NBC’s Mitchell: ‘We’re Relying on the Taliban’ for Counterterror, Them Taking out ISIS-K Leader ‘Completely Undermines’ Biden’s Line

On Tuesday’s edition of NBC’s “Hallie Jackson Reports,” NBC News Chief Washington Correspondent and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell reacted to the announcement by U.S. officials that the Taliban killed the mastermind of the ISIS-K suicide bombing at the Kabul airport in 2021 by stating that the incident “completely undermines” claims by the Biden administration that the U.S. can conduct over-the-horizon counterterrorism in the country and shows that “We’re relying on the Taliban” for counterterrorism.

Mitchell said, “Hallie, this only reinforces the fact that the U.S. is not in Afghanistan and that they are — that their counterterror strategy now depends on one bad group killing another bad group. We’re relying on the Taliban, these acknowledged terrorist leaders of Afghanistan who have taken over the government killing a rival faction, the ISIS faction.”

Host Hallie Jackson then asked, “What does this say, Andrea — back when the U.S. pulled out, withdrew from Afghanistan, there was some discussion that the capabilities that we had in the region would not be diminished because of the possibility, the ability to do…over-the-horizon kinds of things. How does this fit into that bigger picture of what the U.S.’s capabilities are in the region here?”

Mitchell responded, “Well, I think it completely undermines that claim…of we’re not going to lose the intelligence, we’re not going to lose the ability to do over-the-horizon hits. We didn’t do this, they say. The Taliban did.”

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