Biden said in July Taliban 'overrunning everything' was 'highly unlikely'

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US deploying troops to Afghanistan to help evacuate Americans

Correspondent Lucas Tomlinson has the details from the Pentagon on 'Your World'

President Biden last month dismissed the possibility that the Taliban would swarm through Afghanistan, which just weeks later they are in the process of doing. 

"So the question now is, where do they go from here?" Biden said during a July 8 press conference. "The jury is still out.  But the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.

Thursday, Afghanistan’s third-largest city, Herat, located on the border with Iran, fell to the Taliban. The Taliban also claimed to have seized Kandahar City, the country’s second-largest and the Taliban’s spiritual home.

With no U.S. military forces on the ground and very few assets in the skies, the Pentagon cannot confirm Kandahar has fallen, but officials acknowledge, "It doesn’t look good." 

The Washington Post’s resident fact-checker dinged Biden on Thursday for claiming the Taliban takeover was "highly unlikely." 

"This didn't age well," Glenn Kessler tweeted Thursday along with a quote from Biden in July downplaying the idea that the Taliban would regain control of the war-torn country. 
 

U.S officials Thursday confirmed the military is in the process of evacuating personnel from the U.S. embassy in Kabul as reports circulate that the Taliban is rapidly expanding its control of the country and possibly entering Kabul.

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U.S. military officers at the Pentagon tell Fox News the images of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan are "demoralizing."

"This is all melting down in a short period of time," one U.S. military officer said. 

Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report