Dana Bash: Afghanistan Getting Tied to Arlington Incident Remains as a ‘Sore Spot’ for Biden Campaign

BASH: “There’s not a controversy that Donald Trump has not been involved in that, he didn’t double down on, triple down on. It’s the Roy Cohn Playbook that he has followed for decades and decades. My question for you is the Harris campaign and how they are dealing with this. I mean, my understanding is she decided to weigh in over the weekend. They were being asked a lot about it, understandably. Knowing that this is, policy-wise and politically, like we talked about, it is a sore spot for the Biden Administration. No question about it.”
SAENZ: “Yes, I mean — “
BASH: “Not Arlington, of course, the — “
SAENZ: “The Afghanistan — “
BASH: “ — the Afghanistan withdrawal.”
SAENZ: “Yes. And the Biden campaign was long dealing with Trump trying to use the deaths of those Americans in Afghanistan against President Biden. And what they’re trying to do now is directly tie Vice President Kamala Harris to that as well. I think the fact that Harris and also Biden didn’t immediately come out and say something relating to Trump’s Arlington visits, shows that they were trying to take a beat, trying to decide how to respond specifically to the controversy around that. You see Harris trying to show that — or argue that it shows Trump’s sole commitments to serving himself instead of others. But this issue of Afghanistan is something that they will have to navigate going forward. If you look back at President Biden’s poll numbers when these deaths occurred, he never really recovered — “
BASH: “He didn’t.”
SAENZ: “ — from those in his favorability ratings. And so, we’ll see whether voters are actually going to take this into consideration when they’re heading to the ballot box in November. But for the Harris campaign, this is something they will have to grapple with as Trump continues to try to tie the Afghanistan policy to not just Biden, but also directly to Harris.”