This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden calling an end to the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan effective at the end of August. A hair behind his deadline, 70% of the country finally became vaccinated against the coronavirus. And in barring the deportation of pregnant illegal immigrants, he guaranteed a whole new generation of immigrant children born into the United States, and winning birthright citizenship, thus making it virtually impossible to deport their illegal parents ever.
Grader Jed Babbin highlighted the Afghanistan withdrawal and said that the week would have been a good one if other issues had not interfered.
Jed Babbin
Grade: D-
This could have been a great week for Biden and his team, but his Thursday speech on withdrawing from Afghanistan and chief spokeswoman Jen Psaki’s gaslighting us ran down his weekly grade very quickly.
Before we get to that, we have to wonder why Biden has made no response to three days of attacks on U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq by Iranian-backed militias. Drone attacks and missile attacks are multiplying without response despite the fact that U.S. troops have been wounded, though, thankfully, none have died so far. Meanwhile, Biden is backing progressive Democrats’ effort to chop up the military chain of command by taking commanders’ authority over sexual assault cases away and giving it to independent groups of headhunting lawyers who will make cases when they shouldn’t be made.
Psaki gaslighted us when she claimed that Republicans were responsible for defunding the police. Even the uber-liberal Washington Post threw the “BS” flag at that one.
And then, there’s the White House effort to reduce funding for border law enforcement. That won’t satisfy “the Squad,” as Rep. Rashida Tlaib made clear when she demanded the elimination of funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol, and the entire Department of Homeland Security.
Biden is right to get us out of Afghanistan after 20 years of feckless nation-building. But his reasoning on what we accomplished and what follows is laughable. He said there were no parallels to Vietnam (there are and quite precise ones) and that the future of the Afghan nation is up to the Afghans. Is he ignorant of the fact that Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and China have been funding and arming the Taliban for more than a decade? Those nations, and their Taliban ally, will make that decision. He denies that a Taliban takeover of the country is inevitable. He said that we achieved our goal of preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists to mount attacks against us when we obviously haven’t. Come on, man.
Our other grader, Democratic pollster John Zogby, was not available this week.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Poll and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His weekly podcast with son and partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @ZogbyStrategies
