The press is super upset that President Joe Biden has the nerve to pay attention to more than thing at a time. While in the middle of overseeing the safe extraction of tens of thousands of Americans and their allies from Afghanistan, Biden dared devote time to outlining how our own economy, pandemic response, and infrastructure investment is progressing.
Fox's Peter Doocy was not happy, and took the opportunity to try again to catch Jen Psaki in a misstep. It's like watching Sisyphus, but less tragic and more stupid.
Speaking of Biden, Doocy asked, "In his remarks last night, he gave a lot of time to the domestic agenda. Does he think that the Build Back Better plan is as urgent and as time sensitive as this evacuation of Americans and Afghan friendlies from Kabul?"
Le sigh. Psaki's minor expression of annoyance the other day must have let off enough steam to restore her trademark calm and patience. As with a toddler, she explained with mostly small words, why the answer is yes.
"First of all, I think it's important to the American people, who care deeply about whether they are going have jobs, whether they are going to have child care, whether we are going to be able to compete with China and countries around the world, to understand that we have to do multiple things at the same time. That's exactly what any president of the United States has to do," she answered.
Undeterred by the boulder rolling back down the hill, he started pushing it right back up again.
"The next one, as these negotiations about safe passage for Americans and SIV holders continue, why haven't we heard the president say, 'The United States does not negotiate with terrorists?' Is that still the U.S. policy?"
What exactly does he want from Biden? Does he want the safe extraction of Americans, or does he want us not to negotiate with the terrorists to whom the nation of Afghanistan fell because of The Former Guy's treasonous, criminal grift and incompetence? Did he forget that the Former Guy negotiated the terms of surrender and withdrawal?
Psaki answered, "Well, of course it is, Peter, but I would also say that there's a reality that the Taliban is currently controlling large swaths of Afghanistan. That is a reality on the ground. And right now our focus and our priority is getting American citizens evacuated, and our Afghan partners evacuated, and I would say, given the numbers that we've outlined and briefed for you, that we've made a great deal of progress in doing exactly that."
Psaki didn't give him the satisfaction he craved of announcing some absurd and fictitious narrative that all of a sudden our nation's policy is that YAY NOW WE NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS! Instead, she went with the truth, which is that we've evacuated more than 80,000 people without the loss of a single American life, and that counts as a success.
According to the Sisyphus myth, the man is forever rolling that boulder uphill, only to have it roll back down again, as punishment for having cheating death twice. Seems like Doocy gets slain daily in that briefing room. He must be cheating death somehow, too, since he keeps coming back for more.
