that is the narrow focus. it is about safeguarding the people there at the airport and also our operations at the airport. and in your briefing today you described the speed with which the taliban is taking over and we ve got a map at how much territory they ve actually taken over. it is concerning. because the intelligence didn t predict it or why is that concerning? it is concerning because for two reasons. one, there is an element of time here. and i mention that earlier. the speed with which they re doing it. certainly that is deeply concerning. but also we re concerned because we re not seeing the level of resittance out of the afghan national security forces that you would expect to see given the advances that the taliban are making. so it is two fold. but i ll tell, it is not like we weren t watching this or aware of this. even before the biden administration took office, the taliban was making advances, certainly that has accelerated in recent weeks. we re not arguing again
president is standing by the decision because he didn t want to send anyone else s son or daughter in to die in afghanistan. we don t go to war to protect women and children. i thought it was an interesting and brutal reality perhaps, but i also wonder if you think it cuts against this president s essential strength, which is empathy and the perception that he cares about everyone? i mean we re now about to witness really likely horrific things happening to some of our closest allies, people who went in and stood alongside american soldiers, american intelligence officials, american state department officials for 20 years. do you think that endangers this president politically? well, i think it is also clear that president biden is where he is today, which is where he has been for the last decade. so in that sense it is not a surprise that this is a strategy that he would embark on in the earliest months of his
the testimony of former acting attorney general jeffrey rosen and former u.s. attorney in atlanta, mr. pack, reveal an even stronger portrait of a leader willing to use any means necessary including his own justice department to keep himself in power. in an interview with greg sergeant of the washington post , congressman raskin declined to say whether the select committee will seek to hear from rosen and clark, the doj official who tried to overturn the results, presumably to avoid tipping the committee s hand. but he noted that these new revelations underscore trump s intent on january 6th with fresh clarity. raskin noted a few days ago that trump s pressure campaign on the doj could potentially lead to criminality. we want to get testimony from every material witness. there was clearly a campaign originated with donald trump but sweeping within it the whole executive branch to try to convert the department of justice into an instrument of the president s political will,
kabul as you have mentioned. we spoke with john kirby in the last hour, pentagon spokesman. at his briefing today he described the speed with which the taliban is taking over provinces as concerning. president biden gave a speech to the nation in july where he promised it would never resemble saigon. are you so sure? so my father is a vietnam veteran, and so, you know, those words mean something to me and to my family, and i am worried. i think the american people should be worried, but i also think that we do have opportunities and time. maybe we think about issues and opportunities like close air support for kabul or for the afghan army. we also have opportunities to try to think about how we can be working more effectively with our allies. so i m not quite there yet, but i do share the alarm and the sense of alarm that you are expressing as well. donna edwards, i want to go
you know, unlike what was happening with russia, the question was always, you know, not so much whether, you know, trump cared or even obviously we knew that trump wanted russia to help him. he said that publicly. the question was whether, you know, he had worked with russia, right. that was the whole collusion discussion. this is a different element with january 6th, right. like this is trump himself at the top of the funnel of the improper and illegal activity. i think that what has leaked out of the testimony from rosen with the assistant attorney general jeffrey clark, working with the president to try to undermine and ultimately overturn the election, and this is an absolutely astonishing testimony. it is kind of insane that a hack like clark could have, like, been in that position but that is really where we were during the interim because of barr s resignation because we were dealing with acting, acting, actings at the top of these agencies. so, look, i think that the select com