President Biden is having none of this

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When President Biden first entered the White House, a few media outlets tried to create a scandal out of his reluctance to hold a press briefing, and largely no one cared, aside from the reporters and pundits looking for White House access. They’ve been up to similar tricks over the last few days, with Republicans joining the outcry over the president’s reluctance to take questions after addressing the nation.

Today, after President Biden addressed the nation with remarks on the tragedy in Kabul, however, he did take questions from reporters, and at least one probably wishes that he hadn’t. Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy, who typically ends up being humiliated by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, decided to use the press conference as an opportunity to spread his network’s false narrative about the troop withdrawal and Biden’s response, asking the president if he took responsibility for the tragedy.

“I bear responsibility for fundamentally all that’s happened of late, but here is the deal. You know, I wish you would one day say these things, you know as well as I do that the former president made a deal with the Taliban that he would get all American forces out of Afghanistan by May 1,” said the president. “In return the commitment was made — and that was a year before. In return, he was given a commitment that the Taliban would continue to attack others but would not attack any American forces. Remember that? I’m serious.”

Doocy suddenly regretted taking the question and tried to change the subject, but President Biden held him to it. Republicans have already been going into overdrive trying to scrub posts about Trump’s negotiations with Afghanistan a year ago and their support of it and it’s getting harder and harder for them to bring up the topic at all without getting into an inevitable battle of words over what the former guy’s role was in the whole thing.

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