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Secretary of State Antony Blinken on evacuation efforts for Americans and Afghans
Secretary of State Antony Blinken explains that in the last 24 hours, about 8,000 people boarded 60 flights and were evacuated from the Kabul airport in Afghanistan.
This is a rush transcript of "Fox News Sunday" on August 22, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I'm Chris Wallace.
As the U.S. rushes to evacuate Americans and Afghan partners from the
Kabul, President Biden reckons with a new reality.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE (voice-over):Chaos near Kabul airport as people desperately
try to flee the Taliban. While back at home, the Biden administration
shifts explanations and points fingers over how quickly Afghanistan
fell.
GEN. MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN OF JOINT CHIEFS: There was nothing that I or
anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this
government in 11 days.
WALLACE: We'll discuss the latest plans to get Americans out of harm's
way with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Then we'll get reaction from
Republican Senator Ben Sasse, a member of the Intelligence Committee,
which will soon hold hearings on what went wrong.
And the president struggles to explain his decision.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There will be plenty of time
to criticize and second-guess when this operation is over, but now --
now -- I'm focused on getting this job done.
WALLACE: We'll ask our Sunday panel about damage to the Biden brand in
the U.S. and around the world.
Plus, the White House approves vaccine booster shots and pushes back on
governors over bans on masks and schools. We'll speak with Surgeon
General Vivek Murthy about whether the U.S. should share more of its
vaccine stockpile.
All, right now, on "FOX News Sunday."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE (on camera):And hello again from FOX News in Washington.
It has been a brutal week for President Biden's foreign policy as the
U.S. continues its chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan and the president
tries to rewrite expectations for Americans and U.S. allies.
In a series of appearances, the president contradicted his own advisors
on everything from the terror threat in Afghanistan to what the military
and intelligence communities were telling him.
Right now, thousands of Americans and Afghan allies await guidance on
whether, and how, to try and reach the Kabul airport.
In a moment, we'll discuss all this with the Secretary of State, Antony
Blinken.
But first, let's bring in Trey Yingst from Doha, Qatar, with the latest
on the situation on the ground in Kabul.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TREY YINGST, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An injured child is
carried through the crowd as soldiers work to sort through a sea of
people. Gunfire and scenes of chaos erupted for the sixth straight day
outside of Kabul's only airport. It's been a week since the Taliban took
control of the capital in these families' lives are changed forever.
Amid new threats, the State Department is now urging U.S. citizens to
avoid travel to Kabul's airport over fears they could be attacked. The
Taliban now controls an estimated 600,000 weapons, 75,000 vehicles and
200 aircraft, all formally given to Afghan security forces by the United
States.
To escape the danger, evacuees are being flown to regional countries
like Pakistan, the UAE, and Qatar, until they can be processed and given
homes. In Doha, hundreds of Afghans are sheltering a world away from the
turmoil engulfing her homeland.
These university students from Kabul fear they will never be able to
turn and say the Taliban will only get more brutal once American forces
complete their withdrawal later this month.
UNDIENTIFIED FEMALE:People all around are scared that if Americans
completely leave, then Taliban's true colors will show.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
YINGST: There were reports of opposition figures in the Panjshir Valley
staging an opposition against the Taliban, though the group has millions
of dollars worth of American weaponry and equipment now, so anyone who
tries to challenge them faces an uphill battle -- Chris.
WALLACE: Trey Yingst reporting from Doha -- Trey, thank you.
And joining us, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken.
Mr. Secretary, welcome back to "FOX News Sunday."
ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: Thanks for having me, Chris.
WALLACE: Let's get the latest on the evacuation effort. How many people
have we evacuated from Kabul in the last 24 hours, in the last week
since the Taliban took Kabul? And why did the administration decide to
get U.S. airlines to participate in the evacuation?
BLINKEN: Chris, thanks very much.
Last 24 hours, about 8,000 people on about 60 flights evacuated from
Kabul airport. Since this effort began at the end of July, about 30,000
people, all told, on our military flights and on charter flights that we
helped organize and get out of -- get out of the airport.
We've now asked through authority that the president has, airlines, to
help participate in moving people not of Kabul, but from these third
country sites where we are taking them as we finish processing them,
going through security checks. We've reached agreement with about two
dozen countries over four continents who are now helping or soon going
to help with the transit of people out of Kabul and this is one way to
make sure we have enough flight capacity to move people from those
places to their ultimate destinations.
WALLACE: Job one, of course, is getting Americans through Taliban
checkpoints into the airport. Here's what President Biden said on
Friday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have no indication that
they haven't been able to get in Kabul through the airport. We've made
an agreement with the Taliban thus far. They've allowed them to go
through.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: But yesterday, the U.S. embassy in Kabul issued this alert.
Because of potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul
airport, we are advising U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to the airport
unless you receive individual instructions from a U.S. government
representative to do so.
That alert directly contradicts what President Biden said just hours
before on Friday, and my question is, is that because the situation in
getting to the airport, even for Americans, is more dangerous than the
president indicated, or is it because of a reported new threat from
ISIS?
BLINKEN: Chris, here's what we've seen over the last week at the
airport. Crowds have massed at the gates outside the airport. It's an
incredibly volatile situation, it's an incredibly fluid situation. We've
seen wrenching images of people hurt, even killed that hit you in the
gut.
And it's very important to make sure to the best of our ability, because
it's such a volatile situation, that we do something about the crowding
at the gates of the airport, and that's exactly what we're doing.
First, the more we move people out of the airport who are already in,
the more we alleviate what has been overcrowding inside the airport, the
more we can get people inside the airport and reduce some of the
crowding at the gates. But second and most important, we're in direct
contact with Americans and others to help guide them to the airport,
right place, right time, to get in more safely and effectively.
And at the same time, as we were talking but a few minutes ago, we now
have in place agreements with -- as I said, more than two dozen
countries so that as we're moving people out of Kabul, we're moving them
to places where we can finish processing them, finished doing security
checks and that too will make things run more smoothly. It will get the
flow to a point where we hope and expect that some of these scenes of
overcrowding, which are so dangerous, can be alleviated.
WALLACE: I want to pick up on another aspect of the evacuation. We know
of one instance where the U.S. sent three Chinook helicopters out to a
hotel near the airport to pick up 169 Americans and bring them back into
the airport. Have there been other instances where the U.S. has gone
outside the perimeter of Kabul airport to pick up Americans either in
Kabul or around the country, and are we prepared to do more of that?
BLINKEN: Chris, the president, secretary of defense, have been very
clear that we will do what is necessary to get Americans who want to
leave out of harm's way and get them home. And that is an ongoing
effort. I'll leave it to the secretary of defense and others to speak to
how we would go about doing that.
But our focus now, what the State Department is focused on very close
ordination with secretary of defense and all of our other colleagues, is
directing people with whom we are in direct contact as to the best way
to get to the airport, get through the gates, get onto planes. That's
the safest and most effective way to do it.
WALLACE: In addition to the question of the security and the ease of
Americans get into the airport, the president on Friday said a few other
things that were flat wrong, Mr. Secretary.
Here he is on the threat from al Qaeda.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: What interest we have in Afghanistan at this point with al Qaeda
gone?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: But a U.N. report this summer says that al Qaeda is present in
15 of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, and General Milley said this
summer that if the Taliban fell, that he was -- or rather took over
Kabul, he was going to have to upgrade the terror threat from al Qaeda.
The president -- what the president said just wasn't true.
BLINKEN: Chris, step back for one second. First, as we -- as we all
know, we went to Afghanistan 20 years ago with one mission and one
purpose in mind, that was to deal with the folks who attacked us on
9/11, to bring Bin Laden to justice, which we did a decade ago and to
diminish the capacity of al Qaeda to do the same thing again, to attack
us from Afghanistan. And that, to the president's point, has been
successful. We got bin Laden a decade ago --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: But, Mr. Secretary, the president -- sir, the president said
al Qaeda is gone. Simple question, is al Qaeda gone from Pakistan --
from Afghanistan?
BLINKEN: Al Qaeda's capacity to do what it did on 9/11, to attack us,
to attack our partners, our allies, from Afghanistan, is vastly, vastly
diminished.
WALLACE: Is it gone?
BLINKEN: Are there -- are there al Qaeda members and remnants in
Afghanistan? Yes, but what the president was referring to was its
capacity to do what it did on 9/11, and that capacity has been very
successfully diminished.
WALLACE: Here's another statement that the president made that was flat
wrong. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I have seen no question of our credulity from our allies around
the world.
I've got the exact opposite thing, as we're acting with dispatch, we're
acting -- committing to what we said we would do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: But Armin Laschet, the likely successor to German Chancellor
Merkel, said: This is the biggest debacle that NATO has seen since its
foundation.
And here was the chairman of the British Parliament's Foreign Affairs
Committee.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOM TUGENDHAT, BRITISH PARLIAMENT MEMBER: To see that commander-in-
chief call into question the courage of men I fought with, to claim that
they ran -- shameful. Those who have never fought for the colors they
fly should be careful about criticizing those who have.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Mr. Secretary, does the president not know what's going on?
BLINKEN: This is an incredibly emotional time for -- for many of us and
including allies and partners who have been shoulder to shoulder with us
in Afghanistan for 20 years, at high cost to themselves as well as us.
They stood with us after 9/11, invoked Article Five of NATO for the
first time, an attack on one is an attack on all, and we've been there
together.
But it got to tell you this, Chris, from the get-go, I spent more time
with our NATO partners in Brussels virtually, from before the president
made his decision, to when he made his decision, to every time since.
We've been working very, very closely together.
We've gotten the G7 together, NATO together, the U.N. Security Council
together. We had 113 countries, thanks to our diplomacy, put out a clear
understanding of the Taliban's requirements to let people leave the
country.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: Sir, respectfully, that -- look, I'm not -- I'm not
questioning whether or not the allies have a right to complain. I'm not
questioning whether or not al Qaeda has a presence.
The president said al Qaeda is gone. It's not gone. The president said
he's not heard any criticism from the allies. There's been a lot of
criticism from the allies.
Words matter and the words of the president matter most.
BLINKEN: Chris, all I can tell you is what I've heard, and again, this
is a powerful emotional time for a lot of allies and partners as it is
for me, as it is for us. But I've also heard this -- I've heard across
the board deep appreciation and thanks from allies and partners for
everything that we've done to bring our allies and partners out of
harm's way. This has been a remarkable part of the effort.
I've seen them stand up, step up to help out, including, as I said,
agreements with more than two dozen countries now to help on transit.
And beyond that, we're very focused together on the way forward,
including the way forward in Afghanistan and setting very clear
expectations for the Taliban --
WALLACE: Right.
BLINKEN: -- in the days, weeks, and months ahead.
WALLACE: I've got two more questions I want to ask you, Secretary
Blinken.
On July 13th, 23 staffers at the U.S. embassy in Kabul sent you a memo
saying that the collapse of Afghan forces and the takeover of the
Taliban was going much faster than expected and urging you to speed up
the evacuation of our Afghan allies, the drivers, the translators, the
people who had stood by us.
In the month between then and August 13th, we only evacuated 1,200
Afghan allies. Why didn't you move faster, sir?
BLINKEN: First, Chris, the cable you're referring to came through
something we called the dissent channel, and it's something I take very,
very seriously. This is a very important tradition that the State
Department has. It's a very patriotic one. I read the cable almost
immediately. I responded to the cable almost immediately.
And we took to heart a number of recommendations that were made in the
cable. I can't go into too much detail.
WALLACE: But we only -- we only evacuated 1,200 Afghans in the next
month. That doesn't sound like you took it that seriously.
BLINKEN: Two things here, Chris. First -- and this is important, when
it comes to the special immigrant visa program, these are the folks who
helped us, who stood with us, translators, interpreters, et cetera, who
we committed to bringing out of Afghanistan if they want to leave.
We inherited a program that was in a dead stall. No interviews had been
done when we came into office for visas for these folks going back to
March 20, 2020. Now, largely that was due to COVID. We restarted the
interview process.
The president issued an executive order his second week in office to
look at the program to see how we could make it look better. We surged
resources to the program, assigned more personnel in Afghanistan, and
Washington, to make this work. We went from about 100 visas a week back
in March to 800 in July. We've issued about 5,000 all told.
But here's the rub, and I acknowledge this, there is a difference
between moving expeditiously to get this program off -- you know come
off the ground, off the dead stall that it was in and get it moving. By
the way, we cut processing time in half during his period and that's
exactly what we were doing. But -- and we also instituted Operation
Allies Refuge to make sure that we could lift people out, which was not
part of the program to begin with.
But, there's a difference between that and a full-on evacuation. And
because we believed that the government was not about -- was not going
to collapse, the military was not about to fade away when it did, we
believe that we could do this with -- in a very expedited way, more
resources, more effort, more people out, but that we would have time to
do it effectively.
WALLACE: And that brings us to my final question, which is the failure
of both intelligence and planning.
I want to play for you comments that President Biden made this week and
that he made in July. Take a look, sir.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: The idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without
chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens.
The likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything
and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: How does chaos go from highly unlikely to inevitable in just
six weeks? And frankly, sir, what does that say about the competence of
the president and all of you on his national security team?
BLINKEN: Chris, there's going to be plenty of time to look back, to
figure out who was saying what when, what should have happened
differently, plenty of time for that. I got to tell you right now, I'm
focused on one thing and one thing only -- and that's the mission to get
people out of Afghanistan, to get our people out, to get our partners
out, to do it as fast as we can, to do it as effectively as we can, to
do it as safely as we can.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: But you do realize, respectfully, sir, that -- and you are
saying that, the Pentagon is saying it, the president saying that,
that's a way to avoid accountability now in the midst of this disaster?
BLINKEN: Chris, this is not about avoiding accountability. In our
system, thankfully, there is accountability, there always will be
accountability, but there is a time and place for everything at the time
and place right now is this mission, and I'm seeing people around this
country rally to it. I'm seeing allies and partners around the world
rally to it. That's got to be our focus.
And again, there's going to be plenty of time to figure out exactly what
happened, what might have been done differently, to learn the lessons
from this chapter, and to take account of them.
WALLACE: Secretary Blinken, thank you. Thanks for your time in the
midst of everything you've got going on and I very much appreciate and
respect the fact that you're willing to answer all our tough questions.
Sir, thank you.
BLINKEN: Thanks, Chris. Good to be with you. Appreciate it.
WALLACE: Up next, we'll get reaction from a Republican senator who
calls the evacuation incompetent and says there's plenty of blame to go
around. We'll talk with Senator Ben Sasse. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: Members of Congress in both parties are blistering how the
Biden administration has handled Afghanistan, some comparing it to the
fall of Saigon, and they're promising to grill the U.S. officials on
Capitol Hill.
Joining us now, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
Republican Senator Ben Sasse.
Senator, you just heard my interview with Secretary of State Blinken.
Your reaction?
SEN. BEN SASSE (R-NE):They're still in spin mode, Chris. They need to
go faster. We have a national security crisis. It's ongoing. We have a
lot of Americans in harm's way. We have a lot of people we made promises
to beyond the wire of the airport.
And you heard the president say just shameful falsehood after shameful
falsehood this week when he said Americans aren't having trouble at the
checkpoints. That's not true. When they said they didn't have
intelligence that this was going to happen, that's not true. When they
said al Qaeda was dead, that's not true. When they said they had
contingency plans, that's not true. There's a lot more we have to do. We
have a lot of people in danger right now.
WALLACE:Regardless of how we got here, we are where we are now. And as
you rightly point out, there are thousands, tens of thousands of
Americans and Afghan allies who are outside that airport. What do we do
now? How do we bring them in? How do we get them out of the country?
SASSE: The president needs to step up and be the commander in chief.
Number one, we need enough troops to be sure we can evacuate our -- all
our people. Number two, we need to dam these deadlines. August 31 was a
stupid, arbitrary, politically driven deadline. The Taliban needs to
know, they don't dictate the timetable on American lives.
We need to push out the primitive well beyond Karzai Airport. We need to
have an urgent meeting of the National Security Council and the
president's DOD team to figure out if we should be retaking Bagram. When
need the Taliban to know that we're going to get our people and the
allies are going to be able to get their people and our people are,
obviously, American citizens, but they're also all those special
immigrant visa holders who risked their lives on behalf of Americans to
take the fight to al Qaeda and the Taliban over there so we didn't have
to fight them here.
We need the president to actually talk to our allies, not ignore their
calls for days at a time. We need the president to unleash cyber command
to make sure that all the images that have been taken at our allies and
our friends over there at these checkpoints where the Taliban are
beating these heroes, we need to make sure those images can't be used
for their hit list to go and gather and kill these people. And we need
cyber command to be active.
We need the president to make absolutely clear that we will finish the
mission, we will save all of our people and our -- their plan, I'm
against the withdrawal plan, but that's, as you said, not the question
for today's debate. But the presidents' plan is to leave Afghanistan,
but he needs the Taliban to know and al Qaeda and the Haqqani network
and al Qaeda allies and ISIS to understand that he may well change his
mind on the departure if any fire comes down on Americans as we're
evacuating our people.
WALLACE: But what you're describing, Senator, and this president has
made a decision, and not that it necessarily matters, but the majority
of the American people agree with him, to get out of Afghanistan, you
start going waiting on the border. You start launching raids to pick up
American citizens or are Afghan allies. We're re-engaging in the war
with the Taliban.
SASSE: Well, first of all, the -- the false choice that the president
has laid out again and again and again for months has never been true.
The choice has never been between zero troops and just withdrawing and
giving the Taliban back a sanctuary to allow terrorists to plot attacks
of international reach, or, on the other hand, having 150,000 occupying
ground forces. We haven't had 150,000 -- we haven't had 100,000 troops
in Afghanistan for a decade.
So that was never the choice and that's always been false. We needed an
asset light, light footprint, but a forward deployment of special forces
that could stop these kind of terror attacks. But now, just for the
purposes of this moment and how the president and his team's
incompetence have gotten us to here, they've put us in a situation where
we have a hostage situation developing. They abandoned Bagram Air Force
Base in one of the stupidest military blunders in all of U.S. history
and now we're left in a situation where we're relying on a civilian
airport, Karzai (ph), that has only one runway. I don't think the
American people fully appreciate the danger and the peril into which the
president has put us because one RPG --
WALLACE: Right.
SASSE: Taking down a plane onto that runway means we are stranded. So
the president needs to make sure that this hostage situation into which
we're drifting, that the Taliban knows we will not stand for it.
WALLACE: I've got about a little over a minute left, so I need a quick
answer here. I want to drill down on this question of Afghan refugees,
because there's quite a split inside your party about bringing our
Afghan allies, the people who stood up for us for those last 20 years,
bringing them into this country. GOP Congressman Tom Tiffany says, the
Biden administration's plan to bring plane loads into the U.S. now and
ask questions later is reckless and responsible. Ohio Republican Senator
Candidate J.D. Vance, author of "Hillbilly Elegy," says he'd like to
hear zero about Afghan refugees until we get every single American out
first.
Senator, there's a real difference of opinion inside your party.
SASSE: First of all, a great nation is a nation that keeps its word.
And the American people need to understand who we're talking about here.
We're talking about men and women who risk their lives to protect
Americans. They fought hand-in-hand with our troops and we made promises
to them.
There are 32 million Afghans. We're talking about 60,000 to 80,000
people. So the first thing to say is, the American people need to
understand who we're talking about. We're talking about heroes who
fought with us to take the fight to al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Number two, the administration has been way too slow to get people out
of harm's way. They can get them to Kuwait. They can get them to Qatar.
They can get them to Bahrain. They can get them to Ramstein in Germany
and sort through the larger processing and bureaucratic issues there.
But, number three, when you fought on behalf of Americans to protect our
people, you're welcome in my neighborhood.
WALLACE: Senator Sasse, thank you. Thanks for sharing part of your
weekend with us. It's always good to talk with you, sir.
Up next, we'll bring in our Sunday group to discuss what we learned
about Joe Biden this week, as he deals with the biggest foreign policy
crisis of his presidency.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: Coming up, the U.S. prepares for the next phase of the fight
against COVID.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFF ZIENTS, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: The
president's whole government vaccination effort is ready to get every
American who needs one a booster shot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: We'll discuss the booster shot rollout with surgeon general,
Dr. Vivek Murthy, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I stand squarely behind my
decision. After 20 years, I've learned the hard way that there was never
a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: President Biden saying the buck stops
with me, although he spent plenty of time this week blaming others for
the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
And it's time now for our Sunday group.
Gerald Seib of "The Wall Street Journal," co-anchor of "AMERICA'S
NEWSROOM," Dana Perino, and Charles Lane from "The Washington Post."
Gerry, Joe Biden ran for president based on his experience, especially
in foreign affairs, on his competence. How badly has the Biden brand
been damaged not only by the sudden fall of -- of Afghanistan to the
Taliban by the -- by the chaotic evacuation, but also how the president
has responded in public this week?
GERALD SEIB, EXECUTIVE WASHINGTON EDITOR, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL":
Well, look, I think it's definitely been harm. That's kind of obvious.
You know, Republican's will try to use this to win back control of
Congress. And if they win back control of Congress, they will use it to
beat up the Biden administration through hearings. So that's an ongoing
problem.
I think we should be surprised, though. Joe Biden has said for years he
thought we should be out of Afghanistan. He said it repeatedly during
the campaign. Everybody else in the campaign, including then President
Trump, agreed by the way.
I think the -- the broader question, and Senator Sasse sort of got to
this, that we'll be getting to eventually, the conversation now is about
how this evacuation is happening. I think the more interesting question
in the long run may be why. Why did two successive administrations, the
Trump administration and now the Biden administration, decided they
wouldn't leave a relatively small U.S. force on the ground in
Afghanistan as a stabilizing force and a buffer against this kind of
Taliban takeover, but rather pull everybody out at a time where we still
have lots of troops in places like South Korea and Japan and western
Europe, why take everybody out. I think that's going to be the longer
term question.
WALLACE: Yes, Dana, that maybe the longer-term question. The policy
issue. But this week, it seems to me, the real question is competence.
The president went out on Friday to show that he was getting ahead,
getting a handle on the evacuation and, in fact, he made things much
worse. He said that there was no problem for Americans getting to the
airport. Wrong. He said that al Qaeda has -- is -- is gone from
Afghanistan. Gone. He said he -- wrong. He said he -- that we aren't
hearing any criticism from our allies. Wrong.
How do you explain him just being so flatly wrong on a number of
essential issues?
DANA PERINO, CO-ANCHOR, "AMERICA'S NEWSROOM": I think it's actually
inexplicable. And I believe that when you put those questions to
Secretary Blinken, he -- he avoided them. He didn't want to answer them
because there is a crisis of credibility, competence, and coherence. And
when you have a national crisis like this, an international crisis, then
you need to see the president having personal, hands-on, constant
activity and action. That's why the president's going to speak later
today, Chris. I think that they realize that they have a problem.
They also have several audiences that they need to talk to. Of course
there's the domestic audience, but you also have our allies who are
obviously very angry. You have our adversaries, who are paying a lot of
attention. And you also, very portly, have the veterans who fought, and
they need to be reassured that their sacrifice mattered, that we're not
going to see a safe haven reestablished in Afghanistan, but that also
they care a lot about their interpreters, their drivers, their helpers.
That is something I thought was a very good question that you put to
Antony Blinken, why didn't you do more on this. Expect that to be a
really big issue this next week.
WALLACE: Chuck, your paper, "The Washington Post," had a fascinating
story this week that said advocates for refugees, in this case Afghan
refugees getting out, believe that the Biden administration purposely
went slowly on that this summer because they were already getting
hammered on the flood of migrants across the southern border and they
thought this would just add to their political problems with
immigration.
That would be pretty terrible if the reason we weren't getting our
friends, our allies, out of Afghanistan was because of a political
calculation.
CHARLES LANE, "THE WASHINGTON POST" AND FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: It would
be pretty terrible. Of course they deny that that's the case and they --
I think it's fair to say that they did try expedite this extraordinarily
cumbersome, Bureaucratic process. I've read -- I've read the paperwork
actually that these people are supposed to fill out and, you know,
English is my first language and I can barely understand it. I think we
have to go back to the origin of their program which had to have all
kinds of safeguards built into it. It was delayed by COVID. But, yes,
they are on the defense over the border and they are sensitive to the
fact that that seems to be out of control.
I think the deeper issue here is the contradiction between the whole
reason they're pulling out, which is the Afghan army is incompetent, on
the one hand, and the bet that that very same army will hold the line
long enough for an evacuation to occur. Both of those people we were
just talking about who are Afghan citizens and the American citizens.
And that just doesn't square. It doesn't make any sense. And -- and they
are now living with the disastrous consequences of that, you know,
eminently foreseeable problem.
Indeed if -- if they really believed the Afghan army was so bad, why did
they entrust it to protect the retreat and put the lives of American
citizens and SIVs in that same force's hands?
WALLACE: Dana, it seems to me that we learned a lot about Joe Biden this
week. That for all of the talk about his empathy, that, in fact, he has
made a pretty cold calculation that, for instance, the plight of Afghan
women, and there's every reason to believe their lives are going to get
a lot worse now with the Taliban in charge, is not a matter of national
security, just as he appears to have made the cold calculation, despite
the fact that 5 billion people around the world haven't had any
vaccination, that he is going to provide not only one and two, but a
third booster dose for Americans. In a -- in its own way it's a form of
America first.
PERINO: I think especially when it came to the empathy point, Chris, boy
I agree. You know, I felt like I could have written that speech to him,
having listened to him in the past year, especially about COVID. But he
sounded very cold and it was almost -- it's been described as the "you
are on your own" speech. And it might be true that no matter what
happened, if -- if the pullout had happened under President Trump or
under President Biden, that women in Afghanistan were probably going to
see a lot of their freedoms taken away.
And I think the other thing that you need to see is that the president
needs to make it very clear to everybody what the risks are. You saw him
start to do that on Friday a little bit more. The American people can
handle a lot of things. They can handle the truth. But they have to be
told the truth.
WALLACE: Gerry, I've got less than it -- excuse me -- a minute left.
White House officials seem to feel that as messy -- excuse me -- as
August of 2021 is that in the end most people are going to be happy
we're out of Afghanistan and that's going to be the political takeout,
even if this evacuation didn't go well.
Could they be right about that?
SEIB: They could. They could very well be right.
Let's remember, most Americans forgot about Afghanistan a long time ago,
wasn't discussed in the 2020 campaign, wasn't a topic of debate. I think
most Americans -- and you cited a poll earlier that said along the way
let's get out. They didn't expect this but they may be ready to move on.
I think that sounds crass and cold, but it's entirely possible.
WALLACE: All right, panel, thank you. More to discuss. We'll see you
next Sunday.
Up next, the U.S. readies booster shots for millions of already
vaccinated Americans. We'll talk with America's surgeon general, Vivek
Murthy. That comes up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: In just under a month, the U.S. is expected to start offering
third vaccine booster shots to people who have already had two doses,
setting off a debate about whether we should share more of our vaccines
to countries still struggling to give people their first shot.
Joining us now, U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy.
Doctor, let's start with the latest on this fourth wave of COVID. I want
to put up the alarming numbers. The average of new cases is now more
than 151,000 a day. That's up more than 1,000 percent from June. And
children now make up 18 percent of new cases. That's almost one in five.
Question, how high could this number of new cases per day get in this
fourth wave of COVID?
DR. VIVEK MURTHY, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: Well, Chris, the numbers are
deeply concerning. You know, we have seen, driven by the delta variant,
cases surge over the last several weeks. And how high could they go is
an open question.
But I do think there are a couple of things buried in the data, which
are very important to recognize.
Number one is that the vast majority of people who are ending up in the
hospital and who are losing their lives to this illness are those who
are unvaccinated, which means that the vaccinations are doing their job
to keep people out of the hospital and to save lives. And what we've got
to do is get more people vaccinated as quickly as possible.
It was encouraging, Chris, over the last three days in particular, to
see that we topped 1 million vaccinations administered each day. That
hasn't happened in a long time. But my hope is that that will continue
to accelerate, because that is ultimately how we are going to save lives
and overcome the data variant.
WALLACE: The FDA is expected to take the Pfizer vaccine off emergency
use and give it full approval, perhaps as early as tomorrow. Why is that
important, Doctor?
MURTHY: Well, Chris, I won't get ahead of the FDA's announcement, but
we've been anticipating that this may come soon, the full approval of
the Pfizer vaccine.
And this is important for a couple of reasons. One is, and my belief is
that, you know, number one, there were some people who may have been
waiting for this, and who may come up in the sense (ph), so to speak, to
get vaccinated. So, it may help increase vaccination rates to some
extent.
But I also think that there are universities and businesses that have
been considering putting in vaccine requirements in order to create a
safer, a workplace, a learning environment. And I think this
announcement from the FDA would likely encourage them and make them feel
more comfortable in putting some requirements in place.
But one thing that we've known for a while now, Chris, given our
experience -- go ahead.
WALLACE: No, I just wanted to ask you, to drill a little bit on this
question of vaccines. Because President Biden already set out a schedule
for giving out this third vaccine starting on September 20th.
Here was CDC Director Rochelle Walensky this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: Even though our vaccines are
currently working well to prevent hospitalization, we are seeing
concerning evidence of waning vaccine effectiveness overtime and against
the delta variant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: But if FDA approval is so important, full approval as opposed
to emergency use approval, why is the president putting out a schedule
starting September 20th for giving out these boosters before you've
gotten any FDA or CDC approval and at a time when there -- as you know,
are a number of doctors who say they think that we're moving too soon to
third boost -- third shots, to boosters?
MURTHY: So, this is a really important point, Chris. So, let me make a
distinction between the types of FDA action that we're waiting on. There
is, on the one hand, the full approval of the Pfizer vaccine, which the
FDA has been considering and may announce soon. But separate from that
is the FDA's evaluation of the safety and efficacy of a third dose. And
in that, the latter is actually what the booster plans are contingent
on.
The reason that we wanted to lay out this plan, Chris, was really
twofold. Number one, because we as committed to the public that as we
were monitoring the data, as soon as we saw a signal that indicated
something of concern, that boosters may be needed, that we would tell
people.
And second, we wanted to share a plan, a plan contingent of the FDA and
CDC advisory committees weighing in. But a plan nonetheless that would
allow people, including localities and states, to prepare for these
boosters. We want people to know how they're going to be protected and -
- you know, against COVID-19. People are protected right now from the
worst of COVID. We want to extend that protection and stay ahead of
delta. That's why the boosters are important.
WALLACE: There is another controversy about boosters and that is if we
start giving them out to the 100-plus million Americans who've had them,
that we're talking about probably having to keep hundreds of millions of
doses of Pfizer and eventually Moderna here in the U.S. at a time when
there are reportedly 5 billion people around the world who have not
gotten any vaccinations at all.
Here is a comment from a top official at the World Health Organization.
Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE RYAN, WHO'S EMERGENCY DIRECTOR: We're planning to hand out extra
life jackets to people who already have life jackets, while we're
leaving other people to drown without a single life jacket.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: I know, Doctor, that the U.S. is committed to distributing 600
million doses of our vaccines around the world, but having said that,
how do you justify giving people in this country a third dose when the
need is so much greater outside the U.S.?
MURTHY: Well, Chris, this is critical issue because we know that to end
this pandemic and to prevent the development of future variants, we need
to vaccinate both America and the world. And we don't have a choice. We
can't do one or the other, we have to do both. Now assuming that
vaccines for Americans takes away from vaccines for the rest of the
world assumes that the pie stays the same size, but we have been making
a number of efforts in recent months to increase the size of the pie, to
enhance the supply. And doing that not just by donating our own doses,
but by actually working with the manufacturers to increase and scale up
their production as well as working with other countries to establish
local production of the vaccine and scale that up.
That's how we create enough vaccines for everyone. And rest assured,
Chris, we will not stop in these efforts until America and the world are
vaccinated. That is our commitment.
WALLACE: Finally, as more children start going back to school, the
battle over mask mandates for children in school heats up, so much so
that this week President Biden gave a direction to the education
secretary, Miguel Cardona, to actually go after governors who have put
bans on mask mandates in the schools. Take a look, sir.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This includes using all of
his oversight authorities and legal action, if appropriate, against
governors who are trying to block and intimidate local school officials
and educators.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Is the public health risk to children so great that it
justifies President Biden ordering the government to perhaps take action
against, for instance, Governor DeSantis in Florida, Governor Abbott in
Texas for violating the civil rights of students, of children?
MURTHY: Well, Chris, let me say this not just as surgeon general or as a
doctor, but let me say this as a father. There is nothing more important
than the health and the well-being of our children. What we have seen
during the course of this pandemic is that COVID thankfully is not as
severe in kids as it is in older adults. Thank goodness for that. But we
have had hundreds of children who have lost their life to COVID. We have
thousands who are hospitalized. And right now we have more children
hospitalized with COVID than at any other point during this pandemic.
And that's because of the Delta variant and how contagious it is.
So we absolutely should be taking every step possible to protect our
kids from this virus. That is our moral responsibility as human beings,
as adults, you know, on whom these kids depend. And the way we protect
kids is really two-fold, Chris. We all get vaccinated, because kids who
can't get vaccinated depend on those around them to shield them from the
virus. And we also take measures in schools which include masks,
testing, better ventilation. These are the strategies that we know work.
WALLACE: Doctor, I've got...
MURTHY: We just have to summon the will to do them.
WALLACE: I'm running -- Doctor, I'm running out of time, I've got 30
seconds. You talk about being a parent, what about the idea that other
parents should decide whether or not they want their children to wear
masks?
MURTHY: Well, Chris, we know that the greatest protection to children is
when all people are masked in school. And there are decisions we make
all the time where we require people to do things for the better good.
We have a list childhood vaccines, for example, that parents have to
make sure their kids have before they start school. This is just one
more example of that, a step we take to protect all kids, and it's a
step I think that's relatively low cost that is especially important to
take during this pandemic.
WALLACE: Dr. Murthy, thank you, thanks for coming in today and giving us
the latest on the fight against COVID.
Up next, our "Power Player of the Week," the first college athlete to
profit off her image, showing others how they can too.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: As student athletes head back to campus, the debate over
letting them make money off their celebrity keeps changing. The Supreme
Court ruled this summer the NCAA can't limit education-related benefits
schools offer to their stars. And now name, image, and likeness rules
are also changing. But as we first told you this spring, our "Power
Player of the Week" has already entered this new era.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHLOE V. MITCHELL: I feel super blessed and super grateful to be a
trailblazer.
WALLACE (voice over): Volleyball player Chloe V. Mitchell, one of the
first college athletes to make money off her own image. It's a game
changer for players who for decades have earned millions for schools,
merchandisers and broadcasters, but not themselves.
WALLACE (on camera): How do you feel about college athletes finally
getting to benefit from big time college sports?
MITCHELL: I could not be more excited. I mean it's American, right? It's
American to be able to get out there, to make your own brand and to
capitalize off of that.
That's when an idea hit me.
WALLACE (voice over): It happened almost by accident and only partially
due to sports. Mitchell gained a following as a do-it-yourself guru
during the pandemic.
MITCHELL: My name's Chloe and on a whim I decided to turn my shed into a
she-shed.
WALLACE: Sharing TikTok videos of how she turned her parents' storage
shed into her own she-shed.
MITCHELL: In the end, my nasty old shed went from this to this.
WALLACE: The number of people following her blew up.
MITCHELL: One of my best friends texted me and was like, Chloe, Chloe,
open up the app. Look at the views that you're getting. And at the time
I only had about 32 followers.
WALLACE (on camera): How many followers do you have on TikTok?
MITCHELL: On TikTok I have 2.7 million followers.
I started the demolition process on the fire pit.
WALLACE (voice over): More followers meant more sponsors asking her to
plug their products.
MITCHELL: I was pretty tired after this, so I grabbed my Smart Cup.
WALLACE: But Mitchell faced a choice heading into her freshman year as
an athlete at a Aquinas College in Michigan.
MITCHELL: If I keep working and making money off of TikTok, I will
become ineligible to play my sport.
WALLACE: Then Mitchell's college athletic association, the NAIA, which
is a smaller version of the NCAA, became the first to end the ban on
college athletes making money from their name, image, or likeness.
MITCHELL: My dad is going to love this.
WALLACE: Mitchell made her first ad for golf gear.
WALLACE (on camera): May I ask how much they paid you?
MITCHELL: It was around three grand.
WALLACE: Wow, pretty good, huh.
MITCHELL: Yes. Yes, it was awesome. I mean I'm paying for college. I'm
paying for -- I paid for my car and my computer. So, for me, that's
great money.
WALLACE (voice over): And it sparked another idea, an app Mitchell and
her dad have created called PlayBooked, where she helps fellow college
athletes find their own sponsors. Mitchell gets a small cut of each
deal.
MITCHELL: If you are a collegiate athlete, Chris, you could look at the
app and say, oh, look at this, I have a kid who wants a video from me or
you could get a message from a local business or maybe a national
business saying, hey, we'd love for you to post on your Instagram about
us. And, ultimately, it's an app that connects athletes to businesses
and fans.
WALLACE: Mitchell says the beauty of PlayBooked is it's for any athlete,
not just megastars.
WALLACE (on camera): How big do you think PlayBooked could become?
MITCHELL: Chris, I think that one day PlayBooked is going to be an app
on every athlete and every fan's phone. They're going to leave college
with money in their pocket. It's going to be a springboard for the rest
of their life. I'm just super excited about all of it.
WALLACE: Mitchell and her PlayBooked team are now working with more than
2,500 athletes.
And now one final note.
As bad as these last weeks in Afghanistan have been, it's worth
remembering we accomplished our prime objective there. I've written a
new book that goes behind the scenes of the special forces raid that
killed Osama bin Laden back in 2011. The book is called "Countdown Bin
Laden: The Untold Story of the 247 Day Hunt to Bring the Mastermind of
9/11 to Justice." It's the story of how America's intelligence,
political and military arms worked together flawlessly to pull it off.
And you can preorder "Countdown" now. It comes out September 7th in time
for the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
And that's it for today. Have a great week and we'll see you next FOX
NEWS SUNDAY.
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