white house correspondent, kaitlan collins. she s standing as a matter of fact outside the white house for us. good evening. let s talk about the news. president biden going through with his call for that he wants to stick with this august 31st deadline, withdrawal deadline out of afghanistan and getting as many people out as possible but he started his speech today talking about his agenda back home including infrastructure, including voting rights. does this tell you anything about his thinking? don, i think he actually timed these remarks to wait for the house to get through these votes, given the drama that had been happening on capitol hill with the moderates and house speaker pelosi about this because i do think this is what the white house would prefer to be focusing on this week, moving his domestic agenda. but of course this is what they re actually having to focus on in large part, what is happening in afghanistan. this started the president s day with a briefing with his
.delegating? oh, good one. move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. sight yay director william burns meeting face to face with the top taliban leader in afghanistan on monday. the highest-level direct exchange between the biden administration and the militant group since the fall of kabul. and it s another example of the president using his powers to negotiate. the president s negotiation chops on display at home today too with the passage of key parts of his agenda in the house. so will this meet in the middle strategy pay off for the president? time to talk about it now. cnn contributor evan osnos, author of joe biden: the life, the run and what matters now.
but you get to be president, you have to decide. and i ve been on both sides of this issue, having served in congress and saying here s my recommendation, mr. president, and then in a cabinet saying the president has to decide. congress doesn t really make the decision. the president makes it. he s made it. and we ll have to see how it unfolds. okay. so let me say this because i think there s no denying that getting more than 70,000 people evacuated in ten days, that is remarkable. it was a rough beginning, no doubt. you saw the pictures. what is your view of a successful threshold for these evacuations? and part 2 of that question, is it really realistic to think that america can or should be maybe they should be. but can get every single person out of afghanistan who wants to leave? is that realistic? i don t think so.
one is that the president believes that the longer that the u.s. stays there the higher the threat of a potential terrorist attack becomes. and also they worry that if they do stay past that deadline that they ve been discussing with the taliban so far, they could lose their cooperation. and don, that has been critical to getting americans and afghan allies out of afghanistan so far, making sure the taliban would actually let them come through those checkpoints to get to the airport. so i do think that is a big factor into the decision that the president has made, something that many in the west wing advocated for. they did not want to he see him extend that deadline, despite the pressure you re seeing from other world leaders and other democratic lawmakers who say they think it s best to extend that deadline. i don t want to get past what you said. you mentioned getting the forces out. the first u.s. troops have started leaving afghanistan. several hundred leaving today. again, conc
on all of it. but i just want to begin with afghanistan because that s where the pace of evacuations is really at an all-time high on the day president joe bide anne nounss he is sticking to his august 31st deadline, one week from now. for u.s. troops to leave the country. we are currently on a pace to finish by august the 31st. the sooner we can finish, the better. each day of operations brings added risk to our troops. but the completion by august 31st depends upon the taliban continuing to cooperate and allow access to the airport for those who we re transporting out and no disruptions to our operations. so here is what the president is saying, that the u.s. has helped evacuate more than 70,000 people since august 14th. 12,700 in just 24 hours. that is the largest number in a 24-hour period so far. you see the video there. planes leaving kabul about every