President Joe Biden’s pandemic response has been criticized as the delta variant rips through unvaccinated communities, but the White House appears to prefer speaking about COVID-19 to addressing the unexpected fall of the Western-backed Afghan government.
But Biden’s awkward attempt to pivot to the coronavirus only amplified his mishandling of the United States’s withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. The president refused to answer questions as his administration struggles to evacuate tens of thousands of Americans and Afghan allies from Kabul.
BIDEN BRACES FOR POPULARITY DIP AFTER AFGHANISTAN CHAOS
Biden’s COVID-19 remarks after the White House announced it was preparing to provide booster shots to people who received their second dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines were jarring against the bright international spotlight on Afghanistan, according to Republican strategist and ad maker Brad Todd.
“He seems passive at best and absent at worst,” he said.
The administration had foreshadowed the booster shot announcement with leaks days before the Wednesday morning announcement during a COVID-19 task force press conference. But the announcement’s timing and Biden’s stilted remarks in the White House Wednesday afternoon seemed at odds with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. And that perception was exacerbated by the president not talking about Afghanistan until an interview with former President Bill Clinton staffer and ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, which aired Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Frustrated journalists scoffed audibly when Biden walked out of the East Room without taking any questions earlier in the day.
The booster announcement was slammed by the World Health Organization and humanitarian groups as developing countries remain mostly unvaccinated, effectively becoming petri dishes for future variants.
“If Joe Biden doesn’t prove he is capable of standing up to WHO on vaccinations, which we know he cares about, Americans will begin to put it all together and conclude he’s not up to the job,” Todd said.
For former Republican staffer John Pitney, an administration is constantly multitasking. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, for instance, reported this week that the U.S. was notching, on average, 500-plus “largely preventable” COVID-19 deaths a day.
So the booster shot announcement would have been newsworthy regardless of Afghanistan, according to Pitney. But “obviously,” the White House communications shop would like to shift the focus away from the “terrible first hours of the withdrawal,” the Claremont McKenna College politics professor said.
“This is reality, not an Aaron Sorkin script,” Pitney told the Washington Examiner. “If the administration can get all the Americans out safely, any political damage will be short-lived. But if there are American deaths or hostages, no amount of spin will save the day.”
Tom Cochran, a partner at public affairs firm 720 Strategies and an alumnus of former President Barack Obama’s State Department, called it “a fair assumption” that the White House was “pushing to pivot back to COVID.”
“If anything, it shows you how difficult that job is, because you’re responsible for simultaneously addressing a resurgent global pandemic and the collapse of a nation-state we fought to support over two decades,” he said. “Both are inherited crises, but the buck stops with the president, and he’s going to make controversial or unpopular decisions, I’m sure, fairly often. It’s the nature of the job.”
Afghanistan news coverage also masked other COVID-19 announcements that would have typically triggered Republican outrage and generated more negative headlines.
Biden, for one, directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to fight governors enforcing face covering and vaccination mandate bans, including through “oversight authorities and legal actions.” Cardona’s civil rights office has already sent letters to Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah for violating federal requirements to offer safe in-person learning environments.
The administration, too, rolled out a vaccine mandate for long-term care workers who look after Medicare and Medicaid enrollees.
Instead of placating the public, Biden’s sit-down with ABC underscored the work he needs to do to extract up to 15,000 Americans and 65,000 Afghan nationals from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport before his Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline.
Since last Saturday, the U.S. has airlifted roughly 7,000 people to safety from Kabul. The airfield is surrounded by Taliban fighters but is secured by 5,200 American troops, according to the White House. That is double the number that were there in the first place.
The interview handed fodder to Republicans hunting for reasons to scrutinize Biden before the 2022 and 2024 election cycles as well. The GOP has seized on the president’s insistence the Afghan forces comprised 300,000 people before it collapsed, when 119,000 were part of the Afghan National Police. Biden similarly reiterated that there are no U.S. military personnel in Syria when there are 900 servicemen and women in the country.
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“We’ve all seen the pictures. We’ve seen those hundreds of people packed in a C-17. We’ve seen Afghans falling,” Stephanopoulos said.
“That was four days ago, five days ago!” Biden replied of the 72-hour-old photos.
Biden did not have any public events on Thursday. However, the State Department and Pentagon have briefed reporters daily. Press secretary Jen Psaki has not been behind her podium since Tuesday.
