Scalise: ‘This is President Biden’s Saigon moment’

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) on Sunday said the likely fall of Kabul to the Taliban is “President Biden’s Saigon moment.”

Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Scalise said House lawmakers had been briefed of the situation in Afghanistan by the secretaries of State and Defense, though the Louisiana Republican said some things could not be discussed due to the real-time nature of events as they unfolded.

“It’s a very dire situation when you see the United States Embassy being evacuated. In fact you just had President Biden a few days ago saying you wouldn’t see helicopters evacuating the embassy like Saigon, and yet here we are. This is this is President Biden’s Saigon moment and unfortunately it was very predictable,” Scalise said.

“It seems like many in President Biden’s intelligence community got this devastatingly wrong and I think a lot of questions will be asked later about why just weeks ago they were saying something completely different than what we’re seeing on the ground today and in Afghanistan,” he added.

Guest host Nancy Cordes asked Scalise for his thoughts on Biden appearing to place some onus on former President Trump who had reached an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. troops prior to leaving office.

“You’re seeing a lot of finger-pointing and blaming … You know, there used to be a saying that the buck stops here on the president’s desk to blame everybody else. But look, President Trump had an agreement in place, that was conditions-based and those conditions were not met in fact many of the conditions included that the Taliban wouldn’t overtake the cities that they have now overtaken under President Biden’s leadership,” Scalise said.

Scalise said the ease with which the Taliban was able to overtake much of Afghanistan sent a “concerning message to our allies around the world” as well as America’s adversaries like China, which has signalled it will recognize the Taliban if it takes control of Afghanistan.

“So it’s an epic failure on President Biden’s foreign policy,” he added.