Joe Biden ‘exploded’ when he was on vacation at Camp David and was told Ashraf Ghani had fled Afghanistan as Kabul fell to the Taliban, Franklin Foer claims in The Last Politician
- Franklin Foer’s new book details the inner workings of the Biden White House
- He says Biden ‘exploded’ in August 2021 when he was on vacation in Camp David
- He reacted with fury when told that the president of Afghanistan had fled Kabul
- Foer also claims Biden is worried about being called stupid so ensures that he is fully briefed before taking any questions
Joe Biden reacted with fury to the news Afghanistan’s president had fled the country and left it to the Taliban, a new book has claimed.
The President was three days into his August 2021 vacation at Camp David when he was told by his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, Ashraf Ghani had left Kabul.
‘Biden exploded in frustration,’ writes journalist Frankin Foer, in a new account of the first two years of the Biden presidency, which will be published on Tuesday.
Foer writes, according to Fox, that Biden exclaimed: ‘Give me a break!’ Ghani left Kabul on August 15, 2021.
The planned exit of US troops dissolved into chaos and on August 22 Biden was asked about the rapidly unravelling situation and he laughed.
Joe Biden is seen on August 22, 2021, laughing when asked about criticism of his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal
Biden is seen on Sunday leaving a church service in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware
Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, fled the country on August 15, 2021
A CBS News reporter asked Biden for his response to a poll which showed Americans were unimpressed with his handling of the withdrawal, and ‘no longer consider you to be competent, focused, or effective at the job.’
Foer’s book will be published on Tuesday
Biden laughed, and said he had not seen the poll.
Four days later, on August 26, 2021, 13 U.S. Marines were killed in a suicide bomb attack.
In Foer’s book, he writes that Biden bemoaned newspaper columns that described the chaos at Kabul’s airport.
‘Either the press is losing its mind, or I am,’ he told an aide.
His view was that the shocking images of disarray during the hurried evacuation were the inevitable consequence of a difficult decision, according to an account of the 2021 operation in ‘The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future.’
Foer on Sunday told Chuck Todd that Biden has ‘insecurities’ about being ‘perceived as stupid.’
Foer said that Biden was scarred by a 1980s plagiarism scandal, and was passionate about being seen as being on top of policy debates.
‘He is somebody buried in details, he is somebody who is very technocratically obsessed in the intricacies policies,’ Foer told Todd.
‘He micromanages all of the dealings in the White House.
‘He has these insecurities that govern a lot of the ways he moves through the world. One of the primary insecurities is that he does not want to be perceived as stupid.
‘So when he walks into a press conference, he wants to have mastery of what he is discussing. His prep sessions can go on for a long time.’
Foer’s book paints a picture of a president who stuck stubbornly to his belief that he had made the right decision despite the way the Taliban were able to sweep through the country and seize the capital as American troops left.
‘And amid the crisis, a crisis that taxed his character and managerial acumen, the president revealed himself,’ writes Foer in an excerpt published by the Atlantic.
On April 14, 2021, President Joe Biden announced that the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan would be completed by September 11, a political deadline that was later dropped
Four months later, Biden was at Dover Air Force Base for the return of 13 U.S. personnel who were killed in a suicide attack during the chaotic evacuation from Kabul airport
‘For a man long caricatured as a political weather vane, Biden exhibited determination, even stubbornness, despite furious criticism from the establishment figures whose approval he usually craved.
‘For a man vaunted for his empathy, he could be detached, even icy, when confronted with the prospect of human suffering.’
This week marks the second anniversary of the U.S. exit from a 20-year war. The last soldier stepped off Afghan soil on Aug. 30, 2021.
But missteps along the way, capped by a suicide attack that killed 13 U.S. personnel and more than 160 Afghans, mean there will be little official fanfare in Washington to honor the date.
In Foer’s telling, those missteps started with Biden’s April announcement that U.S. troops would be leaving.
‘Biden’s speech contained a hole that few noted at the time. It scarcely mentioned the Afghan people, with not even an expression of best wishes for the nation that the United States would be leaving behind,’ he writes in his book, which will be published on Sept. 5 by Penguin.
‘The Afghans were apparently only incidental to his thinking.’
On top of that, he set September 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as the deadline for the departure, apparently much to the irritation of Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
‘Although he never officially complained about it, Milley didn’t understand the decision,’ writes Foer. ‘How did it honor the dead to admit defeat in a conflict that had been waged on their behalf?’
But Biden expressed fury that coverage focused on the chaos of the withdrawal
The Americans killed in the blast were: (left to right, starting with top row) Cpl. Daegan W. Page – Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo – Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover – Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza – Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum – Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui – Cpl. Hunter Lopez – Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz – Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss – Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez – Navy Corpsman Maxton W. Soviak – Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola – Sgt. Nicole L. Gee
That deadline was quietly shelved.
Planners had accounted for ‘catastrophic scenarios’ using tabletop simulations, but no-one really believed they would be needed.
The White House believed the Afghan government’s armed forces could hold off the Taliban for months, allowing a scaled-down U.S. embassy to stay open, running aid programs and issuing visas.
In the event, an army built to an American model needed American air support and American contractors to fight the enemy. Its troops simply melted away as the Americans left.
Taliban fighters arrived in Kabul on Aug. 15, triggering chaotic scenes at Hamid Karzai International Airport as desperate Afghans tried to flee their new masters.
‘After seeing the abject desperation on the HKIA tarmac, the president had told the situation room that he wanted all the planes flying thousands of troops into the airport to leave filled with evacuees,’ writes Foer. ‘Pilots should pile American citizens and Afghans with visas into those planes.’
Taliban forces took control of Kabul on August 15, 2021, triggering a haphazard evacuation of foreign nationals and vulnerable Afghans. And it meant US forces had to rely on Taliban help
Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the US Army 82nd Airborne Division, pictured boarding a C-17 cargo plane at the Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 30, 2021
During and after the operation, officials talked up the extraordinary operation. Some 387 sorties flew more than 122,000 people out of Kabul by the end of August 30.
But the media coverage focused on chaos, images of people clinging to departing planes in desperation, and the fact that the U.S. failed to predict the rapid advance of the Taliban.
‘Biden didn’t have time to voraciously consume the news, but he was well aware of the coverage, and it infuriated him,’ writes Foer. ‘It did little to change his mind, though.
‘In the caricature version of Joe Biden that had persisted for decades, he was highly sensitive to shifts in opinion, especially when they emerged from columnists at the Post or the Times.
‘The criticism of the withdrawal caused him to justify the chaos as the inevitable consequence of a difficult decision, even though he had never publicly, or privately, predicted it.’ And Biden tried to micromanage key moments.
Foer wrote that ‘Biden would pepper’ former Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass with ideas for how to get ‘more evacuees through the gates’ of the airport.
‘The president’s instinct was to throw himself into the intricacies of troubleshooting. Why don’t we have them meeting in parking lots? Can’t we leave the airport and pick them up?’ Foer writes.
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