Aug. 30, 2021 - Bannon's War Room
48:56
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
We've given them to literally sift through a sea of humanity. | |
| Thousands and thousands of Afghans to try to pluck out our allies, our friends, and their families, their husbands, their wives, their little girls and boys, and put their kids on their back and hold their hands and literally pull them to freedom. | ||
| So I expected to see a gate with Marines on one side and Afghans on the other, but that's not the way this can work. | ||
| Because we waited so long to start this evacuation, we have to go out in the crowd. | ||
| So these Marines were out there, feet from the Taliban with their horse whips, at tremendous risk. | ||
| Literally saving lives. | ||
| These Marines who grew up knowing that the Taliban harbored the people who attacked us on 9-11, now has to work with these terrorists. | ||
| But we have to to save lives. | ||
| And one of the most important things we learned by being there on the ground is that that crazy relationship with the Taliban is actually going to be really important going forward. | ||
| Politico is shedding light on that, quote, crazy relationship with the Taliban, reporting this, quote, U.S. | ||
| officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city's airport, a choice that's prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials. | ||
| Earlier we told you about one of the Marines who was killed in Thursday's suicide bombing outside the airport in Kabul. | ||
| 20-year-old Lance Corporal Riley McCollum was a dedicated Marine, according to his sister, a father, with a baby due in just three weeks. | ||
| I want to show you now video similar to some we showed you last night. | ||
| It's roughly near where that blast occurred. | ||
| It was taken before, obviously the blast in days before, to show you the kind of mission that Lance Corporal Riley McCollum and other U.S. | ||
| service members are engaged on, the difficulty of it, the close quarters. | ||
| This comes from PBS news hour correspondent Jane Ferguson, she recorded it days before the attack, she says it's the entrance point to Abbey gate, a international airport and that the detonation occurred a few feet behind from where this video was recorded. | ||
| She says Taliban are in the front trying to sort through the crowd, U.S. also has troops there totally exposed, obviously risking their lives for this mission and very little separating them and Afghans from potential terrorists. | ||
| Jane Ferguson, the PBS NewsHour correspondent who shot that footage, joins us tonight. | ||
| Also with us is retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmett, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Political and Military Affairs. | ||
| Jane, I appreciate you being with us. | ||
| The video that you took, I mean, it's so important to see this. | ||
| It really gives you a sense of just the close quarters, the sheer number of people, and the lack of any real safety for U.S. | ||
| troops there. | ||
| Can you just explain, I mean, was there actual screening being done by the Taliban? | ||
| Because I can't imagine that folks who are walking around with, you know, pieces of pipe to beat people with are necessarily great at screening people. | ||
| Anderson, it wasn't really a screening or any kind of security screening by the Taliban. | ||
| What we really were watching was crowd control and a deeply crass, violent kind of crowd control, where, as you say, they were beating people with sticks. | ||
| They were firing guns in the air very, very often whenever the crowds would get too intense and too panicked and pushed towards them. | ||
| But really, in all my years of covering the conflict in Afghanistan, I've never seen anything like it. | ||
| U.S. | ||
| forces just standing, essentially in the street, surrounded by civilians. | ||
| And, of course, with the Taliban just down the street, supposedly controlling the flow of those civilians. | ||
| They were hugely exposed. | ||
| It's worth pointing out that it would have been impossible to screen these people. | ||
| This was a mass crush of panicked civilians. | ||
| I mean, at this point, people were just trying to keep them alive. | ||
| It was incredibly hot. | ||
| It's August in Afghanistan and you saw people fainting every day. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| We're going to play this a lot more. | ||
| The Honored Dead. | ||
| We're brought back today to Dover for the dignified transfer. | ||
| Captain Bennett is going to talk about that later. | ||
| Also tomorrow, we're going to go over the honored dead, most of whom are under 23, 22 years old. | ||
| There was one individual over 30. | ||
| Most of these under 23, most high school graduates, 2019, 2018. | ||
| Many of these young men and women either not born when the towers went down or born just beforehand and volunteered for this and we have one Lieutenant Colonel Scheller who's been relieved for cause because he said that has to be the chain of command has to be held accountable for that. | ||
| You saw Seth Moulton and Seth Moulton is a super progressive left congressman but he's a combat marine He was the hero of the Battle of Najaf. | ||
| He was the platoon leader that went house for house to try to get to that mosque for three or four weeks. | ||
| He knows what it means to come back. | ||
| He came back. | ||
| He was shocked. | ||
| People criticized him about going over there. | ||
| Tell me anybody's come back and talked truth to power. | ||
| He said, this is not a wall. | ||
| They're in the crowd. | ||
| This is crowd control. | ||
| How? | ||
| How did that happen? | ||
| And why is nobody held accountable for it already? | ||
| You see these long faces and all this happy talking. | ||
| By the way, today, the mainstream media lit up Lit up Blinken and lit up Jake Sullivan for not having answers and having this kind of phony spin about who's left behind, what's going to happen, what's the plan, and why are you kowtowing to the Taliban? | ||
| I want to bring in First Sergeant John Bennett first. | ||
| First Sergeant, I just got to ask you, given the footage we've seen, and here's the thing, CNN's not playing that footage again. | ||
| That was a PBS reporter, Jane Ferguson, who's been covering the Afghan war, and she is no Trumpanista. | ||
| She is not MAGA. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| She's sitting there going, I've never seen anything like this in the entire time covering the war. | ||
| You've got Seth Moulton, a former Marine Corps, I think, First Lieutenant, platoon leader, saying, hey, I've never seen anything like this before. | ||
| First Sergeant Bennett, what are your initial thoughts on what actually happened at the Abbey Gate? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, just another catastrophic failure in the planning, in that retrograde. | |
| First and foremost, when you do any type of retrograde, It should be under some sort of deception. | ||
| And what I mean by that is you can't let the enemy know, and you certainly can't work with your enemy, but you can't let them know what you're going to do, how you're going to give them a timeline. | ||
| You need to deceive them so they can't prepare and do the things that they've been able to get to do to get away with so far. | ||
| So as far as the gate process goes, I mean, what a train wreck. | ||
| I'm appalled. | ||
| That our military leadership didn't say, hey, sit down and plan that whole thing out. | ||
| They should have known that we're going to be getting thousands and thousands of people because those people over there, American citizens and Afghan citizens, they're being hunted down. | ||
| Like you last guest said, they're being hunted down methodically. | ||
| They're being identified and they're going to kill them. | ||
| So they should have expected this. | ||
| I mean, that was just that's just a free for all cluster over there right now. | ||
| And it was only a matter of time before An attack like that happened, and unfortunately it did, and it killed our Marines, Army, and soldiers, and Navy personnel. | ||
| First Sergeant, you've been in these situations before. | ||
| The upper command approved, and this is what's stunning, because I've never recalled this ever happening before, and I think in American military history, where we actually agreed to have our enemy guard the perimeter. | ||
| Do you, in your experience in the Corps, in your experience, I know you know history, you've got this great site up there about the study of radical Islam. | ||
| Do you ever recall a situation? | ||
| Where the American military has agreed up front, senior level commanders and the political establishment has agreed to turn over the perimeter of something as vital as Kabul Airport, where we know 100,000 individuals are going to come through at least to be extracted, then we've got to retrograde that thing. | ||
| Have you ever seen a situation where the perimeter was turned over to our enemy to control? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Never, and it's appalling that it happened. | |
| I think you hit on something very important just a minute ago when you asked your last guess. | ||
| Do you think maybe some of this was intentional? | ||
| Well, I was shaking my head yes whenever you asked that. | ||
| I mean, if you think about it and put it in perspective, Biden was the vice president whenever they left our boys in Benghazi to die. | ||
| Nothing was ever done about that. | ||
| We know that the election was stolen. | ||
| Biden's in that office. | ||
| He was planted there. | ||
| I mean, there's so many other considerations. | ||
| You got China and Iran. | ||
| They signed a $400 billion oil and trade deal. | ||
| You've got Russia, China, Palestine, Iran. | ||
| They're all coming together, supporting the Taliban. | ||
| They have vested interests in the Middle East. | ||
| I mean, you got China looking at harvesting all those precious metals that are over there. | ||
| This has a huge strategical and geopolitical impact. | ||
| As far as what we're doing, as far as the national security concerns of the United States and Biden and his entire team has just been handing over everything to them. | ||
| Everything, including our own troops. | ||
| They served them up to them and they should be held accountable for that. | ||
| Sergeant Ben, hang on. | ||
| Do we have Ben? | ||
| Is Ben McMillan ready? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's go. | |
| By the way, we've got a quick update from Ben McMillan. | ||
| Ben McMillan of Weather Nation, our sister channel, is actually in Thibodaux, Louisiana, 125 miles southwest of New Orleans. | ||
| Ben, can you give us an update on Hurricane Ida? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Steve, I've stepped out of the wind to show you that we are in a safe place here, but we've seen a lot of damage here. | |
| Let me show you behind me the buildings that have actually ripped apart while we were out here. | ||
| We'll have our photographer zoom in and show you some of the debris that's coming off the roofs of these structures. | ||
| And on top of that, we still are being pounded by 100 mile an hour winds in some areas. | ||
| We'll show you the trees off to our right and They are still leading at a 45 degree angle. | ||
| You'll see him under the streetlights there. | ||
| So this area is still being battered by this hurricane. | ||
| And we were talking earlier, this made landfall in Louisiana just before noon. | ||
| So we're at seven plus hours now. | ||
| Is that right, Steve? | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| Has not moved. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Ben, let me ask you. | ||
| You mentioned in the beginning of the broadcast about Grand Isle. | ||
| Governor Edwards had an evacuation order. | ||
| You said there were about 50 people. | ||
| There's been reports that Grand Isle is just getting absolutely pounded. | ||
| Can you give us an update on Grand Isle or any other of the townships down in the parishes even closer to the coast than Thibodaux? | ||
| What are you hearing right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, unfortunately, it's not good. | |
| We had 150 mph winds at landfall, and that's incredibly strong. | ||
| It's going to destroy most weaker-built buildings. | ||
| Even if residents try to put walls in between them and the storm, that kind of wind shreds structures. | ||
| And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, you know, a property owner can make the call And have the freedom to not evacuate. | ||
| But that also comes with the risk. | ||
| It means emergency services will not come to your rescue. | ||
| So it's a terrible situation if one of those structures down in Grand Isle, for example, started to get ripped apart and the person called 9-1-1, no one would respond. | ||
| What do we know, Ben, right now? | ||
| Because it looks like with that wind, you had a 12 to 14 foot surge. | ||
| They're talking about, I don't know, 12, 18 inches potentially of rain. | ||
| With all this being hit at one time, where do you stand with emergency services? | ||
| Is power out? | ||
| Is water? | ||
| What's the story with water? | ||
| Can you update us on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, again, we're in a hospital, the regional hospital, serving about 300,000 people here. | |
| So the light you see behind me and over my head is actually generator generated. | ||
| So much of the area is going to take some time for the power crews to respond to the area and work on the residential homes, the area businesses to get that power restored. | ||
| In addition, Before the power can be restored, we have to have vehicle access established by clearing trees, power lines, any other debris on the area highways. | ||
| Ben, the Weather Nation Storm Center, do you guys have any idea of when this storm is really going to start moving inland, and particularly the eye of the storm? | ||
| I mean, it's extraordinary that it has been down there on the coast of Louisiana and around the coast of Louisiana where it made landfall. | ||
| At 11 58 Central Time today. | ||
| Now it's it's what 7 o'clock. | ||
| It's 715 Central Time. | ||
| Does Weather Nation, do you guys have any idea of when this storm is going to start moving off and moving into the interior of the country? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it is moving. | |
| It's only moving at about 10 miles an hour. | ||
| So it's going to take more time, more hours of terrible weather battering the folks here in Louisiana. | ||
| But eventually it will get picked up by stronger upper level winds and move through the country. | ||
| But that might not happen until tomorrow. | ||
| We'll have to monitor those conditions. | ||
| You could watch Weather Nation for updates on that. | ||
| And then maybe some folks here will get a break from these terrible storms. | ||
| Ben, we've got to go to commercial break. | ||
| We're going to come back to you later in the show. | ||
| By the way, download, everybody in this posse across all our platforms should download the Weather Nation app. | ||
| This is an extraordinary company. | ||
| They cut right to the chase. | ||
| You're going to get weather and nothing but weather. | ||
| No happy talk. | ||
| Okay, make sure you go there now. | ||
| They're our broadcast partners here. | ||
| They're the sister station, sister channel. | ||
| of Real America's Voice. We're going to return. We've got First Sergeant John Bennett from the Marine Corps, retired, head of the Oklahoma Republican Party is going to join us. We've got Michael Yan, we've got Jack Posobiec, we've got Captain Bannon. We're going to talk about the retrograde evolution that's taking place right now in Kabul Airport as American troops start to withdraw in the last of the evacuees. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break and return with the gathering storm Afghanistan and Hurricane Ida on Real America's Voice in the War Room next. | ||
| Okay, you're back in the War Room. | ||
| It is, what, the 29th of August, the year of our Lord, 2021. | ||
| This is The Gathering Storm. | ||
| It's a special put on by, with the help of the good officers of Real America's Voice, our broadcast partner, also John Furniture Radio Network. | ||
| We're in Mandarin on G-News and G-TV. | ||
| I want to thank everybody. | ||
| Also with our sister channel, Weather Nation, we're doing live coverage. | ||
| This is Gathering Storms. | ||
| We're doing both Afghanistan and Hurricane Ida. | ||
| We're going to go back to our field reporter, Ben McMillan, in a moment. | ||
| But I've got breaking news right here. | ||
| Jack Posobiec coming on. | ||
| He just gave me a heads up. | ||
| Lieutenant Colonel Stu Scheller, this hero, By the way, the only guy relieved for cause in this entire thing because he said the senior officers have to be held accountable and the political class. | ||
| He says, I'm resigning my commission as the United States Marine effective immediately. | ||
| So we're losing the good guys and keeping the guys that allowed this to happen. | ||
| I'm going to play that footage again tomorrow and Seth Moulton. | ||
| This is outrageous, what allowed to happen to those young patriots, those young heroes that came home today in the dignified transfer at Dover Air Base. | ||
| I want to go to Michael Yont. | ||
| Michael, you saw that footage. | ||
| You know the situation as well as anybody. | ||
| Has the situation gotten any better for the Marines as we retrograde out? | ||
| I mean, what's the status right now? | ||
| What we saw there is unacceptable to the American people, and we're going to play it, and we're going to play it, and we're going to play it, because CNN had it. | ||
| With PBS, and they played it one time, and you don't see it anymore. | ||
| They understand how explosive that is. | ||
| And you couple that with Seth Moulton telling MSNBC, you couple it with General McKenzie, who said, hey, you know, he explained, you're right up on you, you can feel their breath. | ||
| Well, sir, I got that part. | ||
| But if that's the part, then you can't have the Taliban as your screeners, and you can't put young troops out for crowd control with tens of thousands of panicked people who understand one simple thing. | ||
| If we don't get past the Marines and onto that airfield, we're dead. | ||
| Because the Taliban will commit genocide. | ||
| Michael Yon, your thoughts and analysis? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just got a message right now from Laura Logan, like two minutes ago. | |
| I'm going to pray that Laura will be okay with me saying what she's saying here. | ||
| She says, I have zero confidence in this narrative. | ||
| How many people got access today? | ||
| How many planes are left? | ||
| They're gathering names. | ||
| Basically, she's saying the United States is funneling people through the Taliban to get them killed. | ||
| And I mean, she's saying it clearly. | ||
| She's been saying it to me on the phone. | ||
| She's saying it in messages. | ||
| I think she's right. | ||
| It's very clear that we've turned over. | ||
| We put those Marines And the Navy Devil Doc out there on the front line to be killed. | ||
| How many of us have seen suicide vests and car bombs in action? | ||
| A lot of us. | ||
| Me, I've seen a lot of them. | ||
| They're so easy to deploy. | ||
| It's as easy as deploying a knife. | ||
| I mean, all they have to do is get anywhere vaguely close, which is easy to do in those crowds. | ||
| Our commanders know what's going on. | ||
| This is insanity. | ||
| And we are set up right now for a mass casualty attack, which could happen at any moment now. | ||
| I'm just praying that our guys get out. | ||
| Because as you know, on these retrograde under fire, this is one of the most dangerous military operations you can do, other than hitting the beach at Normandy. | ||
| I mean, we are Our forces are within small arms range of the Taliban right now and they have the same weapons that we have and they're very well trained because we trained them. | ||
| Our own special forces trained them. | ||
| They're actually quite good fighters now. | ||
| So I mean they can easily take out our aircraft now. | ||
| I know for instance right now there's three civilian aircraft Sitting on the ground. | ||
| They've been there all day. | ||
| I've been trying to help fill these aircraft. | ||
| And we can't get people through the gates. | ||
| It's very difficult. | ||
| Even though soldiers are trying to help people get through the gates, they're being stymied. | ||
| As Sam Faddis said on your show just earlier, he's exactly right. | ||
| I've been watching Information come through supporting what Sam is saying. | ||
| It's unbelievable. | ||
| I mean, we're not even people that get through the gates sometimes are not allowed to get on the aircraft. | ||
| So I mean, what's about to happen is clearly a Sam. | ||
| And as Laura Logan has said, there's going to be a genocide. | ||
| Everybody who's had much experience in Afghanistan can see it coming. | ||
| And as Laura or Laura, if we put it in South African talk, as she often points out, They're all the same. | ||
| There's no kinder, gentler Taliban. | ||
| There's no separation from Haqqani. | ||
| These are just inter-jungle fights, you might say. | ||
| They're still very anti-freedom. | ||
| Let me let you go, Steve. | ||
| No, you hang on. | ||
| I don't want you to just stay there, but I got, you know, Colonel Rogers said she's a C-141 pilot. | ||
| She says, hey, you're coming in low and slow. | ||
| You're totally exposed. | ||
| This is the good graces of the Taliban and the Kani Network, these guys not shooting us out of the sky. | ||
| We're totally exposed. | ||
| Our brave pilots and those kids that came back, the 13, dead heroes, and every other kid that's there is totally exposed. | ||
| The American people are not going to put up with this. | ||
| The parents that sent them over there are not going to put up with this. | ||
| And those are the deplorables. | ||
| Remember, these kids are volunteers. | ||
| Look at them. | ||
| They're 19, 20, 21 years old. | ||
| Not going to put up with it. | ||
| First Sergeant Bennett, before I go to Jack Posobiec. | ||
| Lieutenant Colonel Scheller is the only one that's been relieved for cause. | ||
| Tell me, First Sergeant, how could that possibly happen? | ||
| He sat there and goes, I don't care if I'm throwing my whole career away, but somebody's got to get to the front and say, hey, people in the chain of command have got to be held accountable for this. | ||
| And they fire him. | ||
| And then he just says, resigns from his beloved Marine Corps. | ||
| You spent a career there. | ||
| These guys have stayed for the entire career, stayed 20, 25, 30 years. | ||
| They love the Corps. | ||
| The Corps is their family. | ||
| So tell us about Scheller and about the example he's setting by basically saying, hey, I don't care if they fire me and I don't care if I have to leave, but I can't put up with this anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he's the only one with the guts and the backbone to actually say and do something. | |
| You said it earlier that the parents of these 13 heroes should be furious with the administration and with those generals. | ||
| We should be promoting Lieutenant Colonel Scheller, not Forcing him to resign because I know what they did to him. | ||
| They told him, hey, we'll make this go away. | ||
| You just resign. | ||
| We won't have to court-martial you and everything will be fine. | ||
| He probably doesn't know any better, and no one's probably supporting him. | ||
| So now we have a hero trying to save our heroes is being pushed out. | ||
| I mean, put it in perspective. | ||
| What about Lieutenant Colonel Vindman? | ||
| Remember him? | ||
| Look what he did. | ||
| But yet he was able to retire. | ||
| He's got a book deal, and he's celebrated as a hero now by the same administration that's thrown Lieutenant Colonel Scheller under the bus. | ||
| I mean, it's just Unbelievable. | ||
| And we still, still have, as you pointed out, troops over there on the ground, completely vulnerable. | ||
| They're war fighters. | ||
| They are not traffic control. | ||
| They are war fighters. | ||
| And to not allow them to do their job or not give them the resources to do it is just unbelievable. | ||
| And the American people should be curious and they should demand that the entire chain of command Resign and we put in real people like Lieutenant Colonel Scheller, maybe promote him and put him in charge. | ||
| I guarantee you we could get some things done then. | ||
| I want to bring in Jack Posobiec now, former Naval Intelligence Officer. | ||
| Jack, you've been covering this non-stop, human events. | ||
| It's a must-read. | ||
| Go there. | ||
| Jack's the Senior Editor. | ||
| Jack, I want to leave Kabul for a second and come back here to the United States. | ||
| What is this thing that the Navy's putting out? | ||
| The ONI is putting out some threat to the First Sergeant Bennett's and to the Wendy Rogers of the world, retirees and active duty personnel, saying you can't create the UC will bring you up on court martial charges on the Unifor code of military justice section 88. | ||
| If you criticize the president or anybody in the chain of command, I first I thought this was some joke going around. | ||
| Is this actually true? | ||
| Steve, from what I've been able to talk to the people I've spoken with and as you know, folks in my background, I did serve at the office of Naval Intelligence for many years that they all confirmed that this letter is genuine. | ||
| This is something that's going around. | ||
| It's also an intimidation letter. | ||
| Look, Article 88, that's, that's only if you're active duty and when you're on duty, right? | ||
| That doesn't apply to a reservist. | ||
| UCMJ doesn't apply when you're not on orders. | ||
| Uh, that doesn't, obviously doesn't apply to retirees, this directive they're talking about, Steve. | ||
| This is an intimidation effort to stem the bleeding of the Lieutenant Colonel Schellers and the patriots out there that know The problems that have been faced by this leadership and don't want to keep their mouths shut. | ||
| How can you demand accountability of your own soldiers, your own sailors, your own Marines, when you don't turn around and demand accountability from the people that are sending you into battle, that are sending you on these missions, that are putting you, like they put these 13 Marines, the sailor, the soldier, everyone else who is out there, against a wave of humanity and say, Hey, try to do something about this. | ||
| These were children. | ||
| They were 18. | ||
| They were in their 20s. | ||
| They were in the oldest one was 31. | ||
| They're their lives in head of them. | ||
| And when 9-11 happened, they were babies. | ||
| They were all babies when 9-11 happened. | ||
| This was not their war. | ||
| This was not their fight. | ||
| Our leaders put them there and you can't even demand accountability for that. | ||
| So I salute Lieutenant Colonel Scheller, I absolutely salute him for doing what he did. | ||
| And if other people want to come forward, I want to tell you right now, we will support you. | ||
| We will do everything in our power to make you whole, to take care of you, to do what you need to do. | ||
| We will run the crowdfunding operations. | ||
| We will make sure that all of you are taken care of. | ||
| We'll get nonprofits set up. | ||
| This is not the time to be silent. | ||
| Real quickly, we've got about a minute and a half left. | ||
| Maureen's been on me all day and the guys I know, but her younger cadre of officers are outraged by this. | ||
| What have you heard today from various people you serve with and other veterans and active duty personnel that I know you know very well? | ||
| What's the general attitude of folks? | ||
| Look, I've been out here at a wedding with friends. | ||
| There are people that I served with here. | ||
| There's active duty members here. | ||
| There's people that are in. | ||
| The sentiment is that this is complete chaos and it was Avoidable. | ||
| Now we're getting reports in that there's this been this retaliatory strike. | ||
| They're saying it took out an ISIS suicide bomber, but people on the ground are saying it took out an interpreter and his entire family. | ||
| So my question, Jake Sullivan, is where did you get the target data for that strike? | ||
| If we don't have people on the ground, you're talking about this over the horizon OTH operation from East Afghanistan. | ||
| Who is giving you the target data? | ||
| Are you taking target data from the Taliban and are they using the list that we gave them a week ago illegally to strike our own interpreters? | ||
| Are you conducting strikes, drone strikes, out on behalf of the Taliban, sir? | ||
| OK, we're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| When we return, we've got Weather Nation. | ||
| We're going to have Ben McMillan live. | ||
| He's down in Etipeto, Louisiana, down in La Forche Parish, 125 miles southwest of New Orleans. | ||
| The storm is now moving 10 miles an hour, but I've got to tell you, This thing is going to leave horrific damage. | ||
| It came ashore, landfall at basically noon. | ||
| It's 7.45, 7.30 there right now. | ||
| We're going to get a live report. | ||
| We've got Pasovic, we've got Bennett, we've got Jan. | ||
| Captain Bennett is going to join us. | ||
| Stick around for The War Room. | ||
| Okay, welcome back to The War Room. | ||
| Gathering storm Afghanistan and Hurricane Ida. | ||
| This is a very historic evening. | ||
| You're seeing an extraction, essentially under fire, in Kabul. | ||
| One of the most dangerous of all military evolutions carried on by the bravery of our Air Force pilots, Marines, Navy SEALs, Army, Special Forces, all of it. | ||
| The best of the United States people in our military, they're right now extracting themselves from Kabul. | ||
| Basically, 48 hours. | ||
| It'll be 4 p.m. | ||
| Eastern Time on Tuesday. | ||
| That is the deadline, the 31st. | ||
| We're going to get into more of the details of that. | ||
| Also, this historic storm, Hurricane Ida, if you look at the charts and you look at the, and you look at the, we're trying to put the box down there where the storm is. | ||
| It's moved very little since essentially 1 o'clock eastern time today when it came ashore as a Category 4. | ||
| 150 mile an hour winds. | ||
| Surge, I think they said 12 feet to 14 feet, up to 18 inches of rain. | ||
| It is pounded, pounded, southern Louisiana down these parishes southwest of New Orleans. | ||
| We have Ben McMillan from Weather Nation, our broadcast partner, sister channel we're going to go to in a minute, and they've done amazing. | ||
| Download the app, go to the Weather Nation, there's no happy talk there, there's no Uh, you know, there's no spin. | ||
| You get the raw weather from a really great crew there, and people in the field are tremendous. | ||
| I've never seen a reporter like Benjamin Millen, quite frankly. | ||
| Okay, uh, make sure, also, the sponsorship, MyPillow.com, you know, please go make sure you support Mike Lindell, you support the great manufacturing company, you support the War Room. | ||
| MyPillow.com. | ||
| Promo code War Room. | ||
| We've got all the sales there. | ||
| There's not enough time to go through it. | ||
| Just go to our square. | ||
| Up to 66% off, but support the fight for freedom by going there. | ||
| I want to go to First Sergeant John Bennett. | ||
| First Sergeant, you've got a website, Understanding the Threat. | ||
| We've only got a couple of minutes, but after 20 years, 10,000 dead, 50,000 wounded, Nine trillion dollars. | ||
| We've essentially created a terror super state in Afghanistan that now has access through the Haqqani Network, ISI, the Pakistani Intelligence Services, to potentially 80 to 100 nuclear weapons in Pakistan. | ||
| Tell us about the threat. | ||
| What have we created and how dangerous is this for people here in the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
September the 10th 2001 And it's coming again because they've had over 20 years or almost 20 years to pool their resources together, work together, figure out what we're doing and how we react to things. | |
| And now they have a lot better chance of more of an open door to come here to the United States and commit more terrorist acts upon us. | ||
| And the only way we can stop that now, because our federal government is a catastrophic failure in protecting us, it's got to be done by the citizens. | ||
| So how do you do that? | ||
| You do it by educating yourselves on the global Islamic threat, their direct doctrine, and why they do the things they do and how they do it, as well as the no-communist Marxist threat, because both of those entities are working together from the ground level to the international level, together, even though they're ideologically opposed, to do one thing, and that is to destroy this constitutional republic. | ||
| We see it. | ||
| They've penetrated the highest levels of our government. | ||
| All the way through our bureaucracies, and we're seeing that unfold in Afghanistan today. | ||
| This is an intentional outcome of what they've done over the 20 years, and it's not going to stop once we retrograde out of Afghanistan. | ||
| It's going to get worse. | ||
| And if people don't stand up and hold our government accountable and act, then we're going to see more 9-11s. | ||
| First Sergeant Bennett, thank you very much. | ||
| Can you give your social media? | ||
| How do people follow you during the day? | ||
| I know you're head of the Republican Party down there in Oklahoma, but how do people get access to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the easiest way is to go to our website, www.understandingthethreat.com. | |
| You can also go to our Oklahoma GOP Facebook page as well and follow me on either one of those. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Honored, and thank you very much for changing your Sunday night around to join us. | ||
| Really appreciate it. | ||
| Before I get back to Jack Posobiec, I want to go to Michael Yon. | ||
| Michael, any other updates? | ||
| I know it's pretty chaotic there right now. | ||
| They had a strike today. | ||
| Supposedly it took down a car bomb, a couple of... it was purported to be a large car bomb that was headed towards the airport. | ||
| but it took down, we know it took down for a fact, a residence. | ||
| And supposedly it killed the potential terrorist. | ||
| Jack says there may be some other reporting there, may have killed an interpreter. | ||
| But it's been reported by CNN that nine people in the family, including six children. | ||
| Michael, what are you hearing about the airport right now that our audience needs to know before we get to the Demar show? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm working right now trying to get people through Taliban, actually. | |
| And I mean, it's still possible, but the Taliban are not letting American citizens through. | ||
|
unidentified
|
An American colonel just told me that about six minutes ago or so. | |
| But there's still a chance to get some through. | ||
| But otherwise, they're really getting locked down. | ||
| We're getting down to the wire. | ||
| In less than 24 hours, we'll probably have all American forces out of there. | ||
| Insofar as that strike today, you know, whether or not that was actually legitimate targets is unknown to me. | ||
| We know the U.S. | ||
| government's lying as much now as North Korea lies. | ||
| I can see the Taliban are already using this as a information operation. | ||
| They're saying that there were nine civilians killed, of which six were children. | ||
| And, of course, the attack at the gate that killed our Marines and Navy medic corpsmen is being used as an information operation. | ||
| The Taliban are saying that most of the people that died at the gate were shot by American forces. | ||
| There's videos about this out there. | ||
| I've been looking at them on Social media, of course, Twitter just lets those fly. | ||
| So everything is still building up. | ||
| They're still building up the revenge narrative. | ||
| It's clear that they want to attack us. | ||
| Many people want to attack us. | ||
| Whether or not they're going to attack us before we leave is unknown to me. | ||
| But as soon as we get off the air right here, I'm going to be trying to help people get through the gate. | ||
| It's still possible we'll get a few through. | ||
| Jack Posobiec, I know you have extensive contacts in the apparatus, let's say, both in the national security side, the intel side, the White House side. | ||
| What are people saying that, what are they really telling you about what they think of this evolution so far? | ||
| And I don't want to get to the political damage, we have days to talk about that, but just where it looks, because it looks so disorganized and so chaotic, right? | ||
| And today, Martha Raddatz And Jake Tapper and others were lighting up the administration. | ||
| They were trying to sell this as like some Berlin airlift. | ||
| And across the board, they just got absolutely, absolutely. | ||
| Jonathan Karl, Martha Raddatz at ABC, Jake Tapper, who are not, you know, not MAGA and not Trump supporters, were crushing Blinken and Jake Sullivan and this whole crowd. | ||
| What's your reporting telling you? | ||
| Look, Steve, the reporting that's telling me, you know, I heard that, of course, at Dover, at the dignified transfer, that this was, that it was very rough, that there were some people who, you know, kind of turned away. | ||
| You know, people were respectful generally when they met the president, but there were other people who just sort of stayed away, didn't want to go and shake his hand. | ||
| And there's even that video of some, I believe it was one of the Gold Star mothers who actually walked off during the transfer. | ||
| And then we're also hearing reports as well. | ||
| By the way, is that video is that is that is that video? | ||
| Was that a was that someone from the government apparatus? | ||
| Because I didn't know that the Gold Star mothers were out there. | ||
| Is that this was Fox actually covered it. | ||
| Have we ascertained was that actually one of the mothers that was overcome or was a part of part of Biden's entourage? | ||
| The report we saw that it was one of the mothers. | ||
| But we're waiting to get the full video so we can actually see it. | ||
| But what I am also hearing now about the general tenor of things that you're asking is that people are saying, how can we keep going on like this, right? | ||
| And I've said this on multiple shows. | ||
| I'll say it again here. | ||
| Kamala Harris and her team are seriously discussing the 25th Amendment, discussing options as pertains to that. | ||
| They're saying, how much longer can we actually get out of this? | ||
| Do we want to take a more active role in terms of these decisions, or do we just want to step back and let it play out? | ||
| As things stand, you know, you look at this target that came out today. | ||
| My question is, as a former intelligence officer, where did we get the target data for the strike that took place today? | ||
| If our people aren't there, how are you conducting over the horizon targeting? | ||
| If you don't have humans, if you don't have people in the area with eyes on target, right, you are getting that target set from somewhere. | ||
| So please explain to us how it was that you got that target data today. | ||
| And please let us know if you got that from somebody on the ground that was connected to the Taliban. | ||
| So let's go to your contacts in national security, because I'm hearing that the retrograde operation, obviously our troops are incredibly brave, organized, everything like that, but when you look at the transfer over to the Taliban, of who's actually controlling the airport, who's controlling the gates, you're hearing this from Laura Logan, you're hearing from Michael Yan, people with extensive contacts, that it's chaos there. | ||
| What is it like inside? | ||
| We have 48 hours essentially, or I guess 44 hours now, | ||
| One of the great shames of this entire thing, and this has now been reported widely across social media, it started on a few Instagram posts of people sending text messages back and forth, they were telling our troops from 82nd Airborne and others that were there at HKIA, that's the Kabul airport, they were telling them to clean the airport and even clean the latrines, the | ||
| bathrooms at the airport before it was turned over to the Taliban. | ||
| That's an actual order that came down from task force to the soldiers that were at the airport that before this was done you had to clean the bathrooms for the Taliban before you handed it over to them. | ||
| And they've got pictures of the bathrooms and everything else. | ||
| Jack, Senior Editor at Human Events. | ||
| Let's go to Ben McMillan of Weather Nation out in the field down in Thibodeau, Louisiana. | ||
| Sir, give us an update. | ||
| How's it going? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Steve, we're in shelter now, and you can see not very strong winds, so that's some good news. | |
| But look out just a couple hundred feet behind me. | ||
| Look at that wind howling underneath those streetlights. | ||
| We're still seeing gusts around 100 miles an hour. | ||
| We've been talking about all show how long this storm has been battering the Louisiana coast, and we are now coming up on eight hours, and it's still sustained winds at 120 miles an hour. | ||
| So that is now eight hours of 120 plus mile an hour winds in Louisiana. | ||
| Ben, what we want to give a shout out to the first responders. | ||
| The first responders down there have got to be tremendously heroic. | ||
| We understand you're at the regional hospital. | ||
| Can you tell us about the men and women that are going in harm's way? | ||
| We've got them in harm's way in Kabul. | ||
| We know we have them in harm's way down in the parishes, the parishes south of New Orleans. | ||
| Can you tell us about those people? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Steve. | |
| We have six ambulances staged here at this hospital, and they are waiting for that moment when that call comes to jump in their units and head out for the people that were most likely stranded. | ||
| Coms are down in many areas, so we have to go. | ||
| Actually go house to house in many situations with these first responders trying to find the people that may have been left behind or stayed behind as this very serious storm moved through the area. | ||
| And one interesting fact here on Weather Nation, we actually have our own paramedic with us. | ||
| You see the coverage that we do, and it seems very dangerous, but I want to thank my paramedic, Robert, for watching our back and all the first responders for everything they do across the region here responding to the call when it comes. | ||
| By the way, we know you've got a great crew down there. | ||
| The camera crew, sound, the paramedics. | ||
| Just my concern here is your parental supervision because you're one of the bravest guys I've ever seen. | ||
| Your reporting there has just been absolutely heroic. | ||
| I've got to tell you, the Weather Nation people, I want everybody in the War Room Posse across all of our platforms to download this app. | ||
| You've got to get to meet these people. | ||
| It's extraordinary what they do, the coverage. | ||
| And by the way, this storm is going to last for many days now as it goes up into the internal part of the United States. | ||
| And I've got to tell you, This, I think, is one of the most powerful hits any coastline has gotten. | ||
| As a kid growing up in Virginia, we're very used to hurricanes in the August-September time frame. | ||
| I have never seen a hurricane sit basically where it made landfall for seven hours and just pound with winds this high, rain, tidal surge, everything. | ||
| So this is historic. | ||
| I can tell you, Ida is a historic storm already. | ||
| Ben, hang on for a second. | ||
| We're taking a short commercial break. | ||
| When we return, we've got Jack Posobiec, we've got Michael Yan, we've got Ben McMillan from Weather Nation. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| When we return, the gathering storm, Afghanistan, the retrograde operation now, extraction under fire, and of course, the historical Hurricane Ida as it pounds now to the Louisiana coast just south of New Orleans. | ||
| We will be back in a moment. | ||
| The Gathering Storm. | ||
| This is a special. | ||
| Afghanistan and Hurricane Ida. | ||
| I want to thank Real America's Voice, John Fredericks, GNews, GTV. | ||
| Particularly, go to MyPillow.com right now. | ||
| Promo code WarRoom. | ||
| Make sure you support the War Room. | ||
| Mike Lindell and the great company that is MyPillow, the manufacturing company. | ||
| I don't have time to go through the sales, but there's sales everywhere. | ||
| Action, action, action. | ||
| We need your support. | ||
| I want to go now to the one and only, one of the bravest guys I know, Ben McMillan from Weather Nation, our broadcast partner here. | ||
| Ben is in Thibodeau, Louisiana, just 100 miles southwest, 125 miles southwest of New Orleans. | ||
| Ben, we've got a couple of minutes. | ||
| What I think the audience wants to know is, why is this storm not moving inland more rapidly? | ||
| And what is, this must be just incredible devastation it's going to leave behind. | ||
| Ben McMillan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Steve. | |
| The upper level winds just aren't strong enough to push this along. | ||
| So that's the issue here. | ||
| This storm has almost stalled, more or less, along the coast, only moving about 10 miles an hour right now. | ||
| So it's going to take several more hours to actually reach, say, the Baton Rouge area, a city of about 225,000 people. | ||
| So the danger is not over yet. | ||
| We're going to continue to see this move very slow and unfortunately affect some pretty large population centers as it moves out of the state. | ||
| Now, Hopefully it will eventually get picked up by those stronger winds that push that storm along. | ||
| There goes the hat and it will move out of the area. | ||
| Ben, this storm, everybody's going to be watching Weather Nation. | ||
| I want you to stay, download the app, go to Weather Nation, stay in Real America's Voice, but you've got to watch what's happening in this weather. | ||
| This storm is a monster storm, and it's coming inland. | ||
| It's going to go up through the Tennessee Valley. | ||
| It's going to hook around. | ||
| West Virginia's going to be hit. | ||
| Carolina's going to be hit. | ||
| Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania. | ||
| There's going to be, I've got to tell you, this is a monster storm. | ||
| This thing is stuck right now on the Louisiana coast for now going on to eight hours. | ||
| Eight hours. | ||
| So we're going to see tomorrow morning when the sun comes up. | ||
| I think some real devastation. | ||
| Ben, I'm honored to have you guys on, honored to be a partner to Weather Nation. | ||
| I want everybody to download the app. | ||
| You stay safe, brother, because don't get too crazy out there. | ||
| We need you for other days. | ||
| We really want to thank you and your broadcasting, Ben. | ||
| He's good? | ||
| Fine. | ||
| Fantastic. | ||
| By the way, everybody download the app. | ||
| I want to bring in Captain Bennett. | ||
| We're going to get into more tomorrow, The Honored Dead. | ||
| This transfer, dignified transfer, took place. | ||
| But I got to ask you, and thank you, but this show was so jammed tonight. | ||
| We're going to do The Honored Dead. | ||
| We have time tomorrow morning, in the evening. | ||
| In this, correct me if I'm wrong, Maureen, did I see Joe Biden looking at his watch at the end of the service? | ||
| It wasn't really a ceremony, but at the end of the transfer, did he actually look at his watch? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He did, and he tried to hide it after he took his hand off of his heart. | |
| He put it down to his side. | ||
| However, he looked at his watch while he was bringing it back down to his side, which is completely disrespectful. | ||
| I understand that he had a FEMA briefing, but like it has been discussed before, briefings don't start until he gets there, so he should not have been looking at his watch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Completely disrespectful to the families of those 11. | |
| Marines and Staff Sergeant in the Army and Corpsmen that were taken off that plane and their remains were put into those vehicles for further transfer. | ||
| It was just completely disgusting to see him do that. | ||
| What are you hearing among your contemporaries that were at the Academy, served in the military and other, I know you know a ton of veterans now through your work in the war room. | ||
| What are you hearing the chatter from junior officers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's no respect for him as the Commander-in-Chief. | |
| He doesn't have the military's back. | ||
| He doesn't have veterans' backs. | ||
| And it's just, there's no faith and confidence in the Commander-in-Chief, and that is extremely bad for morale in the service. | ||
| What is your social media handles? | ||
| How can people follow you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They can follow me on thegram at RealMaureenBannon and on Twitter and Getter at Maureen underscore Bannon. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| We'll have you back on tomorrow to go through the honored dead. | ||
| Jack, I got to ask you, we're 40 hours away or 44 hours away from pulling out altogether. | ||
| Where do we stand right now on Sunday night as we come to two cataclysmic days before us? | ||
| From the self-imposed deadline on this evacuation. | ||
| Keep in mind, the deadline was May 1st from the moment that Trump said it when he made the deal. | ||
| This could have been done in a dignified manner. | ||
| And I think everyone in the entire administration, quite frankly, everyone in the world knows, I should say everyone in the intelligence community, the national security community knows that how this should have been done and how this could have been done. | ||
| There are still, we're hearing now, go to New York Times. | ||
| Peter Baker has the story, right? | ||
| There are still American students at the American University of Kabul who are there for whatever reason studying abroad in Afghanistan. | ||
| They can't get out. | ||
| And the response they're hearing back from our State Department is, don't worry, we've turned your names over to the Taliban to keep you safe. | ||
| I just want everybody to let that sit in. | ||
| I want everyone to hear those words, to feel that feeling of the hair on the back of your neck standing up, and then know what that means. | ||
| That we are now trusting an enemy that we've been fighting for 20 years, not with just to stay in their own lands and not strike us in the homeland. | ||
| We have our own people, our own allies on the ground. | ||
| We also have those veterans, those members of the task force that have gone over special operators on their own dime. | ||
| They're raising money. | ||
| They're doing crowdfunding. | ||
| They're finding money in any pocket they can get it to conduct their own operations. | ||
| Now they can't get to HKIA. | ||
| They're talking, how do we get out? | ||
| How are there any other ways that we can get out of afghanistan how can we get out of this landlocked country safely and with these people that we're trying desperately to get out before the taliban's control extends across the entire land we got about an hour about a minute to go but given the valor and courage of our young men and women in uniform in the paramilitary and and everybody that's there the humiliation that our government is saying the humiliation to this country | ||
| what ramifications in the area and particularly as the economist is talking about the beginning of global jihad what ramifications does it have for our country sir . | ||
| Look, you've got one of two situations here, right? | ||
| either, and I'll let you guys be the judge, right? I don't even need to put my analyst hat on for this one. Are we going to have a situation where the Taliban forms a fully functioning democracy, or I shouldn't say democracy, but a fully functioning government, right, across the land? | ||
| Or are you going to get a situation where these third party groups, groups like al-Qaeda, groups like the Haqqani Network and others, go in and they say, we'll prop you up. | ||
| We'll work with you. | ||
| But let us fund our training camp over here. | ||
| Let us start our group over there. | ||
| You're going to have China coming through. | ||
| They want that economic corridor in through the port of Gwadar in Pakistan. | ||
| They're building their pipelines. | ||
| They're building their railroads. | ||
| That's why Xinjiang and the Uyghurs and the concentration camps are up there because they want the connection down through Pakistan. | ||
| They're playing nice with Taliban. | ||
| Of course, they want the mineral assets there. | ||
| But the real question then becomes, What is going on on the ground in Afghanistan? | ||
| We've lost our eyes on the ground. | ||
| We've lost our eyes and ears. | ||
| Our best and brightest people, they're gone. | ||
| Now in the north, you've got the resistance growing. | ||
| Jack, we've got to bounce. | ||
| Gathering Storm, special tonight, Real America's Voice, Weather Nation. |
Export Selection