Scarborough: ‘No Doubt’ Putin Mistook Biden’s Actions in Afghanistan as a Sign of Weakness

SCARBOROUGH: “You know, Willie, we’ve got a lot to talk today, it’s 7 o’clock, we will have Fareed Zakaria on, he’ll be talking about how the United States sent a top general over to Israel. He is over there to help coordinate military strategy on what many fear is a pending Iranian strike. But also, just to send the very strong message to Iran: ‘Don’t even think about it. Don’t even think about it.’ I will say, I think this is very helpful for the Biden Administration. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Vladimir Putin mistook Joe Biden’s actions in Afghanistan as a sign of weakness when, in fact, we were all predicting, and anybody that had read anything that Joe Biden said about Afghanistan since 2009 knew that he was going to get us out of Afghanistan. He was opposed to Barack Obama’s policy of tripling the number of troops there. He thought that the United States, he thought 65% of America is right, America needed to come home from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. Russia misread that. Vladimir Putin misread that as a sign of weakness. And I think it’s very important that we’ve sent our top general over from the region into Israel to say, ‘Don’t misread what we’re saying about Gaza. We’re friends in a fight right now, trying to figure out the best way to sort through this. But, Iran, don’t even think about attacking Israel right now.’ It’s a very strong message that’s being sent, I think to Iran and across the world.”
GEIST: “Yeah, I think this is important tactically, but also symbolically, as you say. Iran and Hamas and others think they see cracks in the relationship between the United States and Israel. There may be some in this moment over the way that Israel handled the war, but President Biden is sending this message to say, ‘No, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder be Israel. Be clear, we just have a family squabble about how this is going on.”