Did Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen say Joe Biden did a ‘tremendous job' on Afghanistan withdrawal?

Three years after the Taliban retook Kabul, marking a victory for the group in the Afghanistan War, Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown said Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., characterized the American withdrawal as a "tremendous job."

"It’s been three years since the fall of Kabul," Brown said in an Aug. 15 X post. "@RosenForNevada might be the only person around who said Biden-Harris did a ‘tremendous job’ on the withdrawal. 13 Americans were killed and hundreds were left behind. That is called a tremendous failure, Jacky."

Brown, a former U.S. Army captain seeking to unseat the first-term senator, has campaigned frequently on his background as an Afghanistan War veteran. The withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 also marked a significant turning point for Democrats, including Democratic President Joe Biden, whose approval rating plummeted in the immediate aftermath and never fully recovered.

We asked Brown for evidence Rosen said Biden did a "tremendous job" on the withdrawal. Campaign spokesperson Kristy Wilkinson pointed us to an Oct. 2, 2021, Rosen appearance on KLAS-TV’s "Politics Now."

But Brown twists what Rosen meant when she said the State Department did a "tremendous job" getting Americans out of Afghanistan. He also omits what Rosen said during and after the evacuation.

The United States under Republican then-President Donald Trump and the Taliban signed a peace agreement Feb. 29, 2020, in Doha, Qatar — commonly known as the Doha accords or Doha agreement — which ended fighting between the Taliban and the U.S. and set a scaled deadline for NATO troop withdrawal. All NATO forces were to be out of the country by May 1, 2021.

Biden said April 2021 that the remaining 2,500 U.S. service members would not be out of the country by that deadline, so he set a date of Sept. 11, 2021. He revised that date in July, setting Aug. 31, 2021 as a final withdrawal deadline.

The Taliban advanced quickly over summer 2021, retaking the capital of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s military offered little resistance, with Ghani fleeing the country the same day. Thousands rushed Kabul’s international airport the next day looking for a safe exit from the country.

The Afghan government’s rapid breakdown gave ISIS an opening to launch a suicide bomb attack at Kabul’s airport Aug. 26, 2021, that killed 13 American service members and 170 Afghan civilians. 

The U.S. completed its military withdrawal Aug. 30, 2021.

Rosen campaign spokesperson Johanna Warshaw said Rosen’s "tremendous job" comment referred to officials working quickly to abide by the Aug. 31, 2021, deadline to get Americans out of the country quickly as the Taliban took over. 

It is also far from Rosen’s only comment on the withdrawal.

Here’s how her response unfolded:

Rosen, in an Aug. 16, 2021, statement, questioned the Biden administration’s lack of foresight into the Afghan government’s deterioration. 

"When we are sure Americans and our Afghan partners are safe, Congress and the administration must work together to assess why we did not anticipate that the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces would prove so ineffective in holding off the Taliban and why our plans to safely evacuate embassy personnel, Afghan translators and others did not account for the rapid Taliban takeover of Kabul," Rosen said. "For now, though, we must focus on the mission at hand and limit further loss of life."

Rosen, during a Sept. 28, 2021, Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and then-Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley she was frustrated with the withdrawal. 

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"You know, I just want to speak about how, as Americans, we are really frustrated, all of us, about the way we withdrew from Afghanistan, but we nonetheless understand the difficult position that you and our men and women in uniform on the ground were—the position you were in last month," Rosen said. "So, what the American people fail to understand, however – and what I too have difficulty accepting – is the idea that the circumstances we found ourselves in were inevitable."

Rosen, who is on the Senate Armed Services Committee, sat for the KLAS-TV interview a few days after the hearing. She said the following in response to a reporter’s question about Austin’s and Milley’s answers about the failures during the evacuation (we bolded the relevant portion):

"Let’s be clear that the Doha agreement was made in the spring of 2020 by President Trump. And so, I believe, as was testified to, alluded to today by the generals and of course the defense secretary, that American lives, American men and women in uniform and others, may have been in harm’s way had we extended past the Aug. 31, (2021) deadline.

"Therefore, we quickly had to marshal our resources to do that massive evacuation. Like I said, over 124,000 individuals. That is still ongoing for anyone who wants to be evacuated to safety. Our office, our office is — all of the Senate offices, I would imagine, across the country — working with Department of State and others, working to ensure that safe passage for anyone remains.

"And so, I think that it had to happen quickly. They did a tremendous job doing that. There are a lot of lessons to be learned and a lot of takeaways. This is just the first step in the hearing to get to the bottom of that."

Rosen rebuffed the Biden administration’s withdrawal March 28, 2023, breaking with her party to support an amendment from Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., to establish a joint committee investigating the Afghanistan withdrawal. This amendment, which was attached to a bill repealing authorization for the presidential use of military force against Iraq, failed by a 33-62 vote. Rosen was the lone Democratic vote in favor.

Brown said Rosen said the Biden administration did a "tremendous job" on the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Rosen did make comments commending the effort to pull U.S. personnel from Afghanistan by the intended deadline amid a rapidly deteriorating political and military situation. However, she was not complimenting the Biden administration’s overall plan for withdrawal. Her post-withdrawal actions ranged from skeptical to critical. She was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans to form a committee investigating the Biden administration’s withdrawal strategy.

We rate the claim Mostly False.