Jake Tapper Notes the Anniversary of the ‘Horrific’ Fall of Kabul, With One Glaring Omission

Objectivity in the media stands as the elusive conceit for many. Journalists love to tout that as their standard, yet for so many, it stands as a supreme challenge. Look, we get it; the desire to slam President Trump and the administration is substantial, but when Jake Tapper cannot even deliver the barest amount of balance, well, that is a sign of a problem.

Maybe it is a pathology. The effects of TDS are substantial, sure, but can there not be some sign of an effort being applied? Tapper set the table to serve both sides, then removed the chairs to prevent participation in one half of the setting.

On State of the Union he closed out the episode wanting to recognize the fifth anniversary of the failed pullout of American troops from Kabul. All just fine, so far. He acknowledged the FUBAR nature of that mission, and used proper terms to describe the calamitous extraction efforts. “Disastrous”, “horrific”, and other negatives were employed, all accurately.

It was inevitable, sure, that the fall of Kabul, and Afghanistan (what could more accurately be described as a surrender) would fold into the current Iran conflict. Tapper brought up President Trump, and also Secretary Pete Hegseth in his segment. But what was remarkable was what he did not mention.

Throughout his soliloquy, the name “Joe Biden” was never uttered. The former president was never pictured in the graphics as the CNN anchor spoke, unlike the current officeholders. This is a remarkable effort to elide by the host, given the stern descriptions he gave of the extraction from Kabul. Something that stands as one of the biggest scars on the Biden term in the White House does not merit mention of the man?!

To see just how much Jake Tapper strained to avoid mention of Biden, look at the passage he used first to bring up Trump’s name: “Many Afghans who fought with the U.S. – risked their lives for the U.S. – remain stranded abroad after the Trump administration halted the special immigrant Visa program.”

This is Jake using willful obfuscation. It needs to be pointed out, apparently, on this, the 5-year anniversary, that bringing Afghan allies to the U.S. has been a problem for at least 4.6 of those years. The president at the time, whom Tapper does not want to invoke in his memoriam, was being scorched by his own party in the months following the Kabul fiasco.

Biden was being hectored by no less than Chuck Schumer over the prevention of bringing those workers to this country. It was barely four months after the pullout when Democratic leadership was badgering Biden and his cabinet over this issue of Afghan workers denied entry here in the States. Immigration services had been flooded with tens of thousands of Aghan applications under its “humanitarian parole” process; at that point barely over 100 had been granted, by December of 2021. But let’s blame Trump for this.

Likewise, Tapper mentions the current conditions our military faces and the plight of the Iranian people during the current war. To get there, he needed to glide right past the details at the Abbey Gate, inside the Hamid Karzai International Airport. That would be where a suicide bomber took the lives of 13 servicemen and injured 18 others.

As for imperiling the lives of the locals, you have little more needed in the form of dramatics after seeing those who plummeted a thousand feet from the landing gear of military transport aircraft, to go along with dozens of fatalities from that bombing. Then there was the errant drone strike days later that took out innocent civilians. It is probably considered intolerant to draw those comparisons.

The problem employed by Jake Tapper in this lecture is twofold. He avoids placing accountability on President Biden, after mentioning this anniversary, then uses Biden’s boondoggle to impugn the character of President Trump. Slamming Trump after dredging up the Afghanistan extraction half a decade earlier is desperation.

We understand Tapper’s desire to steer away from culpability with Biden.  But bringing up what has to be considered his most glaring failure while straining to avoid tying him to that debacle is pure folly. It is also undiluted bias on display.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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