Biden on Afghanistan: "Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home"
CBSN
President Biden took questions from reporters Friday for the first time since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, outside a Wednesday interview with ABC News, pledging that the U.S. will get any American home who wants to come home. The president's address comes as tens of thousands of American citizens, legal residents and their families and vulnerable Afghans struggle to flee the country.
The president started out his speech by touting what the U.S. has done so far — evacuated 18,000 people in recent weeks, and 5,700 people in the last 24 hours alone. Mr. Biden said the U.S will do "everything, everything" it can to evacuate as many Afghans who have aided the U.S. as possible. The Pentagon has said it will be possible to fly 5,000 to 9,000 per day out of Kabul, but that's dependent on multiple factors. "But let me be clear. Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home," Mr. Biden told reporters in the White House East Room.
Air travelers faced hundreds of flight cancellations and thousands of delays on Tuesday in the wake of powerful storms that struck the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard. Many airports also continue to struggle with disruption from reduced staffing at often-jammed security checkpoints amid a partial government shutdown that has lasted more than a month. Mark Strassmann contributed to this report. In:

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