GOP Rep. Tells Fox News Americans Left Behind in Afghanistan Will Make Iran Hostage Crisis ‘Look Like a Sleepover’
Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) slammed the Biden administration on Wednesday over how it’s handling the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies from Afghanistan, and warned that “we are on the cusp … of having the biggest mass hostage situation in American history” that will make the time Americans were held hostage in Iran in 1979 “look like a sleepover.”
On The Faulkner Focus on Fox News, Waltz, who served in Afghanistan in the U.S. Army, decried what he called“an ongoing disconnect … between the happy talk that we’re seeing out of the White House, from political appointees, from the president himself, from [Pentagon press secretary John] Kirby, that things are fine and dandy.”
“They may be a little bumpy but they’re going as planned, and then what our own staffs and offices are seeing on the ground,” said Waltz. “We had to go operational out of the United States Congress, talking to airport managers, gate guards, helping American citizens avoid Taliban checkpoints.”
“Just before coming here, one of my team told me that an [Special Immigrant Visa] applicant, with visa in hand, had their phones taken from them and smashed from the Taliban and told to turn around,” he continued. “The reason we’re having to go operational, the reason retired Special Forces officers and intelligence officials are taking matters into their own hands is because it’s not going well because of such a lack of leadership and clarity from this administration that we’re having to do whatever it takes to get Americans out and to save those that stood with us.”
“But we are on the cusp, Harris, of having the biggest mass hostage situation in American history,” said Waltz, causing host Harris Faulkner to say “oooh.”
“It’s going to make 1979 in Tehran look like a sleepover,” warned Waltz, referring to the time when Iranians held more than 50 Americans hostage in the U.S. Embassy in the Iranian capital for 444 days during the Iranian Revolution.
Waltz explained that “you’re going to have thousands of Americans left behind that the Taliban will then have for leverage when they want international recognition, they want money, they want economic assistance. And they have a gun to the head of American citizens because Joe Biden left them. The Pentagon has been clear to us they could stay and they could get them out. Now you have to weigh that, there’s an ongoing terrorist risk to the folks there, but Americans don’t leave Americans behind.”
Watch above, via Fox News.
