Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was interviewed by Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Friday, and slammed President Joe Biden for his handling of Afghanistan and the administration’s efforts to evacuate Americans from the country, calling it “a debacle of significant proportions.”
“Today, what President Biden said frankly made it worse. I didn’t hear a single thing from him today that would have given comfort to those families. There’s still no plan to get these Americans back. I didn’t hear a single thing that would give comfort to the very allies you spoke about,” Pompeo said in the interview, which came after Biden defended his administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, though he acknowledged the mission faced risk and the situation was unpredictable and said, “I cannot promise what the final outcome will be.”
“This is a debacle of significant proportions. We haven’t seen anything like this, the United States, in an awfully long time. America has the tools to fix this,” Pompeo added. “Our military could certainly figure out a way to go get these folks back and to destroy some of these billions of dollars in equipment that we left behind, but it’s going to take American resolve and leadership, and President Biden has refused to show this for the entire time.”
The Biden administration has come under fire for his handling of the crisis in Afghanistan, where the Taliban overtook the capital Kabul last week, forcing the Afghani president to flee to the United Arab Emirates.
On Monday, Biden gave a speech in which he justified the decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and said he “stands squarely behind” that decision.
On Wednesday, in an interview with ABC, the President insisted he doesn't know how the US could have withdrawn from Afghanistan without "chaos ensuing."
Among those to criticize Biden is former Vice President Mike Pence, who penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which he accused Biden of showing "weakness" toward the Taliban.
Former President Donald Trump blasted Biden in an interview with Newsmax, saying, "It's inconceivable that anybody could be so incompetent, stupid.”
"Use any word you want to use," Trump added. "To imagine that you take out your military before you take out your US citizens, and the civilians and others that may be helped us to even think of that, it's not something that can be believed."