The Afghanistan Pullout Fallout Settles on the Biden White House

The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Commentary Magazine

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2021

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

John Podhoretz is out today enjoying some well-deserved time away from the microphone. The nightmare in Afghanistan continued over the weekend and, despite the administration’s outward displays of confidence, the prospects for a disaster loom larger than ever. But will the emerging domestic political crisis over our disastrous pullout evolve into something that threatens to derail the Democratic... Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the commentary magazine podcast for today Monday, August 23rd, 2021,
0:29.8	I am Noah Rothman, the associate editor of commentary magazine, John Adhoritz is out today.
0:35.1	With us as always, senior editor, Abe Greenwald, hi Abe. I know, executive editor, but it's okay.
0:40.8	Executive editor, so I get I demoted you. I got a promotion last week. You got a
0:45.4	demotion this week. I never know where I stand until this thing starts.
0:49.6	You're in that? And senior writer, Christine Rosen. I was holding out for Zarina, but I'll take it.
0:56.3	That's tomorrow. We'll give you we'll give you an upgrade tomorrow. If you missed it over the
1:01.2	weekend, a lot of updates out of the atrocious situation in Kabul. And that's only because we only
1:09.7	know what's happening in Kabul. The rest of Afghanistan is a black hole, but at least we're aware
1:14.6	of what's happening in the capital. And it's not great. Joe Biden delivered a press conference
1:20.5	on Friday afternoon, which I don't think anybody would call inspiring, but at least
1:24.8	did acknowledge the situation, which he had been previously attempting to downplay by sending
1:30.2	signals to the press that it was essentially time to move on from the Afghan news cycle,
1:33.6	doing this build back better agenda meeting with democratic leaders and holding a news conference,
1:40.1	not even a news conference. I guess a speech on COVID and updated boosters when the story of the
1:44.8	week was quite clearly Afghanistan. The president gave an address. I talked about some of the concerns
1:52.0	that were put forward to him from the press and then similarly walked off after taking four
1:57.1	questions. One of the things that he stressed was that, listen, you get yourself to the airport.
2:02.3	We want to get everybody to the airport. If you can get yourself to the airport, get yourself to
2:06.4	the airport, acknowledging, however, that it was difficult that this Taliban had set up checkpoints
2:12.6	everywhere and that they weren't making it easy to get to the airport. But nevertheless,
2:16.3	we're working with them. There are partners in this mission. Subsequently, I think less than 12
	...

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