afghanistan. the secretary of said that's not completely true. he said we have no troops in syria. the pentagon said we have 900. there's been so many instances, especially considering when he said there were no problems with americans getting to the airport and we've seen image after image of people having trouble getting in, the pentagon had to send a helicopter to get americans out. howie: when your words are contradicted by the pictures everybody sees it's not a good situation. a washington post columnist said many white house officials are shell shocked by what's happening, the magnitude of the failure. what's your sense? >> i think that might be true of some people of the press, people that ran the president's campaign, who are used to talking about hopes and dreams for building the country back better but the people who are making decisions i think that these are people who have been around the block. i mean, blinken was -- he served in two administrations over 20 years, senior foreign policy