On Thursday’s broadcast of “CNN This Morning,” CNN Political Commentator and former Biden White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield reacted to reporting in The Wall Street Journal about “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge” that included reporting on how President Joe Biden was insulated, such as then-House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) being unable to get ahold of Biden ahead of the Afghanistan withdrawal by stating that members of Congress always complain that they don’t have enough access to the President and Biden was hearing from people around him and “Hearing from every single person in Washington who has a perspective can actually be muddying and damaging and confusing.”
Bedingfield said, [relevant remarks begin around 26:25] “First of all, complaints about not getting enough access to the president are as old as the republic. Members of Congress are constantly complaining about not getting access to the president. That is a time-honored complaint that people have when they feel like they have expertise, they have political perspectives that should be shared. So, I think we should maintain that perspective.”
She continued, “I was there during the Afghanistan withdrawal. I spent hours and hours in the Situation Room with Joe Biden and the national security team during the withdrawal. My experience was that he was hearing from all quarters. Now, it is true that there are — again, there will [be] members of Congress who I’m sure didn’t feel like they got enough access, because, ultimately, what the president’s doing in moments of crisis, and every day, but in moments of crisis, is taking information, filtering it in, trying to make a principled and effective decision based on the input of the core people around him. Hearing from every single person in Washington who has a perspective can actually be muddying and damaging and confusing. So, I don’t doubt — I certainly don’t dispute that there were people who felt like they didn’t have the opportunity to weigh in when they wanted to. That in and of itself is not an indicator, to me, of a diminished Joe Biden. I watched the President grilling his national security team, grilling the generals who were on the ground, every single day, during that withdrawal. And there was never a moment where he was not getting the hard information and making the hard decisions.”
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