President Biden, one year ago today, speaking to members of the intelligence community at the National Counterterrorism Center on the Liberty Crossing Intelligence Campus in McLean, Va.:
Give me your best judgment of what you think is — your best judgment is better than almost anybody else’s judgment in the whole world — even if the news is hard, even if the news is bad.
I can’t make the decisions I need to make if I’m not getting the best unvarnished, unbiased judgments you can give me. I’m not looking to hear nice things. I’m looking to hear what you think to be the truth.
By the end of the summer, we knew the president did not want to hear what the intelligence community believed about the situation in Afghanistan, and the risks involved with the withdrawal from that country:
Classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly, according to current and former American government officials.
By July, many intelligence reports grew more pessimistic, questioning whether any Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on in Kabul, the capital. President Biden said on July 8 that the Afghan government was unlikely to fall and that there would be no chaotic evacuations of Americans similar to the end of the Vietnam War.
The drumbeat of warnings over the summer raise questions about why Biden administration officials, and military planners in Afghanistan, seemed ill-prepared to deal with the Taliban’s final push into Kabul, including a failure to ensure security at the main airport and rushing thousands more troops back to the country to protect the United States’ final exit.
A few months later, Biden insisted no one had told him about the risk of the Afghan government collapsing, or the risks of withdrawal at that time.
LESTER HOLT: On the subject of American citizens, I have to draw your attention to that Army report, an investigative report that’s come out about the lead-up to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It interviewed many military officials and officers who said the administration ignored the handwriting on the wall. Another described trying to get folks in the embassy ready to evacuate and countering, you know, people who are in essentially in denial of this situation. Does any of that ring true to you?
BIDEN: No. No. That’s not what I was told.
HOLT: You were told that the U.S. administration officials were prepared, they knew it was time to get out–
BIDEN: No. When I was told, no one told me that. Look, there was no good time to get out. But if we had not gotten out, they acknowledged we would have had to put a hell of a lot more troops back in.
Biden went on to contend that withdrawal at any time included risks, which was not the question he was asked. Holt returned to the question of whether Biden was warned, or whether the administration ignored the handwriting on the wall.
HOLT: I just want to clarify, are you rejecting the conclusions or the the accounts that are in this Army report?
BIDEN: Yes, I am.
HOLT: So they’re not— not true?
BIDEN: I’m rejecting them.
In fact, throughout Biden’s presidency, he often demonstrates the opposite of welcoming the truth, even if the news is bad. On inflation, on the border, on Covid testing, on the supply-chain crisis, on the baby-formula shortage, Biden often rejects bad news or ominous projections and insists that his approach is working.