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On Tuesday's Morning Joe, after Willie Geist pressed Yamiche Alcindor hard, twice asking whether the Biden administration understood the gravity of the Afghanistan situation, Alcindor, of PBS and MSNBC, responded: "I think it’s been very clear to me in talking to White House officials that they understood the gravity. This is a 20-year war spanning multiple presidencies. And President…

Plenty have people have compared the current situation in Kabul to Saigon in 1975, but on Tuesday, CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley became probably the first to suggest that may not be all bad. For Brinkley, the fact that people are scrambling to get onboard or hanging off the exteriors of C-17s might, one day, lead to them being seen as symbols of hope.

In all my many years of blogging MSM outbursts against Republican presidents, I've never seen anyone angrier Richard Engel about Biden's Afghanistan fiasco. Well, there was Keith Olbermann. But for present purposes, let's leave aside the clinically disturbed. In a piece with which Morning Joe opened today's show, Engel absolutely unleashed on the Biden administration. Rolling heartbreaking…

The major broadcast networks continued their welcome stance on Monday afternoon of holding President Biden accountable for the embarrassing collapse of Afghanistan and the peril Afghans and Americans have found themselves in. After Biden’s speech, ABC, CBS, and NBC lambasted it for having “missed the moment” in failing to “accept responsibility” for this “catastrophe” he’s caused and explain…

Today's Morning Joe offered the spectacle of a stunning contrast between two Democrats, one principled, the other totally cynical, on the issue of Biden's Afghanistan fiasco. On the one hand, Mika Brzezinski. As anti-Trump as ever, but passionately blaming Biden for "leaving to die" Afghans who had helped America. Mika also said that as much as Trump can be blamed, ultimately, "Joe Biden made…

Richard Engel has described himself as "basically a pacifist." But when it comes to telling it like it is regarding the Afghanistan fiasco, NBC News' chief foreign correspondent is taking no prisoners today. When on his MSNBC show this morning, Ali Velshi asked Engel whether it is surprising "not that it is happening, as much as how fast it is happening," Engel flatly rejected the notion. "No…

On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough scoffs at the claim by Biden's State Department spokesman who said of Afghanistan that "this is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal." That's "exactly what it is," retorts Scarborough. And retired Navy Admiral and Supreme Allied Commander Europe James Stavridis says calls the abrupt Biden withdrawal a "very dark moment…

Rick Stengel, formerly of Time, turned Obama State Department flack, turned MSNBC analyst, appearing on Nicolle Wallace's show this afternoon, says of the Afghanistan fiasco: "It hasn’t quite worked out as we thought." Shades of Hirohito's surrender speech in 1945: “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”

CNN climate guy Bill Weir joined At This Hour guest host Boris Sanchez to discuss the latest U.N. report calling climate change "code red for humanity." Weir sounded pessimistic about governments' willingness to do anything about it, but in an attempt to find some optimism hyped lawsuits by children amidst "the social license to go drilling for oil."

Substitute Morning Joe co-host Jonathan Lemire channels the supposed fret of foreign leaders that "there could be a return to Trump or Trumpism if Biden, let's say, serves only one term and Donald Trump or someone like him follows him into office."

Under close questioning by New Day co-host Brianna Keilar, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby doesn't deny the Taliban's claim that it has taken control of 85% of Afghanistan. Kirby supports Biden's claim that there will be no "fall of Saigon" moment in which people have to be evacuated from the roof of the US embassy in Kabul.

CNN has been a slavish supporter of all things Biden—with one glaring exception. The network has been critical of Biden's precipitous withdrawal of all US combat troops from Afghanistan.  As early as April, when Biden first announced his intentions, we noted a very critical CNN segment on the subject. That downbeat drumbeat continued today. Co-host John Berman opened New Day by solemnly…

Former two-time Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld died on Wednesday at the age of 88. Given his role in the Iraq War, both in its conception and in how it was fought, it was inevitable that media reaction would be at least somewhat critical. On his MSNBC show, Ayman Mohyeldin, however, went much further, blaming him and the U.S. for the misery that exists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Biggest risk to the United States: Isis? Al Qaeda? Russia? China? Nope. It's—you guessed it—Donald Trump . . . if you believe MSNBC. On Nicolle Wallace's MSNBC show this afternoon, ex-FBI agent-turned-liberal-commentator Clint Watts claimed: "The biggest risk to the country isn’t actually from outside the country. It’s not even necessarily from inside the country, but from the last person that…