A fiery new book claims US President Joe Biden had an “explosive” reaction when he was told the president of Afghanistan fled Kabul as the Taliban took control of the city in 2021.
On Friday, August 12, 2021, Biden is said to have left Washington D.C. for what he thought would be a mid-summer break to Camp David. But just three days later he received a call from national security advisor Jake Sullivan told him the-then president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani was forced to flee the capital.
Journalist Franklin Foer now claims Biden “exploded in frustration” in his book “The Last Politician”. The book, which describes the inner workings of the White House during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, says Biden exclaimed “Give me a break”.
And Biden wasn’t the only one who was on holiday as Kabul fell, reports Fox News. With the White House expecting a gradual handover to the Taliban, multiple high-ranking officials had gone on holiday.
Foer claims Biden was in Camp David, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the Hamptons and the-then White House press secretary Jen Psaki was at the beach. Then came scenes on August 16, where a US evacuation flight from the Hamid Karzai International Airport left a crowded runway as people tried to desparately grab the landing gear.
Foer says Psaki knew then she would have to leave her family vacation. He says Psaki wrote to then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain: “I’m contemplating coming back,” and Klain responded: “I’m sorry. I think you need to.”
The book says Biden took an active interest in the evactuation flights, throwing out ideas to get more people on planes. It claims he asked to be updated when individual people had made it safely out of the Afghanistan.
The Biden administration managed to evacuate more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan as the country collapsed under Taliban pressure. But Foer claims the “improvised feat of logistics” failed to overcome the impression that the Biden administration was reacting slowly.
The White House was reportedly “stung” by the fact the toughest criticisms from its response were not just coming from the conservative media but “the columnists and venerable reporters that Biden’s inner circle respected and tended to heed,” says Foer.
Foer writes that “[i]n the thick of the crisis, Biden didn’t have time to voraciously consume the news, but he was well aware of the tough coverage. ‘We’re getting killed,’ he would admit. It frustrated him to no end.”
The criticism however is said to have done little to change Biden’s mind about withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Foer writes: “After defying their delusional predictions of progress for so long, [Biden] wasn’t going to back down now.
“In fact, everything he’d witnessed from his seat in the Situation Room confirmed his belief that exiting a war without hope was the best and only course.”
Foer’s book documents the first two years of Biden’s presidency from his inauguration through the 2022 midterm elections. The book is to be released Tuesday by Penguin Random House.
