On July 23, Joe Biden tried to persuade Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to lie about the situation in Afghanistan so that he could look good while withdrawing from the country. America first learned about the phone call in which this conversation took place on Wednesday.
“I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden told Ghani. “And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
But Biden’s efforts to cover up the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan so that he could have his September 11th photo-op go beyond his request that Ghani lie about the Taliban’s ability to take over the country.
According to a report from Just The News earlier this week, “Biden administration officials also conceded the president granted himself a waiver to avoid providing Congress this summer a legally required report on the dangers of withdrawing from Afghanistan, leaving lawmakers mostly in the dark about a situation in which U.S. confidence in the Afghan government and military rapidly deteriorated.”
By not issuing that report, the Biden administration was able to make several false claims. They promised that every American and Afghan ally who wanted to leave the country would be able to before the deadline, and that the Afghan army would be able to hold Kabul for months after we left.
Related: Jen Psaki Dodges Question About Damning Leaked Biden Call With Afghan President
Members of both parties say they feel deceived by the Biden administration.
“This administration has lied to the American people, to Congress, to the world,” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) told Just the News on Wednesday. “I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrated I have been, my team, my constituents. It has been absolutely, utterly disheartening. We know that there were soldiers that were there, helping getting people through the gates, they were trying to move people. They were kind of beholden to the State Department because State was really driving this operation and they couldn’t process paperwork fast enough.”
“It’s heartbreaking because the boots on the ground did their job, and the suits in Washington didn’t,” she added.
Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also blasted the Biden administration for the cover-up. “Congress was told repeatedly that the Afghan Defense and Security Forces were up to the task, that it had the troops, equipment and willingness to fight,” Menendez said in a statement. “To see this army dissolve so quickly after billions of dollars in U.S. support is astounding. The American and Afghan people clearly have not been told the truth about the ANDSF’s capacity and deserve answers.”
In granting himself a waiver to avoid giving Congress a true picture of the situation in Afghanistan, he was clearly more concerned about getting credit for ending the war in Afghanistan than doing it right. As Rep. Byron Donalds (D-Fla.) said, we now have 13 dead servicemembers because Joe Biden wanted a photo-op for September 11th. And now we know that Biden wanted that photo-op so desperately that he not only asked Afghan President Ghani to lie, but he committed a devastating lie of omission to Congress about the real situation in Afghanistan.
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