NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel delivered a harsh report of the state of Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover over the capital.
In a report that aired Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Engel highlighted the U.S. troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan at President Joe Biden’s order. He noted the Taliban was in “full control” again and had set up checkpoints “with the very weapons American taxpayers bought for the Afghan army, which collapsed instead of fighting.”
“And the U.S. didn’t see this coming?” Engel asked in a voice-over.
“The warning signs were there,” he continued. “And this weekend, Kabul was taken without resistance, and the Afghan president fled. Still in the country are tens of thousands of Afghan interpreters marked for death by the Taliban, who were taking their meals in the presidential palace and settling in, celebrating their victory. As we drove through Kabul, it’s clear the Taliban’s hard-line Islamist rule is creeping back.”
MSNBC aired the inside of a beauty salon, which Engel noted the Taliban had already painted over and covered up.
“This was a popular beauty salon, styling women’s hair and makeup,” he said in the voiced-over report. “The Taliban bans salons, along with education for women and girls. So when the Taliban returned …”
The report cut to Engel outside of the Afghan salon stating, “Now they’ve painted over the beauty shop. People here know what the Taliban want, what the Taliban expect. We watched a man tear up the beauty parlor sign, in line with the Taliban’s wishes. A 20-year war, the longest in U.S. history, ended in disgrace. The U.S. leaving behind a country its citizens are too terrified to live in. The administration maintaining it was taken by surprise.”
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