President Biden appeared to go back on his campaign promise to "take responsibility" as commander-in-chief and not "blame others" during his speech on the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that has seen the Taliban swiftly retake control of the country – and outcome Biden previously claimed was "highly unlikely."

Biden on Monday suggested that the withdrawal debacle was the result of the peace deal he "inherited" from former President Donald Trump and claimed his only options were between "escalating the conflict and sending thousands of American troops back into Afghanistan."

"I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces," Biden said. "That’s why we're still there."

Biden also pointed fingers at the Afghan army for lacking "the will to fight" for their future. And he said the slow-moving pace of evacuating the U.S.'s Afghan allies was in part because "some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier — still hopeful for their country." 

The comments contrast with then-candidate Biden's promise to do his "job and take responsibility" for his actions.

It's hard to believe this has to be said, but unlike this president, I’ll do my job and take responsibility. I won’t blame others. And I’ll never forget that the job isn’t about me — it’s about you.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 4, 2020

"It's hard to believe this has to be said, but unlike this president, I’ll do my job and take responsibility," Biden wrote in June 2020. "I won't blame others. And I'll never forget that the job isn't about me — it's about you."

He claims he only had two decisions, either to pull out based on Trump’s agreements or to fight the Taliban. I think that’s a strawman argument of false choices. He didn’t have to pull out the way he did and let the country go to hell, putting our own people’s lives in jeopardy. He didn’t have to ignore his own intelligence agencies telling him this would happen if he pulled out.

When Biden saw the first city fall to the Taliban, he could have reversed course and helped support the Afghan government to fight back against the Taliban. Yeah, it would have meant we’d still be there, but clearly that’d be better than what’s happened now.

No, this was Biden’s decision to unconditionally pull out and allow the Taliban to take over the entire country. This is on him and no amount of blaming Trump will change that.

And as was blatantly obvious, he didn’t take a single question because he knew that would completely unravel the strawman arguments he’d just made.