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Feb. 16, 2022 - Kash's Corner
37:55
Exclusive Interview with Trump | Kash’s Corner

In this week’s episode of “Kash’s Corner,” Kash Patel interviews former President Donald Trump.In this exclusive interview, Trump and Patel—who previously served as a top White House aide and Pentagon chief-of-staff—discuss the state of the country, the threat from communist China, the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, the investigation by special counsel John Durham, and much more.

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Hey everybody.
During the past year, we've been fortunate to have some great conversations on Cash's Corner.
Today, I think is the most special.
Today, we are going to be talking to my former boss about on camera what he and I discussed in person so often, be it in the Oval Office, in the residence, or on the road with the president.
We talked about defeating terrorists, we talked about ending the never-ending wars, we talked about bringing home American hostages, reforming the intelligence community, and so much more.
Those conversations were had on Air Force One, Marine One, or the Oval Office.
Today, on camera, we bring you some of these conversations with the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, here in Mar-a-Lago.
Mr. President, thanks so much for joining us on Epoch Times in Cash's Corner.
We're excited to have you.
Thank you for being with us today.
It's very exciting.
At wonderful Mar-a-Lago, I'm glad to be talking to you.
I'd want to sort of just jump right in, sir.
We know what your administration accomplished against China, against the CCP, and how you made Xi Jinping respect you.
And we saw how the last year has gone, sir.
What I wanted to know is, Mr. President, what does the next three years look like?
How do we take on China?
What does the next administration, the next president, have to do, not to just get us back to where we were, but even further along?
It is the saddest period of time that I've ever seen for our country.
We had everything so good, you were a part of it.
The borders, the relationships with other countries, they respected us.
We made trade deals that were good deals.
We broke bad deals and made great deals, like we got rid of NAFTA, which was a horrible thing.
And we have the USMCA with Canada, Mexico.
But this is the saddest time for our country, and I think the most embarrassing time for our country.
And it really, look, the borders are a disaster with millions of people coming in.
Everything's a disaster.
There's nothing good, inflation.
But the point that was the worst, I think, was that whole, the way they withdrew from Afghanistan.
Yeah.
The way they withdrew.
No, I got them down to 2,000 soldiers.
I was getting out.
We were going to get out with strength and dignity and our equipment and no deaths.
The way they withdrew from Afghanistan was like we were the gang that couldn't shoot straight.
It was the most, and to take out the military before you take out now they're hostages, okay, we'll call them the hostages, the Americans, and some others.
And now they've just taken thousands and thousands of people out of Afghanistan.
They don't even know who they are, where they come from.
We're going to pay a big price later.
You watch.
You're going to pay a big, big price with terrorism and other things.
But it is so sad to see it.
It's not even.
How do we reset?
Okay, China.
So it's got to be reset.
China now is going to be on a rampage.
I think after the Olympics, bad things will happen with respect to Taiwan.
Would have never happened with, if the election weren't rigged, this stuff would have never happened.
It was a rigged election and a disgraceful situation.
And what's happening with Russia and Ukraine, what's happening with North Korea, what's happening with Iran, now they're renegotiating from weakness.
We would have had a deal with Iran in one week after the election.
It was going to be done.
They were all set to make a deal.
They would have made a deal.
And in one week, instead, this deal they're talking about now is a disaster for our country.
And it's just, you need new leadership.
You know, I could give you 20 different things.
I could say do this, do that.
They're not going to do it.
Well, they're not going to do it, but I think what America wants to know is what should be done because no one in a position of power like you, Mr. President, is saying what should be done.
Everyone's saying it was.
And it was great.
I agree.
I was part of your national security apparatus.
And we took on Iran and we withdrew from Afghanistan smartly with conditions and put America first.
But people are out there, and I talk to them.
They want to know what do we do?
We know it's gotten so bad.
Well, you need leadership, though, Kashi.
You know, it's easy to say what you could.
You close the border, you go back to stay in Mexico, you go back to all of the policies that we had, catch and release, we ended, we ended.
And it's easy to say that's what you have to do, but they're not going to do that.
I used to think they were just grossly incompetent.
Now it's a combination of that, but their policy is so bad.
So it's easy for me to say you have to do that.
You have to get strong with China.
You have to do tariffs.
You have to do a lot of different things.
But they're not going to be doing it.
If they don't do it, what do we tell Americans?
What do we tell the world?
I mean, tell them to wait three years.
I'll tell you that we have got a problem because three years is a long time.
Look, they have destroyed our country in one year.
And they're going to get three more years.
They rig an election, they're going to get another three more years.
I can't tell you what's going to happen because our country has never gone down so much so fast.
We have never been in this position.
What they're doing to our country in terms of criminal justice, in terms of trade, in terms of our military, we have these woke generals that don't know what the hell they're doing.
I know.
Where they leave $85 billion worth of equipment behind and they move the military out before they move the people out.
It's, you know, it's easy to say.
I could give you a list of things.
I could give you a list of 10 to 15 items and everyone would be perfect, but they're not going to do them.
They're not closing the border.
I used to think that they were just late.
But, you know, the war could have been done if completed in three weeks.
It was almost complete.
It took two and a half years to get it started because I had to win 11 lawsuits, mostly by Congress and Democrats.
I won all the lawsuits and it was almost complete.
And it's still, sir, you know, look, it's still without it.
We had the lowest numbers ever on our southern border.
Now we have the worst numbers ever.
And that includes drugs.
The drugs are 10 to 15 times more than they were one year ago.
Think of that, 10 to 15 times, they're saying.
So we can give you everything to do, but it's just a waste of time because unless you have the right people in, they're not going to do it.
So speaking of the right people, sir, we got a midterm election and it looks like the Republicans are poor as well.
Can leadership in the House and the Senate, like when we had Chairman Nunes and I were running the Russiagate investigation, can we have oversight investigations that help stall or pause the bad policies?
And do we have that leadership coming into Congress?
Well, you have a lousy leader in Rich McConnell, and he's proven that a lot.
But having the Senate is a good thing.
And getting the House is going to be, that's going to be like a stopgap because they'll be able to stop a lot of the things that are being done to destroy our country.
So getting the House is a very big thing because you need the House.
If we have the majority, which we should be able to get, I mean, some people are saying by 45 votes.
I heard that.
We could get them by a lot, maybe even more than that.
And who wouldn't vote for the Republicans right now?
And if we get the House, we can stop most of this stuff from happening at least.
That's so big.
But what they're doing is in between now and November, that's a lot of time.
And they are going full speed to get as much as they can.
You know, they were never given a mandate to use mandated in different terms because the mandates are bad, right?
But they were never given a mandate in this election.
Right.
Because even if you looked at it where they won, which they didn't, they lost by a lot.
But if you look at the number, they were so close.
It was a, you know, so that's not a mandate to destroy our country.
But Americans are seeing that it's going the wrong way, right?
You know, Americans are.
It's going the wrong way, but it's going away that if somebody won an election by 40 points, you know, you maybe could do whatever you want.
But this was a thing that they just snuck it over the line.
And it's all coming out.
Now, look, they lost the election.
And now they're destroying the country.
So think of it.
They're destroying our country.
They're making us a different country.
We're becoming like a socialist or a communist state.
We no longer have a press.
The press is absolutely the enemy of the people.
We don't have a press.
If you do a story that's very important from your view, you can't get the story out.
It's very hard to get the word out.
That's why what you do is so important, because you will find a way.
But we don't have a free press anymore.
We don't have a fair press anymore.
And it's sort of interesting because you really wonder, Cash, why.
Why would they want to have a weak military?
Why would they want to have high interest rates and higher taxes?
And why would they want to have no border?
I mean, no border.
Why would they want to have no voter ID, as an example, or sanctuary cities that take care of criminals?
You go through all of these things, defund the police.
Why do they want to defund our police?
They want to take money away.
They want to take our police away.
Why?
You know it can't be possibly good.
So either they're stupid, which I don't think they are, or they hate our country.
But you really say, why do they want to do this stuff?
Why?
Why does somebody want to defund the police?
And you see the crime rates in these Democrat cities, it's going through the roof like it's never been before.
And I think you're right, sir.
I think most of America, the overwhelming majority of Americans, agree with you and your policies from the past administration.
What I think Americans are missing right now is the solution.
And I know three years is a long time away.
It's a long time.
But, you know, if you were back in and, you know, what was the first thing you'd say to somebody?
Oh, back in?
If I were back in the wall, first of all, the wall.
And finish it.
Because he loses, even for him.
You know why?
Because when he sees millions of people pouring into our country, he loses respect for our country.
This is before the Afghanistan disaster.
When him and Putin and Kim Jong-un and Iran leaders, when they're watching millions of people walk into our country and just from 129 different countries just walk in, they lose respect.
It's so easy.
You close it up.
You've got to close it up.
And that would send a big signal, a really big signal.
And then you've got to get their respect again.
How did he do that?
I had...
Well, you do that by making sure, making sure that they know that this country is here and it's here to stay, and we're not going to take any nonsense.
Number one, our military budget, they cut the hell out of it.
So China's building a military like nobody's ever seen before and we're cutting our budget.
You can't let that happen.
We have better everything than them if we are allowed to use it, okay?
And you have to gain the respect.
Right now, Putin no longer respects our country.
That's why they're doing what they're doing in Ibn.
But he's doing the same thing.
In Ukraine, right, over in Russia.
He's doing the same campaign.
These things would never have happened had I been president.
Would you call him today, Putin, and say, this just can't happen?
If I were president, I'd call him.
I wouldn't call him if I'm not president because it wouldn't be appropriate to do it.
I mean, you know, they'd say, oh, Trump is, look, I'm the one that stopped their pipeline.
Yeah, the North South.
Okay, and then they say, oh, Trump was easy.
That's the biggest thing that's ever happened to them.
And I got along well with Putin.
I had a very good relationship with him, but he understood, and I understood.
We had an understanding.
He would have never done Ukraine, and she would have never been, you know, doing what he's doing.
Look, he's looking to do Taiwan.
That would have never happened under the United States.
You set the posture.
And when I was at Chief of Staff for you at DOD, you set a very tough posture in the South China Sea and again, you know, and with Taiwan.
And you're right.
He didn't think for a second to come in and do anything.
Never even thought of it.
Now he's taking shots at American dummy ships in the South China Sea.
You're absolutely right.
And with Putin, right?
In the Obama administration, he did the Crimean invasion.
In the Biden administration, he's thinking about coming into either Kazakhstan and the Ukraine.
But it didn't happen under your.
You were there.
I wiped out 100% of the ISIS caliphate.
Everyone said it couldn't be done in less than two or three years.
I cannot in one month.
I got to tell a story.
Go ahead.
I don't mean to interrupt the president here, but I was running counterterrorism for you, and you said, Cash, I've got some very simple policies I'd like to get done.
I want to kill Al-Qaeda's senior leadership.
I want to wipe out the emirs of ISIS, and I want to make sure we shut Iran down.
Mr. President, I had an org chart for ISIS and al-Qaeda on the back of my office door when I was head of CT for you.
And we X'd out 98% of the people on org chart because you took the fight to them.
And that was a humbling and impressive experience.
Do you think now, with what happens in Afghanistan, they're going to be back on the rise and we're going to have to deal with this?
Well, they already are on the rise.
And look, they were wiped out 100%.
You know, remember I wanted to leave because we were 95% there.
I said, oh, we can leave now.
Let these other countries handle it.
Let Russia handle it.
Let Iran handle it.
You know, we're doing their work for them.
Yeah.
Like with ISIS in particular.
They hate ISIS.
I said they can handle the rest.
And then the press said, oh, it wasn't 100%.
I said, okay, I'll do 100%.
And I wiped out in two weeks, 100% ISIS-free, Iraq and Syria.
Nobody could believe it.
And I had great generals.
Here's the good news.
We have great generals, not the guys like Millie that you see on television.
We have really great generals.
I know a lot of them.
And look at the job they did for me.
When I said go get them, that was the end.
And I didn't go through Millie.
When I said go get them, we did an incredible job with ISIS.
People don't even believe it to this day.
We also had thousands of soldiers on the border between Syria and Turkey.
And I said, why are we protecting Turkey or Syria?
Why are we in the middle of these two armies that have been there for a thousand years more?
Why are we doing that?
I took the soldiers out.
You did.
So we got down to like 50.
I said, I'm not going to let 50 soldiers be between these armies.
I got them out.
And everyone said, oh, what a mistake.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened.
We had 5,000 soldiers there.
And I kept taking them out, taking them out to because why are we at play?
We can't protect our own border, our southern border, and yet we're protecting a border between thousands of miles away between Turkey and Syria.
I said, bring them home.
I took them out.
You know what happened?
Nothing.
Nothing.
You went back to where they've been for the last 2,000 years.
Your foreign policy, you drew us out of wars, of the forever wars, as we called them.
And, you know, I ran F4 in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and you did that successfully.
Do you see us going back the other way?
Are we going to, in the next year or so, with the current leadership structure, with the politicization of the national security apparatus, how do we stop us from going back into an Afghanistan with the rise of ISIS and Al-Qaeda?
Well, people don't know.
We also fought Russia.
You know, we were being hit a little bit by Russia.
And I said, don't do it again.
Don't do it.
I said it two times.
And then we did something.
People don't talk about it.
And I'd rather have them not talk about it.
But we hit them very hard.
And they know it, and we know it.
And it was a level of respect that we developed that was very good.
And even a relationship, but we developed a level of respect.
We shouldn't be fighting with Russia.
We shouldn't be fighting with these countries.
We should get along.
And that includes China.
We would have had a very good relationship with China.
COVID was too much to take because when that came in, and it came in from China, it came in from the Wuhan labs.
Now everyone agrees.
You and I knew it back then when Rick Rinnell and I briefed you.
That's right, Rick was great.
And you shut down travel from China right after the briefing that Rick and I gave you when we were running the Intel community.
And that was the right move.
And people didn't want it done.
Now they still have two years later, the rest of the world has travel bans in place.
What do you say to them about all these travel bans and everything that they're still doing?
Well, I say this.
I say China got away with something that's absolutely terrible.
One of the worst things ever to happen to the world.
Maybe the worst thing.
Because the whole world has been so affected by the China virus.
The world has been affected.
But I had a great relationship with China up until that point.
At that point, it was too much.
How do you have a great relationship when you have millions of people all over the world dying?
And now Biden gets in.
He does such a horrible job with the COVID.
It's like they don't know what the hell they're doing.
And he came in, I'm going to solve COVID.
They had more in his year, and that's after all of the everything that we have.
We developed therapeutics, vaccines, everything.
With all of the stuff they have, all of the knowledge that we learned, all of the gear that we bought, you know, with the ventilators and with the outfits and the masks, the goggles.
We stocked up the whole country.
We did a great job.
I got very little credit for doing, that was an incredible job.
All the cupboards were bare.
The states were bare.
The United States government, our cupboards were empty.
They were all empty.
You've stocked them.
And we stocked them up.
And Biden comes in and they didn't know what they were doing.
And now we've got tests coming in that are made in China.
Yeah, we have tests coming in made in China that don't work.
They didn't have any tests.
For the new variant that came in, they are so unprepared.
It's been terrible.
So what do you tell the American public who are now sick and tired of being locked up for two years, who know your administration did all that successful stuff?
What do you tell America now saying going forward, what do we do?
You have to end the mandates.
The mandates are horrible and they have to be ended and they shouldn't have started.
Initially, I closed it to China, but I let the governors make the decision on what they're going to do.
You know, not every state closed.
Some did, some didn't.
Some absolutely remained open.
You know the ones and I know the ones.
But I said, you make your own decision from a state standpoint.
It was really the right thing to do.
The Democrats went crazy and they just closed everything.
New York, I don't know if it's ever going to be the same what they did in Europe.
You are home.
You know, it's so sad what happened in New York.
You look at what happened.
But some of these states were, what happened in Los Angeles, what happened in parts of California.
But a lot of Republicans did a very, very, just a great job in terms of that.
But, you know, I didn't close anything.
I let the governors make that decision.
So I think that's a distinction that's lost on a lot of people, Mr. President.
I think so.
They think I closed.
And you respected the state's rights, powers, and was that federalist.
No, I said to the governors, you do what you have to do, but I did close our country to China and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
And I closed it to Europe, too, when I saw what was happening in Italy, France, and Spain.
And then if you look at, you know, virtually every country, I mean, it got to a point, and I closed it very early, a little bit after China, but we closed it to Europe.
And those two closures, Europe and China, they saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
And so now you would, you know, now we're past it.
You would tell the American people now.
Get on with your life.
Move on, right?
Now I say, and you know, the whole concept of children with the children getting going through all of this masks and vaccinated, what they're doing is just absolutely crazy.
They say they do it because they're on a power trip.
It's hard to believe.
What's the power trip?
I don't get it.
But it's just wrong what they're doing.
I've only got, I've got two more things I know you have to get going, Mr. President, but I want to definitely ask you about two things and then a personal story, if I may.
One, we talked about it briefly, Iran, okay?
We've got the Ayatollah rising, Iran's the largest state sponsor of terrorism.
You took out Soleimani, rightly so.
I was there with you when you did it.
An amazing day.
your march to eliminate, not defeat, just eliminate terrorism flat out.
What do you tell the American people about Iran marching towards a nuclear weapon now?
How do we give them confidence to say that we won't let that happen?
Well, you can't let it happen, and I think Biden is letting it happen.
You can't let it happen.
You won't be able to talk.
This is an ideology, religious, that is not going to be acceptable.
You can't let it happen.
If he lets it happen, it's going to be a horrible day for the world.
Israel will not exist, in my opinion, if they let that happen.
And, you know, Israel, if you look back at Israel and what I did with the capital of Israel, Jerusalem and all, and Golan Heights.
But the biggest thing I did was ending the Iran nuclear deal.
That was the biggest thing.
You know, I did Golan Heights.
I did the capital of Israel, coming to Jerusalem, moving the embassy.
Not only did I move it there, I built it.
I built the embassy.
I built it for $500,000.
I took a building that we had already there in Jerusalem and I built the embassy.
We built it, and it's beautiful.
It uses Jerusalem stone.
Would you tell Israeli Americans and people in Israel now that you think this administration is going to let Iran get a nuclear weapon?
I think so.
It looks like they are going to.
Yeah, it's not even conceivable.
I think it's going to be one of the tragic moments of history.
How do we prepare for that?
Not government.
We know this administration is not as politicized as the state.
I had him still.
I did not stop, right?
I know you did.
I had him still.
How do you give the American people, the so many people that backed you, how do you give them a little faith to say in the next year or two with new leadership, we can get it back and get it better?
There are different kinds of things.
We can stop people from doing this horrible thing that's happening.
Again, the election should have never been allowed to go through.
The Supreme Court didn't have the courage to do what should have been done.
A lot of very bad things happened.
Very bad things.
The House will help, but they won't be able to help very much, because I think we're going to have a tremendous victory in the House, and we can win the Senate, but I think we're going to have a tremendous victory in the House, and that will be a blocker.
But that doesn't stop Iran from having nuclear weapons.
That's done through the administration.
Right now, it almost seems like they don't mind if they have nuclear weapons.
I mean, that seems to be their policy.
And the problem they have is they have, they are being decimated on so many fronts.
Hey, look, I had no inflation.
I had low gas prices.
We were energy independent.
We were respected by Russia.
We were respected by China.
Respected by Kim Jong-un, North Korea.
We were respected by Iran.
We were really respected by Iran.
I'm telling you, we would have had a deal on Iran.
We had them on the heels.
But we were respected by everybody.
Every single thing that I just said, and multiply it times three, is a disaster now.
Even supply chain.
You know, I never heard the term supply chain while I was in office.
There was no such thing.
It just took care.
Everything worked out well.
There was no supply chain issue.
There was no problem.
Nobody talked about, well, we've got to start working about.
I leave office, and within less than a year, the stores are all empty.
For Christmas, it was only good if you didn't want to buy somebody a Christmas present and you saved the money because you'd go into a store and you couldn't buy anything.
And that was the only time, Cash, that I've never seen anything like it.
So I don't want to take credit for supply chain.
This was just happening routinely, and it has been for many, many years.
These guys have destroyed our supply chain.
I was in California, and where the boats come in with the big cargo containers.
Yeah, Long Beach.
I have never seen anything like it.
And I've been passing it for 20 years.
I have property out there.
I've been passing it for 20 years.
And I've seen it for 20 years.
And it was, you know, something.
The container would come in, it would be on a truck, and it would be gone.
They're stacked up like I've never seen anything.
There are thousands and thousands of containers.
I said, they'll never get rid of these things.
They'll never get rid of them.
And this goes on for miles.
By the way, that's a big port.
Yeah.
And this is going on for miles.
And I said, look at that.
So I just got to see it for the first time in a few years.
And I said, I've never seen anything like it.
So supply chain's a big problem.
So you take that on.
Well, it's all, look.
It's all in a roll.
Everything's fixable.
But you need the right people to fix it.
We don't have the people now.
I'd like to be optimistic, say, here's what you do.
I can say what to do.
And I've said a lot.
during this interview, I can say what to do, but they're not going to do it.
They're not going to freeze the border.
They're not going to throw out murderers and drug dealers that have poured into our country and terrorists.
We have terrorists coming in from Afghanistan.
Afghanistan.
And they're being flown in on planes.
3% of the people that they've taken in are vetted and checked.
And a smaller percent, it should be, look, when you have a war and that war ends, and I'm the one that really ended it.
All I wanted to do is take it out very efficiently.
But when that war ends, no country's ever taken in all the people.
So the war ends, and now we take in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people.
Without vetting them.
They have no idea who those people are.
A big price will be paid.
I want to just get one more personal story and then one last thing I think you and I always enjoy talking about, sir.
You know, when you and I get together, I was fortunate to head up a lot of your hostage rescue operations.
And what the world doesn't remember is that you, sir, brought home more Americans and citizens from around the world than all the previous presidents combined.
48 hostages.
Actually, I got to correct you.
It was 54.
Okay, I'll take that.
I like that, Correct.
54 hostages and zero dollars.
And it was such a priority.
We never paid.
We never paid, and it was such a priority for you.
And the taxing work that goes into getting just one.
But I remember this moment, sir.
We were in the situation room.
I was heading up counterterrorism for you, and it was the night of the Baghdadi strike.
And we call Signal Jackpot.
You order the raid.
Absolute right call.
Even though some people are advising you not to do it, the absolute right call.
Take out Baghdadi.
He's dead.
You, on a Saturday evening at the White House, look at me and you said, Cash, I want the contact information of the Muellers, the Saplofts, the Foley's, and the Kassigs, and we know who they are.
Their children were ravaged by Baghdadi, raped, tortured, and killed.
After killing the world's number one terrorist, Mr. President, I got to ask, why was it so important to you to call the families that you had avenged?
It was pretty emotional for the rest of us that were there that night that the commander-in-chief said, I want to focus on these individuals.
And then just two months later, you had Carl and Marshall Mueller as guests of yours and the First Ladies, and you honored them at the State of the Union, and you revealed that we named the operation 8-17, which is Caleb Mueller's birthday.
Why was that always such a pressing issue for you?
I didn't know until you just told me that so many people were watching, but I felt it was very important.
These are people that have been absolutely decimated, their families destroyed by al-Baghdadi and what he did.
And what he did personally, it was on a personal basis.
And one of the first things I said is, you got to get al-Baghdadi.
This was when I first got elected and first came in.
And not easy.
You know, they've been looking for him for 16 years.
They've been looking for him.
I said, you got to get him.
I always say the guy with a fan behind us, you know, remember?
He always had that same picture of him and the little fan behind him as he was preaching.
But we took out al-Baghdadi.
And yeah, the first thing I did, I called the parents and the relatives and the friends of the people that were absolutely disciples.
Why was that so important to you, sir?
Because nobody suffered like they did at the hands of this animal.
He was an animal.
And he was rebuilding ISIS.
He was building it, and he was rebuilding it.
He was going to rebuild it fast.
If I weren't president, you'd have ISIS all over the world right now.
We knocked it out.
We wouldn't have gotten our hostages back.
Have never gotten them back.
No, we got them back, and we didn't pay for it.
You know, if you start paying, if you say, I'll give you 5 million if you give me, once you start paying, it's no good.
Because then you have plenty of negotiations, okay?
We got, as you say, 54, 55, 56.
I hear different numbers.
But whatever it may be, we got them back, and we never paid.
If you start paying, everybody all of a sudden becomes a hostage.
But when they know you're not going to pay, it makes life.
There's still Americans that are hostages.
Oh, yeah.
What would you tell those parents right now?
What do you have in Afghanistan?
Yeah.
You have hostages right now.
And it could be in the thousands.
I mean, nobody's telling me the numbers.
Nobody knows the numbers.
It could be, you know, people are saying two or three hundred.
That's too many.
One is too many.
But it could be in the thousands.
But you have people because we took our military out first.
How stupid is that?
Well, you know, this is actually, I'm going to add one on here.
You came up with the conditions-based withdrawal for Afghanistan, and I was fortunate enough to be over at DOD.
And you said, Cash, we're not leaving until we get the Americans first.
We're not leaving.
That's one of the conditions.
We're not leaving until we wipe out al-Qaeda and ISIS.
We're going to leave Bagram.
We're going to keep it.
We're going to leave special forces in the country.
And we're going to bring every American home.
Fast forward in juxtaposition of what they're doing now.
They just left.
People are falling out of the sky to their death.
And by the way, they were texting American citizens in Afghanistan to say, please come to Kabul if you can, and we'll get you out.
What kind of foreign policy is that?
Well, we gave them a list.
We gave the Taliban a list of all the people that we knew that were Americans as we were leaving.
It was crazy.
So now they know it, and they probably have them.
And some are captured.
There's no question about it.
And some are living a very bad life.
But we gave this all to them.
The way they did that is not, number one, it's not excusable.
And the way they did it, it's just not even believable that somebody could be so stupid, that they could be so weak and so stupid.
We look like we surrendered.
Not one soldier was killed in 18 months.
I spoke to Abdul.
Abdul was the leader of the Taliban, still is.
And I had a very strong conversation with him.
And we didn't lose one soldier in 18 months.
And then we flee.
There was no reason to even go quickly.
I would have said, take the people out, take the equipment out.
When everything's gone, get some of the people from Afghanistan that helped us, the interpreters, et cetera.
Not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands.
It's a small group.
But get them.
I mean, people are fleeing Afghanistan.
Hundreds of thousands of people are coming out.
They're coming into our country.
We have no idea who they are.
It's very sad that.
Do you think in the next three years we have to go back into Afghanistan?
We as a conventional government.
I hope not.
But I would have kept Bagram.
It was always my plan to keep Bagram.
Not because of Afghanistan.
They spent billions of dollars building it 20 years ago.
Yeah, you're right.
It has the longest, most powerful runways thick.
It can handle anything.
And it's right next to China.
It's one hour away from where they build their nuclear weapons.
And they lost Bagram.
See, the world doesn't know that part about it.
I don't think people know that.
I don't know if they know it or not.
How can you lose Bagram?
It's one hour away from where China does its nuclear weapons now.
To add insult to injury, they have a parade displaying all of the equipment that they got from us.
Think of it.
70,000 trucks.
And these are armor-plated, many of them, the most expensive.
This is not like you go down to your local dealer.
700,000 machine guns, rifles, weapons.
Helicopters.
Helicopters, tanks, night goggles, out of the box, better than what we have, the new model, the newest model.
And here's the other part.
China is now taking over Bagram.
China is going to have Bagram.
And they also have a lot of our weapons because they're re-engineering and going to build them for themselves because we made the greatest, you know, the Apache helicopters, et cetera.
And they're now studying our helicopters because they want to build them just like that.
This is one of the greatest catastrophes.
And not only in terms of actual, in terms of psychological, I think it's the most embarrassing day or week in the history of our country.
And the fake news media hardly wants to talk about it.
How do we get it back?
Who does that?
The next leader?
What do they have to do?
You need a leader.
You need a leader.
If you have the leader, it'll all work out right.
But we don't have that right now.
Are we going to have that leader?
Right now, you have nothing close to it.
I hope we do.
You're going to find out.
You're going to find out.
I will say this.
We had the country better than it's ever been.
The economy, everything.
It was the best economy we ever had.
And then COVID came in from China.
I call it the China virus because it's a much more accurate term.
But the China virus floated in, and then we rebuilt it again, and we handed over something that was incredible, and they blew it.
And he ran on the basis that I will stop COVID.
He didn't stop anything.
It was a disaster.
And they weren't prepared.
They didn't order the kits.
They didn't order the tests.
They didn't order the therapeutics that you need.
The therapeutics are so important.
We developed great therapeutics.
They didn't order it.
They were totally unprepared.
You know what I see as the difference, Mr. President, across the board from a national security, defense, law enforcement position is you just did the mission.
You ordered your priorities to be executed.
And compared it to today, they politicize it.
They want to know what the media is going to like.
They want to take their cues from the media.
That's what I've been saying recently on TV, that I think just because President Trump placed the priority against Russia, against China, against Iran, bringing hostages on, killing terrorists, they want to do the opposite.
And I think that's just a tragic day for America.
What do you think?
I think this.
They're good at two things, politics and rigging elections.
That's it.
If they used the same genius on running our country, we'd have a country like no other.
And you know, when I say make America great again, I mean that because we have to make America great again.
They never talk about greatness.
All they talk about is the same old stuff.
You watch the news.
It's COVID.
It's global warming.
They talk about global warming.
They don't talk about nuclear warming.
They talk about.
Yeah, the DOD's priority is global warming.
Global warming.
Woke.
Everything's woke.
Let's make sure that a guy can participate in women's sports.
Do you see the records that are being broken now?
A record that held up 11 years in swimming was broken by 38 seconds.
So you used to.
Weightlifting records are being broken by numbers like nobody's ever used.
Like one hand.
It's a disgrace.
What's going on?
It's just disgusting.
Scott, the last thing, and you know, when you and I get together, Mr. President, we always have to chat RussiaGate and what happened to you as the biggest criminal enterprise when you were running for president than when you became president.
And I don't want to stew over the past, but I do think our viewers are really interested in John Durham.
And they want to think, they want to know what you think about John Durham.
I mean, you and I talk about it as a former federal prosecutor, national security guy.
You know, I think I know where John Durham's going.
Where do you think, how do you think he's done and where do you think he's done?
So I wish it were faster because I think it could have been much faster.
It would have been nice to have been done before the election because they cheated viciously and crazily.
What they did was so criminal.
It would have been good if the voters would have known that, but it didn't matter because I won the election by a lot anyway.
But so it didn't, honestly, I don't think that was the big defining moment.
But he did come up with some really interesting stuff with the lawyers and Sussman and all of these people, number one.
And I hear there's a lot coming.
So I think the jury is out.
We're going to see what happens.
But what he's doing is one of the most important jobs being done right now in America.
What do you say to the American people that every time I'm on TV or every time you do a rally, I'm sure you see it on a much greater level than I ever will, sir, that where's John Durham?
Where's John Durham?
Do you have faith in him?
And I tell people he's on the right path.
It takes time.
That's right.
You've said that.
That makes me feel good too, because you know a lot about that.
But I will say that he came out with that initial statement and report, and it was big.
And that felt like a foundation for very big things to come.
So hopefully, I mean, who knows?
We're going to see.
I wish it were faster.
We're going to see what happens.
But it was a criminal, I call it the crime of the century.
Yeah.
It is really the crime of the century.
And it changed everything, including the election.
It changed everything.
It was so disgusting what took place.
And all of the things they said about me in Russia, it was them in Russia.
It was them in Russia.
They worked with Russia, and they would lie.
They'd go up and say, I watched this Adam Schiff.
I call him respectfully watermelon head because his head is shaped just like a watermelon.
And I'd watch him go up to the microphone and act as though so hurt.
He's so hurt, talking about Trump and Russia when he knew it was a rigged deal, when he knew it was a fake.
He knew it was fake.
He was one of the people that made it up along with Hillary Clinton and others.
Maybe they're looking at him.
And they'd go out there and they'd act as though they're so hurt by what took place.
These are bad people.
So I hope John Durham comes up for the good of the country, comes up with everything that you know took place and that everybody know took place because it has been exposed.
It would be really nice to have it fully exposed.
So we'll see what happens.
I will give you a really good answer, hopefully, in a year from now.
I'll take your word for it, Mr. President.
So look, I know your time is precious.
Thank you for joining us on Cashius Corner.
Thank you for inviting us into Mar-a-Lago and meeting the team, meeting my parents, made my day, made my year.
And you know, I'm going to come back and see you soon, sir.
Your parents did a great job with you.
Have a good time.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thanks, Mr. President.
That's good.
Okay.
Okay, we're ready.
Let's go.
Ten minutes, right, Marlon?
10?
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