Gutfeld calls out Biden for avoiding the elephant in the room
National Security correspondent Jennifer Griffin weighs in on the U.S. rushing to bring Americans home from Afghanistan before the August 31 deadline on 'The Five'
Fox News' national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin unloaded on President Biden, spotlighting the plight of U.S. troops who are scrambling to keep up with the administration's ever-changing timeline and contradictory messaging surrounding the evacuation of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
"I'm trying to sort through my reaction," Griffin told "The Five" on Tuesday, moments after Biden announced his decision not to extend the Aug. 31 deadline to accommodate demands by the Taliban. "But," she said, "the first thing I would say is that what continues to be amazing to me is that every time the president speaks, he sets a deadline that then the military has to scramble to adjust to meet."
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"He doesn't seem to understand what it takes to evacuate people, the buildup, the time needed, the amount of people that he has promised that he was going to get out. He makes statements like ‘all U.S. citizens will be evacuated from Afghanistan.’ Right now, the U.S. government doesn't even know how many Americans are in Afghanistan," Griffin said.
She continued, "The military pulls out, they have to go back within 11 days, then they’re expected to move 100,000 people out of Afghanistan in a matter of a week. It's only been a week since the Taliban took over and already we reported earlier today, the military is having to pack up because, once again, the president has given an arbitrary deadline, August 31st."
Griffin described the devastating situation for American troops on the ground at the Kabul airport who are" having to turn back people… lift babies and women over the walls, are breaking rules, at times, to get people in."
"The people who are suffering are the Afghans who are being left behind, the women and the children who won't be able to go to school, and those poor American troops who are doing the best they can right now, being given an impossible task," she went on.
"I can't even imagine the trauma that they are experiencing right now and that they will be suffering from when they get home. And," she added, "there's the veterans back home who feel so awful, who are getting WhatsApp messages and e-mails from their translators who sacrificed their lives for more than a decade, many of whom, thousands of whom, we have not gotten out. We did not keep our promise and it is a national shame."
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Griffin said she has been in contact with Americans and U.S. allies whose families are "cowering in their homes," as the Taliban close in on their communities, adding that the president's remarks demonstrate just how "detached from reality" he is.
"We're getting videos of their families members being killed as the Taliban close in on them, and the callousness with which these statements from the White House are made when the president reads those statements and starts with a domestic agenda and then says, 'Oh, by the way, here's what's happening in Afghanistan today,' it is so detached from reality," she said.
"It's so appalling. It didn't have to be this way."
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