Joe Biden Abandons the Media in Afghanistan

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Thur
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Wendell Husebø

President Joe Biden has abandoned the media in Afghanistan, as the Washington Post publisher reportedly requested help from the White House to evacuate more than 200 journalists in the collapsed country.

Publisher Fred Ryan told National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan the Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal’s reporters “are currently in danger and need the U.S. government to get them to safety,” a Hill columnist reported:

Ryan’s request comes as the Taliban terrorists may be going door to door searching for journalists. “Afghanistan’s Tolo News outlet posted on Twitter Monday that Taliban forces had confiscated its security staff’s weapons and assumed responsibility for protecting the office,” Breitbart News reported. “Though the Taliban have promised to protect civilians and, ostensibly, safeguard journalistic offices, even male media personnel have good reason to be wary of such assurances as the group has been known to execute critical media figures.”

The Taliban have also overrun a Kabul television station:

Meanwhile, the establishment media on Monday compared President Joe Biden’s evacuation of the United States embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, to the 1975 humiliation of evacuating the United States embassy in Saigon, Vietnam.

“The fall of Saigon: As Taliban seizes Kabul, the Vietnam War’s final days remembered,” the Post compared the two evacuations. NBC News titled their headline, “As the Taliban gains ground, Biden grapples with the ghosts of Saigon.”

Punchbowl News reported Biden does not agree with the comparison:

Biden also downplayed the comparison to South Vietnam, saying Americans would never see an image of U.S. helicopters plucking people off rooftops in Afghanistan, similar to what happened in Saigon in 1975. Which is what happened on Sunday, just five weeks later, when American forces took embassy staff out of the U.S. compound. This video was played on repeat Sunday.

Biden’s indifference to the comparison could perhaps be the reason he required the media to RSVP for his remarks on Afghanistan Monday afternoon, although the White House claimed the RSVP was due to coronavirus “restrictions.”

“There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of [an] embassy… of the United States from Afghanistan,” Biden promised July 8.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø

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