Republicans didn't hold back Friday in marking the one year anniversary of President Joe Biden saying the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan was "not inevitable" and "highly unlikely."
Biden, in remarks from the East Room of the White House on July 8, 2021, said "the likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely."
That came with Biden insisting that all U.S. troops would be withdrawing from Afghanistan by September.
The Taliban declared control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15 after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and conceded that insurgents had won the 20-year war.
"Today marks one year since Biden’s infamous press conference where he insisted a Taliban take over of Afghanistan was 'highly unlikely,'" the Republican National Committee's Rapid Response Director Tommy Pigott tweeted.
"We now know it was full of lies. Biden may want to forget. But Americans won’t. It will stain his legacy forever."
Lawmakers also took to social media.
"Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal and his surrender to the Taliban remain a stunning catastrophe," Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted.
Newsweek last week included Biden's Afghanistan remarks in a story about things the president "shouldn't have said."
Amid growing concerns from some people who had witnessed the Vietnam War that there were parallels to be drawn between the withdrawal then and in Afghanistan, Biden dismissed that notion.
"The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army," Biden said during his July 8, 2021 remarks.
"There's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable."
On Aug. 27, U.S. forces helping to evacuate Afghans desperate to flee new Taliban rule were on alert for more attacks after an Islamic State attack killed 92 people including 13 U.S. service members just outside Kabul airport.
The U.S. military completed its withdrawal from Bagram Air Base on Aug. 30.
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