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President Joe Biden is slated to give a speech about Afghanistan on Monday afternoon, as he draws flak for the fall of the Central Asian country’s government.
He is due to make his remarks around 3:45 p.m. Eastern at the White House, having cut short a trip to Camp David and returned to Washington, D.C., ahead of schedule.
The Taliban have swept into Kabul and triggered chaos at the capital city’s airport, bringing a stunning end to a two-decade campaign in which the U.S. and allies responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and tried to transform Afghanistan.
The turn of events has sparked comparisons with the American withdrawal from Saigon as the Vietnam War ended. It comes just days after Biden was celebrating some progress on his push for domestic spending on traditional infrastructure
PAVE,
— plus “human infrastructure” and other Democratic priorities.
“The political clout of the Biden administration will be diminished somewhat for a time — not completely, and not permanently, but exactly when it was most needed in September and October to push Democratic moderates into supporting Biden’s big expansion of the social safety net while simultaneously making giant investments to build out the clean energy
ICLN,
economy,” said James Lucier, managing director at Capital Alpha Partners, in a note on Monday.
Biden’s approval rating has dipped to a new low of 50%, while disapproval of the president’s performance has risen to a fresh high of 46%, according to a RealClearPolitics average of polls as of Monday. The White House also has been grappling with rising inflation and fresh COVID-19 problems due to the delta variant.
Republicans and some Democrats have been expressing dismay with the Biden team’s handling of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, which comes after the Trump administration made a deal with the Taliban last year on a full withdrawal of American troops.
“America’s two-decade involvement in Afghanistan has had many authors. So have the strategic missteps made along the way,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, in a statement on Sunday. “But as the monumental collapse our own experts predicted unfolds in Kabul today, responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of our current Commander-in-Chief.”
Opinion: The U.S. and the world will regret the choice by Trump and Biden to abandon Afghanistan
Also: The quick collapse in Afghanistan proves Biden was right to leave
DJIA,
traded mostly lower Monday, as weaker-than-forecast Chinese economic data and the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan weighed on sentiment.
“Military/terrorist shocks have historically impacted headlines more than bottom lines, since the effects typically dissipated fairly quickly as investors concluded that they would not result in a global recession,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA, in a note on Monday.
Now read: What the Afghan government’s collapse might mean for the U.S. stock market
And see: U.S. officials say 7 were killed in Kabul airport evacuation chaos
