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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Biden to Withdraw U.S. Troops from Afghanistan By September 11; Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) is Interviewed About Ending America's Longest War; Any Moment: CDC Vaccine Advisers to Vote, Could Update Recommendations for Use of J&J Vaccine. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired April 14, 2021 - 16:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Let's go to our nation's capital. THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER starts right now.

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JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

And we begin today with the world leader. President Biden just minutes ago announcing the end of America's longest war beginning on May 1st with a plan, he says, to remove the remaining 2,500 U.S. service members in Afghanistan before September 11th of this year, which will be the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that led the U.S. into this war to begin with.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: End America's longest war. We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: -- American service members have been killed in Afghanistan, and more than 20,000 physically wounded, to say nothing of other kinds of wounds and to say nothing to the losses experienced by our NATO allies and the Afghan people.

Today, President Biden says U.S. humanitarian and diplomatic efforts will continue in Afghanistan though administration officials at least for now tell CNN there's no potential for the September 11th deadline to be extended.

Later in the day, standing amid the graves of those American service members killed in Afghanistan in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, President Biden said this was not a difficult decision.

Quote: We went for two reasons, he said. Get rid of bin Laden and to end the safe haven. I never thought we were there to somehow unify Afghanistan. It's never been done.

We're covering this story with our correspondents from the White House to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Let's start with CNN's Kaitlan Collins.

And, Kaitlan, just moments ago, President Biden was at Section 16 in Arlington paying respect to the service members killed there.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Of course, Jake. Section 60 is where so many of those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq now rest. And so, that was the first stop that you saw President Biden make after making this announcement at the White House earlier.

And while he was at Arlington National Cemetery, Jake, the president was asked if this was a hard decision to make, and he looked at the reporters and he said no. To him it was absolutely clear.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS (voice-over): An end in sight for America's longest war.

BIDEN: We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021.

COLLINS: President Biden announcing this afternoon he'll withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by September 11th, the 20th anniversary of the attacks that brought them there.

BIDEN: It's time to end America's longest war. It's time for American troops to come home.

COLLINS: Overruling warnings from the Pentagon, Biden chose a full withdrawal with no strings attached to the political conditions on the ground.

BIDEN: I'm now the fourth United States president to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth.

COLLINS: Biden spent months deciding whether to meet a May 1st deadline set by former president Trump. Now he must grapple with an intelligence assessment warning the Afghan government will struggle to keep the Taliban at bay.

WILLIAM J. BURNS, CIA DIRECTOR: There is a significant risk once the U.S. military and the coalition militaries withdraw.

COLLINS: Though Democrats who oppose the war applauded the move, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle questioned it.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Precipitously withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan is a grave mistake.

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): I think any withdrawal that takes place in that country must be conducted in a manner that's coordinated among our military, diplomatic and intelligence partners. COLLINS: Today, Biden made his announcement from the Treaty Room, the

same place where President George W. Bush announced the first Afghanistan airstrikes in 2001.

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT: The Taliban will pay a price.

COLLINS: That night on "LARRY KING LIVE," then Senator Biden acknowledged the long road ahead.

BIDEN: It's a beginning, Larry. There's a long way to go.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BIDEN (on camera): And, Jake, that's where they both were in 2001, about October. Now, we did hear from President Biden in that speech today. He said he called former President Bush yesterday to inform him of the decision that he was going to announce today.

TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins.

Let's go now to Kabul, Afghanistan, where we have CNN's Nick Paton Walsh who has been reporting in and out of that country for some 15 years. In fact, I first met Nick when I interviewed him about a decade for my book about Combat Outpost Keating in Afghanistan because he was the very last journalist to have visited that ill-fated camp.

Nick, give us perspective. What does this move mean for Afghanistan and the region?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: It means a very turbulent few months ahead and when you heard Joe Biden speaking there, there was deep eloquence of a decision that's clearly been formulating in him over decades.

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He was never a fan of long-term investment here because he saw the problems here too deep-seeded, often, to be fixed. And if you look at where Americans has tried in the last 20 years, Jake, as you've seen, they've tried, frankly, everything -- from invading to losing to surging to drawing down to camped terrorism to only to peace talks. The only thing they haven't tried is not being part of the problem anymore.

And so, there was an element I think of the commander in chief there, knowing that the decision he had to take would lead to bad consequences, but he had the responsibility to have a strategy and to know frankly when to stop maybe, to have the courage to call that particular moment. He also pointed out the 1 percent of Americans who do the serving, who do the dying and being injured in this particular war.

And that's a key element because as a commander in chief, you clearly have to know why they are there, know why they are enduring that. So, he did suggest that the drawdown would begin by May the 1st. That may pander to part of the Taliban's agenda here that wants the U.S. out in 16 days, entire unrealistic and what the few get-outs might mean for U.S. action that suggests they might come back and hit back against the Taliban if attacked, or if their partners will attack as they withdraw, and they're going to keep funding Afghan forces.

So all is not entirely lost for the Afghan government here. But this is a country where the Taliban have extraordinary sway in the rural areas. And this bubble of Kabul where millions now live and billions have poured in, that's also on edge too as to what comes next, Jake.

TAPPER: And, Nick, how are America's allies, how are America's enemies reacting to the news of this pending withdrawal?

WALSH: Yeah, well, the Taliban is the key dynamic here. As I said, they recently suggested they weren't even going to go over the peace talks in Istanbul that were a key part of the Biden plan, and recently suggested this morning that they got 16 days for the Americans to entirely withdraw. As I said, they've made this before and many think they do need the legitimacy of transitional government here as the U.S. is suggesting alongside the Afghan government, to will keep aid flowing in, when eventually get there and on the levers of power.

This country is struggling to keep its lights on, to feed itself at times. And if the Taliban want to control more of it as the actual government in some ways, they're going to need to deal with that. NATO said, as many expected, NATO allies can't really sustain themselves here without the U.S. infrastructure and muscle, frankly. They will be leaving at the same time, too.

And the Afghan government are the key wild card in this, strange to say that. They've been opposed to the dynamic of the peace process. They wanted elections first before a transitional government. But today there was a very tame and I think respectful statement from President Ashraf Ghani who said he respected the decision and they wanted to make the transition as smooth as possible.

This is a presidential palace that fully knows it faces a superior force in terms of the Taliban. They've made statements about how they can keep them at bay. They're going to desperately want most are assistance for their armed forces. Presumably hope that U.S. air power might be at their back possibly in the months ahead. Though that's definitely not part of what Biden's proposing.

Look, America's leaving this war, but the war doesn't end because there are no longer two and a half thousand troops here. It continues in a darker new phase where the insurgency that caused so many lives to be lost may now be calling the shots. So, this is, you know, as you say, Jake, not something at the forefront of many American minds, and it will be interesting to see quite how the world pays attention to it now that international presence draws down -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much for your excellent reporting there in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Let's discuss this all with Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. He served as an Air Force pilot in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's currently serving in the Air National Guard. He joins us. He opposes this move.

Congressman, thanks for joining us.

So, you said this announcement is short-sighted and a grave mistake. Tell us why.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): Yeah, look, I think it's incredibly disappointing.

So, two things -- first off, yes, it is a tragic situation in Afghanistan. The Afghan people and the Afghan military is doing the brunt of the fighting, 96 percent of combat operations are by them. We are there to train and assist and do counterterrorism missions and stiffen the spine of the Afghan military.

Are there challenges? Of course. But, you know, what we haven't had in the last 20 years, we have not had a terrorist attack in the United States of America that was planned and executed out of Afghanistan. I think it's part of that (ph).

Plus, you look at places like Kosovo. There are still 3,500 troops in Kosovo playing an important role there.

And, plus, on top of that, you now have Russia at the door of Ukraine, China growing. You have these negotiations in Iran, and I think this sends the wrong message at the wrong time.

And, frankly, it's going to be, I fear, a repeat of what we saw in Iraq after the U.S. left. We only had to go back with a bigger force.

TAPPER: So, I don't need to tell you, we've been there 20 years. And it's people like you, not people like me, that are doing the fighting and doing the dying.

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What conditions would need to be met on the ground for you to think that this was an okay decision? And what in the last 20 years has given you any sense that we would ever reach those conditions in an ironclad way?

KINZINGER: Yeah, I think it's an important question. By the way, your book is actually really great for understanding those conditions. So, good job on that. And I'd encourage people to read it because you see the sacrifice that Americans have made to get to where we are today.

Where we are today is not 100,000 troops in Afghanistan bearing the brunt of the vast majority of fighting. It's 2,500 with 5,000 NATO. Basically they're in a train and advice.

We're not really in a war footing necessarily in Afghanistan. The Afghan people are and the government is. But they're in a bit of a different capacity.

So, I think if you look, has there been success? Yes. We basically can have a version of relative stability with a smaller footprint, sort of like what we saw against ISIS, leveraging a small American force for bigger outcomes instead of 150,000 troops.

But what I do know is that leaving Afghanistan is going to lead to a real potential of us having to go back with a bigger footprint. And it's unfortunately one of those moments. If you look at after World War II, had the U.S. left after 20 years, had we left Europe, we would see a very different Europe than if we chose to stay there in a posture of Cold War and eventually tear down the Iron Curtain that freed Eastern Europe. It's really important to see it in that context.

TAPPER: Yeah, I mean, I understand what you're saying. I mean, we have troops in Japan. We have troops in Korea. We have troops in Germany.

Our troops in Germany, they can go to Oktoberfest and not worry about being killed. Our troops in Afghanistan don't face that kind of luxury. I mean, they are risking their lives just by being there. So I guess what I'm asking is, do you -- do you see this as a model what we have in Germany, what we have in Kosovo, the idea that we should always have troops in Afghanistan, just 2,500 or fewer?

KINZINGER: No. And I don't think -- I think people that do say, you know, for instance, still on enduring presence in Korea, I think it's a false equivalence. But I do think you can look at a place like Kosovo, and you understand that Kosovo without a NATO presence and a U.S. presence, you would have the real potential that could fall apart again. And yet, 20 years later, Kosovo has now introduced their first troops into peacekeeping processes.

So, the point isn't necessarily the clock or the calendar or the equivalency to, for instance, Germany. Right, I'd much rather go to Germany as a U.S. soldier than to Afghanistan, but it is the idea that a small forest can prevent in the worst case a bad thing from happening, the collapse of the Afghan

government, which now appears potentially inevitable, versus another attack on the U.S., versus having to continue to give them and the next generation the opportunity to change their country.

There's no great answers, but I do know there is a bad alternative. And, unfortunately, it appears that bad alternative has been made. I hope I am wrong. I desperate hope that I'm wrong in that.

TAPPER: So one of the reasons that I wanted to interview you today in response in addition to the fact that you have actually served is that I am confident that you would be saying these same things if President Trump had been re-elected and were making this same announcement. And he for a long time had talked about wanting to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan to the chagrin of former Secretary Esper and others.

Do you think that Donald Trump has convinced most Republicans that what Joe Biden is doing today is the right move? I mean, are you an outlier in the GOP because of the influence of Donald Trump on this issue?

KINZINGER: I think it's possible. And, in fact, when the former president went from 5,000 troops to 2,500, I was very critical. I said all that does is put the current president in a position to either have to double troop presence or withdraw. You know, either way he has to make a decision.

And -- but, yeah. I think this idea, the Rand Paul idea of endless wars, you know, yeah, it's really catchy, you can remember when somebody says that. But Afghanistan is not the equivalent of Afghanistan eight years ago with 100,000 troops or Iraq or whatever. It's a very different mission, and we're doing a big disservice.

And I think a significant number of Republicans have been convinced by that, and we've forgotten as Republicans this idea of what America's presence in the world means and the moral role that we have not just to defend our nation but to stand for bigger values.

TAPPER: Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, thank you for your time, and also, of course, for your service as always. Good to see you.

KINZINGER: You bet. See you.

TAPPER: Breaking news. A CDC committee is meeting right now about the paused Johnson & Johnson vaccine. New information about the vaccine has been revealed. We'll tell that to you.

Plus, we're tracking new developments in Minnesota, the former police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright, apparently by accident, has been arrested and is facing charges.

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TAPPER: Our health lead right now. The CDC Advisory Committee is right now meeting to determine the fate of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the U.S. after distribution was paused yesterday morning due to six people having reported rare blood clots after receiving the vaccine.

It's literally a one in a million situation. One in a million people have reported this issue. Nearly 7 million have received the vaccine.

CNN's Nick Watt is listening in on the meeting.

Nick, what do we know?

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, that group has just gone on a small break. Then they're going to have some public comment. And then they will vote.

It looks likely that they will end up saying that they want a little bit more time, they want to extend this.

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Apparently, the work group from this committee met yesterday, and that seems to be where they are leaning. Now their options are they could vote to recommend no one gets this vaccine. They could vote to recommend everyone gets this vaccine over 18. Of course some more information to help doctors know how to treat the

possible side effects and the public to know what to look for.

So, we will know shortly what they're going to recommend. It looks like it will be a pause to gather more information. For example, just like how many cases. We knew of six. We just heard of a couple more from during the trials, one of those in the placebo group.

Now Johnson & Johnson itself said this morning that based on the data, they think that the benefits of their vaccine outweigh the potential problems.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WATT (voice-over): During the emergency discussion of this, the only one-shot vaccine authorized in the U.S., the known clotting cases were described in detail.

DR. ARAN MAREE, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, JANSSEN PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES BY JOHNSON & JOHNSON: Time to launch it after vaccination was reported at 11 days. Treatment was not described. And this patient died.

WATT: That's the only death. And still no proven link between the clots and the vaccine.

MARETT: While the clot has not been established between these very rare events on the vaccine, we recognize these events could represent an important potential risk.

WATT: Also, still unclear if these issues are exactly the same as those similar also very rare clots reported in Europe with AstraZeneca's vaccine.

DR. TOM SHIMABUKURO, CDC: Five of these six cases really headache is the initial presenting feature.

WATT: Note, those clots reported in just 0.0008 percent of people who got the Johnson & Johnson shot.

All right. The brighter side.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our vaccination program is accelerating.

WATT: Now averaging nearly 3.4 million people dosed every day. Pfizer has boosted production, says they'll now deliver 220 million doses by May's end.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I know Moderna is on track and we're working with Moderna to do everything we can accelerate those doses.

WATT: Today is day 450 since the first confirmed COVID-19 case in this country. And we're now averaging over 70,000 new cases a day, up 10 percent in just a week.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: Hospital admissions also continue to increase.

WATT: Just look at that line climb. That's hospitalizations in Michigan where a doc posted this after an ER shift.

DR. ROB DAVIDSON: We're like five times the number of inpatients from COVID as we had a week ago. Our house was full. We've got to do better, folks. The light is there at the end of the tunnel but we're just not going to get there unless we do all of it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT (on camera): Now, one other option for this Johnson & Johnson vaccine is officials could recommend that it not be given to people in certain demographics. For example, not be given to younger women who appear to be at most risk of those clots.

And the CDC also pointed out this morning that after 182 million doses of the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines, not a single case of this clotting has been reported -- Jake.

TAPPER: Important to know.

Nick Watt, thanks so much.

Let's bring in CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, even if the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is ultimately deemed safe and put back on the market, this is only going to worsen vaccine hesitancy. There's no question about it.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. I think that's probably safe to say. I mean, this is one of those challenging things.

You know, I was thinking about this, Jake, the other day if we hadn't gotten the news this way about hearing about a trial pause and sort of laying out what was going on with these patients, we just heard that a patient had died after vaccination, maybe that would have worsened hesitancy even more, you know? Who knows? These are subjective things.

One thing we can say is that if you look at Europe with the AstraZeneca vaccine and the concern of clots over there, there was an online poll in France that showed about 20 percent in that online poll, French people actually had confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine. So, greatly increased vaccine hesitancy toward that vaccine.

But, Jake, this is rare, this is extremely rare, and it appears to be isolated to these particular vaccines, not the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines as Nick was just mentioning.

TAPPER: Is there a risk of this particular blood clot in COVID patients? Because I wonder if the risk of getting COVID for this blood clot is worse than for the J&J vaccine. Obviously, the risk for dying is because we know people die of COVID.

GUPTA: Right, yeah. So, yeah, it's an interesting point. There is a risk of clotting with just COVID, the disease itself is associated with clotting.

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People have developed strokes as a result of that. People have developed everything to COVID toes, DVTs, all sorts of things.

This type of clot, and we can show you an image of this, is a little bit different. This is a cerebral venous sinus clot. It's the blood vessels in the brain that drain blood away from the brain. And that red part there, that is the blood clot.

So if you've got blood going to the brain but it can't adequately leave the brain, the brain can start to swell, and you'll have headache, blurred vision, have seizures. Those are the sort of problems. But this is a bit unusual in that these patients, they develop this clot, but at the same time they're at risk of bleeding because they have low platelets.

And that's probably the biggest issue that prompted this pause we're learning. When you have this sort of problem, you can't treat with sort of heparin a conventional blood thinner, that could worsen the problem. For these six patients were treated as the committee said inappropriately. So that's part of what dictated the pause if you have patients like this, they wanted to make sure clinicians got the message of how best to treat this.

But to your point, let me put up this other graphic really quickly. What we did, Jake, to show you the math on this. What is the likelihood of someone developing a clot, you know, this type of clot between these ages, OK? So how many people got the vaccine that were women between the ages of 18 and 49? We calculated that and then said it's about one in 200,000, roughly, vaccinations in that age group, that develop clots. Very rare.

The risk of death in that same age group if people got COVID-19, you can tell, it's 30 times lower. So, it's the risk/benefit ratio is still very clear even if you look at the data with that degree of granularity.

TAPPER: So, Johnson & Johnson admitted in this meeting today that there was an unusual blood clotting event in at least one of the vaccine trial participants. What do you make of that? Was it irresponsible to approve the vaccine knowing that there had been a reaction like that?

GUPTA: Yeah. This is interesting. We were reporting on this. This is back in the fall of last year. At that point, we heard that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial had been paused due to an unexplained illness. That's all we sort of heard.

What we subsequently learned is that it was a 25-year-old male who developed a blood clot, again, in one of these veins that drains blood away from the brain. At that point, it was thought to not be associated, in part, because another patient also developed a clot in the placebo arm of the trial at that point. So I think investigators thought this may not have any kind of

association at all. Obviously now they go back and look at that retrospectively and are now asking, did that -- was a harbinger of what we're seeing now.

TAPPER: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much. Appreciate it as always.

We've got several updates for you from Minnesota. Charges announced in the shooting death of Daunte Wright at the hands of a police officer. And just a few miles away, Derek Chauvin defense team calls an expert who says car exhaust may have caused George Floyd's death, car exhaust.

Stay with us.

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