If the Biden administration had hoped that media coverage of its disastrous exit from Afghanistan would fade anytime soon, new billboards gracing the highways in central Pennsylvania say otherwise.
According to USA Today, Scott Wagner, a Republican former Pennsylvania state senator and 2018 gubernatorial candidate paid for the signs, which show a smiling President Joe Biden dressed in Taliban military garb holding a rocket launcher with the caption: “Making the Taliban Great Again!”
Quality trolling. https://t.co/aWB6kcLGu8
— #Marcher (@MarcherLord1) September 16, 2021
Giant 'Making the Taliban Great Again' billboard showing President Biden appears on Pennsylvania interstate https://t.co/yQ3JRs1wvG pic.twitter.com/WCdGnXLGzV
— WFLA NEWS (@WFLA) September 14, 2021
And they’ve gotten plenty of attention.
Joe Biden “Making Taliban Great Again” Billboards Go Up in Pennsylvania… pic.twitter.com/NIOk8vheOY
— Covid-1984 (@NeverSleever) September 16, 2021
vDarknessFalls Telegram 😆
Joe Biden billboard –
"Making the Taliban Great Again!" 🤣 pic.twitter.com/2ka5ieXSIS— Dark II Light (@SheLuvsTGA) September 14, 2021
According to the York Daily Record, Wagner purchased the signs for $15,000 through Trone Outdoor Advertising.
Wagner told the media outlet he blames Biden for the situation in Afghanistan which he sees as “an absolute mess and a tragedy.”
He was especially concerned about $85 billion of U.S. military vehicles and equipment left behind. He said, “I was watching an evening news show one night and saw the Taliban in American personnel carriers.”
“It’s like Vietnam, even worse,” he added.
Asked for a comment by WHTM News 27 in Harrisburg — the Pennsylvania capital — Wagner replied: “I saw the image [of Joe Biden]. I got it from a friend a few weeks ago. The picture tells the story.
“We pulled out of Afghanistan too quickly, and we left so much of American equipment. Joe Biden has made us look like a fool. I feel so bad, words can’t describe what I would say to someone who was wounded or someone’s family who had a soldier pass away in the country after all this happened.”
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Fritzi Schreffler responded to a WHTM inquiry in a statement that read: “The Department permits such outdoor advertising to private entities through an application process, bound by law and regulation. Specifically, the Outdoor Advertising Control Act of 1971 (Federal Law) and Title 67, PA Code, Chapter 445 (PA Commonwealth Regulation) do not regulate or control billboard advertising content. Generally, advertising content is protected by the First Amendment under the US Constitution.
“Therefore, if the advertising message is legal per State or Federal laws and regulations, recourse is not warranted. While we understand the message on the Interstate 83 billboard may be unpleasant to some, it is our understanding that the message is legal. As such, the Department has no basis to require this message be changed.”
According to PennLive, the billboards have been placed along “the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Interstate 83, and Routes 322, 11-15, and 15.”
They’ve have created quite a stir in the Keystone State, which was one of the keys to Biden’s still-questionable victory in the 2020 election.
Americans are angry about the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. This sorry episode should not and will not be forgotten. To use Biden’s famous remark to former President Barack Obama after the passage of Obamacare in 2010, “This is a big f***ing deal.”
The fall of Kabul to the Taliban was a tipping point in U.S. history. In a rare moment of responsibility (with some exceptions), the mainstream media actually committed journalism. There really was no choice.
I would go so far as to say it altered the balance of power in the world. The biggest winners are the Taliban and China. The biggest loser, obviously, is the United States, the country Biden is supposed to be leading.
In addition to our nation’s diminished status on the world stage, the Biden administration’s many missteps left 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans dead. The Biden Pentagon’s “retaliation strike” against the terrorist group ISIS-K ended in the deaths of 10 innocent Afghan civilians including seven children.
I hope to see more billboards highlighting our current president’s profound stupidity pop up across the nation. Biden and his entire administration deserve to be humiliated.
Republicans must continue this messaging as the country moves closer to the 2022 midterms and into the 2024 presidential race.
I suppose the silver lining to the Afghanistan crisis and all of this administration’s other destructive policies is that it will (at least it should) deliver a blow to the progressive cause for years to come.