Democratic Rep.: ‘Just Not True’ for Biden, DefSec to Say They’re ‘Giving Every Resource Necessary’ to Afghanistan Evacuations

 

Democratic Congressman and Marine Corps veteran Seth Moulton criticized the Biden administration Friday for their most recent comments on Afghanistan evacuations.

Those evacuations resumed after an eight-hour pause in Kabul, but there are still many Americans and U.S. allies who need to be evacuated.

Jake Tapper — who has been very critical of the Biden administration in the past week — asked Moulton about an earlier briefing call between House members and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Moulton said they learned just how much the United States is “counting on the Taliban.”

“”It’s extraordinary that we’ve put ourselves in this position.”

During his earlier press conference, President Joe Biden was asked about potentially sending troops into Kabul to “evacuate Americans who haven’t been able to get to the airport safely.”

“We have no indication that they haven’t been able to get in Kabul through the airport,” the president said.

Tapper brought up this “empirically not true” statement — which was almost immediately fact-checked by correspondents from multiple networks — and asked, “Does he know it’s not true, or are people not sharing this information with him?”

Moulton responded by bringing up the videos online “of people trying to get to the gate and being crushed on the way there.”

He said he has been in contact with people in Kabul who are unable to get to the airport gate.

We simply can’t get people through the gate quickly enough. We don’t have enough State Department employees on the ground. The State Department announced that they have 20 consular officers in Kabul and they’re surging to — wait for it — 40. 40 people to handle tens of thousands of evacuees? It’s completely unacceptable. All the Marines I’ve talked to on the ground say that they need more troops. So when the president and the Secretary of Defense claim that they are giving every resource necessary and available to this effort, that’s just not true because you have Marine commanders on the ground saying they’re stretched thin, they need more troops. If they had more troops they’d be able to process more people getting in through the gates, and that’s the solution to this present problem.

You can watch above, via CNN.

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Josh Feldman is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Email him here: josh@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter: @feldmaniac