Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Monday, August 23rd. I'm Margaret

Talif, filling in for Nyla Budu. Here's what we're covering today. Images out of

Kabul are being put to political use. Plus, a new push to make the outdoors

safer for people of color. But first, today's one big thing. Why the US may be in

Afghanistan past August 31st. President Biden spoke yesterday afternoon to the

American people, again defending his withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and

painful, no matter when it started, when we began. There is no way to evacuate

this many people without pain and loss of heartbreaking images you see on

television. But that may not actually be the most important thing that he said.

Axios is politics editor Glenn Johnson joins us now with the latest on

Afghanistan and the withdrawal. Good morning, Glenn. Morning, Margaret. So, Glenn,

US troops are supposed to be out on August 31st. That's one week from tomorrow.

But yesterday, the president seemed to be saying that he was open to changing

course. Why would he need to do that? And what does it say to you about the scale

of this operation? Well, throughout his comments, he made clear that the scale was

overwhelming. He opened up his remarks by detailing almost in like a salesman's

like pitch, a recap of his record over the past month or so. Exactly how many

people had been moved out. It was clear that they were trying to address the

specific argument that they had not handled this well. He just wanted to lay out

the scale of what they were trying to accomplish. What was interesting later was

in response to reporter's questions. He expanded upon his prepared remarks and

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