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Aug. 18, 2021 - Sean Hannity Show
31:17
We Need Leaders
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This is an iHeart Podcast.
All right, News Roundup Information Overload Hour.
Sean Hannity Show.
Thanks for being with us.
As we've been covering all day this unmitigated disaster that has been unfolding in Afghanistan, and there's just not a good way out that anybody can see at this point.
You know, now the big message the Biden administration is putting their trust in the Taliban to ensure safe passage for Americans fleeing for their lives.
Well, the same people that told us the Taliban, oh no, no.
Their army is one of the best equipped armies in the world.
I'm not worried at all.
The same people that told us that not to worry.
The same people that said, no way they're going to get back in power.
And the same people that stayed on vacation for four days as Kabul fell right before the world's eyes.
It's it's we're now at the mercy of the Taliban.
On Fox and Friends this morning, I won't give the person's full name.
There was a gentleman that called in.
And this is how this person, one of we don't know how many thousands stranded.
Well, we do have the updated alert from this the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan.
We can't guarantee your safe passage to the airport.
Are you kidding me?
We can't guarantee it.
How could they possibly have left all these thousands of Americans as vulnerable and not know where all of them are and tell them, yeah, we can't get you to the airport safely, you're on your own.
Basically, Joe deserted them.
Here's how this one gentleman felt.
So I saw it was crowded rush, it's Afghan citizens and Afghan permanent residents and Afghans who had been at work with America and they have their paperworks, their IV packages in their hand, and they're just it's they're right.
They just want to get out of Afghanistan.
No one wants to stay here.
We all know what's going to happen next few days or next couple weeks after America leave Afghanistan.
So everyone is scared, even include as that we already moved to America.
But I have my family from both sides.
They are waiting for their to get approved.
They have all the packages ready.
Like my family, they're trying to go in there too because they know like uh our embassy, U.S. Embassy is not exist in Afghanistan anymore.
They have no idea where else they can go.
They have no idea where else they can go.
And they don't know the I went, I go I started the program today talking about the State Department, the U.S. Embassy sends out an alert.
Americans should consider traveling to Karzai International Airport.
You should enter the airport.
Your plan is to enter the airport at Camp Sullivan, and then from the airport south traffic circle, head east one kilometer and turn right on uh on to Camp Sullivan.
Please note the gates may change frequently, and we will provide updates as necessary.
The United States government cannot ensure safe passage to the Karzai International Airport.
For updates, follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Please check your spam folder for messages for emergencies called this number, and then it goes through the list of eligibility requirements.
As I said earlier in the program too today, the president and vice president, the only thing on their schedule today has to do with COVID.
Americans now are behind enemy lines.
Another email sent out by the State Department as it relates to you former U.S. contractor.
The Taliban is beating people on the way to the airport.
An Afghan, who is also a former State Department contractor, tells Fox News Taliban fighters have established checkpoints throughout the city and around the airport.
Some, he said, are beating people on the way to the airport.
We have video of the Taliban kicking a man in the face and another whipping people walking by working on in ingesting.
When the former contractor encountered a checkpoint, the Taliban guard let him go but warned him not to leave the country.
You can go.
Don't run away, he said.
This scene he described on uh uh at the airport from Monday.
Kids, women, babies, old women could barely walk.
They're a very bad situation.
I'm telling you, at the end I was thinking there was like 10,000 or more people that are running into the airport and the Taliban were beating people.
People were jumping from the fence and and over wires and walls.
And he says the Taliban are going through neighborhoods looking for those that work with the U.S. government.
And he says the Taliban are asking neighbors about him.
The same contractor said to Fox today, I was taking a video and I was close to the airport.
The Taliban saw me, took my mobile phone, and they beat me very, very badly.
Anyway, Sean Parnell is with us, retired Army infantry captain, candidate now for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, Dan Hoffman is with us, Fox News contributor.
He spent 30 years as a CIA operations officer.
Let me uh thank you both for being here.
Sean, it sounds to me, and I'm looking at the note that they're now sending out from the White House of the Taliban is guaranteed safe passage to Americans to the airport, even though they're telling Americans headed to the airport, we can't guarantee safe travel.
Uh, I'm not sure how to digest that if I happen to be there.
Yeah, you're exactly right, Sean.
Thanks for having me.
If you if you want to help save this country, go to Parnell for Senate.com.
But yeah, what concerns me, Sean, is that the White House and the Department of State speak of the Taliban as if they're a monolithic force.
They're not a monolithic force.
I mean, what we're facing over there is a diverse group of sort of global jihadist all-star team of the Taliban, Hikmatir, Hakani, Al Qaeda.
And so it it concerns me that it seems like every leader in this country uh in the executive branch is wholly disengaged.
Even Joe Biden, really, we've gotten what?
One statement, one 10-minute brief, no questions.
He's been on vacation for six days now, when there are upwards of 15,000 Americans trapped in Afghanistan, surrounded by the Taliban.
It's an absolute disaster.
And the fact that most of our of our politicians and many in the media are focused on the refugees, while that's an important question, how we handle our allies, of course it is, but we've got to get American citizens out of that country first, and it's going to be a Herculean task because I feel like people fundamentally.
But Sean, there's no other conclusion than what the Biden administration has said.
They have now said they are trusting the Taliban.
Just pause and focus on that for a second here.
Trusting the Taliban to ensure safe passage for thousands of Americans fleeing for their lives while simultaneously telling Americans that they can't guarantee safe passage to Karzai International Airport.
Now, explain that to me.
So my interpretation is we uh every American citizen there is at the complete mercy of the merciful and evil Taliban.
Now, maybe we will get every American home home, but it will have nothing to do with Joe Biden.
It will have to do with the what the compassion of the Taliban.
How in God's name did we ever allow this to happen?
That that's my whole point, Sean.
The Biden administration has been wholly disengaged.
There was not a plan for withdrawal.
And proof positive of that plan is if you were looking to get out of Afghanistan, and Joe Biden made it public that he indeed he was, then abandoning Bagram Air Force Base, I'm telling you right now, will go down as one of the worst strategic blunders.
American foreign policy disasters of this century would be studied in military academies of how not to conduct a responsible exfil.
There are only a few airstrips and uh places in Afghanistan where you can land plane.
Bagram is one, it's controlled by the Taliban.
Kandahar is another, it's controlled by the Taliban.
Kabul is in the mid the airport is in the middle of a city of 4.5 million people.
Evacuation from that city would be almost impossible.
And I suppose you could you could have a hasty landing strip in a province in Gamal, what many in Biden administration probably don't even know that possibility exists.
And that's my whole point.
The Biden administration has been wholly unprepared for for this disaster and the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe that will undoubtedly follow.
And I I think that we're just At the beginning of this, and that's the scary part.
That is the very scary part.
Dan Hoffman, 30 years CIA ops officer.
I've learned a lot from you over the years.
Is there any explanation for the level of intelligence failure here with Biden assuring the country that the Afghan army was one of the best trained, well equipped in the entire world is well equipped and as well trained as any army in the world, and that there are 300,000 plus, and they have an air force, and and on top of that, there's only 75,000 Taliban uh fighters.
Uh meanwhile, you know, last week we saw 60% of the country taken over by the Taliban, and they still did not have the urgency.
And Joe Biden sat there on vacation for four days and didn't lift a finger as we're watching the fall of Kabul.
Another thing he told us couldn't happen.
Uh and and right now, I would argue every American is at the mercy that is in Afghanistan is at the mercy of the Taliban.
How can this intelligence failure happen?
We keep reading that the Pentagon and the Intel community was warning Joe every step of the way.
Don't do this now.
It's not gonna work.
It'll be a disaster.
And he didn't listen.
Yeah, so Sean, you're right about calling it intelligence failure, but the failure didn't happen at the collection phase or the analytical phase.
The president, I'm quite sure, received all the analysis he needed uh from the intelligence community about the strength of the Taliban as well as the weaknesses of the Afghan army.
And remember that the Taliban was mounting about 120 attacks a day against the Afghan army just over the past few months.
And we've been training the Afghan Army for years.
We knew their strengths and weaknesses, we knew the Taliban strategy of taking over those border areas and uh and then pursuing uh attacks on the provincial capitals to make their run for Kabul, which they did.
We've been engaged with President Ghani for years.
We knew that he wasn't an effective leader, he wasn't even part of the post for the the post Doha Agreement deal.
There was going to be a new government of reconciliation in which he wouldn't be a part.
That's what General Kellogg told us this morning on Fox and Friends.
So we knew all this, and President Biden had uh made a decision, which he announced in his campaign to withdraw our troops.
The problem is that he withdrew our capacity, uh, the intelligence community footprint, eliminate removed our troops from Bagram Air Base.
We don't have the intelligence capability or the military to support uh the exfiltration of our people.
And and that should have happened in reverse.
We should have gotten our people out first and then thought about removing our uh our forces.
Um and we should have done all that after we had an intra-Afghan agreement.
We didn't get any of that either.
So this was um a horrific uh policy failure, which is going to cost us uh for years to come.
And just one last thing.
You know, the irony of irony is as we approach September 11.
Afghanistan is far more of a risk to us today than it ever has been.
And the Biden administration I know wanted to leave to focus on climate change and other things, but the terrorist threat that Al Qaeda will represent from Afghanistan and joined safe haven on Taliban territory, that's going to require more of our resources, more of our attention than I think we would have otherwise had to do vote to Afghanistan had we remained uh with a small stabilizing force of three thousand plus NATO forces and contractors to help keep the air support.
Maybe both of you are smarter than me.
And I know we just interviewed Bill O'Reilly in the last hour, and he thinks he has a plan.
I I just think it's all contingent on what the Taliban decides to do.
And and I see what the fact that we've frozen their money, is that going to stop them or influence them?
I don't think so.
Or or Joe Biden saying they're trusting the Taliban to ensure safe passage for Americans fleeing.
I don't have a whole lot of confidence in that.
Uh it seems to me, uh, Sean Parnell, and then I'll ask Dan Hoffman the same question.
Seems to me that the destiny of however many thousands of Americans remain in Afghanistan is completely out of our hands at this point.
Yeah, and first of all, Dan's exactly right on everything that he said.
Uh and it's not just as simple uh as sending in, you know, 2,000 troops.
Oh, now we have 5,000 troops, 7,000 troops.
The the problem is is we really no longer have an intelligence foothold in that country or a foothold beyond landing at the co at the Kabul uh at the airport in Kabul.
So 15,000 Americans, right?
This is the situation in Afghanistan, right now, at a minimum, 15,000 Americans.
We don't know where they are.
We have no planned exfil them.
And how we're going to find them, get to them, how those civilians are going to get to the airport.
I it's When I say it's going to be a Herculean task, it is because you're talking about Afghanistan.
You want to go back to a time where Jesus Christ walked the earth, add to AK 47 in the pickup truck.
That's Afghanistan.
There's no running water, hardly any electricity, barely any paved roads.
Americans could be anywhere.
It's not as simple as driving to a village to exfil people.
Sometimes you need rotary wing assets to get them.
It's just going to be a crisis that's going to last for the better part of a year.
And it and I'm so concerned.
And if the last week has been evidence of anything, is that the Biden administration, our commander in chief, is woefully underprepared for this task, and it worries me for the Americans and our allies who are on the ground in Afghanistan.
All right, I'm going to let you both go there.
Dan Hoffman, thank you.
Sean Pornell, thank you.
We'll continue to follow our story.
We'll play part of my interview with President Trump in the next uh half hour, and we'll get to your calls as well.
800 941 Sean is our number.
Uh quick break, right back.
We'll continue.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour.
800 941 Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
I I I'm not gonna play it the whole interview that I had with the president last night, President Trump.
We're leaving time in this segment for your calls in just a minute.
But I want to play parts of it because the the president, you know, describe the conversation and the warning and admonition.
And frankly, what sounds like a severe threat to destroy the Taliban if in fact they they ever pursued any geopolitical or geographical ambitions.
He went into that in detail.
I want to play a little bit of that.
And and how we can't always involve ourselves in long protracted wars.
Uh, but we there there is a way to safely exit, and this is not the plan that he had and the agreement that he had.
Um, and you know, we didn't lose one soldier last year, the last year and a half of his presidency in Afghanistan, not one.
Goes into that.
Uh he talks about the the border and how bad that is and how America needs a strong president.
He said, I never realized how important a strong president is.
It may not the way he said it was actually fascinating to me.
Um what an embarrassment what is happening and unfolding this is to this country.
And the world is watching.
And that, you know, he went into energy independence.
How do we lose our energy independent?
We're begging OPEC for oil.
And there's not a single thing that I can cite that Joe Biden has done successfully, not one.
Listen.
We had a great deal.
We worked on it very hard.
Mike Pompeo, a brilliant guy, and many others worked on it endlessly.
Uh, meetings with the Taliban.
Of course, you have to meet with the Taliban.
They're the ones that you're negotiating with.
I spoke on numerous occasions to the head of the Taliban, and we had uh very strong conversation.
I told him up front, I said, look, before we start, let me just tell you right now that if anything bad happens to Americans or anybody else, or if you ever come over to our land, we will hit you with a force that no country has ever been hit with before.
A force so great that you won't even believe it.
And your village, and we know where it is, and I named it, uh, will be the first one.
Mr. President, I want to interrupt.
You said this to who?
Yeah.
Who did you you said to who?
To Mullah Baradar, who is probably the top person.
Now, nobody really knows who the top person is, but I would say that's probably the top person, and it seems to be uh that's the way it's rolling right now.
But I had a very strong conversation.
I also had a good conversation with him.
We talked for a while after that.
That was the primary point I was making, and he understood it.
And I asked him, Do you understand?
He said, Yes, I do understand.
And I wanted them to get a deal done with uh uh the Afghan government.
I've listened to people in your show and other shows say we should stay.
They don't know.
We've we were spending 42 billion dollars a year.
42 billion.
Think of it.
42 billion.
I understand Russia spends 50 billion a year for their entire military.
We are spending 42 billion, not 1%.
They were saying 1%.
That's a lot of nonsense.
We're spending 42 billion dollars a year on defending this for years and years.
We've been there really now, not 20 years, but 21 and a half years.
And we get nothing out of any of these things that we do, whether it's them or many other countries I could tell you about.
I'm not going to insult anybody right now.
But to spend that kind of money and then to have people get on shows and say how inexpensive it was.
And I have to tell you also that we lost no soldiers in the last year and a half because of me and because of the understanding that we had.
We lost no think of that.
In Chicago and in New York and in other cities in the United States, many people die every weekend.
We lost no soldiers in Afghanistan because they knew I wasn't going to put up with it.
And that's what happened.
So we had a very strong conversation.
We would have hit them very hard.
Again, the words are conditions, plural, conditions based.
It was a an agreement where actually we wanted to get out by May 1st, and they violated the agreement.
So we didn't.
It's a great agreement from a lot of different standpoints.
And frankly, Biden didn't have to even go by that agreement.
He could have done.
Look what he's done to the border.
We had the greatest border, southern border, in the history of our country.
We stopped drugs, we stopped human trafficking, we stopped people from coming in, prisoners from coming in.
Now you'll have, I mean, you have the worst people in the world.
They're emptying their jails into our country.
This is like the southern border, but it's handled even worse.
Nobody handled the southern border worse than him.
We had the most secure border we've ever had, and now we have by far the worst border we've ever had.
Well, Afghanistan is the exact same thing.
And he only returned because he was getting terrible press.
Okay, he didn't return for any other reason.
And I don't even believe he's calling the shots.
Look, what you need more than anything is a is a president that's respected.
You need a president that got rid of ISIS.
We got 100% got rid of ISIS.
We did a job.
Uh Al Baghdadi, I won't even mention all of the things that we did.
Nobody's ever done what we've done.
We were respected all over the world.
China was paying us billions and billions of dollars of tariffs.
Companies were moving back into our country, and China respected us.
And frankly, they respected me.
But you look, Russia, I had the pipeline stopped, totally stopped.
Biden comes in, he approves that pipeline, but he disapproves the Keystone XL pipeline.
You need a president that's respected.
I've never realized how important, frankly, and it's a horrible thing to say, how important a president, the head of this country is.
I thought it would maybe run through bureaucracy.
It does it.
You need somebody up there that they're going to respect.
Just one thing, and I have to say, and this is different from everyone else.
I said, why are they fighting?
Why are these Afghan soldiers fighting against the Taliban?
And I was told some very bad information by a lot of different people.
The fact is they're among the highest paid soldiers in the world.
They were doing it for a paycheck because once we stopped, once we left, they stopped fighting.
So all of the people that talk about the bravery and everything, I say everybody's brave.
But the fact is our country was paying the Afghan soldiers a fortune.
So we were sort of bribing them to fight.
And that's not what it's all about.
It's a great thing that we're getting out, but nobody has ever handled a withdrawal worse than Joe Biden.
This is the greatest embarrassment, I believe, in the history of our country.
But gasoline, as you know, was a dollar eighty-seven when I was leaving office.
And now it's going to be up to over five dollars very soon.
And they're talking to OPEC.
I know the OPEC people very well.
You talk about negotiators, they're killing us.
And what you didn't say is that Biden failed with OPEC.
They told him no on the cutbacks.
They failed with OPEC.
To think that we're back to negotiating with OPEC, that's how we got into the Middle East years ago, because we needed we needed the energy, and we went into the Middle East and would protect countries because we needed the energy.
We didn't have to do that anymore.
We were energy independent, and now those wells are shut down and those jobs are gone, and Keystone is and its numbers 48,000 jobs, not 8,000 jobs.
Those people, and they lied in the campaign because Biden never talked about closing up Keystone.
He said, Oh, well, we'll look at it, we'll look at it.
They were lying because it was almost the first day that they closed up Keystone, and those workers are devastated.
And the head of the union, they all support me, but the head of the union supported Biden, and they ought to throw him the hell out because he was worthless because look what happened.
But they lied about so many things.
They lied about energy.
They lied about Keystone.
They lied about the military.
They lied about so much.
Our country is in such trouble.
But what's going on with Hunter and China and Russia and all of that.
I mean, they go after people for much for tiny little things, and here's somebody that took tr vast amounts of money out of China and out of Ukraine and out of Russia.
Three and a half million dollars from the mayor's wife and Chris Wallace wouldn't let me talk about that during a debate.
He wouldn't even let me bring it up.
Well, that has nothing to do.
I said it has a lot to do with it.
But it's a very sad period of time for our country.
Everything's going bad.
We have inflation, the economy's going to go to hell.
We have inflation like we haven't seen in a long time.
I think it's much worse if you look just at energy.
And when energy goes up, everything goes up because it's all about energy.
Everything goes up.
But you look at the price of food where it's being doubled and tripled in some cases.
We're gonna have inflation that's good.
And I remember with Jimmy Carter, and the good thing is for Jimmy is that Jimmy's looking like a much better president right now because you're comparing, you always have to have comparisons.
But I remember with Jimmy Carter with the big inflation, the prime rate went to 21%, 21%, and the country came to a halt, worse than a halt.
Well, I'll tell you, we have a we better get on, we better get Iraq together.
That's all I can say.
All right, that was President Trump from our interview with him last night on uh Hannity.
All right, as promised, we're gonna get right to our busy phones.
Anton is in Florida.
Anton, glad you called, sir.
Glad uh glad you're with us.
Hey, thank you so very much.
Um I just want to say um at the Navy, and I I did a tour out in Afghanistan for a year, and uh hearing the news of everything uh just being taken over.
Uh part of me just really wanted to yell and and and just really scream, and then there's another part of me that just really wants to cry uh thinking uh the guys who I lost while there and guys even afterwards due to suicide.
Um it frustrates me how short of a time frame it took for them to take back this country that we fought for over 20 years at.
Uh yeah.
Uh it's heartbreaking and it's so unnecessary.
Yeah, it sounds like you're you I can hear it in your voice.
You sound upset.
You should be.
Uh I mean I I I mean, uh every American now trapped inside a behind enemy lines in Afghanistan is at the mercy of the Taliban right now.
There's no other way to explain that, except uh one of the greatest failures of of our military and failure of leadership, and I don't even think that it's the military's failure as much as it is the commander-in-chief's failure.
I don't even think it's the intelligence failure.
I've been very critical of intelligence.
I don't think they failed here.
Marco Rubio was very clear.
He's on the Intel committee.
We we we we were we were screaming at them, both sides of the aisle.
This is gonna be a disaster.
Nobody listened.
And that's and unforgivable.
Not only that, I think I'm so frustrated to think that they left.
They were going to start leaving, having troops leave the country before they even started getting Americans out.
How do you do that?
President Trump said to me last night, when you think about it and you think deeply about it, it's like Pretty amazing.
How do you ever let the military military leaves last?
You get every American out first.
In Joe's case, the military left, and they had to send them back.
When Joe finally paid attention three days later, and they still didn't send enough people in.
Now they're telling people, well, try and make your way to Karzai International Airport, but we cannot guarantee your safe passage to the airport.
Now you're trapped inside Afghanistan, and that's what your government is telling you.
What are you thinking?
Just imagine put yourself in somebody else's shoes.
And you're reading your government is telling you we can't guarantee safe passage.
You should go to the airport.
Make your way to the airport.
You know, we hear the directions.
Check out Twitter and Facebook for updates.
And but we can't guarantee a safe passage.
How did we allow ourselves to be this vulnerable?
Because all of this was predicted.
And all of this was preventable.
All of it.
And now they're trusting the Taliban, they tell us to ensure the safe passage for Americans.
Okay.
Maybe, maybe in the end we luck out.
Maybe every American will get home safely.
That's my prayer.
And here's what I uh I find ridiculous as well that the you know Biden wants to blame uh Trump's uh move to uh Lego uh some troops out of Afghanistan and then blame that for the reason why this occurred.
We had the longest amount of peacetime while the last what year and a half, two years?
We didn't lose a single American.
And then and and the warning went out.
People were critical that Donald Trump talked to the Taliban.
I I have now been briefed by apparently there are a lot of people on that call, just like the Ukraine call.
Let's release that transcript.
I want to hear, I want to read the transcript.
Because I'm told by my sources that he warned them he would blow them into the dark ages if they dared step foot out of any area that they're not entitled to be in.
That's what I'm told happen.
And you know what the difference is between Biden and Trump?
Is they believe Trump.
They took his threats seriously.
We'll continue.
We'll continue.
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All right, Hannity, tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News Channel.
Uh, we have we have some personal stories.
I don't want to say much about it now that we'll be uh having on the program people that are trapped or have family members trapped inside of Afghanistan.
Uh shelter in place and check out our website, and we can't guarantee safe passage to the airport.
Okay, the great one, Mark Levin, Don Jr., Ron DeSantis, uh, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, Ronnie Jackson, Sarah Carter, and much more.
Nine Eastern on the Fox News channel.
I promise it's news you won't get from the mob.
Uh we'll see you tonight.
Pray for our fellow Americans trapped in Afghanistan behind enemy lines, and we'll be back here tomorrow.
Thank you for being with us.
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