You knew it was coming. With the disastrous outcome in Afghanistan from the abrupt removal of American forces last month in a Democratic administration, somehow and someway the news media would have to make this epic humiliation about Republicans. Via our friends from the Media Research Center and Newsbusters, NBC News wins the “Republicans pounce®” gold.

On the podium, however, Monica Alba couldn’t spare Joe Biden much criticism, even with the misdirection:

NBC Nightly News whined that Republicans "have seized on" the "optical comparison" between Biden's disaster in Kabul and the Saigon airlift. pic.twitter.com/6J30EqMfHh

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) August 15, 2021

ALBA: Candidate Biden promised to bring troops home, and President Biden guaranteed last month there would be no airlifts from the embassy in Kabul, saying it was not at all analogous to the messy exit from Vietnam four decades ago.

BLINKEN: This is manifestly not Saigon.

ALBA: Still, helicopters continued to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies to the airport throughout the day. An optical comparison Republicans have seized on as they continue to blast the president’s foreign policy strategy.

It’s an optical comparison that’s not just obvious to Republicans. As Alba points out, the Biden administration has insisted for more than a month that any exit from Afghanistan wouldn’t resemble Saigon. Blinken was merely repeating the Biden line. As last as last week, the order to send more than 3,000 Marines into the compound was supposedly to ensure an orderly wind-down of embassy operations. Right up to the point that it turned into Saigon², the White House was doing its best Chip Diller imitation and assuring everyone that all was well.

Instead, the Biden administration has created the worst humanitarian and political crisis since the rise of ISIS. Let’s recall how that happened, too — boosted by another mindless and abrupt American military withdrawal in an administration that included Joe Biden. If NBC News wants to report on parallels, how about reporting on that one?

The big story here isn’t Republicans pouncing. It’s that the Taliban is pouncing all over the Afghan people, a situation allowed by the full-on abandonment of the Afghan military. It was possible to get out of Afghanistan as a fighting force while still providing support for the Afghan military, but Biden made it clear all along that he wouldn’t lift a finger to support them, not logistically or with intelligence and air cover when the Taliban violated their deal and began attacking cities less than two weeks ago.

The “Republicans pounce!®”narrative is a misdirection — and a hoary one at that — by NBC News to distract from Biden’s utter incompetence and cravenness.