On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) stated that the State Department and DHS have been “a stymieing, slow force at every turn” in the work to evacuate people still stuck in Afghanistan, and this is because “in the Oval Office, with the president, there is no sense of urgency, there is no sense of compassion or concern for those that were left behind.”
Meijer said, “We have been working with the State Department, with the Department of Homeland Security throughout the interagency process on, not just the evacuations that took place, but the ongoing evacuations that need to occur, and they have been a stymieing, slow force at every turn. And it all flows down from the fact that, at the top, in the Oval Office, with the president, there is no sense of urgency, there is no sense of compassion or concern for those that were left behind. And until that changes, we’re going to continue to see the delayed, drawn-out, and frankly, deadly process that we’ve seen so far.”
Host Jake Tapper asked, “And there remain Afghan allies stuck in the increasingly unstable country, do you get any sense that the effort to evacuate them has stalled?”
Meijer responded, “It is — if this isn’t stalling, I don’t know what it is. It has been incredibly difficult. There’s one case, a personal friend of mine, that I’ve been working on for almost four months now. And it’s been pulling teeth. And that’s with a member of Congress who sits on the committee that oversees the State Department hitting that brick wall. So, it is — again, we’re not seeing anything happening that we need to see happening. We’re hearing the right words. We’re getting the right promises, but that’s not translating into action or at least action at the pace that it needs to because of a lack of political will from the Biden administration and specifically from President Biden himself.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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