Fox host Jillian Mele and guest Lara Trump put on quite a charade of pretending that Donald Trump's daughter-in-law is a legit analyst of the crisis in Afghanistan.
President Joe Biden may have made mistakes in Afghanistan but Donald Trump and George W. Bush played a role in the collapse of the country, too – except on Fox News.
Media Matters’ Matt Gertz has a good explanation:
The swift and sudden collapse is the culmination of nearly two decades of failures by U.S. political, military, and diplomatic leaders since the 2001 invasion that removed the Taliban from power following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
President George W. Bush’s administration failed to capture or kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, rejected a Taliban surrender proposal, and set maximal goals of ensuring freedom and democracy in Afghanistan while pivoting the government’s resources and attention to invading Iraq. President Barack Obama’s administration killed bin Laden, but its troop “surge” did not eliminate the Taliban’s influence, its effort to train Afghan security forces was a failure, and the government it propped up was riddled with corruption. Trump, with little improvement to the Afghan government or military, negotiated an agreement with the Taliban under which all U.S. forces would be out of the country by May 1, and had drawn U.S. troop levels down to 2,500 by the time Biden took office.
“There’s plenty of blame to go around,” Gertz continues. But since yesterday, “the network has trotted out at least five former Trump and Bush officials who are on the payroll, as well as Trump’s daughter-in-law, to explain that Afghanistan’s collapse is entirely Biden’s fault.”
That daughter-in-law is Lara Trump, a worthy competitor to #LyingKayleighMcEnany for the title of Biggest Liar on the Fox payroll.
Not even Fox News could conjure up any credentials for Lara Trump beyond “Fox News contributor.”
“President Biden placing the blame on former President Trump,” Mele said in her introduction. Then she “asked," “But isn’t it a little too late to be pointing fingers?” As if Donald Trump had not left office not even six months ago, after four years, and as if President Joe Biden has been in office years and not months.
Mele moved on to feed Lara Trump more talking points.
MELE: Look, this has been a completely bipartisan effort that people across, you know, all aisles of the political spectrum wanted the removal of troops from Afghanistan. That is not the argument. What is in question here is how this was done, the execution of a supposed plan that doesn’t even seem like there was a plan in place at this point.
Trump may be a liar but she knows how to take directions. “Yeah, you’re exactly right. It does not seem like there was any plan,” she said. Then, putting blame on Biden over her Big Lie bonafides, Trump said, “Maybe he forgot, ladies, but last time I checked, as of January 20th of this year, Joe Biden is the president of the United States.”
Soon Trump acted like an expert on the subject. “In the eyes of terrorist organizations around the world and in the eyes of our adversaries around the world, like China, Iran, Russia – think about how weak this makes the United States look.”
Claiming that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent makes us look pretty weak but Mele let the "Trump enhanced America's image" lie go unchallenged. Instead, Mele gave a murmur of appreciation when Trump claimed “not once” was there a terrorist attack on the U.S. when Daddy Trump was in office. Oh, that’s right, there were only “normal tourists” rioting at the Capitol and shouting “Hang Mike Pence” on January 6th. And the Neo-Nazi who deliberately ran over an anti-Nazi protester in Charlottesville was part of a crowd of “very fine people.”
“It is shameful, it is embarrassing for the United States,” Trump continued.
Well, Hon, nothing beats your lying, p***y grabbing father-in-law, who sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the U.S. intelligence community – on foreign soil, no less – nor how he got played by his “love,” Kim Jong-un, for embarrassing America.
While she was at it, Trump played a public health expert, too. She accused Biden of allowing COVID-19 to “go through the roof because of the illegal immigrants he’s letting flow over our southern border.”
Mele, not surprisingly, offered no pushback to any of Lara Trump's unqualified propaganda.
You can watch Mele and Lara Trump erase Republican mistakes in Afghanistan and with the COVID pandemic below, from the August 16, 2021 Fox & Friends First.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/saturday-night-live-thinks-its-figured-out-the-trump-brothers-does-it-get-them-right/2018/03/14/8a7f311e-255b-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html
Not that being smarter makes him better.
Step 1. Observe the chinless wonder, Donald Junior.
Step 2. Peruse his Twitter feed.
Step 3. Watch a selection of his drug-addled diatribes on anything, everything and nothing.
Step 4. See Kimberley Guilfoyle, the egomaniacal, star-f*cking fame whore he chooses to be his public consort.
Step 5. Try very hard to imagine an even more cretinous, even less coherent, even less intelligent creature.
While I agree that Brother Eric is a gormless drone and Sister Ivanka is a grasping, ignorant airhead, it is difficult to imagine any homo less sapiens than the former guy’s eldest acknowledged child.
Oh.