White House pressed on Mideast evacuations

Matt, very quickly, what's it like in terms of sirens or people sheltering in place there in Israel? I think the pace of the sirens has decreased significantly. We've had only a few today. Israel says that it's doing very well in terms of taking out the missile launchers of Iran, that they hope to have about 70% or 80% gone by the end of the week. And we have seen very few missiles actually land, certainly intact, over the past three days. So I think that is improving.

Matt Gutman, great stuff, as always. Thank you very much. Turn now to Nancy Cordes, who is at the White House. Nancy, we played that full exchange. It covered a lot of ground. But, also, there was an exchange with Karoline Leavitt today about US troops possibly going to Iran at some point in the future. What did she say? Right, so the message from Karoline Leavitt, the message from the president, the message from other US officials has been so far, Major, that they are going to keep the option open of putting boots on the ground but that that is not the plan right now. And as they are likely aware, there are a small but growing number of Republicans on Capitol Hill who have expressed support for this mission but who have said that boots on the ground would be a red line of sorts for them, that they worry that that would be a sign of an open-ended conflict that would put more American troops in harm's way. And because the White House is aware of that, that's one of the reasons that they continue to say anything is possible, but that's not something that they are looking to do, at least not in the short term. And the administration continues to say it believes this conflict can be contained, even though mounting evidence suggests it's trying to break out of that containment. Right. I mean, there are now something like a dozen countries involved in some way, either because they were targeted by a missile that got shot down or they were hit by incoming from Iran. There was even a NATO country, Turkey, that was a target. And that is just a sign of how these things can potentially get out of control, and that's been one of the big fears that Democrats in particular have addressed. Today, Karoline Leavitt argued that one of the ways in which they prepared Americans in the region for this possibility was by sending out a level four-- that's the highest-level advisory-- back on February 11 warning them that their lives could be at risk if they were to travel to particular countries in the region. The problem is there are a lot of countries now involved in this fight that weren't even on that list, like Qatar or the United Arab Emirates or even Israel. And so, yes, there were some warnings that went out to Americans, but there are a lot of Americans living in those countries who didn't know that they were necessarily going to be in harm's way. Important details, as always, from Nancy Cordes, North Lawn of the White House. Thank you.