Jen Psaki and Peter Doocy Clash Over US Response to Taliban’s New Terrorist Cabinet Member: ‘We Have to Engage With Them’
Fox News reporter Peter Doocy clashed with White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday over the administration’s handling of Afghanistan and its relationship with the Taliban.
Doocy began the exchange at the daily White House press conference by asking about charter flights in Mazar-i-Sharif intended to carry Americans and Afghan refugees out of the country. “The secretary of state said there are limits to what we can do without personnel on the ground,” Doocy said. “You just said we are not on the ground. Whose fault is that?”
“I don’t think this is about fault here,” Psaki said, before acknowledging the Biden administration was playing a role in preventing the flights from leaving. “We’re not going to allow flights that have hundreds of people who we don’t know who they are, who haven’t been through security protocols, where we haven’t seen the manifests, to land on U.S. military bases.”
Doocy, unfazed, moved on to a new topic. “There are now more terrorists wanted by the FBI in the new Afghan government than there are women,” he noted. “Does the president think that is a foreign policy success?”
Psaki replied that the administration did not consider the Taliban “valued and respected members of the global community,” adding, “This is a caretaker cabinet that does include four former imprisoned Taliban fighters.
“We have not validated that … nor are we rushing to recognition, there’s a lot they have to do before that,” Psaki said. “What we are working to do is engage with them, because they oversee and control Afghanistan right now, to get American citizens, legal permanent residents, [Special Immigrant Visa] applicants out of Afghanistan. We have to engage with them.”
“We have to engage with them?” Doocy replied, before referencing the Taliban’s announcement that Sirajuddin Haqqani would become the country’s interim interior minister. “Their new acting interior minister is a Haqqani network terrorist. He’s wanted for a bombing that killed six people, including an American … There’s a $10 million bounty on his head. Why are we engaging?”
Psaki and Doocy engaged in a few moments of cross-talk before Psaki ended the exchange. “As we’ve said many times, the international community is watching, the United States is watching. It’s whether they let people depart the country who want to depart, whether they treat women across the country as they have committed to treat them, how they behave and operate. Therefore, we’re not moving toward recognition.”
Watch above via the White House.
