Joe Biden will leave Washington DC on Saturday for his holiday home in Delaware – exiting the White House amid the biggest crisis of his presidency.
The president will have spent only four days in the last 15 in the White House, with the rest of the time at Camp David or in Delaware.
His vice president, Kamala Harris, left DC on Friday night for an Asia tour. She will be absent from Washington for a week, visiting Singapore, Vietnam and then California. Her office insisted she will continue to work on the Afghan crisis while she is in Asia.
Biden also has access to secure command and control centers at all locations he travels.
Joe Biden is seen with Kamala Harris on Friday afternoon, addressing the nation before she flew to Singapore. On Saturday he will depart for Wilmington, Delaware
Evacuees are seen arriving in an undisclosed Middle Eastern air base on Friday, having been flown on U.S. Air Force planes out of Kabul
A U.S. soldier looks on as a smiling Afghan man, carrying a child, leaves Kabul on Wednesday
The White House announced that Biden would leave for Wilmington around midday on Saturday, following a meeting with his national security team to get updated on the situation. Harris will join remotely.
But the president’s departure from DC for the weekend will be seized on by his critics, who have hammered Biden for the debacle in the war-torn country.
On Friday, evacuation flights were temporarily suspended when the Qatar air base which has, until now, been receiving the evacuees reached capacity.
One man at Al Udeid air base in Doha told CBS News that about 2,000 Afghans and U.S citizens were crowded into the building on Friday.
He said it was hot, and many people were waiting hours for food, but that he and the others who had made it that far were grateful to the U.S., and relieved to be out of Kabul.
Footage shared on social media showed crowded conditions at Al Udeid air base in Qatar
One man told CBS News that he thought there were 2,000 people sheltering in the air base
Commanders were forced to scramble to find an alternative, and on Friday hasty preparations were being made at Ramstein air base in Germany and Isa air base in Bahrain.
Isa has capacity to temporarily shelter up to 1,000 people, and the Bahraini authorities gave the U.S. permission to keep people there for onward processing for up to 14 days.
Other nations in the Persian Gulf are in discussion to host evacuees, including Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates where there are major USAF bases, according to Air Force Magazine.
Qatar was the ‘first way station’ for the evacuation, and as such it hit capacity quickly, said John Kirby, Pentagon spokesman, on Friday.
‘We are grateful other countries have already agreed to accept additional numbers, and we’re working out the details of that with them right now,’ Kirby said.
‘From a military perspective, we are in need of additional capacity and we’re grateful that other countries are going to be helping us out with that capacity.’
Cots were being laid out inside Ramstein air force base in Germany, as hasty preparations were made for an influx of Afghan and American evacuees
Temporary housing was being erected on the U.S. base in Germany in anticipation of the new arrivals from Kabul
Ramstein’s Twitter account showed images of the U.S. troops working hard to ready the facility for the incoming flights
In the 24 hours leading up to Friday’s pause, a total of 16 C-17s and one C-130 departed Hamid Karzai International Airport as part of the U.S. evacuation.
The planes were carrying a total of 6,000 evacuees – 5,000 of whom were Afghans and the remainder American.
U.S. Air Force crews adjusted their operations to fly even more passengers, and are now regularly carrying 400 people as opposed to a previous limit of just over 300 for humanitarian operations, said Brig. Gen. Daniel A. DeVoe, commander of Air Mobility Command’s 618th Air Operations Center.
Biden has given the order to fill the planes, after embarrassing images emerged earlier this week showing cavernous cargo planes with only a handful of people inside.
Furthermore, after Britain and France sent special forces into Kabul to extract their citizens – leading to questions why the U.S. was not doing the same – three U.S. CH-47 helicopters picked up 169 Americans a few hundred yards outside the Kabul airport. The Americans had been told to wait in a building for extraction.
A shocking image shows a near-empty evacuation flight taking the wife of an ex-Royal Marine commando out of Kabul as the Taliban block thousands of Afghans from entering the capital’s airport. Paul ‘Pen’ Farthing said on Twitter: ‘Kaisa is on her way home! BUT this aircraft is empty… scandalous as thousands wait outside #Kabul airport being crushed as they cannot get in. Sadly people will be left behind when this mission is over as we CANNOT get it right’
Footage shared on social media, which was unverified, showed crowds running outside what was believed to be Kabul airport
Biden said on Friday that he believed Americans were able to access Kabul airport unhindered, but social media footage like this suggested otherwise
Pandemonium unfolded at Kabul airport on Monday as thousands of people ran on to the runway in a desperate attempt to escape Taliban rule, fearing bloody reprisals by the Islamists
Thousands of Afghanis had raced on to the tarmac at Kabul airport before some jumped on the side of a US C-17 jet which was flying hundreds of diplomatic staff and visa holders out of the country
The White House is also struggling to control the damage from a series of conflicting statements on Friday – which saw Biden address the nation from the East Room and then, within 45 minutes, his Defense Secretary and Pentagon spokesman both say the president was incorrect.
In a remarkable sequence of events, Biden claimed that there were no reports of Americans having problems accessing Kabul airport, and then said al-Qaeda had been driven out of Afghanistan.
Immediately after, Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, said that reports of Americans being beaten by the Taliban were ‘unacceptable’.
Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, then said that it was known al-Qaeda retained a presence in Afghanistan.
Video on social media showed chaotic scenes at Kabul airport, for the fifth day since Kabul fell to the Taliban.
Biden added on Friday that 13,000 people had been flown out of Afghanistan on U.S. military aircraft since Saturday, and thousands more had been evacuated on private charter flights.