***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
The day after he pulled all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, abandoning some 200 Americans in a terrorist safe haven, President Biden delivered an address to the nation where he literally shouted at the majority of Americans who knew he was responsible for the evacuation disaster. And CNN’s Jake Tapper wasn’t going to let the issue of Americans getting left behind stand during Tuesday’s edition of The Lead, grilling National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on why the President went back on his “pledge” to get them out.
One of his first questions to Sullivan was regarding how “President Biden just acknowledged, there are up to 200 American citizens who want to leave Afghanistan and didn't make it out before the deadline.” He then noted that there were American citizens that did make it to the airport but were turned away at the gate, left to a fate dictated by the Taliban:
I've been told some U.S. Citizens who showed up to the airport before the deadline were left standing outside the gates. They were unable to get in. How are you going to get those Americans out? And what was the reason that some citizens could not get in? Was it entirely because of terrorist threats to Hamid Karzai International Airport?
Sullivan suggested that he and Marine General Kenneth McKenzie were not aware of any such cases. But he did flout just how much contempt the administration had for the people they had to rescue. According to him, it wasn’t their duty to save Americans but “we went out of our way for two full weeks to create the circumstances for any American who wanted to get to the airport and get on a plane to do so.”
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