WH Press Corps: Still think Biden is your friend?
August 26, 2021
Mike Huckabee
Here’s a message for members of the White House press corps: The President is looking you in the eye (when he’s not looking at the teleprompter) and lying to you. So is Jen Psaki, his smiling mouthpiece. Do you really think you’re getting the true story from the White House? After all you’ve done to help put Biden there and gloss over his monstrous shortcomings, his administration doesn’t have enough respect for you to give you more than a ridiculous fairy tale. When you play along, it makes you a national embarrassment, right along with them.
That’s what I would say to the reporters in that room.
“Spin it till we win it.” In the face of the total disaster they’ve caused, that’s the strategy the Biden administration has now adopted to make Americans think their inept retreat in Afghanistan is actually a brilliant success. In politics, who needs a real win when a perception of a win will do? But here's my point: it’s not working. Real reporters are risking their lives –- and sometimes losing them –- to get the real story out, which means our pampered press corps are just going to humiliate themselves when they try to morph Biden’s atrocious failure in Afghanistan into a win. We’re still managing to hear the horror stories about what’s actually happening there, from people who ARE there.
You’d think President Biden would be treating his loyal (for now) media friends with more respect. They’re trying their best, Mr. President! But, no, instead of answering a legitimate question posed by NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Peter Alexander, Old Man Biden made a bizarre wisecrack in his general direction, while the world looked on, aghast. Here’s how it played in Australia.
Before we relate to you some of what’s actually coming out of Afghanistan, I want you to know how sorry I am to have to bring you these stories. The Taliban are vicious, single-minded killers, apparently with no conscience and no other reason for existence. They glory in killing the infidel. They attack the vulnerable without the slightest pause. The only thing that can stop them from committing their atrocities is undiluted, unquestionable power, and President Joe Biden has abdicated that. We pray that our country will get it back, but in the meantime, there are stories that, sadly, must be told.
Of course, the magnitude of the tragedy in Afghanistan became clear when we saw planes take off from the airport in Kabul with desperate Afghans clinging to the outside. We saw, high in the sky, the tiny specks fall, realizing those people had chosen the likelihood of death to whatever they might face from the Taliban. Days later, now that the Taliban have cemented their control, we’re starting to see why those people might have made even that doomed effort to save themselves.
It has been revealed that several weeks ago, a 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian photographer, Danish Saddiqui, 38, was brutally killed after covering a fight between Afghan security forces and the Taliban near the border with Pakistan. He’d been working for Reuters since 2010 and had covered the war in Iraq, the Hong Kong protests and earthquakes in Nepal. At the time of his murder, he was embedded with Afghan special forces in Kandahar.
Saddiqui had been wounded by shrapnel and was taken to a nearby mosque for medical treatment. But word got to the Taliban that he’d been taken to the mosque, so they went there and attacked. They captured him alive, verified his identity and executed him, along with those with him. The rest of the team died trying to rescue him.
Two days later, his body arrived in Delhi, India, to be buried. And although photos of his proud killers with his body show that the body was injured but still intact at that point, somehow between then and its transfer to the Red Cross, while it was in Taliban custody, it had been severely mutilated. Saddiqui’s face was unrecognizable, he had been shot dozens of times, and there were tire tracks over his face and chest from being run over. Ironically, what they did to him simply confirmed the barbarism he was there to document.
A Taliban spokesman denied any wrongdoing, and I suppose that statement would be good enough for President Biden. Zabihullah Mujahid claimed they were under orders to “treat bodies with respect,” but they were the ones in control of the area where this happened, and we do have those pictures of Taliban fighters posing with his body. What? The Taliban lied?
The story at the DAILY MAIL also includes some of Saddiqui’s stirring photojournalism.
Afghan authorities arrested a group of four journalists in Kandahar, purportedly to keep them “safe.” But one Interior Ministry spokesperson said the journalists had been arrested on charges of “propaganda to the enemy.” He said, “The Government of Afghanistan respects and is extremely committed to freedom of expression, but any propaganda in favor of the terrorist and the enemy, as well as against the interests of the country, is a crime.”
Don’t you love that? Oh, yes, we’re EXTREMELY committed to free speech, BUT…. It’s not much different from the view shared by Google and Facebook.
One might imagine how hard it’s going to be to get the real story out of Afghanistan. But at a time when we can’t trust what the White House tells us, it’s good to know that some actual journalists are finding it out on their own.. For example, here’s a story about the real numbers of people being evacuated from Kabul --- the relatively few Americans and the many thousands of Afghans. It’s an update on what we brought you yesterday. You won’t hear this from Jen Psaki.
It’s gratifying, too, to see some real journalists here at home refusing to be taken in by the White House spin. Miranda Devine at the NEW YORK POST sees through it, and she doesn’t mince words about Biden’s conceit --- the feeble mind and prickly arrogance that his people had so hoped to keep under wraps.
https://nypost.com/2021/08/15/joe-bidens-defeat-will-echo-for-eternity-devine/