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US President Joe Biden is currently facing a lot of criticism over the withdrawal in Afghanistan, with many pointing out that the media has only amplified the criticism. A former adviser to George W. Bush criticized the media for their excessive and one-sided coverage of Biden regarding the Afghanistan situation.
Appearing on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Matthew Dowd, along with Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte, was pressed on how he would describe the media’s coverage of Biden and his administration’s steps to evacuate as many Afghans and Americans from Afghanistan. Biden has defended his stance from both Republicans and Democrats in withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and has received a tremendous amount of support from military veterans. Dowd criticized the media’s coverage as “over the top” and lacking perspective since the beginning.
Dowd added that from the four recent presidents to have overseen the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan, Bush is the one most deserving of the criticism that Biden is receiving, having started the war in the first place. Some of the criticism towards Biden cited that he should not have followed with the withdrawal plan set in place by disgraced former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump allies, however, have pinned the blame squarely on Biden and have gone as far as to call for his resignation.
“They’ve added more perspective in the final days, but from the very beginning, they didn’t have a perspective on it. My sense of it is we should judge it on the data of what’s happened and not by anecdotes, and sometimes, the press has a tendency to judge things by anecdotes and not the data. And the data for the last week shows Joe Biden has basically gotten 30,000 people out of Afghanistan without a single loss of American life,” said Dowd.
In other news, Bloomberg reports that Biden will reportedly be hosting a cybersecurity meeting this week to discuss how companies are tackling and improving cybersecurity following the recent ransomware attacks. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy will reportedly be attending the meeting. Other companies invited include IBM, Google, and JPMorgan Chase.
