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Aug. 15, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
33:06
Afghanistan 1 Year Later - August 15th, Hour 3
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If you want to be a part of the program now, we've been counting down uh all the days since Joe Biden uh abandoned our fellow Americans behind enemy lines.
That was only about a month or two ago uh that in fact his his own Secretary of State Winkin Blinken admitted that yeah, we we still have hundreds of Americans behind enemy lines that want to get out.
But it's the opposite of what Joe Biden was telling us at the time.
Then we have thousands of people that have green cards eligible to live in the U.S., they can't get out either.
And add to that, of course, uh our Afghan allies, many that have already been killed, because they were lists left behind, sadly.
Uh many that have uh uh never been seen or heard from again, so you can pretty much assume what happened to them.
Never mind the the tens of billions of dollars in the most sophisticated military weaponry on the face of this earth.
But in the run-up to this, you know, Joe Biden was telling us that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is is not inevitable, and then saying that we're gonna get all Americans out of Afghanistan.
That's what he promised.
There's gonna be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the of the United States from Afghanistan.
Are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American who wants to be out is out?
Yes.
So Americans should understand the troops might have to be there beyond August 31st.
No, Americans don't understand that we're gonna try to get it done before August 31st.
But if we don't, the troops will be.
If we don't, we'll determine at the time who's left.
And if you're American force, if there's American citizens left, we're gonna stay till we get them all out.
Uh Congressman Mike uh Waltz is with us, by the way, Florida Sixth District, former um Army Green Beret uh serving in Congress.
Uh he also wrote a children's book, Dawn of the Brave, talks about the one-year anniversary of leaving Afghanistan, the loss of thirteen lives.
Nobody ever mentions it.
We mention it every day, either on radio or TV or both.
And everybody is just turned the page.
Nobody seems to care.
We have our fellow Americans held hostage there, and nobody seems to care at all.
Why?
Well, Sean, I'll get into that in a second, but I'll tell you who does care uh are the the veterans groups like uh Dynamo, Task Force Pineapple, Afghan Evax, so many others that stood up, grassroots efforts, many of them exhausted their personal savings, many of them left their job uh to do what we all swore to do, which was never leave a comrade behind, never leave a fellow American uh or an ally on the battlefield.
They're still at it.
Sean.
They haven't let go, they're not going to let go, but I have never talked to a Group so disgusted with their own government as the uh as the State Department fiddle farts around uh and as DOD and the generals just basically hold up their hands uh and do nothing.
So you're absolutely right in your lead in.
I I had a meeting with uh uh Anthony Blinken.
Uh he admitted that, yeah, he and in the president said around a hundred.
Um I call that a bold faced lie.
They've now are saying no, it's more like eight times that, around 800 Americans that they've since pulled out, and there's still Americans uh behind enemy lines, many of them uh can't leave because some of their family members can't leave, and they don't want to leave them in the in the Taliban's hands.
You don't get to then classify them as not wanting to leave, as you heard Blinken and the and the president do.
Um Sean, if I could just speak to one other piece.
You know, you're hearing the left this week keep pointing the finger at Trump as they love to do.
Oh, Trump cut this deal, Trump cut the Doha Agreement that led to all of this.
Uh look, there are many of us who never thought the Taliban would live up to their end of the bargain.
They didn't.
They never entered into ceasefire, they never entered into real negotiations.
We now see that they never backed away from uh from Al Qaeda.
But when President Trump was presented with those facts, guess what?
He left the troops to keep supporting the Afghan troops.
And the other thing is, you know, Biden had no problem, zero, none at all, with tearing up the Keystone Pipeline, tearing up uh the maximum pressure campaign with uh Iran or backing away from all of these other Trump policies, but yet suddenly he was stuck with this one.
Uh that that's just a bunch of garbage.
And uh and I'm I'm sick of hearing about it.
Well, I mean, I don't I don't think there's anything left to do.
So I do know the backstory is as President Trump talked about getting out of these, you know, never-ending ending conflicts with Afghanistan.
There were a couple of things that he said to me in interviews and and others have confirmed for me, is number one, Bagram Air Base would have been ours.
He would have held on to it.
And that would have been so from a geopolitical standpoint, especially with the hostilities of China, it would have been critical for us to keep control of that, considering we bought it and we paid for it, we built it, putting and and putting all of that aside.
But in the early conversations with the leader of the Taliban, uh Trump relayed a story to me that in fact he's before they would ever talk about any deal or any pull-out of any kind, um, and there were 18 months where not a single American, the last 18 months Donald Trump was president, there wasn't a single American killed.
And he said to the head of the Taliban, before we talk about anything, you don't you got you need to understand something.
That if you don't follow every dotted eye, cross T, every comma, every period, I will obliterate you.
And he said it, according to other sources, repeatedly throughout the whole process.
Now, interestingly, um that kept the Taliban in check.
They believed Donald Trump when he said it.
They had every reason to believe it because he had beaten the caliphate and Solomon and Baghdadian associates and the Al-Qaeda leader in Yemen.
Now we know I'm happy that we got Iwan al-Zawari, but you know what?
We he they got him in Afghanistan because Afghanistan is once again a safe haven for terrorists.
So the point was is they didn't dare move an inch.
And then at one point in the conversation, Donald Trump gave him the exact address where he was at the time of the phone call to let him know I'll take your ass out.
Did you hear that story?
Yeah, oh absolutely told it to me as well, right?
He said, I I told him I know where you live.
Uh and it it looked the Taliban understand, I've sat across from these bastards uh multiple tours.
They understand strength, uh, they are emboldened by weakness.
But uh uh I want to uh go to your point on Bagra.
Uh I wrote an op-ed, you know, as soon as Biden made this announcement, I wrote op at Fox.com, do not give up Bagra.
Not just because it would serve as a counterterrorism platform, but also because it had a prison there full of the worst of the worst of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, not just Taliban, ISIS Al-Qaeda International Terrorist.
And guess what?
We gave it up.
And two weeks later, a release, a prisoner that the Taliban released was the ISIS suicide bomber that killed our 13 uh brave Marines, soldiers, and sailors.
Uh there needs to be accountability for that decision.
And then the final piece on Bagram, as you mentioned, geostrategically, it's the only base in the world sandwiched between Iran, Russia, and China.
Sean, it's so close to the Chinese border that can you know it's closer to the Chinese border than Mexico City is to the Texas border.
Do you think if the Chinese had a twelve thousand foot strategic runway in Mexico that they had bought and paid for, they would just give it up for nothing?
Of course they wouldn't.
But we did.
And the final thing, we talk a lot about strategic rare earth minerals, uh, the things that we need for computer chips to make our economy go.
Afghanistan was sitting on over a trillion dollars, verified by the US Geological Survey.
Uh, and guess who's sitting at Bagram now?
A Chinese geological survey team set to exploit all of that.
So this was just the biggest strategic blunder uh in in modern history, and yet you've got the commander in chief, Joe Biden standing before the world saying this was uh a quote, extraordinary success.
It's a slap in the face to everyone left behind, and it's a slap in the face to every veteran who sacrificed so much that knows better.
You know, I mean, I think that that gets to the heart of it all.
I mean, what what a sad state of affairs that this is now America?
If do you remember when the Iranians were holding Americans 444 days?
This I'm Ted Cabo, this is nightline.
You know, so Americans cared when Americans were taken hostage.
Nobody has ever held Joe accountable for this mess, this disaster.
And the difference between his plan and Trump's plan was Trump was saying to them, if you dare move before we pull out completely, then you're gonna be obliterated.
And he would have obliterated him because that was his MO.
And in this case, you know, look what happened.
Well, and get this, Sean, and uh I don't think this gets enough attention.
There is an American Navy veteran by the name of Mark Freericks that the Taliban have been holding for years.
Uh and you would have thought with uh Biden unleashing billions of uh foreign currency reserves to the Taliban, hundreds of million in humanitarian aid, you would have thought we could get one American hostage back that that they they have been sitting on and refuse to give.
These guys can't negotiate their way out of a paper bag, but that's what happens when it's just concession after concession uh after concession and an appeasement policy, and why you're seeing so many of our adversaries on the march around the world, and why does it matter so much that we honor our promises to those SIV interpreters and those who fought with us?
Because we've got Green Berets and SEALs all over the world now working from Africa to the Middle East, you name it, trying to work with local forces, whether they're going after terrorists or figuring out what the Chinese are up to, saying work with us, and they're all pointing back to Afghanistan and saying, you know what, you abandon your allies uh after 20 years, you're gonna abandon us too.
So it's not just the Chinese Communist Party propaganda machine to Taiwan and the Russian propaganda machine to Ukraine.
It's down on the ground, and our current special operations forces are feeling the aftermath of this abandonment and this withdrawal.
Why is there no coverage of this whatsoever except for maybe my show and and I would assume maybe other talk shows that I don't get a chance to listen to?
Uh because we have uh we have a complicit media uh and the the administration wanted this uh page to be turned.
Uh Republicans have tried to hold hearings in the House, of course, Pelosi squashes them.
They've had one in the foreign affairs committee, but they did it secret down in Shift Skiff uh so that the media uh couldn't cover it.
And the end of the day, look, politically, this was when uh things started to turn for the worse for Biden because he ran on two things compassion and competency.
And this was the most cold-hearted thing I've ever seen, uh, and it certainly was the most incompetent thing I've ever seen.
And we saw his poll numbers go south accordingly, and the last thing a compliant media wants to do is to resurrect that.
So I think you might get a little bit of coverage over the over, you know, this one year of of uh debacle, but then they're they're gonna want to turn the page and talk about you know uh the big climate change victory that they had last week.
How do you get away with raising taxes on oil, gas, and coal uh when we're paying the highest gas prices we've ever paid, and we're also have a 41-year high of inflation.
And then how do you with the straight face tell Americans we're not raising taxes on anybody that makes uh less than 400,000 a year?
Well, and then uh you know, you layer on to that, there's uh by most estimates about a thousand billionaires, and you need eighty-seven thousand IRS agents to go after them.
Hell no.
They're they're going after uh mom and pop businesses uh all over America.
But the thing that that you know uh that that I find the most outrageous is the 350 billion dollar giveaway to the Chinese economy that produces 90% of the world's solar panels, 70% of the world's wind turbines and control 90% of the lithium that goes into the batteries.
Those monies are gonna flow right over to Chinese manufacturing, which they produce, by the way, with coal.
So that I mean the the irony is is just rich and ridiculous uh all around, but that's what happens when uh when we have the left running Washington, and uh brother I am just counting the days till we can fire Nancy Pelosi and get control of the Congress back.
Well, it's less than a hundred days, so we're on our way.
Hopefully, Americans are paying attention like you are.
We appreciate your time.
Congressman Mike uh Waltz, former uh first Army Green Beret serving in Congress, the first one, uh, wrote the children's book, Dawn of the Brave.
Uh, it's on Amazon.com.
We have a link on Hannity.com, bookstores everywhere, and you know what?
Your kids will actually learn something worthwhile as opposed to the average public school.
Uh, thanks for being with us.
Yeah, thank you, Sean.
If I can just add one more thing, when we do get control, uh, I'm calling for a Benghazi style uh uh uh commission, select committee to get to the bottom.
Those 13 gold star families deserve accountability, and to this day, not a single official, not a single general, nothing, has been fired, reprimanded, resigned uh because of this debacle, and I will never let this go.
And I want every veteran out there to hear me uh that we will get accountability, we will get to the bottom of how uh and who made these disastrous decisions.
Um look, I totally understand, and I hope we we get that opportunity come January.
Thank you, sir, for being with us.
Congressman Mike Waltz of Florida, 800-941-SHOT, our number if you want to be a part of the program.
Thank you.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour, 800, 941 Sean, our number if you want to be a part of the program.
Uh, our friend John Andrasic from Five for Fighting, uh, he's actually done two incredible um songs, one about Afghanistan, one about Ukraine.
Uh, the one in Afghanistan, blood on our hands.
Uh, we actually on our own made our own kind of music video to the song.
We'll put it up on Hannity.com.
Uh, more recently, uh, can one man save the world?
He he went to Ukraine and actually played in the middle of the rubble with the Ukrainian symphony orchestra.
And that video was incredible, so we'll put both of them up, but on this one-year anniversary of Americans abandoned in Afghanistan.
This is called Blood on Our Hands.
Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?
No, it is not.
Got blood on my hand.
I just found out that the last site is gone.
Got blood on my hand.
Our dicks and things.
And I don't understand.
This is not country at all.
Because we don't know if we're gonna make that.
Extraordinary success of this mission.
There's blood on these hands.
13 Americans killed, 95 Afghans killed.
And still Americans.
Nobody predicted you know the government would fall in 11 days.
to the Taliban now How's that happening?
Am I safe?
No, the question is my life.
Am I safe?
Are these people are safe?
Wiggin blinking.
Can't you look me in the eye?
Willie Millet Samar.
When did you decide this will defend your sacred motto now means never move?
there's american citizens left we're going to stay there we get them all out To be disrespected like they were at Dover with Mr. Biden looking at his watch each time the salute was released, was disrespectful as anything I've ever seen.
We are here to celebrate the return of American citizens.
Their parents are inside and they're children are outside.
Mr Biden, you did this, you planned this.
Mr Biden, it's your incalculation.
Mr Biden, you did this, you planned this.
hey joe Asking.
What's happening?
What's happening?
Anyway, you can see the video on Hannity.com.
Also his more recent video when he went to Ukraine and one man saved the world, and he played that amongst the rubble with the Ukrainian, I guess Philharmonic Orchestra.
Uh 800 941 Shauna's on number if you want to be a part of the program.
Mary Ann is in the free state of Tennessee.
What's going on, Mary Ann?
How are you?
I'm good.
I'm good.
Yes, the free state of Tennessee.
That is absolutely right.
Um listen, Sean.
You talk about the FBI, and I know that there might be many of them that are good hearted, but like you said, you know, they're not going to just say no to an order.
They want their pensions.
But I'm old enough to remember Waco, Ruby Rich.
I remember those things too.
I covered them.
Yes.
Exactly.
I listened to you covering them.
And there are a lot of people out here.
My friends, hundreds.
And I'm sure there are millions that believe we don't actually live in a republic anymore.
You know what's interesting you say that.
Victor Davis Hanson was on with the great one last night, Mark Levin, and he said the exact same thing.
Levin has been saying for years, this is a post-constitutional America.
I think all of that is true.
I I well, there are so many.
This is a very dangerous time for this country.
The thing is that a lot of us are saying, okay, we don't have any avenue to redress our grievances.
We don't have to do sovereignty.
No, we do not have popular.
Well, we can vote in the world.
That's that's our only option.
Presidential elections are forevermore rigged, stolen.
Well, look.
But I've been saying since I've been saying since January of 2021.
I've been giving six very specific things that every state legislature needs to adopt.
Not all of them have done it, but many have.
But you're right, we need to have integrity in our election process so that we can have confidence in our election results.
It's that simple.
I believe that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court wrongly upheld the statute that circumvented the process of amending the state constitution, which limits mail-in balloting.
The state constitution limits it.
We're out here, we're looking at all this happening for a long time now.
And the media is so complicit in crafting a narrative against the people.
And against the truth.
They just get up and tell lies.
And it's never challenged, it's never questioned, except on some Fox shows like yours and Tucker Carlson.
Mark Levine.
I mean, that's it.
And a lot of us out here are saying we're in a state of retreat.
Not to retreat forever.
But we're just waiting for them to come and take our firearms, round us up, cart us off.
If they can weaponize the FBI, which they've already done, that's obvious.
The IRS has already been weaponized.
Against people who were against the um Obama health care thing.
And I mean, I I what we're seeing, our friends be told, you have to do what your business says.
You must take these equity classes or you will be fired.
It's all connected.
I I'm a retired professor of American history.
My mother is a retired judge.
And we we sit here and we're just like, this is not our country.
Well, there's no way.
How do you root out corruption that is so deep and so wide, and there is no avenue?
There's none.
I don't think any republic that's been so corrupt has ever survived.
And I've read Peter Schwartz's book, Red Handed.
Peter Schweitzer, yeah.
Yes, like it it made my stomach turn to know how deep this corruption goes.
And it's the GOP too.
Mitch McConnell is not.
He's standing up there, he'll he'll say something, and then Lindsay Graham will call a committee.
And then Jeff um Jim Jordan, he'll get up there, boy, he'll talk and talk and talk.
I never see them walk the walk.
Trump was the only one that did what he said he was going to do.
He's the only one that was looking after us.
DeSantis, I would love to see him run for president.
But if Trump or DeSantis, either one of them is not on the ticket in 2024, I know so many people are sitting out.
Because to put another deep stator in, to put another one that's just going to get some money back channeled from China, go along with the DMs, throw us a few bones.
Throw us a few bones so that they think the GOP constituents are happy.
All the while, just they're they're in it for themselves.
And I I I have lost faith.
If I were to teach American history now, I could not make it through the class.
I'm filled with cynicism and despair and just absolute shock at what has happened in so short of a time.
But then again, I look back, Ruby Rich, Waco.
I mean, I look back all the way to 1877 and the compromise of 1877.
You know, the late 1800s were rife with corruption in the federal politics.
Let me let me give you or offer you a little bit of hope.
Because I'm paying very close attention.
And there's there's even a few things that you left out.
You know, had the Democrats had their way, they would have eliminated the legislative filibuster.
If they had their way, they would have packed the U.S. Supreme Court.
If they had their way, they they would have had DC and Puerto Rico statehood, thinking that would be four more Democrats uh elected in perpetuity.
Uh you forgot the the lack of law and order in our cities.
We we know how to maintain law and order.
They won't let us.
Uh they they refuse to.
They sub they cling to defund dismantle no bail laws.
Uh they're aiding and abetting law breaking.
If you went down to the border and assisted people across the border and then would drive them to another location, you'd be arrested for human trafficking.
Well, that is now done institutionally.
You know, it's there there are there is institutional corruption.
And and just to get to the to the nuts and bolts of this, you know, we did expose the Trump Russia collusion hoax.
It took us three years to get fully vindicated, but we got fully vindicated.
Uh by the way, Jim Jordan, you know, to his credit, I give a lot of credit on that.
You know, Lindsey Graham's 75% of the time can be great, but the other 25% of the time, he drives me up a wall.
Absolutely up a wall.
Mitch McConnell, except for the issue of judges, I agree is useless.
But there is a lot of corruption deep inside our government at a level that I never suspected.
And you know, we saw this, you know.
For example, once they decided to give Hillary Clinton a pass, and and yet they acknowledge that she committed crimes, they acknowledge that she destroyed the evidence.
They they knew all of that was true, but no judge, no uh DA would want to ever prosecute.
Well, that's up to the DA, not James Comey.
You know, then you have Peter Struck, Lisa Page, he's never gonna be president, is he?
No, he's never gonna be president.
And by the way, we have an insurance policy.
You know, the only real hope we have is I think Americans are waking up.
They see what's happening in our schools, they see what's happening in our cities and towns that are not safe and secure.
They don't like this woke agenda.
They see this raid as such such an abuse of power, and it is.
And they watch now for six plus years the deep state try to take one man down because he connects with the American people and they're afraid of him.
And they don't want him on the ballot in 2024.
And let me tell you, if it's Ron DeSantis on the ballot, they'll try to take him out.
He'll try to take any conservative out.
I've watched it my whole life, and it's never been this bad.
You're right.
It's never been this bad.
And the best weapon we have to fight back against this is we've got to elect the right people to government.
And maybe it's not the perfect person, but I'll take anybody over this climate alarmist cult that we now have running the country.
I hope that answers your question and gives you a little hope.
But I'll tell you something.
This is an inflection point for everybody.
This is a tipping point for this country, the next two elections.
It matters more than any elections in our lifetime.
And then that is the way that we would be able to stop the the water from you know, stop the boat from taking on water, plug up the hole, and fix this country.
We know how to fix it.
Trump showed us how to fix it.
Reagan showed us how to fix it.
But we have to have the right people there to fix it.
You know, so hang in there.
There's always hope.
You know, it's um, but it's it's it's beyond troubling.
Everything you're describing, and more.
It's beyond troubling.
Does that answer your question?
Uh, kind of.
I just the one the two things that brought us incredible joy with the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse and the Roe v.
White decision.
There's other things that are signs of hope, though.
There really are.
And remember, it was just 18 months ago, we were energy independent.
18 months ago, we had secure borders.
18 months ago, we had a president that the world was not going to mess around with.
So we it wasn't that long ago.
We can get back to it.
Now they were treating him like crap the whole time and trying to take him down the whole time, but he was able to withstand it every single time.
And I think he'll withstand this as well.
I gotta run.
I do appreciate your your concerns.
I agree with many of them, and and there's even more that I add to your list.
All right, that's gonna wrap things up for today.
Full coverage of all that went on at Mar-a-Lago.
We're discovering more and more.
They even took the president's passports.
Uh, why are they afraid he's gonna leave the country?
Uh, John Solomon, the president's attorneys will join us as well.
Eric Trump is with us tonight.
Uh, we're following this insane story about Leonardo DiCaprio funneling grants through dark money groups to fund climate nuisance lawsuits according to emails.
Isn't this the same guy that flew to Australia for New Year's and then to Vegas for New Year's on a private jet?
And we're gonna get lectures from him.
I mean, you just you can't even make this up.
Uh, and then in Minneapolis, a teachers union agreement stipulates white teachers must be laid off first, regardless of seniority.
Um, I think there's a word for that.
Anyway, that's all coming up nine eastern tonight, Hannity, Fox News.
See you then back here tomorrow.
Thank you for making this show Possible.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
We got you.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
And I'm Mary Katherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi.
Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
From Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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