Today I talk about the fall of Afghanistan, what it says about Joe Biden, and what it says about Justin Trudeau, who chose to start the election on the very day that Kandahar fell.
I've got some thoughts on that and some videotape too.
That's ahead, but first let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's our daily video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNews.com and click subscribe.
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If you're getting all that government stuff, you should at least hear the other side of the story.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, the Canadian election is on...
Trudeau would rather talk about that than many things, including Afghanistan.
It's August 16th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government a lot of households is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Justin Trudeau called the election yesterday.
He's nowhere near the end of his term.
It hasn't even been two years.
There is no crisis of confidence in Parliament.
I mean that in the legal sense, as in losing a confidence vote.
In fact, all the opposition parties are only too happy to prop up Trudeau's minority.
None of them wants an election, and they keep saying so.
I don't think I believe in a system where an unelected governor general would deny a prime minister an election in a case like this, but I think the new governor general, handpicked by Trudeau just weeks ago, ought to have made Trudeau wait a bit for her answer.
And, you know, she could comment in a very reserved and understated way, like the Queen might do, that she yields to the decision of the prime minister, but on behalf of the constitutional monarchy, on behalf of the state itself, she expresses reservations about the timing of an election.
I say that not because I'm sympathetic to the whining of the unprepared opposition, but because there is actually a crisis going on right now that I think behooves the prime minister to, you know, work on rather than to ignore for the next five weeks.
Ground Truths About Terrorists00:15:30
And I'm talking about the disaster of our age, the handing over of Afghanistan to the Taliban terrorists in a shocking turn of events.
Canada no longer has any troops officially in Afghanistan.
Canadians serve there as private contractors, though.
There's a lot of Canadian NGOs and diplomats there, of course.
Stephen Harper brought back the last of Canada's troops in 2014.
But the fact is Afghanistan was a sort of colony of NATO for 20 full years, 20 years.
You know, I checked, and the median age of Afghans is 18 and a half years old.
So most Afghans were born and raised in a country, spent their whole life in a country controlled by NATO.
It's a very long time.
Truly an empire.
And you can imagine how many people shaped their lives in accordance with the fact that they were living in an American and NATO empire, that the U.S. and other allies would be there to maintain some sort of order, not a democracy, but not even really a rule of law kind of place, but just a mitigation of the terror, some pretense of civilization, at least in the major centers.
That's being replaced in a matter of weeks, actually just days.
the medieval times are back.
They're painting over women's faces in billboards, you see.
Here's CNN's reporter getting into the spirit of things, not just with her head covering, but with her explanations.
I mean, sure, they hate America, but in a nice way.
They're just chanting death to America, but they seem friendly at the same time.
It's utterly bizarre.
Imagine if you were born and raised in Afghanistan, you cast your lot in with the West.
And now the East has devoured the West.
Countless weapons, more sophisticated than ever, even helicopters and jets, American materiel left behind from their own troops, but also everything that the U.S. gifted to Afghan's 300,000-person army that just surrendered in days.
And how much of that is being shipped to Iran right now in this video to be inspected, sold to Russia and China?
I read a report of an F-15 flight simulator that was captured.
China's got to be excited about that.
America was actually begging and bribing the Taliban to spare its embassy in Kabul.
You know that embassy out there, it actually tweeted the Pride Day flag tweet thing.
That's really nice of them.
But I don't think that spirit of LGBTQ2 plus is going to survive much longer out of the Taliban.
The top general in the United States, Mark Milley is his name, he's been so busy lately declaring war against his own troops.
He's made public statements demanding that critical race theory be taught and pro-trans ideas be taught and domestic white rage is the real threat to America.
He said all that.
He's been so busy with that.
I think you forgot about the whole war and guns and terrorists part of his job.
Oh, well, this is a real U.S. Army recruiting ad.
I think they might be focused a bit too much on politics and not enough on killing the bad guys.
This is real.
It begins in California with a little girl raised by two moms.
I also marched for equality.
I like to think I've been defending freedom from an early age.
Standing at the altar to marry my other mom.
With such powerful role models, I finished high school at the top of my class.
I found it.
A way to prove my inner strength and maybe shatter some stereotypes along the way.
I'm U.S. Army Corporal Emma Malone Lord, and I answered my calling.
So back to reality, I think.
Joe Biden went into hiding.
So did the whole Democrat front bench.
They put out this press release, a tweet pretty much, just begging the Taliban to spare the U.S. Embassy.
Pretty please.
It reminded me of this tweet by Michelle Obama, Bring Back Our Girls, which was a tweet written to the Boko Haram Muslim terrorist group in Nigeria that was kidnapping and killing and raping and forcibly converting young Christian girls.
Michelle Obama is the wife of the most powerful man in the world.
If the best you can do about it is tweet, that's actually unhelpful because it signals to the whole world that that's all your husband's going to do about it.
And your tweet is the worst that's coming.
The thing about Donald Trump was that you knew the one thing he was personally incapable of doing was appearing weak.
He was mocked for that.
You know how he always talked about being the best, the biggest, huge, having the most people at his inauguration, for example.
Now, a lot of people debated that.
Did he really or not?
I don't care if it was true if it wasn't.
What that whole ridiculous debate taught me, at least, is that being strong, or at least appearing to be strong, and getting respect for strength was so important for Trump as a businessman and a politician.
And so it was, for example, when he was having dinner with China's president at Mar-a-Lago, that's precisely the minute he ordered a missile strike on Syria, just to show how tough he was.
No one messed with Trump because of that.
There was no terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
In fact, he mopped up ISIS in a few months.
He killed its boss, Soleimani.
And that was actually in Iran and killed al-Baghdadi.
He just killed all the bad guys.
Countries fell into line.
Iran didn't try anything big, even when Trump killed their top guy, Soleimani.
Certainly didn't try anything like when it captured U.S. and U.K. sailors under Obama's watch.
But Biden and his team, who actually are strong because they're Americans and they have the same strong army at their disposable that Trump had, they think weakly.
They actually hate America's strength.
So they telegraph to the world that they don't want to use America's strength.
They want the world to know that they can be beaten.
It's almost like they wanted what happened.
Trump was negotiating an exit from Afghanistan too, by the way.
But anytime the Taliban did something violent, he'd call off the negotiations and bomb them back to the Stone Age.
So they learned who they were dealing with.
That's that strength and appearing strong thing.
What does this scene from Kabul's airport show other than a redux of that iconic Vietnam evacuation photo?
Shows weakness, doesn't it?
It's destructive to me how little Trudeau cares about all of this.
I acknowledge that we don't have troops on the ground there now, but neither does America in a major way.
I acknowledge that Afghanistan is largely a failed experiment in nation building in a country that is not modern and it's in fact culturally anti-modern.
But that's where Canada was the noisiest, or at least Trudeau was.
All that talk about soft power and girl power and LGBT2Q plus, all Trudeau's specialties.
But that's what's going the quickest in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
That was gone the very first day, wasn't it?
Trudeau doesn't really care.
He's happy, like Joe Biden is, to see America humiliated.
Trudeau's favorite country is China, which will take over everything in Afghanistan now.
They'll cover it up with Iran and Russia.
But what about the 158 Canadians who died in that imperial war and the thousands more who were wounded?
A total of 40,000 Canadians cycled through that country with a peak of just over 2,000 at any one time.
What was their sacrifice for?
I'm not sure.
But it feels like Canada specializes in pointless missions sometimes.
I think America and Canada and the UK are tired of trying to nation build.
Trudeau isn't tired of using the military for photo-ops, though, including his recent adventure in Mali.
Can you find Mali on a map?
Do you know anything about it?
Do you even know what continent it's on?
Do you know what our national interest is there?
I think you could apply all those same questions to Afghanistan, too.
Other than Trudeau trying to get on the UN Security Council, is there an interest?
That didn't work.
What irks me is that Trudeau actually did care about one piece of the Afghan puzzle.
He truly loved the terrorists there.
There's no other word for how he treated Omar Carter, the convicted, confessed al-Qaeda terrorist who murdered a U.S. Army medic.
Trudeau must have loved him because he gave him a heartfelt public apology.
The terrorist, I mean, no apology to Sergeant Christopher Spears' family.
Trudeau apologized to Omar Cotter, gave him 10.5 million taxpayers' dollars, and took him off the no-fly list.
I know that last part because I happened to be on a plane with him two years ago.
The flight attendants had no idea.
Remember, I caught up with him in the airport afterwards?
He was seated in first class, so he got off the plane before me, so I didn't catch up with him until I was off the plane.
Remember this?
Can I have a word?
Oh, that's a good question.
Can I talk to you for a minute?
You're going to take a selfie together?
If you want.
Can I ask you a couple questions?
How did you get on the plane?
I thought you were on the no-fly list.
This is exactly what we figured would happen.
Why don't we go ahead and break away from the things that are hurtful?
But aren't you on the no-fly list?
Is there security for me or for him?
For filming a person when that's really not an okay thing to do.
Can I ask you why you won't let the widow have access to some of the money you got?
He's not harassing anybody.
That's a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist right there who just flew on an airplane.
Yeah, Trudeau loves the terrorists in this war on terrorism.
He says we have to learn from them.
Trudeau mocks our military, saying it's just about old white men with their phallic symbols.
Why aren't we talking more about the kind of humanitarian aid that Canada can and must be engaged in, rather than, you know, trying to whip out our CF-18s and show them how big they are?
Yeah, yeah, we know.
Look, Afghanistan is so far away.
40,000 Canadians and their families know a lot about it.
For 158 Canadian families, we know too much about it.
Being a good ally to America and the UK and NATO is important for sure.
But being a new woke empire, trying to teach liberal democracy and feminist and LGBT2Q plus ideas to folks still living in medieval times, it doesn't sound like a good use of time and money and energy.
Now, when we have problems we do now here in Canada, I'd rather spend those billions of dollars fixing Indian reserves and their drinking water, wouldn't you?
You know, for years, the Afghan interpreters who helped Canadian soldiers wanted to come here because they faced sure death over there.
Trudeau didn't help with that.
He blocked them, actually.
Now, though, he says he'll bring over 20,000 of them.
That's quite a lot of interpreters for a Canadian delegation that never had more than 2,000 people on the ground at once.
Of course, to Trudeau, it's just another mass immigration scheme.
I don't know how he can do it, though.
How do you even vet 20,000 people, especially with no embassy on the ground anymore?
No security intelligence, no meaningful records.
Oh, well, it didn't stop Trudeau from bringing in 50,000 Syrians with the same problem.
Joe Biden went to ground on this issue.
He hid for days, issuing this one photograph of him alone in his war room doing a Zoom call with advisors for two days.
That was it until late this afternoon today, when he emerged briefly to blame Donald Trump and hide before any questions were put to him.
Here's a few excerpts.
I always promised the American people that I will be straight with you.
The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.
So what's happened?
Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country.
The Afghan military collapsed sometime without trying to fight.
If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.
American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.
We spent over a trillion dollars.
We trained and equipped an Afghan military force with some 300,000 strong, incredibly well equipped, a force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies.
We gave them every tool they could need.
We paid their salaries, provided for the maintenance of their air force.
Something the Taliban doesn't have.
Taliban does not have an Air Force.
We provided close air support.
We gave them every chance to determine their own future.
What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.
But if Afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance of the Taliban now, there is no chance that one year, one more year, five more years, or 20 more years of U.S. military boots on the ground would have made any difference.
Here's what I believe to my core.
It is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan's own armed forces would not.
There was some truth to what he said, for sure.
But there's plenty of scapegoating.
Everyone's to blame but him.
He was in the Obama White House for eight years, though.
On his watch, ISIS was born and thrived.
He was a high-ranking senator for decades.
It's not like he was only handed this problem six months ago.
It is true that the Afghans surrendered without a fight, but it's also true that the U.S. knew that was the case the whole time, that they were only bribing their way through Afghanistan.
No hearts and minds were actually won over.
It was a bipartisan goal to get out of Afghanistan, though the generals and the arms dealers and the NGOs enjoyed a 20-year paycheck out of it.
No one's actually questioning ending the robe of the role of global cop.
I think both parties in America are tired of it, but you can leave a place in a manner befitting a superpower, as Trump was trying to do on his schedule with whatever symbols of strength could be mustered to run out of there, to be run out of there, to be chased out of there, Saigon style, humiliated.
That was Biden's alone.
There was no, not only two options, stay as an empire or be chased out.
Biden's Saigon Style Exit00:02:02
The humiliating way, that was Biden's touch.
One more thing I have to note is that if this were under Donald Trump, you know he would have stayed and taken tough questions from the media for an hour.
We know that because he did that every day.
And he would always call on his toughest opponents in the press gallery.
Joe Biden ran out of there after 10 minutes.
He didn't even stay at the White House.
He went back on vacation.
You know, Trudeau is the same way.
I don't think any Canadian journalist asked Trudeau if he was consulted by Biden on any of this, by the way.
Because I think every single Canadian journalist knows the answer is, of course not.
As if Biden would value Trudeau's comments at all, as if he wouldn't even think of Trudeau in a time like this.
But for Trudeau to think so little of Canada's historic role there and our sacrifice there, that he would call an election literally on the day Kandahar fell, shows how unserious a man he is in serious times.
Stay with us for more.
We'll have an interview with our friend Joel Pollack next.
It was recorded before Joe Biden made the statement today.
Is the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?
No.
No, it is not.
Because you have the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped, as well as any army in the world, and an Air Force against something like 75,000 Taliban.
It is not inevitable.
That's a press conference from U.S. President Joe Biden just weeks ago, not months or years ago, but it was just last month, where he swore on a stack of Bibles that, oh no, those Afghan military forces are serious and well-armed and well-trained, and there's 300,000 of them.
Why Resignations Matter00:14:37
They're going to hold off the Taliban who are outnumbered and outgunned.
No, no.
Pay no attention to increasing reports from the intelligence community that the country is crumbling and that it could fall.
No, no.
Well, it was short weeks from that to this.
These are terrifying scenes as the Taliban closed in on Kabul itself, the capital city where so many thousands of Westerners, Americans, Canadians, Brits, and others, were there either in a military or a quasi-military or a civilian capacity, 20 years rushing to the airport, reminiscent of the fall of Saigon in Vietnam when the North Vietnamese finally closed in.
Everyone who was associated with the American regime then was in grave trouble, trouble for their lives.
I think the same is obvious in Afghanistan.
If you cooperated or collaborated with America or Canada, you may face death.
And the scene of the hasty retreat, including these terrifying photos of ordinary Afghans literally clambering onto a U.S. military jet.
Look at this.
I don't know what they were thinking, but they must have been so desperate to think that it's better to hang on to the outside of a jet than to be left behind to the devices of the Taliban.
What an utter humiliation and a disaster.
A loss of blood and treasure for 20 years, and now this disgrace in the eyes of the world.
Joining us on to talk about it is our friend Joel Pollock Sr., editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
You know, Joel, it's great to see you.
Thanks.
I've been following you on Twitter on this issue.
Let's unpack the two things, the actual cost and loss of blood and treasure and the loss of military equipment.
Here's a parade of high-tech U.S. equipment being sent to Iran, where it'll surely be shared with China and Russia.
Just the loss of money and life, but also the loss of stature.
Talk about that.
Well, Ezra, there are two dimensions to this.
One is the overall long-term strategic dimension, where Americans have become tired, both Republicans and Democrats, of a long-term commitment to Afghanistan, a country that seems incapable of governing itself.
And the frustration with the government of Afghanistan is bipartisan.
People do feel that 20 years is too long to have troops committed there, not just to provide security, but also in combat roles.
People are tired of the war.
People are tired of the expense.
And they feel that the people for whom this is being done are ungrateful.
So there's a general fatigue with Afghanistan, and you saw it under President Donald Trump, who said he wanted to withdraw, and of course with President Joe Biden, who has withdrawn.
The difference between Trump and Biden is really about tactics and how the withdrawal was going to take place.
Biden has shown that he is willing to accept, in Neville Chamberlain's terms, peace at any price.
So he didn't really care how the withdrawal was done.
He was simply going to withdraw.
With Trump, we saw that he was only going to withdraw from a position of strength.
When he came to office, he talked about withdrawing, but he also dropped the MOAB, the mother of all bombs, on Taliban complexes in the country.
And when the Taliban started to attack Americans during the talks in September 2019, Trump suspended the talks and said there will be no further negotiations while the Taliban are killing Americans.
Trump made it absolutely clear he was not going to withdraw under fire, which is why it took so long to get out.
Trump also set a May 1st deadline to leave.
May 1st is, of course, the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs.
Joe Biden changed that to September 11th.
Now, September 11th is a very weighty day in American history, and it's a sacred day in some ways, but it's also a day that marks an American defeat.
It marks the day, of course, when thousands of Americans were killed by terrorists who had been harbored by the Taliban for years.
Biden essentially marked this withdrawal as a defeat from the beginning.
And he gave the Taliban all kinds of extra time to prepare, and he completely eviscerated his own deterrent ability.
He took apart the American deterrent.
So he was negotiating from a position of weakness, just as he's negotiating with Iran from a position of weakness, just as he has given away almost everything Russia has demanded.
And that's the posture of Joe Biden.
He has extensive experience in foreign policy, but as Sarah Palin said in their vice presidential debate in 2008, he's always been wrong.
There's almost no issue in foreign policy on which Joe Biden has ever been right.
And he thinks he's a genius.
So when the generals told him this is going to be dangerous, evidently from what we're hearing, he overruled them and said, no, we're just going to pull out.
Trump clashed with his generals, but he also listened to them.
And even though he drew down forces significantly, he did it in a way that did not jeopardize American security.
The broader issue is really we have China ascendant, not only because we've now withdrawn our troops from the one country with a land border with China where we had a base, but also because China is now going to move in and do deals with the Taliban and gain access to the rare earth minerals that are abundant in Afghanistan.
Russia is now crowing over this because they had their own defeat in Afghanistan under the Soviet Union, and they're now being seen in the Middle East as a more reliable ally than the United States, at least under Democrats.
And Iran, of course, is thrilled because Afghanistan borders Iran, and they're now getting all that military equipment you talked about.
Plus, they are given a reprieve here.
Trump had Iran on the ropes.
The regime looked weak.
Biden has given them a third chance on life.
The second chance, of course, was given by Barack Obama.
So this is a catastrophe.
And what has to be done now is, first, there have to be rescue operations to bring the thousands of Americans, thousands of Afghan allies out of the country.
We also have to consider the other countries who were with us in Afghanistan.
There's a lot of consternation among American allies, frustration that Joe Biden didn't consult with them about this.
So we have to correct that situation immediately.
Second, there has to be a more aggressive and assertive posture on all fronts in foreign policy.
We need to make clear that we are going to protect Taiwan from China.
We need to make clear that we are not going to accept a return to the failed Iran nuclear deal.
We need to make it clear to Russia that we will not tolerate aggression in Eastern Europe or anywhere else.
In short, we need to reverse all of Joe Biden's foreign policies thus far.
And we also need to see resignations.
Secretary of State Tony Blinken must resign.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan must resign.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has to resign.
The press secretary, Jen Pasaki, has to resign.
She was AWOL during this entire crisis.
And we also need to see other resignations, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who is so busy educating his troops about white rage and critical race theory that he failed to make adequate plans for the Afghan withdrawal.
So that's the situation we're in.
It's not unsalvageable.
Can do it, but we need a drastic change of personnel and policy.
You know, talking about resignations, I know that in the United States, because cabinet members and these other appointees, they're drawn from the population at large.
So they don't have a, like in Canada, we draw our cabinet from the legislature.
So, you know, I think it was Lincoln who said, send me better lumber and I'll send you a better cabinet.
I think it was Lincoln.
In Canada, you got slim pickings.
Like you've got, let's say, 150, 170 MPs.
Imagine having to make your cabinet out of that.
In America, you can choose from that amazing, incredible, vast country.
And so you can fire easily, too.
The idea of firing a Canadian cabinet minister is extremely heavy and serious because it's also a problem.
How do you replace them?
I don't think you have that same problem in America, but isn't it quite rare?
And I wonder if in the age of just brazening it out, like, I mean, Andrew Cuomo didn't quite get away with it, but he almost did.
The idea of just tough it out, brazen it out, admit nothing, explain nothing.
All these resignations you're talking about, they make sense to me.
I mean, that general who was forcing critical race theory on his troops and transgenderism on his troops.
You know, I can't even believe that the press secretary went away for a week or emails on out of office.
Even President Biden basically hiding for two days, putting out one still photograph of him in an empty situation room.
These all sound like resignable offenses to me, but is that realistic at all, Joel?
Not under a Democratic administration, perhaps, although we don't know.
Perhaps Biden's going to need to have these resignations so he can maintain his own credibility, because I don't think anybody believes anything Joe Biden says about anything anymore after this.
As you played in that clip of the press conference, he said it was highly unlikely that the Taliban would take over the country again.
He said we weren't going to see scenes from Saigon.
He was right about that.
It's worse than Saigon.
So I think that Joe Biden's going to need these resignations.
But I will just point out: under Republican administrations, both Trump and George W. Bush, we have seen cabinet members resign.
We saw Donald Rumsfeld resign.
We saw various other members of the Bush staff resign when things didn't go well.
Karl Rove left the administration after the 2006 midterm elections.
We almost saw nobody resign in the Obama administration.
And likewise in the Biden administration, we just haven't seen a willingness to take responsibility.
There is this attitude lately, at least in Democratic administrations, that people don't resign.
They don't resign on principle.
The way Samantha Power, I believe, ought to have resigned when Obama did nothing about Syria.
Remember, she was the expert on genocide, and she was supposed to be in charge of doing something about genocide.
And then Syria happened.
She ought to have resigned.
She didn't.
What we did see with Trump, especially, wasn't just resignation.
Trump fired people when they failed to deliver.
Trump fired a lot of people.
Remember, that was considered a point of criticism, but the American people loved it because it meant that there was accountability.
So when you have a Donald Trump around from the business world who understands that you either get the job done or you get fired, that's how people step up.
That's how people perform.
And if you perform once, that's not good enough.
You have to keep performing.
So there are people who are right for one task but not right for another task and they leave the administration.
That's how it ought to happen.
If you have, as you pointed out, access to the great talent pool of American industry, of American society, American academia, and all of that, and American politics, you can go to the legislature and pick a congressman, pick a senator.
But we don't see that under Democratic administrations as much.
In this particular administration, the advisors and the staff are drawn from a very small coterie of insiders that worked for particular consulting firms.
I think one of them is called West Exec, and it was formed by Clinton alumni and Obama administration alumni, and many of them have now risen within the Obama administration.
Look at Jen Pazaki, the press secretary, for example.
She did nothing for the Biden campaign.
Simone Sanders was his erstwhile press secretary the entire campaign, trudging through the snow in Iowa and so forth.
African-American woman didn't get the job.
Jen Pasaki got the job because she was part of this little group of insiders.
So we see the Democrats hiring from a small talent pool of trusted party loyalists.
They are elite.
They are Ivy League educated.
They've been in Washington forever and they don't know a thing about how to run anything in the real world.
And we saw it under Obama and we're seeing it now.
You know, Trump had two skills from the business world.
And by the way, America got to know this on his show, The Apprentice.
You're fired.
I think there are so many firing offenses in America over the last few days, few months, but I think you're right.
It won't happen.
Not just firing people, but how do you negotiate?
Like, if you're a New York real estate developer, plus if you're in the casino business, these negotiations are, I can't imagine anything harder in the world than negotiating real estate deals in New York.
Whether it's the mafia or crooked city regulators or just your competitors, you need to know what you're doing.
Well, think about that for a minute.
Not only did Trump have to negotiate and navigate between the mafia and the banks and the crooked politicians and all of that, but he kept himself out of legal trouble over decades.
Look how hard the Democrats have to work to try to find something that they can prosecute him for.
They're demanding his tax returns.
Still, they are going after some executive in the Trump organization for, I think it's failing to claim frequent flyer miles as income or some garbage like that.
Trump kept himself clean in dealing with the toughest, dirtiest people in the world.
That's a tough guy.
That's a guy who not only knows how to get what he wants, but also knows how to get what he wants in a very difficult regulatory and political environment.
That's the kind of person you want out there, and that's the kind of person the Taliban were dealing with.
Trump made it very clear when he killed Qasim Suleimani, when he dropped the Moab on the Taliban, he made it clear that there was going to be a price to pay for harming any Americans.
Not only has Biden made it clear that there's no price whatsoever, but he's actually left thousands of Americans behind.
When he came into office, he had 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.
Now we're sending 7,000 troops.
The number keeps going up every day.
We're sending 7,000 troops now back to Afghanistan to try to guide an evacuation that has already failed, where people have already died, as you pointed out.
People clinging to cargo transport planes, C-17s or what have you, C-130s, people mobbing the airport.
It's a complete disaster.
We don't even know the scale of the disaster yet because we can't get good reports.
Journalists are being intimidated by the Taliban.
This is a complete catastrophe.
It's only salvageable with that kind of military force, but it didn't have to be this way.
And that's why I think there has to be accountability.
Yeah.
You know, I've heard reports that the U.S. was offering to bribe the Taliban to permit them to leave their embassy in a certain way.
Like they were begging them publicly.
They were issuing tweets to the Taliban.
And I had reports they were offering staggering amounts of cash if the Taliban would just let the people out.
It's incredible to me.
And while I believe that Afghanistan, you know, graveyard of empires or whatever it's called, or undertaker of empires, but I'm not so much worried about Afghanistan as I am what does China think they know about Joe Biden now?
What does Russia and Iran think they know about Joe Biden?
U.S. Leadership Crisis00:02:31
Now, what does Taiwan, Israel, United Arab Emirates, the Baltic states?
It's like when Ronald Reagan cracked, stood up to the air traffic controllers very early in his agenda.
After the Berlin Wall fell, it came out that the Russians observed how Reagan meant what he said and called the bluff of the Air Traffic Controllers Union in a way that no one thought he would.
And they said, oh, we're up against a different cookie.
So you would think something like dealing with a union, a rogue strike of air traffic controls, what's that got to do with negotiating nuclear arms deals with the Soviets?
Well, everything, because they got the measure of the man.
I think people have got the measure of the man, and they've got to be sharpening their knives.
I think the most scared person in the world right now, it's got to be the president of Taiwan.
And then the close second might be, you know, United Arab Emirates or anyone at risk from Iran in the Gulf.
What do you think of that?
Well, paradoxically, the Abraham Accords that President Trump negotiated between Israel and the Sunni states have made the Sunni states stronger.
I don't think they're as worried, mostly because they know Israel is a reliable ally.
Israel can always be trusted to do what's in its own interest.
And right now, those relations between Israel and the Arab states are still very strong because Israel finds that to be in its interest.
I think they can see the contrast between leaders in Israel who continue a strong national security posture when they change administrations and leaders in the United States where the Democratic Party comes in and you know you're going to get the apology tour and the weakness and the unwillingness to commit to doing anything properly.
You're going to get missile strikes against Sudan and that sort of thing and invasions of Libya, but you're not going to get any kind of commitment to doing it properly.
And they've failed to learn from their mistakes.
Yes, Trump was someone that was unpredictable.
His unpredictability restored some of the strategic balance and deterrence that our diminished military, when he came in at least, could not provide.
He built up the military again, so that was good.
But we have a crisis in this country because there's no clear replacement in the short term for Joe Biden.
Joe Biden has, you're correct, shown that he is weak.
Kamala Harris is his only possible replacement right now.
She's also weak.
She endorsed his pullout from Afghanistan, so she doesn't offer any kind of alternative.
She has no experience running a campaign well, never mind running a military campaign.
So political campaign was a failure, and she doesn't have any credibility either.
Then you go down the list of succession.
No Clear Replacement00:03:29
Who have you got?
Who have you got?
Nancy Pelosi would be the next in line to be the president.
She's the Speaker of the House.
You know, she's at least somewhat fearsome, but she can barely do the job she has now.
So I think there is a crisis of leadership right now.
And this country is going to face a reckoning politically over the next several weeks.
It's not going to stop when the news cycle ends.
September 11th is coming up in a few weeks.
And on the 20th anniversary of September 11th, we're going to find the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan.
And General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who messed this whole thing up, already warned senators on Sunday that he expects terror groups to come back to Afghanistan likelier or sooner than originally anticipated.
Yeah, including from Guantanamo Bay, where most of them were let go.
Joel, it's great to talk to you.
These are heavy matters.
And I should say that everything that you're discussing with America, a smaller version of that applies to Canada, too.
We had over 150 Canadians die in Afghanistan.
We served there for many years.
And I think a lot of people are saying, for what?
And Canada, I should tell you, if you think Joe Biden and his absence is bad, yesterday was the day that Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, chose, instead of to deal with evacuating Canadians, he chose to call an election yesterday at his complete discretion.
He said, no, I think the next 30 days I'm going to spend door knocking, and I'll let the caretaker bureaucrats handle this Afghan matter.
So if you think Joe Biden's bad, I should tell you it's one notch worse here in Canada.
Joel, I don't want to, I could keep you here all day because there's so much we learned from you.
I'm grateful for your time.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks, Ezra.
Keep well.
Right on.
There you have it.
Joel Pollock, Sr., editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
Stay with us more ahead.
Hey, welcome back on my show on Friday.
Rob writes, the Conservative Party desperately needs real men like Jonas Smith and not cowards who abandon their own values for O'Toole's ridiculous social justice warrior goofiness.
What a loss.
Yeah, I reviewed the Conservative Party platform.
I think I'll go through it in some detail tomorrow.
And there was nothing against vaccine passports.
Lots of talks about vaccine, but no talk about civil liberties.
I'll go through it tomorrow.
James writes, promoting liberal policy such as this, never got a conservative elected.
Yeah, I just really, I'm looking back at election after election, and I think voters want a real choice, and they want authenticity.
They want to know that you truly believe it.
I think the problem with Andrew Scheer is that he so clearly was sort of a prairie conservative in a lot of ways, but he tried to act like a fancy pants downtown liberal.
And I think people could detect that.
So they thought it was dishonest.
Both sides thought it was dishonest.
Conservatives said, why are you pretending to be someone you're not?
And liberals said, why are you pretending to be someone you're not?
If people really wanted a liberal, wouldn't they vote for the real thing?
Paul writes, lose 20 seats?
I think it'll be a lot more.
Well, I just want to show you one quick thing.
Let me throw this in here.
This was the very first campaign ad the liberals put online.
You'll see this is really from a conservative account.
Conservatives Call Out Inauthenticity00:01:24
I'm not going to play this whole thing, but let me play a minute of this for you.
I don't even know what the point here is.
The production quality of this is so awful.
This is just so bloody irritating.
This is the first shot that Aaron O'Toole's conservatives fired in campaign 2021.
Take a look.
Here we go again.
Donnie, you'll get your golden goose as soon as we get home.
No, I want one of those.
I want a party with room fulls of laughter.
10,000 tons of ice cream I want the works I want the whole works.
Presents and prizes and sweets and surprises of all shapes and sizes.
And now, don't care how I want you.
Yeah, I'm going to stop that right there.
I'm not even going to punish you by playing any more of that for you.
I don't even know what that is.
But if that's where your donations to the Conservative Party of Canada are going to crack ad agencies coming up with stuff like that, keep your money or light it on fire or, I don't know, donate it to Rebel News, because if that's where your Conservative Party donations are going, yeah, I don't think they need any more money.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubble World Headquarters, see you at home.