Biden stumbles early, Trump fires out falsehoods at first debate

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Updated 28 June 2024
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Biden stumbles early, Trump fires out falsehoods at first debate

  • The two men traded attacks on abortion, immigration, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza
  • A hoarse-sounding Biden stumbled over his words on several occasions

ATLANTA: Democratic President Joe Biden delivered an uneven performance at Thursday’s debate, while his Republican rival Donald Trump rattled off a series of attacks that included numerous falsehoods, as the two oldest presidential candidates ever clashed on stage ahead of November’s US election.
The two men traded attacks on abortion, immigration, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and their handling of the economy as they each sought to shake up what opinion polls show has been a virtually tied race for months.

The debate came at a pivotal juncture in their unpopular presidential rematch, a critical moment to make their cases before a national television audience. Biden’s uneven performance risked crystallizing voter concerns that at age 81 he is too old to serve as president, while Trump’s rhetoric offered a perhaps unwelcome reminder of the bombast he launched daily during his tumultuous four years in office.

Biden entered the debate looking to sharpen the choice voters will face in November. Trump, 78, looked for an opening to try to move past his felony conviction in New York and convince an audience of tens of millions that he is temperamentally suited to return to the Oval Office.

A hoarse-sounding Biden stumbled over his words on several occasions during the debate’s first half-hour, but he found his footing at the halfway mark when he attacked Trump for his conviction for covering up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, calling him a “felon.”In response, Trump brought up the recent conviction of Biden’s son, Hunter, for lying about his drug use to buy a gun.
Moments later, Biden noted that almost all of Trump’s former cabinet members, including former Vice President Mike Pence, have not endorsed his campaign.
“They know him well, they served with him,” he said. “Why are they not endorsing him?“
Two White House officials said Biden had a cold. But his up-and-down evening could deepen voter concerns that the 81-year-old is too old to serve another four-year term.
Trump, meanwhile, unleashed a barrage of criticisms, some of which were well-worn falsehoods he has repeated on the campaign trial, including claims that migrants have carried out a crime wave and that Democrats support infanticide.
Biden and Trump, 78, were under pressure to display their command of issues and avoid verbal gaffes as they sought a breakout moment in a race that opinion polls show has been deadlocked for months. Biden, in particular, has been dogged by questions about his age and sharpness, while Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and sprawling legal woes remain a vulnerability.




People watch the presidential debate between US President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump at Wicked Willy's on June 27, 2024 in New York City. (Getty Images/AFP)

Trump was asked about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol to try to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden.

“On Jan. 6, we were respected all over the world, all over the world we were respected. And then he comes in and we’re now laughed at,” Trump said.

After he was prompted by a moderator to answer whether he violated his oath of office that day by rallying his supporters seeking to block the certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory and not doing enough to call them off as they stormed the Capitol, Trump sought to blame then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Biden said Trump encouraged the supporters to go to the Capitol and sat in the White House without taking action as they fought with police officers.

“He didn’t do a damn thing and these people should be in jail,” Biden said. “They should be the ones that are being held accountable. And he wants to let them all out. And now he says that if he loses again, such a whiner that he is, that this could be a ‘bloodbath’?”

Trump then defended the people convicted and imprisoned for their role in the insurrection, saying to Biden, “What they’ve done to some people that are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“This guy has no sense of American democracy,” Biden scoffed in response.

Biden also blamed Trump for enabling the elimination of a nationwide right to abortion by appointing conservatives to the US Supreme Court, an issue that has bedeviled Republicans since 2022. Trump countered that Biden would not support any limits on abortions and said that returning the issue to the states was the right course of action.
Trump said Biden had failed to secure the southern US border, ushering in scores of criminals.
“I call it Biden migrant crime,” he said.
Biden replied, “Once again, he’s exaggerating, he’s lying.”
Studies show immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans. The televised clash on CNN was taking place far earlier than any modern presidential debate, more than four months before the Nov. 5 Election Day.
The two candidates appeared with no live audience, and their microphones automatically cut off when it was not their turn to speak — both atypical rules imposed to avoid the chaos that derailed their first debate in 2020, when Trump interrupted Biden repeatedly.
As the debate began, the two men — who have made little secret of their mutual dislike — did not shake hands or acknowledge one another.
But there were plenty more moments in which their bad blood was evident. Each called the other the worst president in history; Biden referred to Trump as a “loser” and a “whiner,” while Trump called Biden a “disaster.”
At one point, the rivals bickered over their golf games, with Trump bragging about hitting the ball farther than Biden and Biden retorting that Trump would struggle to carry his own bag.


Takeaways from the Biden-Trump presidential debate


On health care, “Look, we finally beat Medicare,” Biden said, as his time ran out on his answer.

Trump picked right up on it, saying, “That’s right, he did beat Medicaid, he beat it to death. And he’s destroying Medicare.”

Trump falsely suggested Biden was weakening the social service program because of migrants coming into the country illegally.

Trump and Biden entered the night facing stiff headwinds, including a public weary of the tumult of partisan politics and broadly dissatisfied with both, according to polling. But the debate was highlighting how they have sharply different visions on virtually every core issue — abortion, the economy and foreign policy — and deep hostility toward each other.

Their personal animus quickly came to the surface. Biden got personal in evoking his son, Beau, who served in Iraq before dying of brain cancer. The president criticized Trump for reportedly calling Americans killed in battle “suckers and losers.” Biden told Trump, “My son was not a loser, was not a sucker. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser.”

Trump said he never said that and slammed Biden for the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.

Biden directly mentioned Trump’s conviction in the New York hush money trial, saying, “You have the morals of an alley cat,” and referencing the allegations in the case that Trump had sex with a porn actress.

“I did not have sex with a porn star,” replied Trump, who chose not to testify at his trial.

Trump retorted that Biden could face criminal charges “when he leaves office.” Trump said, though there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, “Joe could be a convicted felon with all the things that he’s done.” He added of the president, “this man is a criminal.”

Biden insisted that Trump was more focused on “retribution” against his political rivals than leading the nation.

Pressed to defend rising inflation since he took office, Biden pinned it on the situation he inherited from Trump amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden said that when Trump left office, “things were in chaos.” Trump disagreed, declaring that during his term in the White House, “Everything was rocking good.”

By the time Trump left office, America was still grappling with the pandemic and during his final hours in office, the death toll eclipsed 400,000. The virus continued to ravage the country and the death toll hit 1 million over a year later.

Trump repeatedly insisted that the three conservative justices he appointed to the Supreme Court helped overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and returned the issue of abortion restrictions to individual states, which is what “everybody wanted.” Biden countered that abortion access was settled for 50 years and that Trump was making it harder for women in large swaths of the country to get access to basic health care.

At one point, Trump defended his record on foreign policy and blamed Biden for the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, suggesting the conflicts broke out when the aggressors felt free to attack because they perceived Biden as weak.

“This place, the whole world, is blowing up under him,” Trump said.

“I never heard so much malarkey in my whole life,” Biden retorted.

The current president and his predecessor hadn’t spoken since their last debate weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration after leading an unprecedented and unsuccessful effort to overturn his loss that culminated in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection by his supporters.

Trump has promised sweeping plans to remake the US government if he returns to the White House and Biden argues that his opponent would pose an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.

Aiming to avoid a repeat of their chaotic 2020 matchups, Biden insisted — and Trump agreed — to hold the debate without an audience and to allow the network to mute the candidates’ microphones when it is not their turn to speak. The debate’s two commercial breaks offered another departure from modern practice, while the candidates have agreed not to consult staff or others while the cameras are off.

Heading out of the debate, both Biden and Trump will travel to states they hope to swing their way this fall. Trump is heading to Virginia, a onetime battleground that has shifted toward Democrats in recent years.

Biden is set to jet off to North Carolina, where he is expected to hold the largest-yet rally of his campaign in a state Trump narrowly carried in 2020.

Polarized nation
The first questions focused on the economy, as polls show Americans are dissatisfied with Biden’s performance despite wage growth and low unemployment.
Biden acknowledged that inflation had driven prices substantially higher than at the start of his term but said he deserves credit for putting “things back together again” following the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump asserted that he had overseen “the greatest economy in the history of our country” before the pandemic struck and said he took action to prevent the economic freefall from deepening even further.

The debate took place at a time of profound polarization and deep-seated anxiety among voters about the state of American politics. Two-thirds of voters said in a May Reuters/Ipsos poll that they were concerned violence could follow the election, nearly four years after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol.
Trump took the stage as a felon who still faces a trio of criminal cases, including to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The former president, who persists in falsely claiming his defeat was the result of fraud, has suggested he will punish his political enemies if returned to power, but he will need to convince undecided voters that he does not pose a mortal threat to democracy, as Biden asserts.
Biden’s challenge was to deliver a forceful performance after months of Republican assertions that his faculties have dulled with age. While national polls show a tied race, Biden has trailed Trump in polls of most battleground states that traditionally decide presidential elections. Just this month he lost his financial edge over Trump, whose fundraising surged after he was criminally convicted of trying to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Neither Biden nor Trump is popular and many Americans remain deeply ambivalent about their choices. About a fifth of voters say they have not picked a candidate, are leaning toward a third-party candidate or may sit the election out, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.
Trump’s niece Mary Trump, who has been critical of her uncle, will join Biden’s campaign in its media spin room following the debate, a campaign official said.
Several contenders to be Trump’s vice presidential pick — North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and US senators J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio — traveled to Atlanta and were expected to make Trump’s case in the post-debate spin room.
The second and final debate in this year’s campaign is scheduled for September. See a Reuters photo slide show of previous debates.

 

 

 

 


Trump threatens to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on first day in office

Updated 4 sec ago
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Trump threatens to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on first day in office

NEW YORK: President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as soon as he takes office as part of his efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs.
The tariffs, if implemented, could dramatically raise prices on everything from gas to automobiles. The US is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent Census data.
Trump made the threats in a pair of posts on his Truth Social site Monday evening in which he railed against an influx of illegal migrants, even though southern border crossings have been hovering at a four-year low.
“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25 percent Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” he wrote, complaining that “thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before,” even though violent crime is down from pandemic highs.
He said the new tariffs would remain in place “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! ”
Trump also turned his ire to China, saying he has “had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States – But to no avail.”
“Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10 percent Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America,” he wrote.
It is unclear whether Trump will actually go through with the threats or if he is using them as a negotiating tactic before he takes office in the new year.
Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico have been falling and remained around four-year lows in October, according to the most recent US numbers
The Border Patrol made 56,530 arrests in October, less than one third of the tally from last October.
Much of America’s fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico. Border seizures of the drug rose sharply under President Joe Biden, and US officials tallied about 21,900 pounds (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl seized in the 2024 government budget year, compared with 2,545 pounds (1,154 kilograms) in 2019, when Trump was president.
Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, if confirmed, would be one of several officials responsible for imposing tariffs on other nations. He has on several occasions said tariffs are a means of negotiation with other countries.
He wrote in a Fox News op-ed last week, before his nomination, that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives. Whether it is getting allies to spend more on their own defense, opening foreign markets to US exports, securing cooperation on ending illegal immigration and interdicting fentanyl trafficking, or deterring military aggression, tariffs can play a central role.”
If Trump were to move forward with the threatened tariffs, the new taxes would pose an enormous challenge for the economies of Canada and Mexico, in particular.
They would also throw into doubt the reliability of the 2020 trade deal brokered in large part by Trump, which is up for review in 2026.
Spokespeople for Canada’s ambassador to Washington and its deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, who chairs a special Cabinet committee on Canada-US relations to address concerns about another Trump presidency, did not immediately provide comment.
Trump’s promise to launch a mass deportation effort is a top focus for the Cabinet committee, Freeland has said.
A senior Canadian official had said before Trump’s posts that Canadian officials are expecting Trump to issue executive orders on trade and the border as soon as he assumes office. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department and Economy Department also had no immediate reaction to Trump’s statements. Normally such weighty issues are handled by the president at her morning press briefings.

Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump

Updated 43 min 3 sec ago
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Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump

  • Smith cited the long-standing Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president in his motions to have the cases dismissed

WASHINGTON: A judge on Monday granted a request by prosecutors to dismiss the election subversion case against Donald Trump because of a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to the request by Special Counsel Jack Smith to dismiss the case against the president-elect “without prejudice,” meaning it could potentially be revived after Trump leaves the White House four years from now.
“Dismissal without prejudice is appropriate here,” Chutkan said, adding in the ruling that “the immunity afforded to a sitting President is temporary, expiring when they leave office.”
Trump, 78, was accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden and removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House, but the cases never came to trial.
Smith also moved on Monday to drop his appeal of the dismissal of the documents case filed against the former president in Florida. That case was tossed out earlier this year by a Trump-appointed judge on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed.
The special counsel paused the election interference case and the documents case this month after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 presidential election.
Smith cited the long-standing Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president in his motions to have the cases dismissed.
“The Government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed,” Smith said in the filing with Chutkan. “But the circumstances have.”
“It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President,” Smith said.
“As a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”
In a separate filing, Smith said he was withdrawing his appeal of the dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump but pursuing the case against his two co-defendants, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.

Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said the cases were “empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”
“Over $100 Million Dollars of Taxpayer Dollars has been wasted in the Democrat Party’s fight against their Political Opponent, ME,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before.”
Trump was accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding — the session of Congress called to certify Biden’s win, which was violently attacked on January 6, 2021 by a mob of the then-president’s supporters.
Trump was also accused of seeking to disenfranchise US voters with his false claims that he won the 2020 election.
The former and incoming president also faces two state cases — in New York and Georgia.
He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.
However, Judge Juan Merchan has postponed sentencing while he considers a request from Trump’s lawyers that the conviction be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court ruling in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution.
In Georgia, Trump faces racketeering charges over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in office.

 


No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties

Updated 53 min 20 sec ago
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No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties

  • Merkel, who speaks Russian, also defends her engagement over the years with Putin, who speaks German — despite her misgivings about the former KGB agent who once allowed a labrador into a meeting between them, apparently playing on her fear of dogs

BERLIN: Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel gives a spirited defense of her 16 years at the helm of Europe’s top economy in her memoir “Freedom,” released in 30 languages on Tuesday.
Since she stepped down in 2021, Merkel has been accused of having been too soft on Russia, leaving Germany dangerously reliant on cheap Russian gas and sparking turmoil and the rise of the far right with her open-door migrant policy.
Her autobiography is released as wars rage in Ukraine and the Middle East, Donald Trump is headed back to the White House and Germany faces snap elections after its ruling coalition collapsed this month.
Merkel, 70, remembered for her calm and unflappable leadership style, rejects blame for any of the current turmoil, in the 736-page autobiography co-written with longtime adviser Beate Baumann.
After years out of the public eye, she has given multiple media interviews, reflecting on her childhood under East German communism and tense encounters with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, who she felt “was captivated by politicians with autocratic and dictatorial tendencies.”
In the full memoir, she gives further insights into her thoughts and actions — including during the 2015 mass refugee influx, which came to define the final years of her leadership.

Critics have charged that Merkel’s refusal to push back large numbers of asylum-seekers at the Austrian border led to more than one million arrivals and fueled the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Merkel, who at the time posed for a selfie with one Syrian refugee, says she “still does not understand ... how anyone could have assumed that a friendly face in a photo would be enough to encourage entire legions to flee their homeland.”
While affirming that “Europe must always protect its external borders,” she stresses that “prosperity and the rule of law will always make Germany and Europe ... places where people want to go.”
In addition, she writes in the French edition of the book, fast-aging Germany’s “lack of manpower makes legal migration essential.”
Her bold declaration at the time — “wir schaffen das” in German or “we can do this” — was a “banal” statement with the message that “where there are obstacles, we must work to overcome them,” she argues.
And on the AfD, she cautions Germany’s mainstream parties against adopting their rhetoric “without proposing concrete solutions to existing problems,” warning that with such an approach mainstream movements “will fail.”

Merkel, who speaks Russian, also defends her engagement over the years with Putin, who speaks German — despite her misgivings about the former KGB agent who once allowed a labrador into a meeting between them, apparently playing on her fear of dogs.
She describes the Russian leader as “a man perpetually on the lookout, afraid of being mistreated and always ready to strike, including by playing at exercising his power with a dog and making others wait.”
Nevertheless, she says that “despite all the difficulties” she was right “not to let contacts with Russia be broken off ... and to also preserve ties through trade relations.”
The reality is, she argues, that “Russia is, with the United States, one of the two main nuclear powers in the world.”
She also defends her opposition to Ukraine joining NATO at a 2008 Bucharest summit, considering it illusory to think that candidate status would have protected it from Putin’s aggression.
After the summit, she remembers flying home with the feeling that “we in NATO had no common strategy for dealing with Russia.”

Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, cut Germany off from cheap Russian gas, with the taps’ closure a key driver of its ongoing economic malaise.
But Merkel rejects criticism for having allowed the Baltic Sea pipelines in the first place, pointing out that Nord Stream 1 was signed off on by her predecessor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder, long a friend of Putin.
On Nord Stream 2, which she approved after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, she argues that at the time it would have been “difficult to get companies and gas users in Germany and in many EU member states to accept” having to import more expensive liquefied natural gas from other sources.
Merkel says the gas was needed as a transitional energy source as Germany was pursuing both a switch to renewable energy and the phase-out of nuclear power following Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster.
On nuclear power itself, she argues that “we do not need it to meet our climate goals” and that the German phase-out can “inspire courage in other countries” to follow suit.

 


Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul

Updated 26 November 2024
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Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul

  • Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar

KABUL: Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu visited Afghan government officials on Monday, assuring them Moscow will soon remove the Taliban from its list of banned organizations, Kabul said.
Since the Taliban surged back to power in 2021 visits by foreign officials have been infrequent because no nation has yet formally recognized the government of the former insurgent group.
Taliban government curbs on women have made them pariahs in many Western nations but Kabul is making increasing diplomatic overtures to its regional neighbors, emphasising economic and security cooperation.
Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar.
He “expressed Russia’s interest in increasing the level of bilateral cooperation with Afghanistan,” Baradar’s office said in a statement released on social media site X.
“He also announced that, to expand political and economic relations between the two countries, the Islamic Emirate’s name would soon be removed from Russia’s blacklist.”
The Islamic Emirate is the name the Taliban government uses to refer to itself.
Russian news agencies quoted Shoigu as saying he wanted “constructive” ties with Kabul, without saying if he had floated Moscow removing the Taliban from its list of banned groups.
“I confirm the readiness to build a constructive political dialogue between our countries, including in order to give momentum to the process of the internal Afghan settlement,” Shoigu said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
He also said Russian companies plan to take part in projects in Afghanistan on extracting natural resources.
Analysts say Moscow may be eying cooperation with Kabul to counter the threat from Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) — the Afghan-based branch of the Sunni militant group.
In March, more than 140 people were killed when IS-K gunmen attacked a Moscow concert hall.
Taliban authorities have repeatedly said security is their top domestic priority and have pledged militants staging foreign attacks will be ousted from Afghanistan.
“The Taliban certainly are our allies in the fight against terrorism,” Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, said in July.
“They are working to eradicate terrorist cells.”


Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal

Updated 26 November 2024
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Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal

  • President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it

WASHINGTON: A Republican senator has blocked the promotion of US Army Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, who commanded the military’s 82nd Airborne Division during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and was the last American soldier to leave the country in 2021.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hold had been placed by Senator Markwayne Mullin, who did not respond to a request for comment on why he blocked the promotion.
The Pentagon on Monday said it was aware of the hold on Donahue, who had been nominated for a fourth star by President Joe Biden to lead the US Army in Europe and Africa.
“We are aware that there is a hold on Lt. Gen. Donahue,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.
President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it. In August, Trump said he would ask for the resignation of every senior official “who touched the Afghanistan calamity.”
“You have to fire people when they do a bad job. We never fire anybody,” Trump has said.
Reuters has reported that Trump’s transition team is drawing up a list of military officers to be fired, in what would be an unprecedented shakeup at the Pentagon.
While the image of Donahue, carrying his rifle down by his side as he boarded the final C-17 transport flight out of Afghanistan on in August 2021, has become synonymous with the chaotic withdrawal, he is seen in the military as one of the most talented Army leaders.
“The finest officer I ever served with, Chris Donahue is a generational leader who is now being held up for political purposes. At the tip of the spear defending this country for over three decades, he is now a political pawn,” Tony Thomas, the former head of US Special Operations Command, posted on X.
Under Senate rules, one lawmaker can hold up nominations even if the other 99 all want them to move quickly.