THE DOCTRINE OF THE N.A.F.T.A. GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS IS TO SERVE THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WITH ENDLESS WAVES OF INVADING 'CHEAP' LABOR SUBSIDIZED WITH WELFARE FUNDED BY TAXES ON MIDDLE AMERICA.
In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elites’ opinion about “the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.
Rent Cancellation Advocate Rashida Tlaib Cleaned Up as Landlord During Pandemic
'Squad' member collected rent as she vilified landlords
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) / Getty ImagesChuck Ross and Collin Anderson • August 17, 2021 4:57 pm
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Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) collected up to $50,000 in rent payments last year, even as she publicly criticized landlords and supported an eviction moratorium that has hurt other small landlords.
Tlaib—who in December stressed the need to protect Americans from "landlords and bill collectors in the midst of a pandemic"—disclosed in an annual financial statement this month that she took in between $15,000 and $50,000 in rent on a Detroit property.
Tlaib is not the only "Squad" member who has raked in thousands of dollars as a landlord. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) collected up to $15,000 in rental income in both 2019 and 2020 through a Boston property she owns, her financial disclosures show. Like Tlaib, Pressley slammed landlords for collecting rent during the pandemic, calling the issue "literally a matter of life and death."
While Tlaib collected rent from her tenants, other small landlords in the United States have not been so lucky. Numerous reports have detailed small landlords' struggles to make ends meet amid the eviction moratorium, which Tlaib has supported since early last year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention implemented a ban on evictions last September. The Biden administration extended the eviction freeze through October of this year.
Tlaib, Pressley, and other "Squad" members introduced legislation to cancel rent and mortgage payments. The bill would require the federal government to reimburse landlords for lost rent during the pandemic, allowing Tlaib and Pressley to recoup any potential losses.
"Cancelling rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the COVID-19 virus pandemic would relieve financial pressure, allow residents to stay home from work without the added concern of losing their housing and limit the spread of the virus," Tlaib said in March 2020.
Tlaib has at times portrayed landlords as preying on their renters.
"Always tons of agreement for tools of war and destroying families abroad, but never this much enthusiasm for protecting American families at home from landlords and bill collectors in the midst of a pandemic," she tweeted in December.
Tlaib did not disclose the address for the rental property on her financial statement, though details from her filings and local real estate records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon suggest she purchased the property using a $118,600 loan in 2016. Two years later, Tlaib listed the property for $2,000 a month rent before lowering the asking price to $1,800. Assuming Tlaib has not changed the monthly price, she collected rent for at least eight months in 2020, meaning she received payments throughout the pandemic.
According to local real estate records, Tlaib refinanced the three-bedroom home as a multifamily investment property in April 2019. The designation requires the Democrat to maintain rent loss insurance.
Neither Tlaib nor Pressley returned requests for comment.
Don’t Call it Shari’a, CAIR Official Says of the Taliban’s Ideology
Afghan women in Kabul in 1996, wearing Taliban-imposed burqas. (Photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) – The Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan has thrust the issue of “shari’a” back into the public discourse, and a senior official in the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Tuesday the concept was being misunderstood and incorrectly portrayed.
When the fundamentalist militia ruled most of Afghanistan until it was toppled in 2001, its treatment of minorities, especially women, horrified the outside world.
Women and girls were denied education, strict dress codes were enforced, the vast majority of women were prohibited from working outside the home, and women were “subjected to rape, kidnapping, and forced marriage,” the State Department reported at the time.
Many fear the Taliban’s return will mean a comeback of such policies, which aligned with the Taliban’s interpretation of shari’a.
On Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters that the group would respect women’s rights “within the limits of Islam.”
According to the BBC’s translation of his remark, he said, “Our women are Muslims, they accept Islamic rules. If they continue to live according to shari’a, we will be happy, they will be happy.”
In a Facebook Live conversation, CAIR deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell put on screen a Fox News headline reading in part, “Taliban poised to impose Sharia law in Afghanistan.”
“The thing that Fox is doing here, quite deliberately, right, is that they want to declare that the Taliban’s understanding of how to enforce Islamic and uphold Islamic tradition, is the definitive definition of shari’a,” he said.
Mitchell said interpretations of shari’a vary between different schools of thought, countries and cultures.
While all Muslims believe they must follow the Qur’an and teachings of Mohammed, he said, “how we understand what those teachings are and what they require in different times and places and circumstances can vary.”
Mitchell’s guest, Islamic affairs scholar Anjum A. Ali, said shari’a was often “mistermed as Islamic law, but it’s a lot more than that.” She described it as a way of “living a life of ethical and moral principles” and a “guidebook” or “navigation system.”
None of the Islamic countries around the world “have any form of authentic and authoritative status on what Islamic law, or what shari’a is,” she said.
The laws of those countries had changed over time, informed by culture, history, experiences of colonialism, and that is why there were such drastic differences between them.
Ali said today’s Islamic governments included “dictatorships, despotic governments, complex political-economic situations, and none of them are healthy.”
“So to tell me that any of them represent shari’a is 100 percent false.”
She said the Taliban has “a perverted, distorted concept of how to make society the way they want, with a very controlling methodology.”
Mitchell’s message to Muslims was that they should take back their terminology.
“When you see people misuse our terms, jihad, shari’a, caliphate, khalifah – those words belong to us,” he said. “They don’t belong to Fox News, they don’t belong to anti-Muslim bigots. Those words are our community’s words, we get to define what they mean.”
CAIR describes itself as the nation’s biggest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.
Asked for the administration’s view on the Taliban comments about women’s rights, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told a briefing at the White House, “We’ll see what the Taliban end up doing in the days and weeks ahead. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean the entire international community.”
A reporter asked what “tools” the U.S. has to ensure the Taliban does respect the rights of women, Sullivan cited sanctions, “marshalling international condemnation and isolation,” and “other steps” which he did not elaborate on.
He said the U.S. and other governments will be having conversations with the Taliban about “both what the costs and disincentives are for certain types of action and what our expectations are.”
Whether different Islamic countries practice different interpretations of shari’a or not, the fact remains that the countries where women struggle most are often Islamic countries.
In the 2020 annual World Economic Forum’s “Global Gender Gap” survey, of the 25 countries at the bottom of the rankings – positions 120 to 153 – 23 are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation bloc. (The exceptions are Bhutan in 131st and Democratic Republic of Congo in 149th place.)
The bottom-ranking ten countries are (from the bottom): Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, DRC, Iran, Chad, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Oman.
The survey examines differences between men and women in four specific areas – political empowerment, economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, and health and survival.
Having created one crisis after another – e.g., a broken economy, a broken border, a broken energy supply and, now, a broken Afghanistan – you’d think that Biden would at least step up and lead us into some brave new Progressive future. That, though, is not how Biden rolls. Instead, he’s either played the blame game, hidden at Camp David or in Delaware, attacked Republican governors, dismissed as bagatelles the horrors in Afghanistan, and generally been weirdly disconnected.
I’ve already commented on Biden’s dreadful statement on Monday, during which he created a straw man by contending that the main issue was whether withdrawing from Afghanistan was the right thing to do. Of course, because few disagree with the decision to withdraw, the real issue was and is the utterly appalling mess the administration, whether in the White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department, made of the withdrawal.
However, Biden having presented his straw man knew where the fault lay: With Trump. It was Trump’s fault that Biden, who has systematically reversed everything Trump did, was forced to fall in with Trump’s planned withdrawal from Afghanistan. But having done so, he bravely took responsibility for that unremarkable decision.
As for the real issue – the debacle – Biden knew where responsibility for that one lay as well: The Afghans. It was all their fault, he said, that when the Americans slipped away overnight, the Taliban were able to roll through Afghanistan, enriching themselves with American weapons, vehicles, and planes along the way. After making that speech, Biden practically ran out of the room and headed back to Camp David.
If you thought that speech was as low as it was possible for an American president to go, you underestimated Biden. On Wednesday, Biden sat for an interview with George Stephanopoulos and insisted that the Afghanistan debacle was “old news” and couldn’t have been avoided in any event:
President Joe Biden angrily defended his handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying on Wednesday that chaos was unavoidable and snapping when asked about horrific images of Afghans falling from planes.
‘That was four days ago, five days ago,’ he said, even though the images of people falling to their deaths emerged on Monday.
[snip]
And in a second excerpt shared ahead of the chat, Biden also insisted he’d been told by his intelligence officials that Kabul would likely avoid falling to the Taliban until the end of 2021 - instead of the mere days it took.
‘There was no consensus if you go back and look at intelligence reports,’ the president said when asked if there had been intelligence failings. ‘They said that it’s more likely to be some time by the end of the year.’
Did you hear an echo of Hillary’s “what difference, at this point, does it make?” when Biden said the collapse is old news?
Tom Cotton was incandescent over the claim that the chaos was inevitable:
Biden also insisted that he’d get all Americans out...except he really meant only those the administration could get out by August 31. As for the others, “we’ll determine at the time who’s left,” whatever that means. Currently, the State Department has made it clear that Americans are on their own getting to the airport and Central Command refuses to allow troops to leave the airport to help them. No mention was made of the fact that the Biden administration deleted a comprehensive Trump-era plan for getting Americans home from emergency situations.
Also on Wednesday, Biden gave a speech – except it wasn’t about Afghanistan, which is the most important issue for most people. Instead, it was about Republican governors who refuse to get with the COVID program. He was especially enraged that these governors are “banning masks in school.” That is, of course, a complete lie. In Texas, Florida, and South Carolina, they’ve banned forced mask mandates. Those who wish to wear masks are free to do so. But Biden’s going to use the power of the federal government to crack down on those states.
Of course, the real issue is that creating a sense of crisis about COVID is how the Democrats are consolidating their power. As long as people are kept in a perpetual state of fear, they will freely hand their liberty to the government.
It's not just that the speech was false and inappropriate. Look at Joe’s affect. This is not a well man:
Having had his say and told his lies, Biden followed his instructions and vanished without taking questions:
The whole grim situation was best summed up in the comment someone named “BooggieMan” left on a Facebook page: “This entire ‘presidency’ is like being tied to a chair and watching a toddler play with a loaded pistol.”
He walked out of the room after his speech, ignoring shouted questions from reporters who stood watching in disbelief.
The president has locked down his schedule for Thursday as there are no public events scheduled and no press briefings.
Despite Biden’s failure to address the controversy, he may be trying to squeeze another long weekend at his home in Delaware during the month of August.
A Federal Aviation Administration flight restriction notice suggested that Biden would leave the White House for Delaware on Wednesday and remain there until August 23.
But the president remained at the White House on Wednesday evening as his staff called a lid for the day.
Stubborn Joe Biden Snaps, Falls Apart in Interview as Afghanistan Crisis Worsens
President Joe Biden continued to struggle with his response to the crisis in Afghanistan after days of hunkering down and seemingly waiting for the storm to blow over.
Faced with an outcry from the press over the president’s unwillingness to answer questions about the chaotic conclusion of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, Biden did an interview with ABC News host George Stephanopoulos at the White House to defend his actions.
The interview was the first time Biden took questions about the crisis in Afghanistan in eight days. But he did not appear prepared.
Biden snapped at Stephanopoulos for asking about Afghan people rushing a plane as it took off the runway in the airport in Kabul, some even falling to their deaths as it took off.
“That was four days ago, five days ago,” Biden replied sharply when asked about the images, trying to dismiss them entirely.
In fact, however, the incident occurred only two days ago, which Stephanopoulos did not press him on.
U.S soldiers stand guard inside the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 16, 2021. Thousands of Afghans have rushed onto the tarmac at the airport, some so desperate to escape the Taliban capture of their country that they held onto the American military jet as it took off and plunged to death. (AP Photo/Shekib Rahmani)
When asked what he thought about the images, Biden replied that he reacted by wanting the military to get in control of the situation — avoiding any sense of emotion about scenes that shocked the world.
“What I thought was, we have to gain control of this,” he said. “We have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport. And we did.”
When Stephanopoulos asked if he could have handled the withdrawal better, Biden denied it.
“No. I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that — we’re going to go back in hindsight and look — but the idea that, somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens,” he said.
The president also appeared defiant against his critics in the interview, calling his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan a “simple choice” rather than a task that he and his team could have planned and executed much better.
“When you look at what’s happened over the last week, was it a failure of intelligence, planning, execution, or judgment?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Look, it was a simple choice, George,” Biden said, arguing that he could have either stayed true to the withdrawal date of August 31 or extended it further with more troops.
But in recent days, Biden has already deployed 6,000 troops to Afghanistan to help facilitate the evacuation process as the security situation in the capital city of Kabul collapsed.
All of the conciliatory messages he shared with the public during his speech at the White House on Monday melted away.
When Biden was confronted with his assertion in July that the Taliban would not take over Afghanistan, Biden admitted that intelligence suggested the Afghanistan government would collapse by the end of the year.
Taliban fighters take control of Afghan presidential palace after the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Zabi Karimi)
“Well, the question was whether or not it — the idea that the Taliban would take over was premised on the notion that the — somehow, the 300,000 troops we had trained and equipped was going to just collapse, they were going to give up,” he said. “I don’t think anybody anticipated that.”
Under pressure from Stephanopoulos, Biden finally committed to leaving American troops in Afghanistan beyond the August 31 deadline if necessary, a commitment both his press secretary Jen Psaki and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan refused to make during a press briefing on Tuesday.
Americans should understand that we’re going to try to get it done before August 31,” Biden said and added, “If we don’t, we’ll determine at the time who’s left.” And “if there are American — if there [are] American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out.”
Biden continues to struggle with criticism of his sloppy exit from Afghanistan, but the White House does not appear willing to put him back on camera to answer more questions about it.
On Wednesday, the president tried to refocus America’s priorities on the coronavirus pandemic, spending more time attacking unvaccinated Americans and Republican governors than reassuring Americans that he would get all citizens out of Afghanistan.
WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 18: U.S. President Joe Biden gestures as he delivers remarks on the COVID-19 response and the vaccination program in the East Room of the White House on August 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. During his remarks, President Biden announced that he is ordering the United States Department of Health and Human Services to require nursing homes to have vaccinated staff in order for them to receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. The President also announced that Americans would be able to receive a third booster shot against Covid-19. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
He walked out of the room after his speech, ignoring shouted questions from reporters who stood watching in disbelief.
The president has locked down his schedule for Thursday as there are no public events scheduled and no press briefings.
Despite Biden’s failure to address the controversy, he may be trying to squeeze another long weekend at his home in Delaware during the month of August.
A Federal Aviation Administration flight restriction notice suggested that Biden would leave the White House for Delaware on Wednesday and remain there until August 23.
But the president remained at the White House on Wednesday evening as his staff called a lid for the day.
Poll: Biden Approval Drops to Lowest Level After Taliban Takeover
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—President Joe Biden's approval rating dropped by 7 percentage points and hit its lowest level so far as the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed over the weekend in an upheaval that sent thousands of civilians and Afghan military advisers fleeing for their safety, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The national opinion poll, conducted on Monday, found that 46% of American adults approved of Biden's performance in office, the lowest recorded in weekly polls that started when Biden took office in January.
It is also down from the 53% who felt the same way in a similar Reuters/Ipsos poll that ran on Friday.
Biden's popularity dropped as the Taliban brushed aside Afghan forces and entered the capital, Kabul, wiping away two decades of U.S. military presence that cost trillions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of American lives.
A separate Ipsos snap poll, also conducted on Monday, found that less than half of Americans liked the way Biden has steered the U.S. military and diplomatic effort in Afghanistan this year. The president, who just last month praised Afghan forces for being "as well-equipped as any in the world," was rated worse than the other three presidents who presided over the United States' longest war.
(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Jonathan Oatis)
A majority of American voters believe President Joe Biden is a weak leader, according to a poll conducted this week amid the collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban.
Fifty-three percent of registered voters who responded to the Economist/YouGov poll said Biden is weak, with 47 percent calling him strong. Thirty-nine percent said they believe Biden is a "very weak" leader. The poll queried 1,500 U.S. citizens from Aug. 14-17 and had a 3 percent margin of error.
The poll covered a period that saw Afghanistan fall into chaos in the aftermath of Biden's withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country. On Sunday, the Taliban captured Kabul and toppled the Afghan government, returning to power for the first time in 20 years. The United States and other Western countries rushed to evacuate their citizens and personnel while thousands of Afghans swarmed the Kabul airport in an attempt to escape. Some clung to aircraft and fell to their deaths as the planes took off.
Biden is underwater in a number of other metrics measured by the poll. A 44-percent plurality of voters said they are pessimistic about the next four years under Biden. Forty-nine percent of voters said they lack confidence in the president's ability to deal wisely with an international crisis, with only 39 percent expressing confidence. Biden campaigned in 2020 on a promise to restore American "credibility and influence" on the world stage.
A Reuters poll conducted Monday showed that Biden's approval rating has dropped to its lowest level yet.
Joe Biden Headed Back to Camp David to Resume His Vacation After Afghanistan Speech
President Joe Biden will return to Camp David on Monday evening to resume his vacation after returning to the White House for a few hours to deliver a speech defending his handling of the troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.
The White House released an updated schedule for the president, confirming he would return to Camp David, where he was scheduled to vacation until Wednesday.
In his speech, Biden tried to emphasize the importance of ending the American-supported conflict in Afghanistan but failed to accept his incompetent execution of the troop withdrawals.
Afghan people climb atop a plane as they wait at the Kabul airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city’s airport trying to flee the group’s feared hardline brand of Islamist rule. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
“I am president of the United States and the buck stops with me,” he said. “I’m deeply saddened by the facts we now face but I do not regret my decision to end America’s warfighting in Afghanistan.”
But the president did not take questions from reporters about his failure in Afghanistan, as thousands of Americans remain stranded in the country.
Biden acknowledged he was overly optimistic of Afghanistan’s ability to defend itself.
“The truth is this did unfold more quickly than anticipated,” he said.
Earlier in the weekend, the president appeared reluctant to speak publicly as the crisis unfolded over the weekend, prompting heightened criticism of his handling of the situation as the capital city of Kabul fell under the Taliban’s control.
White House staff issued photos on social media of Biden taking video calls with national security and intelligence officials as proof he was taking the crisis seriously, but it did little to stem public criticism.
Staff also issued a 600-word statement in Biden’s name defending his actions but also tried to blame former President Donald Trump for the chaos taking place on his watch.
THE DANGERS OF LAWYERS IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
LAWYER JAKE SULLIVAN AND LAWYER JOE BIDEN. SEND THEM TO GITMO!
Jake Sullivan Presides Over Yet Another Foreign Policy Disaster
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan is at the center of yet another U.S. foreign policy disaster. During the Obama administration, in his role as a top aide to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and then-vice president Joe Biden, the highly credentialed wunderkind presided over some of the most humiliating failures in the history of American foreign policy.
Sullivan's extensive experience as an architect of American failure in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Iran, and Myanmar, plus the fact that White House press secretary Jen Psaki is mysteriously out of the office, made him a natural choice to defend the Biden administration's handling of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.
"It is certainly the case [that] the speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated," Sullivan said Monday during an interview with NBC's Savannah Guthrie, who also asked about President Joe Biden's assessment that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was "highly unlikely" and "there's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States," as there was in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.
Fact check: False. Kimberley Motley, an international human-rights attorney who has worked in Afghanistan for more than a decade, described the situation in the country as a "nightmare" that was "like Saigon on steroids."
Sullivan was unable to muster a compelling response. "To be fair, the helicopter has been the mode of transport from our embassy to the airport for the last 20 years," he said as the network rolled footage of Taliban militants streaming into Kabul.
In 2011, as a top adviser to then-secretary Clinton, Sullivan helped orchestrate the "kinetic military action" in Libya. Even though the intervention resulted in the death of dictator Muammar Qaddafi, it is widely viewed as a failure. The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was assassinated during the Benghazi terrorist attacks in 2012, and the country would eventually become a haven for Islamic State militants.
Less than a month before Stevens was killed, Sullivan was among the team of experts advising then-president Barack Obama on the escalating civil war in Syria. Obama warned Bashar al-Assad, the Russian-backed dictator, that the use of chemical weapons was a "red line" that would "change my calculus" regarding U.S. military action against the regime.
Assad crossed the red line on multiple occasions, and the United States responded by taking negligible action to deter the slaughter of civilians. Assad remained in power, Russia flexed its military muscle, and the Islamic State established a caliphate in northeast Syria, wreaking havoc in Iraq as well.
During an interview with the New Yorker in 2019, Sullivan said he considered it "a great regret of mine" that "we were not able to more effectively play a role in stopping hundreds of thousands of people from dying in Syria and millions and millions more losing their homes."
By 2014, Obama's failure to enforce his "red line" on chemical weapons in Syria had changed Vladimir Putin's calculus regarding Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Once again, the United States took no significant action to deter Russian forces from destabilizing the country and annexing Crimea. The conflict would claim thousands of lives, including the 298 people aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down with a Russian-made missile over eastern Ukraine.
Less than a month after Biden was sworn in as president, the government of Myanmar was ousted in a military coup conducted by individuals responsible for the genocidal atrocities perpetrated against the country's Rohingya population. Foreign Policymagazine called it "a failure of U.S. diplomacy orchestrated by some of [the Biden administration's] own players nearly a decade ago."
In other words, people like Jake Sullivan. In 2011, he was advising Clinton when she described meeting Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as an "inspiration" and touted the Obama administration's efforts in the country as a diplomatic victory. The celebration was short-lived. Aung San Suu Kyi would go on to assume a senior role in the country's government but would be widely condemned for her refusal to denounce the military's campaign of violence against the Rohingya.
Sullivan, who played a key role in negotiating the failed Iran nuclear deal in 2015, is currently leading the Biden administration's efforts to revive the controversial agreement. He will almost certainly have a major role in crafting the pathetic U.S. response to China's inevitable invasion of Taiwan. He is the Forrest Gump of American decline, and one of the best rebuttals to the American system of meritocracy.
None of these policy failures will hurt Sullivan's glowing reputation among members of the Liberal Élite. After all, his credentials are impeccable: Yale University (Phi Beta Kappa), Rhodes scholar, Yale Law School, Brookings Institution. He was a debate team champion and president of the student council in high school, where he was voted "most likely to succeed." He clerked for Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer and worked as chief counsel for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), where he was presumably traumatized by the abuse he suffered.
In any event, these colossal blunders will likely pale in comparison to what he will be able to accomplish as U.S. secretary of state in the Kamala Harris administration.
McConnell: Biden Ignored Military’s Advice on Afghanistan
'It was pretty obvious to me what was going to happen' if Biden bucked military advice, Senate minority leader says
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said President Biden directly ignored the advice of military leaders during briefings on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
"I was in a number of these briefings over the last couple months, it was pretty obvious to me what was going to happen," McConnell said Monday. "I know for a fact that the president's military leaders argued against this decision. I think the president himself felt strongly about this and overruled his own military leaders to do it, and he owns it."
McConnell slammed the Biden administration for its incompetent withdrawal of thousands of Americans and Afghans. Footage emerged Monday of havoc at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, that caused civilian casualties.
"Honestly, this administration looks to me like it couldn't organize a two-car funeral," McConnell said. "It is a sad day for the United States of America."
President Biden responded Monday to critics of his withdrawal, saying he stands by his decision.
"We will continue to support the Afghan people," Biden said. "The way to do it is not through endless military deployments, but diplomacy."
Poll: Nearly 70 Percent of Americans Disapprove of Biden’s Handling of Afghanistan
Nearly 70 percent of Americans disapprove of President Joe Biden's handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a national poll of likely voters.
The poll, conducted over the weekend by the Trafalgar Group, found that 69 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden's botched pullout, with nearly 60 percent saying they "strongly disapprove." Democrats also see the Biden administration's actions—which saw the Taliban take control of Afghanistan's civilian government in mere hours—as a failure. Forty-eight percent disapprove of Biden's military actions in the country, while just 40 percent approve.
The findings came as Biden prepared to address the American public on the ongoing crisis, cutting short his Camp David vacation. While Biden reportedly planned to wait a "few days" to discuss the fiasco, he returned to the White House Monday afternoon as U.S. evacuation efforts at the Kabul airport spiraled into a frenzy.
Just hours before Biden's scheduled speech, the White House released talking points on the issue, which state that the administration planned for a "quick fall" of Kabul. Just weeks before, however, Biden and top administration officials expressed confidence that Afghanistan's civilian government would retain control of the capital city for months, allowing American troops, civilians, and allies to exit safely.
"The jury is still out, but the likelihood there is going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely," Biden said in July.
According to Convention of States Action president Mark Meckler, the poll shows "there is absolutely no question that the American people are not buying the lies on Afghanistan."
"This is Saigon, and it's far worse," Meckler said in a statement.
Fmr CIA Analyst Zeller: Biden Lied, No Plan to Stop Allies Being Slaughtered by ‘Nazi’ Taliban
Former CIA analyst Matt Zeller told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Monday on her show “Deadline” that President Joe Biden lied to the American people during his address on the chaotic evacuation of Afghans that worked with our military over the last 20 years.
On Biden’s speech, Zeller said, “I feel like I watched a different speech than the rest of you guys. I was appalled. There was such a profound bald-faced lie in that speech, the idea we planned for every contingency? I have been personally trying to tell this administration since it took office. I have been trying to tell our government for years this was coming. We sent them plan after plan on how to evacuate these people. Nobody listened to us. They didn’t plan for the evacuation of our Afghan war-time allies. They’re trying to conduct it now at the 11th hour.”
He continued, “I have Afghans on the ground right now who are telling me the Taliban going door to door in Kabul and making lists of people who used to work with us. They’re telling them with smiles on their face, evil smiles. They will be back for them once we leave. So we either take them now, or these people are going to die. I have been trying to tell anyone who will listen that this is a never-again moment in the making. This is an administration that seems to be a profound champion and defender of human rights. Well, sometimes, human rights have to be defended at the barrel end of a gun. The Taliban are a modern version of the Nazis.”
Zeller added, “I’m not going to sit and list eastbound to a president that I voted for. I was happy this man took office. I’m now appalled at that speech. I’m not going to sit here and have him lie to the American people. We did not plan as a government for this contingency. The American people, the advocates who have been pleading with the government, did plan for it. You can go to our website, evacuateourallies.org. We have had a plan. We have receipts. I put them on social media. No one got back with us. No, no, I’m not going to let them get away with this. We have to take these people. We have to take them now, or they are going to die.”
He concluded, “These people went on to the next unit and the next mission time and time and time again, and how dare us to even contemplate leaving them behind to, again, what I consider to be a modern equivalent of the Nazi Party.
Watch: In 2003, Joe Biden Defended Nation-Building in Afghanistan
President Joe Biden repeatedly condemned the idea of “nation-building” in Afghanistan during his speech on Monday, but in 2003 he defended the idea of standing with the Afghan people.
During a February hearing that year on rebuilding Afghanistan in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden warned the United States needed to stay involved in the country.
“In some parts in the administration, nation-building is still a dirty phrase but the alternative to nation-building is chaos,” Biden said, warning that the ensuing chaos only generated more terrorists, warlords, and drug trafficking.”
The Senate hearing took place with Interim President Hamid Karzai, where Biden defended the idea of staying in the country.
“The facts make one thing very clear, we have a great deal of work left to do in Afghanistan and a continued obligation to the men sitting in front of us to allow them to be able to do the work that needs to be done,” Biden said.
Biden warned that when warlords and drug traffickers took over a country, it became a haven for terrorism.
“That’s what happened under the Taliban and I believe if we’re not careful it’s going to happen again,” he said.
Dem Rep. Moulton: Current Afghanistan Operation a ‘Failure’ and Biden Didn’t Plan for This Situation
On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) said the ongoing operation in Afghanistan is a “failure” and President Joe Biden’s claim that his administration planned for every possibility in Afghanistan is false, because “if they had planned for this contingency, then they would have gotten our friends and allies out of Afghanistan a long time ago” like some in Congress urged the administration to, and then “we wouldn’t see the chaotic scenes at Kabul Airport today.”
Moulton said, “[W]hat matters today is the operation that’s ongoing in Afghanistan. That’s the failure that we’re talking about. That’s the operation that we need to fix. Because there are thousands of innocent lives on the line, and, make no mistake, it is still within the power of the United States to save those lives. So, I appreciate the fact that Joe Biden made, in some ways, a compelling case for his decision, but what we should be focused on right now is what’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan.”
He added, “Well, the president said in his speech that they planned for every contingency. But if they had planned for this contingency, then they would have gotten our friends and allies out of Afghanistan a long time ago. And that’s why I’ve been calling on the administration, for the last several months, to evacuate our allies, to evacuate American citizens, dispense with this bureaucratic special immigrant visa process, you can sort that out once they get to a safe place, just get these people out. If they had done that, we wouldn’t see the chaotic scenes at Kabul Airport today. So, I don’t see how he can make the case that he planned for this contingency. It’s clearly catching us by surprise.”
Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) argued the warnings signs for what has occurred in Afghanistan after the precipitous U.S. withdrawal of military forces were ignored by the Biden administration.
The Florida Republican said the vacuum left behind could also mean the return of al Qaeda to the region.
“Sean, not just did I tell them, but it was a bipartisan warning, OK?” he said. “You look at the intelligence, you look at everything before us, it was clear that not only it was the worst-case scenario out there, it was the likeliest outcome that was going to happen, and we kept insisting, what is the plan of this happens? What is the plan? And they arrogantly, and they smugly ignored it. They ignored everyone who was warning them because they’re the experts, they know everything, and now we’ve seen the consequences.”
“There are two things now to keep in mind,” Rubio continued. “Number one is Joe Biden was elected promising competence, the return on normalcy, the return of expertise to foreign policy, and we see that they can’t even execute on something like this and ignore the people who know something about it. That does encourage people like China — countries like China and other adversaries not just to go out and try to undermine confidence in America, but actually test America and think they can get away with it.”
“And the other is something that the Pentagon’s already saying, and we’ve already been saying for close to nine months, the biggest problem here is going to be now that al Qaeda is coming back to Afghanistan, let there be no doubt,” he added. “They are coming back. They will reconstitute. They will pose a threat again, and this administration has no plan whatsoever to prevent that from happening.”
