BREAKING NEWS: Biden will RETURN to DC from his Camp David 'vacation' and address the nation on Afghanistan at 3.45pm following intense criticism at his silence over the Taliban takeover
President Joe Biden is cutting his trip to Camp David short and will return to the White House Monday to deliver remarks on Afghanistan.
The president is expected to speak at 3:45 p.m., according to updated guidance from the White House.
Biden was originally supposed to stay at Camp David until Wednesday as part of an August vacation.
President Joe Biden meets virtually with national security advisers from Camp David where he's currently on August vacation
Biden tweeted before lunchtime on Monday that he would be returning to the White House to address the nation on the crisis in Afghanistan
The Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week, despite the billions of dollars spent by the US and NATO over nearly two decades to build up Afghan security forces
With the United Nations Security Council and European ministers due to hold crisis meetings to address the rapid return of the Taliban, Biden and his officials kept a low profile amid mounting questions about their bungling departure from Afghanistan.
Earlier Monday a senior adviser was only able to say he would address the nation 'soon.'
Email enquiries sent to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki over the weekend received an automated out-of-office response saying she would return on Aug. 22.
While U.S. military planes flew in an out of Kabul airport to rescue American nationals, it was left to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to defend Biden's decision for a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Sullivan said staying longer would not have changed the overall outcome but was vague about when the nation might hear from its commander in chief.
'They can expect to hear from the president soon. He's right now actively engaged with his national security team,' he told Good Morning America.
'He is working the situation hard.
'He is focused on ensuring the mission which is to secure that airport and continue these evacuations that that mission continues and brought to a positive conclusion. He's deeply engaged on it.
'At the right point he will address the American people.'
National Security Adviser said the nation would hear from President Biden 'at the right point' as criticism mounts of his decision to stay away from Washington amid deepening crisis
Afghans climb on top of a passenger jet at Kabul's airport amid chaotic scenes as civilians try to find safe passage out of the Afghan capital after Taliban takeover
Leading up to Biden's White House return, former President Donald Trump mocked the president's absence.
'The outcome in Afghanistan would have been totally different if the Trump Administration had been in charge,' he said in an emailed statement.
'Who or what will Joe Biden surrender to next?
'Someone should ask him, if they can find him.'
The nature and speed of the Afghan government's collapse in the face of a Taliban advance poses the most serious test of Biden's presidency so far.
Five people were reported killed during chaos at Kabul airport on Monday, as U.S. troops guarded the evacuation of embassy staff a day after the Taliban seized the Afghan capita virtually unopposed.
Two armed Afghans were shot and killed by U.S. troops.
They were part of the large crowd trying to board flights at the Afghan airport.
A day earlier President Ashraf Ghani flew out of the country.
The result is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe and questions about how a president who trumpeted his foreign experience during last year's campaign could have got things so wrong.
But on Monday, Sullivan admitted that the administration was surprised at how quickly Kabul had fallen.
'It is certainly the case that the speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated,' he told NBC's Today show.
Like other officials, he tried to distance the Biden administration from the collapse, blaming Afghanistan's government and armed forces and said staying longer would have made little difference.
Taliban fighters stand guard on the road to the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 16, 2021.
Afghans crowd on to the apron at Kabul airport as they try to flee the country
'Part of the reason for that... is because at the end of the day, despite the fact that we spent 20 years and tens of billions of dollars to get the best equipment, the best training and the best capacity to the national Afghan security forces, we could not give them the will,' he said.
Biden, he also said, was ready to work with other leaders in trying to protect Afghans.
'He is prepared to marshal the international community on this issue. He cares passionately about these human rights questions, and we will stay focused on them in the period ahead,' he said.
'But that was not a reason for the United States to enter a third decade of war in the middle of an internal conflict in another country.'
Republicans laid the blame squarely with Biden.
In a joint statement, three former security officials in the Trump administration said withdrawal was the right decision but had been badly botched.
'The difference between then and now is leadership,' said Lt. General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and former Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.
'The Biden Administration alone owns this failure, adding Afghanistan to Biden's long history of, as President Obama's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, being "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."'
Rep. Liz Cheney called the situation in Afghanistan 'catastrophic' because it could breed the same terrorist threat the country presented 20 years ago when it became the staging ground for 9/11
Rep. Liz Cheney, whose father Vice President Dick Cheney helped the U.S. launch the Afghanistan war, ultimately blamed Democratic President Joe Biden for the mess, but pointed a finger at Trump too.
She argued on CBS This Morning that the Trump administration negotiated a 'surrender agreement.'
'It was a document that had a date certain for our withdrawal, it released - it committed to prisoner releases - and we were old told, the American people were told, that the Taliban was going to renounce Al Qaeda, of course that didn't happen,' Cheney said.
She said that when the Trump administration dealt directly with the Taliban it 'delegitimized' the Afghan government.
She said the Trump administration negotiated with a 'terrorist organization' by talking to the Taliban, and said those talked 'strengthened' the group.
'We were going to invite the Taliban to Camp David, Secretary Pompeo met with the Taliban, first U.S. secretary of State to do that,' she recalled.
Cheney then indicated that Biden, however, should get the bulk of the blame.
'But ultimately this decision to completely and totally withdraw is Joe Biden's - and it is one that is disgraceful,' Cheney said.
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