John Kirby, Pentagon Press Secretary: “We were not aware of this visit, and we are obviously not encouraging VIP visits to a very tense, dangerous and dynamic situation at that airport and inside Kabul generally and the secretary, I think, would have appreciated the opportunity to have had a conversation before the visit took place.”
“They they got a chance to to talk to commanders, as I understand, and got a chance to talk to troops, but to say that there wasn’t a need to flex and to. to alter the day the day’s flow, including including, you know, the need to have protection for these members of Congress, that would you know, that that wouldn’t be that wouldn’t be a genuine thing for me to assert. I mean, there was there was certainly there was certainly a pull off of the kinds of missions we were trying to do to be able to accommodate that visit.”
“Certainly took time away from what we had been planning to do that day. And I don’t know, on the aircraft, they did fly out on a military aircraft. I honestly don’t know what the seat capacity was on that that aircraft, but they are, but they are out of the country now.”