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New Day
Taliban Say They Defeated Powerful and Arrogant U.S.; New Comments from Biden on Chaos Unfolding in Afghanistan; Biden Disputes His Military Advisers Told Him to Keep Troops. Aired 7-7:30a ET
Aired August 19, 2021 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:00:02]
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: So, let's get to it. Here is the rain with Fred. Even a few thunderstorms over Connecticut and Rhode Island right now, had some tornado warnings overnight, if that woke you up around New York, but the flooding is going to be the problem today.
And now we turn our attention to Henri, because although it doesn't look very good right now, it will become a hurricane and it will try to make a run at the northeast and New England over the weekend. About half of the models are on shore, half the models are off but many of them are a hurricane status or higher. This is something we cannot turn our backs on.
New Day continues right now.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world, I'm Brianna Keilar with John Berman. And we're beginning with breaking news.
A declaration of victory by the Taliban, moments ago in an Independence Day statement the Taliban announced they defeated, quote, the powerful and arrogant United States. This morning, Reuters reporting that at least 12 people have been killed in Kabul since the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban on Sunday.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: President biding is vowing to get 10,000 remaining Americans out of Afghanistan no matter what it takes or how long, even if it means keeping the recent surge of U.S. troops on the ground at the airport in Kabul beyond the original withdrawal deadline of August 31st.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS HOST: All troops are supposed to be out by August 31st. Even if Americans and our Afghan allies are still trying to get out, they're going to leave?
JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: We're going to do everything in our power to get all Americans out and our allies out.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Does that mean troops will stay beyond August 31st if necessary?
BIDEN: It depends on where we are and whether we can get -- ramp these numbers up to 5,000 to 7,000 a day coming out. If that's the case, they'll all be out.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Because we have like 10,000 to 15,000 Americans in the country right now, right? And are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American who wants to be out is out?
BIDEN: Yes, yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How about our Afghan allies? We have about 80,000 people --
BIDEN: Well, that's not --
STEPHANOPOULOS: Is that too high?
BIDEN: That's too high. The estimate is somewhere between 50,000 and 65,000 folks total, counting their families.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Does the commitment hold for them as well?
BIDEN: The commitment holds to get everyone out that, in fact, we can get out and everyone that should come out. And that's the objective. That's what we're doing now. That's the path we're on. And I think we'll get there.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, Americans should understand that troops might have to be there beyond August 31st.
BIDEN: No, Americans will understand we have to try to get it done before August 31st.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But if we don't the troops will stay?
BIDEN: If we don't, we'll determine at the time who is left.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And --
BIDEN: And if there are American forces -- if there's American citizens left, we're going to stay until we get them all out.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: That promise extends to American citizens but didn't seem to extend to the tens of thousands of Afghan allies to the United States and NATO forces that have been there for the last several decades.
Now, 1,800 people were evacuated from Kabul yesterday. That's more than the day before, but it's much less than you just heard President Biden said need to be getting out per day in order to meet the goals.
CNN's Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward reports, has been in Kabul over the last week, she's been our eyes and ears on the ground. she joins us now with the very latest developments. And, Clarissa, really the urgent situation is still surrounding the airport in Kabul.
CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. I mean, we're seeing images this morning coming in from people desperately trying to leave. Huge crowds once again particularly by the east gate. That's in a different part of the airport than where we were yesterday. I spoke to an American who was there very early this morning around 6:00 A.M. He said that he saw lines of cars along the road with families just getting out and abandoning them basically as they go and try their luck to get into that airport.
And we are hearing that a trickle is managing to get in. The Taliban is still manning that first perimeter, deciding essentially who gets to go to the next level but not enough people. We heard one -- I spoke to one Afghan translator for the U.S. military. He sent a photograph of him and his family inside. But it is not easy. The Taliban is checking people's documents but they're doing it in a very arbitrary way. Obviously, most of these guys can't read and certainly they can't read English. They don't know what a green card or a SIV even looks like. And that's why you're seeing these chaotic scenes.
As we saw yesterday for ourselves as well, John, the Taliban using very crude methods for crowd control, firing into crowds, whipping people, beating them, essentially trying to push them back and stop them from even entering the airport.
[07:05:06]
The American I spoke to this morning who was there said that he wasn't seeing as much of that in terms of violence, but that's probably because it was such early hours. And we are hearing from Reuters that as many as 12 people have been killed either from shooting or from a stampede as these chaotic scenes continue at the Kabul airport, John.
KEILAR: And you mentioned yesterday, Clarissa, that the Taliban appeared to be obviously letting Americans move more freely than Afghans. Is that still the case today? Are you hearing of many Afghans getting in?
WARD: I have heard of one Afghan getting in. That doesn't mean that there aren't more. But there's something else that I want to add to give more context to our viewers. The Taliban is providing the first perimeter. Then there's a next level which are Afghan Special Forces who are still sort of working with the U.S. or trying to help the U.S. with this. And we are hearing reports that they are being pretty brutal as well, some videos circulating online, and I have to emphasize CNN hasn't independently verified yet but do appear to show them also beating people back.
So if you are an ordinary Afghan, if you're one of the tens of thousands who have given everything to the U.S. or various different NATO allies in terms of working with them over the past two decades and you are now trying to get into the airport, that is not for the faint of heart. You are really running the gauntlet there. There are a huge number of obstacles and dangers to confront and there's no guarantee that you'll even get there.
I interviewed one member of former President Ashraf Ghani's presidential guard. He said I will go to the airport tomorrow if I could to flee because if I stay here, I'm going to be killed. But at this stage I can't risk it because so few people are even able to get into the airport. Brianna?
BERMAN: Clarissa, one question about the state of life right now for Afghans and how it is different from 20 years ago. As you keep on talking and we see the images of you talking to people on the streets there, I'm struck by how many people have their cells phones and have different documentation on it and are getting information on their cell phones. That's radically different than 20 years ago. So I'm just curious what that means for the situation there, because it would seem that the citizens there are much more up to the minute on the situation.
WARD: Yes. I think that's such an important point, John. We have been talking a lot about has the Taliban changed. Well, whether or not the Taliban has changed fundamentally, the people of Afghanistan over the last 20 years definitely have. And we are seeing some pretty extraordinary acts of courage across the city and across the country. Today is Afghan independence -- Afghanistan's Independence Day. We saw people coming out in the streets of Kabul waving flags, carrying one sort of huge flag and sort of pride but also a form of protest against the Taliban. Given that the scenes yesterday in Jalalabad, a different city, where people had taken down the Taliban flag and put up the Afghan flag and were met with a hail of bullets, I think that gives you a sense of just how brave people are.
I also think it gives you a sense of at least in Kabul, the Taliban is trying to show that it can be magnanimous, that it can be tolerant. They are allowing Shiite Muslims today to carry out their Ashura Festivals. They've meet with Sikh representatives at the Sikh temple or Gurdwara. And they are saying that people can fly whatever flag they want. And so they're trying to show that they have a sort of more conciliatory, more diplomatic and open position, although when you see reports of gunfire at protests in Jalalabad and curfews being instated in the city of Khost and reports of houses being searched and stuff, one has a feeling of dread, how long does this last and how long before true colors may be revealed?
BERMAN: So, Clarissa, stand by for a minute, if you will, because we're just getting in some brand new sound from the interview that President Biden did with George Stephanopoulos. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BIDEN: The idea if I had said -- I had a simple choice. If I had said we're going to stay, then we'd better be prepared to put a whole hell of a lot more troops in.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Top military advisers warned against withdrawing from this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 more troops.
BIDEN: -- but I knew that they're going to have an enormous -- look, one of the things we didn't do -- people from getting out. What they would do?
STEPHANOPOULOS: All troops are supposed to be out by august 31st.
[07:10:00]
Even if Americans and our Afghan allies are still trying to get out, they're going to leave?
BIDEN: We're going to do everything in our power to get all Americans out and our allies out.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Does that mean troops will stay beyond August 31st if necessary?
BIDEN: It depends on where we are and whether we can get -- ramp these numbers up to 5,000 to 7,000 a day coming out. If that's the case, they'll all be out.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Because we have like 10,000 to 15,000 Americans in the country right now, right? And are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American who wants to be out is out?
BIDEN: Yes, yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How about our Afghan allies? Does the commitment hold for them as well?
BIDEN: The commitment holds to get everyone out that, in fact, we can get out and everyone that should come out. And that's the objective. That's what we're doing now. That's the path we're on. And I think we'll get there.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, Americans should understand that troops might have to be there beyond August 31st?
BIDEN: No, Americans will understand we'll try to get it done before August 31st.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But If we don't, the troops will stay?
BIDEN: If we don't, we'll determine at the time who is left.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And --
BIDEN: And if there are American forces -- if there're American citizens left, we're going to stay until we get them all out.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, there was the commitment right there. We're going to stay until all Americans --
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: All right. Joining us now is CNN Political Director David Chalian, CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins and Shamila Chaudhary, former White House Adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan. And actually I can see on my screen here, Clarissa is still with us. So, as long as we have Clarissa, let me go first to you, Clarissa.
Again, what we heard -- we heard a little new sound from President Biden there that we had not heard before and it had to do with the, well, did the military tell us to keep troops there or not and then transitioned into the now, into what is going to happen for the people getting out now, which I still think is the most important thing to discus at this moment because there's a crisis with tens of thousands of people to get out of the country, and President Biden is promising that U.S. troops will stay as long as it takes to get Americans out but not as far as I can tell extending that same promise to the Afghan allies.
WARD: Yes. I mean, that's what it's sounding like, John. That will be met with some real deep, unease and anxiety and, frankly, resentment and bitterness by a lot of people on the ground here who are still desperately scrambling, by the way, to get their paperwork in order. Some of them are having to try to track down the H.R. departments of companies that were here in 2017 but have left and how on earth are they supposed to do that and track them down to Texas to get all the bureaucracy in order. It's an absolute mess.
And what people here very much want to hear and see is a clear, coherent plan for the U.S. We sat down with the Taliban. We hashed out a deal. This is how it's going to work. We're going to do this first. Then this is the next plan. And what we're not -- we're not getting that. We're getting a lot of platitudes, a lot of sort of commitments and principle but not hearing that absolute, rock solid assurance if you worked with America, if you put your life on the line, if you're facing threats, we will get you out. We will not abandon you. And that is what people on the ground here are desperate to hear right now.
KEILAR: Yes. There is a lot of wiggle room that we're hearing from President Biden.
Kaitlan, to you, what are we not hearing?
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think the question is what exactly is the timeframe? Because, clearly, there's not a consensus on this inside the administration because during a Pentagon briefing yesterday, the first time that we have heard from the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joints Chiefs on this since Kabul had fallen to the Taliban, they would not commit to staying there past August 31st, saying that is the deadline. Of course, the Pentagon is following orders from the commander-in-chief.
And the president was clear there saying that the U.S. troops would stay there until all Americans were out, but he was more equivocal when it came to the Afghanistan allies. So I think that is a massive question because that is what lawmakers have really been hitting the White House pretty hard over. Even Democrats who are usually allies of this president is making sure they get the Afghan allies out. So, I think that's still a big question going forward.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I mean, we've heard administration officials call it a moral obligation, a moral obligation that the United States government has to help those Afghans and allies that helped the U.S. over these last 20 years. But what you heard from the commander-in-chief and the president of the United States is that he seems to think the moral obligation required to keep U.S. forces there to finish the job relates purely to American citizens. So there is a disconnect there from what we're hearing from some administration officials and what the president is willing to put American forces, keep them on the ground past the deadline for.
KEILAR: Because what he's saying may be just an admission of what's possible.
[07:15:00]
SHAMILA CHAUDHARY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER ON PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTANT: Well, I think he's outlining two priorities. The first priority is always to protect American citizens, which they clearly had not planned for. I mean, the embassy I know had been planning for every possible contingency, but just like they said, they didn't expect the Taliban to take over the country so quickly. And there really -- this caught them flatfooted. And so, first and foremost, their obligation is to American citizens.
Taking care of Afghans that worked for the U.S. government is a complicated process which requires a lot of leg work with partners in other countries who will be willing to take these refugees. And that requires a lot of advance planning that clearly hasn't happened yet.
BERMAN: One of the things, David Chalian, that struck me is, over the last several days, there have been those saying President Biden needs to admit how bungled this one and that he messed up. Having several covered administrations in different ways, I haven't heard a president say, man, did I blow this. It just doesn't happen anymore. But what matters now is assuring the American people and the world U.S. allies and the people in Afghanistan that the U.S. has a grip on the current situation. And I'm not sure that he is conveying that at this moment.
CHALIAN: Right. Because in this interview when pressed about sort of the images that are coming out there right now, you hear the president get defensive and say, well, that's from four or five days ago. What did I think then, I thought we had to get our arms around this and get it under control and we did, except that we still see images that show anything but totally in control situation John. And so what you have here is a president who is calling cards, right, were sort of competency, honesty, going to do -- speak to you straight from the shoulder, he says, all the time. And that now -- those character traits get called into question just because his words aren't matching up with what we're seeing.
COLLINS: And I think a big part of this also has to do with what is happening right now. And I think when we look back on this, of course, weeks from now, years from now on how this all played out, a lot will depend on how this evacuation wraps and what it looks like. And that's why so many questions are focused on that, that if the White House is focused on right now instead of looking back at what went wrong with the intelligence.
But I still think that raises a lot of questions as well, because we hear two different things. We hear from the Pentagon that everything is under control and most of the reports they see is that people are getting through the check points with ease. Clarissa is reporting something completely different from what she is seeing on the ground.
And I think one really stunning thing that came out of that briefing with the Pentagon was that so much of this is hinging on the Taliban and their diplomacy essentially here is how one reporter from the New York Times framed it with the United States and letting Americans through, letting Afghan nationals through. Once that changes or if that potentially changes, it changes the situation a lot.
And so I think that is a really big question for the White House is how they're communicating with the Taliban, what they expect this to look like going forward because, really, so much of this is hinging on those conversations.
BERMAN: It's such a good point. Look, we're getting some new sound in as we speak from President Biden on some of these very subjects. Stick around. We'll discuss right after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:20:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
STEPHANOPOULOS: The Taliban takeover was highly unlikely. Was the intelligence wrong or did you down play it?
BIDEN: There was no consensus. If you go back and look at the intelligence reports, they said that it's going to be more likely to be some time by the end of the year.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You didn't put a timeline out when you said it was highly unlikely. You just said flat out it's highly unlikely the Taliban would take over.
BIDEN: Yes. The question is whether or not -- the idea that the Taliban would take over was premised on the notion that the -- somehow the 300,000 troops we had trained and equipped was going to just collapse. They were going to give up. I don't think anybody anticipated that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator McConnell said it was predictable the Taliban was going to take over.
BIDEN: Well, by the end of the year, he said that was a real possibility. But no one said it was going to take over then when it was being asked.
STEPHANOPOULOS: When you look at what's happened over the last week, was it a failure of intelligence, planning, execution or judgment?
BIDEN: Look, I don't think it was a failure -- look, it was a simple choice, George. When the Taliban -- let me put it another way. When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government, get in a plane and taking off and going to another country, when you saw the significant collapse of the Afghan troops we had trained, of the 300,000 of them, just leaving their equipment and taking off, that was -- you know, I'm not -- that's what happened. That's simply what happened.
So the question was -- in the beginning, the threshold question was do we commit to leave within the timeframe that was set that we extended to September 1st or do we put significantly more troops in? I hear people say, well, you had 2,500 folks in there and nothing was happening. There wasn't any war. But guess what, the fact was that the reason it wasn't happening is the last president negotiated a year earlier that he would be out by May 1st and that when we return, there would be no attack on the American forces. That's what was done. That's why nothing was happening. But the idea if I had said -- I had a simple choice, if I had said we're going to stay, then we better be prepared to put a whole hell love a lot more troops in.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Your top military advisers warned against withdrawing in this timeline. They wanted you to keep 2,500 troops.
BIDEN: No they didn't. That wasn't true. That wasn't true.
STEPHANOPOULOS: They didn't tell you they wanted troops to stay?
[07:25:00]
BIDEN: No, not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a timeframe all troops. They didn't argue against that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So no one told -- your military advisers did not tell you, no, we should keep 2,500 troops. It's been a stable situation for the last several years, we can do that, we can continue to do that?
BIDEN: No. No one said that to me that I can recall.
Look, George, the reason why is it's been stable for a year is because the last president said we're leaving and here is the deal I want to make with you, Taliban. We're agreeing to leave if you agree not to attack us between now and the time we leave on May the 1st. Less than two months after I elected to office, I was sworn in, all of a sudden, I have a May 1 deadline. I have a May 1 deadline. I have one or two choices. Do I say we're staying and do you think we would not have to put a hell a lot of troops? We had tens of thousands of troops there before, tens of thousands. Do you think we would have -- they would have just said, no problem? Don't worry about it. We're not going to attack anybody. We're okay. In the meantime, the Taliban was taking territory all throughout the country in the north and down in the south in the --
STEPHANOPOULOS: So would you have withdrawn troops like this even if President Trump had not made that deal with the Taliban?
BIDEN: I would have tried to figure out how to withdraw those troops, yes. Because, look, George, there's no good time to leave Afghanistan. 15 years ago would have been a problem. 15 years from now. The basic choice is, am I going to send your sons and your daughters to war in Afghanistan, in Afghanistan, in perpetuity?
No one can name for me a time when this would end. And what constitutes defeat of the Taliban? What constitutes defeat? Would we have left then? Let's say they surrender like before. Okay. Do we leave then? Do you think anybody, the same people think we should stay would have said no, good time to go? We spent over a trillion dollars, George, 20 years. There was no good time to leave.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But if there's no good time, if you know you're going to leave eventually, why not have everything in place to make sure the Americans get out, to make sure our Afghan allies get out, so we don't have these chaotic scenes in Kabul?
BIDEN: Number one, as you know the intelligence community did not say back in June or July that, in fact, this was going to collapse like it did, number one.
STEPHANOPOULOS: They thought the Taliban would take over but not this quickly?
BIDEN: But not this quickly, not even close. We had already issued several thousand passports to the SIVs, the translators when I came into office before we had negotiated getting out at the end of August. Secondly, we're in a position where what we did was we took precautions. That's why I authorized that there be 6,000 American troops to flow in to accommodate this exit, number one, number two, provide all that aircraft in the gulf to get people out. We pre- positioned all that, anticipated that. Now, granted, it took two days to take control of the airport, we have control of the airport now.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Still a lot of pandemonium outside the airport.
BIDEN: Well, there is. But, look, no one is being killed right now. God forgive me if I'm wrong about that but no one is being killed right now. We have got 1,200 out yesterday, couple thousand a day and it's increasing. We're going to get those people out.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But we all have seen the pictures. We have seen those hundreds of people packed into a C-17. We have seen Afghans falling --
BIDEN: That was four days ago, five days ago.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What did you think when you first saw those pictures?
BIDEN: We have to gain control of this. We have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of the airport, and we did.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you don't think this could have been handled -- this exit could have been handled better in any way, no mistakes?
BIDEN: No, I don't think it could have been handled in a way that -- we're going to go back in hindsight and look. But the idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens. I don't know how that happened.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, for you, that was always priced into the decision?
BIDEN: Yes. Now, exactly what happened I was not priced in but I knew that they're going to have an enormous amount of -- look, one of the things we didn't know is what the Taliban would do in terms of trying to keep people from getting out, what they would do.
STEPHANOPOULOS: All troops are supposed to be out by August 31st. Even if Americans and our Afghan allies are still trying to get out, they're going to leave?
BIDEN: We're going to do everything in our power to get all Americans out and our allies out.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Does that mean troops will stay beyond August 31st if necessary?
[07:30:01]
BIDEN: It depends on where we are and whether we can get -- ramp these numbers up to 5,000 to 7,000 a day coming out.
