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 — evacuating 18,000 people in recent weeks and 5,700 people in the last 24 hours. 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 can fly 5,000 to 9,000 people 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.Authorities made two gruesome discoveries Tuesday after a Missouri woman walked into a police station and told officers that she fatally shot one of her children and drowned the other, officials said. Jefferson County Sheriff Dave Marshak said at a news conference that authorities believe both children were killed Tuesday morning.
Strong storms with damaging winds and baseball-sized hail pummeled Texas on Tuesday, leaving more than one million businesses and homes without power as much of the U.S. recovered from severe weather, including tornadoes, that killed at least 24 people in seven states during the Memorial Day holiday weekend.