House Minority Whip Steve Scalise on Sunday said the Taliban‘s encroachment on Afghanistan’s capital city is “President Biden’s Saigon moment.”
Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana, said he had been briefed by the secretaries of the State Department and Department of Defense about the situation in Afghanistan as the U.S. troop withdrawal clashed with the Taliban’s efforts to take over Kabul and claim governmental rule.
“It’s a very dire situation when you see the United States Embassy being evacuated. In fact, you just had President Biden a few days ago saying you wouldn’t see helicopters evacuating the embassy like Saigon, and yet, here we are. This is President Biden’s Saigon moment, and unfortunately, it was very predictable,” Scalise said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
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His comments came as reports emerged that Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani flew out of the country, and Taliban forces entered Kabul on Sunday.
Scalise touched on the “finger-pointing and blaming” that has ensued from President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, who have both exchanged barbs as to whether the agreement settled with the Taliban during the previous administration could have been improved or fortified to uphold key promises on both sides of the negotiation.
TALIBAN ENTERS KABUL READY FOR ‘PEACEFUL TRANSFER’ AS US TRIES TO EVACUATE PERSONNEL
“It’s a very dire situation when you see the United States Embassy being evacuated,” House Republican Whip @SteveScalise says of the rapidly unfolding developments in Afghanistan. “This is President Biden’s Saigon moment.” pic.twitter.com/E02hPuZTGy
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 15, 2021
“But look, President Trump had an agreement in place that was conditions-based, and those conditions were not met, in fact, many of the conditions included that the Taliban wouldn’t overtake the cities that they have now overtaken under President Biden’s leadership,” Scalise added.
The Republican called the Taliban’s likely takeover of Kabul on Sunday “an epic failure on President Biden’s foreign policy,” adding that it sends a “concerning message to our allies around the world,” as countries like China have said they will recognize the Taliban if they assume control of Afghanistan.
State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters this weekend that the previous administration’s negotiation was “a deal that this administration probably would not have made, certainly not in all the detail. But it’s the deal that we inherited.”
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On Thursday, Trump said that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would have been “much more successful” had he been in office, claiming, “What is going on now is not acceptable. It should have been done much better.”
The former president previously called Biden’s announcement in April about fulfilling the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan “a wonderful” thing to do but criticized the timing, warning that the complete U.S. exit should attempt to fall as close to a May 1 deadline as possible.
