President Joe Biden vowed Friday to get Americans and Afghan allies out of Afghanistan and took questions from White House reporters – on a pre-approved list – for the first time in nine days.
‘Let me be clear, any American who wants to come home, we will get you home,’ Biden pledged.
During the Q&A portion, Biden was asked if he was making the same commitment to those Afghans who supported the U.S. war effort.
‘Yes, we’re making the same commitment. There’s noone more important than bringing American citizens out, I acknowledge that, but they’re equally important almost is all those [special immigrant visas], as we call them, who in fact helped us – they’re translators, they went into battle for us, they were part of the operation,’ Biden answered.
He also said the U.S. was trying to get out Afghans working at non-governmental organizations, women’s organizations, and others.
‘This is one of the largest difficult airlifts in history and the only country in the world capable of projecting this much power on the far side of the world with this degree of precision is the United States of America,’ Biden acknowledged.
He insisted that the chaotic takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, leading to disarray at Kabul’s airport as westerners and Afghans flee, did not taint the U.S.’s global reputation.
‘I have seen no question of our credibility of our allies from around the world,’ he said.
‘There will be plenty of time to criticize and second guess when this operation is over, but now, now I’m focused on getting this job done,’ Biden added.
President Joe Biden spoke about the Afghanistan crisis from the White House on Friday
Afghans gather on a roadside near the military part of the airport in Kabul Friday
UK coalition forces, Turkish coalition forces, and U.S. Marines assist a child during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Friday
The president talked about conversations he had with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.
‘We all agreed that will convene the G7 meeting next week. A group of the world’s leading democracies. So that together we can coordinate our mutual approach, our united approach, moving forward,’ Biden said.
While dismissing a question about Afghans falling from aircraft posed Wednesday by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos – the one sit-down he did with press all week – on Friday Biden finally addressed the visuals.
‘The past week has been heartbreaking. We’ve seen gut-wrenching images of panicked people acting out of shear desperation,’ he said. ‘It’s completely understandable, they’re frightened, they’re sad.’
‘I don’t think anyone, anyone of us can see these pictures and not see that pain on a human level,’ he added.
Biden gave a status report on the evacuation, explaining why reporters on the ground saw no flights leave Kabul for a number of hours.
‘We paused flights in Kabul a few hours this morning to make sure we could process the arriving evacuees at the transit points,’ Biden said. ‘But our commander in Kabul has already given the order for outbound flights to resume. Even with the pause, we moved out 5,700 evacuees yesterday.’
The White House said that 13,000 people have been evacuated on U.S. military aircraft since August 14, with 18,000 being moved since the end of July.
The administration said 3,000 people were moved since last night’s update.
Biden also confirmed Pentagon spokesman John Kirby’s eye-popping admission Thursday: that the U.S. doesn’t know how many Americans are left on the ground.
‘We don’t have the exact number of people – of Americans – who are there,’ Biden said. ‘We want to get a strong number of exactly how many people are there. How many American citizens and where they are.’
‘Just yesterday, among the many Americans we evacuated, there are 169 Americans who got over the wall into the airport using military assets,’ Biden described.
The withdrawal deadline for the U.S. is August 31.
Biden was asked if that date still marked the end.
‘I think we can get it done by then,’ he said of the evacuation. ‘But we’re going to make that determination as we go.’
Biden was asked why Americans weren’t evacuated more quickly in light of a warning from U.S. diplomats in Kabul to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who stood behind the president’s left shoulder.
‘I got all kinds of cables, all kinds of advice, if you noticed,’ Biden answered, adding that various groups predicted the Afghan government’s collapse at different times.
‘I made the decision. The buck stops with me,’ he said, repeating the phrase he used Monday.
During the Q&A, Biden forgot one of two questions a reporter asked him.
He also flubbed while describing key communications with the Taliban, accidentally mangling the name of Doha, Qatar – a key focal point of negotiations as well as evacuations.
Asked about assurances of security for people making to the airport, Biden responded: ‘We’ve been in constant contact with the Taliban leadership on the ground in Kabul, as well as the Taliban leadership in Daho’ – accidentally transposing the letters in the capital of Qatar.
‘And we’ve been coordinating what we’re doing,’ he added.
He did not immediately correct himself, but he later referred to the location correctly when defending the way the evacuation was handled. ‘The point was that although we were in contact with the Taliban and Doha for this whole period of time,’ there wasn’t expected to be a ‘total demise’ of the Afghan military, Biden said.
Doha is where the Trump administration held negotiations with members of the Taliban for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Many Taliban leaders have now moved from there back to Afghanistan. It is also the location of many outgoing flights carrying Afghans.
‘They’re looking to gain some legitimacy,’ Biden also said of the Taliban.
While news reports suggest that getting to Kabul’s airport, even as an American, has been treacherous, Biden said, ‘We have no indication that [Americans] haven’t been able to get in Kabul through the airport.’
‘We made an agreement with the Taliban,’ he added.
The U.S. embassy in Kabul had sent out an alert Wednesday warning Americans that it could not assure them safe passage to the airport.
That day CNN’s Clarissa Ward stated, ‘I’ve covered all sorts of crazy situations. This was mayhem. This was nuts.’
‘This was impossible for an ordinary civilian – even if they have their paperwork. No way they’re running that gauntlet, no way they’re going to be able to navigate that,’ Ward said. ‘It’s very dicey, it’s very dangerous, it’s completely unpredictable. There’s no order, there’s no coherent system for processing people.’
Earlier Friday the White House said Biden ‘never shies’ away from taking questions – nine days after he last faced reporters and amid criticism over him dodging the media during the Afghanistan chaos.
From the East Room, Biden took questions from five reporters.
He walked out as another reporter yelled, ‘Why do you trust the Taliban?’
Biden didn’t answer.
He was slated to head home to Wilmington, Delaware Friday night, but now is staying in Washington until at least Saturday.
Biden avoided questions after a Wednesday speech on the coronavirus
Biden took heat this week for not participating in Q&A with the White House press corps amid the crisis and only doing one interview with Stephanopoulos, a veteran of the Clinton White House.
Biden spoke from the White House on Wednesday about the coronavirus amid the evolving situation in Afghanistan, but he ignored a chorus of shouted questions about the situation there.
‘The president never shies away from taking questions, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield told MSNBC in an interview Friday morning.
‘I’ll let him make a decision on whether he’s going to take questions this afternoon. But you saw he just did a full sit down interview on this just yesterday. So he is always willing to take questions, and I’ll let him decide if he is going to do that after his remarks today,’ she said.
Bedingfield was referencing to Wednesday’s sit-down with Stephanopoulos, where he said there was always going to be ‘chaos’ when the U.S. departed after the 20-year war.
Biden did speak to the country about Afghanistan Monday, but again took no questions from the White House press.
The last time he took questions was at a press conference on August 10th after Senate passage of infrastructure legislation and a budget resolution.
Back on July 2nd, before the Taliban takeover of the country, a Biden quip signaled the sensitivity of the topic he was trying to avoid. ‘I want to talk about happy things man,’ he said when asked about Afghanistan.