Fox News’ Peter Doocy Grills Biden in Tense Exchange on Kabul Attacks: ‘Do You Bear Any Responsibility?’

Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy grilled Joe Biden on Thursday in a tense exchange following the president’s remarks in the aftermath of an explosion outside the airport in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

Biden called on Doocy for the last question from reporters following his remarks — with the president calling Doocy “the most interesting guy that I know in the press.”

“Mr. President, there had not been a U.S. Service member killed in combat in Afghanistan since February of 2020. You set deadline, you pulled troops out, you sent troops back in, and now 12 marines are dead,” said Doocy. “You said the buck stops with you. Do you bear any responsibility for the way that things have unfolded in the last two weeks?”

Biden responded, “I bear responsibility for fundamentally all that’s happened of late, but here’s the deal. You know, I wish you would one day say these things, you know as well as I do, that the former president [Donald Trump] made a deal with the Taliban that he would get all American forces out of Afghanistan by May 1. In return the commitment was made – and that was a year before. In return, he was given a commitment that the Taliban would continue to attack others but would not attack any American forces.”

“Remember that? I’m being serious,” asked Biden, causing Doocy to attempt to ask a question in which Biden interjected, “No, I’m asking you a question, because” – in which Doocy again tried to ask a question. But Biden wouldn’t budge.

“No, no, wait a minute. I’m asking you a question,” said Biden. “Is that the accurate to the best of your knowledge?”

Doocy asked if Biden if people have an issue with withdrawing from Afghanistan or how the withdrawal has been done.

“I think they have an issue that people are likely to get hurt, some, as we’ve seen, have gotten killed, and that it is messy. The reason why, whether my friend will acknowledge it or has reported it, the reason why there were no attacks on Americans, as you said, from the date until I came into office was because the commitment was made by President Trump. ‘I will be out by May 1st. In the meantime you agree not to attack any Americans.’ That was the deal. That’s why no American was attacked.”

Doocy asked Biden if he stands by his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

“Yes, I do,” responded Biden.

“Imagine where we would be if I had indicated on May the 1st, I was not going to renegotiate evacuation date. We were going to stay there. I would have one alternative: Pour thousands more troops back into Afghanistan to fight a war that we had already won relatively by the reason we went in the first place.”

Biden continued:

I have never been of the view that we should be sacrificing American lives to try to establish a democratic government in Afghanistan, a country that has never once in its entire history been a united country and is made up, and I don’t mean this as derogatory, made up of different tribes who have never ever, ever gotten along with one another. And so, as I’ve said before, and this is the last comment I’ll make. We’ll have more chance to talk about this unfortunately beyond because we are not out yet. If Osama bin Laden, as well as Al Qaeda, had chosen to launch an attack when they left Saudi Arabia out of Yemen, would we have ever gone to Afghanistan? Even though the Taliban completely controlled Afghanistan at the time. Would we have ever gone?

I know it’s not fair to ask you any questions. This is rhetorical. But raise your hand if you think we should have gone and given up thousands of lives and tens of thousands wounded. Our interest in going was to prevent Al Qaeda from reemerging, first to Bin laden, wipe Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and prevent that from happening again. As I’ve said it a hundred times: Terrorism has metastasized throughout the world. We have greater threats coming out of other countries a heck of a lot closer to the United States. We don’t have military encampments there. We don’t keep people there. We have over-the-horizon capability to keep them from going after us. Ladies and gentlemen, it was time to end a 20-year. Thank you so much.

Watch above, via Fox News.

UPDATE 11:53 am ET FRIDAY: The Pentagon corrected the record on Friday and said that there was one explosion, not two.