Democratic Representative Seth Moulton on Friday denounced the White House’s whitewashing of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, arguing that President Joe Biden should take more of the blame as commander in chief.
Appearing on the Fox News Channel, Moulton, a Navy veteran and former 2020 presidential candidate, told host Dana Perino that if the White House had followed former President Donald Trump’s plan, the withdrawal would have been “even more chaotic.”
Still, he said the Biden administration should take more of the blame, responding to the report released by the White House on Thursday, which focused primarily on what the Trump administration was doing.
“I don’t think it’s enough just to blame the previous government. This is the commander in chief. He is responsible for what his administration does,” the Massachusetts Democrat said.
Moulton criticized Biden’s team for not evacuating Americans and Afghan allies quickly enough and also leaving equipment on the ground.
Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton (right) on Friday denounced White House whitewashing of the withdrawal from Afghanistan to Fox News Channel’s Dana Perino (left)
A US Marines photo shows the scene at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport amid the frantic evacuation of Afghanistan in August 2021
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called it “simply ridiculous” on Thursday when asked about a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction that said $7 billion in US equipment was left behind when the Taliban seized it. take over.
“It’s their stuff…it’s the Afghans’,” Kirby replied.
Trump has falsely accused the administration of losing as much as $85 billion in military equipment.
Moulton did agree with Kirby in praising the work of the troops from the White House dais.
“Look, John Kirby is right, the troops have done a fantastic job,” Moulton said.
He pointed out how the US could take over Kabul’s commercial airport to get more than 122,000 people out of the country flight after flight.
“Yes, we took out a lot of Afghans, but we left a lot of Afghan allies behind,” Moulton noted. “Veterans like myself still work every day to try to get them out before they are slaughtered by the Taliban.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby addressed the press Thursday after the White House released the Afghanistan report
The 12-page White House post-mortem said the Trump administration showed “contempt and even hostility” to the Special Immigrant Visa program, which caused a backlog of some 18,000 applications.
Moulton pointed out that the backlog still stands today — and that Biden has been in office for more than two years.
“Some stats, I’ve seen, it could take 18 years to get through that,” Moulton said. “So that means we didn’t keep our promise to the Afghans who helped us.”
Moulton said he recently heard a story from an Afghan interpreter whose paperwork was ready to leave but his flight was delayed.
‘Why? Because of the World Cup. During the two weeks that the evacuation flight was halted because it was more important for the world to watch football, the Taliban hunted him down and killed him,” the congressman said. “It continues every day while we have left behind so many Afghan heroes, heroes to our troops.”
Perino said she heard some veterans say they were dealing with a “moral wound” and asked Moulton if he knew that term was being used.
‘Absolute. I mean, I think a lot of us feel that way,’ he replied. “We promised to stand with them.”
“And look, you can spread the blame here,” he said, pointing to the Trump administration suspending visas.
Perino asked Moulton if he would consider running for president again.
“Look, I ran for president because I thought Donald Trump was a unique challenge to this country,” he said. “And it would be important to have a veteran in the race.”
“I think the American people have made it clear they don’t want me,” Moulton noted.
Moulton’s 2020 campaign lasted just four months.
Biden has not yet formally announced a reelection.
The only Democrats to challenge him are self-help guru Marianne Williamson and prominent anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.