House Democrat Calls Biden’s Afghanistan Deadline a ‘Mistake,’ Says ‘There’s No Way to Keep the President’s Promise’

Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) had some tough words for President Joe Biden after the latter addressed the nation on Tuesday and said he intends on holding to the August 31 deadline he set to withdraw from Afghanistan.

“Look, let me just first say, there’s no way to keep the president’s promise by August 31st,” Malinowski told CNN’s Kate Bolduan. “There’s no way that we may be able to take out the American citizens in the Kabul area who want to leave, but Afghans at risk of retribution from the Taliban, Afghans who helped our troops will not have the opportunity to leave if we leave them.”

A former assistant secretary of state under the Obama/Biden administration, Malinowski said that Biden’s remarks seemed “ambiguous” as to whether the president would truly withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan if the mission of evacuating Americans and Afghans stranded in Kabul isn’t complete.

“What I heard the president say today after his top national security team heard a unanimous message from Republicans and Democrats in the House on this today was that he wants to leave by August 31st,” Malinowski went on. “But whether we do so or not depends on completion of the mission and depends on whether the Taliban cooperate. That is actually a new message from the president.”

The congressman said Biden had made a “mistake” of setting a deadline in the first place:

The Taliban, because of the mistake, I think, that we made of setting this artificial self-imposed deadline, they’ve now seized upon it as you said and started blocking Afghans at risk from going to the airport. So my interpretation of the president’s statement is that he is telling the Taliban, we’d like to leave but if you want us to get out of your hair by August 31st, you have to let these Afghans come to the airport. You cannot impede this. Because if you continue to impede it, then our mission will not be complete and we may stay longer. That is what I heard. I hope that that’s what he means, but operationally it means we can’t start pulling out massive numbers of Americans from that airport.

“We can’t be coming and going at the same time,” Malinowski said.

Watch above via CNN.