out who served side by side with us and fought with us and that the president made a commitment to get them out and said there was a home in america for them. i will tell you there are still u.s. passport holders, american citizens who are out there in kabul. i have been in touch with them and they still can t get to the airport, so there s a balance. what the military will do is do what it takes to do both of those. i also think that general mackenzie, who i have a great deal of respect for, i served with in afghanistan, he has an incredible amount of air power available to him. i know that s not going to do much for bb ieds and suicide bombers, but i do think if there needs to be a bit of a covering force to get these folks out, if the president is serious about getting american citizens out and about getting afghan siv holders and their families out, we may have to stay longer or we may have to increase the flow of afghan afghan citizens into the airport. that just hasn t been hap
air base outside of u.s. borders. this makes the mission more worth it, it makes the mission more imperative, more crucial and even more wind to their backs. officials expecting more to land tonight despite the chaos in kabul? reporter: not just that. they said what s going on right now today is the busiest day that they ve seen or will be seeing since the beginning of the crisis. there s about 6,000 afghan evacuees right now at ramstein air base. they said the occupancy of this enormous air base, the whole community of americans, this is the largest community of americans outside u.s. borders anywhere in the world, they said this community has basically tripled or quadrupled in size in just the last couple of weeks since this crisis started and have come together, ramped up and built up as much capacity as they can.
diplomatic staff in kabul. whether they are able to turn a page, whether they have changed in their hearts is a major open question. it is such an open question, and many millions of afghans do not believe that they have changed, that they are rushing to the airport to try to get out in addition to those who are just trying to get out because it is a poor country and they see a possibility to change their lives. just after midnight in dohar, qatar, where richard engel has flown to safety. richard, i have been told you need to go fly a report and we have lost our time with you for now, but thank you. it is terrific to see you. thanks for lending your expertise. let s bring in correspondent mike memoli to talk about the process likely underway at the biden white house today and this evening. mike, first off, do you have any intel about why the delay? we were supposed to see the president coming up on 11 minutes ago. reporter: well, brian, as we ve become very familiar with