Hellen Wendy Nyabuto could be seen in a video struggling to stay afloat after diving into the deep end of the pool last week.
The 23-year-old health worker, who lived in Toronto, had earlier responded to comments from viewers before resuming her swim.
Her body was spotted hours later at the bottom of the pool.According to her brother, she drowned in Collingwood, Ontario, the town where she worked.
Her father Nyabuto John Kiyondi, 56 told CNN from his home in Kenya: “I watched that video. I cried. It is terrible.”
“She communicated with me two days before she perished. She sounded very fine and I was very happy. She promised me a phone. I didn’t feel anything abnormal,” he said.
Nyabuto lived with her younger brother Enock in an apartment in Toronto and worked part-time as a health worker while studying nursing, her family said.
“She has been in Canada for about three years,” Enock, who is one of her five siblings said.
“All the financial responsibilities (of their family in Kenya) were on her,” he added.
‘Back to square one’
Wendy’s father, a smallholder farmer in Kisii, southwest Kenya, said he is “back to square one” now that his daughter is gone.
“She was assisting me financially to educate her siblings, particularly in terms of school fees and other expenses. I’m stuck now and back to square one. I’m wondering how her younger siblings will continue schooling,” Kiyondi told CNN.
All he now wants is his daughter’s body returned to Kenya.
“According to our tradition, one is supposed to be buried where he or she was born. I’ll not feel comfortable, psychologically, if my daughter is buried away from Kenya,” he said.
Repatriating Wendy’s body will take a toll on her family’s meager resources and Enock said they’ve started a GoFundMe campaignto raise 50,000 Canadian dollars (around $38,000) to help with her burial costs.
“The family is going through a rough time now. All we want is for her body to be transported back home for burial,” he said.
Sykkuno, one of Twitch’s top streamers known for his wholesome demeanor and for playing games like Among Us and GTA Online, left the Amazon-owned platform for the red pastures of YouTube Gaming this month. The move shocked the livestreaming space because Sykkuno was something of a household name on Twitch, boasting four million followers and 103 million total views since becoming a more consistent streamer in April 2019. However, the switch made sense for him because, as he revealed during his first-ever YouTube Gaming livestream, the Google-owned platform offered him a slightly better deal, and Twitch gave his name a rather unfortunate misspelling in an official email.
You might not have heard of him, but Sykkuno has been on YouTube for years. In fact, an old account of his can be traced back to April 2006, where he uploaded League of Legends and Minecraft content before moving to his current channel, which now has 2.75 million subscribers, in September 2011. While Sykkuno spent much of his early career on YouTube, he didn’t make a name for himself as a streamer until April 2019, when he began broadcasting regularly on the Twitch channel he’d created years before. In August 2020 he joined a collective of streamers called Offline TV, which includes other online personalities like DisguisedToast and LilyPichu, and although he left the group a couple of months later in November, he has continued to see rapid growth. Now, with four million Twitch followers, Sykkuno has left the Amazon-owned platform because he believes he’ll be “much, much happier” on YouTube.
After sharing the news of his move to YouTube on social media, Sykkuno went live on May 3 to discuss the reasoning behind the switch. It was a multifaceted explanation spurred by the negotiation of his Twitch contract. He said he went to the company asking for a better deal because Twitch’s initial offer was “just bad,” though he didn’t offer specifics. Twitch came back with what Sykkuno called a “very, very good offer,” which almost convinced him to stay since it was “pretty much dead even” with YouTube’s. He even said that if Twitch’s offer was “a little worse,” he would have remained on the platform.
And yet, he didn’t. Ultimately, YouTube did make the better offer, but that wasn’t the sole deciding factor. What solidified the move, aside from the increase in money YouTube was offering, was a peculiar email Sykkuno received from Twitch.
After sharing some stats about his Twitch performance—he was the 28th highest-earning streamer and the 45th most-followed streamer of all time—he then threw up an email the company had sent him on screen, which showed an apparent Twitch spokesperson spelling his name as “Sukkuno.” You can almost feel the embarrassment emanating from Sykkuno as he discussed the email. He was so shook that he messaged folks asking if it was a phishing scam because he couldn’t believe Twitch would do that to his name.
“Maybe I have too big an ego or something, but I was shocked,” Sykkuno said during the livestream. “I legit thought I was getting scammed. I was afraid to click this email because I was like, ‘Am I about to get a virus?’”
There was some levity, with Sykkuno joking a bit about the unfortunate misspelling, but he wrapped the segment up by expressing just how unappreciated Twitch made him feel. Notably, Sykkuno’s move comes during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, during which Twitch is supposed to be “celebrating and recognizing” the huge impact AAPI streamers have had, not just on Twitch but on gaming culture as a whole. Sykkuno’s an American of Chinese and Vietnamese descent, and misspelling his name, even if it isn’t his real name, seems pretty careless. It’s no wonder he felt unappreciated, especially as anti-Asian sentiment ramps up worldwide but particularly in the U.S. due to the ongoing pandemic.
Kotaku has reached out to Sykkuno and Twitch for comment.
It’s a bold move Twitch, let’s see if it pays off.Screenshot: TikTok / bradeazy / Kotaku
Twitch is reportedly considering major changes to the monetization practices that streamers are upset about because the potentially lopsided percentages work out to pad Twitch’s bottom line.
According to a Bloomberg report, Amazon, Twitch’s parent company, is considering multiple changes to its partner program in order to boost its profits. These changes include a new revenue split from subscriptions, a new tier system, and bolstering advertisements.
One of the monetization changes under consideration is a revenue cut from subscriptions for partnered streamers, Twitch’s most popular streamers. The proposed cut would decrease the revenue partnered streamers make from subscriptions from 70% to 50%.
Another proposal Twitch is considering is adding a tiers system for partnered streamers. According to Bloomberg, these tiers detail the criteria a streamer must meet to receive 50% or 70% of revenue from their subscription. In exchange to this proposal, anonymous sources told Bloomberg that Twitch might release streamers from their exclusivity in their contracts, which will allow them to stream on Twitch’s competitor sites like YouTube and Facebook Gaming potentially to recoup any cut revenue.
Twitch is also reportedly considering incentives for more advertising through “revenue-sharing arrangement,” that Bloomberg says will present “a more lucrative model for streamers.”
Twitch streamers haven’t taken kindly to the news of Twitch’s proposed changes to its partnership program. Twitch streamer PleasantlyTwstd told Kotaku that she isn’t surprised by Twitch exploring these changes. If changes hit the website this summer as they are now, PleasantlyTwstd said smaller streamers will have “little to no incentive” to grow their channels on the platform.
“Smaller streamers I think are going to have little to no incentive at this stage to really push for growth,” PleasantlyTwstd said. “It’s going to start feeling like to make a payout you have to hit more subs and the struggle at current is discoverability at all.”
PleasantlyTwstd said she would like to see streamers be brought into the conversation about Twitch’s monetization changes so they are advocated “in earnest.”
“Twitch has been kind of in a holding pattern where their priority is making the platform more money but until they actually try to work more closely with the people who make them money or freely create tools, they’re just going to keep throwing out ideas and ‘initiatives’ that fall flat,” she said.
Leftist streamer Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker took to Twitter saying the reason Twitch made these changes is due to the company not viewing itself as having competition within the livestreaming space, so there’s little reason to offer something that’s truly compelling for its users.
“[I] love twitch but it seems like they’re moving away from [content creators] to fix their profits,” Piker said in a tweet. “Nearly my entire revenue comes from subscribers who elect to give me $5 a month. Twitch doesn’t consider the 50/50 split it takes from smaller creators in that process profitable enough. That’s wild.”
“Subscriptions are more important to the life of every streamer than almost any other utility Twitch offers and to touch the split is to financially devastate and potentially remove thousands of full-time creators from your platform it immediately,” JERICHO said.
“What a joke. Makes it worse for everyone except Twitch themselves,” Jacksepticeye said.
“Twitch is INSANE if they think this will go over well,” Max “Gassy Mexican” Gonzalez said. “Like actually will shake the platform in the worst way possible.”
Kotaku reached out to Twitch for comment.
While these proposed changes are reported to hit the website as soon as this summer, anonymous sources told Bloomberg none of these changes have been finalized.
2022 is shaping up to be a rough year for content creators and sellers trying to make living through major tech platforms. Sellers on Amazon and Etsy are already facing increased fees and now new pay cuts may reportedly make their way to Twitch.
A new Bloomberg report citing people familiar with Twitch’s pay planning claims the company wants to incentivize streamers to run more ads in addition to considering reducing the portion of subscription fees allocated to performers. More specifically, the site’s top streamers would reportedly see their share of subscriptions dip down from 70% to 50%, according to Bloomberg. The company is also considering introducing multiple pay tiers with different criteria required to qualify for each. All told, these changes are intended to boost Twitch’s profitability, though it could come at the expense of their community’s most active users.
Twitch did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
On the flip side, the sources speaking with Bloomberg said the company may consider easing up on its exclusivity restrictions which would let creators stream on other platforms and potentially raking in some additional income there as well.
The tentative monetization considerations come amid a time of flux at Twitch. On one hand, the company’s riding high on a pandemic induced viewership surge. Some 24% of U.S. internet users between the ages of 16 to 64 said they began watching more live streams during the pandemic, according to GlobalWebIndex data viewed by Insider Intelligence. On the other hand though, even with that uptick in eyeballs, Twitch is simultaneously reeling from what Bloomberg calls a mass “exodus” of employees disappointed in the company’s direction. Some 300 employees reportedly left Twitch last year, with another 60 leaving in the first three months of 2022. Some top creators have left too. In the past year both DrLupo and TimTheTatman, two prominent streamers, left the site for rival YouTube.
Twitch streamers aren’t the only ones bracing for a financial squeeze from their Big Tech bosses.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced it would add a 5% “fuel and inflation surcharge” to third party sellers who use the company’s fulfillment centers as a way to offset increased costs. In a notice to sellers viewed by the Associated Press, Amazon said increased hourly wages, construction costs, and new hires during the pandemic were all to blame for the increased price hikes. Still, Amazon wasn’t exactly struggling as a company during the pandemic, though. In the first quarter of 2021, the company posted a record $108.5 billion in revenue which comes out to nearly triple its revenue from the same time the previous year.
Over at Etsy sellers went on strike and issued a digital boycott over what they viewed as exorbitant increases to seller fees. Etsy recently tried to increase seller transaction fees by 30% which would in effect raise the seller fee from 5% to 6.5%
SINGAPORE—China is planning new curbs on the country’s $30 billion live-streaming industry, according to people familiar with the matter, renewing a regulatory campaign aimed at reining in technology companies and exerting greater influence over the content consumed by its young people.
Chinese authorities are drafting new regulations to cap internet users’ daily monetary spending on digital tipping, said people familiar with the situation. Officials are also planning to set a daily limit on how much live-streamers can receive from fans and are considering imposing tighter censorship over content, some of the people said.
An anonymous hacker leaked payroll information for every streamer on Twitch yesterday, and predictably, the revealed incomes have become an inescapable topic of conversation for streamers in their Twitch chats and on social media. The range of reactions to the leak has been vast, with some streamers making light of the matter, and others seeing it as an opportunity to spotlight longstanding issues with the livestreaming platform.
Yesterday, Twitch confirmed that “a breach had taken place.” While the company investigated the hack, prominent streamers took to Twitter to react.
Jack Manifold (JackManifoldTV), along with multiple other high-profile streamers, joked about the leak: “It is completely unfair that I am that far down the list, and I will be doing everything in my power to pump up that number going forward; for you guys!” Meanwhile, some streamers referred to each other by their ranked placement on the leaked list. Ludwig Anders Ahgren (ludwig), one of the biggest earners on the platform, jokingly replied to another streamer with “don’t speak unless spoken to, #486.” Several Twitch creators even updated their Twitter handles to incorporate their ranking among Twitch earners.
Other streamers such as Charles White Jr. (moistcr1tikal) expressed surprise at the public reaction to the disclosed figures, citing the fact that it was possible to calculate a streamer’s ballpark income from a channel’s subscriber count.
Super weird to see people freak out about twitch income and act like it was some big secret when sub count is publicly available. Take that number and multiple by 2.5 or 3.5 and you’re there. I made a whole video on it; it’s not the krabby patty formula, it’s basic shit
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Hasan Piker (HasanAbi), one of the platform’s biggest earners who recently generated strong public reactions for buying a house, jokingly anticipated being at the center of another firestorm, tweeting: “just woke up to some fun news. cant wait for ppl to be mad at me about my publicly available sub count again.”
Other streamers such as Smash Bros. commentator Phil Visu (EEvisu) ribbed more successful streamers for not being more generous with their Twitch earnings.
Twitch leak just made me realize my millionaire friends are cheap, how we hit Wendy’s and you ain’t picking up the tab Mr. 100k a month? Smh why TF we even at Wendy’s?!
However, other reactions were more serious.
Creators such as variety streamer and host Brandon Stennis (iamBrandon) were disappointed at how Twitch handled the leaks, citing a lack of communication with streamers who were affected.
With a big leak breach like Twitch has, why didn’t they email this information to people and only talked about it on Twitter? I mean its a bit of a huge deal if information like this is out. Not everyone is on Twitter.
Popular streamer Anthony DiMarco (ChilledChaos) was less than impressed with some people’s reactions to the largest doxxing that the Twitch community has ever experienced. Apparently, several streamers have had problems with chat participants behaving badly about the leaks.
Bro…if you make shitty Twitch Leak jokes and get banned by my friends, don’t come to my chat complaining. Because you are also going to get banned. “How does it feel to be XYZ compared to someone else”?
Streamer group Black Girl Gamers, meanwhile, saw the leaks as an opportunity to highlight the opportunity disparities for marginalized content creators on the platform.
The leak is proof of what we’ve been saying all along regarding the lack of diversity at the top, that’s all.
And Tanya DePass (cypheroftyr), director of the nonprofit organization I Need Diverse Games, was disappointed that the leaks gave some audience members ammunition with which to devalue the labor and costs of content creation.
Watching people spin out over the Twitch earnings numbers, especially the pearl clutching over [Critical Role] & adding the [Kickstarter] funds; reveal how little some folks know about how much content costs to create.
The 73rd Emmy Awards returned Sunday night to celebrate the best in television. Actor and comedian Cedric the Entertainer hosted the ceremony in downtown Los Angeles, making him only the second solo Black host in the event’s history.
“Ted Lasso” went into the night with the most nominations, 13, and took home four, including wins for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series and outstanding comedy series. “The Crown” ended up with the most wins, racking up seven Emmys.
Debbie Allen, the multi-talented actress, singer, dancer, choreographer and director, received the 2021 Governor’s Award. RuPaul also made history by winning the most Emmys ever by a person of color.
The annual event had a limited in-person audience made up of nominees and their guests. It’s a shift from last year’s show, which was partially virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic. This year, all attendees were asked to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19, the Television Academy said.
As marginalized creators boycott Twitch for a day, well-off white guys continue to leave for lucrative deals with its chief competitor, YouTube. Earlier this week, it was Ben “DrLupo” Lupo. Today, as the #ADayOffTwitch campaign is in full swing, it’s Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar, who announced on Twitter that he’ll be streaming exclusively on YouTube Gaming.
Betar, who has 7 million followers on Twitch, is one of the streaming platform’s biggest stars. Last August, he made waves for being exceptionally dogshit at Fall Guys, the pastel-colored platformer royale. Despite repeated attempts, it took him eight days to win a match. At the height of the stream in which he finally nabbed a crown, more than 250,000 viewers tuned in concurrently.
“It’s been great to see all that TimTheTatman has achieved since being partnered in 2012 on Twitch, whether it was marrying the love of his life and welcoming an heir to the Tatman throne, or the trials and tribulations of achieving his first Fall Guys crown. It’s been a pleasure being part of Tim’s community, and we are proud of everything he has done for gaming,” a Twitch spokesperson told Kotaku in a statement.
Betar currently has 3.83 million subscribers on YouTube. Lupo, who first became famous for streaming Fortnite, will forgo his 4.5 million Twitch followers. He currently has just under 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube.
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These guys are jumping from Twitch to YouTube because of reasons as old as capitalism: time and money.
Lupo told The Washington Post this week that, as a result of his deal with YouTube, he’s now “secure for life.” He also said the deal will give him more flexibility to spend time with his family. Betar, meanwhile, didn’t explicitly comment on specific financials, but noted in an interview with Insider that streaming on YouTube will allow him, like Lupo, to spend more time with family.
Now, this isn’t to point the finger at Betar, Lupo, or anyone else who’s leapt—or will leap—at the chance to work fewer hours for more money. Streaming, despite any on-paper appearances, isn’t an easy job. You’re not just “playing games for fun.” You’re on camera eight, nine, twelve hours a day. You’re constantly “on.” If you take a couple hours off, your numbers take a hit, which means your paycheck does, too. In some cases, as with the popular oddball streamer CodeMiko, you’re putting on somewhat of an act. The toll all this pressure enacts on the mental health of creators big and small is nothing to sneeze at. So you really can’t blame these guys on an individual level.
But it’s hard not to point a finger at the institutional forces at play. This week, two white men with prominent followings on a major platform left that platform for another major platform, which presumably has greener pastures.
Meanwhile, Twitch continues to drop the ball when it comes to protecting its queer streamers and streamers of color.
Recently, hate raids—coordinated harassment campaigns in which users flood a live stream en masse, typically hurling slurs, insults, and derogatory comments—have proliferated. Since the bar for making a new Twitch account is lower than the basement, users can easily return to any stream they’ve been banned from. On top of all of this, Twitch takes what some streamers say is an unfair cut of subscription revenue, splitting it right down the middle. (Streamers told Kotaku a 70/30 split would be more reasonable.)
As The Washington Post detailed in an extensive report last month, these hate raids, most of which are organized in clandestine Discord servers, are only getting worse. So, creators have since rallied, and have spent today off the platform—no streaming, no viewing, no logging into chat—in an effort to urge Twitch to offer better protection tools.
But tomorrow they’ll come back. They’ll have to. That’s where the paycheck is.
Right now, it’s unclear what impact #ADayOffTwitch will have on Twitch’s bottom line, or if it’ll spur the company into action. Twitch observer Zach Bussey noted on Twitter that, while numbers are preliminary, today’s seen about 5,000 fewer streamers and 500,000 fewer viewers than usual—not exactly earth-shaking. Still, the campaign is no doubt driving the conversation. As Kotaku traitor Nathan Grayson pointed out, #ADayOffTwitch is trending on Twitter with more than 105,000 tweets—a whopping tenfold over YouTube Gaming, which is trending but is doing so with markedly less steam. It’s impossible to miss this moment.
I guess—and I’m sincerely sorry it’s taken me so long to get to the goddamned point—I’m just wondering why Betar couldn’t have waited one more day.
Next week, streamers plan to step away from Twitch for a day in an effort to combat how the platform continually lets it marginalized creators down.
Earlier this month, streamers rallied around the #TwitchDoBetter hashtag on social media, where reports of awful user experiences on the platform proliferated. Many of the posts revolved around how Twitch has offered tepid protections against sustained harassment. In particular, hate raids—in which bad-faith viewers use the platform’s “raid” feature to flood a channel en masse with slurs and vile language—are not only possible, but becoming a daily nightmare for folks using the livestreaming service. And since it’s nearly effortless to create an account on Twitch, trolls are able to sign up for a bunch of accounts. It’s absurdly easy to circumvent any bans, at least until measures like account verification via phone numbers are implemented.
As The Washington Post reported, Twitch streamers say the issue has only exacerbated in the past few months, possibly the result of the platform expanding its tag list to include 350 tags classified by “gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ability, mental health, and more.” On one hand, this allows creators to more easily find a community. On the other, it’s made it far easier for racist trolls to find—and harass—creators.
Plus, Twitch takes a solid percentage of subscription revenue, with half going to streamers and half going to the platform (which was purchased for nearly $1 billion by Amazon in 2014). Streamers told Kotaku the split should tip more toward content creators, somewhere closer to a 70/30 breakdown. If streamers have to continuously put up with bullshit, you’d figure they’d at least get a fair chunk of the pie, yeah?
Read More:Streamers Are Rallying Behind ‘Twitch Do Better’
“It’s so heartbreaking to see all the stories of marginalized people on the platform being attacked for something outside of their control like their skin color, gender identity, sexual preference, or otherwise,” the streamer Rek It, Raven!, who originated the hashtag, told Kotaku via email at the time of the #TwitchDoBetter campaign. “We shouldn’t have to feel fear to press ‘go live.’”
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The #ADayOffTwitch campaign—organized by Raven alongside streamers LuciaEverblack and ShineyPen—is scheduled for September 1. Essentially, it’ll be a 24-hour-long total blackout: no streaming, no watching streams, no logging on to chat. Viewers are encouraged to participate, as well.
Following the #TwitchDoBetter campaign, Twitch quickly rolled out improved chat filters, per The Verge. And last week, the company announced it would implement detection for channel-level ban evasion, but did not offer a timeline for that feature’s rollout. The hope is that a day with reduced engagement on a wide scale will force the company to take note—and, ideally, to take further action.
President Biden took questions from reporters Friday for the first time since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, outside a Wednesday interview with ABC News, pledging that the U.S. will get any American home who wants to come home. The president’s address comes as tens of thousands of American citizens, legal residents and their families and vulnerable Afghans struggle to flee the country.
The president started out his speech by touting what the U.S. has done so far — evacuating 18,000 people in recent weeks and 5,700 people in the last 24 hours. Mr. Biden said the U.S will do “everything, everything” it can to evacuate as many Afghans who have aided the U.S. as possible. The Pentagon has said it can fly 5,000 to 9,000 people per day out of Kabul, but that’s dependent on multiple factors.
“But let me be clear. Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home,” Mr. Biden told reporters in the White House East Room.
Special Report: Biden speaks on Afghan withdr…
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Still, CBS News and other outlets have reported some Americans are struggling to reach the airport, and the U.S. is not currently providing transportation or guaranteeing safe passage to the airport. During his speech, Mr. Biden said the U.S. has “no indication” Americans are unable to get to the airport, noting the U.S. has an “agreement” with the Taliban to let Americans through. But moments later, in a briefing with House lawmakers, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Taliban have beaten Americans in Kabul and called that “unacceptable,” CBS News learned.
“It’s a volatile situation on the ground,” the White House said in response to the seeming contradiction. “We are working to facilitate safe passage for American citizens and SIV applicants and their families to the airport and onto planes. There are going to be reports of challenges and chaos at the airport. Secretary Austin referred to that in the Hill briefing today. But we are going to get Americans into HKIA and on planes.”
In a briefing Friday afternoon, when Pentagon press secretary John Kirby was asked about Americans being beaten by the Taliban, he said he was aware of the report.
“We’ve communicated to the Taliban that that is absolutely unacceptable and we want free passage through these checkpoints for documented Americans,” Kirby said, adding that “by and large, that’s happening.”
State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the U.S. has received “only a small number of reports from American citizens that their access has been impeded in some way” or faced “hardship or resistance,” but added the State Department is taking that seriously.
The president did not directly answer whether the U.S. will send troops to help Americans get to the airport in Kabul. Even as the president pledged to get Americans out, he did not explicitly commit to extending the mission in Afghanistan beyond August 31, saying he thinks the U.S. can complete the mission by then, “but we’re going to make that judgment as we go.”
“There’ll be plenty of time to criticize and second guess when this operation is over,” Mr. Biden said, adding now is not the time.
The president’s speech was not well received by all. Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, urged the Biden administration to evacuate the most vulnerable Afghans more quickly.
“Vulnerable Afghans at risk were looking for reassurance from President Biden. They didn’t get it,” O’Brien said. “They want to know that they’ll be processed for departure regardless of their eligibility for narrow and complicated visa programs. They want to know that they’ll be able to reach the airport in safety. They want to know that the US will keep running evacuations until they and their family have had a chance to flee from harm’s way. President Biden could have used his speech to reassure them, but he didn’t.”
On Friday, the U.S. military was forced to pause its evacuation flights out of Kabul because the processing facility in Qatar reached its capacity. The U.S. hopes to soon open a new flight option in Bahrain. Mr. Biden acknowledged the pause of “a few hours,” attributing it to ensuring that “we can process the arriving evacuees at the transit points.”
“Our commander in Kabul has already given the order for outbound flights to resume,” he added.
The State Department and Pentagon have not disclosed how many Americans remained in Afghanistan as the Taliban assumed control of the country, but earlier this week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki estimated there were around 11,000 self-identified Americans.
In Doha, Qatar, where evacuees are being processed, sources described the situation at the facility as hot, increasingly tense, and a “developing humanitarian crisis.”
During an interview earlier this week with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, the president defended his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and suggested that the chaos over the past week was inevitable.
“No, I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that, we’re gonna go back in hindsight and look — but the idea that somehow there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens,” the president told Stephanopoulos.
He also said during the interview that U.S. troops might remain in Afghanistan longer than August 31 if necessary to get Americans out of the country but emphasized that the goal is to do so by the end of August 31.
The Pentagon said this week it’s working with the Taliban to ensure safe passage of Americans to the airport, admitting the military would not be able to go out and extract large numbers of people unable to get to the airport themselves or who are afraid to do so.
“I don’t have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Wednesday.
The president had been scheduled to leave for his home in Wilmington, Delaware, Friday afternoon following his speech, but the White House announced midday his schedule had changed, and instead said that he would remain in Washington, D.C., Friday night.
— CBS News’ Weijia Jiang, Christina Ruffini and Zachary Hudak contributed reporting.