Mainstream Media Outlets Ignore Report on Biden’s Compromising Call with Afghan President

Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images.

Reuters reported this week that in a July phone call President Joe Biden urged then-Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to project that the fight against the Taliban was going well, “whether it is true or not.”

“I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” said Biden, according to Reuters, which reviewed a transcript and recording of the call. “And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”

Except for a few mainstream media outlets, including USA Today and The Washington Post, there has been no reporting on the story from publications like The New York Times.

Additionally, the major networks – CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS and ABC – appear to have completely ignored it, according to a review of transcripts on media monitoring service TVEyes. Fox News media reporter and Mediaite alum Joseph Wulfsohn first brought this to light on Thursday, citing transcripts, in what he called “a media blackout in the bombshell report.”

The scandal of the call revealed by Reuters is that it reveals Biden cared more about optics than the dire reality on the ground, where the Taliban was winning – and ended up controlling Afghanistan, creating a safe haven for terrorists and undoing more than 19 years of progress made in the country, including for women. If Trump had done what Biden did, major networks would provide wall-to-wall coverage of the tragedy (and rightly so).

The Biden-friendly mainstream media has done a great job overall covering the Afghanistan withdrawal and disastrous and immoral aftermath that has included a hasty evacuation that, while it saved more than 123,000 people, left Americans and, reportedly, the majority of Afghan allies, including interpreters, behind, putting them at risk of being captured or, even worse, killed by the Taliban or other terrorist groups. Unfortunately, the omission by most of the mainstream media, including all the major networks, of this report is inexcusable and puts a dent in that great job.

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