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White House Takes Hard Line With Nursing Homes on Vaccinations; Chaotic Evacuation Efforts in Afghanistan. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 18, 2021 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:25]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us on NEWSROOM. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I'm Victor Blackwell.

Next hour, America's top military officials will brief the press about the urgent humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. We, of course, will bring that to you live.

Now, this is video of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley arriving at the White House today. We understand that they met with President Biden.

CAMEROTA: The administration is aiming to evacuate tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan by August 31. But there appears to be a major disconnect between the stated U.S. evacuation plan and what's actually happening on the streets of Kabul.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(GUNFIRE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK, so what you're hearing right are these pops of gunfire used to control the crowds. These are crowds of civilians trying to get inside the airport in Kabul.

BLACKWELL: And a warning, these pictures we're about to show you are graphic. A photographer for "The L.A. Times" captured this. You see these are children, one of them at least, people being beaten with whips and sticks in what that photographer described as Taliban violence.

The Pentagon says that it is aware of this -- quote -- "harassment" and that U.S. military leaders are communicating with the Taliban in Kabul. Now, the Pentagon says that, in the last 24 hours, 18 military planes have flown roughly 2,000 passengers out of Kabul; 325 of those passengers were American citizens.

Now, today, CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward was right outside of the Kabul Airport. In the middle of her live shot, though, a crowd began to gather around her and they wanted her to tell their stories.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What's your message to America right now?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our message, we helped the American people, so that's their jobs to help right now here. It's a very bad situation. If somebody knew that you worked with somebody...

(CROSSTALK)

WARD: I'm just going to thank you, sir.

Can I just bring you in? You have a green card?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. See, this is my green card.

WARD: This is your green card.

He's showing me a picture right now of his green card. That's his green card.

So you have a green card.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. And I have flight on August 20, this Friday.

WARD: Right. Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I already fill out the application for the U.S. Embassy.

WARD: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And this is the e-mails that I got from the U.S. Embassy.

WARD: And so did you try to get into the airport?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Yes, I did.

WARD: And what did the Taliban say?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Taliban, say we don't know, just go. We don't want to try to let you in. And, like, they say, we don't have flights.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: CNN's Kylie Atwood covers the State Department, and CNN's Oren Liebermann covers the Pentagon.

Kylie, just do we understand what the plan is to get the thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan allies and helpers out of there?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, the challenge now is that the administration is having some trouble answering these basic questions over whether -- if they're going to be able to successfully get out all these Americans, all these Afghans who worked alongside the United States.

Now, of course, there are two major problems right now, first of all, the sheer numbers, right? We know that about 2,000 of these Afghan interpreters have been brought to the U.S., relocated to the U.S. since the end of July. But there are some 20,000 of them who actually could be -- who have applied for these Special Immigrant Visas.

And then there's somewhere close to 100,000 who could also apply for other programs, refugee status, plus their family members, right? So you're talking major numbers here, and then you watch what's happening on the streets there.

As Clarissa was seeing, it is not peaceful right now. There are major problems for the Afghans who are trying to get to the airport. And so that is front and center right now. The administration is saying that they are relying on the Taliban to provide safe passage for these Afghans.

As far as we can see, the Taliban are killing people indiscriminately, but they definitely aren't making it a safe passage for them. And so those are two major problems right now.

Another issue for some of these Afghans is the fact that some of their passports that were at the U.S. Embassy were destroyed, were burned while the U.S. officials were getting out of that embassy just late last week.

Now, the State Department says that those folks are not going to have a problem getting out of the country when they go to do so. They're not going to be prohibited from flying out. But you have got to imagine that it's pretty challenging for those Afghans who are worried right now.

[14:05:02]

Not only are they scared about getting to the airport. They don't have their passports in hand. And it's really unclear, when folks are going to the airport, where they go. And if they don't have a passport in hand, it's unclear if there will be a U.S. consular officer who's clearly marked as the person that they can go to get on these evacuation flights.

BLACKWELL: Well, hopefully, Secretary Austin and General Milley will be able to answer some of those questions at the top of the next hour.

But, Oren, what do we know about this meeting between Milley and Austin and the president? What did they discuss today?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're hoping to learn more about those discussions when we hear from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley in right about an hour here at the Pentagon with a press briefing with those two, where we will be able to ask some questions. Key among those is, what does it look like at the airport? We have

obviously seen the pictures. And the airport is key to all of this. The security situation is better than it was, say, 48, 72 hours ago. But it's clearly not at a point where everyone is safe, everyone is secure, and the processing can move forward at a rate where it seems like it needs to move all of these people.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby says U.S. troops did fire warning shots overnight, nonlethal, but we don't know that much more about that incident. Still, there have obviously been other security incidents in and around the airport.

In terms of the numbers there, there are now 4, 500 troops at Kabul International Airport working to secure the airport. That's still short of the 6,000 that are approved. So there are more troops expected to go into the region into that airport in the next couple of days.

In terms of the flights, 18 C-17s, which appears to be the main plane that will move people out of Kabul, moving 2,000 people simply isn't enough. The Pentagon is aiming for 5,000 to 9,000. So, 2,000 is just 40 percent of where they hope to be. And, crucially, time is ticking away.

We're now 13 days away from the end of the month. So there's an urgent need here to process people faster and to move them faster out of the airport, especially if we're looking at trying to move the higher end of the range that Kylie was talking about, something like 80,000 or 100,000 people. That number is very far away right now.

BLACKWELL: All right, Oren Liebermann, Kylie Atwood, thank you both.

Let's bring it now Afghanistan war veteran and co-founder of No One Left Behind Matt Zeller. He's worked to support Afghans who helped the U.S. for years, urging the Biden administration to do more to help those workers in the region.

Matt, thank you for being with us. I know that you are frustrated, you are angry. There are a lot of emotions that you're feeling. As you are communicating with people in Kabul, what are you hearing?

MATT ZELLER, CO-FOUNDER, NO ONE LEFT BEHIND: Chaos, absolute chaos, pandemonium.

There is tens of thousands of people who have surrounded the airport desperate to get in. There are Taliban checkpoints within 100 meters of U.S. Marines. And you're right. They're beating people in the crowds. I had a friend in the crowd last night who got beaten by Taliban soldiers with chains.

And the Americans just have to stand there and do nothing. They have to stand there and watch it. The Americans are being forced to use tear grass, to fire warning shots. By the way, every time I hear those gunfire go off, all I can think of is those bullets have to come down somewhere. People could be inadvertently getting killed just by that gunfire.

This is the exact chaotic evacuation and exit that Biden administration was warned about and that they were desperate to avoid. So here's what they need to do.

They need to expand the perimeter at the airport. It's clear that this isn't working. We need to reopen air bases like Bagram, where we can more effectively move people. We need to start opening up air bases all throughout the rest of Afghanistan, because what you're only talking about is Kabul.

Your reporter mentioned that there's some 80,000 people that might be able to go. What she's talking about is the Afghan interpreters and their families who we're tracking who have already registered for visas, some of whom are being notified that they have flights, but they're in cities like Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar, which are completely controlled by the Taliban.

CAMEROTA: And, Matt, I mean, you -- this is your personal story that an Afghan interpreter saved your life when you were serving there in 2008, I believe.

And it was so interesting to hear former senior adviser to President Trump Stephen Miller last night say the U.S. doesn't owe these people anything. Listen to him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN MILLER, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: The United States of America never, ever made a promise, written or unwritten, to the people of Afghanistan, that, if after 20 years, they were unable to secure their own country, that we would take them to ours.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: What do you say to that?

ZELLER: I have -- that man has been my personal nemesis now for almost eight years. I have been fighting him since he was Jeff Sessions' Senate staffer.

As far as I'm concerned, he personally is as complicit as the Taliban in these people's deaths. He should be held accountable for war crimes. He spent the entirety of the Trump administration purposely trying to prevent these people from coming here.

[14:10:03]

I have had meetings with him and his ilk. I brought the interpreter to -- who saved my life to some of those meetings. We met with a lady by the name of Andrea Loving. She's the deputy counsel for the House Judiciary Committee for the -- yes, the GOP.

Janis and I were sitting in a meeting with her. She is Stephen's counterpart at that time in Congress. And we were debating about whether or not Congress should allocate more visas for these people. She then articulated what his platform was. I pointed to Janis, and I said: "This is the gentleman who saved my life. Maybe you have just never had a chance to meet an Afghan. And so it might help to put a face to these people's names."

And they looked at me and they said: "You're doing nothing but letting Islamic fundamentalist terrorists into our country, and it's our job to stop you."

Wrong. These are our people. There is no us and them. There's just an us. And you know what? Stephen Miller never wore a uniform a day in his life. He's a privileged little brat. He ought to be held for war crimes. I can't stand that man.

I can't believe that you're even giving him any more airtime. That's the reason why that guy's views continue to get publicized is because the media keeps putting him out there. That guy doesn't represent America. He represents the worst of us.

What's going on right now, however, is the best of us. I'm currently involved with a massive airlift planning operation from my living room. There are veterans all over the country who are organizing a digital Dunkirk. We are not getting any sleep. We are determined to see our people get out. And we're not going to rest until we do it effectively and efficiently, and, most importantly, until we take them all.

But people like Stephen Miller need to just sit down and shut up, because he has been part of the problem for too long.

BLACKWELL: Matt, you have given some suggestions about how to expand this operation.

I know that you have been waving your arms in front of this administration since the beginning, since January. Have you gotten a response? And do you expect that there will be this expansion?

ZELLER: We're hoping to have a meeting soon with the administration. And what we're going to be pushing for is this, is exactly that.

We have a beachhead in Kabul. It's not a very effective beachhead, as we can clearly see. There are scenes of chaos at the airport. What we need is for the U.S. military to then expand that perimeter, so that it's more effective for people to be able to get in, we need to basically tell the Taliban that they need to shut down their checkpoints in the city, because they're actively taking people's passports.

I have had U.S. citizens who have had their U.S. passports taken from them, their green cards taken from them. Afghans are having their documentation stolen from them by the Taliban, in an attempt to prevent them from being able to even get into the air base.

So enough of this. We're the United States military. We have the most powerful military on the planet. We should use it for good. We should establish a humanitarian corridor in Kabul and provide safe passage for whoever needs to get to the airport for as long as this takes. And the only person who can do that is the president of the United

States. So I really hope somebody who works for him or himself is watching, because that's what we need. He's the one person who can save these people's lives.

CAMEROTA: Matt, you have shared with us some video I want to show everyone. This is at the airport, I mean, just heartbreaking scene after heartbreaking scene, but this one is particularly gripping.

It's people passing their children away from themselves and up to the front of the line, I assume, to save these babies and these children. What's happening in this video?

ZELLER: So that was taken by a relative of mine. That was at the north gate at the airport in Kabul, and exactly what you're seeing.

People are so desperate to get away from the Taliban. And I can't -- as a parent, I can't believe that that's what they're having to do, that they're just handing their children off to complete strangers, and, bucket brigade-style, they're passing them to the front of the line in the hopes that they might be able to convince the U.S. military to at least take their kids.

If you didn't -- I don't think we need any other argument than that. These people have no future in Afghanistan. Stephen Miller is wrong. We made them a promise. People like him have been spending the last four years of the Trump administration purposely trying to prevent these people from getting here.

And I want to go on one more point about this. This is critical. The reason why all these people are stuck in Afghanistan right now is because the visa program that was created to get them here, it was purposely shut down by the Trump administration for the last four years.

Now, the Obama administration has plenty to blame on that. They were not an effective processor of it for the first four years that they held office. But the latter four years of the Obama administration, its second term, they actually got the program functioning pretty well.

The Trump administration came in and purposely destroyed it. The reason why all these Afghans were stuck in Afghanistan for as long as they were in the first place is because those people made sure they couldn't get out. As I said before, they're as complicit as the Taliban are in these people's deaths.

CAMEROTA: Matt, we hear you. I mean, does the United States want to stand as the land of broken promises for people when we go into their countries and ask for their help and they save lives, as they saved yours?

Matt Zeller, thank you for your service. Thank you for all you're doing now. We really appreciate it. And we will talk to you again.

[14:15:04] ZELLER: Talk to you soon. Thanks.

CAMEROTA: Joining us now is CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger. He's also a White House and national security correspondent for "The New York Times."

Just jaw-dropping, David, I mean, to see what's happening there in Kabul, to hear from Matt, to try to understand how the United States thinks they're going to get 80,000 people out in the next 13 days, when yesterday was 2,000 people?

BLACKWELL: Two thousand.

CAMEROTA: Yes, David, I mean, where do we begin?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: It's hard to know where to begin. And the administration is a little bit behind the eight ball on this, because having decided in mid-April that we were leaving by a date certain, September 11, obviously, the military got out a bit earlier even than that.

The processing of these special visas for those who are translators and others who worked for the U.S., worked for NGOs, worked for news organizations, including CNN, "The Times," others, all of that suggested that they needed to be moving people starting in April or May or June in large numbers.

And the fact that we're moving so many of them now tells you it can be done, but the urgency wasn't there. The question is, why was that? And was there an overreliance on this assumption that Kabul would remain free of Taliban for 18 months or six months or whatever the moving target of the intelligence was?

BLACKWELL: David, you talked about four miscalculations that you believe this administration made. One of them is the assumption of the luxury of time. And you talked about it a bit there.

I wonder, though, if this administration, in your opinion, still is making that miscalculation. We know that the meeting between the president and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson about strategy is happening next week. There are still members, world leaders who still have not heard from President Biden. Is that miscalculation continuing?

SANGER: Well, President Biden talked today, earlier today, with Chancellor Merkel of Germany.

And I think all of the G7 members are meeting virtually next week. But at this point, it's a really interesting question, Victor. It's really only the United States that has the airlift power to get these folks out. The hard problem isn't once they're in the gate. The hard problem is getting them to Kabul, and getting them inside that gate.

And you saw from Clarissa's reporting and what you just heard in the subsequent interviews that that's the key part. I mean, obviously, if you're in an occupied part of Afghanistan, and that is now all of Afghanistan, you're not going to venture out to make it to the capital.

And if you're in the capital, it's clearly pretty dangerous to make it to the airport. And this is what happens when we were all overtaken by the surprise on the timing. There were other assumptions, though, they needed to make their way through.

They didn't really have fully in place a basing plan for where you would base the U.S. outside, U.S. forces outside of Afghanistan that would be able to reach in and do those over-the-horizon strikes. And we didn't really have a financial plan to make sure that the Taliban were cut off, although it now looks like the Fed is stepping in to make sure that any assets that the Afghan government had outside in the United States do not go to the benefit of the Taliban.

BLACKWELL: All right, David, stand by for us because we have got some breaking news on a point you just made about trying to get to the airport there in Kabul.

The U.S. embassy now says that it cannot guarantee safe passage to the Kabul Airport.

Let's go back now to Kylie Atwood.

What do you have?

ATWOOD: Yes, so we're just getting a new security alert for Americans in Afghanistan from the State Department.

Previously, the State Department has been telling those Americans to shelter in place. Now it is telling them to consider going to the airport in Kabul. But what they're also telling these Americans is that they cannot assure that they will have safe passage on the way to the airport.

That is significant, because the Biden ministration just yesterday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, said the United States is relying on the Taliban to ensure safe passage for Americans and for the Afghans who have worked alongside the U.S. getting to the airport.

But, of course, what we have seen in the reporting from Clarissa Ward on the ground there is that there hasn't been safe passage. And this security alert is clear in saying that the United States cannot tell these Americans who are in the country right now that, if they head to the airport, that they are going to be able to ensure safe passage.

[14:20:07]

But they're still telling them to go. That, in and of itself, is significant. It's different.

Now, numbers here. We are told that there are about somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 Americans still in Afghanistan. That is a significant number, right, especially given we have only seen about 1,000 people fly out of the airport. We know that the military is trying to get those numbers up every day between 5,000 and 9,000. But they haven't been able to. But the bottom line here is that

they're telling these Americans to go to the airport, but they're not telling them that they will necessarily get there safely.

CAMEROTA: Kylie, that's huge breaking news. And it is obviously a setback and not what anybody wanted to hear. It doesn't sound like it's going in the right direction. Thank you very much for bringing us that from the State Department.

Come back whenever you have anything else.

We want to quickly go back to David Sanger to react to that.

Yes, just yesterday, as Kylie said, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the Taliban had guaranteed safe passage. Now, we saw with our own eyes that that wasn't necessarily happening. But it sounded like the Biden administration was trusting the Taliban yesterday.

And now what does this mean? It's broken down?

SANGER: Well, I'm not sure it was ever really -- really there. And what Mr. Sullivan said in the course of that was that the Taliban leadership had offered a guarantee.

I'm not sure anybody thought from the first moment that that would apply or how disciplined the Taliban leadership was to have command over the people who are working for it.

This is the key problem that grows out of the assumption that we had more time than we did. A week ago, the United States still had the ability to sort of make its way around the city some because the city was in the hands of a friendly government.

At this moment, we have don't have that liberty. So we can't send people out to help pluck Americans from wherever they may be. And the guarantees of the Taliban is, as Kylie's report suggests, aren't worth very much.

So we don't have a whole lot of leverage here. Now, the administration will say, accurately, that, two weeks ago, they sent out a warning urging all Americans in Afghanistan to depart immediately on commercial flights. And, clearly, 10,000 to 15,000 people decided not to go do that. And I think one of the big questions is going to be, was that warning urgent enough? Did there have to be a sort of order that they have got to get out?

And I'm sure all of them for all sorts of reasons didn't want to leave, thinking that they were probably safe.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

Again, we have got that news conference happening at the top of the hour. We're hoping to get some clarity there from the White House.

David Sanger, thank you so much. SANGER: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: And we have got breaking news out of the White House.

The Biden administration is threatening to withhold funds to get more people vaccinated.

CAMEROTA: Plus, a major announcement about COVID booster shots. What you need to know about that rollout, what it means for you.

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BLACKWELL: The White House is taking a new hard line with nursing homes. Here are their options: Vaccinate your staff or lose federal funding.

The administration says that Medicare dollars will be cut off to those facilities if they do not comply.

CAMEROTA: CNN's White House correspondent Jeremy Diamond has the details.

So, Jeremy, tell us about the timing here.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, listen, this is a pretty significant escalation of President Biden's campaign to get Americans vaccinated.

And it shows that he's willing to use far more muscular tools to actually boost those vaccination rates. Beginning as soon as potentially next month, this new regulation is expected to go into effect. And, essentially, it will tell these nursing homes that if you want to continue to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, which makes up the bulk of the funding for many of these 15,000 nursing homes across the country, you need to get your staff vaccinated.

And what we know is that, right now, about 60 percent of the 1.3 million workers in these facilities are vaccinated. But that means that as many as half-a-million people who work in these nursing homes are not vaccinated. And the reason why we're seeing this happening now, according to the officials who I spoke with today, is because of the Delta variant.

They have watched as nursing homes where staff is not vaccinated or fewer staff are vaccinated, they are seeing surging COVID cases among the residents, the elderly people in those nursing homes.

And so what one official, Carole Johnson, told me was that, we're on a wartime footing here, Delta is not waiting. And so neither are we.

We're expecting President Biden to make this announcement today, saying that he's directing the Department of Health and Human Services to create this regulation. And before this goes into effect as early as next month, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services is going to be working with these nursing homes with the workers in the unions to try and get people vaccinated even before those regulations go into effect.

CAMEROTA: Jeremy Diamond, thank you.

So, today, top government health officials announcing the plan to administer COVID booster shots to nearly all American adults. Once the FDA gives its authorization, the rollout should start September 20, with seniors and front-line medical workers among the first in line.

So, this booster should happen eight months after the second dose, and for now, will be available for those 18 years and older.

BLACKWELL: And, for the first time, the White House COVID team, they told us why they're now backing this added shot.

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