Republican strategist Scott Jennings reminded panelists on “CNN NewsNight” Tuesday that nobody was fired over the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite the deaths of American servicemembers.
Top Trump administration officials, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, came under fire after Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was included in a group chat on Signal discussing a retaliatory attack on Iranian-backed Houthis. Jennings said the Trump administration’s willingness to admit the mistake was “refreshing.”
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“None of us have seen, you know, what was supposedly war plans, and there’s still a dispute over, over just how sensitive it really was. But I do think it’s noteworthy that the White House is able to acknowledge a mistake, say they’re going to learn from it, say they‘re trying to figure out the technical issues that led to it,” Jennings said. “I mean, they, they did own up to it. I mean, obviously, there’s been some rhetoric and hyperbole around Goldberg and others who, by the way, I agree, acted responsibly in this particular case. Even though if I have some quibbles with what he’s done in the past, he did absolutely act responsibly here.”
“So I think that’s actually kind of a refreshing thing for the government to say, ‘Okay, yes, effed up. We’ll fix it. This won’t happen again,’ especially when you contrast it with previous military and national security snafus in our recent history, in which no one was held accountable, no one was fired, no mistakes were admitted,” Jennings continued. “Until the very end, Joe Biden was saying Afghanistan was a success. I like it here that Donald Trump, the president, said, ‘He’s a good man, but he learned a lesson.’ That tells me he and the president, with Waltz, had a hard talk.”
Thirteen servicemembers, most of them Marines, were killed in an Aug. 26, 2021 bombing as American forces were evacuating from Kabul. Family members of the fallen servicemembers have repeatedly criticized the Biden administration about the incident.
The families previously criticized former President Joe Biden for his conduct during the arrival of the fallen personnel at Dover Air Force Base and for falsely claiming no American troops died during his administration.
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