surrounding former president donald trump. why a grand jury could soon hear from former vice president mike pence. also, our exclusive interview with the leaders of three powerful congressional caucuses, the first time the three have sat down for an interview together. we stand in unity together. i think that is the power of the tricaucus, the power of us is being able to stand together, to make change, and to be there to support each other. but first, the breaking news, a second military base used by the u.s. in syria coming under attack today. it is happening just one day after a drone strike killed one american worker and wounded several troops at a different coalition base. intelligence officials believe the drone came from iran. president biden authorized new air strikes in response. joining us now is nbc news chief white house correspondent peter alexander. good morning. tell us about the new attack and what more do we know about iran s role? reporter: yeah, jos
Right now. Martha good afternoon. Im martha maccallum. This is a huge 180 from the president. The white house is scrambling to spin this afternoon over the move to do exactly what they said they wouldnt do, build a border wall on the southern border. Dhs says there is an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers to prevent unlawful entry. Completely contradicting. This from the president in the oval office a short time ago. Watch this. Border wall money was a pronated for the border while. I tried to get to redirect the money. They didnt. They wouldnt. Meantime, theres nothing under the law other than that they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I cant stop that. Do you believe the border wall no. Martha no. We have to untangle this. Moments ago, reporters went after Karine Jeanpierre. She said she hadnt seen the memo that was put out. The president is looking at the numbers and realizes something must be done. Watch this. Remember this . How is this cons
In our port infrastructure. these ports aren t really used to having this number of people coming through, and they need more processing agents, they need spaces to be able to humanely process people, and i think that s really important. and then number four, you know, we need to be careful that some of the things that we re putting in place aren t limiting to the ability to seek asylum. it is great that we have an app there are problems with the app. we heard about that. we want those fixed. but it can t be the only way that people apply to come in because we know all the problems with using an app and the challenges it presents. i think a lot about this, because it is oftentimes i think that if it is not seen, if it is not on our screens, 24 hours a day, we tend to just kind of think it is not there. but both camps, you know because of the area you visited and your deep concern and compassion about this, there are literally
Resources at the border. so it s clear we have enough resources when we wanted to. that went smoothly. but the united states government needs to do stop looking for easy solutions like title 42. put in a plan, which now they have, but finally surge the resources. i think you ll see if title 42 ends, the united states government has those resources. we need to send asylum officers and other processing agents to the border and start processing people. we just finally need to get rid of title 42, not use it as a crutch and engage in rossing. i just can t stop thinking about those men, women, and children and that picture that they had from telemundo.
These gop states that failed to convince a judge to appeal this to the supreme court. it s unlikely to go anywhere, but i want to emphasize that is one of the issues that those republican statement ises discussed. lieutenant, we ll see what happens on that front. i m sure you d like to see such developments but that, again, does not look likely. you heard what the lieutenant was saying. we also know from the biden administration there s no move right now to extend title 42, but there is talk of hiring an additional 1,000 border patrol so-called processing agents and another 2500 contractors and personnel but from other government agencies. the details are sketchy, but what do you make of what i just told you? so we know that border patrol is very demoralized. they are severely understaffed. there s a reason why you have migrants like in these cases in el paso where you have tens of thousands just being released into the wild, some of them not