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In a stunning rebuke of the Biden administration, and proof that legislators are still fuming over the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, a bipartisan group of lawmakers “stormed out” of a classified briefing session because “officials failed to answer their basic questions.”
At least that’s the story CNN and Republicans told this week. But there’s little proof that bipartisan outburst actually happened, and plenty to indicate it did not. The episode seems to be the latest, heavy-handed example of the Beltway press pumping up administration critics in an effort to boost controversy surrounding Afghanistan — to keep treating hollow GOP claims as breaking news, while portraying President Joe Biden as being constantly under siege.
If Republicans and Democrats did collectively storm out of a closed-door intelligence briefing from top Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security officials, it would have represented a truly extraordinary news event. That kind of across-the-board protocol breach simply does not happen when high ranking players give national security briefings on Capitol Hill. It would be unprecedented.
There’s no indication the walkout actually occurred though, in part because CNN remains the only news outlet to report on the alleged bipartisan act of Congressional disobedience. If lawmakers had angrily marched out because questions weren’t being answered, news would have spread like wildfire across the Beltway and journalists would have easily confirmed the event.
That hasn’t happened. Instead, it appears nameless Republican sources spun a “stormed out” tale and CNN’s Kylie Atwood reported it as fact [emphasis added]:
Multiple lawmakers angrily stormed out of a classified briefing with members of the Biden administration on Afghanistan on Wednesday morning, according to three sources familiar with the briefing.
The Republican and Democratic lawmakers grew frustrated after State Department, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and Office of the Director of National Security officials failed to answer their basic questions during the briefing for members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the sources told CNN.
The report was quite clear — Republicans and Democrats furiously headed for the exits. And that’s what made the report so explosive, since Republicans complaining about the Biden administration barely qualifies as news anymore.
Atwood told CNN’s Jake Tapper the same story on Wednesday afternoon: “Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, we should note, Jake, stormed out of the room because they felt like they weren't getting the detailed information that they needed to really understand what else needs to be done here with regard to the U.S. evacuation efforts from Afghanistan.”
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, then told Tapper that "everybody walked out." The entire briefing room just emptied, according to the GOP tale told on CNN. (It’s quite likely McCaul, or his aides, served as sources for CNN’s dispatch about the walk-out.)
The truth is, CNN’s own report badly undercuts the idea that Democrats bolted the briefing because their Afghan queries were not being addressed.
From the eighth paragraph of the CNN story. [emphasis added]:
A Democratic aide told CNN that some of the members left Wednesday's classified briefing because there were Republican members who were not wearing masks in accordance with Covid-19 protocols. The aide added that many members are satisfied with the engagement from the State Department.
Who were the unnamed Democrats who stormed out?
Following the briefing, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, the Chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, and Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, issued a joint statement thanking her colleagues for participating and looking forward to “conducting bipartisan oversight of U.S. policy in Afghanistan.”
If “everybody” had “stormed” out of the briefing — if Democrats were as angry as Republicans — wouldn’t Maloney and Lynch have mentioned that?
On Wednesday, CNN’s John King repeated the briefing story, but reported “angry lawmakers” had marched out — suddenly all references to Democrats had been eliminated.
As for any questions that were not directly answered at the briefing, which supposedly sparked the bipartisan furor, on Tuesday when U.S. senators received their own, similar briefing from top military leaders, lots of the questions posed were best answered by others. As Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. told the Navy Times, “a number of the questions in there applied to the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, and they were not there to answer them.”
It’s fitting that it was CNN caught juicing the Afghanistan story because the network for weeks tried to turn the troop withdrawal story into something that it’s not — a presidency-defining failure.
It was CNN’s Clarissa Ward who famously declared that the United States’ effort to evacuate thousands of Afghans was doomed to failure. “I'm sitting here for 12 hours in the airport, 8 hours on the airfield and I haven't seen a single US plane take off,” she reported from Kabul on August 20. “How on Earth are you going to evacuate 50,000 people in the next two weeks? It just, it can’t happen.”
In the end, the U.S. evacuated more than 120,000 people.
At one point, CNN claimed the U.S. was inflicting “moral injury” by “abandoning” its allies, even as America continued to airlift tens of thousands of allies in the one of the largest, most successful post-war evacuations in history.
Simultaneously, CNN claimed Biden’s long-expected troop withdrawal meant the U.S. was “walking away from the world stage” and “leaving Europe exposed,” even though most European troops left Afghanistan seven years ago.
Bottom line: It’s highly unlikely that Democrats joined forces with Republicans this week to snub high-ranking administration officials and “stormed out” of an Afghanistan briefing.
GOOD STUFF:
Media critic Dan Froomkin returns to his excellent site, Press Watch, with a new call to arms, “Press Watch Mission Statement: Political Journalism Needs a Reset”:
The uncontrolled spread of lies is anathema to everything American journalism stands for. Fighting it is the calling of our time.
But so far, all we’ve seen is baby steps. Yes, toward the end of the Trump presidency, political reporters finally started being a bit more assertive about describing some of what Trump and his enablers were saying as “lacking evidence,” as false, or even as lies. But as we have seen, for instance during the George W. Bush presidency, when a lie is repeated over and over again, calling it out once or twice doesn’t prevent it from gaining currency.
FUN STUFF — BECAUSE WE ALL NEED A BREAK
Barenaked Ladies, “Here Together”
I first saw BNL a million years ago at the beloved Bottom Line in New York City. The Scarborough, Ontario band was filled with kids who wore shorts in the winter and ended their high-energy, sing and laugh-along shows with a grand, acoustic version of Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power.”
The band is populated by mellower dads now, but they still have a knack for clever, thoughtful acoustic pop, as their new album reminds us.
Oxygen was gettin' thin
Made it from the bottom of the ocean
You said, Don't miss me much
But I could never hold on to you long enough
🎙 Click here to listen to the music that’s been featured on PRESS RUN, via a Spotify playlist.
Click hereto listen via Apple Music.
CNN teams with GOP to concoct new Afghanistan drama
Kasie Hunt, another purveyor of inside-the-beltway group think, is now at CNN. She recently got roasted on twitter for her sophomoric take on the California recall.
https://www.newsweek.com/kasie-hunt-analysis-slammed-critics-biggest-loser-california-recall-gavin-newsom-1629303
Eric, the continued rewriting of history while dredging up the Monica Lewinsky story simply isn't stopping, as this Rolling Stone Q&A with the ACS season's showrunner proves: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/fx-acs-impeachment-monica-lewinsky-fact-check-1226894/
I'll just give you some basic lowlights and my responses.
“The Kathleen Willey story is a really sad one. Kathleen Willey did do some media around the impeachment of Bill Clinton, but her story just never seemed to get a ton of traction. It seems like it was a story that a lot of people did not want to hear. And I think Kathleen Willey’s story becomes quite sad as a result...I feel for Kathleen Willey.”
Oh, you feel for an absolute paranoid lunatic who was caught lying so blatantly that even Ken Starr wouldn’t use her? Who completely derailed into saying “the Clintons killed my cat?” Who is buddy buddy with Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing? You feel for this absolute basket case whose story has no legs to stand on?
“Paula’s story is a morally complicated one. I believe something happened. She did feel aggrieved about it. She told multiple people that week. By today’s standards, that should have been covered in the mainstream press, and taken very seriously, but it wasn’t. I believe perhaps it would be today.”
Not taken seriously? What universe do you live on? The press repeated Jones’ accusations as ABSOLUTE TRUTH. The media had determined, before there was even the boneheaded Clinton v. Jones decision, that Bill Clinton had assaulted Paula Jones. The press was eager for him to fall, and were certain this was going to be it.
“I believe if this happened again, it would happen in much the same way. The way some of the mainstream publications handled it — there were op-eds in The New York Times that referred to Monica in completely inappropriate ways, for instance — I don’t think that would happen again.”
What was “inappropriate?” The “stalker” claims? Claims which came from Michael Isikoff interviewing Lewinsky’s former boyfriends, who said she was needy and possessive? Blame Isikoff for that. All of that started with him. (I also am not ready for forgive Isikoff for what he did. His work with David Corn on Trump’s Russia connections is a start, but it doesn’t make up for how he built the story into the manufactroversy it became.
“But I don’t think political tribalism has gotten better in the United States. And that motivated a lot of the reaction to Monica Lewinsky. She was blamed for the actions of the president. She was blamed for this impeachment, for making him a vulnerable politician. And that, unfortunately, has not gone away.”
Who really blames Lewinsky as the sole reason for the actions of Clinton? Absolutely NO ONE. Clinton did what he did, and it was wrong and inexcusable. Everyone who talks about Lewinsky’s role is merely pointing out that it takes two to tango, no more and no less. Pretending that Clinton’s actions occurred in a vacuum or that he “violated an innocent, naive youngster” is simply wrong and is a bigger lie than the one Clinton told.