[Onkel Neal]

Something Is Wrong with the President

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-m...the-president/

This is a highly unusual schedule for a president during a foreign-policy crisis.

After making no public appearances for four days — during a major foreign crisis — President Biden read a 20-minute speech off a teleprompter on Monday afternoon and took no questions. He immediately returned to Camp David. He had no events on his schedule Tuesday. On Wednesday, he gave another 20-minute speech about vaccine boosters off a teleprompter from Camp David, and again took no questions. Also on Wednesday, the president sat for an on-camera interview with George Stephanopoulos that did not go well. According to the White House public records, Biden has had two phone conversations with foreign leaders in the past ten days — one with Boris Johnson and one with Angela Merkel.

iden is now insisting that the chaos of a Taliban takeover was inevitable, even though he stood before the country on July 8 and specifically assured the country that a Taliban takeover was not inevitable:

Q: Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?

THE PRESIDENT: No, it is not.

Q: Why?

THE PRESIDENT: Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable.

Biden also said that day that, “I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- — more competent in terms of conducting war” and “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

His lack of mental cognizance is getting significantly worse. Handover of the office by the end of the year.

Elsewhere in the Stephanopoulos interview, Biden insisted that, contrary to published reports, his military advisers had not recommended keeping 2,500 troops in the country:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But your top military advisors warned against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops.

BIDEN: No, they didn’t. It was split. Tha– that wasn’t true. That wasn’t true.

STEPHANOPOULOS: They didn’t tell you that they wanted troops to stay?

BIDEN: No. Not at — not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a timeframe all troops. They didn’t argue against that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no one told — your military advisors did not tell you, “No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that”?

BIDEN: No. No one said that to me that I can recall.

There are notes of these meetings that can be declassified. We can see if, as the Wall Street Journal and other publications reported, “The president’s top generals, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley, urged Mr. Biden to keep a force of about 2,500 troops, the size he inherited, while seeking a peace agreement between warring Afghan factions, to help maintain stability. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who previously served as a military commander in the region, said a full withdrawal wouldn’t provide any insurance against instability.” If they did not, Biden is telling the truth and there’s been an insane effort by Pentagon brass leaking that they’re warning the president of about certain dangers, and then not doing so in the meetings.

Biden genuinely does not remember what was said and recommended to him in a meeting several months ago.