THE MAN WHO GOT BIN LADEN Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep 166
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The Biden administration is getting ready to pay ransom to the Taliban.
They don't call it that.
They won't call it that, but that's what they're doing.
Robert O'Neill, the former Navy SEAL who killed bin Laden, joins me to unload, and I mean unload on the Biden administration.
More details on the kidnapping plot for Governor Whitmer, and guess who is driving that plot?
And I'm going to also close out by discussing Aquinas' five proofs for the existence of This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
The Biden administration is hoping that you and I will quickly forget what just happened in Afghanistan.
We'll quickly forget the 13 US servicemen killed.
We'll quickly forget the Americans left behind, that we will move on.
That's their goal.
Here, by the way, is a Pentagon spokesman minimizing the Americans stranded in Afghanistan and basically saying, well, what's so unusual about that?
Listen.
How does diplomacy get those people out of the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan?
It's not completely unlike the way we do it elsewhere around the world.
I mean, we have Americans that get stranded in countries all the time.
Well, it happens all the time.
You know, you forgot your passport and you can't get back, or you lost it in France, and you know, you were stranded there for a while.
Well, there's a little bit of a difference in those isolated situations, and America, having drawn all these Americans to work and teach and serve in Afghanistan in this capacity or that, and then when it comes time to get them out...
Sorry, we're out of there.
We'll leave you behind. Gee, you know, this happens all the time.
The callousness of this, really shocking.
It's almost like they're daring the American people to do something about it.
This is who we are. We're running the country.
It's our decision.
Nancy Pelosi, pretty much in the same vein, a group of Republican congressmen wanted to read the names of the 13 servicemen killed.
And Pelosi and the Democrats blocked it.
Now, you could say that this was kind of out of political embarrassment.
They didn't want the American people.
They don't want the solemnity of all this, the gravity of it, the sheer negligence of it to be apparent.
So they're trying to sort of push it all under the rug.
But think about it.
Think about the contrast between refusing to let the names of these servicemen even be read on the floor, on the one hand, and Pelosi, Schumer, and all these Democrats taking a knee, kind of obsequiously bowing and scraping before George Floyd.
So, they don't want to honor the servicemen, but they want to honor a guy who's a home invader, a drug abuser, a Czech forger.
I mean, basically, if these are your heroes, you just might be a Democrat.
Now, very disturbingly, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, was just on television with Stephanopoulos, and he dropped an idea that has not really gotten the traction I think it deserves.
The United States is getting ready To pay ransoms to the Taliban, to give them huge amounts of money.
Now, Sullivan was kind of aware this is a delicate topic, and so he broached it in this way.
He said, in effect, he goes, first, you know, we've been giving aid to Afghanistan for a long time, and there are a lot of humanitarian needs over there.
Well, there might be.
But when a country becomes your deadly enemy, you don't normally supply development aid to those countries.
So not only was Sullivan saying that there could be ways for this development aid to continue, and then he was offering what clearly was a kind of carrot to the Taliban, essentially saying that our money is your leverage.
So if there are Americans left over there, if there are other Afghan allies we want to get out, we're going to be willing to give you, the Taliban, our enemy.
And in fact, now the strongest terrorist regime in the world, we're willing to give you taxpayer money.
Let's remember, this is not Jake Sullivan's money.
It's not Anthony Blinken's money.
It's not Biden's money.
It's your money.
And it's going to be going to the Taliban under this administration.
So, while the efforts continue to shift the blame, you know, blame Trump, blame the American people, here's an article in The Atlantic.
Afghanistan is your fault.
The American people now has what it wanted.
Here is Max Boot in The Washington Post.
Who's to blame for the deaths of 13 service members in Kabul?
We all are.
We all are. You are.
I am. Because of what we did to do what?
Apparently because we were unwilling to support the war effort, or we were what?
Who planned this evacuation?
Who organized it?
Who botched it?
It was Biden from start to finish, and now the United States is in the groveling role.
Here's General Kenneth McKenzie, he's calling the Taliban, quote, Our generous host nation.
So we have to now kowtow to these people.
We have to prepare to give them aid and money.
Why? All because of an operation in which the Americans who have been left behind could have been gotten out in the first place.
But the Biden people are hoping that by the time the midterms come along next year, this will be a long and distant memory for most Americans.
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You need to use promo code DINESHDINESH. The Afghan refugees are here, tens of thousands of them.
The exact number is not known, but it's going to be over 100,000 most likely.
One estimate here, 111,000 Afghans.
Interestingly, if you think about it, the U.S. government evacuated over 100,000 Afghans and 5,400 American citizens.
So the discrepancy there is very telling.
And Debbie and I were on the podcast together several days ago, and I expressed some ambivalence about these refugees.
I think that When you have people who have helped the United States, it is a good idea to stand by your allies.
But as I begin to look into this more closely, all kinds of worrying signs emerge.
Now, the first one is that the Biden administration has a plan to relocate these refugees all over America.
And it looks to be that they are emphasizing swing states.
Now that is itself really telling.
They're not only emphasizing swing states.
I see that Salt Lake City, for example, is on the list.
But I see Phoenix.
I see Denver, Colorado.
I see Jacksonville.
I see Atlanta. That's Georgia.
And I see St.
Louis. That's Missouri. I see Raleigh.
That's North Carolina. So it could be that the Democrats here are, this is part of the same strategy that they have on the southern border, which is bring in illegals, dissipate them in the swing states, try to consolidate their advantage in those states in this way, or at least over the long term.
Now, there's some Florida Republicans, including, I believe, both Republican Senators Rubio and Scott, who have basically said, we don't have a problem.
Send some Afghan refugees our way.
We want immigrants that are socially conservative, that are hardworking, that are pro-American, that help the United States.
So Florida, or at least the two senators, don't seem to be concerned about We're good to go.
Now, that being said, when I listen to the rhetoric of the Biden administration, oh, these Afghan refugees, these are the people that we owe a debt to, because after all, these are the people who are translators.
And I say to myself, translators?
What, you had 100,000 translators?
No. These were our allies, Dinesh.
They were really helping the United States.
I don't deny that they were probably people who were working closely with the U.S. military, but I refuse to believe that there are 100,000 of them.
That is absolute nonsense.
The simple truth of it is that the Biden administration seems to be basically taking everyone who showed up, seems to have no proper vetting process. It could very well be that they're Taliban guys who go, listen, we can take some of the war to the United States.
Why don't we show up? I mean, these guys have a beard. We have a beard. Those guys don't know our names. They don't know who our relatives are. They're not asking US military soldiers to vouch for us individually. None of that. America's not even doing any of that.
So these guys are going to come to a country and listen, this is not the America of the 1940s or We're a divided country.
We have dilapidated cities.
We have major problems of drugs and other things in our own country.
We need to work on nation-building here at home.
And yet, we're taking in people from South America or through the southern border from all over the world.
We're now taking in these Afghans.
And let's remember that these are people, by and large, Who are tribal people.
They're committed to Sharia.
Even if they're not Taliban guys, these are guys who are used to a very different way of life.
There was an article in 2017 by Cheryl Bernard, the wife of a former U.S. ambassador who is himself Afghan-born.
She said that the Afghan refugees who have actually been taken by European countries over the last several years have very high rates of crime, very high rates of public dependency.
She said, look, I'm a little pained in writing this article.
I'm writing it kind of reluctantly, but I do want you to know that there are problems that come with this.
And yet we're hearing nothing about that.
Listen, you know, if these Afghan refugees ended up in the Tony suburbs of Washington, D.C., in McLean, Virginia, in suburban Maryland, if they showed up on Rodeo Drive in L.A., if they showed up on the Upper West Side in Georgetown, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Santa Monica, but I think you know and I know that's not going to happen.
The idea of the Biden administration is not to stick them in liberal neighborhoods where they can, where they might assault or rape the daughters of some prominent, you know, lobbyist or some prominent attorney who's a Democrat.
No, the idea is, why don't we kind of give them to the heartland?
That's, after all, where we've got the political problem.
Let's deposit these refugees over there, and long-term, let's harvest the political benefit of it.
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I'm really delighted to welcome to the podcast an American hero.
Robert O'Neill is the former Navy SEAL, and this is the man that got bin Laden.
This was a man who was part of the SEAL Team 6, but he's been involved in many missions, more than 400 combat missions.
He has two silver stars, four bronze stars with valor, a joint service commendation medal with valor, Three presidential unit citations, two Navy Marine Corps commendations with valor.
By the way, he's also the author of a book, The Operator, Firing the Shots That Killed Osama Bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior.
Robert, what an honor.
Thank you for making some time for this podcast.
Let me start by asking you, you know, you're an American kid.
You grew up in Butte, Montana.
Tell us a little bit about your story.
How did you decide to join the Armed Forces?
How did you decide to become a Navy SEAL? Talk about what pushed you in that direction.
Sure, well, and thanks for having me today, Dinesh.
It's just great to talk with you. I... The way I joined the Navy is kind of a typical story for most people that life happens around you when you're making other plans.
I always say that when you make a plan, God laughs.
Because I was never going to join the Navy.
I was never going to join the military.
I was playing college basketball.
And it was one of those times, you know, I had a bad relationship with a girlfriend, a time to leave town.
Like everyone says, wherever they're from, it's time to leave.
And I tried to join the Marine Corps because I grew up hunting and I wanted to be a sniper.
And again, you know, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
The Marine recruiter was not in the office, but the Navy guy was.
And I simply asked the Navy guy, where's the Marine?
And he said, why do you want to be a Marine?
I said, I want to be a sniper. He said, look no further.
We have snipers in the Navy.
He said I needed to become a SEAL, a Navy SEAL first.
I didn't know what that was, but he kind of talked me into it.
I didn't know how to swim, but he talked me into becoming a Navy SEAL. And that's literally how it happened.
I shipped out in a few weeks.
Now, they say that the training for Navy SEALs is something that kind of has to be seen to be believed.
Was this something you were prepared?
I mean, you obviously were a strong and fit guy, but I mean, talk a little bit about what you go through to become a Navy SEAL. The best advice that was given to me, because SEAL training is the hardest military training in the world.
I'm talking an average day, a thousand push-ups a day, a thousand sit-ups a day, a thousand flutter kicks a day, 500-plus pull-ups a day.
It's a mile from where we work out to the chow hall.
So you run six miles a day just to eat on top of the additional 10 miles a day.
You're running. It's constant moving.
It's really, really difficult.
But I got advice from an instructor on how to get through SEAL training, but it turned out to be advice for getting through life with long-term goals.
He said, I know that regardless of what you've been told, this course is not impossible.
People graduate. Look at me.
I'm living proof. So I will never ask you to do anything impossible, but I will make you do something very hard, followed by something very hard, followed by something very hard, day after day after day for eight straight months.
And that sounds like a lot, but don't think about it like that.
Here's how you do it. Wake up in the morning on time and then make your bed the right way and then brush your teeth.
You just started the day with three victories.
Make it to the 5 a.m.
workout on time. And as we're beating you, don't concentrate on the pain.
Think about your next goal in life, which is breakfast.
After breakfast, your next goal in life is lunch.
After lunch, make it to dinner.
After dinner, do everything you need to do to get back inside that perfectly made bed because you took the time in the morning to make your bed the right way, regardless of how bad today was.
And it will be bad. Tomorrow's a clean slate.
Tomorrow's a fresh start.
And when you feel like quitting, which you will, do not quit right now.
Never quit right now. That's emotion.
Quit tomorrow. If you can keep quitting tomorrow, you can do anything in life.
Now, Robert, this is an exacting regimen.
I mean, this is hard stuff day after day.
There has to be some sort of goal, right?
Was the goal just to become a Navy SEAL? Was the goal to be the savior of your country?
Was the goal to protect all these people walking around in a fog who need protection but don't know they do?
What was it that made you go through the process?
What made it worth it?
Well, the goal was to become a Navy SEAL. I joined in 1996, pre-9-11.
So there was no war in sight.
And it more turned into proving people wrong.
Everyone back home that told me I couldn't do it.
Because, you know, people say, you know, did you ever think about quitting?
I'm like, yeah, all the time. But you need to think about, you know, what's going to get you to that next...
That next goal. And it's everyone back home that told me I couldn't do it.
Just to make it through, you know, to the next phase, to get a trident, to become a Navy SEAL. And then I figured, you know, I'd be a Navy SEAL for four years and then go back to Butte, Montana and have some cool training stories.
It was just, you know, everything is pretty much mental.
It's a lot physical, but you can convince your body through your mind To do anything you want, and that's what's important to remember.
Tell us a little bit about SEAL Team 6, if you can.
In other words, talk a little bit about the other guys.
Did they have similar backgrounds to you?
Was it blacks and whites?
Was it the diversity of America?
Give us a feeling for what it's like to be in that unit.
Yeah, and that's something important.
People don't realize the diversity that's there.
What I learned, too, being a kid from Montana who was in decent shape but couldn't swim, Can become a Navy SEAL and end up in Bin Laden's bedroom.
I was no different than someone from Philadelphia or someone from Miami, someone from LA. What we learned is it doesn't matter what you look like or where you're from, 80% of you will not make it.
So if it's black guys, white guys, straight guys, gay guys, 80% fail.
And then we end up with the same percentage.
And I don't know what it is, the system just works.
And 20% make it through and it's across the board.
When we come back, I want to talk to Robert O'Neill first about the Bin Laden operation, but then about what's happened in Afghanistan and what Biden has wrought.
We'll be right back. I'm talking to Robert O'Neill about SEAL Team 6 in Afghanistan and how appropriate it is that I talk to you about a movie that deals with exactly this topic.
Now, in May 2011, the White House leaked that SEAL Team 6 had killed bin Laden.
And immediately, Al-Qaeda placed bounties on the heads of all Navy SEALs.
Just three months later, on August 6, 2011, a helicopter carrying many SEALs from that same elite unit was shot down in Tangi Valley, Afghanistan, with no survivors.
30 Americans died that day, and the greatest single incident loss of life in the history of the Navy SEALs' U.S. Special Operations.
But huge questions remain.
Where was the black box and why was it missing?
Did our restrictive rules of engagement contribute to this tragic outcome?
What really happened to SEAL Team 6?
Learn what we now know about the tragic mission.
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I'm back with former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill, the guy who got Bin Laden, also the author of The Operator, Firing the Shots that Killed Osama Bin Laden, and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior.
Robert, let's talk about the Bin Laden operation.
I mean, here was a guy who was kind of the chief planner, the organizer of 9-11, I mean, the number one terrorist in the world.
he was at large or in hiding for it seems almost 10 years.
And finally, he was located.
Can you pick up the story?
When did you become part of this operation?
When did you know? And were you sure that Bin Laden was in that building?
Debbie and I saw the movie about it, which I'm not sure how close that is to what actually happened.
But the idea was that the CIA had made efforts to locate him.
And then, of course, the Navy SEALs were deployed to go get him.
Talk about your role in that operation.
The movie you mentioned, Zero Dark Thirty, is a good movie to watch.
I really like it because it shows the intelligence analysts, especially the woman that found Bin Laden, and she's a real person.
She really found him, and she was the reason that we were 100% sure, at least me, that he was in the third floor of that building.
The way they told us is, I had finished maybe my, I don't know if it was 12th or 13th deployment.
We just got back and they picked a certain amount of us with the most amount of experience in combat.
And it was right place, right time.
There's a lot of men and women that could have done the job.
We just happened to be there, which a good point is always make yourself available.
I don't know where to give credit for this quote, but somebody said, wherever you are, be there.
And they just happened to pick a certain amount of guys.
They brought us to a room.
At first, they told us we found a thing, and this thing is in a house.
This house is in a bowl in a country, and you're going to go get it.
And bring it to us. It wouldn't tell us what it was.
We were speculating the Arab Spring.
It might have been North Africa, Gaddafi, something like that.
But they did bring us to a place a few days after initially telling us, and they said, the reason you guys are here, this is as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden.
So they had some sites set up for us to train for about two weeks as a team, which we didn't need.
When they told us it was bin Laden, we weren't high-fiving and everything.
We said, cool, are we going now?
Because we were ready. We've been to combat so much as a group.
But they wanted us to train so the powers that be could see us, because there was like five options, and obviously sending Americans in by themselves is very, very dangerous, especially in the political climate.
But we proved that we could do it.
We trained a long time. We knew the exterior of the compound, and then we forward staged to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, for the president to tell us we got the green light, which we did.
So that's kind of in a nutshell what we did.
We trained it, and we read as we could.
We had the best Well, again, when I mentioned earlier, life happens around you, and the only time the perfect plan exists is when you're planning.
Once you leave to do your job, it seems like everything changes.
We had the perfect plan that we rehearsed, and our worst case scenario was a helicopter crashing in the front yard, which is exactly what happened because that's just how it goes.
So we ended up with about 12 guys inside because of a crash landing.
The pilot saved, like I said, the best pilots in the world.
He saved everyone's lives by pinning it on the fence.
They let us out outside the building.
And I remember sticking my foot out.
So we had 13 guys in my helicopter and the dog, Cairo.
I remember putting my foot out.
I was supposed to be on the rooftop, but now I'm outside.
I looked at Bin Laden's house and said, I guess we just start the war from here.
And then just because of the experience on the ground and the preparation to get there, we had the ability to find ways to get in.
We already had guys inside.
So by the time I got in through the main carport where the driveway was, I already had half the team in there.
They'd already engaged and killed three terrorists.
And we already had guys inside Bin Laden's house.
So I just headed for the front door of the house.
And I knew that I wanted to get to the third floor because that's where I think Bin Laden is.
And going in the house, now we're in a position where the house should blow up.
If anyone's going to have a house-borne improvised explosive device and kill everyone, it's Bin Laden.
So we're kind of looking around for explosives.
My guys are working. There's nothing there.
And I remember just being very proud of the guys in front of me.
Because we know we can die, but we've accepted death because of 9-11.
And no one seemed afraid.
They were just... We have a saying, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
That's all they're doing. They're working problems, meaning breaching situations, mechanical breaching, explosive breaching, putting women and children to the sides and then trying to find the stairwell to get to the second floor.
So it wasn't a difficult target at that point.
Now we're doing what we always do.
So I found the stairwell to the second floor and there's about eight of us left and that's when it got pretty interesting.
Now, you had some women in there, and so on, and Bin Laden is this iconic figure, at least from the photographs we've seen.
He's got the deep eyes, he's got the kind of recognizable look.
Was it the case that you pushed all these other guys, these women aside, and so on, and you go in there, and did you recognize him right away, or how did that work?
Right. Well, the way it went down, like I said, there was a stairwell, and the woman that found Bin Laden said, I don't know what it looks like inside, but you will find a stairwell.
And Khalid Bin Laden will be on the stairs, armed.
And she was so certain of everything.
She said, if you can get him, you get a shot at the big guy.
That was her words. So we did come to a stairwell.
Khalid was there. The guy in front engaged him, killed him.
We stepped over, got to the second floor.
And then now on the second floor, everyone in front of me went to the right and left to clear the issue.
So unknown spaces. You don't want to keep moving up if it's not clear.
Now it's down to two guys.
One guy in front of me.
And I'm behind him. We're looking up the last set of stairs, and there's a curtain at the top.
And he can see people moving in the curtain.
And he just started saying to me, we got to get up there now, because he thinks those are the suicide bombers.
Like, they're going to go off, but if we go now, we can beat them.
And I remember I wasn't being brave.
I was like, yeah, he's right.
Let's just get it over with. I'm tired of thinking about it.
So I squeezed him. We went up the stairs.
He went through a curtain. And then he tackled who he thought were suicide bombers, which to me is one of the bravest things I've ever seen.
But because he, they turned out to not have vests, but because he went this way, I turned that way to my right and there was Osama bin Laden standing there three feet in front of me on both of his feet with his, his hands were on his wife Amal's shoulders and he's sort of maneuvering and we're so close.
I remember looking at him thinking he's okay, he's taller than me, taller than I thought, he's skinnier than I thought.
His beard is gray.
That's, those are his eyes, that's his nose.
He is a threat. He's not surrendering.
He's a suicide bomber. And I made the decision in less than a second to treat him as a suicide bomber.
So I had to shoot him in the face.
I shot him twice standing up and then once more on the ground.
And people have asked, you know, why did you shoot his face because of recognition?
Because I've dealt with suicide bombers before, and it happens so fast.
It's so loud, scary, and permanent that you need to take life away from them as soon as you can.
So I did that. He fell down.
And then I just started moving.
I moved his wife to the side.
And there's a human element here, because as I'm moving his wife, his two-year-old son was there, and as a father, I'm looking down thinking, this poor kid's got nothing to do with this.
You know, it's a human element.
Anyway, I moved them to the side, and my guys are so matter-of-fact and good at work.
I was standing there, other Navy SEALs came into the room, and I'm sort of thinking to myself, is this the best thing I've ever done or the worst, personally?
And one of my guys came up to me and he saw me standing there and he said, are you okay?
And I said, no, what do we do now?
And he said, now we find the computers.
We do this every night, hundreds of times.
And I said, you're right, I'm back.
Oh my God. And he said, yeah, you just killed Osama bin Laden.
Your life just changed. Now get to work.
And that's how it was. When we come back, I want to pivot away from bin Laden a little bit and talk about Afghanistan.
And where do we go from here?
We'll be right back.
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I'm back with former Navy SEAL, the man who got bin Laden, Robert O'Neill, author of The Operator.
Robert, let's talk about what's happening in Afghanistan now.
Now the Biden people appear, well, two things.
One is they did their best to pin the blame on Trump.
Some of them even tried to pin the blame on the American people.
Hey, America, you got what you wanted.
And now it seems they're just kind of counting on Americans to kind of forget and move on.
As you take stock of what happened over the past couple of weeks, I mean, is this in fact one of the worst military disasters that we've seen and one of the worst commander-in-chief operations that we've seen under Biden?
I think as far as our military, this is the single worst failure in our history.
And it's just because of the way of the, just the weakness, the white flag, negotiating with terror, sending them more money, leaving them billions of dollars worth of stuff.
I mean, even to the point where they, I love the, well, the but stops here.
But, and they always say but, and they blame someone else.
They're to the point where they're even blaming American citizens for not getting out because they didn't want to get out, which is complete nonsense.
This is proof of what happens when you surround yourself with people with absolutely nothing but experience in the beltway.
There's a bunch of people who learn from someone in a classroom, who learn from someone in a classroom, who's never been out of a classroom, and they just assume politically they can make decisions.
No military experience.
They just think, well, we'll just hand it over and then the Afghans will take over and then look at that.
They wanted to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 9-11.
Everyone that I know that was ever on the ground, and it doesn't matter which administration, with Obama, with Trump, everyone I knew said, whatever you do, do not give up Bagram.
You cannot give up Bagram.
That's it. All we needed to keep was Bagram, because not just to support the government in Afghanistan, but also to have a foothold against what's really going to happen with China, Russia, Iran.
Now we no longer have that.
There's so much bad that hasn't given up Bagram, everything.
We don't have sources on the ground.
They're talking about over-the-horizon capability.
How are we going to do that without human intelligence?
Nobody wants to work with us now.
And it's all because we turned tail, we ran away, because somebody wants to get elected in the midterms next year.
That's it. I mean, the scary thing, Robert, is it looks to me that I was listening to Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, It looks to me in a disguised way, he's getting ready to start paying ransom to the Taliban.
Now, what he said was, he said, you know, there's just a lot of humanitarian needs that are still going on over there.
And of course, we want to leverage the Taliban to get good behavior out of them.
And I'm thinking, basically, you're not saying the R word, ransom, but you've set yourself up to pay ransom to terrorists.
You've created the strongest terrorist regime in the world now, and you're getting ready to subsidize them with taxpayer money.
That's crazy. I mean, we are basically, we have become in the past few weeks, a state sponsor of terrorists.
Look at all the stuff that we give to Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS. It's completely ridiculous.
I mean, okay, we talk about humanitarian aid.
Here's what they do with humanitarian aid.
This was Ashraf Ghani, the president.
He took every single folding bill of humanitarian aid, put it in a helicopter to the point he couldn't close the doors, and he left.
That's where the taxpayer monies go.
You think the Taliban's going to Build schools with the money we send them?
No, they're going to sponsor Al-Qaeda.
They're going to probably be in cahoots with Iran.
It goes everywhere from the right to China to what's going to happen to Israel on the left.
I can't describe it from...
From fury, to disappointment, to shame.
I mean, I have so many veterans now calling me, what did we give up our lives for?
Why did I miss so much of my son's life because I'm over there fighting this war that President Biden's just going to lose?
And it's not like he just, if he didn't end a 20-year war, he quit.
He retreated.
He bowed down to the Taliban.
It's insulting. And it seems like he started a new war because you now have a newly emboldened al-Qaeda.
You've got a newly emboldened ISIS-K. You've got the Taliban that now feels victorious.
Man, you know, we Afghan tribesmen whipped the most powerful army in the world.
I saw, I talked about this yesterday on the podcast, North Korea is kind of firing up its nuclear reactors so they feel that we can start operating again.
I'm sure China and Russia feel emboldened.
Now, I mean, this to me, Robert, is, I mean, this is a little bit of a story of Democrats.
I mean, maybe Biden is in his own category, but with Jimmy Carter, you had the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
You had the hostage crisis.
Under Clinton, you had bin Laden getting emboldened.
He hit Cobar Towers.
He hit the coal. You know, he saw, oh man, I can do 9-11.
Under Obama, the Arab Spring.
So is this a case where we basically have one party, one of the two major parties, that has proven itself manifestly incompetent in the handling of U.S. The foreign policy, no doubt, is a mistake because they're making their decisions based on emotion and the thinking that our enemies and our adversaries will tell us the truth, which is complete nonsense. And I mean, even look at some of the policies, the emotion, they look good on paper, but look what they've touched that they've ruined.
They've ruined the Olympics. They've ruined pro sports.
They've ruined Hollywood. They've ruined the universities.
Just because of these emotions...
We're at a point now, if you tell the truth, you get cancelled.
I'm just giving you facts. I try to base, I don't care which platform I'm on, all I try to do is base my opinions on facts, which I'm doing.
But I mean, think about the ramifications too, not just because they're looking so close to their eyeballs.
Think about Taiwan. Do you think that China's going to be afraid that we're going to defend?
Not that our Navy couldn't, but why would they trust us?
We don't have the stomach. And then we put all the weight on our Australian and Japanese counterparts.
We have lost the, because we're, Alliance Solidarity, deterrence, and forward defense is the pillars.
And we've lost them all just because we couldn't keep an airfield.
I saw remarkably that, I think this was Blinken saying that we will now, going forward, lead with diplomacy.
And I was trying to kind of process that phrase.
What does that actually mean?
Does that mean that we will be the first drafters of an international communique and press release and we'll try to get 35 nations to sign on to it?
And because the United States' name is at the top...
That this will be a kind of a strong scolding that we're going to administer to the Taliban or any other adversary that steps forward?
I mean, like you say, these are people who do not seem to have done...
I mean, you talked about doing 1,000 push-ups a day.
I'm really not sure that Jake Sullivan does 10 push-ups a day.
Yeah, I'm not even sure he shaves his face yet.
It's just craziness.
It's just sad to see with...
Just with our allies, everyone's so disappointed in us.
I have friends I serve with the Special Boat Service and the Special Air Service over in the UK, and they're just disgusted with us.
They can't believe that the United States would do this.
And it's, I mean, it's seriously just because, I can't explain it.
I honestly am an optimist, and I want to believe most people want to do the right thing.
But some of these people are so, either blind or doing it, they're either stupid or they're incompetent.
I mean, talk about this because, you know, with Obama, I mean, Obama did a lot of bad things in my opinion.
He did approve the bin Laden mission and you carried it out.
With Biden, it appears that we have, I can't tell if it's just stupidity on the one side or if there's an element of malevolence in which they actually want America to kind of be taught a lesson so that Americans never again approve a kind of foreign adventure of the kind that we attempted either in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I think you're right, too.
And it's got to be that indoctrinating all of our kids that teach us that America is such a horrible nation, some of these academics are trying to change the nation because they think that we're inherently racist and inherently we hate each other and we're dividing each other, which I don't think is the case.
I mean, a lot of the...
Where are all the...
Where's this squad? Where are all these feminists over there worrying about the 20-year-old Afghani women who know nothing but education and trying to...
Now they can't leave the house so they'll get skinned alive.
There are ramifications.
This is a direct result of lying to yourself and all of a sudden the chickens come home to roost.
This is it. Tell the truth.
You won't have to remember a lie.
They've been lying about it. They don't know what is up and what is down and it completely bit us in the butt foreign policy-wise.
I've been surprised at the degree to which the top leadership of the military seemed to have pivoted into a kind of a woke direction, which is to say, you know, we're going to emphasize these issues of race and gender.
Now, it looks to me, although there's an emphasis on the gender issue...
That the race issue is very toxic because by and large our military is black and white.
I mean, not that there aren't Hispanics in there, but what I'm getting at is to maintain the military as a single fighting unit, you'd think the last thing you want to do is create racial division and distrust within the military.
Are you worried that this wokeness, so-called, is going to have a destructive influence if we keep going in that direction?
No. It's destructive at the highest levels of general officers and politicians.
It's frustrating for the soldiers.
I remember when I was getting out, the big thing was we need to abolish don't ask, don't tell.
And I was in Afghanistan in a room full of special operators, a bunch of SEALs, men and women, and I remember looking around thinking, do any of you really care?
And no one did. I don't care if someone's gay.
No one cares if someone's white or black or Hispanic.
All we care about are the standards.
And if you live up to the standards, regardless of sex, gender, if you can do the job, get a uniform, you're on my team.
People are frustrated. I've had people recently call me.
I have family members who are in the Army just joined and said, we're spending so much time on these online courses about gender identity.
Why aren't we at the range shooting?
Why aren't we in the weight we're lifting?
Why aren't we learning tactics, small unit tactics?
Why aren't we learning... No, you have to do this online course or else...
We won't send you overseas if you don't know the difference between which bathroom is which.
And they're just frustrated. A lot of these younger soldiers don't understand it.
And it's needless.
Robert O'Neill, thank you very much.
I really appreciate you joining me.
And wow, what a great service you've done for our country.
Thank you very much. Hey, thanks for having me.
It was great talking with you. We're good to go.
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The Whitmer plot thickens.
I'm talking about the plot that was revealed with much fanfare by the FBI in 2020 to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
The FBI supposedly foiled the plot.
But as the details now emerge, and they're emerging piece by piece, and you kind of have to Put the jigsaw together, it becomes really clear that not only was the FBI the driving force of this plot, but there are eerie parallels between the Whitmer plot and January 6th.
And it almost seems like the Whitmer plot was a dress rehearsal for January 6th.
Now, let's start off, and this is the kind of disingenuous approach of our politicians.
Gretchen Whitmer has issued a so-called victim statement about the plot, and I want to just read a line from it.
The rise in violent extremism in America is one of the gravest threats we face.
The violent insurrection we witnessed on January 6th is not an anomaly.
What she means is it happened to me.
It happened again on January 6th.
And she goes, it is our future if we do not work to address how we got here.
Now, the first thing to know about this is that Gretchen Whitmer knew about the FBI's role in the plot.
Whitmer was notified in advance that the plot was being hatched.
She was notified in advance that the FBI had infiltrated all the major groups involved.
There were really three of them.
The Three Percenters, there was the Proud Boys, there was the Oath Keepers.
And literally every Oath Keeper or every Three Percenter in this group had an FBI agent assigned to them.
So, in other words, we have about as many FBI agents as plotters.
Not only that, but the FBI is driving the plot at every stage.
The plot's explosive expert, FBI agent.
The head of transportation, the guy taking them to the plot, FBI agent.
The head of security for the militia, FBI agent.
Two undercover FBI informants were participants in the original meeting to have the plot in the first place.
Now, one FBI agent at some point, when the plotters were apparently losing heart and thinking we shouldn't do this, the FBI agent, this is, by the way, a new text message that's just come out, the FBI agent is now texting his confidential informant, basically telling these, and here's what it says, quote, mission is to kill the governor specifically.
So the FBI is basically saying, listen, don't let these guys kind of wimp out.
Push him on it. The mission, which we, the FBI, want, because we want to bust it, is to have an assassination plot.
Now, as it turns out, the plot kind of shifted to the kidnapping plot.
But now we find out some interesting details.
Number one, in the Whitmer plot, when these guys decided to...
Storm the Michigan Capitol.
Storm the Capitol. Sounds familiar?
When they were planning to do this, and they show up in tactical gear, sound familiar?
The cops retreat.
The doors are mysteriously open, and the plotters are able to enter the building.
Sound familiar? And you have police standing around, apparently undisturbed, and you have also the media's already there.
The media already somehow knows about the plot.
They're there taking pictures. So what we have here is a very familiar situation To January 6th.
And all of this, I think, makes it imperative.
We're not going to get this out of the Pelosi Commission.
Imperative that we find out exactly what the FBI did on January 6th.
Whether the FBI ultimately was merely trying to find out what happened, or, as I suspect, whether the FBI was right on the scene, even to the level of small details, making it happen.
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Thank you.
I've been talking the last couple of days, setting up what I want to talk about today, which is the proof or proofs advanced by the Christian thinker Thomas Aquinas, philosopher, theologian.
These are his five proofs for the existence of God.
My text here is this work, Penguin Classics, Thomas Aquinas' Selected Writings.
Aquinas believed that God's existence could be proved in five separate ways.
And I'll touch on these ways very briefly, but I want to really focus on one way.
Each of the five ways is dealt with with a considerable degree of nuance and sophistication.
I can't do full justice to all five, so I'm going to really focus on one.
Now, Aquinas' first proof is based on motion or change.
Essentially, Aquinas argues that change is caused by something else that makes the change happen.
And we see the change all around us in the world.
Things change. But Aquinas says, ultimately, there has to be something that moves the whole system that is not itself changed or even changeable.
And that something is God.
This is the proof from motion or change, and I'm going to come back to it.
The second proof that Aquinas advances is from cause.
That when we see effects, we can derive from them causes.
Now, when you see one thing, it's caused by something else, but then that's got to be caused by something also.
And so you keep going back and back and back, and Aquinas' point is you can't keep going infinitely back.
We'll come back to why that is the case.
But there has to be, Aquinas says, a first cause that is, in a sense, getting the system of causation into motion in the first place.
And that, Aquinas says, is God.
The third proof is from perishability or contingency.
Basically, everything in the world that exists is contingent.
And by contingent, we mean it doesn't have to exist.
In fact, it's not likely to keep existing.
Things come into existence and go out of existence.
But Aquinas says that this whole system of popping in and out of existence depends upon a necessary being that must exist.
And this necessary being is God.
The fourth proof is from perfection or degree.
Things have in the world greater or lesser degrees of perfection.
Aquinas argues that when you have a kind of spectrum, a continuum of perfection like this in the world, perfection and imperfection, there has to be a perfect being that in a sense sets the standard, the being upon whom all these lesser forms of perfection depend.
And that being is God.
And the final proof is from order and purpose.
Aquinas says that if you look around the world, the world shows all kinds of signs of order and purpose, of a kind of devising intelligence that in a sense has orchestrated the whole system, keeps it in place, a kind of author, if you will, of the text.
And Aquinas argues that this has to be And in fact, is what we call God.
So five separate proofs, I think, working together a very powerful kind of phalanx of arguments.
But I want to zoom into the first one, just the argument from change or motion.
Now, when we think of motion, we think of kind of moving from here to there.
But the Latin word that Aquinas uses is modus, modus.
And modus actually doesn't mean just motion.
Modus means change.
Aquinas, in fact, drawing on Aristotle, lists three different kinds of modus or change.
First, changes in quality.
Second, changes in quantity.
And third, changes in place or location.
So let's look at a couple of examples of what I mean.
What's a change in quality?
Well, a change in quality would be, for example, if I am extremely hot and And then I become extremely cold.
There's a change in what I'm experiencing.
It goes from one thing to another.
There's a change in quality, in this case the quality of the temperature.
But that is a kind of modus, a kind of change.
The second would be if you take a guy who's really thin and he eats a lot of food and he becomes really huge.
He becomes obese. He becomes fat.
Well, that's a change in quantity.
You have the same individual who used to be, you know, 140 pounds and now he's 280 pounds.
That's a change in quantity.
Or if you take you or me, and here we are in, let's say, Texas, and we want to go to Chicago, that's a change in location or in place.
Now, that's the only one that we would call motion, but modus, the Latin term, covers all three, covers all three types of change.
Now, The point that Aquinas makes here is this, and that is that motion or change is always brought about by something else.
And so, for example, if you say, let's just take, for example, water.
Water is cold, and water becomes very hot.
That is caused by the heat that is added to the water that makes it hot.
Or if you take a guy who's 140 pounds, he becomes 280 pounds, that's because of the food that he ate that, in a sense, enlarged his body and caused the change.
Or if I'm going to go from Texas to Chicago, that's because of the car or the airplane that took me from here to there, and therefore, these changes Aquinas is showing are brought about by some other thing that is separate from the thing being changed.
Now, The deep point that Aquinas raises is that if one thing is caused by another and that thing is caused by another thing, is it possible to have an infinite series of causes like this?
The motion of X being produced by Y, which is produced by Z, which is produced by A, which is produced by B, and can you go on forever like this?
And Aquinas basically says, no, you can't.
An infinite regress like this is not possible.
And he gives, I think, a very profound reason why.
Now, to understand his reason, you should think somewhat like this.
Think about a kid, for example, who is pushed or shoved and comes flying forward.
And the teacher grabs the kid and goes, why'd you do that?
And the kid goes, well, I didn't do that.
The kid behind me pushed me.
And the teacher goes up to that kid and goes, Well, why did you do that?
And that kid goes, Well, no, I didn't do that.
I was pushed forward myself.
The kid behind me pushed me.
And the teacher goes, Oh, wow.
Let me go to that kid. And that kid says the same thing.
The kid behind me pushed me.
Now, here's Aquinas' question.
Can you keep going forever back like that?
And his answer is, obviously not, because somebody had to be the first pusher.
If the first kid didn't push the second kid, the second kid could not have pushed the third kid, who could not have pushed the fourth kid.
So in order for this series to get started, somebody had to be the first mover.
And this is really Aquinas' point.
Aquinas basically argues that when we look at the motion and change in the universe, change that is occurring constantly, it's almost a defining feature of our universe, this change points to, unmistakably, logically, points to an unchanged mover, a first mover, and says Aquinas, that mover we call God.