The White House wants everyone to move on from President Joe Biden’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
That was Biden’s primary message Wednesday in his pointless press conference on COVID-19. Biden talked about booster shots when a simple press release would have sufficed, and he got more attacks in on Republican governors who oppose mandatory masking for 5-year-olds. Then he walked off once again without taking a single question, even as some indeterminate number of Americans (estimated at between 10,000 and 15,000) are still stranded in Afghanistan.
Biden has only taken questions about Afghanistan from one man: George Stephanopoulos, the former press secretary and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. And that went incredibly poorly, as Biden contradicted himself repeatedly in a pathetic display of weakness and incompetence.
??: Stephanopoulos says there’s still a lot of pandemonium at the Kabul airport.
Biden: “But look, no one’s being killed right now,” then *literally knocks on wood!* What?? #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/MNHuyHle8H
— John Cooper (@thejcoop) August 19, 2021
If Biden can help it, that will be the only time he takes questions on the issue. He went on vacation as Afghanistan fell and only returned to give a brief statement absolving himself of all blame before returning to vacation. There is no press briefing scheduled for today, despite the fact that several Americans remain stranded in Afghanistan. The White House is trying to urge its media allies to move on to a new narrative. Remember the delta variant? Hey, let’s talk about those awful GOP governors again!
It’s a credit to many in the media that they have refused to let Biden brush this one under the rug — at least so far. That’s an incredibly low bar, to be sure, but Biden clearly expects them to follow his lead. After all, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying to prevent children from being forced to wear masks indefinitely even though that they are the least at-risk demographic for complications from COVID-19.
Biden doesn’t want to face the music for his disastrous decision-making. He tried hiding out, waiting for the news cycle to blow over, but that didn’t work. Now, he’s trying to change the subject. Biden failed, everyone knows he failed, and he wants to avoid having to answer for his failure, even if that means trying to shift the narrative away from Americans sitting in Afghanistan with their safety entirely in the hands of the Taliban.
