Biden says he doesn’t believe the Taliban have changed

President Biden said in his first interview since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan that he doesn’t think the insurgent group has changed, but added that they are going through “an existential crisis.” 

“Let me put it this way. I think they’re going through sort of an existential crisis about [whether] they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government. I’m not sure they do,” Biden told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview broadcast early Thursday on “Good Morning America” when asked if he thinks the Taliban have changed. 

The Taliban have said that they are very different than they were 20 years ago and vowed this week to respect women’s rights, remarks that have been met with skepticism from the administration. 

The president also told Stephanopoulos that he wouldn’t have predicted that the Taliban would “provide safe passage for Americans to get out” when the U.S. military left Afghanistan. 

The administration said on Tuesday that the Taliban assured the U.S. that the group would allow for civilians to safely get to the airport, but the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Wednesday said it “cannot guarantee safe passage” to the airport. 

The U.S. has sought to increase the number of flights out of the country in an effort to evacuate some 5,000 to 9,000 people per day. 

Biden added that the Taliban now have more than their core beliefs to consider.

“They also care about whether they have food to eat, whether they have an income … that they can make any money and run an economy. They care about whether or not they can hold together the society that they in fact say they care so much about,” the president said.

Biden also said that the U.S. will get out as many Afghan women as possible, adding that he told his team during a meeting in the Situation Room on Wednesday to get Afghan women on planes.

“The idea that we’re able to deal with the rights of women around the world by military force is not rational. Not rational. Look what’s happened to the Uyghurs in western China. Look what’s happening in other parts of the world,” Biden said.

“I mean, there are a lot of places where women are being subjugated. The way to deal with that is not with a military invasion. The way to deal with that is putting economic, diplomatic and … international pressure on them to change their behavior,” the president added.