Awkward: John Kirby Struggles When Asked for a Biden Foreign Policy Achievement

It's got to be tough to be a member of the Biden administration and have it be your job to talk up the administration's accomplishments. Sometimes, you have to be a good liar. If you're not a good liar, well, you can really embarrass yourself.

NSC spokesman John Kirby certainly learned that the hard way last week when he was asked by CBS News' Ed O’Keefe, “What would the president say is his foreign policy achievement of the year?”

"There’s a lot that we’ve achieved in foreign policy,” Kirby began. "And Karine has already made sure that she — that you know that we’re — we’re running late, and I don’t want to — I don’t want to belabor this. So, I — this answer could go on for, like, 20 minutes."

For something that most certainly wasn’t meant as a gotcha question, Kirby sure sounded like he didn’t want to come up with an answer.

And then he launched into an awkwardly long filibuster.

"But, I mean, from the Indo-Pacific and the Quad and the AUKUS deal to get Australia nuclear-powered submarine capability; to what we’ve done with supporting Ukraine, pushing back — they’ve clawed back more than 50 percent of the territory that Russia took in the early months of the war."

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? I’m sure you are, and even Kirby most likely realized this wasn’t exactly a foreign policy achievement of Biden’s at all.  

"You think they — you know, obviously, they did that through courage and bravery on the field. But they certainly did that with United States support,” Kirby added.

Ouch.

"Look at what Israel has been able to do to put pressure on Hamas in the wake of the worst terrorist attack they’ve — that they’ve ever — that they’ve ever succumbed to,” he continued. Which is pretty hilarious because Israel hasn’t exactly been getting much support from the Biden administration these days.

And the train wreck continued.

"I mean, I could go on and on," Kirby said. "There — there has been — I think if I had to bucket it into one thing, the — one of the most important things he’s done on the foreign policy front is shore up and revitalize our vast network of alliances and partnerships. No other nation in the world has that kind of a network at their disposal the way United — the United States does. And our leadership on the world stage is stronger because he took the time to in...vest in those relationships—many relationships that had been let lapse by the previous administration."

It's an awkward, fluff-filled ramble that includes achievements that had nothing to do with Biden's actual policies or completely subjective, abstract talking points. 

Reporter to John Kirby: "Since we don't get to ask him ourselves—we would have last night maybe if he'd stuck around a little while—what would the President say is his foreign policy achievement of the year?" pic.twitter.com/88Lj6t4Ivc

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 21, 2023

You almost have to feel bad for the guy. When Trump was in office, our allies and enemies respected our strength, and Trump managed to achieve something that his predecessors couldn't and Biden failed to build upon: the Abraham Accords. President Trump successfully brokered bilateral agreements between Israel and several Muslim nations — including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan — that established diplomatic relations between the countries. The American media often pooh-poohed the Abraham Accords, but they were the most significant progress towards peace in the Middle East.

In fact, Saudi Arabia’s potential inclusion in the accords was discussed and potentially imminent even during Trump’s presidency. In September 2020, Trump predicted that five other nations would potentially join, including Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, progress in achieving peace deals between Israel and other Arab nations hasn’t increased significantly in the nearly three years Joe Biden has been in office.

Once upon a time, Barack Obama named Joe Biden as his running mate to fill a void in his own resumé on foreign policy experience. Today, Joe Biden's own team can't seem to name any legitimate foreign policy accomplishments to brag about.