Transcripts for MSNBC Alex Witt Reports 20220326 16:43:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
citizens who were already at the airport should leave immediately. us officials have been saying that this is, potentially, the most dangerous part of the ongoing evacuation process and, of course, that is unsurprising given the events on thursday. we ve also heard that italy is also winding up its operations today in terms of those evacuation flights and last night france is well conducted its last air left in one of the reasons why they ve said they stopped yesterday was because of the deteriorating security situation at the airport. now, we ve been hearing that they are stricter taliban checkpoints around the airport facility but, of course, that is the main concern now, as foreign forces wrap up their operations before that deadline, of course, on the 31st of august. itnot also worth mentioning that the taliban have been saying that they already control three main parts of the airport on the military side and
we had a lot of warnings yesterday that clearly everyone from the white house to the secretary of state was getting some very loud red flashing lights something was afoot and people were going to try to attack around that airport facility and they were telling people not to come there. and we started the draw down of u.s. forces in the area yesterday. there was about 400 that left i believe over the last 24 hours. but roughly around that number. i think that the thing to bear in mind with that, that was in order to meet the deadline, right? so, you have to get everyone out by august 31st. that was the deadline that president biden imposed on this mission and wanted to stick to it. in order to do that, you had to start back timing to bring out u.s. military and it just raises
that is escalating day by bay getting people out of the country. u.s. citizens, afghans that worked alongside the u.s. and other afghans. is the nation, jonathan, more secure right now than it was before president biden announced this full withdrawal from afghanistan? i m not going to make an assessment yet as this is evolving in real-time, the situation in afghanistan. we are extremely focussed right now on one mission, on securing the airport facility. we ve got several thousand troops now in place to make that facility as hard as it possibly can be to outsiders who may be trying to target it and flowing our aircraft into that facility to evacuate people in need in afghanistan. that is job one, two and three. and i will leave it to others for an overall assessment because we are very focussed on the day-to-day. the president acknowledged that u.s. troops could remain in afghanistan if americans still