if it's wednesday the fingerpointing and blame game over afghanistan is intensifying. with military and intelligence officials telling nbc news the white house ignored their advice and warnings about the situation on the ground. we've seen the situation, afghans afraid for their lives to flee the country acetal been takes over. now, the global community is bracing for an influx of refugees. for those that can get out, where will they go and how will they be received? and it's now official. the white house announces a plan to begin administering booster shots or a third dose to americans in just a few weeks. it's not a new vaccine.

it's the same one we have been getting as new data shows vaccine protection does wane over time as cases and hospitalizations keep going in the wrong direction. breakthrough cases come. welcome to "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd. for the first time since the taliban took control of afghanistan military and civilian leaders will brief reporters in person this afternoon. the silence from lloyd austin and joints chief chairman milley has been notable. as we get more warnings that the white house reportedly received ahead of the troop withdrawal. many military planners were not in favor of any of this. still, multiple officials tell nbc news that top military officials are furious at biden's national security team because they wanted to start evacuating

vulnerable afghans as early as may but were not allowed to do so. here at nbc, as well as other news outlets new reporting that the intelligence community warned the white house of a potential collapse and that those warnings were ignored. of course, all of this is somewhat subjective. what one person thinks they brief and what another person think they heard for what it's worth. the white house will not confirm whether president biden received such a dire forecast from his national security team, but a senior intelligence official just released a statement which seems to be the first official acknowledgment from the administration that there was information and the possibility of a swift government collapse. and here's how the statement reads. we consistently identify the risk of a rapid collapse of the afghan government. we also grew more pessimistic about the government's survival as the fighting season progressed. this was less an issue of afghan military capabilities and more a reflection of afghan leadership, cohesion and willpower. that said, the afghan government unraveled even more quickly than we anticipated.

interesting distinction between the afghan security forces and what was expected of their capabilities versus the afghan government. if you're going to see a lot of this parsing of the type of warnings that were given. kelly o'donnell is at the white house for us and courtney kube is at the pentagon and on the phone richard engel. kelly, let me start with you. first of all, what do you make of that statement not having a person's name on it? >> well, what you see now is the bubbling up of fingerpointing and reassessments and we do know that the president was asked last month directly about intelligence assessments that pointed to this kind of rapid collapse. and he flatly said that was not true at the time. so, was that a case of the president had not received that briefing or did he disagree with the nature of the assessment? that was in a question and answer moment in the east room last month. that is a lot of time since then and a lot of events that have

rapidly changed. this kind of indication from within the administration also shows the degree to which this is viewed as a crisis both of optics, politics and then, of course, all the humanitarian pieces of it which, of course, are most important. but there wouldn't be this sort of bleeding out of criticism and, hey, we told you so if this wasn't a dire circumstance. that's just one measure of how critical this is for the biden white house and the president's leadership and even ultimately his legacy. here they acknowledge that this is an hour-by-hour situation on the ground. and that the efforts on operational push right now. how to deal not with what happened before, but to try to repair as quickly as possible the functioning of the evacuations, obtaining order. all of those kind of things are their focus right now. there are big questions still to be determined. like americans who are not in the immediate vicinity of

kabul's international airport. can they get safe passage to the airport to be evacuated. do we have even an assessment of where they are and how they would be moved safely from point a to point b? so, there are a lot of questions. we expect to hear from the president later today. the topic is covid and the booster shots. but certainly would be an expectation that with a crisis of this magnitude that he would also say something about that, as well. we'll be looking for that later this afternoon, chuck. >> you know, kelly, this very quickly. we know he's doing a television interview and we expect more marks later in the week. is this an acknowledgment that his speech and they have more work to do communicating what went wrong? >> i think it's both an acknowledgment that the speech he gave where he defiantly said the buck stops with me. i support the decision i made. i have no regrets in essence that that was a statement that is not going to be sufficient to answer the criticism that's happening day by day and reacting to events on the

ground. certainly this is a kind of crisis unfolding with imagery, human beings lives at stake and a lot of criticism filling the void. so, the president needs to not let that void go without his voice as part of it. if he's going to defend and stand by his decision, he may need to do that every day for some period of time. chuck. >> kelly o'donnell at the white house for us, kelly, thank you. courtney kube, i want to zero in on something on that senior intelligence official statement because i wonder if this is the parsing we're going to start to see that all of the assessments of the afghan military was about the military's capabilities and that maybe there was a distinction between the will of the governed and the will of the government versus the capabilities of the military. is that the kind of after-action parsing we should expect both from military and intel sides? >> i think there have been two

big developments here in who knew what when. the reality is the intelligence assessments continue to evolve and they were evolving quickly throughout the summer. and part of that was because as the taliban offensive didn't just begin a week or two weeks ago, it began weeks ago and there were places where the taliban were moving in and the afghan security forces were not putting up much of a fight for a combination of reasons. they were rurl areas and they did not have a strong connection to the government. it was clear weeks ago, months ago, there were places the afghan security forces were not goegto put up a fight. the acknowledgment in the past several days and a backlash, i would say, about all this criticism for the afghan military saying they were folding. everywhere they came in the afghan military just folded. the truth is that is not true. there were places where there are some very capable members of the afghan military, the afghan air force continued conducting airstrikes until just a couple

days ago and that the special ops guys, the afghan commandos, they spread them thin in many of these capitals, these provincial capitals and they were fighting and they were dying. and they were trying to defend their homeland. so, this notion that the taliban showed up at every place and the afghans handed over their weapons is not true. that's one thing i noticed in the past couple days is people trying to connect that narrative and that intelligence, that statement on background statement. that seemed to me to be a little bit course correction on that idea, as well. but another, you know, while there were some afghans who were putting up a fight in certain places, particularly in kandahar and there was also this momentum that built with the taliban over the past couple weeks that really, really started to take off in the last week or two. that was as one place would fall, as one province would fall then they were able to gather up more people, they were emptying

prisons and picking up weapons and equipment from the afghan military and, you know, it's a local environment in many of these places. it's very rural. you know you would hear about them taking over a town or city or even a provance and that would get into the next town or city or province and it became easier for them to take over the neighboring areas. so, i guess it's a long way of saying, yes, the intelligence assessments were changing. but we know they were telling the u.s. military and u.s. intelligence assessments were saying the taliban could take over and it could happen pretty quickly, chuck. >> very quickly, courtney. the significance, what do you expect out of secretary austin and general milley. are they going to be trying to stay out of the public policy fight? >> they will try to stay out of the policy fight. their whole goal is to come out and face the cameras because they have not yet. they want to give an operational

update and really focus on the evacuation effort and how many military are on the ground now. the security of the airport and how many flights are getting in and out. they want to focus on the operational piece of this. the reality is secretary austin a civilian leader and a member of the cabinet and he is responsible for carrying the policy decisions of this white house. so, he's going to get questions about that, chuck. >> that's for sure. let me bring in richard engel. he's on the phone for us for obvious reasons. still in country. richard, you were hearing about courtney's reporting and this point of view of the military versus the white house. what are you seeing? i'm curious, the special operation forces on the afghan side of things which we had seen get praised all the time from our military. really the only aspect of the afghan military that would be singled out for praise. what happens to them? >> so, there were two units that were trained by american special ops.

they were doing very well. they were fighting. they were motivated. those were the commandos and the air force, which was backing up the commandos. they were leading the fight. the problem is, if you can't fight a war and defend a country if you only have the navy s.e.a.l.s or delta force. they are the tip but the shaft of the spear broke and eventually if you're just fighting with the tip of the spear, you don't fight very long. although they were fighting bravely and fought pretty much until the end when the backbone of the military collapsed, it collapsed with them. what happens to them now. some of the commandos are in hiding. a small group of afghans have returned to the valley, the one part of this country that is not controlled by the taliban. but not enough of a resistance there to pose any threat to the taliban.

and a lot of them have been trying to escape going to neighboring countries and going up to the north and uzbekistan. that day when the taliban was taking over a lot of people got on planes and left because they thought they were the ones being targeted. the taliban saying they're not going to go after women and not really go after the translators so they say. but the people who fought them and actually fought them they were for death, no doubt. >> tell us about the evacuation situation as you're seeing it right now. >> sure. and i also have a little reporting on this back and forth on who knew what when. briefings here and spoke to a lot of military officials on the ground. i'll get to that in a second since that seems to be a major point of discussion right now. on the ground, things are going better on the base. so, the base is operating more smoothly.

there was a great deal of chaos. bedlam here a couple days ago when thousands of afghans broke over the perimeter and climbed over the wall and now where troops have been brought up. it's orderly and processing people and security and the planes are landing and taking off but it's hard to get here because the taliban controlled the perimeter and the taliban have been asked to keep people back, but the taliban are doing that by firing in the air and hitting people with clubs. so, how are the people supposed to get in, particularly the ones who worked for the u.s. military. so, had this started earlier, the u.s. would not have been threading this needle of having to evacuate people through a taliban perimeter. it would have been much, much easier. or even if they had the paperwork completed and had the visas stamped, it would have been easier. now, they're trying to process people, get them on to a base through the taliban control. it is, it is a nightmare. that part is a nightmare.

>> richard, i'm over time. as always, sir, be safe out there. we look forward to having you home soon, as well. thank you, richard. we bring in now republican congressman peter mier. army veteran and worked with an ngo in afghanistan. he's now a member of the house foreign affairs committee. congressman, let me start with this. you'll get some briefings from the administration. you know, we can debate long term about how we went in. how we stayed and i think there's no doubt there is this defeat has 1,000 fathers in it. but let's talk about the near term in the moment. what are your concerns and what answers do you think this administration needs to provide you? >> my concerns are that on 31 august president biden is going to remove all remaining u.s. forces from afghanistan whether or not we've removed all american citizens who are trying to get out. whether or not we've gotten or afghan allies to safety. that he will pull up the

tempstakes and leave and that there will be additional blood on our hands because this administration did not move with urgency when bipartisan members of congress approached it in the spring and said if we're withdrawing, i agreed with that decision and others did not. if we're withdrawing we need to look at these people. we need to get these processes going and clear the bureaucratic heardals and the administrative backlogs that led us to this position. they stonewalled every step of the way. this is not an issue they wanted to deal with. as richard engel said if this had begun earlier, we would not have the chaos at the airport we have right now. we would not have people trapped outside of kabul and we would not be facing the massive humanitarian dilemma that we're in right now. but we cannot leave on august 31st. we cannot leave until we get everyone we need to out of afghanistan. >> you'd like to hear a more declaration on that. one of the strategic head scratchers to me and it looks really odd now was handing

bagram over when we did. we can have a debate about whether we should have ever handed bagram over but we could use another runway right now. we could use another base of operations right now. obviously, in hindsight, should we have handed over bagram while we're still trying to evacuate thousands? >> knowing what we know right now, absolutely not. that was a massive strategic mistake. again, there were intelligence assessments that said things would collapse more rapidly. the challenge was back in june it was, well, six to nine months after august 31st, the government should still be functional or that's what we expect for longevity and then in july or sorry in the beginning of august it became, oh, maybe not six to nine months. it might be 30 to 90 days and it turned out it was even shorter than that. i mean, it was a span of eight days from that falling until the taliban where the presidential palace. so, we have a lot of constraints

at harid karzai international airport. but at the end of the day, we cannot leave on august 31st. we cannot leave until we complete this mission. >> do you think there is any maret to the president's argument which he essentially made on monday which was, you know, this was all, you know, that there would have been, this moment was going to happen no matter how you did it because if you had started evacuating sooner, that would have triggered the rush to the exits. that no matter what, this, to borrow a favorite movie quote of mine, everything ends badly or else it wouldn't end. this is going to end badly. any merit to that argument? >> well, i think it depends at what level you're speaking. when it comes to the u.s. involvement and our ability to have a military victory in this conflict, i don't believe that was possible. i think a negotiated political

solution was all we can have. when it comes to the withdrawal it was never going to be clean and never going to be pretty. a big difference between it not being a perfect outcome and having quite possibly the worst of all worlds. what we are in right now the nightmare scenario that many of us have worried about and had said if we're withdrawing we need to keep this in mind and worry about our afghan allies and we can't control what the taliban are going to do but we can control what we are going to do before we have our withdrawal date. i'm not at all sympathet took the argument that there is no way we could have prevented this. the operational strategic and intelligence failures that led us to this point deserve strong reckoning after we get through this chaotic emergency moment. but, again, we cannot wash our hands of this problem. the people who are in danger right now are in danger because we put them there. they served alongside us and served to help us out. this is not a situation where we can just walk away, throw up our hands and say, well, we tried. that's not good enough.

>> what kind of obligation do you think this country has to welcome these afghan refugees who want out? is there a limit to how many should be in the united states? >> you know, i am trying to be very clear because some on the right are making the, yeah, they're conflating all refugees with those who were special immigrant visa holders to whom our obligation is to keep our promise. these are people who signed up to serve the u.s. military with the promise that they would be resettled in the u.s. so, this isn't something that we're doing out of the goodness of our hearts. this is something that we're just simply keeping a promise that we made. and then you have additional folks. some women's rights activists that were doing their work supported by the u.s. who probably would not have put themselves in the risk that they did if the u.s. wasn't supporting them. so, i think when it comes to individuals who risk their lives on behalf of our mission, we owe a tremendous obligation there. again, this is not charity. this is not, you know, oh, these

poor random individuals. i mean, these are individuals that i'm talking to every day that military veterans, that journalists and people who serve with them overseas are talking to every day. they have faces, they have names, they have wives, they have sons and they have daughters and they're at risk because of us and we owe it to them to make it right. >> congressman peter meijer, republican from grand rapids, michigan, area. congressman, thanks for coming on and sharing your perspective and thanks for your service. >> thank you. coming up, we're going to hear from the other side of the aisle. democratic congresswoman barbara lee. the only member of congress to vote against the war in afghanistan. it's now over. we're going to get her assessment next. ...is her reality. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts, for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn?

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who develops products that provide hair protection so that everyone can enjoy the freedom of swimming. like the athletes competing in tokyo, these entrepreneurs have a fierce work ethic and drive to achieve - to change the game and inspire the team of tomorrow. welcome back. as we said, president biden's handling of the afghanistan withdrawal is being criticized not just by republicans but quite a few democrats, as well.

the democratic chairs of the senate foreign relations committee and house armed services committee will be holding hearings on what went wrong. the president is being praised for now by speaker pelosi and the house progressive caucus. the situation is dividing democrats which is exactly the opposite of what the president needs as he attempts to pass a sweeping domestic agenda. joining me now is california democratic congresswoman barbara lee. house progressive caucus and a lone member of congress to oppose. congresswoman, good to see you. we've had conversations about this issue quite a few times over the last few years. so, let me start with this. on the withdrawal itself, do you think there's maret to the president's argument that he essentially says it may not have mattered when, it was always going to be a bad time to withdrawal and it may have always been this chaotic or do you think this could have been handled better? >> let me just say that i think

the president was absolutely correct in his decision to withdraw. we know and i've known many have known over the years that there is no military solution to afghanistan and, in fact, with 2,500 troops remaining and the taliban on the move, we would have had to send thousands more of our u.s. troops who honorably have done everything we've asked them to do for the last 20 years. and so i believe that the execution as all of us have seen has not gone well. i believe that we should have been better prepared and i also know that, for instance, with many of the afghans who have provided the type of assistance that we desperately needed, there were very few lists if any of who they were. that's just an example of the lack of preparedness. so, right now, i'm really very clear on what we need to do in terms of providing the resources for the safe evacuation of

americans, afghan allies, women and children to make sure that they have safe passage on to, you know, into some place, some country where they will be safe and secure. >> what is our obligation to those folks for this country? how, you know, how many of them should be provided safe passage to the united states. >> well, i agree with peter. we work together. we just had on and we have to, one, make sure that we honor our commitments. keep our word. and i believe we must lift the refugee camp. we are going to have to have a cap that allows for more refugees to come into the united states of america. we also need to move very quickly with our international allies to make sure that they are putting forth plans for refugee resettlement. because we cannot abandon these individuals. and we have to make sure that they all are transported out of

afghanistan because it is a very dangerous situation. and having said that, i have to just say that i think the evacuation plans now are more, they're becoming smoother. they're becoming clearer, but we have thousands and thousands of people to evacuate from afghanistan. once again, the reason i could not support this is because i knew for a fact that there was no military solution in afghanistan and we're seeing that, unfortunately, come to play. so, we have to be very strategic now and in how we move forward and make sure everyone is safe that helped us and all of our americans in the country. >> you think the president needs to make it clear that august 31st is not a deadline. the deadline to get our troops out is when we get all americans out and our allies? >> well, the president and his military advisors will advice him on what decisions that he should make. and i believe that he's going to

make the wisest dedecision. this president is very forthright and very honest and he has indicated that, yes, he owns this. he is the president. and so i'm confident that he's going to make the right decision. also, chuck, can i just read you a passage from a report that the special investigator on afghanistan put forth very recently. i've worked with him over the years and i just want to read you one paragraph. he said the report also found that the united states government did not understand the afghan context, including socially, politically and culturally. additionally, the investigators said that the u.s. officials rarely had even a mediocre understanding of the afghan environment, much less how it was responding to u.s. interventions and that this ignorance often came from a willful disregard for information that may have been available. so i think we have to take this moment and reflect on lessons learned so we don't make the same mistakes again in the

future and support our troops and our veterans because they did everything we asked them to do. >> you could have taken out the word afghanistan and afghans and said vietnam and veaetna meez with that statement there. it was haunting there what you read there and how familiar it is to sort of the vietnam after action. but let me ask you this. i mean, do you think that there will ever, i mean, do you accept the idea that there was a, that some part of this mission was successful because it kept us safe and we got rid of al qaeda or was the price too high? >> listen, let me just say, we have three perspectives, three stools, three legs of the stool of our foreign policy. i believe in rebalancing those three stools. we have diplomacy, development and military. defense. the defense military option is

going to always be on the table. and i, too, am very emphatic about our national security and bringing the terrorists to justice. what i was concerned about then three days after the horrific attacks was that we did not have a moment to reflect upon a rational response, the appropriate response and, in fact, we gave congress' responsibility to any president to the executive branch to use force and perpetuity. that's the issue. we need as members of congress to understand now when, in fact, we are going to authorize the use of force. and, so, having said that, we have many, many national security issues that we have to deal with now. we have domestic terrorism, right. the greatest threat to our national security. but we have to look back and just see and understand what took place as a result of 9/11 and the president has been very

emphatic about having counterterrorism operations in place and, in fact, we need to look at how we rebalance our approach in the world as it relates to global peace and security. >> well, congresswoman. i could keep going on on this but you brought up something that i think every single member of congress and one lesson i ought to take away. be careful if you just keep farming out tough decisions to the executive branch. you guys are an equal branch of government. i think more and more of you are realizing that today. congresswoman barbara lee, democrat from oakland california. good to have you on and your perspective. coming up, what you need to know about the third shots that will be widely available soon. florida takes another step towards punishing schools for defying the governor's ban on mask mandates. what are the punishments? are they afraid to talk about them? that's next.

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mask mandates. the first day of school gets under way and also joined by dr. william shatner infectious disease specialist at vanderbilt. let me get to this dispute between the state and the county. the state voted to sanction the county but they didn't say what they're going to do. it does feel as if the state's looking for an exit ramp without embarrassing the governor here. but the county at this point, it sounds like, feels like they won this battle, don't they? >> well, look, chuck, there's no question that broward county is kicking off its school year in the middle of a political tug of war about masks. that's frustrating to parents and teachers and administrators who want the focus to be getting students back in the classroom after a year and a half of disrupted learning. instead, they're facing these sanctions. last night the first punitive

measure taken against school districts that are requiring masks. but, you're right, chuck, they did not say what those measures would be. the school board chair said they have been threatened with $700,000 of school funding being taken from the district. but broward is not budging on this. they say they're looking at the data. last week florida reported more than 31,000 cases of covid-19 among those under the age of 19. and they say they're also taking the directive from their parents. they put a survey they say to more than 270,000 students. only 190 of them were opposed to masks. chuck, i've been talking to parents dropping their kids off this morning. take a listen to some of what i heard. >> if broward hadn't instituted this mask mandate, would you be sending your kids to school? >> we would have to. i'm a first responder and my wife also works. and we wouldn't have any other choice. >> i'm all for the kids wearing

masks. i believe it helps everybody in the long run. >> are you nervous seeing some of the rise in covid cases among kids? >> yes, very nervous. >> sophie, how do you feel about going to school in a mask? >> i feel the same way about my mom. i'm happy that i'm wearing masks. i'm comfortable in it and it also covers up germs. >> chuck, i've been talking to parents across the country and a lot of them are pointing to kids like 8-year-old third grader sophie who seem to understand what a mask can do and willing to wear it and they are hoping the grown ups in leader positions are willing to listen to sofie. chuck? >> any of us that are parents kids are much more adaptable than adlts. dasha, thank you. dr. shafner before i ask you specifics about the third dose,

let me ask you your level of concern about pediatric hospitalizations. what we're seeing in covid cases in younger folks. particularly kids under 12. >> what is happening, chuck, around the country and it's certainly true in the state of tennessee is that we have seen an increase in the number of hospitalizations of young children with covid. you know, this is difficult for people to understand and to grasp because they had heard and it's still true that if children get infected with covid, they're less likely to have severe disease. but all of a sudden we're having more children admitted with covid severe disease. how can you put those two together? delta made the difference. it's now being transmitted to people who are not vaccinated. and that includes some young children and it can produce severe disease. so, we're seeing an upsurge in pediatric hospitalizations

across the country. >> and it should be pointed out that all of those studies about covid in younger folks, i believe, forget predelta, pre-alpha, if you will on the variant. people ought to remember those studies perhaps haven't aged well. let me ask you about the guidance from the government here on a third dose. and i feel like a broken record. every time there's news about a third dose, all i think about are those who got the johnson & johnson vaccine who are sitting there going, what the heck am i supposed to do? doctor, what the heck are they supposed to do? >> well, the official recommendation, chuck, would be sit tight. because at the moment the data aren't there yet to provide reassurance that we could give them either the moderna or the pfizer vaccine or for that matter a second dose of the j&j vaccine. now, having said that, i have to be honest with you, there are

already individual patients and doctors who are advising their patients to say, go ahead and get either pfizer or moderna vaccine because we know it's safe and it probably will help you, even though it's not officially recommended. >> you know, those are two types of vaccines. one is a more, and i'm not going to -- we're all amateur experts these days. after going through 18 months of this. but, you know, one with this mrna vaccine of pfizer and moderna, does it help the other vaccine be more effective in this case or is it just basically you're putting a brand-new vaccine and you may actually need a two-dose version of it? >> actually the thinking is that the mix and match actually enhances the protection. you know, j&j's vaccine is

different than the astrazeneca vaccine that is being used in england. but they're made in very similar ways. and, indeed, in many european countries, they're now giving one dose of the az vaccine followed by either one dose of moderna or pfizer. and there are physicians here who are saying, you know, the analogy is close enough with j&j. they're actually recommending this for their patients. i hasten to add this is not an official recommendation, but there are physicians and patients who are kind of gaming the system and taking advantage of that european experience. not exactly, but close enough they think. >> well, one thing our government officials need to do is they need to be a little more proactive at least giving those who got the j&j vaccine more information rather than to grasp

for individual recommendations from great doctors like yourself. anyway, dr. schaffner, i appreciate you coming on and sharing your experience with us. >> thank you so much. >> all right, please send us your questions on how to stay safe during return to the office. ask us on twitter with the #msnbcanswers. e-mail them to us at talk@msnbc.com. we'll have our experts at 11:00 a.m. eastern answer those questions. that's why i started medhaul. citi launched the impact fund to invest in both women and entrepreneurs of color like me, so i can realize my vision and give everything i've got to my company, and my community. i got you. for the love of people. for the love of community. for the love of progress. citi. what happens when we welcome change? we can make emergency medicine possible at 40,000 feet.

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a little preparation will make you and your family safer in an emergency. a week's worth of food and water, radio, flashlight, batteries and first aid kit are a good start to learn more, visit safetyactioncenter.pge.com welcome back. sadly the death toll in haiti has now risen to 1,900 after this weekend's powerful earthquake. nearly 10,000 more are classified as injured. teams are searching for survivors amid some extreme conditions caused by what is now hurricane grace, by the way. the storm caused massive flooding in some areas already hit by the quake. u.s. coast guard and navy support landed in haiti earlier this week and now helping to airlift people out of flood

zones. unicef estimates that the earthquake damaged and destroyed 84,000 homes in a country still suffering from the 2010 earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people. and the political turmoil after the assassination of the president just weeks ago only adds to the challenge of this rescue effort. coming up, we'll head back, though, to the middle east as the humanitarian crisis grows and countries scramble to prepare for an influx of afghan refugees who can't get out. , smoother skin you can lovingly embrace. renew the love for your skin with dove body wash.

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u.s. and manage to get visas so sort of prevetted, if you will. tens of thousands of afghans that want to get out of the country and can't and a number of people have been forced out of their homes and displaced and maybe just simply running for a border. one of thosed and running for the border and one of them is iran. and joining us is the teheran bureau chief, and i want to talk about one of the bordering countries of iran, and the expectation and preparation of the influx of afghan refugees, and ali, what are you seeing on the ground, and what is the government's -- i guess, stance when it comes to the afghan refugees? >> hi, chuck. well, iran has traditionally housed afghan refugees for decades and there is about 2 million of them here, and they are mostly undocumented, and

they have a difficult life here, chuck. they have to do menial and dangerous jobs for little pay, and their children can't go to school. but for many of them, it is a better option than afghanistan and as the tragedy unfolds in afghanistan, the border is filling up with afghan refugees to get into iran, and the government has set up three makeshift refugee camps, and of course, it is very difficult to get here and they want to get into the afghan western border and turkey has built a 185-foot wall along the western border and specifically to stop afghan refugees coming in, and so it is tighter and tighter for them to move, and also today, we just heard from the minister of borders that they are considering shutting down that border refugee camp temporarily. they are citing reasons of covid not spreading in the country and

other concern of theirs is the afghan refugees coming in won't leave through the western border now that turkey has closed it, and probably trying to see what relationship they can establish with the taliban while all of this chaos unfolds. so for afghan refugees trying to flee all of the problems in afghanistan it is getting more difficult for them to move. this is always a safe haven for them, and it is becoming even tougher for them to come to iran. >> would you still call iran a safe refugee for them wanting to close down or how would you classify it? >> safe haven is a too broad of a word, but some opportunity to make money but not a lot and to try to get some opportunity to get here, but i know many begging for help or influence to

get their family member ps out -- members out of afghanistan, because as difficult for iran, it is better option than what faces them in afghanistan. >> that is going to tell you a lot there. and ali arouzi in tehran, and thank you, sir. let me move to j.c. hendrickson here. walk us through the scope of what you see coming, and the expectation of what a resettlement program is going to look like, and how many people, and our most recent, you know, comparison would be with what happened in syria. what do you expect, and what are you preparing for? >> well, i think it is important to start with the big picture that afghanistan has hosted a decades of conflict, and there are currently 18.4 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in afghanistan. this year alone, the number of people -- >> that is half of the country's

population. >> that is right. that is right. and this year alone, there are 550,000 people who have been internally displaced according to the figures from earlier this week, and this is up from 390,000 people which was reported just last week. so this country is in dire need of humanitarian aid, and the u.s. government right now should be surging aid to trusted partners on the ground and this is not a time to take our foot off of the gas when it comes to humanitarian leadership. >> you say they should not give withhold the aid from the trusted partners on the ground. how many trusted partners are on the ground left? they have frozen a lot of money for fear it will get into the hands of the taliban? >> well, there are 165 humanitarian actors on the ground in afghanistan including the irc, and there are

humanitarian actors in all 401 of the districts in afghanistan, and, you know, for our part, we intend to operate in afghanistan as long as we possibly can. so, you know, the work goes on as long as we are able to. >> what -- what do you expect the number to be over the next couple of years? do you expect that we are going to see afghan migrants, millions of themen around refugees from afghanistan can, you know, use to migrate, however, these programs themselves would only help less than 1% afghans, and that is if they are fully operational and functional, but right now, they are not.

the siv program which is one of the routes that many people have taken over the last several weeks through relocation flights is plagued with backlogs. there are somewhere around 20,000 people who are at some stage in the process in the siv program, and the newly announced program just last week requires afghans to get out of afghanistan and get to the third country, which as you can imagine right now is impossible, so, yes, these programs need to be scaled up, and fixed, but there also needs to be solutions in the region. the united states should be negotiating agreements with the surrounding nation, and we should also be leaning on other wealthy nations to drive aid to the country. >> well, look, as you know, the politics of migration has taken an ugly turn in some parts of the country including in some, in some parts of this country,

but you are looking at what turkey is doing, and what we already saw happen in europe, how concerned are you that this is going to become a larger problem? >> well, it could without the united states taking a whole of government approach to addressing this crisis. i could speak for a moment about support in the united states. across the united states, we are seeing widespread support for afghan refugees, but for refugee settlement in general. the irc has offices in 25 cities and we have seen support surge in this time. we also, i think, have seen and it is important to note that across the political spectrum across the country, you are seeing is support for refugees from republican and democratic governors from the east coast to the west coast, and that is

really critical right now. >> well, that is step one for sure, mr. hendrickson, and it is a big mission on your hands and good luck to the folks on the ground there, and if you can help, take a look at what they are doing. that does it for us. and we will be back tomorrow with more "meet the press daily" and our msnbc coverage continues with geoff bennett right after the break. eoff bennett right ar the break.

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♪♪ it is great to be with you. i'm geoff bennett on what is a very busy wednesday afternoon. as we come on the air, we are awaiting a joint news conference from secretary of defense lloyd austin and joint chiefs chairman mark milley and the first joint press conference since the fall of kabul, and the evacuation of the americans and allies in that country, and keep it here for that, and we are also awaiting an address to