many of the staff that supported our embassy and other embassies, by the way. we want to evacuate them as well. alicia: let s bring in congressman mike gallagher. he s a member of the house armed services committee, also a u.s. marine corps veteran who served as an intelligence officer in the middle east. thank you so much for being here today. what are you looking for from the president today? well, i hope he tells the truth. thus far, every time the president addressed the nation he has not leveled with the american people. he s told multiple lies. he said they planned for every contingency. obviously they did not. he said our allies haven t complained about the lack of coordination. yes, they have. he said americans aren t having problems getting to the airport. of course they re having problems. most notably he said al-qaida is gone from the country. that is a lie.
tried to get to the airport but a half hour later after the statement, secretary austin undercut that claim on a call with house lawmakers. yesterday americans were told not to travel to the airport because it was too dangerous. and as reports come out telling of afghans who died in in the crush of people flooding the gates, the administration is acknowledging the rescue is being hampered by a terror threat. you know, chuck, i know that the scenes around the airport are heart-breaking, large crowds of people wanting to leave. i know that there is complexity and there is turbulence on the ground in kabul and it s very risky and dangerous because there s a genuine threat from isis k. that is the reality of what we re up against. i m not going to sugar coat that reality. reporter: we know the evacuation effort is not hampered by a cyber attack on the state department. they made notifications of a possible serious breach, weeks after the senate homeland
conversation on twitter at howard kurtz and check out my podcast. i enjoyed being out here, the la staff is terrific. we are back in washington next sunday. you know the time, 11:00 eastern. we ll see all then with the latest buzz. a fox news alert, president biden will speak this afternoon on the crisis in afghanistan and the push to evacuate americans from taliban controlled territory. more on that in a moment. but first, henri downgraded from a hurricane to tropical storm but still pummeling the northeast coast with 60-mile-an-hour winds and it could make landfall this hour. hello, welcome to fox news live. i m benjamin hall. . the national hurricane center warning some air class
it will cause a lot of flooding, especially in the mountains. the good news is that it s downgraded. thank you very much, rick. alicia. the last 24 hours, about 8,000 people on about 60 flights evacuated from kabul airport. since this effort began at the end of july, about 30,000 people all told on our military flights and on charter flights that we helped organize and get out of the airport. secretary of state assent anthonyblinken defending the wil from afghanistan as thousands of americans remain stranded. we re also getting reports of taliban gangs beating u.s. citizens. the president expected to update the nation today at 4:00 p.m. eastern after meeting with his national security team. white house correspondent jacqui heinrich has more from the north
member nation organization, right now they are warning about terrorism growing and breeding even more in afghanistan, urging for peace. you have moscow, vladimir putin calling the u.s. actions a humiliating approach. you have the u.k. evacuating more than 4,000 people. the ukraine evacuation, india evacuations and the netherlands, the dutch government he donated money to fund aid for people that are homeless and hungry. we have our allies and enemies all over the globe in this spot and they are saying we did this. yeah, you wonder what is tony blinken seeing that the rest of us aren t. it s almost like this administration is telling us who are you going to believe, what we tell you, are your lying eyes. the truth is americans are seeing it with their own eyes and realize that our government is lying to us, they re outright lying to us. this isn t just incompetence. it would be one thing if i