If so, Joe Biden and his team are hardly alone in that effort. Fox News military analyst General Jack Keane accused the White House of “downplaying” the crisis of abandoned Americans in Afghanistan. The Biden administration has tried changing the subject constantly since September 1, and the national media has proven all too willing to help them bury the story:

Indeed, we’ve barely heard anything about the trapped Americans from the White House, State Department, or Pentagon over the past week. The only exception to that has been the successful flight out of Mazar-e-Sharif which carried a few dozen Americans to safety, as well as other Western nationals and some Afghan partners. Even by the State Department’s highly suspect accounting, that leaves scores of American citizens still stuck behind Taliban lines, not to mention the legal permanent residents (LPRs) of America which State keeps conveniently ignoring or evading. We still don’t have exact numbers for either, a point raised by State’s reporting pool but barely mentioned anywhere in national media.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has not remained silent on this issue, at least. Their lead editorial excoriates the Biden administration for its lethargy and lack of concern over those they abandoned, as well as their rush to change the subject:

Americans, U.S. residents and endangered Afghans are still scattered throughout the country. The Taliban have effectively taken hundreds hostage at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Some Americans have been told to travel to Kabul, but no one knows how many can do so safely. …

The thousands more still in the 14-step application process should have been evacuated to a secure location months ago. Politicoreports that only 705 SIV applicants left during the evacuation. Some U.S. officials have denied that number but declined to provide their own. Mr. Blinken is testifying before the House and Senate this week, and Congress should demand exact numbers.

The Taliban said last week that it will let only foreign passport- or visa-holders leave the country. Are the thousands of endangered Afghans supposed to wait for the process to play out from Washington? And if they survive long enough to get a visa, who expects the Taliban to grant safe passage? The new government’s security forces are run by a leader of the terrorist Haqqani Network wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The State Department says “we are considering and we are developing additional processing alternatives so that we can continue to deliver important consular services, including to these American citizens, these LPRs, these Afghans at risk.” Consular services? No wonder the Taliban feel free to humiliate the Biden Administration.

They have always felt free to humiliate the US. The problem here is that Biden and his team are so willing to be humiliated that they abandoned Americans to the Taliban in the first place. Well, that’s one of the problems, anyway. The other is that the national news media seems determined to help Biden change the subject rather than hold this administration accountable for its disgraceful, cowardly, and incompetent execution of Biden’s long-expressed Afghanistan policy.

The fact that Biden and his team want to “downplay” this disgrace by changing the subject and forgetting about the Americans they abandoned is no surprise. Unfortunately, neither is the disgraceful decision by media outlets to play along with a Democratic administration and bury this story. Shame on all of them.