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Aug. 23, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:23
Joe Biden Is Not Competent In Any Sense | Ep. 1324
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Time Text
Chuck Schumer dances as Americans are stuck in Kabul.
The Biden administration has no good answers to just why Joe Biden is disconnected from reality.
And ISIS is on the rise again.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
There's a lot of it.
None of it is good.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Alrighty, so.
Apparently, the leadership of the Democratic Party, they just don't care very much.
I'm not sure how else to read their activities this weekend.
You had Nancy Pelosi off in Napa Valley dining with the DCCC, and you had Chuck Schumer dancing it up with Stephen Colbert in New York City.
This is kind of an astonishing tape, given the fact that there are currently thousands of American citizens stuck in Kabul, and the Senate Majority Leader is dancing it up with Stephen Colbert, according to the New York Post.
Senator Chuck Schumer was ripped on Twitter for dancing with Stephen Colbert backstage at the We Love NYC concert amid the ongoing catastrophe in Afghanistan.
And as the coronavirus pandemic continues to surge across the U.S., backstage antics wrote Mayor de Blasio's Press Secretary Bill Neihart in a Twitter posting on Saturday, before the star-studded concert in Central Park was abruptly canceled because of storms and lightning.
Generated by Hurricane Henri.
God was like, no!
And thus was the We Love NYC celebration cancelled.
Here is a little bit of some incredibly awkward dancing between the Senate Majority Leader and a man who used to be funny at one point, Stephen Colbert.
Although it's been a long time, it's hard to remember, I know.
Here comes Stephen Colbert.
It's just a disaster area.
Not just the dancing.
Not just the dancing.
Backstage, between Stephen Colbert, whose job it is to target politicians, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader.
It's wonderful, wonderful stuff happening.
Meanwhile, thousands of Americans are still stuck in Kabul with no way out.
And now, the Taliban are openly mocking us.
So, they put up a photo of their guys raising a Taliban flag in the same exact formation as the Marines on Iwo Jima in World War II.
According to the Marine Corps Times, in one particular image released this week, members of the Taliban Badri 313 Battalion appeared to mock Joe Rosenthal's iconic 1945 image of the flag raised atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
In the Taliban image, fighters belonging to Badri 313, which some are calling the Taliban's elite commando unit, are shown wearing full camouflage uniforms, combat boots, tactical gear, and night vision goggles.
Similar photographs released in recent days show Taliban fighters carrying weapons and equipment issued by the United States or allied nations, including M4 carbines and what appear to be Trijicon Advanced Combat Optical Gun Sights, or ACOGs.
The images are a noticeable departure from traditional depictions of Taliban fighters who seldom appeared with heavy weaponry or in full military garb, spoils left behind by the Afghan army. So things are going really well. They're going even better than that, actually. It turns out that over at the airport, a Fox News reporter is suggesting, Lucas Tomlinson, that the Taliban have been stepping up attacks on Afghans outside Abiy Gedi Kabul airport.
They've been tearing up passports and other vital documents.
One Afghan trying to escape says the Taliban knocked his wife's teeth out at a checkpoint, which of course is no shock at all.
You have to understand that the Kabul airport, you think of an airport as like a big place with a lot of runways.
Kabul airport is not a big place with a lot of runways.
Kabul airport is a postage stamp.
Bagram airport, which we Ridiculously surrendered to the Taliban for no apparent reason was a very large airport.
Kabul is one runway.
Literally one.
All the Taliban have to do to knock out the ability of anyone to fly anything out of Afghanistan at this point is send one more around into the runway.
That's it.
And everybody knows this, which is why they're treating the Taliban with kid gloves.
Meanwhile, the Taliban are basically screening whoever goes through the checkpoints, the security.
And this has resulted not just in Afghans being targeted, but also in Americans being targeted as well.
If you have an American passport, and if you have the right credentials, the Taliban has been allowing people to pass safely through.
being beaten by the Taliban as they approach these checkpoints.
There have been incidents of people having some tough encounters with Taliban.
As we learn about those incidents, we certainly go back and engage the Taliban leadership and press home to them that our expectation is that they allow our people with the appropriate credentials to get through the checkpoints.
Oh, well, you know, as long as we're conveying our feelings to the Taliban, obviously that will change things.
By the way, the State Department guidance right now is utterly unclear.
They're basically saying we can't guarantee your safety to get to the airport.
You should wait until we get back to you and give you instructions, but also don't call us because we're overwhelmed.
So it remains a complete crap show over in Kabul.
Meanwhile, Tony Blinken is trying to explain that the best way to get to the Kabul airport is to go yourself.
We're not going to be sending soldiers out there the way that the British have, the way that the Italians have, like there are other people who are out there, the Ukrainians have, like they're sending their military into the city to go pick up their citizens and bring them back.
But apparently not the United States.
Tony Blinken is saying basically you have to get there yourself and we'll try to figure out a way to get you out, but we can't guarantee your safety getting there, but also we're not going to come get you.
So imagine for a second that you were an American stuck in Afghanistan.
What would you do at this point?
Would you try to brave the thousands of people who are now surrounding the Kabul airport, including Taliban fighters, to get through there?
Let's say you're an American woman and you're trying to get through.
How would this go for you?
Do you feel perfectly comfortable that you would get through the phalanx of Taliban fighters and barbarians who are now guarding the airport?
Tony Blinken says, well, you know, we're doing our best.
The best way, the most effective way, the way I'm focused on to get folks in, again, is to be in direct contact with them and to help guide them in, to give them instructions on where to go, when to go there, and then we can bring them into the airport safely and effectively.
So they are still effectively on their own getting to the airport?
Again, we found that the best way to do this is to be in direct touch with them.
President, Secretary of Defense have been clear that we will do whatever it takes to get Americans home and out of harm's way.
Oh, you'll be in touch with them.
You see, you'll talk them through it.
Mmm.
Mmm.
Yes, I'm sure that as people hear stories about people having the crap beat out of them by the Taliban, their first thought is, well, probably I'm just going to go there.
You know, I mean, like, what could be the harm?
Exactly.
Meanwhile, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, he admits there are still several thousand Americans trying to get out of Kabul.
Now remember, none of this counts.
Presumably the hundreds or thousands of Americans who are not in Kabul, right?
This is just the Americans who are in Kabul.
But there are Americans at NGOs all over Afghanistan.
A lot of those people ain't coming home.
And I promise you, a year from now, there are going to be videos of Americans in Afghanistan who are being held hostage by the Taliban.
If you think that American involvement in Afghanistan ended with Joe Biden declaring that American involvement in Afghanistan is over, just watch the news for the next year or so.
Here's Jake Sullivan.
Exactly how many Americans are left behind in Afghanistan?
Well, Nora, the U.S.
government doesn't actually know the precise answer to that question, and that's because we ask every American who comes to Afghanistan to register with the U.S.
Embassy.
But when people leave, they often don't deregister, and even some who come never register in the first place.
Well, the clock is ticking.
The deadline is approaching.
It's just 12 days away.
You think you can have all that buttoned up by then?
We can move thousands of people every single day between now and the end of the month.
We have plenty more seats on flights than we believe that there are possibly Americans still in Afghanistan.
Yeah, yeah.
So they have no idea how many people are actually there.
Meanwhile, Fox News' Trey Yingst, he says there is no clear plan in place to rescue the Americans who are outside of Kabul.
Because remember again, not all of the Americans are in Kabul.
The question we keep hearing, whether it's people reaching out online saying we have relatives or friends trapped in Kabul or elsewhere, they keep asking, what's the plan?
Have you heard anything?
Who can I contact to make sure that my loved ones get to the airport?
And while there is a limited plan to get countries, including the United States, on the ground here to evacuate those who can make it to the airport, there is no clear plan in place to save the thousands of Americans who are not only spread out around Kabul, but in other cities, Herat, Kandahar, smaller cities around the country.
And they have no way to get here.
All of this because Joe Biden decided to precipitously pull out with no warning, without really any plan.
He said we were going to pull out April 14th, but he didn't start actually evacuating people.
So instead, we just moved the military out and we left all the materiel and human beings behind, which is precisely the opposite of what you would do, even if you're in favor of the withdrawal, which again, I think is politically foolish.
I think it's geostrategically idiotic.
But even if you're in favor of the withdrawal, even if you think that this was something that had to be done, we may as well do it sooner rather than later, you at least have to leave the soldiers in there long enough to make sure that we get our stuff and people out.
Instead, we just handed our military technology over to the Taliban.
We abandoned our air bases.
We basically cut our own hamstrings so we can't actually effectuate a way of getting people out of there to the point where now, not only do we not have an ability to get people out of there, the Biden administration is openly at this point talking about bombing all of the people and resources that we left there.
So the idea is we left all of these military resources behind.
Maybe we should bomb them.
Maybe we should just blow up all the military resources.
According to Axios, the Biden administration is considering launching airstrikes against the larger equipment.
They fear that such a move could provoke the Taliban at a time when the U.S.
is focusing on evacuating people from Afghanistan.
Again, this is because we left these people in charge.
These barbarians are in charge.
We are no longer in charge over there.
According to Politico, in the chaos of the moment, it's unclear to U.S.
officials how much equipment the Taliban has seized and how much of that sits unattended on bases and in small combat outposts across the country.
That uncertainty over the status of a massive arsenal is sparking fears of a regional arms bazaar that could be a boon to terrorist groups and insurgents.
The images that have spread across the world over the past week of Taliban fighters posing in front of captured helicopters and light attack aircraft have allowed the group to further humiliate the former Afghan and American governments.
But these images don't concern longtime extremism watchers as much as the proliferation of guns, bullets, and grenades.
So now, I guess we're going to have to send troops back in to blow all that stuff up.
So this has been just wonderful.
CNN, meanwhile, reporting there really is no access to the airport.
The Americans have closed all the gates access.
There is no access to the airport at the moment, except through one British access point called Camp Barron, which is on the outskirts of the airport where people are processed there and then moved into the airport once they've been cleared to fly out.
Now, that has been the case now for many hours.
That is Sam Kiley of CNN reporting as of yesterday.
Sky News also reporting on the chaos and saying, yeah, no, things are not organized out here.
This is an emergency now.
It's nothing to do with process.
They're just trying to save lives.
Tens of thousands are trying to get through.
At the front they're being crushed.
Paratroopers pulling people from the mayhem.
Medics rushing from the next casualty to the next and the next.
The soldiers spray the crowd with a hose, anything to cool them down.
men, women and lots and lots of children.
And then what we feared, the inevitable.
Is this a stabilized withdrawal from Afghanistan?
It looks like death to me.
Okay, so that is a report from Sky News.
Things are going great, though, according to the Biden administration.
By the way, there have been at least 20 deaths in the last week during the Kabul airport evacuation effort, according to NATO.
That's how well things are going over there.
Including, by the way, a child.
Like, at least a couple of children.
Seven people were crushed just over the weekend in panic at the airport.
So things are going absolutely swimmingly.
Thousands continue to try to flee the country.
The British military on Sunday acknowledged at least seven deaths at the airport.
And again, apparently one of the people who was killed was a two-year-old.
Apparently, soldiers had covered several corpses in white clothing.
Other troops stood on concrete barriers trying to calm down the crowd.
Others may have been trampled, suffocated, or suffered heart attacks as Taliban fighters fired into the air to try to drive back the crowds as well.
And, um, apparently the, uh, the temperatures have reached about 93 degrees Fahrenheit over there.
So, uh, so things are very hot and, uh, and, and sticky and just, it's pretty terrible all the way through.
Meanwhile, who's actually setting the rules here?
It's pretty obvious.
The Taliban are setting the rules.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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So the Taliban are in charge at this point and that is perfectly obvious.
So Joe Biden said yesterday that maybe we'll extend the August 31st deadline.
Remember, there was this August 31st deadline that he kept talking about over and over and over.
We're nine weeks away from the August 31st deadline.
Then he's asked, well, are you gonna stay longer if there's still Americans on the ground?
And he was like, we'll do our best to get out before August 31st.
And then George Stephanopoulos asked him last week, but you will extend the deadline.
And Biden said, yeah, maybe we'll extend the deadline.
So yesterday, Joe Biden said, maybe we'll extend the deadline again.
We're nine weeks away from the August 31st deadline.
Will you extend that deadline?
Or what is your thought process on extending the evacuation operation?
The discussions going on among us and the military about extending our Our hope is we will not have to extend, but there are going to be discussions, I suspect, on how far along we are in the process.
So there are discussions on whether we're going to have to extend.
In the meantime, in the meantime, the Taliban are saying, you're not extending.
They're like, you know what?
We're not going to let people through.
And you know what this is?
This is a hostage situation now.
As I mentioned, there's only one way out of this hostage situation for the Biden administration.
That is to hand billions of dollars to the Taliban.
We are going to become the chief funders of some of the worst terrorist supporters on planet Earth and the worst regime on planet Earth.
That is what the United States has been transformed to.
From the greatest fighting force on planet Earth, killing tens of thousands of Taliban members every year in coordination with our Afghan allies, to the people sponsoring the Taliban.
That is what we are going to turn into.
Because the Taliban has now met with Sky News in Doha, Qatar.
And here is what Sky News is reporting.
Taliban spokesperson Dr. Suhail Shaheen said, quote, it's a red line.
President Biden announced on August 31st they would withdraw all their military forces.
So if they extend it, that means they're extending occupation.
There's no need for that.
If the US or UK were to seek additional time to continue evacuations, the answer is no, or there would be consequences.
It will create mistrust between us.
If they are intent on continuing the occupation, it will provoke a reaction.
All of that comes as Boris Johnson is personally begging with Joe Biden to extend the deadline to allow more people to flee the reign of terror of the Taliban.
Meanwhile, desperate scenes grow at Kabul International Airport.
According to Sky News, people are prepared to leave everything and risk their lives to escape life under the militant group rule.
When pressed on this issue, that people are clinging onto aircraft, leaving the country, and that that is far from routine, Dr. Shaheen, he's probably a great doctor, probably.
Dr. Shaheen, the spokesperson for the Taliban.
Probably an excellent doctor.
He said, They want to reside in Western countries.
And that is a kind of economic migration because Afghanistan is poor and 70% of the people in Afghanistan live under the poverty line.
So everyone wants to resettle in Western countries to have a prosperous life, but it's not about being scared of the Taliban.
When asked about footage that the Taliban are going door-to-door and threatening people and closing down girls' schools and banning women from television, and when asked about a story from CNN that the brother of an Afghan translator was just murdered the other day.
CNN is reporting that the Taliban have sentenced the brother of an Afghan translator to death, according to letters obtained by CNN, accusing him of helping the U.S.
in providing security to his brother, who served as an interpreter to American troops.
So the Taliban are obviously doing all this sort of stuff.
Dr. Shaheen said, all fake news.
I can assure you, there are many reports by our opponents claiming what is not based in reality.
Dr. Shaheen said, the women who stay in the country will lose nothing.
Only if they have no hijab, they will have a hijab.
Women are required to have the same rights as you have in your country, but with a hijab.
When pressed on this issue, Shaheen said, women teachers will have resumed work, lost nothing.
Female journalists, they have resumed their work, lost nothing.
Um, yeah, sure.
They said the same thing last time, by the way.
So Sky News asks, what the Taliban would say to the families of those who died trying to help Afghanistan?
Quote, they occupied our country.
If we occupy your country, what will you say to me?
What if I killed your people in your country?
What will you say?
I think all people suffered a lot, bloodshed, destruction, everything.
We say the past is the past, part of our past history.
Now we want to focus on the future.
Yeah, sure.
Okay, so the Taliban are in charge, they're setting the deadline, and they've said there will be consequences if we move past August 31st, which of course means that the United States is now Basically, the Taliban is playing the tune and the United States, the most powerful country in the history of the world, is dancing to the tune of a bunch of 8th century barbarians armed with weapons that we gave them.
So that's great.
The way that we are coping with this, according to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, is we are now ordering commercial airlines to provide passenger jets to help with the growing U.S.
military operation.
Lloyd Austin activated Stage 1 of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, created in 1952 after the Berlin Airlift, to provide 18 airliners to help ferry passengers arriving at bases in the Middle East from Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon spokesperson.
The current activation is for 18 planes, four from the United Airlines, three from American, Atlas Air, Delta Airlines, and Omni Air, and two from Hawaiian Airlines.
Captain John Perkins, spokesman for the military's transportation command, said the commercial airliners would begin service on Monday or Tuesday.
They would fly evacuees from the Middle East to Europe and from Europe to the United States.
So obviously this is a well-planned, well-coordinated effort when you have to call on Hawaiian Airlines to airlift people out of Afghanistan.
Not gonna say that's on their normal flight schedule.
It's like, so yesterday they were flying from, you know, LAX to Maui.
Today, the U.S.
military is like, okay, we're gonna need you to redirect to Kabul.
I'd love to be on that flight crew, gang.
Captain Perkins said in a telephone interview the military had requested wide-body, long-haul aircraft capable of carrying several hundred passengers.
He said discussions had started with the airlines last week, and some carriers had volunteered, but the demand was great enough for Austin to order more airlines to honor their obligations under the Reserve Fleet Program.
Civilian planes would not fly into or out of Kabul, where a rapidly deteriorating security situation is hampered.
Instead, they would help transport thousands of Afghans arriving in Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE.
So they're not actually flying into Kabul, but they are flying into the Middle East, where they weren't flying before, and they'll be flying people out of there.
That's how well-coordinated this effort has been.
Meanwhile, ISIS is back, so that's exciting.
Local staff members at the U.S.
Embassy in Kabul are deeply disheartened by U.S.
evacuation orders and have expressed a deep sense of betrayal, according to NBC News, by the way.
There was a cable that said memos had been sent to Afghan staff at the embassy on Wednesday inviting them to head to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
It told them to take food and prepare for difficult conditions.
No one anticipated the brutal experience that occurred, according to the embassy staff.
Staffers reported being jostled, hit, spat on, and cursed at by Taliban fighters near the airport.
Adding criminals were taking advantage of the chaos while the U.S.
military tried to maintain order in an extremely physical situation.
Some staff members reported they were almost separated from their kids.
Others collapsed and crushed people and had to be taken to the hospital with injuries, according to the cable.
Others said they had collapsed on the road because of heat exhaustion.
One staff member said it would be better to die under the Taliban's bullet than face the crowds again.
Happy to die here, but with dignity and pride, said another.
A third accused the U.S.
of prioritizing the Afghan government elite with contacts in America over American embassy staffers.
So good times.
In just one second, we'll get to the ISIS reports, because apparently ISIS is back in country and doing what they do best.
So everything is working out wonderfully.
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Meanwhile, in case you were wondering whether the terror problem in Afghanistan is going to continue to be a problem, the answer is ISIS is back.
So that's exciting stuff.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S.
warned the Islamic State poses a threat to Americans in Afghanistan as the Biden administration seeks to evacuate thousands of U.S.
citizens and Afghan allies.
The threat is real.
It is acute.
It is persistent.
It is something we are focused on with every tool in our arsenal, said Jake Sullivan, the president's national security advisor, he told CNN on Sunday when asked whether crowds of Kabul International Airport are vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Because, by the way, that is a real possibility.
You got a bunch of Americans and Afghan allies who are just lined up around this place.
All it would take is one ISIS guy with an AK to mow down a bunch of those people.
President Biden speaking from the White House said, quote, we know that terrorists may seek to exploit the situation and target innocent Afghans or American troops. We're maintaining constant vigilance to monitor and disrupt threats from any source. Concerns over Islamic State attacks were one reason the US.
Embassy warned Americans on Saturday to avoid traveling to the airport in Kabul and to avoid airport gates, defense officials have said.
So, question.
If Americans can't go to the airport, and they can't go to the airport gates, and you're worried about ISIS killing them, what are you going to do now?
What exactly is your plan, guys?
Islamic State is among several terrorist groups present in Afghanistan, each with a different relationship with the Taliban.
The Taliban had harbored al-Qaeda before the group's terrorist attacks on the U.S. in 2001.
Reports have surfaced the Taliban have freed al-Qaeda fighters from prisons as they gain control of the country this month.
ISIS and the Taliban have sometimes fought over control of the territory in Afghanistan.
The Taliban, after taking over Kabul, executed the former head of ISIS in South Asia, who had been in a government prison.
Assisting the U.S.
evacuation effort, roughly two dozen countries have agreed to take in Afghan evacuees while they are processed.
The Biden administration has also ordered commercial airliners to help evacuate.
Mr. Sullivan was one of several U.S.
national security officials to appear on Sunday morning news programs to discuss the evacuation effort.
But honestly, if you think things are bad now over there, wait until there's an actual terrorist attack on the gates outside of the Kabul airport.
Because then you're just relying on the Taliban to basically provide full-fledged security.
Right now it's not just, will the Taliban be nice enough to allow our people to leave if we bribe them?
Now the question is, will the Taliban actually go to war with Al-Qaeda to stop Al-Qaeda from killing people who are outside the gates?
And that is a very real possibility given the fact the State Department is now telling people not to go to the airport because they're afraid of terrorist attacks.
U.N.
officials have reported Al-Qaeda operations are still present in some areas.
U.S.
intelligence assessments have said the group could completely reconstitute in Afghanistan within 18 months to two years after an American withdrawal.
U.S.
officials have since said they are likely to reassess that timeline to like 15 minutes.
What a full-scale disaster.
So, the good news is, we have a president who is clearly with us, a president who is clearly in control, a president who has defined this policy and plan for every contingency, and totally knows what's going on right now.
Or, alternatively, we have a house plant.
Who is not with us, and has not been with us for quite some time.
So, Chris Wallace had on the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, who has really outdone himself this time.
And Tony Blinken is not good at his job, and he is extraordinarily not good at his job.
Chris Wallace on Fox News asked him, you know, the president keeps saying things that are not true, like over and over.
The president said Al Qaeda isn't in Afghanistan.
That's not true.
The president has said that there is no violence outside the airport gates.
That is not true.
The president has suggested that the Afghan security forces didn't fight at all.
We're not capable of fighting.
That's not true.
Like he said, a lot of things that are not true.
Is he with us?
Like is the president like on this planet as of any time recently?
Or is he just too wrapped up in that Matlock marathon?
on cable channel 799 to pay attention to what's going on.
Here's Chris Wallace with Tony Blinken.
Tony Blinken's answer here is somewhat disturbing.
Mr. Secretary, does the president not know what's going on?
This is an incredibly emotional time for many of us, and including allies and partners who've been shoulder to shoulder with us in Afghanistan for 20 years.
So the question was, does the president know what's going on?
And the Secretary of State's answer is, it's an emotional time for us all.
Do you feel quieted?
Do you feel that things are going well?
Do you feel that this president is in charge?
That's not the answer you're looking for.
The answer you're looking for is the president knows every single thing that's going on right at this moment.
We are making decisions in real time.
We plan for every contingency.
Sometimes those plans go wrong, and we are making contingencies for the contingencies, but the president is up to date and apprised.
Instead, we get, it's an emotional time.
I mean, let's be real.
The emotions are running high right now.
Yeah, great.
Also, who's in control?
Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who's in control?
Here's Tony Blinken explaining.
The Taliban are in control.
Now, you should be asking yourself the question, why?
You should be asking why?
And the answer, of course, is because Joe Biden decided to put them in control.
Period.
End of story.
That is the only reason the Taliban are in control.
Someone in our audience might listen to you, Mr. Secretary, and say, oh, so we have to ask the Taliban for permission for American citizens to leave.
True or not true?
They are in control of Kabul.
That is the reality.
That's the reality that we have to deal with.
How comfortable are you with that, Mr. Secretary?
Um...
What I'm focused on, what we're all focused on, is getting people out and making sure that we're doing everything possible to do that.
And in this case, it is, I think, a requirement of the job to be in contact with the Taliban, which controls Kabul.
If your jaw's not on the floor after listening to clips like that, I don't know what to tell you.
The most powerful country in world history has put the Taliban in charge of Kabul, with thousands of American citizens still stranded in country.
The Taliban is in charge of the gates.
In terms of who gets in and who gets out, the Taliban is supposed to be in charge of preventing terror attacks on Americans and Afghans.
People who they want to kill, by the way.
And Tony Blinken's like, well, you know, they're in charge.
And when asked whether he is comfortable with that, his answer is, we're focused on the future.
Hmm.
Hmm.
That's good.
Well, the good news is that at least if Biden isn't with it, then Tony Blinken is, right?
I mean, Tony Blinken obviously is on top of this thing.
Here is Tony Blinken talking about the people in Afghanistan that he's been in touch with.
What we've seen, Major, is also pretty remarkable.
Go back a week.
The government fell.
And by the way, I was on the phone with President Karzai the day before, when he was telling me his intent, as he put it, to fight to the death.
Well, the next day he was gone.
The military collapsed.
Um, he was on the phone.
Well, last week, he was on the phone with President Karzai.
That's weird.
The reason it's weird is because Khamenei Karzai has not been president of Afghanistan since 2014.
It's now 2021.
So he meant, presumably, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, right?
Who's the guy who fled.
But it's disquieting.
The Secretary of State doesn't know who the hell he was talking to a week ago, nor does he care.
Let's be real about this.
They don't care what's going on here.
They don't care.
I mean, Chuck Schumer is dancing at events with Stephen Colbert.
And Nancy Pelosi is off doing wine and dines in Napa without masks.
And the president is busy drinking Ensure and taking naps at 11 o'clock in the morning.
There is no hand at this wheel.
There is no hand at the tiller.
And because there's no hand at the wheel, no hand at the tiller, a decision to direct the... to essentially tie the tiller such that the ship is directed directly at an iceberg.
And then to be like, well, I guess, you know, if an emergency arises, we'll do something.
The emergency is here.
You guys are incompetent.
You hadn't... It's... It is jaw-dropping.
It's all jaw-dropping.
Okay, and if you were worried that it was just, maybe it's just Biden's staffers, not Biden himself.
So, there is only one problem with this, which is that Biden is the one who made this call.
There was a tweet from Axios yesterday saying, Joe Biden doesn't plan to fire anyone over this.
Well, who the hell would he fire?
Himself?
This is his policy, beginning to end.
This was his policy.
There are two major decisions that have been made in the recent history of Afghanistan, aside from the 2014 drawdown by Barack Obama.
Two major events, right?
Two major events, I think is fair to say.
One is the killing of Osama bin Laden, the other is the pullout.
Joe Biden was on the wrong side of both of those.
Joe Biden opposed the raid that killed bin Laden.
And now, he was in favor of withdrawing with no contingency plan, radically, without any sort of advance for- like, you would know how to do this.
You, like the regular Joe, plumber Joe, you would know how to do this.
Right?
Let's say that a flood was about to hit your house.
A flood was about to hit your house.
And you have a couple of choices.
One is, you could leave your children and all of your belongings in your house.
And you could just flee.
And then when the flood hits, you could try to row back in on a rowboat to get those things.
Or, knowing the flood is coming, you could, theoretically, take your kids, put them in the back of the car, take the boxes of stuff you want, put that in the back of the car, and then drive away and call the insurance company.
Which one do you think Joe Biden did here?
Joe Biden was like, not only is a flood coming, I'm going to unleash the flood.
I'm going to blow up the dam, right?
The levee is going to break.
I'm going to be responsible for that.
The flood is coming.
Also, I'm going to leave my kids in the house over here and all of my pictures, all my old photos.
I'm just going to leave that stuff there.
And hey, that was an unforeseen, but I had a plan for it.
My plan is that I was going to come back later in a rowboat.
That's the plan.
OK, so if you just think that's his team that came up with that plan, First of all, we have multiple reports of people telling Joe Biden this was the dumbest plan ever.
This is a terrible, terrible, stupid thing to do.
And Joe Biden ignoring them because he is a dumb man.
He's always been kind of a dumb man.
According to Barack Obama, right?
Never underestimate Joe's capacity to F things up.
Quote, Barack Obama.
He was his vice president.
But now we have Joe Biden, who is not at the top of his game.
And there was never a top of his game.
We're not talking about like Michael Jordan in the declining Washington Wizards years.
We're talking about Benoit Benjamin at the end of his career.
OK, this is not somebody who is like a great guy, a great player who has now declined somewhat from his peak.
We're talking about, like, the fringe guy.
We're talking about, like, Brian Scalabrini at the end of the bench.
And it's the waning days of his career when he can no longer move.
And by the way, no rep on Benoit Benjamin or Brian Scalabrini, both of whom were much better at their jobs than Joe Biden is at his job, which is saying a lot because neither one of them are great players.
Like, this is unbelievable.
It's incredible.
Okay, so here is Joe Biden being even less competent than usual over the weekend.
He always gets very testy.
If you ask him like a tough question about the fact that he just, you know, blew up America's foreign policy, like completely blew it up because China is ecstatic today.
We just lost every base we have in the region.
It's not just that we've lost bases in Afghanistan.
We lost our bases in Pakistan.
We have no surrounding bases.
Our nearest base is now in Qatar, which is hundreds of miles away.
We have no over-the-horizon capacity.
We lost all of our intelligence sources on the ground who are likely to be murdered by the Taliban.
China is ecstatic because now they have land access.
They now have basically a bridge all the way from China through Afghanistan into Iran, to Syria, to Lebanon.
Like this is all Chinese allied territory now.
You got the Russians who are doing the same thing.
I mean, it's a full-scale geopolitical disaster.
And if you're an American ally, you're looking at the Biden administration going, I don't trust you.
I'm gonna have to triangulate now.
I'm gonna have to look to Russia and China, try to cut a few deals, try to shore up, you know, kind of backfill some sort of national security here.
It's, I've never seen anything remotely like it.
And the president of the United States is not with us.
There's nothing going on upstairs.
The lights are on, but nobody is home.
And frankly, the lights are dimming very, very quickly.
Here's the President of the United States getting testy when asked questions about it.
I love you.
But you know, there's not a lot of people I trust.
Okay, he was asked if he trusts the Taliban now.
And the reason he was asked that is because he is trusting the Taliban to allow Americans out.
And the reporter says, do you trust them?
He said, I don't trust you, man.
I don't trust anybody.
Trust no one.
Well, I wish you'd abided by that rule before you pulled all American soldiers out of Kabul, preventing us from getting our people out.
If you didn't trust them, why did you do this?
This was unnecessary.
This wasn't the Taliban defeated the United States military in armed combat.
This was not even the Taliban defeated the Afghan military in armed combat.
This was the United States withdrew close air support from the Afghan military, withdrew all American military contractors, allowing the Afghan Air Force to fly.
This is the United States completely destroyed the bases for the Afghan army.
And the Afghan army disappeared.
The Taliban didn't take Kabul in ground assault fighting.
They didn't take Kabul in hand-to-hand combat.
They took Kabul without firing a shot.
They took Kandahar without firing a shot.
They took Mazar-e-Sharif without firing a shot.
That's because of Biden.
No one else.
Just Biden.
That's all.
It's unreal.
Now, what's hilarious is that he says like these two clips back to back.
So he says, I don't trust anybody, including you.
I don't trust the Taliban, but he's going to urge the Taliban to respect the well-beings of Afghans.
Oh, I'm sure that's what's going to happen, Mr. President.
I'm sure that's what's going to happen.
Now you've pulled out all protective forces and destroyed all of our allies and left anyone who allied with us at the risk of being shot in the face by the Taliban.
I am sure that the Taliban are thinking to themselves, how can we protect the well-being of Afghans in coordination with the desires of the Biden administration that just gave us Apache attack helicopters?
What in the actual?
There's no way to do the show without the F word.
There's just no way.
Here's the president of the United States.
The Taliban has to make a fundamental decision.
Is the Taliban going to attempt to be able to unite and provide for the well-being of the people of Afghanistan, which no one group has ever done since before, for hundreds of years?
And if it does, it's going to need everything from additional help in terms of economic assistance, trade, and a whole range of things.
The Taliban is going to have...
The Taliban is going to have to make a decision.
Okay, so let's say they have to make a decision.
Who knows what decision they're going to make?
On the one hand, they could do all the things Joe Biden wants them to do.
On the other hand, they could tell him to go screw himself, kill everyone who allied with us, stuff the women back into burqas, and then back into the basement, and then rape them, and do whatever the hell they want.
I wonder which one... I have an idea.
My hand's up here.
I think I know the answer.
I think... It's a hard question.
I think I know the answer to this one as to what the Taliban is going to do.
I think I know.
This is really rough.
By the way, Joe Biden was then asked a question about ISIS, which again is rising in Afghanistan.
And here was Joe Biden's electrifying response.
In case you can't see that, that's the president of the United States walking and doddering out the back door.
I kid you not.
It's the president of the United States turning around and walking out the back door.
Yeah, man.
This is gonna go fantastically.
Well, the good news is that if Joe Biden should actually be declared incompetent, which may, in fact, have to happen at some point here, then the person who will replace him, Kamala Harris, she's up for the job, right?
Oh, wait, we have video of Kamala Harris, too.
What an administration this is.
But no bad tweets.
No bad tweets.
Get to that in a moment.
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Well, you might be asking yourself whether Joe Biden is competent.
And the answer, of course, is not.
He is not.
I mean, Joe Biden is literally just forgetting things now.
In this same presser, he literally forgot the name of his FEMA administrator, which I understand is a forgettable thing, but not if you're president and it's your administrator.
I know the names of my producers.
It takes me a little while, but once I know them, I know them.
Here's the president of the United States.
Just forget.
By the way, there's a teleprompter in front of him.
He's speaking from teleprompter at this point.
I can't think of anyone better to lead this operation than Dianne Criswell of FEMA.
Before she headed up FEMA, she led the emergency response in New York City.
I can't think of anyone better to lead this effort than Shabbat Yitzhak Buzik, MGODianne.
Yeah, man.
Okay, well, the good news is, waiting in the wings, we have Kamala Harris, the most competent person.
She is so competent.
So competent.
She's deeply ready for this job.
She is so ready for this job.
She'll be ready day one.
I mean, she might not need to be ready day one, but like, we're maybe, what, 150 days into this administration?
So by day 200, she might need to be ready.
Here is Kamala Harris cackling like a crazy person when asked about Afghanistan, which is always heartening.
It's always great when the Vice President of the United States, who, by the way, I don't know who books her travel schedule.
You know she's headed to Vietnam today.
She's flying to Vietnam.
Optics, gang!
Optics!
Here's Kamala Harris.
What's your response to reports of American— Hold on, hold on.
Slow down, everybody.
I want to talk about two things.
First, Afghanistan.
We couldn't have a higher priority right now, and in particular, our priority is making sure that we safely evacuate American citizens.
Man, is that a weird tick?
Is that a weird tick or what?
Madam Vice President, what about Afghanistan?
Let's it let's take a break here for that What is that But the good news is she's not the only one laughing.
I've got a lot of people laughing these days.
Joe Biden is laughing it up.
There is a brand new poll that shows that Americans think he's doing an unbelievably crappy job on Afghanistan.
The new poll, which is from NBC News or CBS News, rather CBS News, YouGov.
According to Americans, there's a poll from three days ago.
Removal of US troops from Afghanistan has gone very badly.
44%.
Somewhat badly.
30%.
Somewhat well.
21%.
Very well.
5%.
So the 5% is Ron Klain and the Taliban.
Meanwhile, 74% of Americans think this has either gone very badly or somewhat badly.
And the 21% who say somewhat well are actually in the pay of the Democratic Party, presumably.
So Joe Biden was asked about this.
It is hilarious to Joe Biden.
The new poll out today shows Americans wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan, but they disapprove of the way you've handled it.
Poll also found that based in part on what's transpired in the last week, the majority of Americans, and forgive me, I'm just the messenger, no longer consider you to be competent, focused, or effective in the job.
I haven't seen that poll.
It's out there, um, from CBS this morning.
Um, what would you say?
So remember that time that Donald Trump would just deny polls?
Remember there would be people who would read him poll numbers and just be like, fake news, fake poll, not real.
And everybody in the media would go, how dare he?
It's a real poll.
What, he's just not going to believe polls now?
So you read Joe Biden a poll saying that most Americans think that he's not competent.
And Joe Biden's like, I don't know anything.
And then he breaks out the Cesar Romero.
Honestly, I've never seen a vice president and a president who both resemble the Joker bizarrely.
It's a weird thing.
It's very, very odd.
But it's all fine, probably.
It's all fine.
Everything is solid.
It's going well.
We're being told by this administration that the competence is at record high levels.
They are laser focused on what they need to do here.
Oh boy.
Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with an additional hour of content.
In the meantime, go check out the Michael Mullins show today.
He discusses the spike in transit surgeries.
You can hear more details about that story over on Michael's show that's available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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The Secretary of State refuses to confirm that Joe Biden knows what's going on.
The Taliban trolls the West on Twitter, and Australia kills puppies to fight COVID.
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