joined by susan glasser and cnn senior political analyst and former advisor to four presidents, david gergen great to have both of you and your insights on this afternoon. susan, if the intel is pointing to an imminent follow-up attack at the airport, then what did -- i suppose the question could be asked what did this drone strike overnight accomplish at this point? >> well, look, obviously this is a grim and even chilling warning from the president. i would point out that actually the white house made similar stark warnings in the days leading up to the first attack by isis-k on the airport. you know, it's just such a chaotic scene there. they haven't yet unspoold ex exactly what happened but they were unable to prevent that. the reality is you can't bomb a terrorist group into submission, we know that. if there's anything we learned from 20 years of an endless war on terror, i think it's that. it's that you cannot destroy an ideology with a series of bombing strikes no matter how many people you kill. remember in the last few hours and days of this operation kabul airport before the deadl

nicolle, bearing in mind david gergen on twitter in the last hour, he has served, what, four u.s.rongly recommending biden do what jfk did after bay of pigs, what ronald reagan did after iran contra, take full responsibility, say this is on me. according to your reporting, nicolle, what will the president say when we hear from him? and more fundamentally, what can he say? >> well, to david gergen's advice, this president is i would say most supremely confident of his experience in the area of foreign policy. and our friend mike memoli, who will be along, probably has more thoughts on that. but i know in navigating the crisis in the mideast earlier this summer he felt like he knew as much as anyone who'd ever had this job. i think that's why the very, very vivid and very tragic scenes that you're describing are such a blow to one of the central strengths of his presidency. i have talked to senior white house officials all weekend, and they are so unapologetically committed to making this about the decision to leave afghanistan after 20 years. they're full of statistics and data abo

i want to turn to someone who has been inside administrations in times of crisis, david gergen joinssidential advisor to four presidents, democrat and republican. what does president biden need to say now? >> i'm so glad he's doing this and interviewing and taking some hard questions, because the questions are cascading now and the president has to protect and advance his own credibility that's very much on the line now. and answer questions that go to the competence of this whole operation, how did it get so botched? up until now the biden administration has been very effective at getting things done. they've worked well together. you and i have talked before about how well they were doing. yet the inexplicable is now happening. he has to make that explicable. one question is when he knew that the intelligence reports were getting grimmer about what was going on there, why didn't the administration start looking at the interpreters and allies then weeks ago? weeks ago veteran groups started asking the white house and state department to speed up the process on these interpreters. pe

with me now, cnn's senior political analyst david gergen, and senior affairs analyst susan glasser. ame being thrown away today. former president trump obviously taking shots at president biden. biden, in his statement yesterday, laying some of the blame at donald trump's feet. what we're watching in real-time in afghanistan is a failure, but whose failure is it? can it be argued this is a failure that has many fathers? >> yeah, it is absolutely a failure that has many fathers. very contrary to what john kennedy used to say, it was a victory of a thousand fathers and defeat was always an orphan. there is a lot of finger pointing going on here. jim, i think biden was courageous in following up what he campaigned on, what he promised to do, to go ahead and follow through on it. i think donald trump does bear some of the responsibility. but you cannot say about this white house that it has handled this well. you know, as you know so well about the white house, jim, what you decide to do is important, but equally as important is how you plan to do it. and in this case, the pentagon had w

i also want to bring in david gergen, the cnn political analyst who's been an advisor to four u.s.his isn't a done deal, but if president biden does get the infrastructure reconciliation package across the finish line, sign it both into law, how do you think the first year of his presidency will be judged? >> it will be immensely well judged. if he can get the rest of this done before the end of the year, wolf, we haven't seen anything like this since franklin roosevelt. and it's so reassuring. as you say, it's more than just a biden victory. this is also a victory for the congress, for the spirit of bipartisanship that has languished in congress for so long, and biden was one of the people who had faith that it could be restored. and his leadership should be given credit for doing that. frankly, it's also a victory for a lot of moderate republican senators senators who are sick and tired of being held to donald trump. and this was a responsible action on their part that's in the best interest of the country from their point of view. >> yeah, 19 republican senators joined all 50 de