McKinnon Defends Biden On Afghanistan, Geist Tags NC Republican Candidate as ‘Crazy’

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It’s general election season, and the presumably more centrist voices on CNN and MSNBC were anything but this morning.

On Morning Joe, Willie Geist has traditionally been a relatively temperate voice, a counterweight to the rabid liberal partisanship of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

And Mark McKinnon, a co-founder of No Labels, is at least in theory the embodiment of bipartisanship.

But on today’s Morning Joe and CNN This Morning, Geist and McKinnon  tilted strongly in favor of Harris and the Democrats.

Discussing the disastrous Biden-Harris withdrawal from Afghanistan, in which 13 US servicemen were killed by a suicide bomber at Abbey Gate, McKinnon rose to the Democrats’ defense, and even shifted blame to Donald Trump.

McKinnon began by contradicting host Kasie Hunt, suggesting that the withdrawal will not be a big campaign issue: “I don’t get a sense that American voters are sitting here today going, oh, we really screwed up in Afghanistan and it’s Biden’s fault.”

McKinnon went on to explain away Biden-Harris’ failure. Declaring “wars are hell,” McKinnon said, “Trump’s the one who planned the exit, and Biden got it done, which is an incredibly hard thing to do.”

It’s one thing to negotiate an exit. It’s another to actually exit. You can’t blame Trump for this incompetent outcome, which could hardly have been worse. Within days, Afghanistan’s government collapsed and the Taliban, which had given shelter to al Qaeda terrorists behind 9/11, returned to power. Billions of dollars of US military equipment were left behind in Taliban hands. And above all, 13 American servicemen’s lives were lost in a tragic and humiliating event.

Meanwhile, on Morning Joe, Geist suggested that down-ballot races in Arizona and North Carolina could hurt Trump at the top of the ticket. When he searched for the “polite” word to describe Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, Jonathan Lemire offered, “controversial.” But Geist countered: “Crazy. I was going to take it one step further.”

Geist’s description of Republican Arizona senatorial candidate Kari Lake was arguably even more insulting. Geist called Lake “the residue of Donald Trump.” That’s tantamount to describing Lake as a lingering stain!

So what got into Geist and McKinnon this morning? With the campaign entering its final, decisive, phase, are the two showing their true color — blue?

Here are the transcripts.

MSNBC
Morning Joe
9/9/24
6:13 am EDT

WILLIE GEIST: Let’s remember, yes, these are all within the margin of error. But where this race was before Kamala Harris came on board, which is to say, and we all talk to many of the same people around the campaign, who privately conceded that North Carolina, probably Nevada, Arizona, and maybe even Georgia, they were going to let those go, effectively. They were going to fight for them, but they were not counting on them. They just had to win the three blue wall states. Well now, those are in play.

And John, we should also point out that, place like Arizona, on those tickets, there’s still the residue of Donald Trump in a candidate for Senate in Kari Lake, who’s not doing well. She’s connected to Donald Trump, helping Ruben Gallego take a lead in that race, potentially helping Kamala Harris there as well.

The gubernatorial candidate inn North Carolina is, uh, what’s the polite way of saying it?

JONATHAN LEMIRE: Controversial.

GEIST: Controversial? Crazy. I was going to go one step further, but we’ll leave it with those two.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Weird.

GEIST: Weird, okay. That obviously could help Kamala Harris, as well, in North Carolina.

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CNN This Morning
9/9/24
6:15 am EDT

JOE BIDEN: Now, some say we should have started mass evacuations sooner, and couldn’t this have been done in a more orderly manner? I respectfully disagree. I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit.

KASIE HUNT:  Thirteen American servicemen lost their lives during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021. House Republicans and Democrats releasing dueling reports on Monday, casting blame for the botched exit on each other.

The Republican report highly critical of the Biden administration, claiming the President and Vice President Harris lied to the American people at every stage of the withdrawal.

. . . 

Mark Mckinnon, this was obviously a really, really difficult moment in American history, period. What happened at Abbey Gate, obviously it’s become a major political focal point of this campaign.  And it also speaks to the bigger issue that the Trump campaign is dealing with, as they try to tie Kamala Harris to President Biden. Because one of the things this report did was talk more about Harris’ role than it likely would have were she not at the top of the ticket. How should she be addressing this this issue? It’s obviously become an issue as well with what happened at Arlington cemetery.

MARK MCKINNON: Well, I mean, wars are hell. I mean, we, how long were  we in Afghanistan? Decades. And have we ever withdrawn from a war easily or casually, or without casualties? I don’t think so.

Loss of any American life is, is never acceptable and it should certainly be a worthy of an investigation to find out what went wrong and what could have been done better.

But I don’t think, I don’t get a sense that American voters are sitting here today going, oh, we really screwed up in Afghanistan and it’s Biden’s fault.

I mean, Trump’s the one that planned the exit and Biden got it done, which was incredibly hard thing to do.