Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst went after the State Department for failing to start getting Afghan Special Immigrant Visas processed more quickly prior to July, but failed to note the broken system and backlog they inherited from Trump.
During an interview on this Saturday's Cavuto Live on Fox, Ernst was asked about a comment from former Bush Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (who should be one of the last people being asked their opinion about anything related to Afghanistan or Iraq) that the French were starting to move their people out of Afghanistan in the early spring after they became aware of the U.S. timeline to withdraw in August, and why the United States wasn't doing the same.
I'm going to guess that Cavuto knows full well that the State Department began issuing warnings urging Americans to leave Afghanistan back in April, and that the State Department inherited a huge backlog of SIVs from the Trump administration that purposely sabotaged the system back in 2017.
That didn't stop Cavuto from allowing Ernst to opine over the Biden administration and his State Department failing to clean up Trump and Stephen Miller's mess quickly enough to suit her, and to get away with never mentioning either of their names during her response to his question.
Do you know whether we were? You know, whether that was a problem early on, that military leaders, maybe yourself, wondered about?
ERNST: Absolutely, Neil, and as a matter of fact, very early in the spring, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and I and a handful of other Senators went to the White House to speak to the national security advisers to the president.
We expressed our concerns that we were not moving as quickly as our allies and in supporting those SIVs we knew that France, we knew that Germany, the UK, they had already started removing their interpreters and other special immigrant visa holders for their own countries out of the country of Afghanistan.
So we were pushing on the State Department, however, the State Department drug their feet and we know they really didn't start a concerted effort until about the middle of July in getting those SIVs going.
So we were way behind the power curve and it was an issue that we raised very early in the spring and we continued to raise today. I don't know how we solve this problem. I do know there are many charitable organizations that are working on getting SIVs and American citizens out of Afghanistan right now. But it is much more complicated because we don't have the folks doing consular activities in Afghanistan right now.
It's also a lot more "complicated" when one administration does their best to sabotage the one coming in after them and leaves a ticking time bomb ready to blow up in their face.
The Daily Beast's David Rothkopf discussed the massive undertaking the State Department went through coordinating the evacuation that took place, and how the media has not just been wrong, but egregiously wrong with their attacks on the Biden administration.
Republicans have been taking full advantage of the press and their willingness to pile on with the way the evacuation was handled. Fox will continue to beat this dead horse all the way through to the midterms, mark my words.
