The White House Is Trying to Cover up the Real Scandal of Austin’s Absence
The Biden administration is trying to contain a serious scandal — which is the last thing they need, given Joe Biden’s other political problems. It’s hard even to imagine how Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin kept his prostate cancer diagnosis and his hospitalization a secret. It's even worse that no one, not even Joe Biden or other top White House officials, knew about it.
“Nobody at the White House knew that Secretary Austin had prostate cancer until this morning,” John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman revealed Tuesday. “And the president was informed immediately after.”
It’s been a few years since I’ve worked in an office, but it was standard operating procedure to inform the boss of a planned absence or even an unplanned absence. If you couldn’t make it to work, you had to call in to let them know. If you didn't, they would at least figure it out.
Related: Biden Should Fire Lloyd Austin, but We All Know Why He Won’t
Despite lengthy disagreements with the Biden administration's policies, I'd like to think that the Secretary of Defense is more important to the administration than my role as an architectural designer was to my firm. If I unexpectedly didn't show up to work, I'd be getting a call within an hour of the official start of business.
So, what's the excuse for the White House not knowing that the Secretary of Defense was hospitalized for a week?
The White House is trying to make this an issue of protocols and has ordered cabinet secretaries to notify them when they are unable to perform their duties. AP News reports:
Meanwhile, the Biden administration, reeling from learning of Austin’s surprise, is mounting a policy review. And the Pentagon has also begun its own review.
Chief of staff Jeff Zients sent a memo to Cabinet secretaries directing them to send to the White House by Friday any existing procedures for delegating authority in the event of incapacitation or loss of communication.
Biden and other top officials weren’t informed for days that Austin had been hospitalized and had turned over power to his deputy. A Pentagon spokesman blamed the lapse on a key staffer being out sick with the flu.
“Agencies should ensure that delegations are issued when a Cabinet Member is traveling to areas with limited or no access to communication, undergoing hospitalization or a medical procedure requiring general anesthesia, or otherwise in a circumstance when he or she may be unreachable,” Zients said in the memo. He also directed agencies to document when any such transfer of authority occurs and that the person serving in the acting role promptly establish contact with relevant White House staff.
While I don't doubt that this step is necessary given recent events, it never should have been. But Austin's shocking lack of transparency isn't the only problem here. There is no excuse for the White House not to figure out Austin was missing within a day. This memo to cabinet secretaries is trying to shift the scandal away from the administration and make it solely a Pentagon scandal. But it's not.
We have the Israel-Hamas war, American hostages still in captivity, a border crisis, Houthi terrorists attacking shipping vessels in the Red Sea, and the endless Russia-Ukraine war, and Joe Biden had no idea his own Defense Secretary was missing. No one in the White House knew he was missing.
This isn't just a transparency scandal of the Pentagon, it's a scandal of gross incompetence at the White House.
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