zeller concluded by saying how appalled he was by Biden’s speech and the false assertions made in it. With that came the end of the most thorough decimation of the President I’ve seen since he took office, and it happened in just two minutes.
Will the rest of the crew at MSNBC get the message? Don’t hold your breath.