Stephen Miller: 'Astonishing' what Biden didn't say at UN on Afghanistan, foreign policy agenda

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Stephen Miller: Biden had captive audience at UN yet barely addressed Afghanistan

Former Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller calls the president's first U.N. address a 'missed opportunity' to answer the world's questions on the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller called President Biden's first speech to the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday a "missed opportunity" for the president to lay out his foreign policy doctrine and give a detailed explanation of the Afghanistan withdrawal on the world stage.

STEPHEN MILLER: I think it was a real missed opportunity. The entire world was really interested in hearing what Biden's doctrine would be, what his philosophy would be. The UN speech stands alone in a president's calendar speeches for a year as the one time the whole world is listening solely to the president discuss foreign policy. You remember, in President Trump's first U.N. address in 2017, he laid out this new doctrine to say we're going to reject top-down globalism, we're going to reject global governance. Instead, we're going to focus on individual nation-states finding common ground and working together in a bottom-up way. And that really animated the whole Trump presidency, it animated the peace deals that were reached and it was the core of that speech. I listened to the speech today trying to hear that, and I just didn't find it. The second missed opportunity was obviously on Afghanistan. The entire assembly, everyone watching at home here in America and people all over the planet wanted to hear a detailed, thoughtful, lengthy explanation of the decisions that were made. You have a captive audience. You can easily speak for an hour if you want to. And I don't think we heard more than, frankly, a few sentences on the issue. 

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It really was astonishing for all that it didn't say… This was Biden's chance. Whether you disagree with him or not, it was his chance with a captive audience to say, "You know what, France? Here's why I did this." And, "You know what, NATO allies? Here's why I did that." But instead of taking that opportunity, it was sort of a parade of platitudes. And so just totally from an objective standpoint, whatever side of the political spectrum you're on, I think you were left really disappointed that he didn't get into those issues.

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