we are aware of the isis threat. if the taliban do what they say they re doing, you can t have military here past august 31st, then they start attacking us, the mission becomes completely and totally untenable. if we can stay past august 31st with the taliban continuing to protect us, that s one thing. bi that option does not appear to be on the table. that s why the pentagon and the white house leaders are so intent on meeting the august 31st deadline, sorry for the long answer. but then what happens september 1st if we keep to the deadline, what happens as you see it happens on september 1st. that s where i was going. that s the second point that secretary blinken and others emphasized. we plan to continue getting people out, afghans and
airport. anything you re hearing from folks at the white house that suggest there s any wiggle room on the august 31st deadline? to this point not at all. the president as you noted made it clear the u.s. is undeterred in its mission. he will stick to the august 31st timeline. they have effectively stayed the course, doubling down, not apologizing for it from the beginning. the president did make significant acknowledgments yesterday, acknowledging among other things it was unlikely the u.s. would be able to guarantee all the afghan allies would be out by the end of the month. clearly that didn t seem like it was going to be possible from the start, now saying that publicly here as well. to courtney s point, he acknowledged there are real dangers that exist for the united states. as relates to the relationship between the taliban and the united states, you remember in july the president said no, he doesn t trust the taliban.
think the deadline will work, you also said the white house told you they have a plan in case they need to go past it. have you gotten any indication there s any wiggle room for them in this, and given what happened yesterday, do you feel confident of where we are? we ve had a couple of briefs in the last couple of days, classified briefs and people at the pentagon that have given me a better understanding of the august 31st deadline. look, the initial reaction is you look at the number of people that need to be gotten out. you go through categories, american citizens, third party nationals, siv holders, people that want out. it is clear all of the people that want to get out of afghanistan are not going to be out by august 31st. the americans, it will be close, but we re not going to get there. what a lot of people are missing is past august 31st, the mission becomes a thousand times more difficult because the taliban have said they re going to turn on us at that point.
something that has to be considered in this kind of landscape, that would effect the timeline. the reporting that we have is that the president is working with that august 31st timeline, the administration believes they can work toward that, have an expectation to do so, but wanted to give breathing room of additional contingency planning if there s a need. now, what is difficult to answer is that issue of at what point does the clock actually truly run out when you have to then not only getty evacuee ees but u.s. personnel there. this is a dynamic situation, one where there could be additional changes and from the white house point of view, you have different sort of audiences. you have allies you talked about the president worked with and met virtually be g7 leaders, they have strong concerns. you have voices from capitol hill. you ve got the american veteran community and those concerned about welfare of american