Monthly Archives: August 2021

Six years to the day after a stadium rally in Mobile gave an early glimpse of Donald Trumps ability to generate the excitement that would propel him to the White House, the former president is back in Alabama today to fire up his supporters again.

Trump will hold a Save America outdoor rally at York Family Farms in Cullman, which is in the heart of a Congressional district where four out of five voters supported him in 2016 and 2020.

Its his first speaking event in Alabama since campaigning for Luther Strange during the special election for the Senate in 2017.

Admission starts at 2 p.m. today live music, food and beverage concessions, and guest speakers.

The rally starts at 5 p.m. Alabama Republican Party Chair John Wahl said nine speakers are lined up to precede Trump. The former president takes the stage at 7 p.m.

Other speakers include Wahl; columnist and commentator Todd Starnes; state Sen. Garlan Gudger of Cullman; Congressman Robert Aderholt of Haleyville; state Rep. Andrew Sorrell of Muscle Shoals; Attorney General Steve Marshall; Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth; Sen. Tommy Tuberville; and Congressman Mo Brooks, who carries Trumps endorsement in the U.S. Senate race.

Wahl said he started working to bring Trump back to Alabama as soon as he was elected state party chair in February. He said the 45th presidents appearance will help build momentum for Alabama Republicans for next years elections.

Alabama is Trump Country, and the president has such a special bond with its people, Wahl said in a press release. We are delighted he is coming to the heart of the Fourth Congressional District, where he received his highest vote percentages in the 2016 and 2020 general elections.

The Alabama Democratic Party has denounced Trumps return to Alabama as a bad idea. Democratic Party Executive Director Wade Perry said it had the potential to be a super-spreader of COVID-19 at a time when the coronavirus has filled up Alabama hospitals.

In fundraising emails to members and supporters, the Alabama Democratic Party has said it would greet Trump with billboards carrying messages such as Welcome to Alabama, Liar.

Since leaving office, Trump has regularly repeated his unsubstantiated claims that President Biden won the election because of fraud and irregularities.

Tickets to tonights event are free but are required. Register for tickets.

The U.S. Secret Service will prohibit chairs, coolers, alcoholic beverages, signs and placards, guns, knives, umbrellas, selfie sticks, tripods, and other items.

Things you cant bring to the Trump rally in Cullman include guns, aerosols, balloons

York Family Farms is the venue that hosted the Rock the South music festival last week.

Read the rest here:

Donald Trump speaking in Alabama for the first time in 4 ...

Trump sues Facebook, Twitter over 'blacklisting and canceling'

Claims that tech companies are biased against conservatives have emerged as a top issue to rally the GOP base ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Associated Press, USA TODAY

Twitter blocked and labeled some Donald Trump's claims ofelection fraud in the run-up and aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

The tweetsspread on and off Twitter anyway.

Thats according to a new study from New York University researchers published Tuesday in Harvard Kennedy's School Misinformation Review and shared exclusively with USA TODAY.

The study is raisingnew questions about the ability of social media companies to halt the flood of falsehoods on mainstream social media platforms during election cycles.

NYU researchers say Trump tweets withfact-check labels spread further on Twitter than those without. And when Twitter blocked engagement with the former presidents tweets, they leapedto Facebook, Instagram and Reddit where they were more popular than tweets that Twitter labeled or did not flag at all.

Do Facebook and Google censor conservatives?Trump, Republicans bet claims they do will rally GOP base in 2022

Banning Trump from Facebook: Why Justice Clarence Thomas and other conservatives say it is First Amendment issue

It's not clear if Twitter intervened on social media posts that were more likely to spread or if it was the intervention itself that gave the tweets a boost, the researchers said.

But they say their studyunderscores how harmful misinformation can hopfrom platform to platform with too little coordination among social media companies to curb its spread.

Misinformation halted on one platform does not halt it on another, said Megan Brown, research engineer with NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics.

Blocked on Twitter, Trumps tweets turned up on Facebook in the form of links, quotes andscreenshots, where they garnered an average engagement of more than 300,000, said Zeve Sanderson, executive director of the NYU center.

That phenomenon shows that political actors seeking to advance a narrative online are not limited to working within a single platform, said Joshua Tucker, co-director of the center.

We are in a world where people who are trying to control information environments and who are trying to push political information environments are in a multiplatform world, Tucker said. Right now, the only way we have to deal with content is on a platform-by-platform basis.

In a statement, Twitter saidit took a number of steps to limit engagement on tweets that violated its rules.

"As election conversation reached record-highs, it was critical that we took swift enforcement action on misleading content that could contribute to offline harm," the company said.

From Oct. 27 to Nov. 11, Twitter labeled some 300,000 tweets as disputed or potentially misleading and saw an estimated 29% decrease in quote tweets.

"We continue to research, question, and alter features that could incentivize or encourage behaviors on Twitter that negatively affect the health of the conversation online or could lead to offline harm," the company said.

Twitter'smost significant intervention waspermanently banningTrump in the final days of his presidency after the Jan. 6Capitol attack, a move that raisedthorny questions of free speech and censorship on social media.

At the time, Trumphad 88.7 million followers who retweeted him at an astonishing rate, giving him near unprecedented power to shape the national conversation.

After his followers stormed the Capitol building to block Congress from certifying Joe Bidens presidential win, all three of the nations top social media platforms Facebook, Googles YouTube and Twitter banned Trump over concerns he would incite more violence.

YouTube said it would lift the suspension after the "risk of violence" decreases. In June, Facebook said the earliest Trump would regain access to his accounts would be 2023. Even if Trump runs for president and wins in 2024, Twitter said it will not reinstate him.

Trump attacked social media companies forlabeling, restrictingorremoving his poststhat spread falsehoods about the outcome of the presidential election.

In July, Trump filed suit against Facebook, Google and Twitter and their CEOs, claiming the companies violated his First Amendment rights.

In a backlash from conservatives, dozens of states are considering legislation that targets how social media platforms regulate speech. One bill passed in Florida but was temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

Another in Texas had the votes it needed in a special session of the Republican-controlled legislature but has beenin limbo after Democrats left the state for Washington to protest a GOP effort to overhaul the state election system.

NYU researchers say they focused on Trump's tweets because of evidence that he acted as a central vector for spreading election-relation misinformation.

They examined tweets from Nov. 1, 2020, through Jan. 8, 2021, that were flagged by Twitter.

Blocking engagement with Trumps tweets limited their spread on Twitter but not elsewhere, researchersfound. The tweets were posted more often and were more popular on other social media platforms.

When Twitter slapped a warning label on Trumps tweets, they were more popular than his tweets that had no label, researchers said.

The finding does not necessarily mean that warning labels were ineffective or had the Streisand effect, when an attempt to hide or remove information draws even more attention to it,Sanderson said.It may be that the types of tweets that Twitter labeled were also the type that would be more likely to spread.

In the future, especially with respect to the ongoing pandemic and the 2022 midterms coming up, it will be really important for the platforms to coordinate in some way, if they can, to halt the spread of misinformation, Brown said.

Originally posted here:

Twitter blocked and labeled Donald Trump's tweets on election fraud. They spread anyway. - USA TODAY

Birmingham Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who is exploring a Republican campaign for Michigan governor, says he would accept Donald Trump's endorsement if offered but he wants to be defined as himself, not the former president.

Craig, who is expected to pursue the GOP nomination for governor, made his first extended remarks on Trump Monday during a press conference in Birmingham that focused on law enforcement policy.

If the president gives me his endorsement, Ill accept it," Craig told reporters. "But I want to be defined as James Craig, not Donald Trump. I am looking ahead to 2022.

Craig is one of nine Michigan Republicans who have formed fundraising committees to run for governor next year. The winner of the August 2022 primary will take on Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in her reelection bid.

Trump, who remains popular within the Michigan GOP, is expected to be a potentially influential figure in the battleground state's primary race. The former president has maintained that he lost his 2020 campaign to Democrat Joe Biden because of election fraud, claims that remain unproven.

Asked if he believed the election was stolen from Trump, Craig said he didn't have information on whether there was evidence to back up the assertions.

I am a cop. … If there was evidence, if there was a proper investigation that the election was stolen … I dont have that information," the former police chief said.

But what I do certainly support is election integrity," he continued.

Craig said he supports a requirement that people show identification in order to vote. Currently, under Michigan law, in-person voters can sign an affidavit saying they don't have their ID with them and still cast a ballot.

He made the comments Monday afternoon after a meeting with law enforcement officials and GOP lawmakers in downtown Birmingham. The group had a policy discussion in private for about an hour inside a room with glass walls.

Reporters sat outside the meeting room and could watch but weren't able to hear the discussion. The Michigan Democratic Party said in a statement that Craig had shown a "brazen disregard forlocal press."

Asked about the closed-off talks, Craig said he's for transparency.

"There's no secrets in that room," he said.

After the meeting, Craig addressed the media and took questions for about 25 minutes, his first formal question-and-answer session with a group of reporters since retiring as Detroit police chief on June 1 to pursue his potential campaign.

Participants in Craig's law enforcement meeting Monday included House Speaker Jason Wentworth, R-Farwell, Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard and state Sen. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte.

Craig said the group talked about the idea that defendants are being treated more like victims now. The voice of "real victims" is not being heard, the former chief said.

Former House Speaker Tom Leonard, R-DeWitt, who many expect to run for attorney general in 2022, and former U.S. House candidate Lena Epstein, who has been floated as a potential GOP secretary of state nominee, were also present at the event.

"Today is about standing with our law enforcement, standing with Chief Craig and this task force," Leonard said when asked about his potential campaign.

Leonard lost to Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel in 2018 by 3 percentage points.

cmauger@detroitnews.com

Originally posted here:

Craig says he wants 'to be defined as James Craig, not Donald Trump' - The Detroit News

When Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 by saying Nobody builds walls better than me, it was to say the least a questionable claim.

Trump insisted the great wall he planned for the southern US border, to keep out unwanted migrants, would be impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful.

Like other pronouncements by the former president, who made his name in construction, the assertion did not hold water.

Neither, it seems, did the wall.

Photographs published by the website Gizmodo appear to show sections of the partially constructed wall in southern Arizona in severe disrepair, torn apart by summer monsoon rains that the site said literally blew floodgates off their hinges.

At least six gates were washed out in a single location near Douglas, according to a quote on the website from Jos Manuel Prez Cant, director of an environmental nonprofit, Cuenca de Los Ojos.

Other sections of the wall were also hit by last weeks powerful monsoon, according to the Tucson Sentinel, which said a US Customs and Immigration Services official confirmed damage had been done.

Experts estimated the storm surge at one section of the wall, at Silver Creek, at up to 7.6m, or 25ft.

In 2020, when Trump was still in power, experts warned that floodgates in some places along the 701-mile, $21bn wall would need to be left open during heavy rains and flooding, to avoid collapse amid surges of tons of water carrying rocks, sediment, tree limbs and other debris.

Because of their remote locations, many of the gates would have to be manually opened and left unattended for months at a time, the Washington Post reported potentially allowing for the easy entry into the US of smugglers and migrants.

It appears the gates were open during last weeks storms, but the wall was still no match for historic flooding after months of drought. According to climate experts at the University of Arizona, the Douglas area has this year received almost twice its average annual amount of monsoon rainfall.

Gizmodo blamed the failure at least partly on rushed construction and an alleged bypassing of environmental regulations.

Who could have predicted this? Ah yes, just about everyone, author Brian Kahn wrote, linking to an article highlighting environmental threats the wall would encounter.

In January, Joe Biden froze construction on the border wall and ordered a review of costs. In April, the Department of Defense announced it was canceling contracts paid for from military funds appropriated by the Trump administration.

Trump always insisted that Mexico would pay for the wall a claim proven false.

Construction began in 2017 but the wall was beset by problems, including lawsuits and cost overruns.

Earlier this year, the Guardian reported that sections costing $27m a mile could be easily scaled using a $5 ladder.

The rest is here:

Trumps border wall reportedly in severe disrepair in Arizona - The Guardian

I forget exactly how we got here, but I did go there a little bit and discussed Donald Trump with Bob Arum during a chat a couple days ago, and this is how it came up.

For a bunch of years, weve conversed about the state of the nation, and the ramifications of having a leader like Trump holding so much sway over the populace.

Heres a sampling:

Before the 2016 election, Arum said he wanted to do a debate against Trump.

Arum felt disgusted seeing and hearing Trump doing daily briefings on coronavirus.

The promoter exulted when Biden downed Trump.

Arum was not pleased that Trump got so much love in the last election, versus Joseph Biden.

That was thenIve dialed almost all the way back on the paying attention to the political narratives being pitched and run with and misused effectively. I was telling Arum that, and he interrupted me. Thats OK, I am that same way, I get excited and blurt.

Bullshit, Arum said. You stopped because you were addicted to Trump!

Bob, I said, you didnt let me finish! I was going to say, I realized I stepped away not because I wised up. Its because, I said, when Trump slithered down to Mar-a-lago to plot his next moves, and stopped having the same sort of coverage and platforms, he was now out of site and largely out of mind.

At the end of January, I really did cut back hard on my intake of political news and the commentary comprises 80% of the coverage done by an MSNBC, for example.I was addicted to Trump, I confessed to Arum.

We all were, Arum said. Same for him, he said, hes now not so inclined to keep track of the latest indignities, buffooning, blustering and stirring of the drama pot. It was the best reality television ever, because he was capable of doing any kind of crazy thing. I hardly watch the news now.

A Commander in Chief who isnt such a magnetic attraction, because of his loose cannon personality, is to many of us a gift.

There is now more room, arguably, for focus on all these moving parts, from the Bobfather, who turns 90 on Dec. 8. He admitted to me that hes whittled his consumption of news way down since Donald Trump left office, and so hes enjoying watching some programs that are not so much going to affect ones blood pressure. Arum liked Hacks on HBO Max very much, and also White Lotus, on the same platform. I turned him on to Flacks, starring Anna Paquin, on Amazon Prime.

I then pivoted to this fight game, from the political arena fight game. Covid uncertainty is still impacting the fight game, cementing the adage that if you wanna make God laugh, make plans for the future and assume they are immutable. Arum and Top Rank are proceeding full steam ahead, as fast as is prudent.

Top Rank has a show in Tucson, Arizona, topped by Mexican native and Arizona resident Oscar Valdez, on Friday, Sept 10, Arum told me. Valdez defends his junior lightweight crown against Robson Conceicao, a 16-0 Brazilian who is stepping up 1.5 levels, maybe, from previous tests. In his last outing, the 30 year old Valdez (29-0) impressed mightily in stopping out Miguel Berchelt, in February.

Then theres that Oct. 9 Tyson Fury ring return, against old pal Deontay Wilder, at T-Mobile in Las Vegas. My fingers and two toes are crossed that this fight gets off the runway, takes flight, and reaches a destination, of resolution.

Arum also mentioned the Oct. 23 Top Rank show, headlined by a Shakur Stevenson-Jamel Herring faceoff. Thats a very interesting fight, Arum said.

Herring is a Marine, who was in Afghanistan. Shakur is managed by James Prince. I straight up told Bob that Shakurs last fight, on June 12 against stinker Jeremiah Nakathila, was a sleeper, not in a good way.I think that Shakur could well be in a mode to shut up critics like me, and that could make for a bout that possesses more spark and fire than some assume. Shakur did apologize, basically, and say hed do better next time, so well see, I said to Bob.

Thats what hes saying, the promoter replied.

We also touched on the pro debut of Nico Ali Walsh, a son of Muhammad Alis daughter Rasheeda, on the Aug. 14 show, topped by a Joshua Franco-Andrew Moloney battle, which screened on ESPN. I wondered, is that deal considered sort of a novelty, or does this Ali Walsh kid have real promise? I know the family very well, they are nice people. Hes serious about it. He has very little background in boxing, he was working with trainer Sugar Hill, who likes how hes developing. And did I see any mannerisms or anything which reminded me of Ali? Hes like a middle class kid, hes very intelligent. He went to one of the best high schools in Nevada, Bishop Gorman, a private prep school, Catholic. Dena (his step-daughter) went there. Then he went on to UNLV.

Arum noted that the Today Show did a hit on Nico, and yep, he liked that buzz. Those morning shows used to do more stories from the boxing space, now and again, understanding that select stories about resilient and charismatic pugilists can and do resonate with regular Joes and Janes. Well take stories like that, period, Arum said. That sort of story hadnt appeared on there in years!

Specifics on the whens and wheres for a Joe Smith light heavy title defense against Umar Salamov will be firmed up soon, Arum said. Thats an October/November proposition. If things align, and this is boxing, its a big if, if the Long Islander Smith could win, he then maybe would fight Danny Jacobs, the Brooklyn native in the first quarter of 2022.

Then, looking further down the near line, Top Rank will be back in NYC, in a big way, with Vasiliy Lomachenko at MSG. Thats December 11, the big room, and as per usual, TR will segue from the Heisman presentation, into the boxing, with ESPN.

I will presume no softball will be scheduled for that time frame.

The rest is here:

Bob Arum On Being Addicted To Donald Trump - NYFights

The most terrifying thing Ruby Wax ever did was climb aboard a private jet with Donald Trump. Her body language is that of a deer caught in the headlights of a monster truck as Trump folds into a seat beside her and declines to laugh at her jokes. The interview that ensues is a systems failure so bruising that, 25 years later, Wax is still getting over it.

This is one of the most excruciating moments of my career, she says during When Ruby Wax Met (BBC Two, 9pm). Its an absorbing look back at her life and times as interviewer of celebrities such as Tom Hanks and OJ Simpson. And it begins with a rendevous with the Tango Titan, back when he was a famous mogul with the crazy dream of one day being US president.

Trump scared the s*** out of me, says Wax, re-watching footage of their tte--tte from 1996 (and which also includes a drive-by handshake with Trumps bagman Roger Stone).

Wax in the 1990s was an acquired taste. She had one setting, which was abrasively on. She laughed at her own jokes. And she often seemed to find her shtick a word that had recently entered the vernacular and which captured her essence perfectly more interesting than whatever her interviewees had to say.

Being a force of nature is tiring for both audience and performer. And so it is no surprise Wax eventually moved on. Today, she is an advocate for mental health and an academic of distinction (she was appointed Chancellor of the University of Southampton in 2019).

But back in the day, in her capacity as a sort of proto-Louis Theroux, she landed some big fish. Having jetted with Trump to his Taj Mahal casino she meets his girlfriend Melania. The Slovenian model looks to be about seven feet tall and full of life. What an innocent, says Wax in 2021, shaking her head. And what a great tragedy.

There are also run-ins with Goldie Hawn, who is delightful, and the late Carrie Fisher, who wisecracks like Katherine Hepburn opposite Spencer Tracy and becomes a life-long friend of Wax.

The episode is bookended by her encounters with Trump and OJ Simpson (in 1998). Trump, who has a hole in his soul where his sense of humour should be, finds her objectionable on every level. Simpson, by contrast, tries to charm.

Back in the present, Wax is asked about the morality of giving exposure to someone many suspected of killing his ex-wife.

Waxs reply is that she wanted to have him confess on camera. He didnt of course. But there is a unsettling sequence in which he pretends to stab Wax with a banana. Its chilling: even more unsettling than Donald Trumps conviction that he was fated to win the White House.

Original post:

25 years after interviewing Donald Trump, Ruby Wax is still getting over it - The Irish Times

President Biden and his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, agree that American troops should leave Afghanistan. Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

President Biden and his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, agree that American troops should leave Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan the world is witnessing disastrous consequences associated with a rare area of agreement between President Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Both presidents saw the 20-year war in the remote and rugged country as an unwelcome inheritance and an albatross. For Trump it was the prime example of the "forever wars" he promised to end, a salient promise of his "America First" campaign. Frustrated in his initial efforts to truncate the U.S. mission, Trump finally bypassed the Afghan government to negotiate directly with the Taliban. The deal with them that he signed on Feb. 29, 2020 promised to pull all U.S. troops out by May 1, 2021.

Biden did not reverse this course when he took office, although he did push back the pull-out to September. He wanted more time to remove U.S. forces and, if necessary, evacuate U.S. civilians as well as Afghan interpreters and others who helped the U.S. war effort. He was advised he would have a period of weeks or months to do this after September.

It turned out, the Taliban had a schedule of their own.

It also turned out that the Afghan army the U.S. built, trained and equipped had been largely abandoned by its own government. Reportedly left without food and other supplies, much of the army simply ceded the battlefield to the Taliban, first in the hinterlands, then in the towns, then in the cities. There seemed to be little loyalty to the elected Afghan government, whose leader Ashraf Ghani fled the country before the Taliban entered the capital and took over his palace.

So when we thought we had months to get out, we had weeks. When we thought we had weeks, we had days. When we thought we still had a few days, we had hours.

The Taliban did not fight their way into Kabul; they drove in. There were commuters in American cities who found it harder driving in to work the next day.

It seems no one foresaw all this happening this fast.

But someone has to deal with the general failure. Someone has to cope with the hundreds of Americans and international workers still in Afghanistan who want to go their home countries and untold thousands of Afghans who want to leave theirs.

Taliban fighters stand guard at an entrance gate outside the Interior Ministry in Kabul on Tuesday. Javed Tanveer/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Biden stood up on Monday and said "the buck stops here." But he made clear he thought that buck had been passed to him by plenty of other people. He acknowledged that the U.S. footprint was now confined to the Hamid Karzai International Airport. He seemed stunned by the scenes of chaos there, the tarmac awash with would-be refugees, some so desperate they clung to an aircraft as it took off.

Yet Biden remained adamant about getting out of Afghanistan, even given the catastrophe on view on screens the world over.

Four presidents over two decades have found themselves mired in Afghanistan, wondering when they might get out. Biden grasped the nettle like no other. And he may well face the political consequences each of his predecessors managed to sidestep.

President George W. Bush first sent troops to overthrow the Taliban then in power after they had harbored al-Qaida prior to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Thereafter, his attention turned to invading Iraq and a larger struggle there. But he kept enough troops in Afghanistan to keep the lid on and move toward building an indigenous army and democracy (while denying it was "nation building").

Elected in 2008, Barack Obama surged the U.S. fighting force to more than 90,000 in his first term, then drew it down aggressively after winning his second. Biden, his vice president, was opposed to the build-up and favored the drawdown.

Neither Bush nor Obama wanted "Who lost Afghanistan?" questions to haunt their own reelection prospects. And indeed, they did not.

Trump, by contrast, seemed more anxious about voters asking why the U.S. had not left Afghanistan.

In his 2020 book The Room Where It Happened, John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser in 2018 and 2019, depicts Trump as determined to deal with the Taliban. He recalls Trump trying to bring Taliban leaders to Camp David for negotiations in September 2019, eventually dropping that plan, and then reviving its outline in what became the Feb. 29, 2020 agreement.

"This deal is entirely Trump's," Bolton wrote of that agreement. "Time will tell who is right, and the full effects of the deal may not become apparent until after Trump leaves office. But there should be no mistaking this reality: Trump will be responsible for the consequences, politically and militarily."

Bolton, long known as a hardliner in previous Republican administrations, has since expressed his scorn for Biden's policy and Trump's, in the wake of events in Kabul.

H.R. McMaster, a retired Army general who preceded Bolton as national security adviser, has also linked the Trump and Biden approaches to Afghanistan. He told a Wilson Center interviewer on Aug. 12 that a "sound strategy" he helped devise for Afghanistan in 2017 had been "abandoned" in "capitulation negotiations conducted under Ambassador [Zalmay] Khalilzad" Trump's special envoy to Afghanistan who was retained in that role by the Biden administration.

So intense was Trump's intention to withdraw that he persisted even after the 2020 election. According to a report published by Axios in May, Trump signed a memo in November that would have withdrawn all U.S. troops by mid-January (just five days before his term was to end). His top national security team, civilian and military, persuaded him not to issue the order but to leave the withdrawal date at May 1.

Trump has since said none of the current mayhem in Kabul would be happening if he were still president. Researchers will need to ascertain how many exit visas for Afghans had already been arranged before Trump left office, or what sort of procedures he might have had in place for Americans and Afghans wishing to leave. But lacking such evidence, and given Trump's timetable and concessions made to the Taliban, it is easier to imagine the current situation happening that much sooner.

Trump in fact had complained at his June 26 rally in Ohio that the Biden administration was dragging its feet and ought to get out faster.

There is a case to be made that Biden is less responsible for this fiasco than any of the previous three presidents. But he is the one who fumbled at the goal line, as it were, at the crucial moment of the game from the perspective of media and politics.

While an Economist/YouGov poll this June found only 1 American in 5 opposed to the U.S. withdrawing from Afghanistan, a Morning Consult survey that followed the fall of Kabul found a plurality of 45% opposed to withdrawal if it meant a Taliban takeover.

It can also be said that by the time Biden was carrying the ball, it was more like being left holding the bag.

"I am now the fourth American president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth," he said. "It is time for American troops to come home."

Biden made that statement on April 14, with Trump's May 1 deadline looming. He repeated the vow about passing the responsibility in his speech on Monday.

There was in that "time to come home" phrase a faint, distant echo of "come home, America" the campaign theme of presidential nominee George McGovern, who ran against the Vietnam War in 1972 and lost 49 states.

It was not a good year for Democrats on the ballot, but one who won was a 29-year-old Senate candidate in Delaware who did not make a major issue of the war. The young Joe Biden had not been a campus activist in his years at the University of Delaware or at Syracuse Law School. "I didn't march," he would recall later. "I ran for office."

Just two years later, still in his first Senate term, Biden watched with the nation as the long war in Vietnam ended in debacle. Helicopters plucked the last U.S. military and civilians from a rooftop in Saigon as the city fell, ending a civil war in which the U.S. had backed the South Vietnamese government against the communist regime of North Vietnam and its guerilla allies, the Viet Cong.

Vietnamese people scale the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, trying to get to the helicopter pickup zone, just before the end of the Vietnam War on April 29, 1975. Neal Ulevich/AP hide caption

American support for Saigon had been waning for years, with the U.S. ending the draft after 1972 and leaving the fighting to the Vietnamese. When left on its own, the South Vietnamese army was routed in a matter of months. Many thousands of Vietnamese who had helped the U.S. were left behind, with some escaping in desperately overloaded ships. Many of these "boat people" were picked up by U.S. Navy vessels; others made it to port in surrounding countries. Eventually, many came to the U.S. where they and their descendants now number well over a million.

When Saigon fell, none of the U.S. presidents who had made commitments to Vietnam was on hand to bear the consequences. Dwight Eisenhower, who sided with the French colonialists against the Vietnamese in the 1950s, was long dead. So was John F. Kennedy, who inherited the war but felt he had to extend it and expand the U.S. commitment, and Lyndon B. Johnson, who had escalated the war far beyond his predecessors. Richard Nixon, still alive, had resigned on the brink of impeachment over the Watergate scandal.

President Gerald Ford had been in office less than nine months when Saigon fell in April of 1975. He had been preoccupied with domestic matters and been assured the Saigon government could hold on a while longer. He was misinformed. But relatively few blamed him, even in the wake of a disastrous end to the long struggle and a humiliating exit for the U.S. His approval in the Gallup Poll did not seem to suffer, and a military rescue of U.S. seamen captured off Cambodia's coast two weeks later helped boost him to more than 50% approval at the end of May.

The other factor that may have influenced Biden on Afghanistan is more personal. Some who heard Biden speak on Monday were surprised he did not mention his son, Beau Biden, who was deployed to the Iraq War in 2008.

"I don't want him going," his father said at the time, "But I tell you what, I don't want my grandson or my granddaughters going back in 15 years, and so how we leave makes a big difference."

Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015, and his father has speculated at times about the effects of toxic chemicals his son encountered while in the war theater.

As vice president, Biden was reported to have told a colleague that he did not want his son going to Afghanistan if the mission was to make sure it was safe for girls to go to school. (The Taliban is notorious for denying women the most basic rights.)

The president has often made mention of the impact his son's life and death have had on him. And while such things as personal loss or the Vietnam era experience cannot be measured precisely, neither can they be counted out.

Follow this link:

Joe Biden And Donald Trump Have Rare Consensus On Afghanistan - NPR