The Biden administration's response to Afghanistan ruled the Sunday shows. As Cortney O'Brien with Fox News pointed out, this includes a CNN panel, during "Inside Politics Sunday with Abby Phillip."
As images out of Kabul show an increasingly dire situation, @jeffzeleny and @jpaceDC weigh in on Biden's struggle to balance confidence in his decision to withdrawal troops with empathy for those caught in the chaos. #InsidePoliticsSunday pic.twitter.com/RgCO07eYa1
— Inside Politics (@InsidePolitics) August 22, 2021
The panel, moderated by CNN's Kaitlan Collins in this week for Phillip, included Julie Pace with the Associated Press, CNN's Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny, Vivian Salama with The Wall Street Journal, and Heather Caygle with POLITICO. The consensus appeared to be how badly the Biden administration bungled this.
Pace referred to "a serious disconnect." As she continued:
There's a serious disconnect from the messaging from the Biden administration, which is essentially we've got this. We have a plan. We're getting this under control. If you want to get out of Afghanistan, you can, and then what we are seeing on the ground from really brave reporters who are there. from a lot of Afghan civilians who are sharing pictures and images of the scene outside the airport where no, you cannot get out if you want to get out. It's very difficult to still get through the gates of the airport, even if you have travel documents, even if you have an exit plan. It's very difficult to get through. We see again today there's violence, chaos outside the gates of the airport. And so I think the onus is on the Biden administration to do two things. One to actually get that situation under control and then two to be upfront with the American people about what's going on. They can see it with their own eyes at this point.
As Collins told the panel, criticism comes from prominent Democrats, such as David Axelrod.
Other concerns mentioned included Zeleny saying "it seems to me he's a bit insulated or isolated inside the White House."
The panelists also agreed on how "bizarre" Biden's response has been, as well as "confusing." One of Axelrod's criticisms, Collins had mentioned, was how it affected Biden's perceived "empathy" taking a hit.
As Collins pointed out:
Jeff, beyond the messaging or logistics of the intelligence and what went wrong, the messaging has also kind been confusing as well and surprising for President Biden, someone known for his empathy. We saw this week he did kind of change his message on Friday after he had been criticized for appearing to really kind dismiss some of the images we were seeing coming out of Kabul.
CNN played a clip of Biden's interview with George Stephanopoulos, where he dismissed images of people falling to their deaths from airplanes as taking place "four days ago, five days ago." Beyond being insensitive, the president also got the dates wrong, as it took place much more recently.
It wasn't just the network which was critical of Biden, but fellow Democrats, and not just Axelrod. Again, this isn't necessarily a common occurrence:
Collins: And Heather, you covered the hill. I know that a lot of Democratic lawmakers, typically allies of this president, have questions about how this drawdown has been executed. As we were saying some of them could be testifying this week. What are you hearing from Democrats about what they want to know, Republicans as well, of course, will have questions, too.
Caygle: Well, I think there say lot of criticism coming from the Democratic side, which is pretty rare, right? Who criticizes the leader of their party in the White House? Usually they try not to. So his week, the house will be
back. They have the first classified briefing on this. Which is really important. They've had some unclassified briefing. They're private but things leak. For instance, the Secretary of Defense said that there were Americans beaten by the Taliban. So I think going into this week, in this classified briefing, they'll be in person. They really want to know, was this a failure of the intelligence or were we deceived by the administration? We've seen some of them actually publicly allude to that question, which is, you know, pretty remarkable, given they are in the same party. I think that that is their line of questioning, and they'll go from there. We also have at least four committee hearings in September where these official will publicly testify. This is an issue that obviously is not going away.
Collins did of course feel the need to reference the Trump administrations, and such perceived failures.
Caygle didn't take the bait though. "I think we'll see finger pointing in all directions over the next weeks and months," she offered. That being said, she did also point out that "Biden also had an ability to change the timeframe" and that "the knew what he was inheriting from Trump."