President Joe Biden says "Look, before I made this decision, I met with all our allies, our NATO allies in Europe. They agreed. We should be getting out,"

 

Biden delivered a speech from the White House Friday defending his decision to remove troops from Afghanistan and attempting to reassure allies around the world that America still has foreign policy credibility. 

"I have seen no question of our credibility from our allies around the world," Biden said in response to a question about the global ramifications of the Afghanistan debacle. "I've spoken with our NATO allies… The fact of the matter is I have not seen that – matter of fact the exact opposite I've gotten. Exact opposite thing is we're acting with dispatch, we're acting, committing to what we said we would do."

Note that this reporter is asking Biden if he will send troops out into Kabul to evacuate Americans who haven’t been able to get to the airport safely. This will be important in a minute.

So in his response, Biden is putting all of his faith in the Taliban, claiming that they are letting Americans through to the airport safely. But of course this isn’t true and we’ve been reporting on it all week.

Biden was challenged on this answer here by a different reporter from NPR, who told Biden that this doesn’t square with the images we are seeing at the airport and the reporting from reporters in Kabul who are describing chaos and violence. He asks Biden “are you saying unequivocally that any American who wants to get to the airport is getting there?”