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The Media Used Afghanistan To Get Revenge On Biden
After just seven months in office, President Joe Biden did what three presidents before him would not: He got us the hell out of Afghanistan. There was never going to be a smooth and peaceful end to this war and the Afghan army we spent 20 years and billions of dollars to train gave up without a fight. The press, naturally, responded with a nuanced look at two decades of failure before trying to assign blame.
Just kidding. They flew into an orgy of condemnation directed almost entirely at Biden. Hands were wrung. Pearls were clutched. “Journalists” seemed almost delighted to rage against the chaos at the Kabul airport where tens of thousands of people were rushing to be evacuated. No one knows how to lose a war/occupation and withdraw in an orderly fashion but, dammit, Joe Biden was at fault for not inventing a way!
With the unending stream of “Fall of Saigon'' comparisons, the press was clearly hoping for a true disaster to unfold. They did not get it. The Taliban did not overrun the airport and has been allowing airplanes to land, load up with refugees, and take off unmolested. As of this writing, almost 60,000 have been evacuated, 21,000 of them in just one 24-hour period. By way of comparison, the frantic evacuation of Saigon lasted 2 days and topped out at around 7,000. President Joe Biden is handling another crisis with competence and a lack of drama. The sense of pique among certain journalists is palpable.
If one were a cynical person, one would think the media’s hysteria was all about finally smashing “boring” Joe Biden over the head and that they have not learned a thing since 2016.
https://thebanter.substack.com/p/the-media-used-afghanistan-to-get
Just kidding. They flew into an orgy of condemnation directed almost entirely at Biden. Hands were wrung. Pearls were clutched. “Journalists” seemed almost delighted to rage against the chaos at the Kabul airport where tens of thousands of people were rushing to be evacuated. No one knows how to lose a war/occupation and withdraw in an orderly fashion but, dammit, Joe Biden was at fault for not inventing a way!
With the unending stream of “Fall of Saigon'' comparisons, the press was clearly hoping for a true disaster to unfold. They did not get it. The Taliban did not overrun the airport and has been allowing airplanes to land, load up with refugees, and take off unmolested. As of this writing, almost 60,000 have been evacuated, 21,000 of them in just one 24-hour period. By way of comparison, the frantic evacuation of Saigon lasted 2 days and topped out at around 7,000. President Joe Biden is handling another crisis with competence and a lack of drama. The sense of pique among certain journalists is palpable.
If one were a cynical person, one would think the media’s hysteria was all about finally smashing “boring” Joe Biden over the head and that they have not learned a thing since 2016.
And, from Julia Ioffe:
Now that Trump is taking the wrecking ball to American democracy from behind the scenes and the rooms of Mar-a-Lago, the rubberneckers are gone, too. That means advertising revenue has started drying up, and standards are being raised. Conservative commentator and former Republican senator Rick Santorum lost his contract as a CNN political pundit after literally perpetuating the “birth of a nation” myth. But many other journalists and hazily named “strategists” lost their contracts in 2021, seen in the industry as easy publicity and easy money (contracts ranged from the mid-five figures to even the mid-six figures for a few appearances a month). That particular gravy train has left the station. “I mean, it wasn’t just the fact that Trump was a gravy train,” said one industry insider. “It’s also juxtaposed to the most boring administration in modern history. You go from a circus with flaming chainsaws to … what? An old man watching his dog?”
With the departure of Trump, temperatures have cooled and the shine of resistance celebrity has worn off. “There was certainly a prominence,” said yet another White House reporter, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized by their employer to speak on the record. “For the first time in my life, I was recognized on the street, people would buy me drinks, or take pictures of my house and post it online. I’m kind of glad to have that gone. When you become a print reporter, you don’t do it to become famous.”...
Olivia has also experienced the change in how people perceive her now that she writes about Biden and not Trump. “People would come up to me and thank me for all the work I was doing,” she told me. “You were a fucking hero for having procured those details on Trump.” She knows this wasn’t the norm, and that it shouldn’t be, but the switch in people’s perception of her has been swift. “I didn’t expect it to continue, but it’s even worse than I thought,” she said. “It’s completely thankless to criticize this president.”....
But many feel a yawning sense of emptiness and disappointment at what the ebbing Trump tide left behind. “I think everyone probably misses the ease of it, having so many willing leakers,” said the young White House reporter. “It made you think that you were better than you were. It made you think you were a really good reporter, but really, are you? I think we had an inflated sense of our abilities and it was all a fraud. Now everyone is exposed and everyone is dogshit. Where are the great stories? They don’t exist. I can’t remember the last time I read a great story that really revealed something about the Biden White House.”
https://ckarchive.com/b/k0umh6h0wo69
With the departure of Trump, temperatures have cooled and the shine of resistance celebrity has worn off. “There was certainly a prominence,” said yet another White House reporter, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized by their employer to speak on the record. “For the first time in my life, I was recognized on the street, people would buy me drinks, or take pictures of my house and post it online. I’m kind of glad to have that gone. When you become a print reporter, you don’t do it to become famous.”...
Olivia has also experienced the change in how people perceive her now that she writes about Biden and not Trump. “People would come up to me and thank me for all the work I was doing,” she told me. “You were a fucking hero for having procured those details on Trump.” She knows this wasn’t the norm, and that it shouldn’t be, but the switch in people’s perception of her has been swift. “I didn’t expect it to continue, but it’s even worse than I thought,” she said. “It’s completely thankless to criticize this president.”....
But many feel a yawning sense of emptiness and disappointment at what the ebbing Trump tide left behind. “I think everyone probably misses the ease of it, having so many willing leakers,” said the young White House reporter. “It made you think that you were better than you were. It made you think you were a really good reporter, but really, are you? I think we had an inflated sense of our abilities and it was all a fraud. Now everyone is exposed and everyone is dogshit. Where are the great stories? They don’t exist. I can’t remember the last time I read a great story that really revealed something about the Biden White House.”
The "revenge" isn't ideological; it arises from the fact that the DC press corps isn't having fun anymore and don't get to be heroes.
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"President Joe Biden is handling another crisis with competence and a lack of drama. The sense
of pique among certain journalists is palpable."
and blame it on Biden and Democrats. Lawless GQP grifters are better for the bottom line.
