White House says Biden doesn’t want Kabul terrorists ‘to live on the earth anymore’

During a White House briefing on Friday, Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question to clarify President Biden’s comments on Thursday, when he said, “We will hunt you down and make you pay,” referring to the people behind the bombing in the airport in Kabul. Psaki responded that Biden made clear that “he does not want them to live on the earth anymore.”

Video Transcript

- Thank you, Jen. When the president says, we will hunt you down and make you pay, what does that look like? Is he going to order a mission to kill the people responsible? Or would he be satisfied if they are captured and brought to trial?

JEN PSAKI: I think he made clear yesterday that he does not want them to live on the Earth anymore.

- And as the US is coordinating with the Taliban about security for the next couple days, some of the people running security for the Taliban in Kabul are terrorists with millions of dollars worth of bounties on their heads. Are we going to try to bring those known terrorists to justice before we leave the country?

JEN PSAKI: Peter, I think our focus right now is on doing everything we can to get the remaining American citizens who want to depart out of the country, to get our Afghan partners out of the country. As I just said in response to Phil's question, this is not a preferred relationship or a situation that we would have designed if we had started from scratch. I think that's very clear. But right now, we need to continue to coordinate. That's our focus for the next couple of days.