MSNBC’s Kelly O’Donnell Says Biden Ducking Press Makes it Unclear Whether He Misled on Afghanistan: ‘No Briefing, No Ability’ to Find Out

MSNBC’s Kelly O’Donnell said Thursday it wasn’t clear whether President Joe Biden had acknowledged “misleading” Americans on events in Afghanistan.

Unnamed intelligence and military officials have told numerous reporters this week that they long predicted the Taliban would quickly regain power in Afghanistan after the United States withdrew from the country, despite Biden’s frequent reassurances over the summer that such an outcome was not guaranteed.

“So if the president now says chaos was inevitable, then are they acknowledging he misled us?” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked O’Donnell during an afternoon segment. He speculated the White House may have done so “because they didn’t want to offend the Afghan government.”

“Well, they’re not acknowledging that discrepancy yet,” O’Donnell replied. “We’ve had no opportunity, no briefing, no ability to get a real sense of that. What they are saying is that they had planned for and expected there could be a fall. But the timing is what they’ve been focused on, that it wouldn’t be as precipitous as it happened.”

Biden hurriedly returned to the White House from Camp David on Monday to address the fact that Taliban had conquered Afghanistan over the weekend — even before the U.S. military had reached its Aug. 31 departure deadline. Biden returned to Camp David less than an hour after he finished speaking.

O’Donnell noted that Biden was in the White House Situation Room on Thursday with Vice President Kamala Harris to assess efforts related to extracting approximately more than 10,000 Americans still in the country. Taliban roadblocks have prevented their safe passage to Kabul’s international airport.

“This is a real question about what the president’s sense of what would happen would be,” O’Donnell said. “In April, when he announced his intention to withdraw by the deadline of August 31st, he talked about working with allies and having an orderly process. He also … [said] it was not inevitable that Kabul would fall, and he has portrayed in a couple of instances that intelligence and military advice to him was somehow split.”

Watch above via MSNBC.