Aug. 27, 2021 - Bannon's War Room
01:11:46
Participants
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very real ways to help Americans get safely to Kabul airport and get out of the country. But the reality is this is the Taliban. No matter what they're saying, you know about changing their ways and they're gonna allow Afghans to live safely and they're gonna allow women with more rights, whatever it is they're saying, we're gonna have to see how they actually what they actually do and they're the defense officials who I'm speaking to do not have a lot of confidence that they have changed their ways and this is going to be some new version of the Taliban. But right now we're not one reason | |
| that we're not hearing a lot of criticism for them and we probably won't hear any criticism of the Taliban for specifically from the Defense Department before the US is is completely out, and that is because they are helping them. | ||
| The military, the Pentagon, they don't want to do anything to tip that balance so that the Taliban would no longer help Americans. | ||
| As Jeff mentioned, there are still a lot of Americans who are trying to get out, and the U.S. | ||
| is also trying to help Afghans if they can. | ||
| To get out. | ||
| So in the meantime, they are working with the Taliban and hope that it continues. | ||
| At the end of the day, some credence is going to have to be given to the Taliban to make sure that they protect our troops. | ||
| What's been demonstrated today is that they can't do it. | ||
| They're certainly not going to be able to guarantee safety. | ||
| Now, the Taliban would surely like to have us out as quickly as possible. | ||
| They also need money. | ||
| There's an argument, and we would like to have a little bit more time to make sure that we get as many people out as we possibly can. | ||
| There's an argument that says that there is a deal here. | ||
| For like Andrea says, maybe an extension of a couple of days to make sure that we get as many people out as we possibly can. | ||
| And the exchange is the Taliban gets some of the money or all the money that's currently locked up and sequestered by Western financial institutions. | ||
| Whether or not that's actually going to happen remains to be seen, but at the end of the day, some American's got to turn the lights out on the American presence there, and that's going to be the most dangerous time. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It sounds like, though, we're having to pay a ransom to the Taliban, right? | ||
| I mean, that's what that sounds like, and it's an uncomfortable position for any American president, no matter what you're trying to do here. | ||
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We've already paid a ransom in agreeing that 31 August is the date. | |
| They will give us safe patches until 31 August and that was the deal as originally. | ||
| I think the dangerous part of this is is just like Colonel Jacobs was saying is as we get a smaller footprint the attack pattern gets more intense and what we're seeing right now is Kabul is the equivalent of a Mogadishu or Baghdad circa kind of 2004 where yeah the Taliban have so-called taken over the country but they do not control the country. | ||
| There are tons of different factions operating in and outside of Kabul right now. | ||
| Constant contact with the Taliban working to ensure civilians have safe passage to the airport. | ||
| We're particularly focused on our engagements on making sure every American who wants to leave can get to the airport. | ||
| Where we have been seeing challenges with Americans for Americans we have thus far been able to resolve them. | ||
| We've been able we've made look. | ||
| And we made clear to the Taliban that any attack, any attack on our forces or disruption of our operations at the airport will be met with swift and forceful response. | ||
| We're also keeping a close watch on any potential terrorist threat at or around the airport, including from the ISIS affiliates in Afghanistan who were released from prison when the prisons were emptied. | ||
| And because they are, by the way, and make everybody understand that the ISIS in Afghanistan have been the sworn enemy of the Taliban. | ||
| I've said all along, we're going to retain a laser focus on our counterterrorism mission, working in close coordination with our allies and our partners, and all those who have an interest in ensuring stability in the region. | ||
| Okay, welcome. | ||
| You're in the War Room. | ||
| It's Thursday, 26 August, the year of our Lord, 2021. | ||
| This is a two-hour special. | ||
| Extraction under fire. | ||
| We've got a lineup. | ||
| We've got Eric Prince. | ||
| We've got Jack Pasovic. | ||
| We've got General Baldick. | ||
| We've got Colonel Mills. | ||
| We're going to have Michael Yan in a minute. | ||
| We're waiting for Joe Biden at the White House to come to the podium. | ||
| We've already had a brief over at the Pentagon by General McKenzie, CENTCOM. | ||
| You're now about to have Joe Biden come up and address the press and the nation. | ||
| I've got Captain Maureen Bannon, who with the 101st, with the 326th Combat Engineers, was part of. | ||
| The extraction that left Iraq under General Austin in 2011. | ||
| She joins us as co-host. | ||
| My in-studio co-host is the great Steve Cortez, the co-host of Cortez and Pellegrino over at Newsmax 9 p.m. | ||
| every night. | ||
| He'll be addressing many of these issues tonight on his opening monologue as Newsmax gets all over it. | ||
| Want to let our audience know we're going to go live to Joe Biden's press conference. | ||
| He's going to make a statement. | ||
| I'm sure I'm sure you're going to take some. | ||
| He's going to take some questions. | ||
| I want to say I really want to thank we're trying to get Sam Faddis. | ||
| By the way, we're going to have Eric Prince at the top of the second hour. | ||
| He's going to join us. | ||
| He's in a area very near to where the action is. | ||
| So he's going to join us and and talk through some of the big issues there, particularly this whole concept of an extraction under fire. | ||
| That's what we have now in in Kabul. | ||
| For the next at least couple of days, and American lives are going to be at risk, not just American citizens that are in Kabul, that are obviously going to get left behind, and the American troops that are there. | ||
| I'm really proud of our coverage this morning. | ||
| At approximately 1030 in the war room, we were able to report through John Mills, Sam Faddis, who is a CIA officer in the region for many, many years, an operative Uh, in, uh, Jason Jones who deals with a lot of the Christian groups. | ||
| We were able to report at approximately 10.30 that of the casualties, uh, four of those were KIA Marines. | ||
| Marines killed in action. | ||
| I think the mainstream media, Steve Cortez, did not report that. | ||
| I think the Wall Street Journal came out at about 12.30 or 1 o'clock. | ||
| The Pentagon wasn't until much later that, but it shows you the depth and quality of the contacts we have in country. | ||
| We know a lot of the contractors, a lot of the intel guys, a lot of the military guys, and people are in shock right now. | ||
| One thing, before I turn it over to Steve Cortez, like I said, we're waiting for Joe Biden. | ||
| As soon as Joe Biden comes to the podium, Real America's Voice is going to cut live to that. | ||
| We want everybody to hear that. | ||
| We'll do analysis afterwards. | ||
| And that last segment we played is Joe Biden talking big talk, right? | ||
| Big talk. | ||
| We're working with the Taliban. | ||
| Taliban knows what's going on. | ||
| And if anything happens, you know, we're on full watch. | ||
| We've got a close thing on terrorist attack. | ||
| And if anything happens, it's going to be, what, swift and sure and focused. | ||
| Now, he's been wandering around all day, as Jack Posobiec says when he's going to come on here. | ||
| It's going to be quite, quite shocking of what the word in the White House right now about where he's taking advice. | ||
| One thing I want to say before I go to Cortez. | ||
| Over the last several days, we have made, ever since it happened, I think it was over the weekend, or right after we did the special Real America's Voice Sunday a week ago, that Afghanis who could not get out were going to this entrance to the airport called the Abbey Gate and not having papers and not being able to get through. | ||
| The Afghan citizens were tossing their children, and particularly their babies, over this very dangerous razor wire to American troops. | ||
| Two marines and members of the 82nd Airborne that were there, special operators, special forces, tossing their children, trying to save their children, understanding they probably couldn't get out. | ||
| Understand, the ISIS-K, Al Qaeda, Haqqani Network, Taliban, they understand optics and they understand symbolism. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| The bomb today went off in exactly that location, the location those troops were. | ||
| So, if it didn't, if those are not the dead, those troops in the photographs, their exact comrades are among the 11 dead Marines. | ||
| And the ISIS knew that. | ||
| They understood the power of those images of the sons and daughters of the deplorables being the ones that the Afghani people wanted their children to be safe with. | ||
| They understood this and they rolled in hard. | ||
| These are smart, cunning, tough people. | ||
| Do not think we don't have an enemy that is very smart, very tough, very cunning, and pure evil. | ||
| Okay, so that's where we are. | ||
| You've got Kevin McCarthy now calling for Nancy Pelosi to bring Congress back. | ||
| They've all left town. | ||
| Stop focusing on these domestic programs. | ||
| Stop focusing on the spending. | ||
| We've got to get our hands around this. | ||
| I called out Benny Thompson today. | ||
| He wants to have a big, you know, send out this massive investigative list. | ||
| Had these big hearings. | ||
| They ought to delay the hearings till we get the hearings of what exactly happened here. | ||
| Captain Bannon, we'll come to you in a second, but I've got to go to Steve Cortez. | ||
| Steve, I know you've been particularly incensed because you're a At the end of the day, besides being MAGA, Understand Finance, all that, you're a specialist in political messaging and communications. | ||
| You were going to come in here earlier, but you were shocked and said, I've got to get over there. | ||
| He says that press briefing by the head of CENTCOM was atrocious. | ||
| by General McKenzie. I almost, I couldn't believe the way he spoke. Two things in particular about his messaging there. One was the sort of matter-of-fact way in which he discussed this absolute carnage, this death and destruction of 12 brave Marines. I think, well, one Navy, but 12. | ||
| Navy corpsmen and 11 Marines. | ||
| 12 troops today in Afghanistan. | ||
| The almost cavalier matter-of-fact way in which he discussed it. | ||
| And then secondly, the almost deferential way in which he discussed the Taliban. | ||
| I mean it was incredible. | ||
| Here were some of his quotes and I'm quoting. | ||
| He said, one of the things he said, we thought this would happen sooner or later. | ||
| And also the manner in which he said it. | ||
| Like, oh, well, we thought this would happen. | ||
| Well, how about prevent it from happening? | ||
| You are the head of CENTCOM. | ||
| Those men's lives are in your hands. | ||
| They are your responsibility. | ||
| Not to mention you have an enormous responsibility for the greatest republic in the history of the world. | ||
| Don't tell us, oh, we thought this would happen sooner or later. | ||
| Totally unacceptable. | ||
| He also said about the Taliban, he said, we share common purpose. | ||
| common purpose with the Taliban? | ||
| He also said that the Taliban is, this is another quote, useful to work with. | ||
| So unfortunately, and listen, of course, the lion's share of the blame has to flow directly to Joe Biden, an illegitimate, and really, in many ways, caretaker, commander in chief of the United States. | ||
| But I also want to make sure that some of the top military brass, some of the people at the Pentagon who are charged with some of the most So our special is Extraction Under Fire. | ||
| We're going to keep this for the next couple of days until all the Americans are out. | ||
| When I say all the Americans out, it looks like just all the American troops. | ||
| with his disastrous performance before the media and before the country today talking about these dead soldiers or dead troops. So our special is extraction under fire we're gonna keep this for the next couple of days until all the Americans are out when I say all the Americans out looks like just all the American troops they've welded shut the gates The understanding is they're reaching out to at least, they think, 1,500 American citizens that are in just Kabul. | ||
| Not the thousands that may be without the country. | ||
| And they're telling them, hey, go to ground. | ||
| Politico in an unbelievable story. | ||
| And Cortez told me, he says, hey, does this mean the media has flipped him? | ||
| Because this story is so brutal to the whole chain of command. | ||
| It turns out that they've got, that now the Taliban have every piece of aspect of paperwork of knowing who our partners were, our allies, and the best of the best that we're leaving behind in Afghanistan. | ||
| This is an absolute blockbuster story from Politico. | ||
| It's leaks coming out of the congressional briefing from our intelligence community which took place a couple days ago here in Washington DC. | ||
| And this is one of the quotes from that story. | ||
| US officials handed over a list of Afghan allies and American citizens to the Taliban. | ||
| They handed them, essentially, a kill list. | ||
| Now, the ostensible reason to hand this over was so that the Taliban could facilitate letting these folks through the security perimeter so that they could get flights out. | ||
| Okay, but let's talk about what actually happened. | ||
| What the intelligence community of the United States, or the U.S. | ||
| military, effectively did. | ||
| Is hand over a list. | ||
| Here are the people that you should worry about once we're gone. | ||
| These are the people you should take revenge against. | ||
| They gave them, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that they gave them a kill list. | ||
| And one of the reasons they did that, why? | ||
| Is because we outsourced security for the perimeter. | ||
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And once we did that, we put ourselves in such a vulnerable... Outsources to the Taliban. | |
| To the Taliban, correct. | ||
| And once we did that, once you outsource that security for the perimeter, because we should have never given up Bagram Air Base, of course, number one, but number two, because we reversed the order of everything, right? | ||
| Instead of getting US citizens out first... | ||
| First and foremost, America first, and Americans first. | ||
| Secondly, other citizens, Afghan nationals that we think deserve extraction. | ||
| Thirdly, equipment and material, or if it can't be taken out, destroyed in country so it can't be used. | ||
| And then lastly, very last, the military. | ||
| Instead, we completely flipped the order. | ||
| And by the way, I want to say too, what happened today, this tragedy today, There would not have been a crowd there to be attacked by these terrorists. | ||
| There wouldn't have been a fertile target if it were not for us taking so many refugees out of Afghanistan. | ||
| In other words, if the policy was we are getting Americans out, and Americans only, there'd be no reason for the citizens of Afghanistan to swarm the airport. | ||
| You would not have created the chaotic scene that attracted these treacherous terrorists in the first place. | ||
| So I also put some of the blame for what happened today on this misbegotten policy of exfiltrating tens of thousands of Afghan nationals while Americans are waiting in line and can't get through this very crush of people to get to these planes. | ||
| Okay, we've got a two-hour special today. | ||
| It's Extraction Under Fire. | ||
| Right after that, Gina Loudon is going to be live today. | ||
| We're going to help do the transition to the Dr. Gina Loudon Show, so Real America's Voice for the next three hours. | ||
| Live, wall-to-wall coverage on Extraction Under Fire, the situation in Kabul. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| We've got Michael Yan, the single best combat correspondent that worked Afghanistan for a decade. | ||
| Over a decade. | ||
| He's going to join us. | ||
| He's now focused on the worldwide migration crisis and this gets back to we're going to have more in-depth analysis from Steve Cortez in this for the simple reasons that we had Beatrice van Storch from Alternative for Deutschland from Turkey today working on this exact same problem. | ||
| They said, hey, what's happening here and we can see it coming. | ||
| And she said that Turkish intelligence officials and people there are telling her on the Iranian border, they expect five million, a minimum of five million Uh, refugees coming out of the 37 or 40 million in Afghanistan. | ||
| Okay, short commercial break. | ||
| We're gonna return. | ||
| We got Captain Maureen Bannon. | ||
| We got Michael Yon, Steve Cortez, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| War Room. | ||
| Extraction under fire. | ||
| The crisis in Kabul. | ||
| We're going to return in just a moment. | ||
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♪♪♪ Okay, back in the war room. | |
| It's Thursday, 26 August, Year of the Lord 2021. | ||
| It's a day people are going to remember for quite a while. | ||
| This is our special Extraction Under Fire. | ||
| That's exactly what's happening in Kabul right now. | ||
| We're going to have Michael Young update. | ||
| One thing I want to know, we're waiting, as soon as Joe Biden Walks into the press briefing. | ||
| We're gonna cut live to the White House. | ||
| This is not a rally, Steve Cortez. | ||
| This is not where President Trump's flying into a field in Alabama in bad weather. | ||
| This, it's symbols to the world. | ||
| You gotta go out, if you say 5 o'clock, you gotta hit your mark. | ||
| On a day like this, absolutely you better hit your mark. | ||
| And listen, I'll say this as a comment. | ||
| coms guy as a spokesman, nothing, not a tweet, not and then he says five o'c at 5 18 eastern time righ to your point, hitting th is a day that you have to that you are on your game to be prepared, that you know, medicated whatever | ||
| You step out there at five o'clock as an in-charge Commander-in-Chief on a very dour, very solemn day for this country and explain how you're going to make it better in concrete ways. | ||
| It's a very eerie day here. | ||
| There have been massive thunderstorms early in the afternoon in the summer as people know in Washington, D.C. | ||
| and the Potomac, usually late in the afternoon. | ||
| These started at like one, two o'clock. | ||
| It's been a very eerie, even MSNBC was reporting that, how much thunder, rain. | ||
| It's a very strange day here. | ||
| This is a day you have to hit your mark. | ||
| You have to show the world, particularly our enemies, you have to show them that you're in command. | ||
| And not just in command, but you can enforce your will on things. | ||
| You can enforce your will onto these That's so important. | ||
| The Taliban feared Donald Trump. | ||
| That's not just my opinion. | ||
| events are driving the action, not the action driving the events. | ||
| And by the way, that's so important. | ||
| The Taliban feared Donald Trump, okay? | ||
| And that's not just my opinion. | ||
| If we actually look at events, we now know that in 2019, he secretly, right, was negotiating a peace agreement with them. | ||
| Then an American was killed in late 2019. | ||
| He said, deal is off, right? | ||
| Not only that, retaliated pretty harshly within Afghanistan against them. | ||
| Once they came back to the negotiating table in 2020, they knew they were dealing with a bad hombre in President Trump and they knew that he was somebody to be feared. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| Other than a green on blue insider attack in Feb of 2020, for the entire last year of Trump's presidency, no American harmed in Afghanistan because they knew that they had to fear this man. | ||
| I really want to thank, by the way, all the people we've had working on this. | ||
| Today at 1030, we called the fact that there were four Marines that were killed in action, obviously to increase much more than that. | ||
| Mainstream media did not call it until at least, I think, 1230, 1 o'clock, the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| I don't even know, I think it was the CEMCON commander was the first guy to say it when he came on for his briefing. | ||
| So it was, you know, the White House has been way behind this and they're looking at how you message it. | ||
| Not how you get in front and lead on it. | ||
| Right now, they're reacting to everything. | ||
| It's very passive, it's very reactive. | ||
| Well, I think the fact that you were so early on that, too, is just indicative of the larger truth, which is that the MAGA world is incredibly well-versed in the military, right? | ||
| So many veterans, so many people currently serving, so the military network of the MAGA world is spectacular. | ||
| It's certainly better than any mainstream media platform. | ||
| Unfortunately better than the White House right now. | ||
| Okay, I want to go to Michael Yan. | ||
| Michael, you've got some additional reporting of your contacts. | ||
| You're the, I think, the finest combat correspondent we've had there for such a long time. | ||
| You've got deep relationships in Kabul throughout Afghanistan. | ||
| What are you hearing right now about the airport? | ||
|
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Thanks, Steve. | |
| An Italian Air Force C-130J got fired on this morning with small arms fire, took evasive action and landed safely. | ||
| So nobody was hurt. | ||
| As far as I know on that aircraft, other aircraft are taking small arms fire. | ||
| I'm getting messages coming in even as we talk. | ||
| I believe that our casualties now are up to at least 13 killed and probably more to come. | ||
| Of the approximately seven explosions today, it looks like at least three were actual attacks. | ||
| The others may have been controlled detonations. | ||
| Some may have been air delivered. | ||
| That's unclear at this time. | ||
| Satellite phones don't appear to be working in the area. | ||
| Cell phones don't appear to be working very close to the airport. | ||
| Taliban are in complete control of Kabul. | ||
| As you know, the Pashtun cultural habit of fighting is to swarm, which is called a chaga, and to pursue or siege and then to humiliate. | ||
| So it's always Thank you. | ||
| And right now, they know that they've got us as we draw down forces, as the General will be able to say, and as you well know, as a military man, this is the most dangerous time. | ||
| As you know, just hours before these attacks this morning, I published for everybody to get away from the airport, at least get a mile away and get inside. | ||
| I published that just two or three hours before. | ||
| And as you know, just yesterday, I said that we would probably stop flying in there by the 29th, not the 31st. | ||
| And of course, that sounded kind of strange yesterday. | ||
| But today it doesn't sound so strange. | ||
| The sources are very good. | ||
| Last night we watched a B-52. | ||
| I was up until sunrise this morning. | ||
| We watched a B-52 coming in with a refueler behind it. | ||
| They both switched off their transponders before they probably took a left turn to go over Afghanistan, unless they were going to Diego or someplace like that, but they were probably going to Afghanistan. | ||
| I know that there's a lot of fighter aircraft swarming now. | ||
| I was told that they're flying low, doing Show of force, sonic booms across the area to keep people's heads down. | ||
| So the fighting is ongoing. | ||
| Michael, thank you. | ||
| I want to bring in General Don Bolduc, who is head of Special Forces. | ||
| General Bolduc, can you give us your assessment, given your expertise in this area? | ||
|
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I certainly can, and I've been talking about it since last week, Steve. | |
| The plan was flawed. | ||
| We knew it was flawed. | ||
| It was time to make up for that mistake. | ||
| We have gone about this completely wrong. | ||
| We needed to seize all the airfields, shorten the lines of operations, build safe corridors, have air patrols, have our predators up, have our ears up, and take this to the Taliban, ensuring that they would not interfere with getting our citizens out, our allies out, and we would have avoided this at Kabul airfield today. | ||
| But no, we did not do that. | ||
| What we did was, We let risk-averse, hand-wringing, poor policy and strategy, which has been plaguing Afghanistan for 20 years, allowed to reign the day. | ||
| And there are, this is, this is high crimes and misdemeanors for politicians, and it's criminal for four-star generals and the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| This is, this cannot stand. | ||
| And what we need to do now, we beat them twice before, Steve. | ||
| And I've been part of great teams that have done that. | ||
| We can beat them a third time. | ||
| We can't let this stand. | ||
| This is an act of war, killing 12 of our Marines, and we can't just say, oh well, we're going to get out 1,500 more people, and then we're going to go bye-bye. | ||
| No way! | ||
| No way This is a day that you need to show that you're in command. | ||
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unidentified
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Right. | |
| This is a day because what General Balduck said, everything you've done has been wrong to date. | ||
| OK, here he comes right now. | ||
| Joe Biden is about to address the nation. | ||
| We'll cut and then we'll come back at the end of it. | ||
| A tough day. | ||
| This evening in Kabul, as you all know. | ||
| Terrorists attacked. | ||
| That we've been talking about, worried about. | ||
| The intelligence community has assessed, has undertaken an attack by a group known as ISIS-K. | ||
| It took the lives of American service members, standing guard at the airport, and wounded several others seriously. | ||
| It also wounded a number of civilians, and civilians were killed as well. | ||
| I've been engaged all day in constant contact with the military commanders here in Washington and the Pentagon, as well as in Afghanistan and Doha. | ||
| And my commanders here in Washington in the field have been on this with great detail, and you've had a chance to speak to some so far. | ||
| The situation on the ground is still evolving, and I'm constantly being updated. | ||
| These American service members who gave their lives — it's an overused word, but it's totally appropriate here — were heroes. | ||
| Heroes who've been engaged in a dangerous, selfless mission to save the lives of others. | ||
| They're a part of an airlift and evacuation effort unlike any seen in history. | ||
| With more than 100,000 American citizens, American partners, Afghans who helped us, and others taken to safety in the last 11 days. | ||
| Just in the last 12 hours or so, another 7,000 have gotten out. | ||
| They were part of the bravest, most capable, the most selfless military on the face of the Earth. | ||
| And they're part of simply what I call the backbone of America. | ||
| They're the spine of America. | ||
| The best the country has to offer. | ||
| Jill and I, our hearts ache, like I'm sure all of you do as well, for all those Afghan families who lost loved ones, including small children who have been wounded in this vicious attack. | ||
| And we're outraged as well as heartbroken. | ||
| Being the father of a Army major who served for a year in Iraq and before that in Kosovo as a U.S. | ||
| Attorney for the better part of six months in the middle of a war. | ||
| When he came home after a year And in Iraq was diagnosed like many, many coming home with an aggressive and lethal cancer of the brain. | ||
| We lost. | ||
| We have some sense, like many of you do, what the families of these brave heroes are feeling today. | ||
| You get this feeling like you're being sucked into a black hole in the middle of your chest. | ||
| There's no way out. | ||
| My heart aches for you. | ||
| But I know this. | ||
| We have a continuing obligation, a sacred obligation, to all of you, the families of those heroes. | ||
| That obligation is not temporary. | ||
| It lasts forever. | ||
| The lives we lost today were lives given in the service of liberty, the service of security, and the service of others. | ||
| In the service of America, like their fellow brothers and sisters in arms who died defending our vision and our values in the struggle against terrorism, of the fall on this day, they're part of a great and noble company of American heroes. | ||
| To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this. | ||
| We will not forgive. | ||
| We will not forget. | ||
| We will hunt you down and make you pay. | ||
| I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command. | ||
| Over the past few weeks, I know many of you are probably tired of hearing me say it, We've been made aware by our intelligence community that the ISIS-K, an arch enemy of the Taliban, people who were freed when both those prisons were opened, has been planning a complex set of attacks on the United States personnel and others. | ||
| This is why, from the outset, I've repeatedly said This mission was extraordinarily dangerous, and why I've been so determined to limit the duration of this mission. | ||
| As General McKenzie said, this is why our mission was designed, this is the way it was designed to operate, operating under severe stress and attack. | ||
| We've known that from the beginning. | ||
| And as I've been in constant contact with our senior military leaders, and I mean constant, around the clock, And our commanders on the ground throughout the day, they made it clear that we can and we must complete this mission, and we will. | ||
| And that's what I've ordered them to do. | ||
| We will not be deterred by terrorists. | ||
| We will not let them stop our mission. | ||
| We will continue the evacuation. | ||
| I've also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership, and facilities. | ||
| We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose, in the moment of our choosing. | ||
| Here's what you need to know. | ||
| These ISIS terrorists will not win. | ||
| We will rescue the Americans in there. | ||
| We will get our Afghan allies out. | ||
| And our mission will go on. | ||
| America will not be intimidated. | ||
| And I have the utmost confidence in our brave service members who continue to execute this mission with courage and honor to save lives and get Americans, our partners, our Afghan allies out of Afghanistan. | ||
| Every day when I talk to our commanders, I ask them what they need. | ||
| What more do they need, if anything, to get the job done? | ||
| As they will tell you, I granted every request. | ||
| I reiterated them today on three occasions. | ||
| That they should take the maximum steps necessary to protect our forces on the ground in Kabul. | ||
| And I also want to thank the Secretary of Defense and the military leadership of the Pentagon and all the commanders in the field. | ||
| There has been complete unanimity from every commander on the objectives of this mission and the best way to achieve those objectives. | ||
| Those who have served through the ages have drawn inspiration from the Book of Isaiah, when the Lord says, Whom shall I send? | ||
| Who shall go for us? | ||
| The American military has been answering for a long time. | ||
| Here I am, Lord, send me. | ||
| Here I am, send me. | ||
| Each one of these women and men of our armed forces are the heirs of that tradition of sacrifice, of volunteering to go in harm's way, to risk everything, not for glory, not for profit, but to defend what we love and the people we love. | ||
| And I ask that you join me now. | ||
| The moment of silence for all those in uniform and out. | ||
| military and civilian who have given the last full measure of devotion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
. | |
| May God bless you all, and may God protect his troops and all those standing watch for America. | ||
| We have so much to do. | ||
| It's within our capacity to do it. | ||
| We just have to remain steadfast. | ||
| Steadfast. | ||
| We will complete our mission, and we will continue After our troops have withdrawn, to find means by which we can find any American who wishes to get out of Afghanistan. | ||
| We will find them and we will get them out. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, I gave me a list here. | ||
| The first person I was instructed to call on was Kelly O'Donnell of NBC. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have said leaving Afghanistan is in the national interest of the United States. | |
| After today's attack, do you believe you will authorize additional forces to respond to that attack inside Afghanistan? | ||
| And are you prepared to add additional forces to protect those Americans who remain on the ground carrying out the evacuation operation? | ||
| I've instructed the military. | ||
| Whatever they need, if they need additional force, I will grant it. | ||
| But the military, from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Joint Chiefs, the commanders in the field, have all contacted me one way or another, usually by letter, saying they subscribe to the mission as designed to get as many people out as we can within the time frame that is allotted. | ||
| That is the best way, they believe, to get as many Americans out as possible and others. | ||
| And with regard to finding, tracking down the ISIS leaders who ordered this, we have some reason to believe we know who they are. | ||
| Not certain. | ||
| And we will find ways of our choosing without large military operations to get them. | ||
| Wherever they are. | ||
| Trevor Reuters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| There's been some criticism, even from people in your party, about the dependence on the Taliban to secure the perimeter of the airport. | ||
| Do you feel like there was a mistake made in that regard? | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| Look, I think General McKenzie handled this question very well. | ||
| The fact is that | ||
| We're in a situation, we inherited a situation, particularly since, as we all know, that the Afghan military collapsed 11 days before, in 11 days, that it is in the interest of, as McKenzie said, in the interest of the Taliban, that, in fact, ISIS-K does not | ||
| Test the size beyond what it is. | ||
| Number one. | ||
| Number two. | ||
| It's in their interest that. | ||
| We are able. | ||
| To leave on time. | ||
| On target. | ||
| As a consequence of that. | ||
| The major things we've asked them. | ||
| Moving back the perimeter. | ||
| Give me more space between the wall. | ||
| Stopping vehicles from coming through, etc. | ||
| Searching people coming through. | ||
| It is not what you'd call a. Tightly commanded regimented operation like the US is military is. | ||
| But. | ||
| They're acting in their interest. | ||
| Their interest. | ||
| And so. | ||
| By and large, and I've asked the same question. | ||
| To military on the ground. | ||
| Whether or not it's a useful exercise. | ||
| No one trusts them. | ||
| We're just counting on their self-interest. | ||
| To continue. | ||
| Generate their activities. | ||
| And it's in their self-interest. | ||
| That. | ||
| We leave when we said. | ||
| And that we get as many people out as we can. | ||
| Like I said, even in the midst of anything happened today over 7000. | ||
| People have gotten out over 5000 Americans. | ||
| So. | ||
| It's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of mutual self interest. | ||
| And. | ||
| But. | ||
| There is no evidence thus far. | ||
| That I've been given as a consequence by any of our commanders in the field. | ||
| That there has been. | ||
| collusion between the Taliban and ISIS in carrying out what happened today, both in front of the hotel and what is expected to continue for beyond today. | ||
| Amir, Associated Press. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| You have spoken again powerfully about your own son and the weight of these decisions. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| With that in mind, and also what you've said, um, that the longer we stay, the more likelihood that there would be a major attack. | ||
| How do you weigh staying even one more day considering what's happened? | ||
| Because I think what America says matters. | ||
| But we say we're going to do in the context in which we say we're going to do it, that we do it, unless something exceptional changes. | ||
| There are additional American citizens. | ||
| There are additional green card holders. | ||
| There are additional personnel of our allies. | ||
| There are additional SIV card holders. | ||
| There are additional Afghans that have helped us. | ||
| And there are additional. | ||
| Groups of individuals. | ||
| That have been contacted us. | ||
| From. | ||
| Women's groups to NGOs and others. | ||
| Who have expressly indicated they want to get out? | ||
| And have. | ||
| Gathered. | ||
| In certain circumstances. | ||
| In groups. | ||
| On buses and other means. | ||
| That still presents the opportunity for the next. | ||
| Several days between now and the 31st to be able to get them out. | ||
| And our military and I believe. | ||
| To the extent that we can do that, knowing. | ||
| The threat. | ||
| Knowing that we may very well have another attack. | ||
| The military has concluded that's what we should do. | ||
| I think they're right. | ||
| I think they're correct. | ||
| And after that, we're going to be in a circumstance where there will be, I believe, numerous opportunities to continue to provide access For additional persons to get out of Afghanistan. | ||
| Either through. | ||
| Means that we provide and or. | ||
| Are provided through cooperation with. | ||
| The Taliban, they're not good guys, Taliban. | ||
| Not suggesting that at all. | ||
| But they have keen interest. | ||
| As many of you been reporting, They very much would like to figure out how to keep the airport open and have the capacity to do it. | ||
| They very much are trying to figure out. | ||
| Whether or not they can. | ||
| Maintain. | ||
| What is the portion of an economy that has become? | ||
| Not robust, but fundamentally different than it had been. | ||
| And so there's a lot of reasons why they have. | ||
| Reached out not just to us, but to others. | ||
| As to. | ||
| Why it would be continued in their interest to get more of the personnel we want to get out. | ||
| We can locate them now. | ||
| There's not many left that we can assess. | ||
| That are want to come out. | ||
| There's some Americans we've identified and contacted the vast majority of them, not all of them. | ||
| Who don't want to leave? | ||
| because they have dual nationals, they have extended families, et cetera. | ||
| And there's others who are looking for the time. So that's why we continue. | ||
| I'll take a few more questions. And, but, yes, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Q I wanted to ask you, you say that what America says matters. | |
| this. | ||
| What do you say to the Afghans who helped troops who may not be able to get out by August 31st? | ||
| I say we're going to continue to try to get you out. | ||
| It matters. | ||
| Look, I know of no conflict as a student of history, no conflict where when a war was ending, One side was able to guarantee that everyone they wanted to be extracted from that country would get out. | ||
| And think about it, folks. | ||
| I think it's important. | ||
| I know the American people get this in their gut. | ||
| There are, I would argue, millions of Afghani citizens who are not Taliban, who did not actively cooperate with us as SIVs, who have given a chance, they'd be on board a plane tomorrow. | ||
| It sounds ridiculous, but the vast majority of people in communities like that want to come to America given a choice. | ||
| So getting every single person out is Can't be guaranteed by anybody because there's a determination all who wants to get out as well. | ||
| At any rate, it's a process. | ||
| I was really pointing to you, but you, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| There are reports that U.S. | ||
| officials provided the Taliban with names of Americans and Afghan officials to evacuate. | ||
| Were you aware of that? | ||
| Did that happen? | ||
| And then, sir, did you personally reject a recommendation to hold or to recapture Bagram Air Force Base? | ||
| Here's what I've done. | ||
| Let's answer the last question first. | ||
| On the tactical questions of how to conduct an evacuation or war, I gather up all the major military personnel that are in Afghanistan, the commanders, as well as the Pentagon. | ||
| And I ask for their best military judgment, what would be the most efficient way to accomplish the mission. | ||
| They concluded, the military, that Bagram was not much value added, that it was much wiser to focus on Kabul. | ||
| And so I followed that recommendation. | ||
| With regard to, there are certain circumstances Where we've gotten information, and quite frankly, sometimes from some of you, saying, you know of such and such a group of people are trying to get out. | ||
| They're on a bus. | ||
| They're moving from other people. | ||
| And this is their location. | ||
| And there have been occasions when our military has contacted their military counterparts in the Taliban and said, this For example, this bus is coming through with X number of people on it, made up of following group of people. | ||
| We want you to let that bus or that group through. | ||
| So yes, there have been occasions like that. | ||
| And to the best of my knowledge, in those cases, the bulk of that has occurred. | ||
| They've been let through. | ||
| But I can't tell you with any certitude That there's actually been a list of names. | ||
| There may have been, but I know of no circumstance. | ||
| It doesn't mean it didn't exist, that here's the names of 12 people that are coming and let them through. | ||
| It could very well have happened. | ||
| I'll take one more question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wait, wait, wait. | |
| Let me take the one question from the most interesting guy that I know in the press. | ||
| That's you. | ||
| Mr. President, there had not been a U.S. | ||
| service member killed in combat in Afghanistan since February of 2020. | ||
| You set a deadline, you pulled troops out, you sent troops back in, and now 12 Marines are dead. | ||
| You said the buck stops with you. | ||
| Do you bear any responsibility for the way that things have unfolded in the last two weeks? | ||
| I bear responsibility for fundamentally all that's happened of late. | ||
| But here's the deal. | ||
| You know, I wish you'd one day say these things. | ||
| You know, as well as I do, that the former president made a deal with the Taliban that he would get all American forces out of Afghanistan by May 1. | ||
| In return, the commitment was made, and that was a year before. | ||
| In return, he was given a commitment that the Taliban would continue to attack others but would not attack any American forces. Remember that? I'm being serious. | ||
| No, I'm asking you a question. Because before... | ||
| No, no, no, wait a minute. I'm asking you a question. Is that accurate? The best you're not. | ||
| I think they have an issue that people are likely to get hurt. | ||
| Some, as we've seen, have gotten killed. | ||
| And that it is messy. | ||
| The reason why, whether my friend will acknowledge it or has reported it, the reason why there were no attacks on Americans, as you said, from the date until I came into office, was because the commitment was made By President Trump, I will be out by May 1st. | ||
| In the meantime, you agree not to attack any Americans. | ||
| That was the deal. | ||
| That's why no American was attacked. | ||
| Yes, I do, because look at it this way, folks, and I'm going to I have another meeting for real. | ||
| But. | ||
| Imagine. | ||
| Where we'd be. | ||
| If I had indicated on May the 1st, I was not going to renegotiate a evacuation date, we were going to stay there. | ||
| I'd have only one alternative. | ||
| Pour thousands of more troops back into Afghanistan to fight a war that we had already won relative to why the reason we went in the first place. | ||
| I have never been of the view that we should be sacrificing American lives to try to establish a democratic government in Afghanistan, a country that has never once in its entire history been a united country and is made up, I don't mean this in a derogatory, made up of different tribes, | ||
| Who have never, ever, ever gotten along with one another. | ||
| And so, as I said before, this is the last comment I'll make. | ||
| We'll have more chance to talk about this, unfortunately, beyond because we're not out yet. | ||
| If Osama bin Laden, as well as Al Qaeda, had chosen to launch an attack when they left Saudi Arabia out of Yemen, Would we have ever gone to Afghanistan, even though the Taliban completely controlled Afghanistan at the time? | ||
| Would we have ever gone? | ||
| I know it's not fair to ask you questions. | ||
| It's rhetorical, but raise your hand if you think we should have gone. | ||
| And given up thousands of lives. | ||
| And tens of thousands of wounded. | ||
| Our interest. | ||
| In going was to prevent Al Qaeda from re-emerging, first to get bin Laden, wipe out Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, prevent that from happening again. | ||
| As I've said 100 times, terrorism is metastasized around the world. | ||
| We have greater threats coming out of other countries, a heck of a lot closer to the United States. | ||
| We don't have military encampments there. | ||
| We don't keep people there. | ||
| We have over the horizon capability to keep them from going after us. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| It was time to end a 20 year war. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| I don't even know what to make of that. | ||
| It's. | ||
| Wow, and one thing I do want to say, and somebody ought to give a wrong claim or to slip a note to Joe Biden, the meeting starts when the President shows up. | ||
| You don't have to go to, what do you mean go to a meeting? | ||
| At least the way, when Donald Trump is in the White House, When he shows up, the meeting starts. | ||
| What do you mean, I gotta go, I gotta, I gotta meeting? | ||
| It's the whole thing, and we're gonna deconstruct it. | ||
| Steve Cortez. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I want you to take it from, by the way, when the world needs to see power and strength and steadfastness, and not a word salad, but they need to see someone walk in a room and command a room. | ||
| And own it. | ||
| This is what we got. | ||
| and owned it and commanded it, and proved that you belong, that you're supposed to be the commander in chief of the most fearsome military in world history. | ||
| He didn't provide any of that, neither in substance nor in style. | ||
| On the style side, I have to say this, in all honesty, that presentation right there scares me. | ||
| It scares me as an American because of the predicament, the peril that Americans are in, brave young Americans, mostly working class men who are over there in the military taking enormous risk, and the fact that this is their commander in chief. | ||
| And then when I pair that up, somebody who's clearly not cognitively able to do the most difficult job on When I paired that up with what we saw earlier from General McKenzie and his frankly lackadaisical approach to protecting our troops, it really just, it makes me worried about them. | ||
| The other thing I want to say, Steve, that I thought was really reprehensible that he opened this presentation with, which he was a half hour late for, Apparently he needed extra time to prepare this grand opening. | ||
| As he tried to compare the deaths of these 12, and might be 13 now, servicemen, these heroes that gave their life for our country, he tried to compare them to his son Beau, which is just reprehensible. | ||
| Now listen, it's awful that he lost his son early to cancer. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| That is a tragedy for their family. | ||
| But in no way is it relevant To what happened today in Kabul. | ||
| And a lot of people, by the way, agree with me. | ||
| People that I respect. | ||
| One of them is Julie Kelly, who I think is one of the best writers out there in conservative media. | ||
| She said, he always has to make it about him. | ||
| My God, this has nothing to do with Beau. | ||
| That is the great Julie Kelly. | ||
| Alex Berenson, who's more known for covering COVID issues, he said, did he just compare his son's death from cancer to what happened today? | ||
| Did he just use his son's death that way? | ||
| OMG. | ||
| Uh, and yes, he did. | ||
| He tries to personalize it. | ||
| He, he wants everything to be about, uh, about feeling about sympathy for him rather than talking about there are 12 American families today who got the worst news of their lives in a tragedy that I believe was 100% the making, uh, in the making because of Joe Biden and because of his terrible policies, because of his complete bungling of this exit from Kabul. | ||
| And unfortunately it may not be done, the suffering and the casualties. | ||
| We hope it is. | ||
| If history is any guide, it probably is not yet because of what Joe Biden has done. | ||
| If there was not a firestorm before around this capital city because of the strategy and the way it was implemented and the tactics and the disengagement. | ||
| He's having meetings with cyber meetings with the Apple CEO and all these people last couple of days. | ||
| They don't seem to be engaged 24 hours a day. | ||
| What just happened here is going to cause a firestorm. | ||
| And by the way, if he's not fit, which I don't believe he is... He's certainly not fit. | ||
| That means Kamala Harris is President of the United States. | ||
| Guess what Kamala was doing today, on this very dark, dour day for the United States, a solemn day. | ||
| She was meeting with LBGQ activists in Vietnam. | ||
| I mean, think about that for a moment. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Today? | ||
| That was front and center on your agenda, the woman who may end up being Commander-in-Chief, and according to public polling, a super majority of the American people believe that that's going to happen. | ||
| By the way, in terms of his lack of fitness, Josh Hawley, who I don't consider to be a MAGA firebrand, I don't think, just publicly came out and said he clearly cannot lead anymore and he has to resign. | ||
| I think that's a big deal. | ||
| I think, you know, now it's no longer just sort of the fire breathers saying it. | ||
| You're getting to senators of, I think, real stature saying that he has to resign. | ||
| Josh Hawley said that, I think, before or right at the beginning of this presentation. | ||
| This thing got worse. | ||
| One of the things that was worse, just from a style perspective, he clearly lost energy during this, right? | ||
| He clearly lost focus during it. | ||
| The question and answers... By the way, I thought the media... Now, it wasn't the feeding frenzy you were seeing around President Trump. | ||
| But, Kelly, they were good questions. | ||
| No, that's a good point. | ||
| They were straightforward questions, they were good questions, and they kind of demanded precise, sharp answers. | ||
| Now, they're sort of reverential in the way they present it. | ||
| But, on substance, I will give credit, actually, to the White House Press Corps, which is not a group I'm very fond of, and they asked him the correct and the tough questions today. | ||
| I'm still confused. | ||
| I'll bring Captain Bannon. | ||
| We've got Posobiec. | ||
| Did he actually say, because I think he said one thing and then he dove up and said another, he said we're going to stay Until the mission is complete, and he said we're going to get all the American citizens out. | ||
| Yeah, but I mean, again, it's just a plan. | ||
| He said we're going to get them out. | ||
| Well, how? | ||
| I mean, how? | ||
| Operationally? | ||
| How? | ||
| Also, listen, the American people, and obviously there are times, and this, when you first come out, you have to talk about our honored dead, obviously. | ||
| The families today are grieving, their comrades and their compatriots understand the sacrifice. | ||
| But folks understand, especially this extraction under fire, we're in it. | ||
| Right now, we don't need a lot of the... everybody in the military, because it's all volunteer, they understand what the drill is, right? | ||
| They don't need to be sent... they don't need some guy to come out and talk... give the big high thing and try to be Lincoln at Gettysburg, okay? | ||
| That's not what this is about, right? | ||
| This is a day you come out and you got to obviously recognize that and go... | ||
| The thing is, and let's be honest, his son was a JAG officer, okay? | ||
| It's not like he's an infantry platoon leader right in the middle of Iraq in 2004, you know? | ||
| He always did it for politics, and obviously it's terrible that he died of brain cancer afterwards, okay? | ||
| It's tragic. | ||
| It obviously had a big impact on Joe Biden. | ||
| People have got to give him that space. | ||
| But to come out today, On what happened to those young people. | ||
| Remember, go back and look at the pictures and the photographs at the Abbey Gate with the Afghanis tossing the babies over, handing the children over to be saved by the sons and daughters of the deplorables. | ||
| Those were the people. | ||
| Those units were the ones blown up. | ||
| Abbey Gate was blown up. | ||
| And by the way, ISIS did it as an optic and symbolism to say, hey, you're going to show that you're the good guys. | ||
| We're going to show you what that gets. | ||
| That's not the time to start this talk. | ||
| In front of the world and start to talk about your grief and everything like that. | ||
| You're the commander-in-chief, right? | ||
| And also, I just want to reiterate, this is a lack of confirmatory due diligence by the American people. | ||
| Why? | ||
| The tech oligarchs, the media. | ||
| Elections have consequences. | ||
| Stolen elections have catastrophic consequences. | ||
| We saw a catastrophe today. | ||
| I got Jack Posobiec. | ||
| I'm going to get Posobiec's word and then I know you've got a bolt. | ||
| Steve Cortez, 9 o'clock tonight. | ||
| Don't miss him at 9 o'clock tonight on Newsmax TV. | ||
| Co-host with Jen Pellegrino. | ||
| He's going to have a blistering open, because I know you've been working on this all day. | ||
| Pasovic, let me get your thoughts. | ||
| We've got Colonel Mills we're going to do, Captain Bannon we're going to get to, but I got to let Cortez go in a second. | ||
| Jack, give us your initial thoughts. | ||
| You know people at the White House, but particularly you've got deep relationships with people on the ground, in the military, in the intelligence, paramilitary, all of that. | ||
| Put this in perspective for us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What we're hearing right now in The administration is that they are circling the wagons right now. | |
| You've got two sets of things going on. | ||
| One is Kamala Harris and everything that's going on with her and from her canceling the event in California. | ||
| She's in discussions in midair with Secretary of Defense Austin. | ||
| Now you've got people in the White House regarding this list that was handed over, a list of our forces and our allies. | ||
| there that was given to the taliban you've got people in all cya mode from the nsc and jake sullivan on down thinking wait a minute what did we just do how many laws did we just break uh... what do you hear and also i'm what You've been tweeting out that he's now kind of confused and people are approaching him. | ||
| He's looking for other sources of information here, given that he's not confident of the people around him gave him a course of action. | ||
| And once this happens, ladies and gentlemen, once you start taking it from everybody, that's when things really start to spin out of control. | ||
| Is that what you're hearing, Jack? | ||
| He's asking everybody. | ||
| He's very uncertain about the course of action he's chosen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's exactly right. | |
| That's exactly right. | ||
| He's under information overload. | ||
| Keep in mind, this is a guy who's never had to make serious decisions in his life. | ||
| He's always sort of floated around in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And also, you know, the phrase that was given to me earlier today, even before his speech, and I tweeted it out, what they said, it seems like he's in a fugue state. | ||
| You know, in the IC, we would call this paralysis by analysis, right? | ||
| That he's just got so much incoming, he can't understand the difference between signal and noise, and so he's just sitting there, and it seems like he's paralyzed. | ||
| He repeats the last thing he heard, and then, so I was tweeting all that out prior to the speech, and then you saw exactly that when he got out there. | ||
| It's just sort of some babble of talking points, and whatever the last person said to him, whatever was written on his note card, And that's what the American people are getting instead of a decisive leader. | ||
| Hey Jack, it's Cortez here. | ||
| I want to ask your opinion on his record when it comes to handling complex issues because I believe even when he had his full cognitive ability during his long reign in the Senate, he was disastrous on foreign policy. | ||
| It's not just my opinion, by the way. | ||
| Robert Gates, who was his own Secretary of Defense when he was Vice President, said, and this is a quote, he's been wrong on every major foreign policy decision for four decades. | ||
| He said that about Joe Biden, again, when he's, when I think had his full cognitive abilities, for example, regarding Afghanistan, he's been, he's literally been wrong about Afghanistan since the very beginning, right? | ||
| He was pro-nation building the entire time he was against going and killing Osama bin Laden, which is the only great thing that we've done in the last 18 years there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your thoughts. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Remember Joe Biden, I actually went back and looked this up because I saw people trying to say that Joe Biden's been against nation building. | ||
| He was a co-sponsor of the original bill. | ||
| He was one of the co-authors that went in for this thing and it was a bipartisan effort. | ||
| We remember it was bipartisan. | ||
| We also, when you look at his decisions on China, the way that we were going to get in bed with him when he went to Sichuan University in 2011, he stood there where Xi Jinping and said the rise of China is good for American workers, right? | ||
| This is 10 years ago, Joe Biden, and he's saying all of these things. | ||
| So we know that he hasn't been the one making these decisions. | ||
| He knows what he's told. | ||
| He goes in. | ||
| He kind of takes the talking point. | ||
| He walks forward with it. | ||
| And this is the way the team wants me to go. | ||
| And you hear him saying that same kind of language. | ||
| I'm not what he works about. | ||
| He's the one who says, I was instructed to do this. | ||
| I was told to do this. | ||
| I better not do that because I don't want to be in trouble. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That is not the words of someone who's used himself as a leader. | ||
| He doesn't understand leadership. | ||
| He's never been a leader. | ||
| And that's what we're getting now. | ||
| See, in the middle of this, too, because this is an extraordinarily difficult situation, the speech, you could tell, had a bunch of different hands in it. | ||
| There was very high rhetoric at the beginning about the war dead, the honored dead, and then it kind of went all over the map. | ||
| I don't think people are still sent there. | ||
| I mean, we're disagreeing as we talk to each other on chat right here. | ||
| About what did he actually say in the talk and then answering the questions? | ||
| I believe he said, hey, we're standing to get all the citizens out. | ||
| Did you hear that? | ||
| He did say we're getting them out, but he did not say how, right? | ||
| Which is critically important. | ||
| I mean, how? | ||
| We don't possibly have a workable plan. | ||
| I mean, look, he said it was sort of a word salad of sloganeering, right? | ||
| And to that point that you made, Jack, which I think is critical, about where he constantly says, I was instructed to, or I'm going to get in trouble, right? | ||
| It's the opposite of a confident leader that we need, especially at a time like this. | ||
| Kurt Schlichter, who I think is fantastic, just a great writer and great on social media, and a former colonel in the Army, this is what he tweeted out to that. | ||
| He said, quote, the first person I was instructed to call upon, end quote, you know, quoting Joe Biden, and Schlichter then said, Who the hell is instructing this guy, right? | ||
| I mean, the fact, oh, I have a meeting I have to go to. | ||
| Whose meeting do you have to go to? | ||
| And who is instructing you? | ||
| The Commander-in-Chief. | ||
| We hired you to be the Commander-in-Chief. | ||
| I mean, I don't believe we really did, but ostensibly we hired you to be Commander-in-Chief. | ||
| And it's not funny. | ||
| For a guy to sit there and go, I've got to go to a meeting. | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| You've got to take care of what's important. | ||
| The thing that's important is communicating not just to the American people, you're actually communicating to the Taliban and to ISIS. | ||
| And to China. | ||
| China, exactly. | ||
| You know, these concentric circles. | ||
| Of what exactly is going to happen. | ||
| And look, understand you don't want to telegraph everything. | ||
| But you have to command the room. | ||
| You have to walk in and people know that you can enforce your will on events. | ||
| Here is where we are. | ||
| we're in a situation where we have a team that was not fully vet that was not the merrily were not allowed to do full due diligence you have a group and this was the your betters as was the the most professional team out there right you get him from all the big think tanks there from all the proper stuff you should understand these are guys for all the credentials from all the ivy league schools they've been in junior white house positions over the senate in the house they've gone to the right think tanks They've worked at the right hedge funds. | ||
| They're in the right dining clubs in this town. | ||
| This is the elite. | ||
| This is the American elite. | ||
| And this is where you're seeing how absolutely incompetent they are. | ||
| This is incompetent. | ||
| And then to roll him out today. | ||
| And to have him give that talk, right? | ||
| And still, I think, my takeaway is that, hey, he's going to stay, but then they say, are you going to put in more troops? | ||
| No, I'm not going to put in more troops. | ||
| Are they coming out now? | ||
| Are we coming out immediately? | ||
|
unidentified
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No, there was no clarity. | |
| You've welded shut. | ||
| McKenzie's talk was kind of sitting back and kind of flippant. | ||
| It's kind of flippant. | ||
| I don't think we have time to play McKenzie. | ||
| You're going to do it on your show tonight. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But I do want you to give a highlight because you were infuriated by McKenzie. | ||
| I couldn't believe it. | ||
| If you put McKenzie as the head of CENTCOM, it's kind of this flippant, kind of leaning him back in his chair with this haphazard Biden unfocused. | ||
| If I'm ISIS-K, I go, guys, let's do what Michael Yan says. | ||
| Now let's pursue and then humiliate. | ||
| Yeah, because these are unserious people, these leaders that we're up against. | ||
| And who are the two most important generals in America right now? | ||
| It would be Mark Milley and this McKenzie, right? | ||
| The head of CENTCOM and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. | ||
| Mark Milley is obsessed with social justice warrior nonsense, right? | ||
| He's obsessed with CRT and Ibram X. Kendi. | ||
| Right, he's also obsessed with trying to claim that Jan 6 was an insurrection. | ||
| He's obsessed with making hundreds of thousands of U.S. | ||
| servicemen and women take a jab that they don't want. | ||
| That's where his focus is, okay? | ||
| Not on getting us properly and safely out of Afghanistan. | ||
| And then we look at McKenzie today. | ||
| Appalled. | ||
| Appalled at the lackadaisical approach during his presentation and some of the things he said. | ||
| Please play the tapes of this because I think the American people will be appalled. | ||
| On a day when 12 Americans gave their lives, 12 of our youngest and bravest Americans gave their lives, he did not come out with A battle plan mode? | ||
| He didn't seem to be solemn about the loss? | ||
| None of that. | ||
| And by the way, from Biden, you know, as a messaging guy, what I would have told him, here's what we need from you. | ||
| Yes, pay tribute to the dead. | ||
| Not your son. | ||
| Not your son, okay? | ||
| Who has nothing to do with this. | ||
| Pay tribute to the dead from today. | ||
| Then, promise retribution. | ||
| And you don't have to give details there because you probably shouldn't, right? | ||
| But promise retribution. | ||
| Convince the world that you mean it. | ||
| And then thirdly, say, and here's what we are going to do operationally. | ||
| Maybe it's status quo, maybe it's not. | ||
| But the point is, make the world confident that you have a plan and that you are executing on that plan. | ||
| He did none of that today. | ||
| None of that. | ||
| Instead, I think what he showed the world is that he is a doddering caretaker. | ||
| And that's what happens to your point, Steve. | ||
| We've got to get back to the beginning of all this, the genesis of all this madness, is what big tech did, what the corporate media did last year, to hide from the American people the truth of who he is, so they were not able to make an informed decision about the election. | ||
| They de-platformed one of the strongest leaders we've had in the history of this country in a turbulent time in the world, okay? | ||
| And particularly in one of the worst neighborhoods of the world. | ||
| A strong leader, a steadfast leader, even if he didn't agree with everything he did, okay? | ||
| Nobody doubted his strength, nobody doubted his resolve, particularly our enemies. | ||
| They de-platformed, I want you to keep in mind, while he was commander-in-chief, while he was commander-in-chief, While he was Commander-in-Chief, he was de-platformed by a guy like Jack Dorsey, by Zuckerberg, by the guys at Google. | ||
| He was de-platformed, okay? | ||
| And shut down by the media. | ||
| And this, what you saw today in Living Color, okay? | ||
| Rachel Maddow and the tech oligarchs and the Wall Street, everybody supported him, right? | ||
| Everybody supported him. | ||
| You own this. | ||
| You own this. | ||
| This is not about parlance and politics now. | ||
| This is about this country going into a very dark and dangerous place, okay? | ||
| We're on the path, I'm telling you right now, to a kinetic war. | ||
| The Chinese Communist Party, you know why? | ||
| They see that today, and they go, we can move now. | ||
| We can move now before Trump gets back, and we're going to move now. | ||
| One thing I want to get to, you get a few minutes, and Jack, I'm going to get to you in a second. | ||
| Cortez has got a bolt. | ||
| You've been very controversial the last couple days. | ||
| We were at, in Turkey today, live with Beatrice van Storch, one of the most serious politicians in the world, the opposition party to Angela Merkel, Alternative for Deutschland. | ||
| She's down there because of this migrant crisis, refugee crisis. | ||
| She says it's going to trigger as big a problem as in 2015 in Germany. | ||
| You've been very adamant about this. | ||
| Now we've got a situation that's exacerbated. | ||
| You see they're taking guys in the planes. | ||
| Tell us what your position is on these refugees. | ||
| Yes, so you know, blue check lefty Twitter is going crazy, you know, a flutter, calling me a racist because I say we cannot and should not accept these Afghan refugees to the United States. | ||
| I believe that, listen, for people who took risk and helped us, I think we have a moral obligation to get them to safety. | ||
| That is not the United States. | ||
| That is in region. | ||
| We have bases, we have allies there, countries that share culture and religion with those Afghans. | ||
| but we cannot bring them here for two main reasons. | ||
| The one is the example of Europe, exactly what you're talking about, Steve. | ||
| What we have seen happen in Europe, in the countries that generously open themselves to Afghans, is an absolute wave, a systemic wave of sex crimes against women there. And I'm not making this up. | ||
| I can give you the stats to prove it. | ||
| But first one, just anecdote, in Austria, just a few weeks ago, 13-year-old girl raped and killed in Austria. | ||
| Three Afghan migrants were arrested It became a national scandal. | ||
| It's one of the reasons that Chancellor Kurz there has said we are taking none of these Afghan refugees in the country of Austria, though, to show you that was not an isolated, just terrible incident. | ||
| In the country of Austria from 2015 to 2018, when the real wave began, sex assaults up 53 percent. | ||
| That's according to the Hoover Institution from Stanford. | ||
| According to the Afghan, or excuse me, to the Austrian police, Afghans, which are a tiny sliver of the Austrian population, Afghans are half Of all sex crime assailants in the country of Austria. | ||
| Similar stats in Germany and Sweden. | ||
| And what I'm saying is, let's not invite this to the United States on top of the security risk. | ||
| The second big reason, of course, for me is terrorism. | ||
| I do not believe that we can adequately vet these people. | ||
| And even the people who we were able to vet when we had the time to take our time, when we basically controlled the country, right? | ||
| Even then, we had ongoing, regular insider attacks on the United States. | ||
| What I'm saying is don't bring... I hope these awful events of today will serve as a warning for people, right? | ||
| Do not bring Kabul to Kansas. | ||
| It is a terrible idea. | ||
| America has a great heart. | ||
| We do. | ||
| We're very open and we love immigration done well. | ||
| This is a terrible idea to bring Kabul into the United States. | ||
| Okay, Jack Posobiec is going to stay with us. | ||
| Colonel John Mills, Captain Bannon. | ||
| Steve Cortez has got a bolt. | ||
| Nine o'clock tonight, Newsmax TV. | ||
| Cortez, Pellegrino, you're going to open hot, right? | ||
| Open hot. | ||
| We're going to have Joe Kent on. | ||
| Joe Kent. | ||
| And Amanda, I think, 11 deployments. | ||
| But you're going to be talking also about General McKenzie, correct? | ||
| Absolutely, yes. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| I want to thank you for coming by. | ||
| Great, great analysis. | ||
| And here's what I love about Cortez. | ||
| Blue check Twitter. | ||
| He ain't backing off, right? | ||
| He's not going back. | ||
| Doubling down. | ||
| Doubling down, as he always does, right? | ||
| Because you know why? | ||
| He brings the receipts. | ||
| He brings the math. | ||
| It's all about the analysis. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| We're going to be back. | ||
| The War Room. | ||
| Extraction under fire. | ||
| Kabul. |
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