Day: 8/24/2021

Trump’s Plan for Afghanistan Was to Abandon Our Troops and Allies, Psaki Reveals His Lies

Posted by on August 24, 2021 at 5:34 pm. 4 Comments :

One of the problems that Joe Biden inherited from his predecessors when he became President was the two decades long war in Afghanistan. And he made it clear that he was determined to make certain that it wasn’t handed down to another president.

Jen Psaki, Donald Trump

Biden’s goal was strewn with obstacles placed in his path by Donald Trump, whose abysmal deal with the Taliban has been lambasted by his own National Security Advisor as a “surrender agreement,” that lifted all sanctions on the Taliban and freed 5,000 of their imprisoned fighters, including their leader.

Not one to be deterred by reality, Trump is still hammering away at Biden with blatantly dishonest representations of the situation now unfolding in Afghanistan. He released a statement on Tuesday via his spokes-shill, Liz Harrington (whose proxy Trump tweeting is violating Twitter’s rules against circumventing a ban), that sound more like a madman on a street corner yelling at passing cars than a diplomat:

“Biden surrendered Afghanistan to terrorists and left thousands of Americans for dead by pulling out the Military before our citizens. Now we are learning that out of the 26,000 people who have been evacuated, only 4,000 are Americans. You can be sure the Taliban, who are now in complete control, didn’t allow the best and brightest to board these evacuation flights. Instead, we can only imagine how many thousands of terrorists have been airlifted out of Afghanistan and into neighborhoods around the world. What a terrible failure. NO VETTING. How many terrorists will Joe Biden bring to America? We don’t know!”

There’s a lot to unpack in that hysterical harangue. Starting at the top, Biden did not surrender to terrorists. That was Trump. And Biden has not left a single American for dead, much less thousands. Trump appears to have ingested some powerful hallucinogens.

Moving on, Trump is surprised that 26,000 of the evacuees were Afghans. He apparently doesn’t know that there are far more Afghans in Afghanistan than Americans. He also doesn’t seem to know that thousands of them served our troops loyally and bravely and deserve to be rescued from a dire fate at the hands of the Taliban. Trump is actually repeating the very same racist lines that he previously used on Mexican refugees, implying that they are all criminals being “sent” to America by wily foreign governments.

What’s more, Trump is outright lying (surprise) about whether these Afghans are vetted before being evacuated. This question was raised at the White House daily press briefing by Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy. Which gave press secretary Jen Psaki yet another opportunity to publicly humiliate him. Doocy asked a loaded question suggesting that there are suspected terrorists among the evacuees. Psaki replied saying that…

“We have a stringent vetting process, which includes background checks before any individual comes to the United States. So I can’t speak to one individual, but I can tell you and confirm for you that we take the vetting of any individual who comes to the United States and comes out incredibly seriously and it’s an extensive process.

“I would say that this is now on track, Peter, to be the largest airlift in US history. And that is bringing American citizens out. It is bringing our Afghan partners out. It is bringing allies out. So, no, I would not say that is anything but a success.”

Doocy, masochist that he is, persisted with another question suggesting that because Biden is hoping to stick to the August 31 date for the withdrawal to be completed, that the Taliban had “the same kind of influence over military planning as the Commander in Chief?” And once again, Psaki had to set him straight:

“Well, first of all Peter, the Taliban’s deadline was May 1st, struck in a deal with the prior administration. The President’s timeline was August 31st. That’s the timeline he set, and a period of time he needed in order to operationalize our departure from Afghanistan.”

Anyone who had even a glancing knowledge of these matters knew that the Taliban and Trump had agreed to a May 1st exit date. So it’s just a demonstration of his ignorance that Doocy didn’t know that the August 31 date was Biden’s decision, not the Taliban’s. And Biden is reserving the option to extend that date if conditions on the ground require it. The Taliban has no role in that decision making process.

It’s clear from Trump’s remarks that his plan was to leave behind both Americans and Afghans. He had not initiated any operations to evacuate anyone prior to his evacuation from the White House, even though there were only three months between his exit and May 1st. That may have been his purposeful attempt to hamstring Biden, or it may have just been his incompetence and negligence.

Either way, Trump has no right to complain about how things are turning out. Just the fact that the Biden team has evacuated 70,000 people since August 14 is a testament to what competent leadership can achieve. And he did it while also dealing with a surging pandemic (also Trump’s fault) and a busy legislative agenda that included bills to provide relief payments to the American people, a historic investment in infrastructure, and an effort to preserve voting rights.

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.

Vaccine Truthers at Fox News Say FDA Approval Was a Distraction From Afghanistan

Posted by on August 24, 2021 at 1:46 pm. 3 Comments :

The relentless determination of Fox News to propagate phony stories and contrived outrage can really be rather impressive at times. And on Tuesday morning America’s foremost right-wing propaganda source pulled a twofer, slandering President Biden and the COVID vaccine in one dangerously dishonest segment.

Fox News, Covid

On Monday the FDA announced that it was giving a full approval of the Pfizer vaccine as a safe and effective means of preventing infection and transmission of the coronavirus. It took only minutes before Fox News was trashing the FDA and its motives. They asserted that the approval was rushed in the same segment in which they also asked “What took so long.”

On Tuesday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes at Fox and Friends called in their medical contributor, Dr. Marty Makary, to comment on matters for which he had no qualifications. He was asked by co-host Brian Kilmeade about what he claimed was suspect timing for the FDA approval. Whereupon Makary accused the Biden administration of using the announcement of the FDA’s full approval of the COVID vaccine as a distraction from critical stories about the Afghanistan withdrawal (video below):

“Three days after the viral video [of the Afghan airport] the FDA is going to approve the vaccine after sitting on it for nine months.”

Makary, of course, has no expertise in either media analysis or military strategies. But that didn’t stop him from questioning the FDA’s action. Nor did the same ignorance on Kilmeade’s part prevent him from implying that the FDA’s decision – that Makary said was held for nine months – was too rushed, and then issued for political purposes:

“All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the FDA is going to give full approval to the Pfizer vaccine. And then that becomes a leak, and that becomes an announcement. Do you believe the timing is curious? […] They make people doubt, because they look at this timing and they say wait a second, does it really get full FDA approval? Do we really need a booster shot? What are we worried about?

The one constant in all of the COVID coverage by Fox News is to trivialize the pandemic, disparage the vaccine, and frighten their audience away from partaking in it. Tucker Carlson has claimed outright that it doesn’t work and that the authorities are hiding that “fact” from you. And Donald Trump told his cult rally that it was just a “money making operation.” Meanwhile, Fox peddles toxic snake oil cures like the horse dewormer, Ivermectin.

Then there is the charge that the FDA was participating in a White House plot to deflect from news about Afghanistan. Makary and Kilmeade had zero evidence of any such scheme or any explanation for why the independent FDA would go along with it. It was purely floated to malign the FDA, the vaccine, and the Biden administration’s kept promise to finally end the twenty year long war. Although it might be an improvement over their previous attack on First Lady Jill Biden as being at fault for everything.

In the end, Fox News is going to cause more suffering and grieving as a result of their pro-COVID propaganda. Simultaneously, they will disinform their viewers about the progress of the Afghanistan withdrawal, while inciting more racist responses to the arrival of Afghani refugees who helped American troops for the past couple of decades. Fox News doesn’t care about any of these adverse and anti-American consequences, or the harm to human lives. Because the only thing they care about is their Republican power grab, and advancing their ultra-rightist agenda. And

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.