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Still No Public Remarks By Biden As Afghanistan Falls To Taliban; NIH Sounds Alarm, Saying It's Clear Variant Impacts Children; Afghan Military Crumbles In Days As Taliban Seize Control. Aired 7:30- 8a ET

Aired August 16, 2021 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: But, so far, that is the most recent image that we have seen of the president since Kabul's fall just yesterday.

Now, on Saturday, the president also released a very lengthy statement outlining some of the steps that he has been taking and also issuing another forceful defense for his overall decision to withdraw an American military presence from the country of Afghanistan. That is something you have heard officials double down on over the course of the past 24 hours. But still, so many questions remain for the commander in chief of how exactly this has all played out.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Arlette Saenz, keep us posted if those plans change. Thank you very much.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk more now about all of this with CNN senior political analyst John Avlon, and Alyssa Farah, former White House communications director and Defense Department press secretary under the Trump administration. She was in Kabul for the announcement of the peace talks with the Taliban in the previous administration.

You know, John, just following on Arlette's report there about what we really have not heard from President Biden, what does he need to do in this situation to show leadership?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, AUTHOR, "WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL" AND "WINGNUTS": Well, I think he needs to speak to the American people, and he's apparently going to double down and defend his decision. But let's be honest, this is a disaster. This is a catastrophe.

His predictions that it would be unlikely the Taliban would overrun Afghanistan shortly have not come to bear. The opposite is true and there needs to be accountability for that. Whether or not this is a policy that, in some ways, is a continuation from the previous administration, it is on his watch. And the failure to execute this efficiently, where we're still struggling to get translators, and Americans, and people who supported us over 20 years out of the country, that needs to be addressed, hopefully without further bloodshed. But this is a disaster and people need to deal with that. The president needs to deal with that.

BERMAN: Alyssa -- and everything John just said there I think is dead-on true. There is also an argument, though, that you are hearing that the speed with which the Afghan government collapsed shows it wasn't a real government at all, frankly. The speed with which the Afghan military collapsed shows it wasn't real, to begin with.

So why, then, should American troops put their lives on the line? There are those who suggest the speed with which this just happened shows that there was no role for the U.S. there going forward. How do you respond to that?

ALYSSA FARAH, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, FORMER DEFENSE DEPARTMENT PRESS SECRETARY, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, VISITING FELLOW, INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S FORUM: Well, so I would disagree with that. I would say this. We made incredible gains over the 20 years we were there and I don't think we can disvalue the humanitarian gains for women, for children. Getting kids in the classroom that weren't, lowering maternal mortality rates.

But I would say this. It is remarkable what the U.S. military can do with a very small residual force in Afghanistan.

So in the previous administration, when I was at the Department of Defense and then at the White House, we had plans for withdrawal but it was conditions-based withdrawal that would have meant we were keeping some level of a force there. We were keeping ISRs, so we had surveillance capabilities. We would have a -- we would have an Air Force that's able to conduct airstrikes to support our Afghan partners.

But this wholescale withdrawal with no plan in place to secure the country -- and, frankly, letting Bagram fall is going to go down as one of the biggest failures in this entire debacle. Somewhere that we could have actually done a secure evacuation from.

But listen, I disagree with the notion that we shouldn't have been there in the first place and that this shows it was a failure. This withdrawal is what the failure is.

KEILAR: I --

AVLON: I --

KEILAR: Alyssa, I will just say -- I'm sorry, go on.

AVLON: No, no -- go Bri, please.

KEILAR: I was just going to say I don't know, Alyssa, if it's fair to say that -- I don't know if it's fair to characterize this as if Trump were in power there would still be a residual force there. I think that's very much up for debate unless it was some sort of ad hoc response to what we are seeing with this very swift Taliban sweep through the country. But at the same time, those negotiations were conditions-based.

And look, I have heard from people who wanted there to be a residual force and some people who did not want for there to be a residual force. The question really is this total drawdown -- was this even, for folks who are in support of it, the right way to do this? What do you think?

FARAH: Well, unquestionably, no. This will go down as a very, very bad moment in American history. And it's moments like this that require president leadership and we're not seeing it.

But what I will say is this. I think -- listen, there's limited value in deciding what the former administration would have done versus this administration. This is squarely on Joe Biden.

The idea that we did not evacuate U.S. diplomats, U.S. Intel forces, as well as journalists -- American journalists who are still on the ground -- before letting Bagram fall to the Taliban, before letting the country be taken over -- that is a failure at every level.

There's a lot of questions, to John's point, about why this was able to happen so quickly. And I think the Pentagon has to answer for that, the I.C. has to answer for that. But in this moment, it is on the president to get as many Americans out of the country and as many Afghanis who supported U.S. forces over the last 20 years.

[07:35:12]

AVLON: Yes, there's no question about that, and especially after we've seen persistently in American history a failure to secure the gains of the military after the war at the end of the war. The failure to predict and anticipate this contingency and to get the translators and the Americans out is serious.

That said, this does not occur in a vacuum. It is under Joe Biden's watch. But the initial peace deal was done under the Trump administration when the members of the Trump administration senior officials were negotiating with the Taliban and elevating them in Doha. When the president's official policy -- for a long time, the past president's official policy was to seed the ground. Was to leave Afghanistan and treating the Taliban as someone they could negotiate with.

I think there's zero percent chance anyone should trust the Taliban as an honorable force. The gains for women and girls will be reversed. That is a human tragedy. But I think there will be a temptation by some Republicans to try to dunk on Joe Biden and to try to distance themselves from this policy. And the reality is, unfortunately, there is continuity with what occurred under the Trump administration with strength in the Taliban's hand leading to what we're seeing today.

FARAH: But I want to be clear. As Brianna mentioned, I was in Kabul when the Doha peace announcements were made because it was important to the U.S. government to show we are staying with our Afghan security forces partners. We wanted to appear in-country to say we are not abandoning you -- we

are not leaving you tomorrow. This is going to be conditions-based over time. We're going to continue to give you support that's needed.

So we can speculate as to what another six months of the Trump administration would have looked like. But I can tell you this. When we were making those agreements, we wanted to appear alongside our 20- year-long allies in Afghanistan to show we are not abandoning you.

BERMAN: We don't have to speculate, right? The former president's criticism of Joe Biden when he announced the full withdrawal from August 31st wasn't that it was the wrong decision, it was that it's not fast enough. That you should pull out all the troops --

AVLON: Early.

BERMAN: -- even more quickly.

FARAH: But John, just to be clear, Gen. Milley briefed the president on this. Robert O'Brien did.

BERMAN: Oh --

FARAH: We had plans to evacuate our personnel from the country and keep a residual force in a way that you would not see Afghanistan crumble the way that it has in the past 72 hours. There were plans in place. Those orders existed.

And I'm kind of curious from the Pentagon perspective -- were those briefed to President Biden? Because there was a way to do this safely, deliberatively, and over a course of time that this is not what we're seeing right now.

KEILAR: Yes. Look, I'm curious about that, too. I don't think -- you know, we can't know what would have happened, to be clear, under a Trump administration. It's very easy for his supporters to say that yes, this all would have been fine. But this is -- this is obviously a botched drawdown here at the very end that we are certainly seeing.

Alyssa, thank you so much. John Avlon, thank you so much.

Later, CNN is live on the ground from Haiti where almost 1,300 people are dead after a devastating earthquake.

BERMAN: And a warning from one of the country's top doctors about the Delta variant and children.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:43:11]

BERMAN: With a clear resurgence of COVID cases, the director of the National Institutes of Health is issuing a stark warning that it's no longer true to say this virus doesn't affect children.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DR. FRANCIS COLLINS, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: So anybody who tries to tell you well, don't worry about the kids -- the virus won't really bother them -- that's not the evidence. And especially, with Delta being so contagious, kids are very seriously at risk. And it's up to all of us to do everything we can to protect them, as well as we're trying to protect everybody else at the same time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: I want to bring in CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. Elizabeth, everyone under 12 unvaccinated at this point. And to hear Francis Collins say they're at risk -- you know, it's a moment.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a moment because we need to stop thinking about this as a virus -- that oh, it doesn't really affect kids. Don't worry about -- we need -- about it. We need to stop thinking of it that way.

And I want to show you a graph that should make every parent go yikes, I need to get my child vaccinated if they're 12 or older. These are COVID-19 hospitalizations for under 18. As you can see if you look on the far right side, they're back up at the levels that they were at the height of the pandemic back in December and January. They are back up there.

This really can affect your child. Get your child vaccinated if they're over the age -- if they're 12 or older.

BERMAN: And, of course, we don't know for sure yet whether there are more severe cases or just more kids are getting sick --

COHEN: Right.

BERMAN: -- so, so many more are getting sick there will be more severe cases. But the bottom line is you can see from that graph right there, there are a lot of sick kids.

COHEN: Yes.

BERMAN: As many as there have been.

Doctor Collins also made a prediction about how many cases we could be seeing a day here -- a lot.

COHEN: Two hundred thousand. That's a lot. That's a lot. And so, I want to try to put that 200,000 that Dr. Collins mentioned into context.

If we look at where we are right now, we're about 130,000 cases a day. And if you look back at where we were January 16th, we were at 200,000.

[07:45:00]

So, Dr. Collins is basically saying he thinks that we're going to go back to case numbers that we saw in January. In other words, we are not done with this. We are not on the other side of this. We're still on the upswing and people need to keep that in mind.

BERMAN: Yes. Let's hope that we don't see the deaths rise as much. Maybe we won't because so many of the older population have been vaccinated. But right now, we're just watching.

COHEN: Right.

BERMAN: Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.

COHEN: Thanks.

BERMAN: Brianna.

KEILAR: Back now to the shocking fall of Afghanistan's forces and government to the Taliban after the 20-year -- nearly 20-year war that the U.S. fought, initially overthrowing the Taliban. It's a chaotic scene that we have seen just a short time ago at Kabul's airport. Afghans scrambling to get out, clinging to the side of a U.S. military plane.

And it took only about a week for the Taliban to march across much of Afghanistan and take Kabul. So where are we right now, and what is the Biden administration doing as it exits from the country?

I want to talk about this now with Deputy National Security Adviser John Finer, who is with us from the north lawn of the White House. He has longtime pushed for ending America's so-called forever wars. John, thank you so much for being with us.

Look, I know there's a lot, of course. The blame game going on at this point in time. But let's just talk about what we're seeing at this moment. Desperate Afghans -- they're at the airport. We understand from the Pentagon that they're planning to relocate up to 30,000 Afghan special immigrant visa applicants.

Can you tell us anything more about what America is doing to help Afghans who put their lives in danger to help America?

JONATHAN FINER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Thanks, Brianna, for that question. Yes, the images that we're seeing out of Kabul international airport this morning are very serious. We are going to be focused throughout the course of the day and beyond on ensuring that airport is safe and secure.

You know, these are desperate people. You used the word desperate and I think that's right. And these are people who, quite rightly, are looking for a way out or a refuge who are caught in a very dangerous situation.

And that is exactly why President Biden has ordered the evacuation of thousands of vulnerable Afghans -- both people who have applied for special immigrant visas to the United States, as well as others who are vulnerable -- activists, women, judges. People who are potentially going to be in the crosshairs going forward that we are going to be flying out of the country.

But the prerequisite for that is getting this airport back safe and secure. That is going to be the main line of effort so that these flights -- which have already brought, by the way, 2,000 people who worked alongside the United States, and their family members to the United States in the last couple of weeks.

KEILAR: Getting it back safe and secure. Is it not safe and secure right now? What are your concerns security-wise?

FINER: The concerns, I think, are the images that we've all seen on television and other places of people walking around the runway and the tarmac.

The United States has the forces that are necessary to bring stability and security to that airport. I think they have gone a great distance towards doing that since some of those images have aired. There are going to be more forces flowing in throughout the course of today and tomorrow, and we believe we have what's necessary to be able to enable these flights to continue as soon as possible.

KEILAR: OK.

FINER: And that is the most important thing.

KEILAR: OK. So, John, what about all the people who are not at the airport? Because it seems like they might be -- look, for lack of a better word right now -- screwed. We know that they are hold up in their homes in Kabul. We know that a lot of them are out even in the provinces unable to get to Kabul.

What is the U.S. government doing, if anything, to provide safe passage for people to the Kabul airport so that they actually can get out in the numbers that the administration is promising?

FINER: So, the United States has communicated to the Taliban in no uncertain terms that they are not to interfere with the safe passage of Afghans to the airport who are looking to depart the country, and people who we are prioritizing for these flights that I've just described that are going to start to bring people --

KEILAR: OK, but, John, let me ask you --

FINER: -- people out of the country.

And just to finish this, we've been quite clear to the Taliban that should they interfere with those efforts they will face severe consequences. We have the military forces in place to be able to execute that. We are not seeing them interfering at this time with people's ability to get to the airport and it is going to be very important that continues going forward.

Now, Brianna, you know as well as I do that the United States is not in the position now and will not be in a position going forward to provide security throughout the city of Kabul and throughout the nation of Afghanistan. We are focused on the airport. We are focused on these priority populations and executing the evacuations that the president has ordered.

KEILAR: Where is the president? You know, why isn't he communicating fulsomely to the American people?

FINER: The president has been deeply engaged in all of the policy conversations and in this situation as it evolves in real time. We have met with the president and his entire national security team daily and often multiple times a day. That's going to continue again today.

The president has spoken to this issue a number of times in recent weeks and we expect that he will speak to it again.

KEILAR: He has not -- look, John, totally different story than a few weeks ago, right? I mean, why isn't he out there now? Kabul fell yesterday. Where is the president?

[07:50:04]

FINER: I mean, again, Brianna, the president has spoken to this extensively and I expect that he will speak to it again soon.

KEILAR: Soon in the coming days? Should we hear something from him today? Do you expect that? It seems like the moment demands that.

FINER: I'm not going to get ahead of both decision-making announcements on this. All I can say at this point is that we expect the president, again, to address the American people on Afghanistan. And as soon as we have more to say about that, we will.

KEILAR: OK. So this plan to evacuate up to 30,000 people -- Americans as well as Afghans. So it sounds like those are just people at the airport. Do you have a handle on the numbers? Are there that many people at the airport right now?

FINER: So, Brianna, that's not just people at the airport. These are people, again, in particular categories. People who worked alongside the United States' mission over the last two decades, many of whom are in the process of applying for a special immigrant visa -- a program created by Congress to enable people who face additional risks because they supported our mission to get out of the country.

We are also going to be seeking to evacuate and have already begun the process of evacuating locally employed staff of our mission in Afghanistan -- of our embassy -- as well as other Afghans who are particularly vulnerable because of their circumstances. That is going to be the focus, as well as, as you say, American citizens who happen to be present in Afghanistan, of which there is a significant number. We are going to be making evacuation flights available to them as well.

KEILAR: OK, but you say these aren't just people at the airport that you're going to evacuate, but you also say you can't provide safe passage for people to the airport. So then, how is it not just people at the airport? FINER: We are going to providing security at the airport and the people getting on these flights are going to be people are selected based on these priority categories --

KEILAR: Sure.

FINER: -- that we've identified.

KEILAR: Ok, but -- so I asked you are the 30,000 just people who are those who are hold up at the airport and I guess qualify is what you're saying. But when I asked you if it's just people at the airport, are you trying to say that underneath that category are a number of Afghans and Americans who may not be at the airport? And if so, how do you get them?

FINER: So, we are asking people in an orderly way when their flight is called -- and again, this is not going to be just a free-for-all. It can't be, for security reasons -- work that way. When people's flights are timed, we are asking them to show up at the airport to be present to get on those flights -- not just whoever happens to come to the airport. And we have messaged quite clearly, both to applicants and people who might be eligible for these flights, as well as publicly if that is the case.

This is all going to require, again, establishing clear securities at the airport and that is the main focus of the effort today. We believe we have the troops in place and the personnel in place to be able to execute that, and that is moving forward in real time and has improved since some of these images aired.

KEILAR: All right, John. Look, we really appreciate you coming on. This is obviously a very quickly-moving situation with a lot of desperate folks there in Kabul. Thank you so much for joining us from --

FINER: Thank you.

KEILAR: -- the White House.

I also should note that as we were speaking, the U.S. has temporarily suspended all air operations at the Kabul airport. We're told that it's so troops can clearly the airfield of Afghans who are swarming it, desperate to leave.

Next, another crisis for the Biden administration. CNN with a firsthand look at the unprecedented surge of migrants at the southern U.S. border.

BERMAN: Plus, CNN live on the ground in Haiti where almost 1,300 people are dead after a devastating earthquake.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:56:47]

BERMAN: The Biden administration facing an unprecedented border crisis. Officials are defending the strategy to deter migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border even as the number of people caught illegally trying to cross the border reaches a two-decade high.

Nick Valencia live in the Texas border town of La Joya. Nick, what are you seeing?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

The problems along the U.S.-Mexico border have been an ongoing phenomenon for generations -- a seemingly never-ending crisis. But it's under the Biden administration where the Department of Homeland Security says we're now seeing an unprecedented number of apprehensions of illegal border crossings.

This road here in La Joya, along the U.S.-Mexico border, is one of the biggest problem areas for border patrol agents. And in July alone, they apprehended nearly 212,000 people trying to cross the border illegally. About a third of those are people who tried to cross the border in the last year alone. The number of unaccompanied minors is also way up -- about 19,000 in July alone.

And with this -- the large numbers of migrants crossing, there was concerns voiced by local residents that there was COVID-19 being brought into the country. Because of that, about 11 miles from here they've set up a temporary tent camp where migrants are tested for COVID-19. Those who do test positive are quarantined. And right now, it's home to about 1,500 families and it's growing.

Now, there have been multiple push factors throughout the years, including climate change and existing gang violence. But in our conversations with migrants, it's clear just how much the pandemic has played a role decimating, they say, the local economy, leaving them no opportunity -- so they've shown up here -- John.

BERMAN: All right, Nick Valencia for us on the border -- just one of the crises now facing the Biden administration.

The other -- the big one this morning, chaos in Afghanistan. At the Kabul airport, flights suspended right now. That's the only way out as thousands of people try to flee the country. CNN live on the ground, coming up.