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Republican Trump Supporters' Criticism of Biden Administration's Military Exit from Afghanistan Examined; U.S. Government May Recommend Third Booster Shot for COVID Vaccine; Taliban Allowing U.S. Military to Transport Personnel from Kabul Airport Out of Afghanistan; Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) is Interviewed About the Afghanistan Withdrawal. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 17, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: But one issue united almost all members of Congress was the moral obligation to protect Afghan interpreters who risked their lives to aid our effort. That's why there was a lopsided 417 to 17 vote in the House to expand and accelerate their visas. But take a closer look at those 16 no votes. All Republicans, including charter members of Trump's sedition caucus, like Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jodi Hice, Scott Perry.

So don't buy the mock outrage over Biden's botched withdrawal from this crew. Last month they weren't even willing to offer assistance to the Afghans who helped us. And Arizona's Andy Biggs was pressuring Biden from a complete withdrawal back in February. Biggs' insistence that, quote, Afghanis need to be responsible for their own destiny going forward doesn't seem to apply when Joe Biden backs it.

The GOP can try to ignore that most of them backed Trump's withdrawal plan despite its reversal of the party's post 9/11 consensus. They dropped those principles for political gain. They can't just pick them up again to use as a political weapon. Just in case anyone is still tempted to buy into the b.s., here's a blip of ex-president Trump bragging about being the author of this withdrawal less than two months ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn't stop the press. Twenty-one years is enough, don't we think, 21 years?

Yes, thank you. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: He added that the only way the Afghan government lasts is if we're there.

And that's your Reality Check. NEW DAY continues right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I'm John Berman with Brianna Keilar. It is Tuesday, August 17th, and we do have breaking news this morning. Health officials in the Biden administration are poised to recommend COVID-19 booster shots for most Americans.

Now, people ultimately, regardless of age, would get it eight months after being fully vaccinated, getting their second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. The boosters could start rolling out beginning next month. This is a major expansion of the previous plans, and it's worth noting the timing, right in the midst of the chaos in Afghanistan.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Now, officials expect a booster will also be needed for the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. If you got J&J, that's what you need to know. Officials saying that could be coming this week, so stay tuned.

It comes as the Delta variant is spreading new cases across the country, which of course is leading to a crush of patients in hospitals primarily among the unvaccinated. Joining us now to talk about this is CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. And Sanjay, people will wonder what does this mean for me? When am I going to need to get this third shot? How is that going to work? Do I get the same brand, et cetera?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. And so what this is going to mean is that these shots will be available for most Americans who have had a shot eight months ago. That's what it's sounding like is going to happen here, although it's a little confusing because just over the last couple of weeks we heard sort of a different message about boosters.

Yes, they would be recommended for people who had weakened immune systems, immunocompromised, but there wasn't a lot of evidence or data to support that they should be given to the rest of us. That was the message from the FDA just within the last couple of weeks.

So there will be supply, it sounds like, of these vaccines available to Americans. It may come at the expense of having vaccines available to other countries around the world. But let me show you the data they're looking at here. Some of this data is coming from the United States. They are also bolstering with some data from Israel. But basically, this is sort of what's happened over time. You look at Moderna, you look at Pfizer, January compared to July. And you do see some waning effectiveness against the infection.

Now, let me just, let me just give you a little bit of context here when you look at data like that. They're basically looking at anyone who got tested, right, and people that came back positive. So this could be people who had absolutely no symptoms, were being tested as part of surveillance for traveling, it could be people that ended up in the hospital. They didn't really stratify that. But when I show you the next piece of data, which is something that a

lot of people have pointed to as a reason not to do boosters in the United States, they point out how effective these shots still are against hospitalization and death.

Now, some of this may change over time, but the point is that just the two shots, Moderna and Pfizer, still very protective against hospitalization and death, and I think that's why this has surprised a lot of people this morning that the boosters are being recommended. It sounds like it's happening, these shots will be available. We checked into supply. The shots, the number of shots will be available. But in terms of the actual science, I'm sort of laying it out for you there.

BERMAN: So that was the science. I guess the administration, the reporting is, is also looking at results coming out of Israel which vaccinated more people in some ways more quickly and has tracked them more.

[08:05:06]

And there is some fear that it's not just a decrease in effectiveness against infection, but also potentially serious illness. Is there any reason to worry about that?

GUPTA: Yes, that would absolutely be the trigger, I think. If you start to see people who are vaccinated, aside from immune compromised, but just people who are vaccinated against this, are they developing serious illness, serious illness enough to land them in the hospital in particular? And you're right, there may be some early indications of that. It may have been in people over a certain age and people who had their shots further ago.

Let me show you specifically ACIP, this is the advisory committee to the CDC, the questions they were sort of asking, put this together to sort of lay it out in terms of how they would look at this. Is the vaccine effectiveness waning over time? Is the vaccine effectiveness reduced specifically because of the Delta variant? Does the data vary by subpopulation? Again, elderly, very elderly, compared to younger. I'm 51. Should I be getting the booster the same as my parents who are in their late 70s? Are booster doses of COVID-19 safe of immunogenetic?

I think the last question is pretty clear that that's probably OK. It's not unsafe to get a third shot. But just how much more protection does it offer the three of us that are talking here versus people who are quite elderly at greater risk? I think that's some of the data that I would want to see.

In Israel, for example, some of the data they first released were primarily in patients who were on hemodialysis, kidney patients. So that's a different subgroup. I'm not sure if you can take that data and apply it to the whole population. But nevertheless, it sounds like this is happening, that they are going to recommend booster shots for people eight months out from the original shots.

BERMAN: For most people, that would mean already good protection I suppose would be really, really good protection against serious illness. But we have to see some of the data, Sanjay. Thank you very much for being with us this morning, helping us understand this.

GUPTA: You got it. Thank you.

BERMAN: There is an urgent situation unfolding in Afghanistan. President Biden, of course, vowed devastating force against the Taliban if fighters interrupt the evacuations of Americans. More U.S. troops arrived overnight at the airport in Kabul, the scene of desperation over a chaotic 24 hours. We've all seen this extraordinary image that appears to show hundreds of Afghans packed into a U.S. military cargo plane in an attempt to flee Kabul after the fall of the capital. The situation is said to be much calmer this morning after U.S. forces shot and killed two men who opened fire at Kabul's airport during the rush of people to escape.

KEILAR: While addressing the rapid fall of the Afghan government for the first time, the president admitted that the collapse unfolded more quickly than he anticipated, but he stood firmly behind his decision to withdraw U.S. troops entirely from Afghanistan. He promised to help Afghan allies escape, but he left many unanswered questions about how the U.S. can actually achieve that goal. Former President George W. Bush who entered the U.S. -- who entered the U.S. into this war almost 20 years ago said in a statement from him and the former first lady that they feel deep sadness over the events unfolding in Afghanistan.

We do want to get you straight to Afghanistan where our Clarissa Ward has been reporting here in recent days. First thing, Clarissa, just tell us a little about the scene around you there on the street in Kabul.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, the streets of Kabul today, it's almost surreal. It feels like things are beginning to get back to normal. We saw a lot more people out on the streets than we did yesterday. We went to a market, as you know from earlier. It was pretty busy. I'd say roughly a third or half of the stores were open, some of them closing early to make sure that people get home early.

But for the most part, there is a sense that there is a sort of very tense calm. That's holding, and that's because there are Taliban fighters on every street corner who are trying to preserve law and order because they know the world is watching them right now, and they want to get it right.

And I should say the reason I'm just a tiny bit distracted because all the Taliban fighters who were behind me before are now over behind our camera. They appear to be engaged in some kind of dispute, potentially, with someone in the neighborhood. But no, it appears that that has been resolved peacefully.

And that's exactly what I'm talking go here, right. The Taliban wants to show this is their moment. They're ready for it, they're more mature, they're more diplomatic, and they are different, essentially, from the Taliban of 2001.

[08:10:00]

But that's not doing a lot, understandably, to reassure the tens of thousands of Afghans who are now desperately afraid for their lives. I think you could probably argue it's in the hundreds of thousands between people who worked for the government, people who worked for the U.S. military, people who were in the Afghan forces. The list goes on. These people are hunkered down, waiting for the worst.

The Taliban has said that there is a blanket amnesty in place, but understandably a lot of people have a really tough time believing that, because their association with the Taliban is the Taliban of the late 90s and the early 2000s, and the sort of draconian rule that came with that, and then the Taliban at the last two decades, which has essentially been a bloody, ugly guerrilla insurgency.

BERMAN: Clarissa, first of all, your situational awareness is more important than anything else, so if you need to look around or get a sense of what's going on any time that armed militants are walking around with guns engaged in disputes, just make sure you take care of yourself and your crew there.

If I can ask another question, we were speaking to John Kirby moments ago, the Pentagon press secretary, and he gave us a few bits of news that I hadn't heard yet. Number one, that he claimed that the United States had flown out 700 to 800 people in the last 24 hours, and he hopes that number will rise to 5,000 to 9,000 people a day when the U.S. gets operations up and fully running there.

But he also made clear that the U.S. doesn't intend to extend any authority or assistance beyond the borders of the airport, which means that people have to get there on their own. And that's not clear how that's going to happen for the tens of thousands of people, these Afghan allies who need it.

WARD: Right, and the other question he didn't answer was, what about the people whose paperwork is stuck? What about the people who got rejected for some idiosyncratic, bureaucratic reason, and they don't know why? They just got a note saying your Civ has been declined. What happens to them? How do they -- can they reapply? Are they given some assurance? And I pressed him on this issue. Can we say concretely that anyone who worked with a U.S. organization, be it military, be it nongovernmental, be it U.S. embassy, will be guaranteed that they will be gotten out of this country safely?

And he didn't really answer the question, because the reality is I think the U.S. understands the magnitude of that task. You're talking about certainly tens of thousands of people. And how do you achieve that with the constraints on your resources and the constraints of the space that you have with which to operate? Because the Taliban is tolerating right now what's happening at the airport. They are allowing the U.S. to station this evacuation mission from their takeover of the airspace, basically run the entire operation.

But there is a limit to that tolerance, and they've made it very clear. And so the people who are coming up to me who are petrified and desperate, who are asking every day how can we get out, how can I get my paperwork sorted out, they're worried that the minute this operation finishes around August 31st, or whenever that deadline is, that that's it for them.

That's game over. That was their last chance. And I spoke to one woman like this. She's worked with the U.N. and many other organizations over the years, and she's now absolutely destitute. She's hunkered down, hiding in her home, petrified for her future, and can't even get anyone on the phone to help. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is not easy for a person who worked a lot with international organization, having more than 10-years experience of working with international. And now no one of them help me. Just sending emails to different organizations that I worked with you, but now no response.

WARD: Are you angry?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I'm not angry. But as a person who worked with them, now I need their support. It is not fair.

WARD: You look very emotional as well.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, because I'm thinking about my future, my daughters. What will happen to them if they kill me? Two daughters without mother.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WARD: You can see, John and Brianna, she had her face covered. She's too frightened to appear on camera. These are the people whose stories need to be told. They're too frightened to appear on camera, they're too frightened to come out on the streets, but they're desperately in need of assistance. John, Brianna?

KEILAR: We've been watching this window of time getting them the help that has been promised close, and I think maybe the takeaway from today is that for some people it isn't just closing, it is closed. Clarissa, thank you so much for your reporting from Kabul.

[08:15:00]

There is a striking image that has emerged from the capital of Afghanistan, and this is it. It appears to be to show hundreds of Afghans packed into a U.S. military cargo plane in a desperate attempt to flee after the fall of Kabul.

The evacuation flight came near the record. For the most people ever flown in this massive Boeing airlifter and this is a chilling story behind that powerful photo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR (voice-over): This photo shows the inside of a U.S. military cargo plane packed with Afghan refugees. Defense One posting the image online Monday, saying the U.S. Air Force C-17 evacuated approximately 640 Afghan civilians late Sunday. Among the men and women desperately escaping the chaos in Kabul, some children, including a baby holding a bottle.

A defense official telling the website, the plane did not intend to take so many people, but made the decision to go anyway.

Congressman Adam Kinzinger who served as an Air Force pilot in Afghanistan and Iraq commenting on the evacuation effort.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): They violated basically every Air Force regulation packing that many people in there and in the long run that's going to end up saving a lot of people's lives.

KEILAR: The aircraft similar to this one, typically transports troops and cargo around the world. This C-17 is believed to be one of several that departed the Kabul airport Monday with hundreds on board.

The Air Force says it is among the highest number of people ever flown on a C-17.

Back in 2013 a crew evacuated more than 670 people during a typhoon in the Philippines. This plane, part of the airlift operation departing from Kabul, transported the Afghan refugees safely to a U.S. Air Force base in Qatar.

LT. GENERAL MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It just shows the techniques of the great air force personnel that were running that cargo plane.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: And up next, reaction from a Republican congressman who served in Afghanistan as a green beret.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And later, we're going to hear from the only member of Congress who voted against the Afghanistan war right after September 11th.

Plus, CNN on the ground in Haiti as the new threat looms on the heels of the devastating earthquake.

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[08:20:56]

KEILAR: President Biden is standing by his decision to pull American forces out of Afghanistan. This morning, the situation is still incredibly dangerous for America's Afghan allies, for people like translators and other support staff who have helped Americans, who are now in harms way after this chaotic withdrawal.

Joining me now is Congressman Michael Waltz of Florida. He is a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan as a Green Beret.

Sir, thank you for being with us to talk about this. You were never a fan of the drawdown proposed by President Trump and

now being executed by President Biden.

REP. MICHAEL WALTZ (R-FL): No.

KEILAR: Let's talk about this ending here and what is at stake because the door is closing to help Afghan allies and even Americans who are outside the airport in Kabul. What can you tell us?

WALTZ: Well, right now, we have Americans, American citizens, passport holders behind Taliban lines. The numbers are unclear, but they're significant numbers.

While we may establish control of the airfield, the Taliban have surrounded the airfield and are not letting people through.

So what I was hoping to hear from President Biden yesterday, rather than kind of a litany of justifications of how we got here, was how do we move forward in the near and long term?

In the near term, how are we going to get American citizens out? Are we going to expand beyond the air field and go get them? Do the troops on the ground have the authority and the rules of engagement to do that, or even outside of Kabul to get Americans out?

I'll remind you that we have had a navy veteran, Mark Frerichs, held hostage by the Taliban a year and a half. The thing the Taliban wanted the most is withdraw of the U.S. forces. One would have thought we would have at least gotten him out.

So, we now face multiple -- the prospect of multiple Americans held hostage. On top of then, how do we get 70,000 to 80,000 Afghan SIV and their families out with no flights moving, with the Taliban surrounding the airfield? You know, the -- set the withdrawal debate aside. The execution here has been nothing short of disastrous.

KEILAR: When you add up all of those people -- we actually have John Kirby from the Pentagon on last hour. He seemed to put the number of Americans somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000. I believe that is the number he put.

WALTZ: That's a huge number.

KEILAR: It's a huge number. It was a bigger number than I was expecting to hear.

WALTZ: How do we withdraw all of our military assets before getting Americans out?

KEILAR: And so that's the question. Now, you put those Americans together with the visa, the SIV folks together with their families, then you consider, for instance, Afghans who worked with the embassy --

WALTZ: Right. KEILAR: -- who worked with American organizations, who worked with

American journalism outlets. You're looking at safely well over 100,000 people.

Any indication that there's going to be some sort of corridor to provide safe passage for them or the Taliban might layoff as they try to make it to the airport?

WALTZ: That's what I was hoping to hear from our commander in chief yesterday. How long will we hold this air bridge? Are we going to establish corridors?

The State Department has to stop giving people death sentences over typos and paperwork and the wrong forms filled out. They expanded the program. It's called P-1 and P-2. If you weren't necessarily an interpreter but you fit all those other categories, you stood for democracy and freedom publicly and against the Taliban, you still have to get to a third country to then -- to Pakistan or, Iran.

We could eliminate that program. The State Department could drastically streamline the bureaucracy like they did for the South Vietnamese so many years ago. And then what are the rules of engagement for the military? How long will we keep that air bridge there?

We don't have answers to any of that.

KEILAR: There are no answers to that.

WALTZ: Yeah.

KEILAR: I also want to ask you something we've been talking with other veterans about, which is kind of the moral injury of this.

WALTZ: Yeah.

KEILAR: You know, I think talking to a lot of veterans, they look back on their service, and when they find value in it, it isn't necessarily in the policy that took them to Afghanistan.

[08:25:06]

But they are so proud of the fact that they served alongside their brothers and sisters in arms -- and for veterans like yourself -- that includes your Afghan allies who went on so many dangerous combat missions with you.

WALTZ: Yeah.

KEILAR: What does it do to you as you consider they may be sacrificed?

WALTZ: I've been in a very, like so many others, I think unhealthy mix of rage and grief. And it's not just the veterans. It's Gold Star families. It's victims of 9/11. And, you know, I want them to hear me loud and clear. Their sacrifice

was not in vain. It was not in vain. America was kept safe for decades.

We had an entire generation grow up not worried about planes flying into buildings or suicide bombers on school buses. But the thing that has me perhaps the most upset is that that's all now gone. Al Qaeda 3.0 will come roaring back.

Where Biden is so fundamentally wrong is this isn't an Afghan problem, this is a global problem. And terrorism that grows in Afghanistan will spread like a cancer. It won't stay there. It will follow us back.

So as we head into the 20th anniversary of 9/11, with the prospect of al Qaeda 3.0 following us home, that to me -- and further, the fact that we're in a worse place than we were in 2001. Some future soldiers are going to have to go back to deal with this.

But now, we have no bases. Our local allies will have been hunted down. The Taliban are armed to the teeth from all of the weapons that they have now taken from the Afghan army. We do not have a single country in the region that's agreed to host American forces or a base.

KEILAR: Yeah, this --

WALTZ: I don't know how we deal with this in the future, but there will be more American blood spilled because of this policy decision, and that to me is what's so upsetting.

KEILAR: This story will certainly continue.

Congressman, thank you so much for joining us and a sincere thank you for your service as well. Congressman Michael waltz.

Up next, new CNN reporting on finger-pointing within the Biden administration. We will be going to the Pentagon and the State Department, next.

BERMAN: And the desperate effort to help those injured in Haiti's horrific earthquake, the death toll there just went above 1,400.

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