Day: 8/16/2021

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Nails Biden’s Afghanistan Speech: The People vs the Media

Posted by on August 16, 2021 at 4:29 pm. 2 Comments :

A lot has and will be said about President Biden’s decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan and the method with which he did it. Needless to say Fox News and Donald Trump’s Republican Party will embark on their predictable knee-jerk condemnation of Biden regardless of how events transpire.

Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC

Trump has already rolled out his narcissistic version of the situation that he neglected for four years, other than to negotiate a deal with the Taliban that was tantamount to full surrender. He lifted all the sanctions on them, released 5,000 of their prisoners, including their founder and leader, and promised to remove all U.S. and allied forces by last May.

As for the GOP and their Ministry of Disinformation (aka Fox News), they launched a coordinated, and wholly dishonest, campaign to disparage Biden and portray him as on vacation while he was actually working at Camp David, a military facility run by the U.S. Navy.

On Monday afternoon Biden addressed the American people to explain the reasoning behind his decisions regarding finally ending America’s involvement in the Afghanistan war (video below). It was a speech that was equal parts elucidation, compassion, and accountability. Some of the highlights include…

“We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001, and make sure Al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again. We did that.” […]

“That was a decade ago. Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building.” […]

“I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.” […]

“The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.” […]

“If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision. American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.” […]

“I made a commitment to the American people when I ran for president that I would bring America’s military involvement in Afghanistan to an end. While it’s been hard and messy and, yes, far from perfect, I’ve honored that commitment.” […]

“I know my decision will be criticized. But I would rather take all that criticism than pass this decision on to another president of the United States.”

Following the speech MSNBC anchor, Nicolle Wallace, gave a profound summation of the different ways Biden’s words would be received by the public and the press. She said that…

“95% of the American people will agree with everything he just said. 95% of the press covering this White House will disagree. And for an American president to finally be completely aligned with such an overwhelming majority of what the American people think about Afghanistan is probably a tremendous relief to the American people.”

Wallace is exactly right. The media seems to have a built in favoritism for whatever generates the most conflict and melodrama. But the American people have long favored an end to the seemingly perpetual conflicts that began after September 11th, 2001. And that opinion is shared by both Democrats and Republicans. Even Trump and his cult disciples have been opposed to continuing the war in Afghanistan. He ran on it, just like Biden did.

Of course, that won’t stop Trump and his GOP confederates from lambasting Biden for achieving the goal that they never could. They are jealous of his successes, whether it be foreign affairs, infrastructure, healthcare, or any of the other failures by Trump and company.

It’s ironic that Wallace is one of the few television commentators to recognize both the desires of the public and biases of the press. She was the White House Communications Director for George W. Bush, the president that got us into this mess to begin with. Which makes her insights all the more relevant and welcome.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Watch Trump Bragging About His Taliban Deal That He Now Calls ‘Embarrassing’

Posted by on August 16, 2021 at 10:24 am. 15 Comments :

Expecting Donald Trump to be honest about anything is guaranteed to lead to bitter disappointment. He is a pathological liar whose self-serving distortions of reality are his way of avoiding having to face the torrent of failures that define his existence. His malignant narcissism prevents him from seeing anything he does or says as anything but perfection.

American Afghanistan Taliban

In the wake of the tragic events in Afghanistan, Trump predictably embarked on a frantic crusade to absolve himself of any responsibility. And naturally he blamed it all on Joe Biden. It’s the same deranged defensiveness he had to the COVID pandemic that he so horrendously bitched, and the January 6th insurrection he deliberately incited.

However, Trump’s raging irrationality inevitably fouls up his attempts to exalt himself no matter what disaster he produces. On Monday morning he said that “Afghanistan is the most embarrassing military outcome in the history of the United States,” in a proxy tweet that his spokes-shill, Liz Harrington, posted for him (a violation Twitter’s rules against circumventing a ban). But Trump can be seen on video bragging profusely about the conditions for which he is now castigating President Biden. Here is Trump just one month ago at one of his cult rallies:

“I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process. Twenty-one years is enough, don’t we think? Twenty-one years. They couldn’t stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very tough to stop the process when other things were… Yeah, thank you.

It’s a shame. Twenty-one years by a government that wouldn’t last. The only way they last is if we’re there. What are we gonna say? We’ll stay for another twenty-one years, then we’ll stay for another fifty? The whole thing is ridiculous.”

Is this what Trump means by “embarrassing”? The “process” to which Trump is referring is the deal he made with the Taliban in March of 2020. At the time it was not exactly heralded as “the Art of the Deal.” To the contrary, it was widely repudiated by foreign policy and military experts as “disgraceful” and a total surrender to the Taliban.

One representative appraisal of Trump’s folly said that it “gives the Taliban a series of concrete, measurable gifts.” It began by promising an immediate drawdown from 100,000 troops to less than 3,000, and that “American and allied forces will leave within 14 months” (by last May). It also promised “the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners,” including their founder and leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar. The deal also committed “to the ‘goal’ of removing sanctions from members of the Taliban that include travel bans, asset freezes, and an arms embargo.” And it came “without any agreement by the Taliban to cease hostilities against our allies.”

Trump’s comments a month ago affirm his belief that exiting Afghanistan was a priority that superseded any other strategic considerations. He virtually confessed that he “started the process” as a means of boxing Biden into an untenable dilemma. He also admitted that the outcome we see today was inevitable because Afghanistan had “a government that wouldn’t last.” without U.S. support.

All of that failure was Trump’s own assessment of the consequences of the deal that he made with the Taliban. It was a deal that he excluded the Afghans from even participating in, which assured that they would have no stake in complying with it. But now Trump is accusing Biden of causing the calamity that he claims to have foreseen when he made the deal more than a year ago. Talk about embarrassing.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.