weekend of campaign rallies to try and fire up his base ahead of the caucus there. president biden travels to the valley forge area, home to george washington s war encampment, to deliver a speech on america s democracy, marking three years since the capitol insurrection on january 6. secretary blinken overseas for high-stakes diplomacy, with tensions flaring throughout the middle east. a new u.s. drone strike in iraq calls for revenge from hezbollah. all as the idf is pressed by nbc on civilian casualties in gaza. good to be with you. andrea mitchell is on assignment traveling with secretary of state antony blinken in the middle east. it s january 5, 2024. president biden is beginning his campaign season, heading to valley forge where soldiers trained to fight for the new promise of america. using the historical site to warn voters that donald trump is dangerous, a threat he says to that idea of america, to our democracy. just remember what happened three years ago
right now on early start, trust but verify. where things now stand between the world s two largest super boy powers. plus what biden said about hostage negotiations and potential deal to come. overnight top house democrats were evacuated from dnc headquarters as police clash with protestors calling for a ceasefire. good morning to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m casey hunt. it it is thursday, november 16. president biden and xi jinping putting their tensions aside to agree on a series of issues after talking for the first time in a year. the two leaders spent four hours together at a secluded california location with relations between the two biggest economies near a low point. biden and xi agreed to take steps to curb fentanyl production and restore military communications and work together on art fificial intelligence. and to pick until phone and call in times of crisis. but biden said there was no agreement after raising the issue of detained
chief spokesman for the idf. this was a conversation, relatively rare for him to speak to the foreign press. i asked him about data that appears to show israel s military has killed far more civilians, much faster than the american military did in mosul fighting against the islamic state terrorist group. listen to a little of that exchange. you can really tell the world you are taking care of palestinian civilians when you drop 2,000 pound drops in urban areas? it s not the right thing to do because mosul is not gaza. gaza has been built as a terror stronghold of hamas building more than 500 kilometers of tunnel system underneath hospitals, underneath schools,
in a remote, mountainous area of eastern afghanistan that borders pakistan. kourtney was live with us yesterday when the news of this came out. good to see you again. this bomb has been in the u.s. arsenal for decades. why use it now? well, as you mentioned, it has been in the arsenal for decades, but what was the target that made the military pull it out now? well, general nicholson, the commander there, talked about that this morning and mentioned it was a large isis complex with an intricate tunnel system underneath. so the gbo-43, the mother of all bombs, as you said, it s actually a pressure munition. what that means is when it hits the ground, when it explodes, it lets off a big blast wave, and it penetrates through the tunnels and kills anyone down there and will often collapse the tunnels down, especially
fighters killed in this strike came from the afghans. the u.s. military is not confirming that. they re still saying they know there was a large contingent of isis fighters hit, but they don t have any specificity on numbers. the bomb itself was a 21,000 pound gbu-43. yesterday when we first heard about this, everyone was asking this question, why did they need to use such an enormous bomb? the answer is the target itself. it was a complex, an isis complex with a relatively extensive tunnel system underneath. this gbu-43 is not only an enormous payload, but it s a blast munition. so it hits the target, and then it sends out a shockwave or a blast wave that would have penetrated down into the tunnels, and taken out any isis fighters who might have been inside there. the target itself was in eastern afghanistan.