Exclusive — Rep. Lee Zeldin: White House Is ‘Joking Around’ While Americans Are Imperiled in Afghanistan

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), who is running for election to be New York’s governor, noted how White House officials were “trying to find levity and joking around” about events in Afghanistan while Americans remain imperiled in the failed state.

“Sometimes they’re trying to find levity and joking around,” Zeldin said on Monday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow. “There’s nothing about this that is enjoyable or humorous to anyone.”

Zeldin recalled Vice President Kamala Harris’s laughter while approaching reporters asking about U.S. actions in Afghanistan during a trip to Singapore on Sunday. He also highlighted Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) “rap flow” at a hip-hop concert in New York City on the same day.

He said, “Kamala Harris walking up to press, she’s giggling and laughing during this trip that she’s taking. or Senator Schumer backstage, out there dancing with Stephen Colbert while this is all going on. The optics of that type of activity… removes confidence that people want to have.”

Zeldin added, “I saw Admiral [John] Kirby take to the podium, and he was kind of acting like this was some type of shtick, where he was showing that he’s some kind of a funny guy or this is an amusing moment in time. It doesn’t work. It’s out of a place.”

The White House is committed to framing the outcomes of all its actions as victories, Zeldin determined. He said Americans of all political and partisan persuasions know “we are being misled.”

“Stop trying to spin everything as a success story and the right decision and [saying], ‘History is going to decide that we made the right decision,'” he stated. “History is going to clearly be stating that this was a totally botched, historically, epically failed withdrawal. We already know that history is not going to be kind with the way that this was planned and executed. So stop trying to rewrite history while we’re going through it, because you’re actually only going to continue to make it worse.”

Zeldin said the Biden administration’s disinterest in being “honest” is driving a “loss of confidence” in the president’s capacity to fulfill his duties.

He remarked, “People around him, clearly, have some serious issues in getting facts [and] transparency through [the communications] process, because I do know that the [analysis] coming from agencies is not jiving with what is being communicated [by] President Biden. So dealing with facts and being honest is key.”

“They’re all over the place,” he continued. “There have been times where the State Department is punting to the Defense Department, the Defense Department is punting to the State Department. There are times where they’re punting to the White House, or the White House is punting back to the Defense Department. … That doesn’t help instill any level of confidence.”

Zeldin concluded, “It’s a good thing that you have other people… who have a better ability to complete a sentence communicating with the public [than Biden], but there’s something wrong there, clearly, in the process and the communication because what’s coming out of their mouths and a way they’re punting to each other.”