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Aug. 20, 2021 - Sean Hannity Show
31:51
How Long Can The Media Protect Joe?

Hannity August 20th, Hour 1

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America held hostage.
Americans behind enemy lines, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Russia, China racing, hoping uh to exploit this any and every way they possibly can.
It shouldn't surprise anybody.
I'll get into this more deeply as the show unfolds.
There is something radically dramatically wrong with the president.
The incoherent interview with George Stephanopoulos leading to today's absolute lies are just breathtaking.
All of them.
And I'm going to go through it in great specificity in a second here.
The you know, no public appearances, staying on vacation.
The plan until I think like two or three hours ago was he was going to give these remarks and race back off to Delaware, uh, back on vacation, uh, but public pressure is now forcing him to sleep at the White House instead of sleeping at home in the comfy of his own little bed.
You know, I I know at one point I was, you know, we play all the Biden, you know, gaffs and missteps and flipping and flopping and playing and and and just confused and confounded and mumbling and bumbling and stumbling in coherence.
I mean, there's something wrong with him.
This is something America is going to have to deal with.
And even not that big a fan of National Review anymore.
Even they had a piece out today.
Something is wrong with the president.
On the menu today, the transcript of Joe Biden's interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos dropped, and the president's incoherence insistence that he was incorrectly briefed, denial that he was warned by his military advisors, an oddly low profile in the past week raises troubling questions about his ability to perform his duties.
What's going on with President Biden?
After making no public appearances for four days during a major foreign crisis, Biden read a 20-minute speech off teleprompter, took no questions, returned immediately to vacation at Camp David, held no events on his schedule on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, he gave another 20-minute speech about vaccine boosters off a teleprompter from Camp David, and again took no questions.
He took about five questions today.
We'll get to all of us in a second.
Also, on Wednesday, the president sat for the interview with Stephanopoulos.
It didn't go well.
Nope.
Even they acknowledge that Biden had had two phone conversations with foreign leaders in the past 10 days.
Very late in the game.
Boris Johnson and apparently now one with Angela Merkel.
No public events were scheduled for today, except they they're beginning to realize beginning to dawn on them how dire the situation is that they themselves created.
And let me point out before we get to the presser.
Um we have a read from the Wall Street Journal.
Uh, because in spite of what Joe's been saying, well, we didn't see this coming, and General Milley saying we have no idea, 11 days is all it's not about 11 days.
From the State Department, Wall Street Journal reporting about two dozen State Department officials serving at the embassy in Kabul.
Sent an internal memo to the Secretary of State Blinken and another top State Department official last month warning of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the deadline, which is now approaching.
Now, the report is damning evidence that things were dire.
But I hate to tell you, all the evidence was there for the world to see.
And that was the Taliban quickly consuming large portions, geographical portions of Afghanistan.
You didn't need the memo at that point that this was, but they had it five weeks ago.
And why there was not immediately an evacuation plan drawn up and executed is it makes this The the biggest preventable foreign policy disaster, unmitigated disaster in the history of this country.
The he is still out to lunch this man, which is even scarier.
Now, so the president comes up, I just met in this today, and he says we've met in the situation room, and you know, guy just want to give a brief update.
We have secured the airport.
Okay.
Americans might hear that and think, wow, that's really good.
Okay, we have security at the airport, which is not true, by the way.
There's not security at the airport.
As a matter of fact, reports today that tear gas were being fired into crowds at the airport, in the overcrowded airport for the lucky few that were managed to get through the numerous checkpoints around the perimeter.
You know, the president talks about, well, the 18,000 people uh evacuated, 13,000 people evacuated.
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post reporters all evacuated.
He claims reports, other reports claim otherwise, 5700 yesterday, but it we're looking at at least 15,000.
Keeps promising that those Afghanis, interpreters, others that were told and promised that if they assisted American troops on the ground, that they, if this moment ever came, would be protected and we would remove them and they would not end up being killed.
There's no way we're getting 60 to 75,000 of those people out of there because right now, as we speak, the situation on the ground is uh the reality, the truth-based reality is that the Taliban is going home by home, and they are looking for and they are brutally murdering any Afghani who helped any in any way the U.S. military or the forces that were in Afghanistan.
They're killing them now.
Then Joe goes on to talk about uh, you know, about Afghanistan, etc.
etc.
He doesn't know the exact number of Americans still trapped there.
Um the big problem with his his braggadocious we've secured the airport problem is you know, and it wasn't until the questioning and the last two questions of the five, I think that he took really address the problem, which is well, you don't control the perimeter and the checkpoints.
And then he gives this spectacular lie of an answer.
We we've had no reports whatsoever of anybody having any trouble getting to the airport.
That's Karzai International Airport.
That is just a lie.
We have videotape evidence to the contrary, we have people, eyewitness accounts to the contrary, and all the evidence you'd ever want to the contrary.
But this is what he said.
This is a big lie.
And what good is it if you control the airport, but you don't control the perimeter and checkpoints around the airport that are preventing Americans from getting to the airport.
And even yet again today, we've had another memo put out by our own State Department, and in the memo, it goes on to explain, yeah, we cannot guarantee your safety in getting to the airport.
We'd advise you to start considering trying to get to the airport.
We can't advise you, you will get to the airport.
The checkpoints keep changing at the airport, and we have offer no guarantees for your safety on the way to the airport.
But Joe Biden is seeing no evidence at all.
Is he reading his own State Department memos?
Listen.
The military has secured the airport, as you mentioned, but will you sign off on sending U.S. troops into Kabul to evacuate Americans who haven't been able to get to the airport safely.
We have no indication that they haven't been able to get in Kabul through the airport.
We've made an agreement with the with the Taliban thus far.
They've allowed them to go through.
It's in their interest in them to go through.
So we know of no circumstance where American citizens are carrying an American passport or trying to get through to the airport.
But we will do whatever needs to be done to see to it they get to the airport.
It's in their best interest.
Actually, Joe, no, it's really not.
If we're going to be really, really blunt here, you don't have a lot of options because they hold all the cards because you gave them all the leverage.
They have American lives, thousands of them.
That's their leverage.
So you can threaten them all you want, Joe, but it ain't gonna matter to them because we all know that terrorists don't really care about human life the way the American people do, and they'll have no trouble whatsoever murdering as they are murdering Afghanis on the streets now.
Let's go to the last two questions of this press conference.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I just want to follow up on something you said a moment ago.
You said that there's no no circumstances where American citizens cannot get to the airport.
That doesn't really square with the images we're seeing around the airport with the reporting on the ground from our colleagues who are describing chaos and violence.
Are you saying unequivocally that any American who wants to get to the airport is getting there and getting past the security barrier and to the planes where they want to go?
I thought the question was how can they get through to the airport outside the airport?
And the answer is to the best of our knowledge, the Taliban checkpoints they are letting through people showing American passports.
Now that's a different question when they get into the rush and crowd of all the folks just outside the wall near the airport.
That's why we had to, I guess yet was it yesterday or the day before, we went over the wall and brought in how many?
169.
169 Americans.
So it is a process to try to figure out how we how we uh deal with the mad rush of uh non-Americans, those who didn't help, those who were not on the priority list, just any Afghan, any Afghan to be able to get out of the country.
And so my guess is that no matter what, under what circumstances we anyone, there's not a whole lot of Afghanis, uh, there's a whole lot of Afghanis that just as soon come to America, whether there are any involvement with the United States in the past at all, rather than stay under Taliban rule or any rule.
So what I was saying is that we have an agreement that they will let pass through the checkpoints that they the Taliban control Americans through.
But given this, given the negotiations with the Taliban, the scenes that we're saying, can you just fully explain why uh the plan wasn't to go ahead with these evacuations of both Americans and allies before the drawdowns began, before Bagram was closed, looking back several months, because whether it was now or several months from now, there seems to be a broad consensus that the Taliban would make these gains and this would be needed at some point.
Well, yeah, at some point.
But the point was that although we were in contact with the Taliban and Doha for this whole period of time, that some point wasn't expected to be the total demise of the Afghan national force, which was 300 persons.
Let's assume the Afghan National Force had continued to fight and had and they were surrounding Kabul.
Very different story.
But the can overwhelming consensus was that they this was not going, they were not going to collapse.
The Afghan forces, they were not gonna leave.
They were not gonna just abandon and then put down their arms and take off.
So that's what's happened.
Biggest part of that lie is we saw the Taliban advancing rapidly.
We have the greatest intelligence capabilities in the world.
All you needed to do was just look at a map, even some news reports.
Because the broad consensus was everybody knew about the Taliban gains last week when they had 60% of the country.
Uh that that didn't alarm you to the to the severity of the situation or cause you to lift a finger, you know, for four days while you're hanging out at Camp David, but for a 10-minute speech written by somebody else telling us everything's okay at in this critical moment when you could have secured the perimeter.
We could have saved these lives and not not have these lives hanging on a thread in the whim of of terrorists, the Taliban.
And then this whole issue, well, even you got liberal news reporters saying, well, our reporting on the ground is nothing but chaos and violence at the checkpoints and around the perimeter and people being turned away.
Because that's that that is the reality on the ground.
And the State Department memo from today oh, latest security of Kabul uh airport is warning uh the airport gates may open or close without notice.
Advising Americans, use your best judgment as you try to get to the airport.
We will govern U.S. government provided flights departing Kabul will continue until the evacuation operation is complete.
U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and their spouses, unmarried children, should consider traveling to Hamed Karzai International Airport when you judge it safe to do so.
U.S. government cannot ensure safe passage to the airport.
We are processing people at multiple gates due to large crowd security concerns, gates may open and close without notice.
You can contact us, you know, on Twitter or Facebook.
That's today's notice, Joe.
You're contradicting your own State Department admonition to the people trapped behind enemy lines.
The ones that you could probably rightly as the Wall Street Journal refer to as U.S. hostages.
We'll continue.
We'll continue.
All right, as we roll along, 800 941 Sean, you want to be a part of this uh program.
The Fox News.com website has on it right now.
The Taliban is going house to house hanging people that they identify as having work with the U.S. An Afghan journalists attempted to flee the Taliban describing the efforts over the gunfire.
Play this tonight on TV.
It is chilling.
New York Post reporting Taliban fighters dressed as U.S. troops.
They've made propaganda videos.
Also a report today that they even have a black hawk United States military helicopter.
We have some exclusive video we'll share with you.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tonight.
You know, five questions is all Joe Biden has taken during this entire crisis.
Even the mob and the media can't take this guy much longer, so it appears.
And we'll give you the we'll give you the real take on what's going on there.
That, you know, just stay with us.
We've got a busy news day this Friday.
The new Sean Hannity Show.
Talking about what's right for America.
With a renewed commitment to keep you up to date on the breaking news stories.
25 till the top of the hour.
If you missed uh Joe's press conference, I mean, it's lying on a scale so spectacular it defies all re any connection to reality.
You know, even even the the five people that got to question Joe Biden, I think it was five, was it four, five, six, whatever it was.
Uh, well, what was that, Linda?
You could tell me.
What five?
Reporting, even our reporting on the ground shows nothing but chaos and violence.
Um, there was broad consensus early on that all of this was happening.
You know, it is Biden has pretty much been in hiding the entire time with you know, on vacation, staying on vacation the entire time.
And yet we now know, and I'll give you more details about how he was warned in pretty dramatic fashion.
And his top officials were warned, and yet they said, Well, we didn't know in 11 days this could all happen.
None of what he said today is true.
Because the Taliban had been taking city after city after city before seizing the Capitol, and five weeks ago, two dozen officials, diplomats on the ground sent a scathing warning Admonition memo to his Secretary of State, telling them how dire this situation was becoming and how quickly the Taliban was advancing.
And then Joe, the week before was telling us, oh, well, this is one of the best trained militaries on the face of the earth.
And the situation on the ground was showing us just the opposite.
Basically offering zero resistance.
The president, you know, he so I've talked to world leaders.
Okay, you did.
You talked to two world leaders, Boris Johnson, but you it took him 36 hours to return Johnson's call.
And Angela Merkel.
And then up until today didn't take a single question on any of this.
The interviews when he remembered let's go back to the interview with George Stephanopoulos.
The Pentagon, by the way, admits that they still don't know how many Americans are in Afghanistan.
The guess is around 15,000, and they have no means or ability to help Americans get to the airport.
Now the president made a big deal.
We have secured the airport.
It's meaningless when the Taliban secures the perimeter of the airport with all of their checkpoints.
And all the reporting on the ground from the mainstream media is saying that there's nothing but violence and chaos and people being turned away left and right.
So there aren't a lot of good options here when, you know, we have control of an airport, but we don't have control of getting Americans in any way to the airport, as confirmed by today's memo from the State Department to people in Afghanistan, which I read in the last half hour, which says that, yeah, warning the airport gates may open or close without notice.
Yeah, use your best judgment.
We you might want to start making your way to the airport, but just so you know we cannot ensure your safe passage to the airport.
Well, that gives me a lot of confidence if I'm in the middle of this Adam Schiff show.
Really does.
Then meanwhile, so this is what the Pentagon is saying.
It's a debacle.
It's worse than a debacle.
It's a dereliction of duty.
It shows a man that is not capable of doing his job with a team incapable of doing their jobs.
We don't have the ability.
We saw all of this coming.
They didn't lift a finger.
Our pet, nobody can help.
That's what the Americans are told, nobody can help.
It was so painful.
I thought the I thought the Stephanopoulos interview was bad.
Today was worse.
Biden, you know, misled the public in the interview when he stated intelligence reports said the Taliban were unlikely to take over the country.
Yeah, but before the end of the year.
That's what they were telling us just last week.
The old assessment from the diplomats on the ground was, yeah, they'd be there by the end of August.
That's how bad it was getting.
And why no mobilization, logistical ops, you know, were immediately deployed.
Nobody has an answer to because there is no answer.
There's no good answer.
He asks Stephanopoulos.
I even bet he's saying, My God, I'll take Donald Trump over this cognitive mess any day right now.
Because they wouldn't pull this crap with Trump.
Because Trump would have obliterated them when they moved five feet out of whatever area that they had there was part of the agreement.
Wouldn't have happened.
He would have acted swiftly and with mighty overwhelming force.
We've lost two wars in recently.
We lost, we certainly lost the war in Vietnam.
And Joe Biden lost this war.
There was a way to secure the peace and you know, a plan to exit, so we don't, we're not involved in these never-ending wars.
Has to happen.
We we can't be the world's police force.
I completely agree with that.
But there's a way to draw them down.
And the way Trump did it was before they even negotiated a thing, said I will I will blow you into oblivion and another century if you don't abide by any agreement we might come to.
That was at the beginning of their negotiations, as confirmed by Mike Pompeo and confirmed by the likes of uh Mark Meadows and even the president, pretty much in the interview that I had with him this week.
Asked about the intelligence assessment, you know, about the Afghani government would likely collapse.
That's not true.
That was a lie, too.
Whether this is an intelligence failure, planning, execution, bad judgment.
No, the the entire world's, you know, the world's watching, and you know, he's even suggesting in this interview that no, well, I have not heard of any ally, no questions of our credibility around the world.
Everybody's been questioning his credibility.
What the hell is he talking about?
No independent, no indication whatsoever that people are having a hard time getting to the airport.
Just watch the news.
What's liberal news they are even reporting it?
They can't protect him on this disaster of his own making.
Because that's exactly what this is.
Incoherent, full of lies.
I mean, it is it's mind-numbing to think that this could happen, that this would ever unfold this way with American lives on the line in Afghanistan, behind enemy lines, ostensibly hostages.
And you know, with now, if there are military ops efforts possible, I'm I'm impressed that the British did it, send in paratroopers, and they even help save Americans.
At this late hour, every second we wait, it gets more difficult as they gain more control.
As what they go door to door.
You know, it was funny.
Mark Noller of uh CBS.
This was Biden's what, ninth news, uh, ninth news interview the other day.
He's only did a couple of press conferences with Stephanopoulos.
Mark Noller goes, at this point in the presidency of Donald Trump, he'd given 50.
I don't think Donald Trump would have been silent to the American people, nor do I think he would have allowed it to get to this point, which is the point.
Biden is just out to lunch.
He's been barely been there since the seas, the Taliban seizing all of this territory within Afghanistan and their march to Kabul.
Days of silence on vacation at Camp David.
He interrupts, gives a 10-minute speech, and heads on home.
What is he doing amid this chaos?
Biden's claim that he wasn't warned about Kabul's fall being imminent.
That is an absolute lie.
As the Wall Street Journal points out.
U.S. diplomats in Kabul wrote the memo last month warning the Secretary of State and others of the government of Afghanistan's quick collapse pending that it could collapse quickly, contradicting Biden's lie that the U.S. government was surprised by the Swift Taliban takeover.
Two dozen, nearly two dozen diplomats signed this July 13th memo.
That's that's five weeks ago.
Five weeks ago, we could have immediately mobilized, set up every logistic necessary, identified every American and gotten them the hell out of there.
Twenty-three embassy staffers submitted it through the State Department's dissent channel, a rarely utilized form through which foreign service officers are able to raise internal concerns about U.S. policy.
One day after the memo was submitted, the Biden administration launched Operation Allies Refuge to orchestrate the departure of Afghan citizens who assisted, but the evacuation floor rights did not accelerate only until the Taliban had already seized most major Afghan cities and were right outside the door of Kabul.
White House claims that Biden is suddenly laser focused.
Up until a few hours ago, he was he was going to Delaware for the weekend.
Laser focused on getting Americans who want to leave Afghanistan out of the country.
That was also part of the big lie today.
Any American that wants to come home, we will get you home.
But I can't promise the outcome.
That instills a lot of confidence in me if I'm over there.
You know, the seriousness of this hostage crisis, because they're ostensibly hostages.
They're they're there at the whim of the Taliban.
The Taliban will decide whether they get to the airport or not.
Not America.
We've given up being the masters of their destiny.
That is extraordinarily.
That is an extraordinarily.
Just what a dereliction of duty.
we've evacuated some people.
Anyone that gets home, it's a miracle at this point.
Australians fleeing Kabul, met with Taliban gunfire and smoke bombs.
Oh, more reporting on the ground, Joe, about people trying to get to the airport.
Harold, you're not reading any newspapers.
Why did you ignore Boris Johnson's repeated calls to you and wait 36 hours?
Tried to reach Biden Monday morning.
Wasn't able to get him on the phone until 10 p.m.
Tuesday, 5 p.m.
Washington time.
According to the Daily Telegraph.
Why would you wait 36 hours?
Biden administration urging trapped Americans to get to the airport.
But we can't guarantee your safety in doing so.
And from the Wall Street Journal, military personnel fired tear gas to control the crowds of Afghans trying to gain access to Kabul Airport Friday, a day after the Pentagon said that order was being restored at the site and evacuation flights would be accelerating.
Soldiers have also fired into the air to disperse crowds, according to senior Western officials.
It is unclear whether the soldiers were American, Afghan, British, and other Western troops also stationed at the airport.
No immediate comment from the U.S. military.
Soldiers are also going outside the airport perimeter, which is surrounded by Taliban fighters to disperse crowds and clear the way for families struggling to get in.
They're trying.
They're risking their lives.
They're trying.
But there's only six thousand of them, not exactly the number I would want if I was president.
They said Biden administration now is is saying that they will need to get permission.
From the Taliban to evacuate Americans after August 31st.
The Pentagon conceded that yesterday.
That it would require additional conversations with the Taliban.
Taliban, though, according to Joe, is assured safe passage to the airport, which nobody is reporting that's on the ground from any news organization anywhere in this country, which ought to tell you a lot.
So we're going to need tacit approval from the Pentagon.
Those aren't my words.
John Kirby, Pentagon spokesman.
There has been no decision to change the deadline and indicated that an extension of the timetable for evacuations would need tacit approval from the Taliban in the form of a new agreement between U.S. officials and commanders of the militant group.
Until then, we're focused on doing everything we can inside that deadline and move as many people out as possible.
Kirby tells reporters.
Just the fundamental fact of reality of where we are with that communications and a certain measure of agreement with the Taliban on what we're trying to accomplish has to has to continue to occur.
So we're counting on the good graces of a terrorist organization.
Do you ever think you'd hear this type of reporting?
It sounds like we're I'm reading from a novel, these reports.
Biden administration won't let U.S. military leave the Kabul airport while the Brits and the French conduct rescue operations.
So they're the French are doing it too.
France reports that the French military, they've conducted similar operations as the Brits.
And the Brits sent in 200 British nationals.
They've been able to retrieve 200 British nationals by paratroopers flying right into the war zone, right into Kabul, and then they're asked escorting them straight to the airport.
France is reporting their military has been conducting similar operations since Monday.
That's President McCron thanking French security forces for uh executing a sensitive operation, evacuating more than 200 French and Afghans.
I don't see the we have we have the best military on the face of the earth.
Sorry, it's not Great Britain and it's not France.
It's us.
We haven't done a thing.
Joe's been asleep at the wheel.
We haven't seen much of him.
It's, you know, Lindsey Graham.
Biden needs to be impeached if every American isn't rescued.
It's not in his control anymore.
I hate to.
I don't even want to get too specific.
Well, this is a very intelligent audience we have on this show, and you know what I know that is capable of happening here.
Americans are now behind enemy lines.
And we have we don't know who they are, we don't know how many, we don't know where everyone is.
So you tell me who's in control.
And you tell me what great military plan that would be that successful.
Because I can't think of one.
Nor can any of the people that I talk to.
We'll continue.
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