Despite that, President Biden plowed ahead with his withdrawal plans.
He was confident enough that, just last month, he rejected comparisons to Saigon because “the Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army.”
That might be fair. They proved far more capable.
Again, just last month, Biden said “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”
One month later, the Taliban had done just that.
If today’s speech from Biden sounded familiar, it’s because it was largely lifted from his speech in April announcing the drawdown.
One line that didn’t make it in this time? The Afghan military will “continue to fight valiantly…at great cost.”
One of the most consistently wrong people is Antony Blinken, Biden’s Secretary of State.
He said of the withdrawal: “as the United States begins withdrawing our troops, we will use our civilian and economic assistance to advance a just and durable peace for Afghanistan.”
In April, while visiting Afghanistan, Blinken told Afghan President Ashraf Gandhi - who has since fled the country - that Blinken was there to “demonstrate literally, by our presence, that we have an enduring and ongoing commitment to Afghanistan.”
I’m…not sure that one came to pass.
But perhaps Blinken’s worst prediction was from June where he said the US withdrawal wouldn’t lead to “some kind of immediate deterioration in the situation” that could happen “from a Friday to a Monday.”
It took, what, a week and a half?
There were a lot of bad predictions about the Taliban.
In April, US Envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad told lawmakers that the new Taliban would behave better because “international recognition” would prove an incentive.
Doesn’t look like it.
The generals, as ever, were also wrong. Speaking to the Senate in June, SecDef Lloyd Austin and Gen Mark Milley said there was a “medium” risk that the Taliban would have the capability to retake Afghanistan and it would take two years.
It took them two weeks.
Milley at that same testimony said that “I don’t see Saigon 1975 in Afghanistan. The Taliban just aren’t the North Vietnamese Army. It’s not that kind of situation.”
It was, in fact, precisely that type of situation, just worse and faster.
Here we’ve got nameless “U.S. officials” endorsing the theory that the Taliban - yes, that Taliban - would be concerned about being an international pariah because their leaders “have a record of seeking international credibility.”
"...experts also believe that Taliban leaders have moderated in recent years, recognizing that Afghanistan’s cities have modernized, and note that the group’s peace negotiators have traveled internationally, seeing the outside world in a way its founders rarely...did." NYT, 4/23
Speaking of generals, here’s Joseph Dunford endorsing the international respect theory that this Afghanistan would “temper its violence” because…well, who knows.
Just amazing.
As has been the case for the last twenty years, our intel has simply been wrong.
We thought we had months, even worst-case scenario.
We really only had weeks.
I’ve said this on here repeatedly but I really don’t think that Biden will face serious political consequences from this devastating situation.
But every prediction and promise he and his team have made have been disastrously wrong on Afghanistan.
Folks sometimes ask how they can support the threads. I do them as a hobbyist so the short answer is that there isn’t a way.
I know there’s a lot going on but we just had a media conspiracy implode that I think captures something important about the corporate press.
Did you hear about how Trump was allegedly going after John Bolton as retribution for his criticism?
Well…follow along ⤵️
We saw a week straight of media suggestions that Trump was abusing the powers of the state to deal out “retribution” to John Bolton following the news that the FBI (“Trump’s DOJ!” headlines rang out) raided his house.
We were in “unsettling” times, to hear @nytimes tell it.
The *Editorial Board* at @nytimes put out an even more dramatic statement, asking who Trump’s next payback victim after Bolton would be.
A single poll has bootstrapped a media narrative that DC residents are outraged by Trump’s takeover.
I poked around the cross tabs of the poll — of 600 or so of DC’s more comfortable residents — and I think it’s pretty suspect.
How come? Follow along: ⤵️
Let’s start with the poll. The @washingtonpost talked to 604 people, of whom 90% — 90%! — self-described as living in “very good” or “good” neighborhoods.
So, fine. 80% of people who like where they live in DC are upset.
But even beyond that, it’s worth asking whether this poll really captures DC’s opinion.
In the poll, only 31% describe crime as a “serious” or “very serious” problem in DC.
When @washingtonpost asked this same question in May, *50%* said it was a serious problem.
I feel like I’m losing my mind about the Biden autopen pardons.
The former president said he made every decision. His staff says that he didn’t actually make the final call on thousands of them.
We’re supposed to treat this as normal?
I try to unpack. ⤵️
This got new life from a Biden interview w/ @nytimes.
NYT leads by repeating Biden’s claim that he made the calls…burying the admissions that 1) he really didn’t & 2) where he allegedly did, the aids sending details to the autopen weren’t in the room when the call was made…
…instead, they relied on what senior staff had allegedly heard, which was then passed along.
The piece ends with the revelation that Biden’s then-chief of staff gave the final sign off.
Given what the former admin has lied about, why should we trust this reporting of events?
The coverage of the anti-ICE riots in LA is perhaps the clearest example of advocacy “journalism” in Trump’s second term.
Reading the reporting, you would never know the most significant fact: the American people support Trump’s deportations.
Follow along ⤵️
First, the facts about the riots.
You’ve seen the burning cars, looting & clashes between police & protestors.
Demonstrators blocked the freeway, attacked ICE agents, all in an effort to prevent the deportations of illegal aliens. Trump deployed troops to allow ICE to operate.
As @MarkHalperin and @seanspicer discussed, the situation in LA is so tranquil that the mayor has instituted a curfew for the city.
The new book “Original Sin” from Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson recounts the effort to cover up Biden’s cognitive decline ahead of the election. The authors point to many guilty parties.
The one glaring omission? Their colleagues in the corporate press. Follow along ⤵️
There are numerous dramatic reveals. The Biden team considered condoning him to a wheelchair? Maybe in his fog he forgot about the border?
But as I worked on a review for @commonplc, the one thought that I kept coming back to was that you can’t tell this story without the press.
Perhaps no one was more vital to the continued fiction that Biden had it together than the media.
Tapper and Thompson even highlight some of the telling moments.
Biden’s cancer diagnosis is a tragedy I know first-hand.
But our sympathy can’t silence questions about Biden’s cognitive decline, clarified just days ago by the Hur tape.
The media tried to bury the story then. They’re trying again now.
I’ve got the receipts. ⤵️
When the report first came out in 2024, outlets rushed to demean Hur, accusing him of serving as a Republican hatchet man.
Just look at this take from @USATODAY, who assembled sympathetic voices to make the case that Hur “crossed the line.” They found an expert to call it a “disgrace” and then featured the obviously unbiased Eric Holder to lead a section titled “Way too many gratuitous remarks.”
The audio makes clear that Hur, if anything, played down how alarming the claims were.
(If you haven’t listened to the Hur audio yet, you should.)