Ex-security adviser: Biden caused 'generational hits to our influence and reputation' in world

Former Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates says President Joe Biden has caused "generational hits to our influence and reputation" in the world through a series of policy blunders ranging from OPEC to Afghanistan.

Coates told Just the News that Biden believed his 50 years of experience and his climate change agenda would transform the world, but instead he has allowed foreign crises to overwhelm his administration and usurp its political capital.

"They keep getting mugged by reality," she said in an interview with the John Solomon Reports podcast. "And, you know, they came in with a very rigid set of ideas about how they were going to govern, and some of which I think came out of the very experience you described: The adults are back in charge. America's back. We know how to do this, leave it to us."

Coates said that the arc of the Biden foreign policy came crashing down with the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan and worsened when Russia felt emboldened to invade Ukraine. Last week's decision by OPEC to drastically cut oil production was a further rebuke, she said.

"We, I think, have taken generational hits to our influence and reputation," she said. "You know, Afghanistan was such a catastrophe, I think, we still don't fully comprehend what that's going to mean for us."

Coates said Biden expected the Russian war to end quickly and now doesn't have an exit strategy, as Ukraine has performed exceedingly well.

"I think part of the problem is the Biden administration never thought for a moment that this would be anything but a three-day war, with the overthrow of Kyiv, the installation of a new government, Zelensky in exile," she said. "Now we're almost eight months in, and, you know, that that's not the case.

"They've been real flat-footed in taking advantage of what is enormous weakness in one of our great geopolitical competitors," she said. "And all I hear out of the president is, 'We'll do as much as it takes as long as it takes.' Like, okay, well, what is it? And, you know, if you don't tell me what it is, then ... you've just said a bunch of words. And, you know, that's what what troubles me. I think it troubles the Congress deeply."