From JC

The New York Times ran a story yesterday with the politically-astounding, pronoun-confusing headline, “Biden Faults Austin for Judgment Lapse, but Says He Still Has Confidence In Him.”

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A lapse in judgment? That’s not a very good look for Austin, who allegedly leads the largest, most powerful military in history. Nor was the comment as supportive as the media is describing, notwithstanding Biden’s ‘continued confidence.’ In fact, it was outright political sabotage.

Lapses in judgment are exactly what you don’t want in a Secretary of Defense. Do I need to spell it out?

The article also offered one glaringly-missing fact: there was no comment from Austin about his lapse in judgment. According to Baghdad Bob (aka John Kirby), Austin is fine, he’s working up a storm. In fact, the Defense Secretary has probably never been so productive as he is now:

John F. Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, has said the secretary has continued to work while hospitalized. “It was seamless, it was as if — his participation was no different than it would be on any other given day, except he was briefing the president on options and engaging those questions from the hospital, but he was fully engaged,” Mr. Kirby said.
But … if Austin is fully engaged and is seamlessly working from his hospital bed, then why didn’t he respond when the President of the United States said his judgment lapsed? It’s kind of a big story, and it’s the kind of thing that can get away from you in politics if you don’t stay on top of it.

Austin didn’t even respond through a spokesman.

I don’t mean to imitate a broken record here — you remember records, right? They’re like streaming, except the songs were printed on plastic frisbees — but the Defense Secretary is perhaps most remarkable for his absence. Yesterday’s news from the Pentagon admitted — barely — the Defense Secretary is still in the hospital (but always working!), as reflected in yesterday’s Daily Beast headline:

Is it just me, or was the “Always Working” banner a snarky giveaway? In any case, the Pentagon is caught in the crippling crux of two wildly incompatible claims. On the one hand, they claim the Defense Secretary is doing so well that he’s seamlessly working and issuing critical battle orders carefully expanding the highly-unstable Middle East war. On the other hand, they also claim Austin is simultaneously so sick that his doctors can’t even guess at when he can get out of the hospital.

Which is it?

Oh — you probably could have guessed this, but none of yesterday’s stories about Austin declaring war on Yemen from his sickbed included a single quote from the Defense Secretary. He can issue orders, but he can’t issue statements. Apparently.

Makes perfect sense.