Sen. Murphy panned for saying it's 'fantasy thinking' to believe Afghanistan withdrawal would not turn chaotic

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Media top headlines August 30

In media news today, Obama's former education secretary gets slammed for likening anti-maskers to Kabul suicide bombers, Disney faces internal pressure to conduct an outside probe of ABC News' handling of sexual harassment claims, and ABC's Jon Karl says Biden admin calling Afghanistan a success is not based in 'reality'

Media analysts and political players bristled at Sen. Chris Murphy's, D-Conn., attempt to excuse the Biden administration's chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan by arguing it was "fantasy thinking" to believe the country would not descend into chaos.

Last Thursday marked the most devastating day of the crisis yet after a suicide bombing outside the Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. service members, as the U.S. struggled to evacuate troops, American citizens, and Afghan allies.

"To believe that there was some way to do this evacuation in a way that didn't have panic on the ground and didn't have a risk of loss of life, I think is the same kind of fantasy thinking that led us to stay in Afghanistan for ten years too long," Murphy said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday.

Murphy argued that even if the U.S. had begun evacuating earlier, "there would have still been the scenes that we're seeing today." The senator said he hoped that if Congress investigates, it would do a "full scope" of what went wrong not just in the past few weeks, but in the past 20 years.

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Some viewers did not buy Murphy's narrative.

"It's ‘fantasy-thinking’ to believe there wasn’t a better way to plan the Afghanistan withdrawal that didn’t involve getting 13 of our service members killed, scrambling to save stranded Americans, and leaving millions of dollars worth of our gear/weapons to the Taliban," Michelle Perez Exner, the communications director for House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, tweeted. 

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"Disingenuous," others reacted.

Murphy also told Tapper the evacuation did not start earlier because they were "laboring under the belief" the Afghan forces wouldn't collapse as swiftly as they did.

"In retrospect, obviously the government and the security forces of Afghanistan did collapse, and so we probably should have started that evacuation earlier," he said. "But we were laboring under the belief that they wouldn't."

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The U.S. completed its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan on Monday, officially ending its longest war. The removal was not without immense cost, and Biden has faced the sharpest criticism of his presidency from the media over the chaoticc process.

ABC's Jonathan Karl accused the White House of living in its own fantasy by claiming successes throughout the Afghanistan crisis. 

"They have been describing something that isn't reality," Karl said. "This has been an incredible airlift, more than 100,000 people evacuated, but what a disaster."