afghanistan decision making. first upon coming into office, how did the biden administration assess the impact on the the ground of president trump s flawed deal with the taliban. did the administration attempt to negotiate better terms with the taliban upon coming into office? second, did the president s april withdrawal announcement set in motion any contingency planning in the event that the taliban rapidly took over the country? what was the plan to evacuate all americans? what was plan to evacuate sivs, p-1, and p-2s and other at-risk groups and staff and those affiliated with radio free europe, voice of america, the national endowment for democracy and other u.s. funded organizations. president trump s with steven miller intentionally blocked sieves from being processed. which i think is a barbaric and cruel decision which likely resulted in death for some u.s.
p-2 program that you ll hear about, which we ll talk about, about refugees which also falls under that, which is also assisting in other lanes, when sivs, that program comes to an end like it did in iraq, they qualify for p-2s. biden actually just institu havd the u.s., been allies, but also have credible fear of reprisal when now the government has fallen to the taliban, and you re saying that even years ago, that miller was sort of really focused on shrinking and getting rid of the category, right? like essentially deconstructing it so you couldn t use it as a category to get people in. yes, but he does it in a very
undermine anyone who worked on solving the siv issue by devastating the system at dhs and state. olivia, i know that steven miller s wife, katie miller, is pushing back on that and worked with you in the trump administration, but what kind of arguments were they making against taking in afghan partners and refugees when you were there? what did you witness? i feel like this argument is frustrating because when i was in the white house working on these issues, it was nothing but increasing restrictions on immigration and restricting refugee admissions, and all of these categories are part of that process, and the sivs are part of that, p-2s, all fall into the pipelines of these offices with resources that were gutted during the trump administration, many of us who worked with refugee issues were pushing to make sure they did not reduce the ceiling number for refugees and ensure that
bases set to receive them. we want to get up to 22,000 capacity. we re not there yet. understandably. but we re building out to that. and as the secretary made clear, we think we can get 22,000 in relatively short order and we ll see where that goes. but aside from siv, p-2s, other afghans at risk, would you look at say installations like in italy or in continental europe? that is a better question put to the state department. that wouldn t be our call to make. john, does the secretary
0 welcome to msnbc on a busy friday afternoon. president biden giving an update on the chaotic situation, the evacuation of americans and afghans as the white house continues to deal with the fallout from the crisis unfolding in afghanistan. the president says evacuation flights have resumed. that is of being paused for several hours. sources tell nbc news the flights stopped temporarily because qatar, the first batch of evacuees were taken, didn t have the capacity to take any more people. this has its situation outside the airport gets more desperate. thousands of afghans hoping for a chance to get inside and get on a plane out of the country. the president defended his situation to get out of afghanistan in a report that nearly two dozen diplomats at the u.s. embassy in kabul sent a cable to tony blinken warning of a possible taliban takeover and urged an airlift operation. i made the decision, the buck stops with me. i took the consensus opinion. it would not occur if it occurred