Stephen Miller, a former staffer and speechwriter for former President Donald Trump, told Fox News host Jesse Watters on Thursday that the "vast majority" of the incoming tens of thousands of Afghan refugees have "rendered no meaningful assistance" to U.S. forces.
As disaster after disaster continues to unfold regarding the Biden administration's horribly mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan, one aspect they've managed to run relatively seamlessly of late has been flight after flight out of Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport filled with Afghan refugees wanting to get the heck out of Dodge.
President Biden claimed on August 22 that incoming Afghan nationals all receive "security screenings" and a "background check," but this Politifact article acknowledges that many vetting process details aren't public.
Asked by Watters whether he trusts the Biden administration "to vet these people before they touch down on U.S. soil," Miller responded: "Not in the least." He then cited his own government sources to claim that most of the current Afghan nationals who have been removed so far have had little to nothing to do with helping U.S. forces on the ground.
Horrifying. Fmr. Trump staffer @StephenM tells @JesseBWatters many of the 100,000 Afghan 'refugees' aren't refugees at all.
— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) August 27, 2021
"The notion that we're going to indiscriminately bring 100,000 into the U.S. and just cross our fingers and hope this works out is just clinically mad." pic.twitter.com/dgh0cxrIhI
What I have heard from my government sources about the evacuation is horrifying. Over 100,000 Afghan nationals have been removed from the country, the vast majority of whom have rendered no meaningful assistance to the United States government in the war effort. The only common thread among them is the Taliban let them through and they want to leave Afghanistan. That's it. That's the qualifying criteria. This is madness.
The one thing that Joe Biden said today that was correct is that Afghanistan has never had a successful history of being a democracy with a strong central government. That it's been a series of warring tribes. That's true. It's been a series of fundamentalist extremists killing each other for generations. The notion that we are going to indiscriminately bring in a matter of days 100,000, in other words, the size of a very large province in Afghanistan, into the United States and just cross our fingers and hope this works out is clinically mad. We are going to have here the exact same problems they have in Afghanistan, and to believe anything else is simply to deny reason and logic.
Acknowledging that indeed "some among them" are genuine U.S. collaborators, Miller went on to describe a story of the gates being opened for a passport holder, thus allowing "dozens of other Afghan nationals" to rush through and make it on a plane.
"That kind of thing and similar stories play out all the time," he said.