Aug. 24, 2021 - Sean Hannity Show
15:10
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| This is an iHeart podcast. | |
| All right. | |
| Hour two, Sean Hannity show toll free. | |
| It's 800-941-SEAN. | |
| If you want to be a part of the program, it is inexplicable why Biden is being bullied by the Taliban and agreeing to stick to this August 31st deadline. | |
| Even we have what? | |
| Even Democrats now saying that it's going to be impossible to keep that deadline and get everybody out of there. | |
| It makes no sense. | |
| The Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, announcing that only several thousand Americans have been evacuated since August the 14th. | |
| It's just a horrendous situation the president has got us into. | |
| Even his own, you know, even former Homeland Security Secretary Jay Johnson said that this is going to get a whole lot worse while Prime Minister, the Prime Minister of Singapore is lecturing Kamala Harris about this blunder and how it's damaged America's credibility worldwide. | |
| And even teams that are of people, Americans, that are trying to orchestrate private evacuations say Biden is actually hurting their efforts. | |
| It doesn't get any worse than this. | |
| Many U.S. senators are trying to do everything they can do to help people in their district or just Americans that they know are in trouble or the death sentence that would await Afghans that we promised if this day ever came, we would get them out knowing that they will be killed. | |
| It's a death sentence if they stay behind. | |
| That's seven days left. | |
| And Joe Biden shows no indication of the urgency that is needed to get every single person out of there. | |
| Senator Cotton has called for a military rescue of trapped Americans. | |
| If Biden's going to stick to this deadline and be bullied by the Taliban, at least we ought to have tens of thousands of troops evacuating the people all over Afghanistan and make sure they get safe passage to the airport. | |
| Because even our own State Department, they keep sending out memos. | |
| You might want to consider making your way to the airport. | |
| We can't guarantee your safety. | |
| You better not go today, Saturday. | |
| It's a bad day. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Oh, and all the checkpoints are changing and the entry points are changing by the minute. | |
| Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. | |
| I mean, you can't write a novel this insane. | |
| I know one person whose family went on Fox and Friends and his entire family trapped behind enemy lines. | |
| Senator Tom Cotton was instrumental in getting him out. | |
| His name is Haroon. | |
| He was on with us last night on Hannity. | |
| Listen to what he said. | |
| Haroon, when we talked to you last week and you told us the harrowing story about how you had gone to the airport twice and there were just thousands of people, you were reluctant to show your American passport because you were worried that the Taliban would see that and then follow you to your parents' home and kill your whole family. | |
| Tell us about the day you finally made it through the checkpoints and got to the planes. | |
| Eventually I had to do that. | |
| Even my parents, as you just mentioned, they have to show the Taliban all the paperworks that he had in his hand. | |
| Otherwise they will ask him where you're going and stuff like that. | |
| Even myself, I did show them my passport, to be honest, that I am an American. | |
| I want to go inside. | |
| So the last day, Mr. Tom Cotton, he tried his best. | |
| And his people, Zach Welley and other people, I forgot their names. | |
| And I know the other one, Safir Raufi, and those guys, they did their best to help me get out. | |
| And they gave me a ride from home to the gate and from the gate. | |
| Somehow they had connections without going through that crowd. | |
| They put me all the way in the front and I got a chance to talk to one of the Americans so that I show my passport and they got my kids from over the fence and then I went behind the wall. | |
| They gave me a letter to get in. | |
| So this is how I got in the last time when Mr. Cotton Zach Welley and Rofi Safirauf, I think. | |
| Those people helped me to get in there. | |
| Okay, that was Haroon. | |
| Senator Tom Cotton has called for the military rescue. | |
| Senator, first great job on helping Haroon and his family. | |
| I know you've helped others as well. | |
| Thank you for all you're doing. | |
| The idea that the Taliban is going to bully the United States of America into this artificial deadline, which could result in Americans left behind, certainly Afghanis that helped us. | |
| Not that we necessarily have to take them to America. | |
| I mean, I think anybody that comes has to be vetted completely before they're let free in this country in any way, even considered. | |
| But we did promise them safe passage the hell out of there because pretty much if we leave them there, they will die. | |
| Because now apparently the Taliban has all the information on anybody who might have helped us over the last 20 years. | |
| Welcome back, Senator. | |
| Hey, Sean. | |
| It's good to be back on with you. | |
| We're pleased to help Haroon and his family. | |
| But unfortunately, there are thousands of others like Haroon, both American citizens and those Afghans who risked their lives to support American troops over the last 20 years. | |
| And as you said, President Biden has this arbitrary deadline of just a week from today to be out of the airport. | |
| Obviously, that means that evacuation flights have to stop in just a few days because we still have to get troops we have on the ground safely out of the country if he tries to do that by August 31. | |
| That's why even people with whom we normally don't agree, like Adam Schiff, have said that Joe Biden needs to reverse course and make a commitment, as I've said for days now, to stay at that airport and secure it for as long as it takes to get out every American citizen. | |
| And furthermore, Sean, we do need to start entering into the city to identify, collect, and return with Americans to the airport. | |
| I mean, the French, the British, even the Dutch militaries are doing this now, Sean. | |
| If the Dutch military, for goodness sake, can protect its citizens and bring them back to the airport, then surely the American military can. | |
| The only thing we're straining. | |
| It takes my breath away, Senator. | |
| I mean, I cannot believe it. | |
| What you're saying takes my breath away. | |
| Sean, imagine being one of those young Marines or young soldiers standing at a gate at the airport in Kabul, and you can see hundreds, if not thousands, of people in front of you, and you know that some of them are American citizens. | |
| You know that some of them have a valid visa and have been thoroughly vetted, so they're not a security threat to us. | |
| And Taliban goons are obstructing their progress towards the gate. | |
| In many cases, Taliban goons are beating them with sticks or pipes or chains. | |
| And your rules of engagement say that you cannot go out to protect your country, man. | |
| You cannot go out and protect those who served alongside you and your battle buddies, that you just have to stand there at the gate. | |
| Meanwhile, the Dutch are just rolling out freely to go pick up their citizens. | |
| This has to change. | |
| We have to make a commitment to stay at the Kabul airport until we get all of our people out. | |
| And, you know, it was pretty shameful the other day when the Secretary of State kind of shrugged his shoulders and said, well, the Taliban is in control of Kabul. | |
| Well, guess what? | |
| They may be in control of Kabul, but only until the American president says, now we're in control of Kabul. | |
| That's all it would take. | |
| Our military is more than capable of conducting this evacuation mission if their commander-in-chief didn't tie one hand behind their back. | |
| So I'm not sure why do you think it was? | |
| What is the thinking in Biden's brain to go along with this artificial deadline? | |
| Clearly, I guess the Taliban threat got to him because they said absolutely, it's absolutely not even under consideration extending the deadline. | |
| And Adam Schiff is even acknowledging the odds of us getting just every American out of there, never mind those that supported us that will die if we leave them there, That this is probably not going to happen. | |
| Is Joe Biden saying he's going to leave Americans behind? | |
| I don't see how you can interpret it in any other way, Sean. | |
| I mean, to this day, just in the last few hours, my office has continued to receive phone calls and emails from American citizens who are tracked behind Taliban checkpoints who can't get to the airport. | |
| And Joe Biden announced a month ago that we would have our troops out by August 31st. | |
| He is stubbornly clinging to that deadline. | |
| And I do believe that he is now fearful and timid towards the Taliban because they are threatening to take military action against our troops if we stay at the airport beyond August 31st. | |
| President Biden should make it clear to the Taliban that we'll stay as long as it takes to get every American out. | |
| And any Taliban soldier who interferes with that evacuation or who attacks an American soldier or an American citizen will be killed on site. | |
| You know, we have to, this didn't just unfold overnight. | |
| I mean, the Taliban have been on the march now for a couple of months. | |
| We watched them take over 10% of the country, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%. | |
| You know, was the intelligence that wrong? | |
| Were they not paying attention? | |
| How did they get caught flat-footed? | |
| You know, how did we end up giving billions of dollars, including Blackhawk helicopters, to the enemy? | |
| So now they're armed to the teeth with our weaponry that we paid for because they didn't think ahead of time to either return it to the U.S. or at least destroy it. | |
| That same goes for computers that identify every Afghan that might have supported us the last 20 years. | |
| That's their death sentence signed by Joe Biden, United States president. | |
| It's a disgraceful fiasco. | |
| And Sean, you're right. | |
| It's all under the order and execution of Joe Biden and the way he implemented this withdrawal. | |
| Again, reasonable people can disagree, Sean, about the decision to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan. | |
| No one can believe that this was the right way to do it. | |
| And Joe Biden's decisions actually contributed to the collapse of the Afghan army. | |
| You know, we trained the Afghan Army for several years to fight the way Americans do with close air support. | |
| And they were flying their own aircraft. | |
| They had their own pilots. | |
| What they didn't have were the refuelers and the maintainers to help upkeep all those aircraft. | |
| And when Biden announced we were pulling out, he pulled out all those Western contractors as well. | |
| So we basically grounded the Afghan Air Force overnight. | |
| And therefore, they weren't able to fight the way we trained them to fight. | |
| Furthermore, when Joe Biden announced that we were taking all of our troops down, I think it had a huge psychological effect on those Afghan troops to realize that they weren't going to have that small contingent of Americans in the pitch if they needed them, or just to provide basic logistical support, Sean. | |
| You know, we have been processing the payment systems for individual soldiers in Afghanistan for a long time. | |
| I bet a lot of them wondered, you know, am I going to get paid next month whenever I'm out there fighting the Taliban in defense of my country? | |
| So it's President Biden's execution of his decision to withdraw that directly contributed to the collapse of the Afghan army. | |
| Now, Grant, I mean, they have their problems, to be sure, but Joe Biden set them up for failure from the way he executed this decision. | |
| That's not what he was telling us but a few short weeks ago. | |
| You know, in this constant blaming of the Trump plan, well, the Trump plan, number one, was built around outside. | |
| And I know this is hard for people to believe, but they actually have what is known as fighting season in Afghanistan. | |
| And it was before the fighting season. | |
| It was always based on conditions on the ground. | |
| It always included keeping total, complete control of Begram Air Force Base. | |
| And also, it was the threat of obliteration if you dared before they even discussed having an agreement with the Taliban. | |
| It was made clear. | |
| And it's been confirmed to me by former President Trump, Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, former Mark Meadows, the chief of staff of the president. | |
| I mean, they all confirmed in this meeting, Trump said, I will obliterate you if we make a deal and you don't abide by every comma and every period. | |
| And if one single American gets threatened or hurt, before any discussion ever began, Donald Trump laid that out. | |
| That didn't happen here because they've been on the march now for months. | |
| Yeah, and Sean, it's a total farce for Joe Biden to claim that somehow his hands were tied because of Donald Trump's policies. | |
| Well, if only his hands were tied with, say, Donald Trump's border policies, we wouldn't have the fiasco we have at the border. | |
| It's just one specific area where Joe Biden has made such a disastrous calculation. | |
| And we wouldn't be begging OPEC either for oil. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| Exactly. | |
| But this one area, which has become a total, total catastrophe, Joe Biden is trying to blame Donald Trump. | |
| Look, it was not Donald Trump's fault. | |
| It's not the military's fault. | |
| It's not primarily the fault of anyone else in our government, whether it's the military or the intelligence community for not fully assessing the situation. | |
| It is President Joe Biden's fault. | |
| The buck stops with him, as he said last week, but then as he immediately began to pass to everyone and anyone he could find. | |
| Why is Joe Biden allowing the French, Great Britain, and even the Dutch to get people out? | |
| And he's not made any moves outside of the perimeter at Karzai International Airport into Kabul, which we know from the Secretary of State Tony Blinken this weekend is in full control of Kabul to get into Kabul and escort American citizens and others to the airport. | |
| Why have we not done that? | |
| And how many days do we really have left to accomplish that, considering Joe has agreed to the deadline yet again today? | |
| Yeah, Sean, it's mystifying to me why we haven't been going on on patrols for a week to pick up Americans. | |
| We know where they are. | |
| My office has the exact grid coordinates for where they are, while these other countries are going to collect up their citizens. | |
| I mean, I can only speculate. | |
| And what are these people telling you as they make their attempts to the airport? | |
| What's happening to them? | |
| You know, they go there. | |
| In some cases, they go and they just stand in the long line and they can't get in. | |
| So they go home after hours and hours in the hot sun and running out of water and food. | |
| Some cases, they get assaulted by Taliban thugs. | |
| In some cases, they've had their passports or their visa paperwork stolen. | |
| Now, in many other cases, we fortunately been able to talk them in through some of our friends who are at the airport and who are cooperating with my aides and get them to the right gates at the right time and get them on the inside. | |
| But there are many people who are still on the outside trying to get in. | |
| Again, these are not just random Afghans who are fleeing a brutal, repressive government. | |
| They are American citizens, I mean, who are holding American passports. | |
| And the fact that President Biden executed this withdrawal in a way that left tens of thousands or 10,000 or more of them stranded is grossly reckless. | |
| And it is a complete abdication of his duty to say that we might leave before we get every American out. | |
| Unbelievable. | |
| Well, thank you for all you're doing. | |
| I'm very afraid for our fellow Americans right now behind enemy lines, ostensibly hostage to the whims of a terrorist organization. | |
| How this has ever happened, it's unimaginable to me. | |
| We hope you keep working hard to get these people home, Senator. | |
| Keep us updated. | |
| We appreciate it. | |
| Thank you, Sean. | |
| We will. |
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