Biden Holds Firm to Aug. 31 Deadline, Pledges to Leave Afghanistan
President Joe Biden, facing a ticking clock and wrenching scenes of individuals desperately trying to depart a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, insisted Tuesday he would get the work done on time, with no Americans left behind. Biden, his approval rating tumbling amid the primary major foreugn policy crisis of his presidency, sought to reassure a skeptical public, noting that the pace of evacuations had increased. As of Tuesday, 70,700 Americans, allies and Afghans who had helped the U.S. mission there had been spirited out of the country, the president said, with 6,400 evacuated on 31military and civilian planes within the previous 12 hours alone. "We are currently on pace to end by Aug. 31," Biden's self-imposed deadline to urge out everyone who wants to go away and is qualified to be evacuated by the us , the president said. "The sooner we will finish, the higher ," he added, noting that the safety risk – especially from ISIS-K, an Afghanistan-based affilia...