Well, it looks like we are set up to see some ugly during the upcoming Presidential Debate. (Assuming Trump shows up. I still say it’s 50-50) Over and over Trump has slammed the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Pick any negative descriptor word and Trump has used it. It looks like Harris is prepared to engage in some serious pushback. More to the point perhaps during the debate. Ok, almost certainly during the debate. That’s what makes the article I read earlier so impactful.
CBS News posted a story that Harris is punching back. After yet another attack from Trump (this time while he was in Detroit) the Harris campaign decided enough is enough and responded:
In a response first shared with CBS News, Harris’ campaign is using Trump’s announcement, and abrupt cancellation, five years ago of a meeting at Camp David with Taliban leaders, to highlight the role his deal with the Taliban played in the withdrawal.
The campaign argues that Trump’s deal created a “virtually impossible” deadline and left “the Biden-Harris administration with zero plans for an orderly withdrawal — only a dangerous, costly mess.”
Today as I write this it’s Sept. 7. Five years ago let me remind you Trump had invited not any leaders of the Afghan govt. but the freaking TALIBAN to come here and meet with him at Camp David to work out a withdrawal ‘deal.’ Think about that. On the anniversary of the attack the f**king TALIBAN carried out Trump was going to host them at Camp David to basically say – ‘Ok. You guys win. You can have the place and do what you want with it. We’ll get out. Just pretty please let’s not have any fighting between us from now on.’ That’s what Trump planned to do to mark the anniversary of 9/11!
I sometimes say the old ‘retro-scope’ gives us 20/20 vision and that aborted at the last minute ‘peace conference’ at Camp David was the marker that Trump had slip over the edge into clear mental decline. Holding that meeting then and at that time was flat-out boneheaded. Trump has never been smart but he was at least savvy and this was anything but. Well, it took a few months but in Feb. 2020 Trump made his deal. More importantly he had the entire spring and summer to “git er done’ but all of a sudden he seemed to want to take his time! Even though then candidate Biden supported the idea of ending our involvement in Afghanistan Trump seemed to have cold feet.
By summer, for all his big talk Trump knew he was in trouble politically. Biden was the candidate he’d always feared and his own internal polling showed him losing. Add that to the odds of at least a couple of days of Saigon redux chaos and no way in hell was Trump going to push ‘his’ generals to pull out. It could wait until AFTER the election, and if as he feared he lost then any mess could get blamed on Biden. It’s not like we didn’t know Trump would run again! Trump made a cynical, cold and heartless decision to set himself up a campaign issue for 2024. Sure enough he’s been playing it to the max, with that disgraceful stunt at Arlington National Cemetery, using families of the fallen who happen to be supporters of his as political shields.
I’m thinking this is why Trump has agreed to go through with the debate. on THIS issue alone he think’s he’s “got” Harris. That this will be the thing that allows him to recover momentum and seize the narrative. I also suspect an awful lot of thought has gone into Harris and her campaign’s strategy on how to handle what we can be sure is coming. That’s why I think it’s pretty clear Harris is signaling Trump that if he wants to make a bigly deal out of Afghanistan during the debate she’s not going to sit there and ‘take it.’ She’s going to punch back. That’s also why I say we could be in for some major ugly both during the debate itself and the aftermath. It will remain to be seen how the public will react, and of course how the media chooses to frame what takes place.
However, Trump simply isn’t there mentally anymore. Harris is, and I suspect she (just like Biden would have) is prepared to winnow down the timeline to a few specific things that can be parked in the viewing public’s minds. The timeline of what happened IS important and I’d urge you to read this write up by FactCheck.org which lays things out quite well. Harris I believe can and will hit Trump with the ‘You had time to do a withdrawal so why didn’t YOU do it?’ She can also point out long before the actual Feb. 2020 agreement was made Trump was dealing directly with the Taliban including that aborted meeting at Camp David which would have been taking place on the anniversary of 9/11. AND that the actual Afghan govt. was completely cut out of things including releasing five thousand Taliban (with Al Qeeda members among them) prisoners – something that was kept secret even after the agreement was announced. There are some other things she can hit him with but Trump’s mind as I said is gone. He won’t know how to respond and could really lose it – and with it the election.
It truly pains me that so many are too young to have seen what played out in Saigon in 1975, and that so many who did seem to have forgotten it. We sure as hell can’t count on news outlets to spend a couple of minutes doing a side-by-side comparison, much less tell the TRUTH that what we saw in Afghanistan including that suicide bomb that killed thirteen of our people at Abby Gate was always likely.
From the time the withdrawal deal was announced every time the subject came up all I could think about was the U.S. withdrawal from Saigon just before I graduated high school in 1975. Two things always went through my mind: 1) We are going to see a repeat, and 2) Even if Trump has forgotten Saigon 1975, someone will remind him of it and as much as he wants us out of there right freaking now he’ll wait until after the election – and if he loses he’ll dump the whole mess on Biden.
That’s exactly how it played out. I don’t care how much planning went into the withdrawal in the closing days it was going to be a “Charlie Fox” (cluster f**k) and anyone who thinks differently is either stupid or lying to themselves. At least the Biden administration put effort into evacuating as many Afghans as they could who helped our side during that miserable war. Not all of them. Some, like many U.S. citizens ignored pleas to leave, and that the means to get them out were waiting. With some of our own military arguing to stay they didn’t REALLY believe President Biden would honor the deal Trump made. So President Biden extended it a bit. And STILL some refused to believe it. It was only in that final week or two the ‘Oh sh*t! It’s really happening’ sank in with too many people than we could help, which is why those final days were so chaotic.
It was a mess. It was ALWAYS going to be a mess. More importantly though is that the whole thing was set in motion by TRUMP. By a deal he made directly with the TALIBAN. That’s right. What passed for the Afghan govt. was cut completely out of things. Is it any wonder than once it was clear we were getting out that the Afghan Army and Police we’d trained up took off their uniforms and tried to melt in with the civilian population? Again, we saw the same thing in Saigon in 1975. It was predictable as the sun coming up in the morning, at least to me.
Trump has counted on Biden, and now Harris just standing their and getting punched in the face. Just taking it. Well, it looks like that’s no longer going to be the way of things. It looks like Harris is going to start punching back. It’s a risky thing to do but I’m not sure she has much choice. This is one issue on which Trump has been able to hurt her and Democrats and could continue to do so. Hitting back, engaging in an actual ‘fight’ carries risks. However, if internal polling is telling the Harris campaign this line of Trump attacks is truly hurting she’s in a proverbial ‘damned if you do and damned it you don’t’ situation. Personally, in my own life when face with such things (and few times literal life and death have been involved) I’ve always believe it’s better to go with the ‘do’ option.
I agree, Denis that she should definitely answer any accusations he makes. I think the dems in general, have not returned fire in these situations and the public gets the impression the accusations are correct.
The problem with answering all his accusations is it allows him to control the messaging. That is never a good strategy. Yes, she does need to set the record straight on important shit-Afghanistan DOES need to be laid on trump’s doorstep-but spending all her time setting his lies straight leaves little time for her own messaging. She has precious little time to fuck around so dancing to his tune is a less than stellar recommendation. She needs to broadcast HER message and let Gov. Walz deal with trump’s lies. Let her other surrogates and supporters deal with them. She needs to present an ALTERNATIVE to mango man rather than constantly saying “but it wasn’t me”, constantly defending herself. Defense doesn’t win games, battles, or wars. I seriously doubt it will win an election.
Look, the vast majority of the public knows trump cannot open his mouth without uttering a lie or gibberish. Many, maybe even most, of his magat base know this too-and they don’t care. He’s been allowed to be an idiot since, well all his life but for election purposes since 2015-it is EXPECTED of him. V.P. Harris needs to show everyone what an erudite, capable, hard-working, and especially not ancient person looks, sounds, acts like.
Well, that’s a little more a case of holding the media responsible for not doing ITS/THEIR job and actually *reporting* both sides of the story.
Over the past few decades, we’ve seen this blatant media pro-Republican bias. When the GOP is in power, the media kowtows to them with very little pushback from Democrats (who are lucky to even get a minimum amount of time to talk to the media). Then, when the Dems are in power, the media blathers and spins Democratic talking points and policies to utter nonsense and then they seek out as many GOPers to corroborate their spin. Remember the Obamacare coverage? Consistent media coverage featuring GOPers making all sorts of irrational attacks with absolutely ZERO visible pushback or response coming from Democrats–because they weren’t being invited to the talk shows or getting the interviews. Remember the whole “death panels” nonsense? Oh, the media went into a feeding frenzy when the GOP (with Sarah Palin leading the attack as I recall) made the claims that Obamacare would lead to death panels being established so they could kill off granny and paw-paw with absolutely NO mention of how insurance companies were already essentially doing that. Have a heart or liver condition for which there’s a new albeit highly experimental treatment that shows promise in stopping or reversing the condition? “Oh, dear. I’m afraid your insurance won’t cover that because it’s experimental.” Granny and Paw-paw are having trouble affording their meds on their Social Security income and their limited savings have been drained to almost nothing and they learn they can order the same drugs from Canada for 1/100th the cost they’ve been paying at Walmart *with* their insurance and Medicare and Medicaid coverage. “Oh, dear. I’m afraid you can’t do that because the FDA can’t approve the drugs for sale to Americans and the Postal Service is prohibited from allowing the importation of drugs across international borders and FedEx and UPS are being told they can’t do that either. And, if it turns out you are somehow able to do that, then your Medicare/Medicaid coverage will be cut by an appropriate amount.” Yep. For *some* reason, the media wouldn’t let their reporters talk to insurance companies and ask them why they wouldn’t approve “experimental” treatments for patients with terminal conditions and illnesses.
Everyone has a plan…until they get punched in the mouth. Mike Tyson
She needs to learn from Jean Carroll. She punched him in the mouth…put him on the hook for 90+ million, got him convicted in a public trial, and labeled as a rapist. He’s still reeling and whining over it. Time to serve baby his own medicine.
Everything trump touches becomes a shit show-the withdrawal from Afghanistan could be no different. When his shit shows demonstrate his incompetence, he blames everyone except the one who caused the failures-himself.
When this abject failure of a “man” loses his ass in November, I hope he absconds for some country having no extradition treaty with us. I want this dumbass gone and I never want to hear any more of his stupidity ever again.
unfortunately modern social media means nowhere is far enough away to shut him up. Elon (or Leon) could send him to Mars, perhaps.
It’s not about social media shutting Trump up. It’s about getting it to belittle those who profess to be journalists/expert pundits who might, maybe have a little bit of shame left in their character.
I see the “risk” as minimal for Kamala if (as I hope) she goes toe-to-toe with Trump over Afghanistan. She just needs to lay out his responsibility, simply and quickly: “You made a backroom deal with the Taliban and that ruined all hope of a proper withdrawl for our troops. Then you were too chickenshit to do the withdrawal yourself, you left your mess for others to clean up, like you always do.” That should get him frothing nicely at the mouth.