said about the number and why it is hard to give a more precise figure. the number is about 100, and it s very hard to give a realtime number at any given moment, because it s very fluid by which i mean this. some people and we re in direct contact with this group. some for understandable reasons are changing their mind from day today about whether or not they want to leave. now, because of the fluidity of that situation, it means that the state department is still very much engaged with those americans on the ground. as they make these decisions about if they are going to leave, and when they are going to leave if they choose to do so. now, when it comes to legal permanent residents of the united states, that s green card holders, the secretary said the number of those folks left in afghanistan is likely in the thousands. he wasn t definitive about that
appalled by the disastrous withdrawal process itself. for us, today, however, i would like to focus more on the moral stain of leaving people behind and understand what we can do to make sure that we are not leaving people behind. i understand we are down to a small number of americans, and it s hard to know exactly how many are left behind, but in terms of legal permanent residence, is your priority just as high to get them out as it is to get out citizens, or is there a different level of commitment for a legal permanent residence to return to the united states relative to a citizen? senator, our number one priority is american citizens and that long as been the case. in this situation in afghanistan, in this emergency evacuation in afghanistan, we did everything we could, as well, to make sure that legal permanent residence, green card holders, and we don t know at
number one message still is get the vaccine. i mean, those people who aren t vaccinated as you know 11 times more likely to die from covid. but they are also a risk to themselves, to infect others, and particularly, you know, children. and i think that s a real problem. but, on the boosters, i think that the biden administration tried to get ahead of it and i think that that s why people are saying wait a second, you were making maybe a political statement when you should have been making a scientific statement. bret: all right. quickly, the politics of today and this hearing with secretary of state blinken, guy? well, i think that it was a much more serious hearing. more bipartisan in nature. the criticism was pretty blunt from both sides of the aisle compared to yesterday was much more partisan in the house. i still think perhaps the biggest news to come out of these last two days was the secretary of state finally admitting that there were thousands of americans stranded in afgh
0 for the unity of our country. i thank you very much for the way that you have kept us engaged and informed as decisions have been made. as you pointed out, the biden administration was dealt a very difficult hand on the withdrawal from afghanistan. we all recognize we needed to withdraw, the options were extremely limited. the mistakes made by previous administrations, we ve talked about it. i think we need to understand that many of us did not support the 2002 campaign to go into iraq. one of those reasons was we wanted to complete the mission in afghanistan when we had a chance to do it when the taliban was diminished after our military came in after the attack on our country. instead we went into iraq which was not engaged in the 9/11 activities and we never finished afghanistan. a mistake made by the bush administration. we ve already talked about the trump administration and setting a deadline and releasing prisoners and moving forward with the reduction of troops when there was
0 i thank you very much for the way that you have kept us engaged and informed as decisions have been made. as you pointed out, the biden administration was dealt a very difficult hand on the withdrawal from afghanistan. we all recognize we needed to withdrawal and the options were extremely limited. the mistakes made by previous administrations, we talked about it, but i think we need to understand that many of us did not support the 2002 campaign to go into iraq. one of those reasons was we wanted to complete the mission in afghanistan when we had a chance to do it when the taliban was diminished after our military came in after the attack on our country, but instead we went into iraq which was not engaged in the 9/11 activities, and we never fin finished afghanistan. a mistake by the bush administration. it doesn t negate the information that was made available to you about the strength of the afghan security forces and the ghani administration s will to stick with it in afghanistan