Hey, pull up a chair.

It's axon tap with David Axelroth, Robert Gibbs, and Mike Murphy.

The evacuation of thousands of people from CUMBOL is going to be hard and painful, no

matter when it started, when we began.

Would have been true if we had started a month ago or a month from now.

There is no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss of heartbreaking images

you see on television.

So Robert Gibbs, that was the President of the United States on his third or fourth effort

to explain what was going on in Afghanistan.

But to see you, I want to say to everybody including our buddy Bill Crystal, who's standing

by here, I had a little oral surgery this week.

I'm hopped up on painkillers.

I'm offering that as a disclaimer for anything I say during this podcast, but it strikes

me you guys that there are a lot of people in Washington who would like painkillers.

Right now there's been a terrible week.

You mean you're not just talking about your oral surgery now, you're talking about writ

large.

Did you explain that?

Yeah.

Written large.

I feel, I mean, Bill Crystal, you're a veteran of the White House.

Whatever you think about what happened, I watched Jake Sullivan on Sunday, you know, on

...