breaking loose in the next couple of hours. john harwood joins us now. who s driving the dpoeshgs nego on this right now? pelosi, the president? who is leading the charge? it s all of them. it s president biden, it s the democratic leadership, it s the house leadership, progressive caucus, manchin and sinema. when you ve got bare majorities of this kind, everybody has got a veto, and as a result of that, when you have a jam-up like this on the infrastructure bill as well as on the reconciliation bill, everyone is frustrated. moderates are frustrated as lauren was indicating, progressives are frustrated because they want a larger reconciliation package. i do think the underlying feeling at the white house this morning is that they got closer to the goal line last night. the gears engaged. they started getting a more significant amount of negotiation. i don t think they expect joe manchin to end up at one point
but at the same time, there have been allegations against the taliban that they have been trying to hunt people down, associated with the nato involvement there and, indeed, with the government. there are people passing through the taliban check points showing papers that obviously prove their connection to the united states and her allies. and some are getting through. but nowhere near enough. barbara, the pentagon had set this expectation that eventually they d be able to fly out somewhere in the range of 4,000 to 9,000 people a day. it seems like there is still a jam up. what is the biggest challenge as far as what you understand right now for the u.s. to carry out these evacuations? well, it seems after today there s jamups everywhere. and the pentagon not yet speaking plainly, speaking publicly, very candidly about what is going wrong. so let s review for a minute. the gate at the airport were closed for hours earlier today,
from shelters. if you re jammed up, running out of the gas, trying to get to a shelter, floridadisaster.org/shelters. that s what the state of florida and officials are are directing people to. they want people to get there. that will have the latest information on shelters. to the airport. people trying to get out by air. miami airport has basically said last call. 10:30 was the last flight and that s it. they had a big jam up with the baggage towards the end of the tonight, that s it. so there s no point in trying to get to the airport at this poinpoint we ve been talking about these cranes. there s 20 to 25 of them in miami. the reason we re concerned about these cranes is while they re desooened to withstand these winds, sometimes they don t. this was hurricane sandy. this was west 57th street here in new york city. a kran snapping in half during sanity. i think we have that video.
brazenly defied the court and said, i m going to continue any way. that s what led to the contempt of court finding. and that s what he was about to be sentenced for. and that s what ended as a result of the pardon. that legal process. again, not discussed at all by the president. as far as i could tell until this point. michael, what the president did talk about, though, was how many other bad pardons presidents have made in the past. it was almost as if he was saying look, there s a hall of shame out there for presidential pardons, and this one is in a long line of controversial presidential pardons. is that a good defense? it s not a good defense, but it s a fact. if you re pardoning something, they re in a criminal jam-up or they ve been in jail. we saw president obama free a terrorist who was responsible for defendants and hundreds of bombings. you re doing it, too. absolutely. listen, pardons are, by their very nature, controversial. i think that president trump, while a
other bad pardons presidents have made in the past. it was almost as if he was saying look, there s a hall of shame out there for presidential pardons, and this one is in a long line of controversial presidential pardons. is that a good defense? it s not a good defense, but it s a fact. if you re pardoning something, they re in a criminal jam-up or they ve been in jail. we saw president obama free a terrorist who was responsible for defendants and hundreds of bombings. you re doing it, too. absolutely. listen, pardons are, by their very nature, controversial. i think that president trump, while a lot of people disagree, especially on cnn, about this pardon, you know, he was looking at an 85-year-old man who had never been in trouble in his life who he felt and a lot of people in our camp feel was railroaded by a weaponized department of justice. and at 85 years old, convicted of a misdemeanor and what we