Look, CNN has been surprisingly brutal towards Joe Biden on the air regarding his Afghanistan fiasco. Jake Tapper is not protecting the president. He sees right through the BS. Before she was evacuated, reporter Clarissa Ward did have a minor odd moment where she said the chants of “death to America” sounded friendly, yet she did refute almost everything Joe said about access to the airport and the overall situation. She said if this doesn’t exemplify failure, she doesn’t know what does. Biden tried to peddle a narrative of calm and competence regarding access to the airport at Kabul. That was not the case—and it wasn’t just CNN who torched the president for peddling remarks that did not comport with reality. Alas, all honeymoons come to an end, at least on the print side of CNN, where Chris Cillizza took umbrage with the repeated calls from the GOP for Biden to resign over the Afghanistan fiasco:
The deaths of 13 American soldiers after twin blasts at the Kabul airport served as a devastating blow for an already fraught attempt by Biden to pull all American troops out of the country by next Tuesday, affirming for many the dangerous mistakes and miscalculations that this President has committed in the region.
All of that is undeniably true. None of it is grounds for Biden to resign his office -- as Republican elected officials fell all over themselves to demand even as the casualties from the suicide bombings in Afghanistan were still being tabulated.
[…]
There were dozens of other Republicans following that lead, demanding that the time had come for Biden to step aside.
Which is ridiculous, for two main reasons:
1. There was a time not that long ago where NO politician would even consider calling publicly for the resignation of a president while the number of American casualties were still being counted. It would have been considered abhorrent -- playing politics on a day when we are all Americans first and members of a political party second. One of the many boundaries that Donald Trump shattered was this one; there is now no compunction about politicizing the deaths of Americans on a mission abroad. Everything is now political from the second it happens.
2. Do the members calling for Biden's resignation actually believe that a tragedy happening -- either in this country or abroad -- is grounds for resignation? By that standard, George W. Bush should have resigned on September 12, 2001. Franklin Delano Roosevelt should have resigned after Pearl Harbor. Bill Clinton should have resigned after the Oklahoma City bombing.
Is it @CNN’s belief or editorial position that Bush did 9/11 and FDR did Pearl Harbor? https://t.co/stVZ0gzfIn
— Spencer Brown (@itsSpencerBrown) August 27, 2021
Okay, first, has this network been in the dark for four years? There was nothing behind the repeated calls from Democrats to impeach Trump. They just didn’t like him, and they couldn’t handle the results of the 2016 election. They still can’t which is at the core of this clown show of a select committee looking into the Capitol Hill riot on January 6. The jury is out. There’s no evidence to corroborate this insane tin foil hat theory that Trump coordinated this incident to overturn the 2020 election. Who said that? The FBI. For years, the Left tried to get Trump. They tried to impeach Trump and failed. It was COVID being linked from a lab that saved Democrats from a second Trump term.
Also, as Spencer noted, “is it CNN’s belief or editorial position that Bush did 9/11 and FDR did Pearl Harbor?”
The best part is that Cillizza admits that there is no chance Biden resigns over his chaotic exit from Afghanistan. He just needed to be the good soldier and take one for the team for this disaster that no one who is seriously is actually saying is going well for America and this administration.