Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

President Biden Gives Interview on Military Advice He Received about Afghanistan before Complete Troop Withdraw; Large Numbers of Afghans Attempt to Access Kabul Airport in Hope of Leaving Afghanistan as Taliban Takes Over; "Biden: Significantly Greater Threats" to U.S. Than Afghanistan. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 19, 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]

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: 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'd be out by May 1st, and that in return there would be no attack on 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 said we're going to stay, then we better be prepared to put a whole hell of a lot of more troops in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But your top military advisers warned against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops.

BIDEN: No, they didn't. It was split. That wasn't true. That wasn't true.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They didn't tell you they wanted troops to stay?

BIDEN: No, not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a timeframe all troops. They didn't argue against that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So no one told you -- your military advisers did not tell you, no, we should just keep 2,500 troops, it's been a stable situation 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.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: The Taliban is piling on here. They released an independence day statement announcing victory over the, quote, powerful and arrogant United States. According to Reuters, at least 12 people have been killed in this chaos since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan five days ago, 1,800 people were evacuated yesterday. That is far less than the 5,000 to 7,000 that President Biden wants to see or the 5,000 to 9,000 that the Pentagon has said they're aiming to have the capability of taking out.

And these images just in to CNN show the chaotic scene continuing outside the east gate of the Kabul airport, an endless sea of Afghans desperate to flee their homeland. CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward live for us on the ground there in Kabul this morning. Tell us what is happening there today, Clarissa.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, I spoke to an American who was at the airport earlier this morning, and he said the crowds -- and you can see it there in those photographs -- the crowds are enormous today, a huge amount of Afghans. Some of them, a lot of them waiting patiently for an opportunity that will likely never present itself because the Taliban, and also, I should say, Afghan commandos who are working with the U.S. forces, are basically not really allowing Afghan people, even if they have the appropriate paperwork, to pass and get into the airport.

And we have heard multiple reports of violence being used against people who are trying to push in there as well as what we saw yesterday on the ground, with Taliban fighters carrying truncheons, carrying whips, firing into the crowd. We're also hearing about those Afghan commandos, special forces, working with the U.S., also meting out some tough justice -- not tough justice, just being brutal, basically, beating people, pushing them back, shots being fired.

So it continues to be a very chaotic situation at that airport. I also heard from this American, he said it was extraordinary. There was a long line of cars that had simply been abandoned. Families were driving up, getting out, and leaving their cars behind as they tried their luck at the airport. The reality is, though, from everything we've seen and everything we're seeing today, that they will probably need to get back in those cars and drive back home, because it just does not seem that this impasse has been resolved in any way, shape, or form.

And the understanding that we have is that basically the priority right now is just for westerners. So if you're an American, then it might be your lucky day and you might be able to get out. But if you're an Afghan who worked with the Americans for the last 15 years, then you are probably out of luck today, and that's why you're seeing those scenes, those enormous crowds, hundreds if not thousands of people who have been camped out for days now patiently, desperately waiting, trying to get out of the country.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: What is it like for an Afghan who wants to get through the gate this morning, Clarissa? What do they have to do, and what do they have to show, and to whom? Because they have to prove their identities to the Taliban first, it seems.

WARD: Well, part of the problem, John, is that it's such an arbitrary process. It's not a streamlined process. It's not a coherent process. It's not oh, stand there if you're Afghan, stand there if you're American, have your I.D. ready. No, it's nothing like that. One person will try to get through and he gets beaten. Another person manages to get through. They are asking to see I.D. cards. But don't forget, most of the Taliban fighters are illiterate. Those

who can read certainly can't read English. So there's no real checks going on here, it's just mayhem. And some people get very lucky. I heard from one U.S. translator, Afghan translator for the U.S. army who showed me a picture of him in the airport with his family who managed to get in this morning.

[08:05:08]

But he really is one of the lucky ones. I've heard plenty of other reports of people getting this close and then getting beaten with a truncheon or a whip. So there is no certain way, there is no path to follow, there is no safe passage. And the situation is becoming more desperate with every day. The reports of the drastic measures that Afghan people are willing to go to become more and more disturbing every day. And also, John, the very real possibility of some dramatic escalation or conflagration becomes more realistic every day.

KEILAR: Clarissa, thank you so much for that report from Kabul. We know that you have -- you are our eyes and ears there on the ground, and we'll be checking in with you throughout the day. Thank you.

President Biden was speaking about Afghanistan in an interview released just moments ago. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you have withdrawn troops like this even if President Trump had not made that deal with the Taliban?

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I would have tried to figure out how to withdraw those troops, yes, because look, George, there is no good time to leave Afghanistan. Fifteen years ago it 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. OK. Do we leave then? Do you think anybody, the same people think we should stay would say no, good time to go? We spent over $1 trillion, George, 20 years. There was no good time to leave.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: All right, let's talk about this now with CNN chief Washington correspondent and the anchor of THE LEAD, Jake Tapper. Jake, thanks for joining us this morning. As you were looking at this interview, what are the big takeaways for you?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, I see somebody, I see a president who is eager to talk about the bigger decision and not the chaos that we've seen over the last week or so. And I think that the White House is concerned about the next few weeks, and hopeful that the evacuations go well. Obviously, there's a lot that could go wrong theoretically in Afghanistan during this period. There are any number of terrorist groups other than the Taliban, which is not a designated terrorist group by the U.S. government, by the way. And there's any number of horrific things that could happen.

But they and the president are, I think convinced, that the larger decision to leave Afghanistan was the right one, and that ultimately -- and this is a big caveat, but ultimately if there is nothing disastrous that happens over the next few weeks -- and that's a big if -- they're pretty comfortable with the decision the president made.

And I should say that as somebody that's been covering then senator, then vice president, now President Biden for decades, it is true that he has been skeptical of the American experiment in Afghanistan ever since the mission changed from defeating Al Qaeda and became one about nation building or counterinsurgency or whatever you want to call it. He has been a skeptic of that. And I do think it is true -- and I'm not saying this is the right decision or the wrong decision, but if he had been elected president in 2009 or 2012 or 2016 or whenever, I do think that he would have withdrawn U.S. forces no matter what.

BERMAN: He just said that in that interview. After, in his paper statement and other statements, framing this as something he was in a way cornered into by the decisions of former President Trump, he told George Stephanopoulos he would have tried to get the troops out anyway, which I think was obvious to anyone who has covered Biden over the years. The other piece of information that's interesting -- go ahead.

TAPPER: I was just going to say, there is -- I don't want to overplay this. This isn't him criticizing President Obama. But when somebody like President Biden says, I'm not going to leave this to a fifth president, I'm not going to hand this over to another president, there is by implication a suggestion that Bush, Obama, and Trump all did that, all failed to resolve this issue, this conflict. So, again, I don't want to overstate, he's not slamming Obama, but he is taking a position that is contrary to the one Obama made.

[08:10:02]

BERMAN: He explicitly made the case in his speech the other day that he had a different view than President Obama, or a different view than the administration as far back as 2009. So I think you're exactly right on that.

All I was going to say was another bit of news, and it's backwards looking, not forwards looking, and I really do want to focus on the now and the situation facing tens of thousands of Afghans right now. But one bit of news was he told George, Jake, that he had never been told by military leaders that he should leave a small contingent of U.S. troops in Afghanistan for longer, which seems to be contradictory, a, to our reporting, but, b, even within that interview he told George that the military opinion was split.

TAPPER: Yes, I don't know that to be accurate. And he did have a caveat he tacked on at the end there, as far as I can recall, or something like that. Obviously, it has been military -- "wisdom" is not the right term, but it has been a belief among people in the national security community and the military community, that a counterterrorist force of 2,500 to 3,000 or so would be a good idea.

And for years that has been -- it's never really, I have to say, been pitched to the public by anybody on the presidential level as a good idea. There's never really been the explanation, the argument. And, in fact, this issue wasn't particularly debated in the 2020 election because both Biden and Trump wanted the U.S. out. But that said, there is a belief among military leaders, again, I'm not saying it's a good one or a bad one, that a counterterrorist force of 2,500 to 3,000 to maybe even more, in that neighborhood, in that area at Bagram or some other similar base, because of the neighborhood, because Pakistan is right there, Russia is right there, and Iran is right there, that it would be a good idea.

But, President Biden did not agree with that. And look, I don't know -- their basic argument now, and Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor, began addressing this I think yesterday, their basic argument of everyone -- we keep being told that a 2,500 residual force, counterterrorism, would be a good idea and there's been such low cost because there have been no American combat deaths in more than a year in Afghanistan, et cetera. But that would not hold -- that's the argument that you hear President Biden and Jake Sullivan and others beginning to make, which is the reason that there haven't been any combat deaths is because the Taliban thought we were leaving and there was this agreement, and it would have gotten much, much worse.

KEILAR: Jake, I want to ask you, because the moment that we're seeing right now is people on the ground, a sea of them, Afghans and Americans trying to get out. And the moment, that moment at present will be the moment I think that history judges. We're even hearing this moral obligation that folks in the Obama administration maybe -- pardon me, the Biden administration, maybe President Biden isn't framing it that way, but there are folks in his administration who do this, moral obligation to the Afghans who helped American forces.

You and I have been talking about this for days. We've been talking to veterans who feel that obligation very strongly. I have been talking to a lot of veterans who they didn't want to stay in Afghanistan, they didn't want their kids fighting a war they fought, and they are feeling, quite frankly, abandoned by these decisions that they are seeing the Biden administration make just, just in terms of how they are committing to get Afghans out. What are you seeing?

TAPPER: Well, I'm seeing what you are, and I'm hearing the same thing from veteran friends and contacts that they're worried about, that it is a military credo, you don't leave men behind, you don't leave anyone behind, and that we are leaving Afghan allies behind.

And obviously this has been an issue. We've been covering it more than days, Brianna. We've been covering it for years, and especially with urgency for months since the beginning of the year, since it became clear that Biden was going to withdraw. And this is a big dilemma and a big problem and a big logistical challenge and humanitarian challenge for the Biden administration because there are tens of thousands of special immigrant visa applicants and their families that Biden, you just heard him in his interview with Stephanopoulos, with George Stephanopoulos, has pledged to try to bring home -- not bring home, bring to the United States.

And look, that is a big challenge. And it's a big challenge that the United States faces. It's a big challenge for American allies that many of them are speaking very righteously about the need of the United States to step up to the plate and honor this, while they are also not helping the United States.

[08:15:00]

They're not offering to, you know -- one of the issues that the Biden administration faces, and this is -- we've been discussing this for months on my show what was called the Guam option, just airlift as many of these allies as possible to Guam and put them in some sort of temporary housing there, and then the special immigrant visa vetting process, which is part of the special immigrant visa.

It's not like here's a visa. I mean, it's a very intense vetting process. It's more difficult than an American getting a national security clearance.

But the problem with the Guam option the Biden administration has always said is once they're on Guam soil, then they have a claim if something is found to be negative about who they are, they have a claim to American citizenship anyway because they're on American land. So where do they go, then, right? Some of them are being taken to U.S. military bases. There are three. But then you have this -- these are tens of thousands of people. What do you do with them?

There is this issue of vetting. We can't pretend that there isn't. There are Afghan allies that do not deserve to be given a special immigrant visa, and there are more that do, but it is a process and it is logistically a hideous one. So, it would be great if American allies benefit from the largess of the United States.

But, yeah, this is a clear failure by the Biden administration and the Trump administration before. And by the way, and also, the Obama administration. You hear a lot of people from the Obama administration who are not part of the Biden administration criticizing their friends in the Biden administration.

The Obama administration wasn't exactly setting this on a fast track either. This has always been a huge bureaucratic problem.

BERMAN: Jake, stick around.

President Biden also spoke about the potential security threats with Afghanistan back under Taliban rule. More on that with Jake next.

KEILAR: And the big rollout of COVID booster shots in the U.S., Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains who they are for and why they're getting them.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:21:04] BERMAN: Moments ago, President Biden speaking about the safety and security of Afghanistan with the Taliban in charge and the potential threat that may pose to the United States.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS ANCHOR: What happens now in Afghanistan? Do you believe the Taliban have changed?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No. I think -- let me put it this way. I think they're going through sort of an existential crisis about do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government. I'm not sure they do. But, look, they have --

STEPHANOPOULOS: They care about their beliefs more.

BIDEN: Well, they do. But they care about whether they have food to eat, whether they have an income that can make any money and run an economy. They care about whether or not they can hold together the society that they, in fact, say they care so much about.

I'm not counting on any of that, but that is part of what I think is going on right now in terms of -- I'm not sure I would have predicted, George, nor would you or anyone else when we decided to leave they would provide safe passage for Americans to get out.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Beyond Americans, what do we owe the Afghans who are left behind, particularly Afghan women who are facing the prospect of subjugation again?

BIDEN: As many as we can get out we should. For example, I had a meeting today for a couple hours in the Situation Room just below here. There were Afghan women outside the gate. I told them, get them on the planes, get them out. Get them out. Get their families out if you can.

But here's the deal, George. The idea that we're able to deal with the rights of women around the world by military force is not rational, not rational. Look what's happening to the Uighurs in western China. Look what's happening in other parts of the world. Look what's happened in the Congo.

I mean, there are a lot of places where women are being subjugated. The way to deal with that is not military invasion. It way to do that is putting economic, diplomatic and international pressure on them to change their behavior.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the threat to the United States? Most intelligence analysis was al Qaeda would come back in 18 to 24 months after withdrawal of American troops. Is that analysis now being revised? Could it be sooner?

BIDEN: It could be, but, George, look, here's the deal. Al Qaeda, ISIS, they metastasized. There is a significantly greater threat to the United States from Syria. There is a significantly greater threat from East Africa. There's significant greater threat to other places in the world than it is from the mountains of Afghanistan.

And we have maintained the ability to have an over the horizon capability to take them out. We don't have military in Syria to make sure that we're going to be protected --

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you're confident we're going to have that in Afghanistan?

BIDEN: Yeah, I'm confident we're going to have the overriding capability. The deal is the threat from al Qaeda and their associate organizations is greater in other parts of the world to the United States than it is from Afghanistan.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And that tells you that it's safe to leave?

BIDEN: No, that tells me that we should be focusing on where the threat is the greatest. And the idea we can continue to spend a trillion dollars and have tens of thousands of American forces in Afghanistan when we have North Africa and Western Africa. The idea we can do that and ignore those looming problems, growing problems, it's not rational.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. Back with us now, CNN's Jake Tapper.

Jake, president doing this interview, some new language, some new words here.

What is the thing going on on the ground in Afghanistan and Kabul is the United States is having to deal at certain levels with the Taliban, whether explicitly or implicitly to get Americans to the airport and Afghan allies to the airport. And the idea that the United States is now having to deal with the Taliban has ironically, I suppose is the word here, upset some Republicans, including former ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, who wrote: To have our general say that they're depending on diplomacy with the Taliban is an unbelievable scenario.

[08:25:07]

Negotiating with the Taliban is like dealing with the devil.

Now, she was U.N. ambassador --

TAPPER: Yeah.

BERMAN: -- when the Trump administration began dealing with the Taliban, correct?

TAPPER: Yeah. Yeah, not only that, I have -- there is a story from "The Military Times" in January 2018 where then Ambassador Haley says the U.S. in Afghanistan is working. We are seeing closer to talks in the peace process than we've seen before.

There is this attempt to memory hole the last four years under President Trump of an attempt to have a peace agreement between the United States and the Taliban. By the way, the Afghan government was excluded from those talks by the Trump administration.

Look, I'm not faulting the Trump administration for attempting to achieve some sort of peace deal with the Taliban. I mean, you don't make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies. That's how peace deals work.

But there is this attempt by former Secretary Pompeo, Vice President Pence, Trump is all over the map on this, Nikki Haley, et cetera, and their supporters in Congress to pretend that there is something demonstrably different about what Biden did than what Trump would have done.

BERMAN: We have Nikki Haley talking about dealing with the Taliban out loud here. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: The U.S. policy on Afghanistan is working. We could see dramatic changes in terms of what the U.S. policy has been doing. We are seeing that we're closer to talks with the Taliban and the peace process than we've seen before.

We think peace is very important. We think the Taliban coming to the table is very important. And we think that the entire international community needs to support this process so that we can have peace.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Nikki Haley praising dealing with the devil there in her own terms, Jake.

TAPPER: Well, I mean, that's the thing. And again, you make -- I don't think that the Trump administration should be blamed for trying to come to a peace deal with the Taliban. You can argue about how they did it, whether it was right to exclude the Afghan government, whether they should have put pressure on local governments and Afghanistan and Pakistan and elsewhere to release Taliban prisoners who are now part of this re-taking of Afghanistan by the Taliban. There's all sorts of decisions you can make here and there.

But the issue is not that they were trying to make peace with the Taliban. The issue is they are now pretending that the previous effort did not happen.

I saw an interview with the former acting secretary of defense under Trump, Miller, in which he is arguing the whole thing was a ruse, that Trump never had any intention of fully leaving Afghanistan, and that's just crap. I mean, of course he had every intention of leaving Afghanistan. His nominee to be ambassador to Afghanistan, William Ruger, is one of the leading veteran proponents, he's a U.S. veteran, proponents of complete withdrawal.

I mean -- so there is an attempted memory hole that is just insulting to everyone, including people in the MAGA world who liked that about Trump, who a few months ago, a lot of these people attacking Biden today for the decision to withdraw, not for the inept exit that we've seen which is certainly deserving of criticism, but for criticizing him for the decision to withdraw. Months ago were faulting Biden for not abiding by the may 1st deadline and saying, oh, Biden is a proponent of forever wars, he's going to keep us in Afghanistan forever. They were faulting Biden for doing the exact opposite of what they're faulting him for now.

So that hypocrisy is just rank and offensive, though I do think obviously, as we all have been covering it, the bigger issue right now is saving Americans, saving Afghan allies, the chaos at the airport and I think the focus the Biden administration has right now behind the scenes, which is how do we prevent a disaster in the next three weeks while we're trying to do this massive evacuation.

KEILAR: You have a sea of people that as we speak is outside the airport there in Kabul.

Jake, thank you so much for joining us this morning. We will, of course, see you at 4:00 p.m. on THE LEAD.

TAPPER: Thanks, guys. Always great to see you.

KEILAR: Always great to have you on, Jake.

President Biden in a brand-new interview we've been talking about here, he said nation building never made any sense to him. We have a CNN fact check coming up.

BERMAN: And who should get booster shots when they're available? Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:30:00]