White House says messaging on Afghan evacuation efforts is going great, man
By Call Sign Buttercup
THE WHITE HOUSE — President Joe Biden said in a press conference on Saturday that his messaging surrounding the evacuation efforts in Afghanistan is going real great.
“We’ve successfully spun the story to the American people that the withdrawal is nothing but a great foreign policy success,” the president said, “despite the obvious catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. Give us some credit for those messaging efforts, c’mon man.”
The president went on to say that his trips to Camp David and Delaware really helped him to clear his mind and think of clever ways to communicate his dereliction of duty strategically to the American people, finding ways not to make this all seem like the fall of Saigon or the 1979 hostage crisis.
“My brilliant advisors — same guys behind the New Coke ad campaign by the way — said let’s equate this to the Berlin Airlift and Dunkirk, both of which involved the government’s successful rescue of its people, rather than relying on private citizens, servicemembers, and Instagram influencers. Once 80,000 people are evacuated no one is going to remember who actually organized their escape.”
The story spinning has been getting more difficult, however, for the administration. “One of the biggest challenges was explaining why we’re leaving thousands of Americans and Afghan allies behind enemy lines,” explained Biden, “But then I thought: We can just blame them! We’ll say they didn’t want to leave. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant messaging.”
Biden did concede one blunder. He expressed disappointment in his failure to communicate how the messiness of the situation was inevitable, but yet there was never a plan to deal with the inevitable situation, and instead assured the American people that the withdrawal would not be chaotic.
When pressed on how the evacuation will continue in light of last week’s deadly attacks at the Kabul airport, Biden employed his go-to blame-shifting strategies.
“I take full responsibility,” Biden said. “For everything going good. But c’mon man, we need to hold the Afghan people and prior administration responsible for everything else.”
At press time, the administration was working on positive messaging for the Taliban’s inevitable rash of beheadings on August 31.