Associated Press reporter Jonathan Lemire got soundly ridiculed on social media for declaring that a slew of recent setbacks for President Joe Biden were “uncontrollable events.”
“The Pentagon admitted its errant drone strike. COVID boosters did not get full approval. France recalled its ambassador. The punishing headlines, all within an hour, underscored the perils for a president from uncontrollable events that can define a term,” Lemire, who is also a political analyst for MSNBC, wrote on Twitter.
The Pentagon admitted its errant drone strike. COVID boosters did not get full approval. France recalled its ambassador
The punishing headlines, all within an hour, underscored the perils for a president from uncontrollable events that can define a term https://t.co/Vjnakmdvr2
— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) September 18, 2021
On Friday, everything disintegrates. First, the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border exploded. More than 12,000 foreigners flooded the Del Rio Port of Entry along the Texas-Mexico border — so many that thousands crowded under a bridge as U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents tried to handle the throng. The crisis got so bad that the Office of Field Operations at the port of entry temporarily shut down and re-routed traffic to another entry point “to respond to urgent safety and security needs presented by an influx of migrants into Del Rio and is effective immediately.”
Also on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron ordered the nation’s ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia be recalled after the two countries signed a deal that will provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. “At the request of President Macron, I have decided to immediately recall our ambassadors to the United States and Australia to Paris for consultations,” Jean-Yves Le Drian, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, said in a statement. “This extraordinary decision reflects the exceptional seriousness of the announcements made on September 15 by Australia and the United States.”
Then in a shocking admission Friday, the Pentagon confirmed that a drone strike in Afghanistan, meant to target members of ISIS-K who planned a deadly attack on the United States military in the waning days of the Afghanistan War, killed 10 civilians in a “tragic mistake.” “The Pentagon acknowledged on Friday that a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan on Aug. 29 that officials said was necessary to prevent an attack on American troops was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, an American military official familiar with the investigation,” said The New York Times.
And in one last hurdle for Biden on the dismal day, an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday rejected recommending a push to give booster shots to most people who had received the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. “The vote — the first on boosters in the United States — was a blow to the Biden administration’s strategy to make extra shots available to most fully vaccinated adults in the United States eight months after they received a second dose,” the Times reported.
Critics of Lemire had a field day with his tweet.
“Biden was in control of all those events. They went south because he’s a failure, not because of bad luck,” wrote Sean Davis of The Federalist.
“AP/MSNBC propagandist @jonlemire’s term for Biden admin scandals is amazing in its lack of subtlety: ‘uncontrollable events,'” wrote Federalist writer Mollie Hemingway.
“Are you saying the drone strike that killed 7 kids and 0 terrorists was an uncontrollable event?” tweeted Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Gustavo Solis.