Aug. 17, 2021: Biden’s big bet on Afghanistan

Before President Joe Biden took the podium to address the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan on Monday, senior Obama White House advisor David Axelrod was on CNN giving him some free advice: “You cannot defend the execution here. … This has been a disaster,” he said. “He needs to own that failure. … He’s the commander in chief.”

As Axelrod said after, Biden did anything but. Even as he asserted that “the buck stops with me,” Biden pointed fingers at everyone but himself: Donald Trump tied his hands with his deal with the Taliban, the Afghan army wasn’t willing to fight, and some civilians didn’t initially want to leave.

Most of all, he defended the pullout he’s been advocating for years.

Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. 
Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.