Sean is off today, but The Best of Sean Hannity brings listeners back to Hannity's visit to Israel. If there was ever a time to stand up to terrorism and help an old friend, now is the time! In this Best of Sean Hannity Podcast, Sean sits down with Bibi Netanyahu to get an update on the future of Israel. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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| Uh we just came back from an amazing trip to Israel. | |
| One of the the highlights was literally showing how small a country this is. | |
| Joining us now is the Prime Minister who I was gonna have on Friday's program, but obviously we got delayed with other issues. | |
| Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for taking time today. | |
| How are you, sir? | |
| It's great to see you. | |
| Well, I'm fine, uh Sean. | |
| It was wonderful to see you in Israel. | |
| It's good to talk to you today. | |
| You know, that helicopter ride, I don't know if you had a chance to watch the program, but when you actually see it up close and you see that when we take off from Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean and we go up the coast and you're looking out your window and you can see the borders and you can see where Israel's enemies are, | |
| just like in twenty fourteen when I was in Gaza and you look out in towns like Sarot and and where they've been hit with ten thousand rockets in ten years from Gaza, it is it is the most precarious, defensible th most precarious and dangerous situation on the face of the earth. | |
| It's scary to me. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Um let me try to give your audience a feeling for the size of Israel. | |
| If you fly across the United States from the East Coast to the West Coast, it'll take you about five hours, right? | |
| All right. | |
| If you fly from the west coast of Israel to the eastern border of Israel, it'll take you on that same airplane, five minutes. | |
| You got that? | |
| Five minutes across Israel. | |
| Five minutes with, you know, so five hours compared to five minutes. | |
| So Israel is a small country, an exceedingly small country. | |
| It's about the size of New Jersey. | |
| But it is a very powerful country, uh, among other things, because of the spirit of our people, the courage of our soldiers, and the friendship that we enjoy with the American people, and the help of the United States. | |
| We appreciate that very much. | |
| Israel is a forward position for the United States and for the Western world for Western civilization. | |
| I you know, if you look at it, you say there's the United States, you know, there's Europe, then you get to Israel, and it sort of stops at that point. | |
| I mean, there are other friends of the United States, and I'm, you know, very glad that the there are governments in our region in the Middle East who are friendly with the United States. | |
| But Israel is the only place where both the people and the governments, the government and the people, are solidly pro-American, solidly pro-Western, solidly rooted in our common values of democracy and freedom. | |
| And that's the strength of Israel. | |
| Our values and our willingness to defend those values. | |
| And when we defend ourselves, we also defend our common civilization against our common enemies. | |
| Enemies that are called militant Islam. | |
| You know, Mr. Prime Minister, you can see that inclusiveness just when you go to the old city in Jerusalem, where you have a Jewish sector, and you have an Armenian sector, and you have a Christian sector, and you have a Muslim sector. | |
| All in what uh how many square miles are we talking about where all of the one square mile. | |
| One square mile. | |
| And and so all of these religions, you know, are included in this historic land, which is Israel and Jerusalem. | |
| Indeed it is. | |
| Yeah, But uh uh they are. | |
| But I I have to say that in the all the thousands of years of Jerusalem's history and in since and in all the centuries since the rise of the great uh monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the only time that people of these three faiths could worship freely in their respective religious sites has been under Israel's sovereignty. | |
| When Israel became the sovereign of Jerusalem, when Israel became responsible to maintain uh peace and tranquility for the holy sites, that's when you've had uh that kind of unfettered access and that kind of religious freedom. | |
| And you know, that's no small thing in the Middle East where you have uh militant Islamists butchering other Muslims, butchering Christians, Christians are under tremendous uh uh assault in the Middle East. | |
| Uh you know, the fact is that the only place where those rights are guaranteed and where Christians are guaranteed uh a thriving future is in the state of Israel. | |
| And today, this year we're marking fifty years of the liberation of Jerusalem and fifty years of religious freedom in this holy city. | |
| What is the percentage of Arabs that actually vote in Israeli elections for those that don't know how inclusive Israel as a country is. | |
| Well, people don't know that uh, you know, of the Israel's eight million citizens, uh over a million, close to a million and a half are actually Arab citizens. | |
| And they're the ones who, you know, they vote uh for our parliament, they vote in our elections, they serve in the government, they serve in the Supreme Court. | |
| Uh people don't know that. | |
| And they're probably looking the Middle East, uh, I don't think that's very common to have that kind of freedom. | |
| Israel is a genuine democracy. | |
| Mr. Prime Minister maligned it's maligned terribly, but it is in fact the beacon of uh liberty and human rights in an otherwise uh fairly dark region. | |
| I don't disagree with that at all. | |
| Let me ask you, I thought the best speech, and I've known you for well over two decades of my life now, going back a long time and I've known you when the first time you were prime minister, I've known you since that time, now that you've taken and that you may end up being the longest consecutive serving prime minister in Israeli history following Ben Gurion, | |
| but I guess the best speech I think you ever gave was here on American soil when you came to talk and speak out against this horrible Iranian deal, and that is a hundred and fifty billion taxpayer dollars going to Iran, they spin their centrifuges, questionable questionable inspections, twenty-five days' notice, uh the right to partner with Russia to build missile defense, uh build their conventional weapons. | |
| It was a horrible deal. | |
| You tried to warn America. | |
| President Obama was very angry that you came here and spoke that way. | |
| But I thought it was one of your best speeches. | |
| You know, I went back and I looked at Bill Clinton, he s promised that when he gave North Korea four billion dollars, they wouldn't get nuclear weapons while they got them. | |
| And President Obama and Susan Rice and John Kerry said once they drew the red line in the sand with Syria they wouldn't get they wouldn't they got rid of all their chemical weapons. | |
| We know that's not true. | |
| To me, this deal will facilitate a nuclear armed Iran unless they're stopped. | |
| What is your warning to the people of this world? | |
| Look, I spoke about this with uh President Trump uh and with Secretary of uh Defense uh uh Jim Mattis, who was just here. | |
| Uh I I think we see eye to eye. | |
| I don't think, I know we see eye to I that Iran is not the solution to the problems of the Middle East, but in many ways the main problem because most of uh you know, all the countries in the region uh are suffering from Iranian aggression, and to have this Iran that is the foremost sponsor of terrorism in the world, uh to have this terrorist state uh walk into a nuclear arsenal, which is what this agreement ultimately pays, is obviously a big mistake. | |
| And uh yes, I took that message uh to the American Congress. | |
| I had uh I had many areas of agreement uh with uh President Obama, but I also also some disagreements. | |
| And this was a very strong area of disagreement because I think that a nuclear Iran threatens the future of my country, and I've felt obligated to speak about it. | |
| This agreement does not obligate Israel. | |
| We will do anything that we need to do to make sure that this terrorist regime that calls death to America, death to Israel, uh that harms and harasses US ships, that's killed US soldiers in Iraq, that stamps on American flags and threatens to eradicate my state. | |
| I'll do everything in my power to make sure that this regime uh does not have nuclear weapons. | |
| Well, I think it's a simple mathematical equation. | |
| A squared, nuclear weapons, B squared in the arms of radical Islamic mullahs, the number one state sponsor in the world, equals a potential Holocaust, and I don't use that word lightly in our time, and I know you talked about it this weekend. | |
| Prime Minister Benjamin Nanyaho is with us. | |
| He'll stay a few minutes longer on the other side, eight hundred nine four one Sean, toll free telephone number. | |
| All right, as we continue with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu continues with us. | |
| My next question to you is, you know, one of the maybe a positive outcome of the President of President Obama's really bad deal is it has brought Israel closer. | |
| A new alliance is emerging in the Middle East with Saudi Arabia, the emirates, with the Egyptians, the the Jordanians. | |
| And if you add America to that equation, it seems to me that there is an alliance strong enough to stop Iranian hegemony in the region and to stop their pursuit of nuclear weapons. | |
| There's no question the countries in the region see as I do that Iran is uh the greatest threat to the peace and tranquility uh of the region. | |
| There is uh very broad agreement of that. | |
| And if uh uh before I I was the only one speaking out loud, the others who are saying that openly, and again, there's uh a clear change in the American position, a very welcome change that uh President Trump uh has enunciated. | |
| Uh look, today is Holocaust Day, Holocaust Remembrance Day. | |
| Uh, and my responsibility as the Prime Minister of Israel is to make sure that such tragedies never repeat. | |
| I think this is obviously uh something of vital interest to me and my people, but I think it's also something of vital interest to the world, to uh America, and to all civilized people. | |
| Iran seeks to dominate the world. | |
| Iran seeks nuclear weapons. | |
| Iran is also building submarines, satellites, uh precision guided missiles, and many, many other weapons, and it is arming terrorists left and right. | |
| It is uh threatening uh it is trying to conquer Yemen, it is in Iraq, it is in Syria, it has killed many, many Americans. | |
| Uh, it is supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon. | |
| This is uh an all-purpose terrorist state. | |
| Uh it also hangs gays, it kills opposition uh leaders, uh hangs them from cranes, it tortures journalists. | |
| Iran is a bad deal. | |
| It's a bad regime. | |
| It should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons. | |
| And yes, it is creating a change in uh uh our part of the world because as I told you last week, for the first time in my lifetime, many of the Arab states uh are thinking differently about Israel, not as their ally uh uh enemy rather, but as their indispensable. | |
| Let me ask you about that. | |
| Because you said to me in this interview, I want peace, I've been to war, and you said that in the case of the Palestinians, they need to prove that they want peace. | |
| And Mahood Abbas, for example, says one thing about the blood of Israelis when he is in the Middle East and he'll be coming to see the President soon, and I am fairly certain that he will tell the President just the opposite and won't be reiterating those things he says when he's back home. | |
| So my question to you is, you know, is there another option besides land for peace, because you barely have defensible borders now? | |
| Is there an option to partner, say with the Emirates or the Saudis and and perhaps President Trump can can broker that deal. | |
| I think there are many possibilities uh in the region, and I'd love to be able to uh uh speak to President Trump about that, uh continue the conversation we've had. | |
| Uh as far as the Palestinians are concerned, as far as Israel is concerned, nobody wants peace more than Israel because we know the cost of war. | |
| I know the cost of war. | |
| Uh I lost my older brother in the war of on terrorism. | |
| He fell while leading the Israeli rescue mission to Antebe to release one hundred and three Israeli hostages. | |
| It succeeded, but he was the lone military casualty of this great rescue mission. | |
| I myself was wounded um in trying to and successfully rescuing shot in the shoulder, I remember, yeah. | |
| Uh no, it wasn't the shoulder, it was in my arm, and I still think it uh but from uh friendly fire too. | |
| But we burst into a Sabina airplane in order to uh liberate uh uh Israeli and other passengers who were held hostage by uh four terrorists two pa four Palestinian terrorists and we were able to overcome them. | |
| Uh so you know if you face death if you've experienced death of your loved ones uh and fallen comrades uh you know the cost of war and therefore you know nobody wants peace more than Israel the the people of Israel yearn for peace, pray for peace and are ready to do a lot for peace. | |
| One thing they're not ready to do is give land which is then turned not for the purpose of peace but turned against us as a base to attack us. | |
| You've already tried that is unfortunately what has happened in the past. | |
| Yeah. | |
| We the territory but we didn't get we gave the land we didn't get peace. | |
| We've got thousands of rockets fired in the cities of Israel, and we don't want to have that happen again. | |
| The Palestinians, you know, they speak peace to foreign audiences, but to their own people they say, you know, we have to dissolve the state of Israel. | |
| Knife Israelis. | |
| We can't accept a Jewish state. | |
| And I'm talking about, unfortunately, their leaders. | |
| I'd like to see that change. | |
| If it changes, if they accept Israel genuinely, you know, we could have a brilliant future for both Israelis and Palestinians. | |
| Well, that's a... | |
| How can Abbas speak of peace with us, with Israel, and at the same time pay terrorist murderers, okay, who are in our jails, and he's paying them stipends. | |
| He's paying the families of dead terrorists. | |
| $300 million a year or thereabouts. | |
| Hundreds of millions of dollars a year over a decade. | |
| That's a billion dollars going to pay terrorists who are hell-bent on murdering Israelis. | |
| So I'd like to see a change in that. | |
| These are the kinds of, you know... | |
| have no conditions on meeting on talking uh that's fine but if you really want to see a change a move towards peace that Israelis would embrace and would would uh would be enthusiastic about is to see a real change in the Palestinian policies. | |
| You know if someone paid anyone who murdered Americans by a sliding scale the more Americans they killed the more money they got which is what the Palestinian authorities paying these Palestinian killers wouldn't you expect to see a change if they said they they professed they wanted peace well I believe that peace the Palestinians should stop paying terrorist murders. | |
| That's the way to go get to peace. | |
| And that's the law of the land. | |
| Mr Prime Minister it was an honor to see you. | |
| It was great to be back in your country um incredible hospitality by everybody it is uh also great to have you back here we look forward to you back to when you are back in the States and uh thank you so much for all the time and your generosity. | |
| Thank you, sir. | |
| Thank you, John. | |
| Always a pleasure to talk to you. | |
| Thank you. | |
| All right, 800-941-SHAWN, toll-free telephone number. | |
| You want to be a part of the program. | |
| Jeff Sessions, when we get back as we continue. | |
| Taylor Force was an outstanding young American with a distinguished record of service at the military academy and then overseas. | |
| He was what every parent could hope their son could be. | |
| I think I want to make sure that the record that he put together is remembered by Americans and is a positive force for change in the world. | |
| The taxpayer dollars are no longer going to subsidize the murder of American citizens or Israeli citizens. | |
| And that the Palestinian people are no longer subsidized with American money and a leadership that encourages this kind of brutal murder with graduated payments for the more... | |
| worse mayhem that these terrorists rack so the Force family has my commitment has all of our commitments that we're gonna do everything in our power to make This bill into a law to commemorate Taylor's memory and to ensure that his sacrifice is not forgotten and that it has a lasting positive legacy in the world. | |
| All right, 24 now till the top of the hour. | |
| Very emotional, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. | |
| Now he serves on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. | |
| He served in Iraq himself, the 101st Airborne, and in Afghanistan with the provincial reconstruction team, and also joining us as Stewart Force. | |
| Now Stuart's son Taylor was a former U.S. Army officer, West Point graduate. | |
| He was part of Vanderbilt University, their tour group that was visiting Israel. | |
| I talked about this with Prime Minister Netanyahu last week. | |
| He was brutally stabbed and killed by a Palestinian terrorist. | |
| The Palestinian is Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas and their Fatah faction praise the terrorists as a heroic martyr. | |
| By the way, Donald Trump is meeting with this guy on May 3rd, and the Palestinian Authority has never condemned the attack, a terrorist attack. | |
| Now, what I got into with the Prime Minister of Israel is the fact that the U.S. government gives about 700 million dollars a year to the Palestinian Authority, and of that 700 million, they spend about 300 million dollars. | |
| According to the Palestinian Authority's online budget, they shell out the same amount or that amount of money, $300 million a year to the families of jihadists. | |
| They build in their town squares literally quote so called works of art for the people that kill either Israelis or Americans. | |
| Now the Taylor Force Act would cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority if they continue this policy. | |
| It is now the stated law of paying money, monetary rewards to terrorists and their surviving family members. | |
| Anyway, uh Senator Tom Cotton is back with us from Arkansas. | |
| Uh Stuart Force is with us. | |
| It was his son Taylor, who this legislation is designed and and to honor. | |
| Welcome both of you to the program. | |
| Good afternoon, Sean. | |
| And I it I appreciate so much you you having me on. | |
| It's it's a great honor to speak with you. | |
| I spoke at length with the Prime Minister of Israel about this very issue in light of the the leader of of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas is meeting with President Trump on May 3rd, um, and the Prime Minister of Israel was adamant that if there's any chance of peace, one there's got to be a recognition of Israel's right to exist. | |
| Number two, stop paying monetary rewards to terrorists and their surviving family members. | |
| Doesn't that have to be a fundamental basic starting point? | |
| I would I would think so, Sean. | |
| I can't imagine negotiating with anybody about anything, knowing that they have law laws that provide for killing your citizens. | |
| I cannot I cannot believe that you could start with that in effect. | |
| Um I think it's just when all the facts came out to us after after we lost Taylor, and I I heard and read what was going on. | |
| I I was appalled that that is going on in this day and age. | |
| The contract killing with an open open-ended contract. | |
| I could not I could not understand it. | |
| It is it's just but you know why? | |
| Because it's not comprehensible. | |
| Because you you th there's no sense behind this that American money is going to a group that kills Americans and Israelis and they're rewarding the terrorists and their families. | |
| Because, you know, that is insanity by definition. | |
| And it's got to end. | |
| By the way, I'm pretty certain I know pretty it's President Trump pretty well. | |
| I think once he gets made aware of the magnitude of this, I think he's gonna say, no more money until you stop this. | |
| I I think that it would be a first good step, and um um everyone I've uh had the opportunity to speak opportunity to speak with. | |
| I I agree that they they are more and more aware of how ludicrous the whole situation is and how you can't go forward with that in place. | |
| It it's yeah, I I I hate that we're that my wife and I and daughter have have spoken to so many people that have been so concerned. | |
| We never in our lives imagined that in like anything would this happen to anyone in our family, but uh we agree it it it it has it has to stop. | |
| It just cannot continue, and it's not it's it's not a partisan issue. | |
| I I tell people And whether they're Democrat, liberal, independent, Republican, just the situation. | |
| It's not a it's not a party or belief. | |
| It's just not right. | |
| You're right. | |
| It's not right. | |
| Hey Sean, this is Tom Cotton. | |
| If you're sorry to add um it's good to be on with you uh as always, but it's a an especial honor to be uh on with you with Stewart, Mr. Force. | |
| It's good to hear your voice. | |
| Thank you, Senator Cotton. | |
| I appreciate you s what you're doing for this so much. | |
| I can't tell you. | |
| Yes. | |
| Um and and Sean, your your instinct is right, uh, because I've seen this repeatedly now, both in Congress uh and with Arkansans. | |
| Uh decent people cannot imagine that the facts at hand. | |
| They cannot imagine that we give the Palestinian Authority hundreds of millions of dollars and the Palestinian Authority gives what's essentially bonus payments to the families of terrorists um who commit the kind of heinous crime that uh happened to Taylor Force. | |
| W when you bring that to them, sometimes you have to actually show them the laws, show them the Palestinian laws, show them the budgetary accounts which are freely available uh in the open source domain to get them to realize that this is in fact true, that this is not a myth. | |
| Um and I for one confident once the president understands and appreciates what's happening with your tax dollars that we can put an end to this uh and that we can pass the Taylor Force Act through the Congress for his signature. | |
| Sean, I'm so happy that you raised this with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and I'm so grateful that Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke forcefully about the need to end you see us talking about this. | |
| Did you see the quotes of a boss that he he uses when he's at home versus what I know he'll probably lie to and tell the president? | |
| Sean, it it's so important that Prime Minister Netanyahu weighed in on this matter that we have to stop what are essentially bounty payments uh to the families of of dead terrorists. | |
| Um and his support uh removes one of the very last objections that anyone in the United States could have, because if the Prime Minister supports this legislation and this effort uh to try to stop U.S. taxpayer dollars uh from going to the families of dead Palestinian terrorists, I can't imagine any Senator or Congressman voting against our legislation. | |
| So I I'm encouraging the president to raise this matter with uh President Boss during their meeting next week and say very simply to him, look, i if you don't stop this practice, you will no longer receive this money. | |
| Uh we're not asking them for some pie in the sky um, you know, lying down lying laying down with the lamb scenario. | |
| We're not asking them to try to, you know, eliminate all anti-Semitic feelings from their society. | |
| We're asking them to do something within their control. | |
| Stop taking our money and giving it to the families of dead terrorists, if you want to keep our money. | |
| Have you gotten any democratic support, Senator? | |
| A lot of Democrats have been supportive uh um but quietly. | |
| Uh one reason why we couldn't pass this legislation in previous years is that the Obama administration plainly did not support it, did not want it coming to the floor, um, and Democratic senators did not want to vote on it. | |
| Uh but with President Trump in the White House, who I believe will support the legislation, um, with the endorsement of Prime Minister Netanyahu, I think it's a horse of a different color, and I suspect that we will be able to pass this. | |
| Uh about Chuck Schumer. | |
| Have you ever talked to Chuck Schumer about it? | |
| I I haven't personally talked to him about it, but you know, Senator Schumer likes to prevent his uh caucus from having to take votes on things that might be tough for them. | |
| Um I again it's hard for me to imagine anybody saying this is tough, but ultimately it's Mitch McConnell that schedules the floor. | |
| And Senator McConnell can bring this to the floor uh with the President's support now with the endorsement of the Prime Minister as well. | |
| I think you'd see a large and bipartisan vote if we have a vote on the floor. | |
| Um let me ask you this. | |
| Um do do they have confirmed themselves that this is actual law under the Palestinian Authority, correct? | |
| They must pay the families of terrorists and terrorists that survive. | |
| It's in black and white, it's Palestinian Authority and law, and um the more heinous the attack and crime, the uh bloodier it is, the more money the families receive. | |
| It is a straight incentive for terrorists to kill innocent civilians like Taylor Force to try to make sure their family is cared for. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Mr Mr. Force, Stewart Force, tell us about your son Taylor. | |
| Oh gosh. | |
| Your program's not long enough, Sean, for me to tell you all about Taylor. | |
| I believe it. | |
| I believe it. | |
| But we're it it we were just very fortunate that we have we have two good kids and uh he at an early age decided That uh uh West Point would be a goal. | |
| He went to uh Mexico Military Institute in Roswell where people like Roger Stauback had had gone to school and in their efforts to uh obtain appointments to the various service academies and it was a good academic and uh pre-military background and he enjoyed well, I guess you'd have to say mostly endured his his four years at West Point because it's quite a a grueling regimen that they go through. | |
| But um his my father, his grandfather had had graduated in forty-seven, and so he had uh an ideal and an idea of what to expect and he was excited and and when he graduated he went to field artillery and uh to serve the two tier tours, uh a year in Iraq and nine months in Afghanistan, and uh you know, he uh I I would want to mention one thing. | |
| I know people have a tendency to use the word hero, and Taylor was very a very modest and humble person, even though he achieved a lot. | |
| But I want he always cringed when somebody would call him a hero. | |
| Well, he felt the real heroes were those that were wounded or or gave their lives. | |
| Yeah, but he was willing to risk it, so he fits in that category. | |
| It's the same thing to me in many ways. | |
| It's not the same thing. | |
| I mean, anybody that's willing to risk it, that is a level of heroism and courage. | |
| I I he but he viewed himself as a patriot uh more than more than a hero, Sean, but it was um it was something he felt very strongly about and being there for his his men, and uh it it honestly wasn't about him, and it's just a tragedy that situations like this happen. | |
| It takes so many so many promising young people, not only Americans but but Israelis and and other visitors to Israel in a in a situation like this, it's just it's just uh uh it it's a shame and and we're we're incredulous about the whole thing. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, first I just want to say on a on behalf of so many people, I'm so sorry, Mr. Force for your loss, your son Taylor, and uh I truly, you know, send the sympathy of a very sympathetic audience here, and we want to wish you and your family the very, very best. | |
| And so sorry you have to go through this. | |
| And Senator Cotton, thank you for what you're doing on this. | |
| And I know you're fighting a good fight every day. | |
| Is that health care bill in the house gonna work through the Senate and get done, you think? | |
| Sean, over the last few weeks uh I've decided not to hazard guesses about what's gonna happen on the floor of the House. | |
| But whatever happens, I want to make sure that we pass legislation that repeals Obamacare and provides uh all Americans with affordable and quality insurance, no exceptions and no excuses. | |
| Do you like the changes that the Freedom Caucus was able to get? | |
| I haven't seen the text, but from the reports I've seen and that my conversations with some of my friends there, they're moving in the right direction. | |
| Obviously the Senate will uh will take up any bill that comes here and put our own stamp on it. | |
| Uh but the ultimate goal uh that we share with those in the house is making sure that insurance is affordable for everyone, no matter how you get your insurance. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Mr. Force, thank you so much for being with us. | |
| You're in our thoughts and prayers. | |
| Your son was indeed a hero. | |
| God bless you and your family. | |
| I know how hard that must be for you every day. | |
| This insanity of paying money to the Palestinian authorities so they can shell it out to the families and jihadists and their survivors is insanity. | |
| And I'm I'm gonna make sure in the next interview with President Trump that I ask him about this. | |
| Thank you so much for being with us.com, retired Air Force Captain Joni Marquez, Karen Vaughn, she lost her son Aaron, a Navy SEAL. | |
| This was in this important extortion seventeen case, where in fact that we had Americans engaged with eight Taliban that were heavily armed, and two of them ended up surviving, and while they had an opportunity to engage and kill those two combatants, permission was denied. | |
| As a result, thirty Americans, including seventeen Navy SEALs were killed. | |
| Joni, I mean, Captain Marquez, this this was all preventable. | |
| You there's no doubt in your mind you had these two fighters in sight and you could have killed at those engaging Americans and killing Americans. | |
| Absolutely, son, and that's what's so disgusting about all of it. | |
| You know, I've been living with this hell for about six years of my life now. | |
| And um I also would like to set the record straight on something. | |
| I apologize, Sarah again for not being clear on this because of nerves or whatnot from two months ago. | |
| But the actual enemy that took out the helicopter wasn't in the it wasn't co-located with the twelve men that that force gained up to be they were probably another mile, A mile and a half away in some other building. | |
| So the two weren't even related in that regard. | |
| Oh my goodness. | |
| I apologize for not making myself clear on that. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| You you offer no apologies. | |
| You you were doing your job and and you were you were doing everything possible to keep our guys safe. | |
| And had you been able to do your job without these ridiculous rules of engagement, Karen Vaughn's son Aaron would be alive today. | |
| And and uh Karen, if it was me, I'd be apoplectic every hour of every day. | |
| I'd never get over this. | |
| You know, Sean, it's something I really have to monitor and control in myself, not to be angry. | |
| What I want now, the productive thing to feel now is a desire for accountability because only through that can we can we receive the change that we need to make sure another American son or daughter does not die to these reckless criminal rules of engagement. | |
| And and that's the goal here. | |
| There's nothing I can do to bring Aaron back. | |
| I I do want accountability for the people who made the decisions that night. | |
| Joni, when she when you hear more of her story, you will be even more stunned at what's about to come out, uh because get that was just the first thing that went wrong that night, Sean, and it just kept getting worse from there. | |
| And you know, I had an I had an admiral turn around to the grieving parents at the debriefing, and one of the dads asked, why didn't we just use a drone strike on the guys that the SEALs were coming in to interdict that night? | |
| And and Admiral Harward turned around and put his hand on my knee. | |
| I was sitting right behind him, and he said, Because we want to win the Afghans' hearts and minds. | |
| And so basically what if if I was strong, if if I was as strong as I am today on that day, I probably would have punched the guy in the face because he's looking at parents and wives sitting there grieving unimaginably over the deaths of their sons and their husbands, and that's his thing is we cared more about the Afghans than we cared about your loved ones' life. | |
| And that's exactly what's going on, and it has to stop. | |
| Sarah, I'm going to give you the last word here because we're running out of time. | |
| Well, I think the next step, Sean, is really going to be whether or not the Trump administration is going to take a good look at this and say, you know, what do we need to do to ensure that this never happens again, not on their watch, and that they can put into action rules of engagement that are reasonable, that don't tie the hands of our troops, our airmen, and that save lives instead of take lives. | |
| And I think that is going to be the most important thing to come out of this. | |
| Joni's bravery, Karen's bravery, the bravery of all the families that have spoken up, and the loss that they've endured is something that we all as Americans have to remember and not be afraid to seek the truth and find it and not be afraid to tell it. | |
| Can I add one final word, Sean? | |
| Yep, really quick, Karen, we're out of time. | |
| However, parent feels let them fight or bring them home, Sean. | |
| Let them fight or bring them home. | |
| I agree wh wholeheartedly. | |
| We're not gonna fight, bring them home. | |
| I agree. | |
| Thank you, Sarah Carter. | |
| Thank you, Karen Vaughan. | |
| You're in our prayers, and many, many thanks, Captain Joni Marquez, for your courage in speaking out so we can prevent this ever from happening again. |