Despite all evidence to the contrary, President Biden appeared before the American people on Tuesday to try to sell his version of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

With a straight face, Biden half-shouted to the American people about the "extraordinary success" of the evacuation effort - an assessment that seemed completely at odds with the reality of the situation - before trotting out some equally specious stats: the US had successfully evacuated 90% of Americans who wanted to leave Kabul, and Biden committed to doing everything in his power to help those left behind.

But just as President Biden was delivering his prepared remarks, Reuters was quietly publishing a leaked transcript from the president's final call with Ashraf Ghani, which took place in late July. The call offers a more realistic picture of a Biden Administration obsessed with the optics of the pullout, who was still pushing the Afghans to focus on an irrelevant strategy shift to try and make it look like they were doing something in the face of Taliban defeat.