Meghan McCain has continued her criticism of President Joe Biden, calling him 'unfit to lead' and 'like Jimmy Carter on acid' over the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan.
The former View co-host gave a withering assessment on Thursday of what she called 'one of the greatest foreign policy catastrophes of my lifetime,' saying that Biden had brought 'shame, dishonor and embarrassment' to America.
Her fury at the president is all the more stinging as she has previously expressed fondness for Biden who consoled her after the death of her father, Republican statesman John McCain.
It follows reports that State Department officials in the Kabul embassy told the Biden administration last month that the Afghan capital would fall and urged them to speed up evacuations.
'I have been physically ill, more depressed than I have been since the beginning stages of the pandemic and filled nothing short of pure rage and anger since the calamity of a “pull out” which will be seen as one of the greatest foreign policy catastrophes of my lifetime,' she said in an Instagram post.
Meghan McCain has continued her criticism of President Joe Biden , calling him 'unfit to lead' and 'like Jimmy Carter on acid' over the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan
She has previously expressed fondness for Biden who consoled her after the death of her father, Republican statesman John McCain
The former View co-host gave a withering assessment of Biden on Thursday
'I am furious our President was so incompetent not to see what every expert on the planet could have seen coming,' McCain continued.
'I am furious for my friends and family who have been fighting in these wars since I was 16 (many who have lost limbs, had their life terrorized by PTSD from their experiences in war and deployments, or worse). I am furious seeing our allies and innocent Afghan citizens who trusted us are being left to be slaughtered or so desperate to escape the pure evil the Taliban will bring in that they are falling out of f***ing planes,' wrote McCain.
'This is not who America is, this is not the values this country was founded in. Our veterans deserve better, the innocent Afghan people and our allies and translators who have stood by us for the past 20 years deserve better' she went on.
'The shame, dishonor and embarrassment the Biden administration has brought to our country will take generations to undo. Not to mention our standing in the world and the cruel reality that the likelihood of another significant domestic terror attack has now risen to the highest levels since 9/11 and will usher in ISIS 3.0. - I could say so much more (and have been raging on twitter), but please reach out to your veteran friends and their families - everyone I know is struggling,' McCain added.
'May God have mercy for what we have done to these people abandoning them. Biden is unfit to lead and I am nothing short of disgusted he and his staff can’t seem to be bothered to leave their vacation during an international crisis of our own creation. There should be an emergency congressional hearing before more innocent lives are lost. My heart is broken, this tragedy will absolutely haunt our country. Also - every single Afghan refugee fleeing must be granted a safe haven in America!' she concluded.
On Twitter, McCain shared footage of terrified Afghans fleeing gunfire at Kabul airport, writing that their 'blood is on the hands of the Biden administration and no one will ever forgive or forget this.'
Neither Biden nor White House press secretary Jen Psaki made any appearances on Thursday, leading to accusations that his administration had fled to a 'bunker' amid chaos in Kabul.
Meghan McCain, the 36-year-old daughter of the late Republican statesman John McCain, has previously expressed fondness for Biden who consoled her after the death of her father
Pandemonium unfolded at Kabul airport on Monday as thousands of people ran on to the runway in a desperate attempt to escape Taliban rule, fearing bloody reprisals by the Islamists
The 36-year-old McCain tweeted: 'No press briefings from the Biden White House from the President or his staff. They're all on vacation.
'He is like Jimmy Carter on acid and he and his team will be remembered in history worse than him. Also anyone in the press want to to jump in on criticism of him in hiding?'
She shared a video earlier of chaos on the runway at Kabul airport, tweeting: 'Everyone in the Biden White House should be forced to watch this. These are consequences for your reckless, insane, plan-less actions. Are you proud of yourselves?!?'
At least 12 people have died at the airport since Sunday, including several despairing young men who fell to their deaths after clinging to the fuselage of a USAF jet.
McCain shared another video late Wednesday which showed a woman holding her terrified baby as Taliban fighter fired shots outside the perimeter of the airport.
She wrote: 'THERE IS A WOMAN HOLDING HER BABY IN THIS VIDEO! This blood on the hands of the Biden administration and no one will ever forgive or forget this.'
In his woeful interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News on Wednesday, Joe Biden attempted to shift the blame and insisted there were not warnings of such a rapid fall to the Taliban
The Biden administration remains under intense pressure to explain what it did and did not know as it pushed ahead with the president's order to bring home troops by September 11.
A dozen diplomats sent a confidential memo in a dissent channel to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on July 13 that the Taliban was rapidly gaining ground and Kabul was vulnerable to collapse, the Wall Street Journal reported.
It is the latest in a series of reported warnings the Biden administration potentially ignored as American forces left and the insurgents swept through the country with ease.
During the past week, Biden has shifted blame to the intelligence community, insisting that the rapid advance of the Taliban had taken the administration by surprise.
'The truth is: This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated,' he said last week.
And in his woeful interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News on Wednesday, Biden said there was no warning of such a precipitous fall.
A U.S. Air Force plane is seen landing at Bagram Air Base on July 1. The base has since been abandoned
US Marines assigned to 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit escort evacuees during an evacuation at Kabul airport on Thursday
Evacuees boarding a C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation from Kabul on Thursday
'Number one, as you know, the intelligence community did not say back in June or July that, in fact, this was gonna collapse like it did,' he said.
Stephanopoulos proved for more detail. He asked: 'They thought the Taliban would take over, but not this quickly?'
Biden replied: 'But not this quickly. Not even close.'
In another part of the interview he said he could not remember ever being advised by senior Pentagon figures to maintain a military presence in the country.
Reports suggest that his generals urged him to leave 2,500 troops to support and train the Afghan force.
'No, no one said that to me that I can recall,' Biden said.
The White House sent the deputy National Security Adviser, Jonathan Finer, as their envoy to news networks on Thursday, while his more senior colleagues remained out of sight.
His boss, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Adviser, has become in the eyes of many 'the face' of the crisis - and, amid calls for his resignation over the debacle, he was absent on Thursday.
The Pentagon held a press briefing, only for spokesman John Kirby to admit that he did not know how many US citizens remained in Afghanistan. He could not even muster an estimate when pushed, telling the reporter to ask the State Department.
Kayleigh McEnany, who served as Donald Trump's White House spokesperson from April 2020 to January 2021, on Thursday took Psaki to task over her failure to hold daily briefings during the crisis.
'Jen Psaki promised us a daily White House press briefing,' McEnany said.
'There isn't one today. There wasn't one Monday. When the going gets tough, the daily press briefing that she promised goes out the window.'
The Trump administration was strongly criticized for abolishing the tradition of regular briefings, and went 300 days without holding one.
Stephanie Grisham, in her nine months on the job from July 2019 until her firing in April 2020, never held a White House press briefing - a unique and ignominious distinction.
A crime writer, Don Winslow, said he would donate $100,000 to a children's hospital if Grisham did a briefing - then Stephen King doubled the bounty.
She did not take the bait and rarely conducted the smaller informal briefings known as 'gaggles' and almost never appeared on TV, unless it was Fox News.
Crowds are seen gathering outside Kabul airport on Thursday, trying to get in and flee
Furthermore, Trump himself held less than half as many press conferences as the previous two administrations during their first three years in office.
Biden has only granted nine sit-down interviews in his first seven months in office, a number far below that of his Trump and Barack Obama, who held 50 interviews and 113 interviews, respectively, at this time in their presidency.
McEnany said that Kirby's failure to find out how many Americans remained in Afghanistan compounded the mistake made by Psaki in not appearing.
'When you are a press secretary at any entity, you anticipate whatever the questions will be,' McEnany said.
'One of the most obvious questions is how many Americans are on the ground.
'He didn't take up the time to pick up the phone and call Secretary of State Antony Blinken and get that number for us when you are the one place we are getting information from today, when there are nearly 15,000 American hostages on the ground?
'And the Pentagon spokesperson could not pick up the phone and Jen Psaki won't go to the podium to give us these very basic answers we deserve.'
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