Rubio: ‘We Just Donated an Air Force to the Taliban’

Tuesday on FNC’s “Hannity,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) hammered the Biden administration for its handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which included U.S. military equipment having been left behind.

Rubio urged President Joe Biden not to adhere to a date certain, but instead of fulfilling the goal of withdrawing all  U.S. assets from the Central Asian nation.

Partial transcript as follows:

You know, when history looks back at this moment and it’s going to look back at this moment, this is going to be — I mean, this is going to be a big deal for decades.

This is going to be covered as one of the worst catastrophes in American foreign policy history for two reasons.

Number one is, everything you just said right now, the failure of this administration to anticipate what they should have known — what the red lights were flashing the whole time, that the Taliban was moving faster than they were talking about. The whole time, they were oblivious to it, it seemed.

And then the botching of this evacuation, of this entire process. This is the way the process should have worked, OK? The way — what Joe Biden should have said is, we have these people and we have this equipment and we’re going to get it out of Afghanistan, and we’ll leave once we have all that stuff. And anyone who gets in the way including the Taliban who tries to stop us is going to be killed. You will die if you get in our way.

Not August 31 and not September 1, not August 29, not a date, a goal. The goal is we’re going to get out the Americans, we’re going to get out the people that work for us and we’re not going to leave the Taliban an air force. We just donated an air force to the Taliban.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor