Psaki refuses to discuss leaked call with ex-Afghan president

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White House press secretary Jen Psaki  said Wednesday she was ‘not going to get into’ the bombshell July 23 phone call between President Biden and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, where he implored the Afghan leader to ‘change the perception’ of the war with the Taliban. 

Psaki refused to comment as Republicans tore into the call where Biden told Ghani to try and show the world they were beating the Taliban ‘whether it is true or not.’ 

‘I’m not going to get into private diplomatic conversations or leaked transcripts of phone calls,’ the press secretary told reporters Wednesday. 

‘The content of the reporting is consistent with what we have said many times publicly,’ she added. 

‘No one anticipated, the vast majority, … anticipated that the Taliban would be able to take over the country as quickly as they did or that the Afghan national security forces would fold as quickly as they did.’   

‘What the president conveyed publicly and certainly privately as well, repeatedly, to Afghan leaders is that it’s important that the leaders in Afghanistan do exactly that – lead, show the country they are ready to continue the fight.’ 

Two years ago, she demanded the White House release not only the transcript of former President Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky but the entire whistleblower complaint. 

‘It is not just the call transcript. The whistleblower complaint would likely have more details. We need both. And not just the call,’ Psaki said in a tweet on Sept. 24, 2019, the day Trump’s White House released the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian leader.

Trump had been facing demands to release details of a complaint made by a member of the intelligence community about the call.  

That call led to his eventual impeachment, where Democrats determined he had improperly pressured Zelensky to investigate a political opponent, Biden, and his son Hunter. 

‘I’m disgusted that President Biden lied to the world to try to make everyone think the Taliban wasn’t taking over, when he knew they were rapidly gaining power. His lies cost us 13 American lives and Biden abandoned our allies when they needed us most,’ Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., told DailyMail.com. 

At least 170 people and 13 US troops were killed in a suicide bomb after the Taliban takeover as the US was evacuating Americans and allies in Kabul last week. 

In a phone call transcript obtained by Reuters, Biden said the US would provide aid if Ghani could project to the world that he ‘had a plan’ for fighting the Taliban, while the Afghan army was being overrun.

Some say the call shows that Biden knew the situation was dire in Afghanistan way before the evacuation and flies in the face of claims from the administration that they had no idea the Taliban would take over so quickly. Other critics say Biden’s call shows he is ‘disconnected from the real world’ as he didn’t grasp Ghani’s warning that 15,000 terrorists were about to ‘invade’ Afghanistan.

Yet, the White House is sticking to its story, with Chief of Staff Ron Klain telling MSNBC late Tuesday that no one in the administration knew the Taliban would take over Afghanistan in just 12 days. 

Reuters have not revealed how they obtained the transcript. But they said they could not reach Ghani or any of his representatives – raising the prospects that it could have come from inside the White House. 

‘We will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is,’ Biden said.

Biden focused much of the call on Ghani’s ‘perception problem.’

‘I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,’ Biden said. ‘And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.’

At the time of the call, Taliban had captured about half of the nation’s provincial capitals. 

‘Using the Orange Man Bad standard, this seems like a really impeachable phone call,’ Donald Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter.  

‘Yet more evidence that Joe Biden is totally disconnected from the real world. ‘Changing perception’ is political spin, not a national security strategy,’ Rep. Jody Hice, R-Fla., said.

Republicans have upped calls for Biden’s impeachment over his handling of Afghanistan, but Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell threw cold water on that idea Wednesday. ‘Look the president is not going to be removed from office…I think the way these behaviors get adjusted in this country is at the ballot box.’

‘There isn’t going to be an impeachment.’

Biden pressed Ghani to bring together the government’s most prominent figures for a press conference. ‘That will change perception, and that will change an awful lot I think.’ 

‘That is how Joe Biden treats the American people, too. He thinks he can read a pre-scripted, defensive speech and we will all go along with it. What a joke!’ Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., wrote on Twitter. 

‘Sounds like an impeachable phone call to me,’ Monica Crowley, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury wrote on Twitter. 

‘BOMBSHELL CALL!’ former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany wrote on Twitter. ‘In July, Biden pressured the Afghan President (Ghani) to suggest the fight against the Taliban was going well “whether it is true or not.”’

Still, Biden in the call expressed confidence that the US-trained Afghan security forces could fend off the Taliban, being much bigger in size and far more well-equipped. 

‘You clearly have the best military,’ he told Ghani. ‘You have 300,000 well-armed forces versus 70-80,000 and they’re clearly capable of fighting well.’

The White House has since laid blame on the Afghan military for ‘collapsing without a fight.’

Ghani, meanwhile, relayed a sense of urgency to the US president. 

‘We are facing a full-scale invasion, composed of Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and at least 10-15,000 international terrorists, predominantly Pakistanis thrown into this,’ Ghani said. 

‘We need to move with speed.’ 

 ‘In July, Joe Biden publicly downplayed a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, calling it ‘highly unlikely.’ Was he lying then? If he knew privately that the Taliban was winning then, how did his administration fail so horrifically in the end? Thirteen service members are dead and hundreds of Americans are stranded because of Biden’s botched withdrawal. Americans deserve answers,’ Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., told DailyMail.com.

Ghani told Biden he believed there could be peace if he could ‘rebalance the military solution.’ 

The Afghan president fled the country, sending his government into collapse, three weeks later, and the Taliban subsequently took Kabul.  

Biden promised diplomatic and economic support even after the military’s withdrawal concluded. 

‘We are going to continue to fight hard, diplomatically, politically, economically, to make sure your government not only survives, but is sustained and grows,’ said Biden.  

Tom Schwartz, a Vanderbilt US foreign relations historian who formerly advised the State Department, told DailyMail.com the call proves Biden was ‘deluded’ and really believed the Afghan government could resist. 

‘I didn’t see it in quite the deception way, I saw it as self-deception – more than anything else this belief that somehow it was only the perception that was the problem,’ he said. ‘I mean it’s scary in that sense that they were that out of touch with what was going on.’ 

‘One of the more dangerous things is when people believe their own Kool-Aid,’ he added. ‘It’s kind of sad.’ 

But others said that the phone call proved Biden knew things were headed south but did not speed up evacuations.

‘It’s damning President Biden knew the situation in Afghanistan was rapidly deteriorating in July and pressed Ghani to ‘project a different picture’ of the Taliban’s advance through Afghanistan rather than address the reality on the ground,’ Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., told DailyMail.com. ‘I met with Ghani the night before his Oval Office meeting with Biden [July 8] and he asked for two requests: robust air support and U.S. contractors to maintain the aircraft. He received neither.’  

‘The transcript of President Biden’s last call with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani proves without a doubt that Biden is blatantly lying to the American people and our allies about what he knew and when he knew it,’ Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., said. 

‘It is clear from this transcript that Biden understood the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was imminent and inevitable, yet he and his administration repeatedly assured the public that his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan would be done smoothly and the Afghan government would remain in control.’ 

DailyMail.com has reached out to the White House for comment.  

The Biden administration, up until the Afghanistan debacle, has been tight-lipped, avoiding the frequent leaks that came out of the Trump administration. 

‘I was surprised it [the phone call] was leaked, that’s the type of thing that goes on when you have a breakdown and a blame shifting thing going on. It’s not a good sign,’ Schwartz said. 

Meanwhile, the leaks continue as White House officials expressed their dismay for the Americans and allies left behind. 

‘I am absolutely appalled and literally horrified we left Americans there,’ one administration official told Politico. ‘It was a hostage rescue of thousands of Americans in the guise of a NEO [noncombatant evacuation operation], and we have failed that no-fail mission.’

Another White House official said that the mission isn’t accomplished if they left Americans behind.

Reuters also reviewed transcripts of a call later that day between Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, General Mark Milley and U.S. Central Command commander General Frank McKenzie, and Ghani, who also focused on a ‘perception’ problem. 

Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Ghani ‘the perception in the United States, in Europe and the media sort of thing is a narrative of Taliban momentum, and a narrative of Taliban victory. And we need to collectively demonstrate and try to turn that perception, that narrative around.’

‘I do not believe time is our friend here. We need to move quickly,’ McKenzie added.

Since the US completed its hasty exit from Afghanistan on Monday, the Taliban have seized control of billions of US equipment, including weapons, ammunition, planes and helicopters, armored vehicles and protective gear.

On Tuesday, they held mock funerals for American troops and NATO allies. 

Coffins draped with the US, UK and French flags as well as NATO’s insignia were paraded through the streets of Khost on Tuesday by crowds waving the Taliban’s flag, hours after the final US plane departed. 

Originally, Biden aimed to have all US military out of Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, which is the 20 year anniversary of the catalyst that led to the war in the first place – the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He then moved that date up to August 31 and by August 30 the final U.S. aircraft departed from Afghani soil with the last American service members on board.

On Tuesday, Biden delivered remarks declaring an end to the two-decades-long war in Afghanistan and deemed the withdrawal an ‘extraordinary success’ despite immense backlash for his handling of the pullout.

In addition to the deaths of 13 US soldiers and hundreds of fleeing Afghans, bungled withdrawal also left hundreds of U.S citizens behind, who are now on their own to find their way out of the country without military presence in Afghanistan to assist.

A defiant Biden said the mission couldn’t have been completed in a ‘more orderly manner.’

He said he ‘respectfully disagreed’ with critics who claimed he should have started the evacuation sooner to avoid the chaos.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that the Taliban had offered the US a chance to secure Kabul while it was conducting evacuations, and Milley turned them down, knowing that Biden remained stalwart in his mission not to send any more US troops.