President Joe Biden’s summer messaging strategy had already been questioned before his awkward silence and then reemergence amid the dramatic collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
The White House announced Monday that Biden would finally address the public after the Taliban’s stunning resurgence in Afghanistan last week, culminating in insurgents recapturing the capital Kabul over the weekend. The president has been criticized for relying on a defiant statement justifying his decision to withdraw troops rather than delivering remarks.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy, Jon Finer, had replaced Secretary of State Antony Blinken as Biden’s chief spokesmen on TV by Monday morning. But their promise that the world would hear from Biden “soon” did not stop mounting pressure as chaos continues to unfold in Afghanistan, two decades after the United States invaded to deny al Qaeda a safe haven following the terrorist attacks of Sept. `11, 2001.
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Biden’s delay in publicly speaking about Afghanistan punctuates a week of bungled White House summer messaging. His absence has meant cable news networks have simply rerun footage of U.S. diplomats, citizens, and allies being evacuated frenziedly from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, a process that is incomplete. Video of the president insisting last month the draw down would not resemble America’s hurried departure from then-Saigon after the Vietnam War has similarly been replayed.
“To be fair, the helicopter has been the mode of transport from our embassy to the airport for the last 20 years,” Sullivan said Monday regarding the comparisons.
Biden has not spoken live in public about Afghanistan for six days, and his press secretary, Jen Psaki, has not stood behind her podium since last Wednesday. The State Department is set to brief reporters after the president’s speech, but the White House is not poised to take questions, even after seven people died at the airport during the pandemonium.
Biden’s early return to the White House from Camp David is the latest scheduling update to his summer vacation plans. He was originally slated to come back on Wednesday.
The White House also appeared surprised last week when the Senate passed Biden’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan bricks-and-mortar infrastructure bill. Aides had indicated there would be no press briefings in mid-August while the president was due to spend time either at his lake house in Wilmington, Delaware, or oceanfront property a couple of hours away in Rehoboth Beach. That guidance was recanted as the Senate closed in on passing Biden’s infrastructure proposal, but the White House still seemed unprepared to tout the accomplishment.
For University of Michigan debate director and co-author of Mr. Speaker, The President of the United States: Addresses to a Joint Session of Congress, Aaron Kall, the White House should have at least anticipated the need for briefings. Messaging is particularly important given the bipartisan infrastructure measure’s narrow pathway through the House and that Biden has to simultaneously promote its accompanying $3.5 trillion social welfare and climate framework, according to Kall.
“President Biden’s administration must sell the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill specifically to Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have concerns about the size of the package and impact on the deficit,” Kall told the Washington Examiner. “They can take their message directly to the public to point out how well it polls with the American public since the two senators don’t want to be viewed as spoilers and put the passage of the entire infrastructure package in jeopardy.”
Although Biden remained at Camp David over the weekend, his team shared a photo Sunday of the president during a national security meeting after the Taliban stormed Kabul and former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country. The image supplemented a lengthy statement circulated the previous day in which Biden defended the withdrawal and blamed his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, for exacerbating the situation.
“Over our country’s 20 years at war in Afghanistan, America has sent its finest young men and women, invested nearly $1 trillion dollars, trained over 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, equipped them with state-of-the-art military equipment, and maintained their air force as part of the longest war in US history,” the president wrote. “One more year, or five more years, of US military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country. And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”
But the White House’s steps did not prevent critics, such as the Republican National Committee and GOP opposition research firm America Rising, from seizing on the problematic optics.
“There’s an ongoing foreign policy disaster unfolding in Afghanistan and Joe Biden is on vacation,” RNC spokesman Tommy Piggott emailed reporters Monday.
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“Despite Joe Biden’s assurances to the contrary, Afghanistan is falling under Taliban control at an alarming pace while the president goes on vacation,” America Rising spokesman Joe Gierut wrote days prior.
