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Speaker 1: Hey, guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal

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Speaker 1: and Sager. We're going to be totally upfront with you.

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Speaker 1: We took a big risk going independent to make this work.

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Speaker 1: We need your support to beat the corporate media CNN, Fox, MSNBC.

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Speaker 1: They are ripping this country apart. They are making millions

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Speaker 1: of dollars doing it to help support our mission of

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Speaker 1: hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our

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Speaker 1: reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate and

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Speaker 1: weekly ask me any things, and you don't need to

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Speaker 1: hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now,

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Speaker 1: com become a Premium member today, which is available in

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Speaker 1: the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys, Good morning, everybody,

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Speaker 1: Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.

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Speaker 1: When we have Crystal, we do. We're going to bring

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Speaker 1: you up to speed with all the latest developments coming

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Speaker 1: out of Afghanistan and including President Biden's big speech yesterday,

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Speaker 1: which I think we could only describe as extremely based.

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Speaker 1: We've got updates for you on why exactly it is,

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Speaker 1: some of the reasons that people don't want to get

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Speaker 1: the vaccine that the media is by and large not

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Speaker 1: telling you about, as well as an update on the

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Speaker 1: Biden administration's position on booster shots. The California governor recall

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Speaker 1: election has been kind of going on underneath the radar

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Speaker 1: and cleanly. It's funny because you know, if this was

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Speaker 1: happening in New York, because the media is located, there

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Speaker 1: would be super fixation on it. Newsome is actually in

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Speaker 1: some trouble here, so we're going to break down what

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Speaker 1: that looks like and what the likely outcome is there.

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Speaker 1: We also really excited to have Craig Whitlock on today.

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Speaker 1: He is the reporter who broke the news about the

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Speaker 1: Afghania stand papers, who revealed all of the lies that

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Speaker 1: are generals and top leaders and president after president have

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Speaker 1: been telling American people about Afghanistan. He has a new

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Speaker 1: book about the Afghanistan papers about to come out. He

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Speaker 1: is going to join us and break all of that

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Speaker 1: down for us so we're super excited to have him today,

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Speaker 1: but we did want to start with that big Biden speech. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think the Biden speech is very important, just to

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Speaker 1: give people an up to the minute as of right

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Speaker 1: now where things stand in Kabble. Flights have resumed from

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Speaker 1: the Kabol International Airport. The Biden administration sending up to

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Speaker 1: seven thousand troops to the airport in order to keep

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Speaker 1: it secure. It seems that some sort of deal Crystal

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Speaker 1: was struck with the Taliban. Yeah, because not a single

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Speaker 1: attack has yet happened on the airport, the US has

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Speaker 1: reasserted control. That's right. Taliban is patrolling the streets in Kabble,

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Speaker 1: where things have, according to the reports, a sort of

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Speaker 1: like eerie calm, as people hunger down in their houses,

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Speaker 1: having no idea what's going to happen. It's very strange.

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Speaker 1: The Taliban minister came out yesterday and said that there

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Speaker 1: will be no reprisal killings, that we're having some sort

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Speaker 1: of amnesty. Obviously, Look, we should all be very skeptical

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Speaker 1: of what comes out of the Taliban. I'm a NBC

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Speaker 1: this dude, I actually was a fascinating interview. I thought

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Speaker 1: it was important It's funny. I saw a lot of

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Speaker 1: conservative We'll get to this, but I saw a lot

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Speaker 1: of conservative takes. Me like, how dare MSNBC interview the

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Speaker 1: Taliban spokesman. I'm like, look, they run the country, so

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Speaker 1: you know, in my opinion, it's probably worth hearing him

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Speaker 1: out extremely newsworthy. Yeah, I mean interviewing Putin when he's

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Speaker 1: a liar is also probably important. But once again, well

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Speaker 1: we'll save that. I think the Biden administration recognized that

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Speaker 1: there were a lot of criticism he hadn't come out,

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Speaker 1: and he gave probably one of the most defiant and

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Speaker 1: in my opinion, courageous speeches that an American president has

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Speaker 1: given in quite some time. We pulled two distinct snippets

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Speaker 1: from that speech. Let's take a listen to that. There

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Speaker 1: was no status quo of stability without American casualties after

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Speaker 1: May one. It was only a cool reality. Have you

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Speaker 1: either following through on the agreement with there are our

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Speaker 1: forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American

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Speaker 1: troops back into combat in Afghanistan, lurching into the third

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Speaker 1: decade of conflict. I stand squarely behind my decision after

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Speaker 1: twenty years I've learned the hard way that there was

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Speaker 1: never a good time to withdraw US forces. That's why

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Speaker 1: we're still there. I'm now the fourth American president to

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Speaker 1: preside over war in Afghanistan, two Democrats and two Republicans.

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Speaker 1: I will not pass this responsibly on responsibility on to

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Speaker 1: a fifth president. I will not mislead the American people

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Speaker 1: by claiming that just a little more time in Afghanistan

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Speaker 1: will make all the difference, Nor will I shrink from

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Speaker 1: my share of responsibility for where we are today and

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Speaker 1: how we must move forward from here. I am President

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Speaker 1: of the United States of America, and the buck stops

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Speaker 1: with me. I mean, look, Crystal, Honestly, one of the

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Speaker 1: most courageous speeches I've heard from an American president in

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Speaker 1: my lifetime. What we saw there. Biden also admitted, he goes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to be honest, it went way worse than

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Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be. Yeah. Pointed out

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Speaker 1: the fact that the Afghan national security forces threw down

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Speaker 1: their weapons and fled that the president that we backed,

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Speaker 1: Ashraf Ghani, assured him not even that long ago in

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Speaker 1: a private conversation, no, I'm going to stick it out.

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Speaker 1: Ostraf Ghani gave an interview May seventeenth, twenty twenty one,

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Speaker 1: saying I will fight and die for my country. Now

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Speaker 1: he's in Tajikistan. Reports out that he fled with a

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Speaker 1: helicopter full of cash. The collapse of the Afghan army

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Speaker 1: just could not be foreseen, even at the rate of

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Speaker 1: the most pessimistic people, and he admitted that. But more importantly,

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Speaker 1: he said, yeah, I understand that the withdrawal is bad.

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Speaker 1: I understand that the situation is horrible, but I am

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Speaker 1: not going to reverse my decision because doing so would

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Speaker 1: mean putting American combat soldiers in the middle of an

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Speaker 1: Afghan civil war and putting their lives at risk for

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Speaker 1: what ultimately that government decided not to fight for itself.

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Speaker 1: He reiterated that point over and over again. Given the

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Speaker 1: media environment, combined with some of the most incoherent Republican

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Speaker 1: messaging I've ever seen, everybody seems to be a two

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Speaker 1: thousand and five Bush Republican now. I swear to god,

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Speaker 1: I saw MAGA people retweeting Michael Gerson yesterday, And for

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Speaker 1: those who don't know, Michael Gerson is the architect of

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Speaker 1: the two thousand and five second Bush inaugural address about

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Speaker 1: spreading democracy all over the world, and I'm like, you

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Speaker 1: do don't even know who you're in bed with here.

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Speaker 1: So I am just I'm stunned that Joe Biden is

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Speaker 1: the president. I would never have expected this from him

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Speaker 1: to be truly the best anti war president in the

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Speaker 1: last twenty years. There's just really no way you have

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Speaker 1: to probably say of our lifetime. Yeah, absolutely, I mean

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Speaker 1: this what struck me. And I'm going to get to

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Speaker 1: one quibble that I have with the way that he

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Speaker 1: laid this out, But what struck me is that this

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Speaker 1: was the most honest speech, certainly on foreign policy maybe period,

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Speaker 1: that has been delivered to the American people in my

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Speaker 1: entire lifetime. And I am not that young at this point. Okay,

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Speaker 1: he actually leveled with people and said, look, I know

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Speaker 1: it's ugly. I know these images are I think the

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Speaker 1: word he used was heart wrenching. Everybody feels that way.

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Speaker 1: But here is what the actual alternative was. He actually

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Speaker 1: leveled with people. He actually respected the American people enough

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Speaker 1: to say, look, this was the promise in the pledge

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Speaker 1: that I made to you and that I made to

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Speaker 1: our men and women overseas that I would not pass

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Speaker 1: this forward to another president, and I stand by that decision.

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Speaker 1: He was adamant, he was unrepentant. He was clear and

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Speaker 1: forceful and articulating exactly what he had to say. Interesting,

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Speaker 1: we'll talk about this another day, but the Cole Wallace

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Speaker 1: of all people on MSNBC said, look, ninety five percent

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Speaker 1: of people are going to listen to that speech and say, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I agree, and ninety five percent of journalists are going

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Speaker 1: to disagree with it. And I don't know that those

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Speaker 1: are quite the numbers, but there is a big divide

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Speaker 1: between the way the elite media is portraying this and

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Speaker 1: spinning it and the reality of what people actually think

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Speaker 1: about what happened here. My one issue, my one quibble

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Speaker 1: with this is he like put a lot on Oh,

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Speaker 1: the Afghan army stood down and they wouldn't fight for themselves,

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Speaker 1: et cetera. Like who is going to fight for these

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Speaker 1: like corrupt warlords that we've been that we've been propping

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Speaker 1: up for twenty years once you know, the person who's

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Speaker 1: paying the bills goes away, like of course they're not

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Speaker 1: going to stand up and fight for that person. And honestly, look,

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Speaker 1: let's be real, Yes this happened a lot more quickly

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Speaker 1: than even the most pessimistic prognosticators thought. However, everybody thought

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Speaker 1: the entire elligence assessment said Caliban was going to take over,

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Speaker 1: whether it was in a week or three months or

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Speaker 1: eighteen months or two years or whatever. They were on

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Speaker 1: the move long before this official witchrawal actually happened. Ryan

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Speaker 1: Gram has a good substack out this morning talking about Look,

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Speaker 1: part of why this is so messy and so ugly is,

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Speaker 1: first of all, anytime that you unwind a disastrous imperial

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Speaker 1: failure that you've been engaged in for twenty years, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's going to be not pretty. It's going to be

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Speaker 1: a mess, right, And so all these are oh I

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Speaker 1: would have done it different. It's like, oh, please, like,

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Speaker 1: please give me a break. This was going to be

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Speaker 1: a messy, ugly, shameful disaster period. Why because this is

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Speaker 1: the first time that the American people are actually seeing

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Speaker 1: the truth of what we've been doing there for twenty years.

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Speaker 1: And so, you know, political leaders, military leaders, they don't

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Speaker 1: want to frame this as a surrender, which would involve

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Speaker 1: an actual negotiated surrender with the Taliban and ability for

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Speaker 1: us to get our people ont etc. They don't want

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Speaker 1: to portray it that way. That's why you have some

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Speaker 1: of this messiness, especially around refugees and getting our people out,

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Speaker 1: which is something that I really hope the Biden administration

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Speaker 1: does aggressively do whatever they can to get rid of

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Speaker 1: the bureaucratic hurdles to make sure we can take care

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Speaker 1: of those people as best as we possibly can. But

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Speaker 1: the reality is this was going to be ugly. That

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Speaker 1: doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better. But like

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Speaker 1: I said yesterday, I will take Biden's Afghanistan foreign policy

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Speaker 1: every single day of the week over every other president

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Speaker 1: who has been involved with this war. I couldn't agree more.

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Speaker 1: And I want to also go through I've heard from

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Speaker 1: a lot of well meaning people who I think are

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Speaker 1: being gas lit by neo cons and a lot of

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Speaker 1: the MAGA industrial complex around. We wanted to leave, but

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Speaker 1: not like this. So let's go through the scenario. The

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Speaker 1: scenario where we have right now is the Afghan military collapses,

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Speaker 1: Kable is surrounded by the Taliban. We have decided then

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Speaker 1: that we are going to stick it out for the

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Speaker 1: next three months in order to make sure that we

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Speaker 1: can process visas. Right, what does that entail? Let's be honest.

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Speaker 1: That entails bombing the Taliban, initiating kinetic force against the

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Speaker 1: group of which we have a peace treaty with me,

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Speaker 1: which means what which means weapons free on American soldiers.

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Speaker 1: That means that we would have had to have sent

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Speaker 1: thousands of American combat troops to secure the perimeter of

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Speaker 1: Kabole in order to make sure that we could get

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Speaker 1: our people out over the next three months. If you

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Speaker 1: want to sit and tell me that it was worth

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Speaker 1: hundreds of Americans' lives in order to ensure that possibility

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Speaker 1: instant of a negotiated solution which we seem to be

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Speaker 1: going towards, you are welcome to make that case. I

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Speaker 1: reject it fundamentally because what it would be is that

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Speaker 1: we would be fighting for a force that didn't want

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Speaker 1: to fight for themselves, for a government which was completely fake, corrupt,

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Speaker 1: and obviously liars both to our face and to their

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Speaker 1: own people. That is the alternative. And I have just

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Speaker 1: seen so much dishonesty here. I saw Senator John Cornyn

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Speaker 1: smugly say, and I said this yesterday, but it bears repeating.

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Speaker 1: We haven't lost a soldier in Afghanistan since February of

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty, we reached the status quo. Yeah, you idiot,

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Speaker 1: it's because we had a peace deal with the Taliban.

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Speaker 1: The moment you fire a bullet or a US air

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Speaker 1: strike or a drone strike against that force, that's it.

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Speaker 1: It's over. We only had twenty five hundred troops there.

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Speaker 1: In order to secure the perimeter of Kabble. We tried this.

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Speaker 1: We actually did this in Baghdad in two thousand and nine.

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Speaker 1: It took one hundred thousand American combat soldiers. I say no,

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Speaker 1: I say absolutely not. I heard from so many service

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Speaker 1: members yesterday who watched our segment and so appreciated it

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Speaker 1: because nobody seems to be caring for their actual lives.

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Speaker 1: Their lives are the ones time. No, the media right

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Speaker 1: now is agitated for those people to go and die

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Speaker 1: so that Afghan girls can go to school for three

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Speaker 1: more weeks. Listen, If enough Afghans care about Afghan girls

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Speaker 1: going to school, they can mount up arms and they

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Speaker 1: can fight for it. And I'm not saying that I

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Speaker 1: don't support it. God bless them. I feel terrible, but

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Speaker 1: that does not mean that twenty five year olds, twenty

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Speaker 1: three year olds, people from working class backgrounds should go

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Speaker 1: and die for that. Yeah, this is the frustration that

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Speaker 1: I see with the gas lighting from the Republicans whenever

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Speaker 1: they're criticizing Biden from the media in the way that

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Speaker 1: they think, I love this, They're like, the withdrawal should

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Speaker 1: have gone perfectly like the whole war, right exactly. But

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Speaker 1: to your point with this is the most incompetent force

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Speaker 1: on the face of the planet, both the Afghans and

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Speaker 1: the United States military in the way that we conducted ourselves.

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Speaker 1: The Pentagon had eighteen months to plan this. What, by

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Speaker 1: the way, what was going on under the Trump administration.

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Speaker 1: That's a good question. That's a good question. Well, and

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Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot to say. One other piece

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Speaker 1: I want to point out is this also goes back

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Speaker 1: to something we talk about a lot on this show,

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Speaker 1: which is the things the media chooses to fixate on us. Okay,

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Speaker 1: because Americans are good people, yes, right, buying large Americans

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Speaker 1: are good. They don't want to see suffering. They don't

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Speaker 1: want to see women and girls afraid for their lives

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Speaker 1: and people hunkered down. People at the airport are trying

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Speaker 1: to flake. People don't want to see that and that,

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Speaker 1: so they make sure to show you that in the

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Speaker 1: context of trying to advocate for let's go back to

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Speaker 1: Afghanistan for one hundred years or whatever it is that

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Speaker 1: they think would ultimately solve this problem. They didn't give

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Speaker 1: a shit about Yemen, oh, of course, not, which we

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Speaker 1: helped to perpetrate through our Saudi allies, where you've had

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Speaker 1: mass famine children smar. I mean, it's as horrific a

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Speaker 1: humanitarian disaster as you can possibly imagine, But that would

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Speaker 1: be uncomfortable for our Saudi allies, so that doesn't get

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Speaker 1: shown to you. So they're also very very selective in

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Speaker 1: the things that they choose to get outrage about. They

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Speaker 1: didn't give a shit about the Afghan people until this week.

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Speaker 1: Of course, they did not care because the Afghan civilians

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Speaker 1: have been getting slaughtered over the past few year, three years.

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Speaker 1: Casualties have been going up year after year. They didn't

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Speaker 1: tell you that, did they. They did not care until

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Speaker 1: it served their interests of war making, the interest of

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Speaker 1: all the war profiteers that are based within a fifty

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Speaker 1: mile radius of where we sit right now. So it's

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Speaker 1: all gaslighting. It's all extremely selective, their outrage, their manipulation

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Speaker 1: of American's true humanitarian impulses, and ultimately it's disgusting because

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Speaker 1: they're such liars and propagandists and so selective in their

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Speaker 1: outright I couldn't you know. It makes me so angry,

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Speaker 1: and I hope that that comes across because watching these

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Speaker 1: people prem like we showed you yesterday with Richard Engel saying,

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Speaker 1: how shameful that we signed a peace deal with the Taliban.

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Speaker 1: Why doesn't he go sit on the front line in

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Speaker 1: Afghanistan and tell that to the people who lost are

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Speaker 1: who are literally fighting and dying in order to try

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Speaker 1: and fight for a fake Afghan government. You know, the

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Speaker 1: ones that really get me because at least Richard is

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Speaker 1: in the region. I can imagine, I mean, I can

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Speaker 1: imagine how emotional it is when you're there and you

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Speaker 1: know people and how they're going to be affected. You've

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Speaker 1: got people who are coming up to you like help

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Speaker 1: my son, helped my JB. That's the ones that really

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Speaker 1: get me are the ones who are sitting in a

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Speaker 1: studio like this, beating their being their chest, who've never

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Speaker 1: been to the region. They certainly aren't sending their sons

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Speaker 1: and daughters over there to fight for something that you know,

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Speaker 1: the Afghan people have basically given up on at this

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Speaker 1: point for to fight for this ridiculous. I mean, here's

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Speaker 1: the other thing that's this is the ultimate of gaslighting.

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Speaker 1: We didn't go to Afghanistan because of the women and girls.

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Speaker 1: We've never intervened in a foreign country to protect the

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Speaker 1: rights of women and girls. Like the idea that that's

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Speaker 1: what American foreign policy was about out and that was

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Speaker 1: ever our goal in Afghanistan is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Look,

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Speaker 1: I wish, I wish there was more we could do

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Speaker 1: to protect the rights of women and girls and everyone

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Speaker 1: else in Afghanistan and all kinds of places around the world.

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Speaker 1: But if we have learned nothing from Vietnam and from Iraq,

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Speaker 1: and from Libya and from Afghanistan, it is the extreme

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Speaker 1: limits of what we can actually do. Every single one

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Speaker 1: of these projects of nation building, spreading democracy around the world,

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Speaker 1: every single one is an abject failure that leaves us poor,

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Speaker 1: that leaves innocent people dead, and leaves the country in

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Speaker 1: question in a worse place than when we ultimately started.

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Speaker 1: That's ultimately where it is. And look, I think we

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Speaker 1: are going over this ground so carefully and dismantling each

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Speaker 1: and every argument because I have not yet. I didn't

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Speaker 1: understand until this week how we could have had the

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Speaker 1: lives of the war in Iraq like I, you know,

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Speaker 1: I was too young to really see it or remember

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Speaker 1: it in real time. I've watched the tape O'Reilly all

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Speaker 1: that other stuff, but I didn't really get it until

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Speaker 1: I saw this week the entire media industrial complex combined

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Speaker 1: with the uniparty message that what happened here was a disaster.

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Speaker 1: And I love the term disaster, which I don't necessarily

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Speaker 1: disagree with, but the selective use of that term to

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Speaker 1: this and not to the sacrifice of twenty three hundred

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Speaker 1: American soldiers, twenty thousand wounded men, untold number of Afghans.

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Speaker 1: They never use that term once that where's the term

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Speaker 1: for disaster? You know what the real disaster is is

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Speaker 1: throwing people into a meat grinder and for nothing, for

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Speaker 1: literally nothing, and to make the Taliban stronger. Right to

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Speaker 1: make the Taliban, as Biden correctly said, and this is true,

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Speaker 1: they are stronger today in twenty twenty one than they

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Speaker 1: are than they were in two thousand. In fact, they

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Speaker 1: are much richer. They are some of the world's best

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Speaker 1: drug dealers. They've become much more cosmopolitan. Last year they

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Speaker 1: made four hundred million dollars off of the drug trade.

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Speaker 1: These are much more cosmopolitan guys than the people of

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Speaker 1: two thousand and one. It's fascinating to see just how

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Speaker 1: inverse of a success that we have had over there.

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Speaker 1: Every year that we stayed in Afghanistan, things got worse.

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Speaker 1: And as you said, the American people are good. Nobody

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Speaker 1: wants to see people falling off of airplanes, crowding the

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Speaker 1: tarmac at Kabble and more. But do they want to

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Speaker 1: see their sons and daughters sacrificed for a fake government

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Speaker 1: and a fake army. You should make the people who

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Speaker 1: are saying that we should have done this better, make

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Speaker 1: them firmly articulate their vision for how that was going

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Speaker 1: to happen, because I can assure you with every fiber

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Speaker 1: in my being that doing so would have required the

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Speaker 1: sacrifice of at least one one hundred American combat soldiers.

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Speaker 1: And I am very very comfortable saying that I will

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Speaker 1: take this trade any day of the week. It may

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Speaker 1: sound callous, but that is what it means to actually

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Speaker 1: care about your military, your people, and ultimately for the

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Speaker 1: Afghans themselves. If you believe in ending the forever war,

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Speaker 1: then this is what it is always going to look like.

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Speaker 1: I know that's very difficult for people to stomach, but

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Speaker 1: I gees that's true. I thought Matt Iglesias had a

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Speaker 1: good point yesterday and read his tweet. He said, imagine

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Speaker 1: if Biden had announced that he'd learned zero progress had

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Speaker 1: been made over the past twenty years. The Afghan National

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Speaker 1: Army had no independent fighting ability, and as a result,

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Speaker 1: he was dispatching thousands of fresh troops in the country

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Speaker 1: to beat the Taliban. Yeah that what you want. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because that's the true alternative. Okay, that is the real alternative,

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Speaker 1: not the fake. Oh we should have done it better

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Speaker 1: and I fire and chy I would have etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: That's the real alternative. Is a new surge. And what

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Speaker 1: did the last surge get us, by the way, A

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Speaker 1: pack of lies to try to spin the American public,

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Speaker 1: which worked for a time, by the way, which even

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Speaker 1: worked on me for a time that oh, things were improving,

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Speaker 1: the surge was working, remember that whole phase. Pack of lies.

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Speaker 1: And that's what we're going to get to later with

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Speaker 1: Craig Whitlock. Make sure you stick around for that interview,

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Speaker 1: because I really want him to lay out what people

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Speaker 1: said in public versus the reality of what they confess

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Speaker 1: to what was actually happening on the ground in Afghanistan,

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Speaker 1: because every president, every general, everyone who has been involved

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Speaker 1: with this for the past at least fifteen years has

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Speaker 1: known the truth that what we've seen this week, this

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Speaker 1: was how it was always going to end. And the

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Speaker 1: reason no one was willing to do it is because

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Speaker 1: exactly the scenes and the political risk that you see now.

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Speaker 1: Kudos to buy and again, look, it's not perfect. I'm

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Speaker 1: not claiming that it is, but wow, I give him

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Speaker 1: so much crest it in the face of this absolute

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Speaker 1: media onslaught, which he's no spring chicken, he knew was

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Speaker 1: coming for him, and a lot of Democrats suddenly very

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Speaker 1: quiet in the face of all of that, to go

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Speaker 1: forward as adamant and as clear as he did, all

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Speaker 1: the credit I can possibly give same. I've never seen.

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Speaker 1: I have not seen an act of political courage like

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Speaker 1: this in quite some time. On the other hand, not

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Speaker 1: everyone has been so courageous. Boys and girls. So our

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Speaker 1: friends are thought leaders, as if we might call them.

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Speaker 1: In the MAGA world, mag have been struggling with how

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Speaker 1: to deal with this development, because, of course, this is

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Speaker 1: one area where Trump was really unequivocal about getting out

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Speaker 1: of Afghanistan. Ending the Forever Wars a big part of

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Speaker 1: his pitch back in twenty sixteen, and it was a

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Speaker 1: part of his pitch this time as well. I think

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Speaker 1: I read yesterday that Don Junior tweet shortly before election

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Speaker 1: day of him saying, yeah, when we're talking to Richard

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Speaker 1: Hannani of him a vote for Biden's a vote for

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Speaker 1: endless war. Donald Trump was gonna get a sound of Afghanistan.

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Speaker 1: You can go back and look at all the press releases.

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Speaker 1: Even Mike Pompeo is a total neo khn Hawk singing

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Speaker 1: along at the same tune about We're ending the Forever War,

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Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. So, of course Trump did not

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Speaker 1: do that, although to his credit, he helped to set

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Speaker 1: us on this path where Biden eventually actually followed through

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Speaker 1: and got a sound of Afghanistan. So I do want

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Speaker 1: to give him credit for that. And by the way,

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Speaker 1: I also want to say, I hope you guys know

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Speaker 1: that whether this was Biden or Trump, we would have

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Speaker 1: had the same exact take the same view of it.

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Speaker 1: I would have given him all the credit in the

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Speaker 1: world if this was Trump pulling as they can go,

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Speaker 1: roll the tape from multiple periods when we were on Rising.

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Speaker 1: February twenty twenty, when John Bolton resigns over the Doha negotiation, Yes,

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Speaker 1: both of us were like, bye, good bye, Ziya. Why

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Speaker 1: did you ever hire him for in the first place?

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Speaker 1: December twenty twenty, Whenever he was trying to get the

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Speaker 1: troops out, we did the same thing. Whenever the treaty

430
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:02,200
Speaker 1: was signed, get the exact date of the Doha Cords

431
00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:05,080
Speaker 1: and more, when Mike Pompeio met with them, we did it.

432
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:08,960
Speaker 1: Whenever we saw the generals agitating against it, we did

433
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:11,960
Speaker 1: monologues at Rising. This has been a long standing position.

434
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:17,679
Speaker 1: He So Trump has dramatically changed his tune now that

435
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:21,480
Speaker 1: Biden has actually followed through and gotten a sound of Afghanistan,

436
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:24,360
Speaker 1: something that over four years Trump was ultimately unable to do.

437
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:27,640
Speaker 1: So here's the statement that he put out yesterday, which

438
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:29,720
Speaker 1: is just kind of hilarious. So we can throw this

439
00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:32,600
Speaker 1: first tweet up on the screen. He puts on a

440
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:37,199
Speaker 1: statement hitting Biden, and he seems to be calling for

441
00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:41,240
Speaker 1: the US to take in Afghan refugees, something I wholeheartedly support,

442
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:44,120
Speaker 1: but seems a little bit at us with the Trump

443
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:46,240
Speaker 1: we knew of the past, who did the Muslim ban

444
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:49,800
Speaker 1: and didn't care about the you know, Iraqi translators that

445
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:52,919
Speaker 1: were stranded at the airport, stranded in Iraq, who helped

446
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:56,400
Speaker 1: our men and women overseas. He says, can anyone even

447
00:24:56,400 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: imagine taking out our military before evacuating civilians and us

448
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: others who'd been good to our country and who should

449
00:25:02,359 --> 00:25:05,800
Speaker 1: be allowed to seek refuge Look. I applaud you, mister President,

450
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:08,800
Speaker 1: for getting on board with expediting a refugee process, But

451
00:25:09,280 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 1: a little bit different, Congress, little in Congress with like

452
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:15,760
Speaker 1: kind of your whole ethos and vibe previously and your

453
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 1: statements in the past. Just to give you a sense

454
00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:20,840
Speaker 1: of what he was saying not so long ago, let's

455
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:23,040
Speaker 1: put this next tweet up on the screen, which is

456
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:27,160
Speaker 1: a previous statement from President Trump back in April, when

457
00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 1: he says getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and

458
00:25:29,840 --> 00:25:32,400
Speaker 1: positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May first,

459
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 1: and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.

460
00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:39,040
Speaker 1: So this is he's hitting Biden pushing the timeline back

461
00:25:39,080 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: to September eleventh originally, then it was moved up a

462
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:44,159
Speaker 1: little to August. So he's hitting Biden for not getting

463
00:25:44,200 --> 00:25:48,400
Speaker 1: out soon enough, and he talked about this at one

464
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:51,359
Speaker 1: of his rallies, basically seeking to take credit for the

465
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:54,320
Speaker 1: eventual withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Let's take a listen

466
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 1: to a little bit of that. I started the process.

467
00:25:56,880 --> 00:25:58,920
Speaker 1: All the troops are coming back home. They couldn't stop

468
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:03,480
Speaker 1: the breast. Twenty one years is enough, don't we think

469
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:07,720
Speaker 1: twenty one years. They couldn't stop the process. They wanted to,

470
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 1: but it was very tough to stop the process when

471
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:14,960
Speaker 1: other things are at Yeah, thank you, thank you. It's

472
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 1: a shame twenty one years by a government that wouldn't last.

473
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:23,840
Speaker 1: The only way they last is if we're there. What

474
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:25,639
Speaker 1: are we going to say? We'll stay for another twenty

475
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:27,840
Speaker 1: one years, and we'll stay for another fifty. The whole

476
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 1: thing is ridiculous. So we're bringing our troops back home.

477
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:35,320
Speaker 1: I supported him enough. He was correct. Thank you, mister president.

478
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:37,879
Speaker 1: That's why I supported you in twenty seventeen, whenever you

479
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 1: were trying to go up against the generals and I

480
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:42,359
Speaker 1: was very disappointed when you fell for their tricks and

481
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 1: you surged troops in Afghanistan, ignited in air war, which

482
00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:49,959
Speaker 1: was completely pointless. I supported Donald Trump whenever he's you know,

483
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 1: as I said, pushed a piece a piece deal with

484
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 1: the Taliban at Doha. I thought it was one of

485
00:26:54,600 --> 00:26:57,239
Speaker 1: the most courageous things that a president had done in

486
00:26:57,280 --> 00:26:59,720
Speaker 1: a really long time. I supported him inviting them to

487
00:26:59,760 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 1: Camp David, because I think that's what you do whenever

488
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 1: you try to end a war. When Mike Pompeo met

489
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:07,679
Speaker 1: with the Taliban leader, I said, good, this is a

490
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:10,320
Speaker 1: good thing. You shake hands with the enemy, you shake

491
00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 1: hands with the man who killed your soldiers, and you say,

492
00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:16,439
Speaker 1: let's end it. Let it end, because I believe in

493
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: ending this war. And to watch these people just I

494
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:23,919
Speaker 1: have not seen the online ecosystem and more more unhinged

495
00:27:24,240 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 1: in so long. They're convinced that, as Richard Hannanias said,

496
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 1: they've now invented Trump into some Afghan feminists, and he

497
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:35,600
Speaker 1: himself seems to be playing into that canard. I seem

498
00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:40,159
Speaker 1: to remember Crystal, when Trump pulled out of Syria unceremoniously

499
00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:42,760
Speaker 1: and told the Kurds to go screw themselves, and a

500
00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 1: lot of them were massacred by the way. I actually

501
00:27:44,800 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 1: supported that decision at the time. You can go and

502
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: you can roll the tape because I said as I'm

503
00:27:49,320 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 1: saying now, which was look getting now. It's hard and

504
00:27:52,800 --> 00:27:55,239
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it's messy, but you know,

505
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 1: when you're fighting up against the military industrial complex, you

506
00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:00,320
Speaker 1: have to pull the rug out from under them and

507
00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:04,240
Speaker 1: make a final decision that may sound like familiar analysis

508
00:28:04,359 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 1: that you heard defended on the likes of Fox News

509
00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:09,880
Speaker 1: and a lot of other mag of people. Suddenly they're

510
00:28:09,880 --> 00:28:14,520
Speaker 1: all Afghan, like uh, They're like Afghan nonprofit NGO givers

511
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 1: or something like that. And the lack of consistency here

512
00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:20,400
Speaker 1: drives me nuts. This is what the culture war does

513
00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:23,439
Speaker 1: and rots your brain. And actually, what's the saddest thing

514
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:26,679
Speaker 1: of all is it reveals that Trump does not actually

515
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:30,160
Speaker 1: have the principles around this, and most likely what would

516
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:32,600
Speaker 1: have happened is he would have been played by the generals.

517
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 1: I've been having this fight with some friends of mine

518
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:37,240
Speaker 1: who are like, this never would have happened under Trump,

519
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:39,520
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know what, You're probably right, because

520
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 1: what would have happened is that the generals would have

521
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:43,760
Speaker 1: come to him and they would have said, oh, the

522
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 1: fall of Cobble, you can't have that right. And he

523
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:49,240
Speaker 1: would have been like, oh God, that's embarrassing because that

524
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:52,240
Speaker 1: he cares about optics and his ego, and he cares

525
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:54,000
Speaker 1: about his ego, and so what would he have done.

526
00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: He would have greenlit US troops on the ground fighting

527
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:00,760
Speaker 1: in order to protect Cobble. And then what would have happened.

528
00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 1: People would have died, and there would have been a

529
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 1: whole debacle, and the generals would have invented a whole

530
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:07,719
Speaker 1: other reason. Well, now they killed us, Now we have

531
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: to stay I go. I watched him fall for this

532
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:14,640
Speaker 1: every single time. Let's all be honest about how he

533
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: got played. And at the end of the day, he failed,

534
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 1: miserably failed. In order to get us out of Afghanistan

535
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:25,840
Speaker 1: December of twenty twenty, he tried multiple tribes. Remember he

536
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: had that acting acting Defense Secretary in his last month

537
00:29:29,520 --> 00:29:32,160
Speaker 1: trying to withdraw troops and the military said, screw you,

538
00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:34,200
Speaker 1: We're not going to do it because they think didn't

539
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:37,640
Speaker 1: think Biden was going to Only Joe Biden has had

540
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:40,920
Speaker 1: the stones to stand up to the entire foreign policy establishment,

541
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:44,280
Speaker 1: his own generals who have been leaking against him, like

542
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:47,800
Speaker 1: I've never seen the intelligence community who leaked against Trump.

543
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 1: You know, the mag of people understood that the president's

544
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,920
Speaker 1: hands can often be tied, and that often that the

545
00:29:53,960 --> 00:29:57,200
Speaker 1: set of circumstances that you will find yourself into are

546
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 1: a result of the deep state taking action against you

547
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:02,800
Speaker 1: and trying to screw you over. And now all of

548
00:30:02,840 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 1: a sudden, that disappears whenever it comes to Joe Biden.

549
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is the unitary executive. But Trump was just

550
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:10,120
Speaker 1: simply a man. It was just at the whim of

551
00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:13,600
Speaker 1: these exotic forces. That's such a good point. That's such

552
00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 1: a good point. And the truth is too, because that

553
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 1: plays into why they didn't bother to prepare for this exit,

554
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:25,560
Speaker 1: because clearly they were betting on it never happening. They

555
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: were betting on being able to roll Biden the way

556
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:30,160
Speaker 1: they rolled Trump and the way they rolled Obama. They

557
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:32,400
Speaker 1: were that's what they did. They were betting on we

558
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 1: know how to we got this handled. Don't worry, we

559
00:30:35,080 --> 00:30:38,360
Speaker 1: know what to say. We're never leaving Afghanistan. Because there

560
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:40,800
Speaker 1: was so much money at stake, and for these dudes

561
00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: who are still in the military, of the generals, they're

562
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:46,920
Speaker 1: looking at their post military career sitting on the boards

563
00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:50,400
Speaker 1: of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, et cetera, et cetera. So so

564
00:30:50,880 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 1: much money is at stake here. They didn't plan for

565
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: this because they didn't think it was ever going to happen.

566
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:57,240
Speaker 1: They thought they would be able to do to him

567
00:30:57,280 --> 00:31:00,440
Speaker 1: exactly what they did to Trump. So well, I think

568
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: you're right. Look, you have to look at the history

569
00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:05,719
Speaker 1: of how Trump actually behaved when he was off in office,

570
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:08,240
Speaker 1: and we saw over and over and over again the

571
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 1: way he got rolled. Understanding the pressure that is brought

572
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:15,320
Speaker 1: to bear on these presidents when they want to make

573
00:31:15,360 --> 00:31:18,520
Speaker 1: a decision that goes against the military industrial complex, that

574
00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: should make you respect Biden's decision here even more. Yes, because, yeah,

575
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: the Maga War, they understood how hard it was, and

576
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 1: he was ultimately unable to do it, unable to overcome

577
00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 1: all of the fears that they put into it into him,

578
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:36,840
Speaker 1: unable to overcome his terror of what the media would

579
00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:39,600
Speaker 1: say about him if he faced the same sort of

580
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 1: scenes that Biden is facing right now in the media onslaught.

581
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 1: Biden is facing right now there are a couple other

582
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:49,239
Speaker 1: notable entries here. You mentioned the culture War, and so

583
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 1: this was another really just silly analysis here in terms of,

584
00:31:54,880 --> 00:31:58,680
Speaker 1: you know, the failures and why the scenes we see

585
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 1: coming out of Afghanistan are coming out of the Afghanistan.

586
00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: This is from center Tom Cotton, where everything just gets

587
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:08,280
Speaker 1: filtered through like this stupid culture war lens He says,

588
00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 1: it's clear President Biden and his Department of Defense have

589
00:32:11,840 --> 00:32:14,680
Speaker 1: been more concerned with critical race theory and other woke

590
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:19,320
Speaker 1: policies than planning an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think

591
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:25,280
Speaker 1: the idea half agree with Congress talking about white the

592
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: idea doing this. The idea that President Biden is like

593
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 1: some critical race theory woke whatever, ridiculous inlous This dude

594
00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:39,280
Speaker 1: is like thirty seconds from dropping an ethnic slur every

595
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 1: time he gets in front of a camera. Okay, he

596
00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:45,800
Speaker 1: is not woke in any sense of the words. Are.

597
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: The people who are supposed to be doing this are

598
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 1: all right, we can blame them, but it wasn't because

599
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:52,680
Speaker 1: they were fixated on critical race theory. It's because they

600
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 1: wanted the grift. That's what this is about. It's not

601
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 1: about like gender theory or critical race theory or whatever.

602
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 1: It's because they want to keep the grift going. Okay,

603
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: another one here for you. Steven Miller suddenly also says

604
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:10,240
Speaker 1: you hear a lot of desperate lying and revisionism today

605
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 1: from Biden and co. Let's be very clear. Biden abandoned

606
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:18,560
Speaker 1: the Trump peace plan and exit strategy, which included powerful deterrence.

607
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:22,080
Speaker 1: Biden foolishly devised his own plan and crashed and burned.

608
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 1: It's a flaming Biden wreck. Talk about revisionism. I mean,

609
00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:30,400
Speaker 1: this guy actually followed through and did the thing that

610
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:33,480
Speaker 1: your boss never had the stones to do. And this

611
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:35,400
Speaker 1: is what he has to say that. I also, once again,

612
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 1: I want to be clear here. You know what powerful

613
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: deterrence means. That means bombing the Taliban, which means that

614
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:42,600
Speaker 1: we're at war with the Taliban once again. It means

615
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 1: what how many times do I have to say it?

616
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 1: And this is, you know, the callousness which which we

617
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:53,040
Speaker 1: talk about plans and actions which we know will lead

618
00:33:53,080 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: to amre American combat deaths just drives me up the wall.

619
00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:01,480
Speaker 1: It's so easy to sit behind the keyboard and beat

620
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 1: the drum. Powerful deterrence. Taliban would have never Oh yeah,

621
00:34:05,280 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: go and ask the twenty three hundred soldiers who have

622
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: already died when the Taliban did. Whenever they stood up

623
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 1: against the most powerful army in the world and continued

624
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:16,520
Speaker 1: to fight, became a richer and more powerful as we

625
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 1: spent two trillion dollars trying to defeat them. Listen, I

626
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:22,200
Speaker 1: hate the Taliban as much as anybody, but I respect

627
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:24,160
Speaker 1: the hell out of them as an enemy and as

628
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 1: a fighting force. And I care enough about the troops

629
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 1: in order to know not to beat my chest and

630
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:32,840
Speaker 1: say powerful deterrence in order to try and score culture

631
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 1: war points against the president who is actually doing what

632
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:39,239
Speaker 1: Donald Trump said that he would do. Yeah. Trump has

633
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:41,359
Speaker 1: said it's not that we're leaving Afghanist and he put

634
00:34:41,400 --> 00:34:44,280
Speaker 1: out a statement yesterday it's how we left. Once again,

635
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:46,480
Speaker 1: what the hell were you doing when you were president?

636
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:49,640
Speaker 1: You had plenty of time to process special Afghan visas,

637
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 1: get people out, get the ball rolling. You know why

638
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:55,799
Speaker 1: he didn't because your administration was completely incompetent, and you

639
00:34:55,840 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 1: were more focused on trying to prove that the election

640
00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:01,160
Speaker 1: was stolen than you were on actually trying to save

641
00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:04,439
Speaker 1: American combat troops lives. That's the truth. Let's just let's

642
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:07,799
Speaker 1: let's face it and look at it squarely for what

643
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:10,400
Speaker 1: exactly we're dealing with, and I guess we have a

644
00:35:10,400 --> 00:35:12,719
Speaker 1: final peace. It is maybe my favorite, which is my

645
00:35:12,760 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 1: personal favorite? Yeah, this is Lauren Bobert, Congressman Lauren Bobert.

646
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 1: So first on the left side of the screen, at

647
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:22,560
Speaker 1: least as I'm looking at. I don't know if it's

648
00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:24,319
Speaker 1: left right for you guys. Anyway, it says, we've been

649
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:27,160
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan for more than half my life. We need

650
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:30,759
Speaker 1: to end the endless Wars. So this February twenty first,

651
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:33,839
Speaker 1: just back in February, Okay, not that long ago, after

652
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: she's made a member of Congress, and it was unclear

653
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:38,959
Speaker 1: at that point whether Biden was actually going to follow

654
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:40,719
Speaker 1: through and get us out abo Afghanistan. So that we've

655
00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 1: been in afghust, time to end the endless Wars. Now,

656
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:47,319
Speaker 1: she says, Joe has a forty eight year history of

657
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:51,400
Speaker 1: making bad decisions, and this weekend's foreign policy decisions to

658
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: the list. Add them to the list, she says, So,

659
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:57,960
Speaker 1: I mean, at least I guess Stephen Miller was clever

660
00:35:58,239 --> 00:36:01,680
Speaker 1: enough to craft some justification for why It's different now

661
00:36:01,719 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 1: that Biden's doing the ending the endless Wars versus when

662
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:07,359
Speaker 1: Trump was doing it. She doesn't even cut. She just

663
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:10,960
Speaker 1: straight out flip flops without any sort of cover or justification,

664
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: total mask off moment, And I guess I kind of

665
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:15,920
Speaker 1: appreciate it in that way. What I really learned from

666
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:17,840
Speaker 1: this is that nobody has learned a damn thing. The

667
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 1: culture War has roten. I mean, I knew this, but

668
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 1: I really know is that people have rotted their brains

669
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 1: so much that they're going to find themselves on the

670
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:28,600
Speaker 1: side of two thousand and five Bush Neocon Republicans. Yeah,

671
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:31,319
Speaker 1: I understand now how the Iraq War happened. I really do,

672
00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:34,600
Speaker 1: which is that these people hate Libs so much that

673
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:37,960
Speaker 1: they're willing to sacrifice their principles. I tweeted on behalf

674
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:41,399
Speaker 1: of President Biden yesterday and I had the most delicious

675
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 1: Maga cope in my replies that I've ever seen. Crystal

676
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:49,880
Speaker 1: all of this revisionist history around. Oh, Trump was this

677
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 1: great president who had this awesome peace deal. Actually I

678
00:36:53,680 --> 00:36:56,440
Speaker 1: agree with that, and he would have gotten us out Differently, No,

679
00:36:56,600 --> 00:37:00,279
Speaker 1: there's actually no evidence of that whatsoever. If you support

680
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:03,920
Speaker 1: the withdrawal, then you should on balance support Joe Biden

681
00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:07,200
Speaker 1: here over the alternative. I will. I will go to

682
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:11,319
Speaker 1: my deathbed believing that. But because these people, like I said,

683
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 1: they didn't care about the curds, so they don't actually

684
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 1: care whenever it comes to any of this. No, you're

685
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:18,880
Speaker 1: trying to weaponize it as a political tool against Biden. Unfortunately,

686
00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:22,000
Speaker 1: I think they'll probably be successful in that, and they

687
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 1: will definitely gaslight much of the Republican base into being

688
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:28,280
Speaker 1: like pro war again because so many of these people

689
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:30,239
Speaker 1: just follow you know what, a lot of these so

690
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:33,440
Speaker 1: called thought leaders say, it's an amazing day to watch

691
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 1: the Ben Shapiro neo cons once again be back in

692
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:40,400
Speaker 1: charge of the GOP. But honestly, it was probably inevitable

693
00:37:40,600 --> 00:37:43,719
Speaker 1: given how so much of this is just rudderless cultural

694
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,799
Speaker 1: war brainworms that these people have infested. There were so

695
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:49,839
Speaker 1: many instances that we really had trouble narrowing it. Yeah,

696
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:52,720
Speaker 1: there's one other I do want to mention our producer

697
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 1: James Sennes from the America First Policy Institution. So these

698
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:00,360
Speaker 1: are supposed to be like, not just the politician, so

699
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 1: of course they're going to have their type. These are

700
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:07,160
Speaker 1: supposed to be like the serious policy like think tank types,

701
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:10,680
Speaker 1: and it was the same mess, total flip flop with

702
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:15,320
Speaker 1: some like flimsy cover of a justification. It just shows

703
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: you the way that culture war and partisan tribalism just

704
00:38:20,360 --> 00:38:23,840
Speaker 1: completely rots people's brains. And when you got the elite

705
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:27,279
Speaker 1: media backing you up in those brain worms, then it's

706
00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: a particularly potent combination. But I hope now you guys

707
00:38:30,560 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 1: will all see through all of that. Hey, so remember

708
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:36,640
Speaker 1: how we told you how awesome premium membership was, Well,

709
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:38,799
Speaker 1: here we are again to remind you that becoming a

710
00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 1: premium member means you don't have to listen to our

711
00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 1: constant please for you to subscribe. So what are you

712
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 1: waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to

713
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:49,440
Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot com, which you can click on in the

714
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:53,239
Speaker 1: show notes. Had another news item we wanted to get

715
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:56,200
Speaker 1: to here. First of all, let me mention on vaccines

716
00:38:56,280 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 1: that the news just broke that the Biden administration is

717
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:03,880
Speaker 1: planning on recommending a booster shot. So that would be

718
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:06,279
Speaker 1: for Pfiser a third shot or Majorita a third shot.

719
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 1: But I think it's Fiser that they've been focused on

720
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:10,680
Speaker 1: in this buy and large. I know Piser is the

721
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:14,279
Speaker 1: company that has been pushing for these booster shots. It

722
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:16,160
Speaker 1: makes them a lot of money, of course, and I

723
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: don't want way into heavily. Year. The preliminary data I've

724
00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:21,520
Speaker 1: seen is that this may be important, especially for the elderly,

725
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:24,000
Speaker 1: for those who are compromised. But I did want to

726
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:25,680
Speaker 1: tell you that's the very latest, and we're going to

727
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:27,759
Speaker 1: research it or bring an expert on to tell you

728
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:31,239
Speaker 1: whether or not that really is justified or whether this

729
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:33,440
Speaker 1: was sort of like a cave to big pharma and

730
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:36,120
Speaker 1: their scare tactics in propaganda. From what I have seen,

731
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:40,240
Speaker 1: there is a case to be made around booster shots

732
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:43,359
Speaker 1: only for the elderly in terms of what we see

733
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 1: the data out. Once again, I am not a doctor,

734
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 1: so please don't take medical advice for me, but my

735
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:50,880
Speaker 1: general perusing of the people that I trust say that

736
00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:54,560
Speaker 1: a booster shot may be useful for those who are

737
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: of elderly or a menual compromise. But as I understand it,

738
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 1: this guidance, and this is per the New York Times

739
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 1: that broke this morning, is that they would recommend this

740
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:07,799
Speaker 1: to everybody in terms of eight months after your second shot.

741
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:10,640
Speaker 1: And so look, I personally just think this is going

742
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,360
Speaker 1: to add to more vaccine hesitancy. I think that the

743
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:15,719
Speaker 1: idea that people now need three shots instead of two

744
00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 1: shots seems pretty ridiculous, given that Maderna and Pfizer both

745
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:24,080
Speaker 1: have great protection against regular COVID, even against Delta, it's

746
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:27,359
Speaker 1: pretty good. And look, the death rates don't lie people.

747
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 1: I've said it a million times. You get this shot,

748
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:32,600
Speaker 1: You're not going to die from delta. Will you get infected? Yeah,

749
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:35,840
Speaker 1: maybe it's a cold or flu. Okay, we've lived with

750
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: that as a people. As long as you're not going

751
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:40,960
Speaker 1: to die, and as long as your grandma especially is

752
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:43,360
Speaker 1: not going to die or your grandfather the elderly, the

753
00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:46,400
Speaker 1: immunal compromise, yeah, then look, I think we're good. Right.

754
00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:50,400
Speaker 1: So the preliminary data I saw apparently they're looking closely

755
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:52,920
Speaker 1: at what's happening in Israel, because Israel's kind of ahead

756
00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:56,759
Speaker 1: of us in terms of when people started to get vaccinated,

757
00:40:56,840 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 1: so you're able to look at Okay, do these vaccines

758
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 1: their effectiveness wear off over time? And what that data

759
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: is suggesting according to the ride at by a Ride,

760
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:07,360
Speaker 1: which is I think in the New York Times, is

761
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 1: that as you said, the effectiveness does start to wear

762
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:16,239
Speaker 1: off even where is concerned severe illness and hospitalization in

763
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:21,319
Speaker 1: elderly populations and an immunocompromised populations. So keep an eye

764
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:23,800
Speaker 1: on this and we will continue to do the research

765
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 1: and make sure you bring we bring to you, you know,

766
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:28,279
Speaker 1: the best information we can possibly find. The other thing

767
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:32,040
Speaker 1: that we wanted to talk about, though, is obviously vaccine

768
00:41:32,080 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 1: hesidency big issue. Are kind of stuck. There has been

769
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:36,880
Speaker 1: a little bit of an optic especially as DELTA has

770
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 1: searched in areas where DELTA has been you know, really

771
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:44,000
Speaker 1: ravaging the population. You have seen people starting to get

772
00:41:44,080 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 1: vaccinated at increasing rates, which you know, it's sad that

773
00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:49,360
Speaker 1: it had to come to that of actually fearing for

774
00:41:49,719 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 1: your life or the life of your loved ones around you,

775
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:55,160
Speaker 1: but that is in fact where we are one. So

776
00:41:55,400 --> 00:41:58,840
Speaker 1: most of the media conversation about vaccine hesidency is just

777
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:02,360
Speaker 1: pure contempt, right. It's just like the only care to

778
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:06,640
Speaker 1: talk about one population, which is white conservatives and especially

779
00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: white conservative men. They completely ignore the data about how

780
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:13,360
Speaker 1: for example, in New York twenty only twenty seven percent

781
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:18,279
Speaker 1: of young black New Yorkers have gotten vaccinated. Basically, if

782
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: you've gotten screwed repeatedly by government institutions in our healthcare system.

783
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:24,480
Speaker 1: There's a good chance that you're going to be a

784
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 1: little skeptical of this vaccine. But there's been nothing but

785
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 1: contempt coming from the media, and in particular, they have

786
00:42:30,640 --> 00:42:34,720
Speaker 1: not focused on one really pretty obvious and just super

787
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:38,480
Speaker 1: practical reason why at least some segment of the population

788
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 1: has not gotten vaccinated yet. It's not so much that

789
00:42:41,680 --> 00:42:44,600
Speaker 1: their vaccine hesitant. It's that they can't get a damn

790
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:47,440
Speaker 1: day off of their job so that they can go

791
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:52,000
Speaker 1: and get the vaccine and manage whatever the side effects,

792
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 1: which for some people are very real. Might be our

793
00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:58,400
Speaker 1: great friend Jeffrey Stein over at why do I call

794
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:04,200
Speaker 1: him Jeffrey? Jeffrey jeff resigned, oh the Washington Post. He

795
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:08,240
Speaker 1: did the research here and looked at the survey data.

796
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:11,320
Speaker 1: In about two out of ten, so a significant chunk

797
00:43:11,680 --> 00:43:15,920
Speaker 1: of unvaccinated employees, according to Kaiser Family Foundation, said if

798
00:43:15,960 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 1: their employer gave them paid time off, they'd probably get vaccinated.

799
00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:23,680
Speaker 1: Three vaccine clinic representatives also said he went and reached

800
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:26,439
Speaker 1: out to people and talked to them about what they're

801
00:43:26,560 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 1: finding are the reasons that people aren't getting vaccinated, and

802
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:31,920
Speaker 1: they said that time off that was a real issue

803
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:34,839
Speaker 1: and one of a handful that they commonly hear from

804
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:39,759
Speaker 1: vaccine hesitant people. I want to give you one anecdote

805
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:42,840
Speaker 1: here so that you can understand, you know, the reality

806
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:46,040
Speaker 1: people are facing and the costs and benefits that they're juggling.

807
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:49,319
Speaker 1: Here Jeff talked to one forty year old who said

808
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:52,840
Speaker 1: he'd been working sixty plus hours hour weeks for months,

809
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:56,440
Speaker 1: no bump in his pay. He covers gaps and he's

810
00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:58,520
Speaker 1: a manager at a subway to cover gaps in the

811
00:43:58,560 --> 00:44:01,320
Speaker 1: store schedule. They've struggled to find workers. He would like

812
00:44:01,440 --> 00:44:04,239
Speaker 1: to get vaccinated. He believes everyone should get it, but

813
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: said he just hasn't had the time or mental space

814
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 1: to do it. Quote, by the time out of work,

815
00:44:09,600 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: it's time to go to bed. He said he would

816
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:14,320
Speaker 1: have gotten the shot months ago if he'd been offered

817
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: paid time off, but the store doesn't offer that benefit

818
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 1: to get the vaccine or deal with the after effects

819
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:22,719
Speaker 1: or sick pay. In general, doesn't have health insurance either,

820
00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 1: and said he had not seen a doctor in years.

821
00:44:25,280 --> 00:44:27,320
Speaker 1: Subway did not respond to your request for comments. So

822
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:30,719
Speaker 1: here's someone who is not attached at all to the

823
00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 1: healthcare system, doesn't have a primary care physician who he

824
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:36,880
Speaker 1: trusts that he could go and talk to, or that

825
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:39,719
Speaker 1: you know, he would have easy access there, can't get

826
00:44:39,719 --> 00:44:43,360
Speaker 1: a day off of work. Is worried about missing time

827
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:46,120
Speaker 1: if you know, Okay, getting the shot is one thing,

828
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:47,480
Speaker 1: but then are you going to have a day where

829
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:49,120
Speaker 1: you don't feel up to being able to go into

830
00:44:49,160 --> 00:44:51,920
Speaker 1: the work. He's a manager, he's not even a regular employee, right.

831
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:54,560
Speaker 1: He makes thirty five thousand dollars a year, so it's

832
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 1: not like he's making a huge amount of money here.

833
00:44:57,040 --> 00:45:00,120
Speaker 1: But but this is the struggle that I mean, well,

834
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:02,360
Speaker 1: we don't have paid time off in this country, and

835
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 1: some employers, most white collar employers, will give you the

836
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:09,480
Speaker 1: day off, your working class person at a restaurant, at

837
00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 1: a gas station wherever. Very unlikely that they're going to

838
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:15,440
Speaker 1: give you the time off, certainly paid time off to

839
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:17,359
Speaker 1: be able to go and get this done. Yeah, your host.

840
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:19,200
Speaker 1: I mean that, there's really no other way to say it.

841
00:45:19,280 --> 00:45:21,480
Speaker 1: And I think that's the same thing is very important

842
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 1: about young black Americans as well. Put this up there

843
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:26,839
Speaker 1: from the New York Times, twenty seven percent only twenty

844
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:29,840
Speaker 1: eight percent, sorry if young Black New Yorkers are vaccinated,

845
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:32,680
Speaker 1: And in general, what you see is a large amount

846
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:35,759
Speaker 1: of distrust. And what I have tried to point to

847
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:38,840
Speaker 1: is these Kaiser Family Foundation surveys, which is what Jeff's

848
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:41,360
Speaker 1: story is also based on, where they point out that

849
00:45:41,800 --> 00:45:44,640
Speaker 1: two out of ten of the unvaccinated say that they

850
00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:47,160
Speaker 1: would fix it or that they would get vaccinated if

851
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 1: they had paid time off. And some people will say, oh,

852
00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:53,200
Speaker 1: that's just not that many. At scale, that's millions, a

853
00:45:53,239 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: lot of people, millions of the hundreds of thousands of people.

854
00:45:56,800 --> 00:45:59,719
Speaker 1: You take that twenty eight and you make it thirty five.

855
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 1: You know what, that's a whole lot of people who

856
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: probably live in intergenerational housing and are around, they're elderly relatives.

857
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 1: Maybe they're elderly relative won't get vaccinated. But you know,

858
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:13,080
Speaker 1: these the types of things where all we have to

859
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:17,399
Speaker 1: do have some actual compassion for these people and just say,

860
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:21,320
Speaker 1: what's going on here, Tell me what's happening. I don't understand,

861
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:24,200
Speaker 1: it's okay if you don't understand, it's okay that you

862
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:27,560
Speaker 1: hold the position that you hold, and instead just the

863
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:31,120
Speaker 1: hatred that we all seem and I'm pointing not just

864
00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 1: to white people who've been left behind, Black people, Latino,

865
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:39,319
Speaker 1: so many lower middle class folks who are rightfully distrustful

866
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 1: the entire surround You see this booster shock thing, What

867
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:45,920
Speaker 1: are you supposed to think? I was told I can

868
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 1: take off my damn mask. Now I can't. You know,

869
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:52,040
Speaker 1: I was in France, where there's literal vaccine passports, you

870
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:54,080
Speaker 1: can't go out to eat, but they still have indoor

871
00:46:54,160 --> 00:46:58,960
Speaker 1: mask mandates. What's happening. I actually have a certainty that

872
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 1: I'm in a building where every single person is vaccinated. Yeah,

873
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: and why do I still have to wear a mask?

874
00:47:05,160 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 1: No one can explain these things to me, which is

875
00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:12,799
Speaker 1: again why I am seeing this only harden amongst people

876
00:47:12,840 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 1: who are vaccine hesitant. I know people, frankly, even person

877
00:47:16,120 --> 00:47:18,839
Speaker 1: like my people like myself, who are vaccinated themselves, who

878
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:21,880
Speaker 1: are looking at this booster nonsense and the mask mandates

879
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 1: and more and being like, what the hell is going

880
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: on here? Well, and here's the other thing that is

881
00:47:26,200 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 1: so galling is like, I mean, these media elites, the

882
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:35,279
Speaker 1: liberal ones in particular, you know, they were the forcefully

883
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 1: making the case effectively against medicare for all in the

884
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:41,200
Speaker 1: democratic firm. They don't give a shit about people's health

885
00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 1: until they're worried about, like them personally getting infected. So

886
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:47,800
Speaker 1: that's the other part of this that is so disingenuous.

887
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 1: Is another obvious reason why we have a higher level

888
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:55,200
Speaker 1: of vaccine hesitancy here is the other aspect of this

889
00:47:55,440 --> 00:47:58,279
Speaker 1: man's story is he doesn't have a primary care He

890
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:00,959
Speaker 1: hasn't been to the doctor in years. Okay, that's gonna

891
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:03,440
Speaker 1: make you a lot less trustful of You don't have

892
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:05,880
Speaker 1: a person you can go to who can tell you like,

893
00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 1: here's the reality, I promise you. It's say, I've had

894
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:12,279
Speaker 1: many patients who have gotten it, They've been fine, Like

895
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:16,120
Speaker 1: you are disconnected from the medical system. And that's the

896
00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:17,920
Speaker 1: other part that you're not going to hear about in

897
00:48:18,120 --> 00:48:21,520
Speaker 1: elite media is like, there's a good reason that makes

898
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 1: total logical sense of why you have a higher unvaccinated

899
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:27,200
Speaker 1: population here than you do in nations where they have

900
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:30,040
Speaker 1: a single payer health care system and where everybody has

901
00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:33,040
Speaker 1: a connection to the healthcare. That's not like my crazy

902
00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:35,680
Speaker 1: lefty point of view. That was what Michael Brennan Doherty

903
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:40,239
Speaker 1: from the National Review told us. Okay, so it's so selective.

904
00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:44,400
Speaker 1: They only care about like this one tiny sliver of

905
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:47,640
Speaker 1: people's health and of public health, and they care about

906
00:48:47,640 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 1: it only with this one population that they want to

907
00:48:50,200 --> 00:48:53,080
Speaker 1: like shame and because it's it's again it's it's not

908
00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:55,880
Speaker 1: really about public health. It's about culture war. There's one

909
00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:57,840
Speaker 1: other thing that we don't have a terarichy for. But

910
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 1: this is downright psychopathic. There's a doctor who they had

911
00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 1: on MSNBC who said it's time to start denying people

912
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 1: who don't get the vaccine access to major medical treatments.

913
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:16,319
Speaker 1: That's all libertarian dream liberal MSNBC supposedly right. They're saying

914
00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 1: we should deny people life saving care if they don't

915
00:49:20,080 --> 00:49:24,399
Speaker 1: get vaccine. I mean that is literally psychopathic. Play this game.

916
00:49:24,520 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 1: These are the same people who would claim they support

917
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:29,280
Speaker 1: universal healthcare. Let's let us play this game. Forty percent

918
00:49:29,440 --> 00:49:33,200
Speaker 1: of healthcare costs, almost forty percent are two things dialysis

919
00:49:33,280 --> 00:49:36,279
Speaker 1: and congestive heart failure, which are linked to what obesity?

920
00:49:36,360 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 1: So should we deny fat people care in this country?

921
00:49:39,440 --> 00:49:42,279
Speaker 1: Especially the uninsured. Fat are the people who cost us

922
00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:44,600
Speaker 1: all a lot of money. Maybe even some of you

923
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:48,359
Speaker 1: are jokingly nodding at that. I say no, absolutely, right,

924
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 1: people who are smoking, like, where does this? Where does

925
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:54,680
Speaker 1: this end? Where does it end? I mean, this is

926
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:56,800
Speaker 1: just and you know what, I was really disturbed because

927
00:49:56,840 --> 00:50:00,040
Speaker 1: I thought on Twitter this is my naivete that but

928
00:50:00,160 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 1: you know, this was Raw Story, which is a liberal

929
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 1: or progressive outlet, and everybody was in agreement. They're like, yeah,

930
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:08,880
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but that's what we should do.

931
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:12,319
Speaker 1: Oh that's insane. Lit it is so insane. And again

932
00:50:13,320 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 1: to talk about what we were just saying before, you're

933
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:19,439
Speaker 1: talking about disproportionately black and brown communities, you are talking

934
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:23,880
Speaker 1: about denying care too overwhelmingly. This is a working class

935
00:50:24,239 --> 00:50:28,000
Speaker 1: and disproportionately black and brown population. Okay, twenty eight percent

936
00:50:28,120 --> 00:50:30,919
Speaker 1: of young black New Yorkers are vaccinated. That's it. Yeah,

937
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: so seventy percent of them should be denied health the

938
00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:35,360
Speaker 1: other seventy two percent you're saying they should be denied healthcare.

939
00:50:36,080 --> 00:50:39,360
Speaker 1: Totally psychopathic. Just had to add that to the conversation

940
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 1: that that's how insane these people. I'm glad you are,

941
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:44,080
Speaker 1: because no, this is a legit. If they had the power,

942
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:46,160
Speaker 1: if you see what's going on in Australia, they would

943
00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:48,080
Speaker 1: do that here. If they could do it, and this

944
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 1: is what they're talking about, and where does it end.

945
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:53,040
Speaker 1: Many of these black and brown Americans are the ones

946
00:50:53,120 --> 00:50:56,280
Speaker 1: disproportionately more likely to be obase and to have comorbidities.

947
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:59,120
Speaker 1: So are you going to deny them healthcare on those fronts? No,

948
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:02,480
Speaker 1: you know, because we understand that we have a lot

949
00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:04,759
Speaker 1: of different problems in this country and some people are

950
00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:07,839
Speaker 1: worse off than others, and that at least in terms

951
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:11,120
Speaker 1: of crisis care, that nobody is going to die for

952
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 1: want of health care generally. I'm not going to say

953
00:51:14,160 --> 00:51:18,360
Speaker 1: that that doesn't happen. And yet this is complete callousness

954
00:51:18,560 --> 00:51:21,720
Speaker 1: directed at the people who are most likely to suffer

955
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:25,440
Speaker 1: in our economic system, in our society. Yeah, it's just

956
00:51:25,520 --> 00:51:28,320
Speaker 1: and again coming from a group of people who claim

957
00:51:28,440 --> 00:51:32,480
Speaker 1: to support healthcare is the human right, right until the

958
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:35,680
Speaker 1: person that needs the healthcare in their mind is some

959
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:39,920
Speaker 1: like you know, right wing white dude, then screw them.

960
00:51:40,600 --> 00:51:43,799
Speaker 1: That's the either. Let them there. That's super, very very

961
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:47,520
Speaker 1: compassionate that we have of a country there. Okay. We

962
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:50,080
Speaker 1: also wanted to make sure that we highlighted this story

963
00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 1: out in California, and as you said in the beginning

964
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:56,520
Speaker 1: of the show, if this was in New York or frankly,

965
00:51:56,560 --> 00:52:00,200
Speaker 1: even in Florida or something more accessible via the East coast,

966
00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 1: then this would be completely different. But the polling that

967
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:06,760
Speaker 1: is coming out of this race, and I of course

968
00:52:06,800 --> 00:52:08,960
Speaker 1: will give a grain of salt whenever it comes to

969
00:52:09,080 --> 00:52:12,799
Speaker 1: the polling and more, looks like it could be incredibly

970
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 1: close for Gavin Newsom. So let's throw this up there

971
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: on the screen from The Hill actually, which wrote up

972
00:52:18,640 --> 00:52:22,000
Speaker 1: this poll from CBS News. So there's a four point

973
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:25,120
Speaker 1: margin of error. Now, in this CBS News poll, the

974
00:52:25,200 --> 00:52:27,800
Speaker 1: fifty two percent of likely voters said Newsom should not

975
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:31,240
Speaker 1: be recalled, but forty eight percent said that he should

976
00:52:31,239 --> 00:52:33,960
Speaker 1: be ousted. And so just how people know all that

977
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:36,680
Speaker 1: needs to happen in order for Newsom to leave this

978
00:52:36,840 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 1: recall is for fifty one percent of people to say yes,

979
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:43,800
Speaker 1: he should be recalled, and then the person who receives

980
00:52:44,120 --> 00:52:48,000
Speaker 1: the most amount of votes, not a plurality, would win. Now,

981
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:51,279
Speaker 1: under that scenario, you would have maybe a fifty one

982
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:54,880
Speaker 1: percent recall and then only twenty percent or something supporting

983
00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:58,239
Speaker 1: a candidate. That person could become the next governor of

984
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:01,799
Speaker 1: the state of California. This is fifty something million people

985
00:53:01,880 --> 00:53:03,520
Speaker 1: live out there. Okay, they have one of the largest

986
00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:06,960
Speaker 1: GDPs in the world. Just as a state. This is

987
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 1: a huge story and Newsom's failures both on COVID, I mean,

988
00:53:11,080 --> 00:53:15,359
Speaker 1: the lockdown, hypocrisy, French laundry, crime is sky high out

989
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:20,360
Speaker 1: throughout California. There is the dissatisfaction with the disparity between

990
00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:23,200
Speaker 1: the tax rate, and then you also just see like

991
00:53:23,440 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 1: all these you know, the state is basically run by

992
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:30,319
Speaker 1: the elite and basically completely fails lower middle class people

993
00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:33,279
Speaker 1: who live there. So there's a weird dynamic going on here.

994
00:53:33,360 --> 00:53:37,399
Speaker 1: And just so people understand some of the dynamics at play.

995
00:53:37,640 --> 00:53:40,880
Speaker 1: First of all, this recall effort wasn't really picking up

996
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:45,680
Speaker 1: that much steam until he went in, you know, and

997
00:53:46,960 --> 00:53:51,320
Speaker 1: in opposition to his own COVID lockdown, Sezors went to

998
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 1: French laundry and that entire for this fancy I think

999
00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:58,400
Speaker 1: it was a birthday party or whatever, unmasked indoors all

1000
00:53:58,480 --> 00:54:02,280
Speaker 1: of that and gets caught. That's when the recall really

1001
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:05,040
Speaker 1: started to pick up stein and they got enough signatures

1002
00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:08,520
Speaker 1: to actually take it to the voters. So that's important

1003
00:54:08,640 --> 00:54:11,279
Speaker 1: to sort of keep in mind in terms of the

1004
00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:14,880
Speaker 1: mechanics of how this is going to work. This is important,

1005
00:54:14,920 --> 00:54:16,720
Speaker 1: and you laid it down. So voters will be faced

1006
00:54:16,760 --> 00:54:20,200
Speaker 1: with two questions. Question number one, do you want to

1007
00:54:20,320 --> 00:54:24,560
Speaker 1: recall Gavin Newsom? Okay? Now if a majority says yes,

1008
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:29,280
Speaker 1: then you go to question number two and people are asked,

1009
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:33,200
Speaker 1: who do you want to replace him? So the Newsome

1010
00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:37,359
Speaker 1: campaign and the Democratic Party were at large have had

1011
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:41,000
Speaker 1: this awkward question of like, Okay, obviously they're pushing people

1012
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:44,360
Speaker 1: to vote no on question number one, but do we

1013
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:47,080
Speaker 1: want to tell people like? But on that second question,

1014
00:54:47,239 --> 00:54:50,239
Speaker 1: here's who you should fill out? And so far their

1015
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:54,000
Speaker 1: strategy has been just leave it blank, leaving it open

1016
00:54:54,040 --> 00:54:58,800
Speaker 1: to basically whoever Republicans are, independents ultimately pick. One of

1017
00:54:58,960 --> 00:55:04,320
Speaker 1: the bizarre dynamics here is that Newsome's approval Newsom's approval

1018
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:08,560
Speaker 1: ratings are actually solidly above water. In this same poll,

1019
00:55:08,719 --> 00:55:11,319
Speaker 1: fifty seven percent of California adults approve of the job

1020
00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:14,480
Speaker 1: he's doing and forty three percent of adults disapprove. So,

1021
00:55:15,120 --> 00:55:17,719
Speaker 1: if you are looking population writ large and you just

1022
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:19,640
Speaker 1: ask him, do you like Gavin Newsom and how he's

1023
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:22,080
Speaker 1: doing his governor, actually fifty seven percent say yes, which

1024
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:25,480
Speaker 1: is pretty strong the prom he faces is that those

1025
00:55:25,600 --> 00:55:29,080
Speaker 1: people who support him are not particularly motivated to come

1026
00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:31,880
Speaker 1: out and vote in this recall. So even in this

1027
00:55:32,320 --> 00:55:37,000
Speaker 1: CBS poll, if you're just looking at voters written large,

1028
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:40,480
Speaker 1: he's he's in better shape in terms of surviving the

1029
00:55:40,560 --> 00:55:42,319
Speaker 1: recall in that first question of just do you want

1030
00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:45,440
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom recalled? But if you narrow that pool to

1031
00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:49,239
Speaker 1: likely voters, then it gets really really tight and is

1032
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:51,840
Speaker 1: right at the margin of air. The other thing we

1033
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:55,759
Speaker 1: should throw into this mix is the fact that in

1034
00:55:56,120 --> 00:55:59,120
Speaker 1: polls in other states across the country, there has been

1035
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:05,120
Speaker 1: a massive Democratic lead, meaning that Republicans have consistently performed

1036
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:08,240
Speaker 1: in state after state and national election after national election

1037
00:56:08,800 --> 00:56:12,480
Speaker 1: better than what the polls actually say. Is that the

1038
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:15,799
Speaker 1: case here. We don't know, but that is another thing

1039
00:56:15,880 --> 00:56:18,560
Speaker 1: that you should factor in as you're looking at these numbers.

1040
00:56:19,120 --> 00:56:22,040
Speaker 1: In terms of the second question who they would pick,

1041
00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:24,279
Speaker 1: let me tell you who they're not going to pick,

1042
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:27,960
Speaker 1: which is Kaylen Jenner, who stands right now at two percent.

1043
00:56:28,239 --> 00:56:32,040
Speaker 1: She's the Australia. Where is she even in the country,

1044
00:56:32,120 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 1: And it's impressive to get two percent when you are

1045
00:56:34,640 --> 00:56:38,680
Speaker 1: that well known. I mean, everyone knows who Kaylen Jenner,

1046
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:41,320
Speaker 1: and she's at two percent in this poll. The person

1047
00:56:41,400 --> 00:56:44,880
Speaker 1: who actually the leading candidate right now is don't know,

1048
00:56:45,960 --> 00:56:48,600
Speaker 1: so definitely still a jump ball here. But in terms

1049
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:52,439
Speaker 1: of actual people, the leading candidate is a conservative talk

1050
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:56,560
Speaker 1: radio host named Larry Elder. Don't know that much about

1051
00:56:56,640 --> 00:56:59,200
Speaker 1: him personally. Newsom has been painting him as he's to

1052
00:56:59,280 --> 00:57:01,680
Speaker 1: the right of Trump. But we wanted to play you

1053
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:03,719
Speaker 1: a little bit of one of his ads. You could

1054
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:06,239
Speaker 1: get a taste of what he's all about. You know,

1055
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 1: another commercial the candidate walks around while a voice tells

1056
00:57:09,080 --> 00:57:11,319
Speaker 1: you how great he or she is. Well, I can talk.

1057
00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:14,080
Speaker 1: The reason to recall Newsom is more than this gas

1058
00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 1: tax hike. It's his incompetence, costing the state tens of billions,

1059
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:21,640
Speaker 1: including fraud and corruption. His policies enable bad schools, high crime,

1060
00:57:21,920 --> 00:57:24,640
Speaker 1: more poverty, The poor get government aid, the rich don't

1061
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:27,840
Speaker 1: need it, and the middle class is leaving. I'm Larry Elder.

1062
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:31,080
Speaker 1: This is a fight for the soul of California. We

1063
00:57:31,240 --> 00:57:37,800
Speaker 1: call Newsom elect Elder. The thing that I thought was

1064
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:41,200
Speaker 1: bad interesting there, as he said his tagline there was

1065
00:57:41,280 --> 00:57:43,680
Speaker 1: it's a fight for the soul of California. It's total

1066
00:57:43,800 --> 00:57:46,080
Speaker 1: rip off of Biden. But in the state that is

1067
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:50,920
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly do not stupid, moved, didn't say the word Republican.

1068
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:53,320
Speaker 1: There either no smart man. Now we have a poll.

1069
00:57:53,520 --> 00:57:55,880
Speaker 1: Let's put that up there. Rob Pires has this tweet.

1070
00:57:55,920 --> 00:57:57,880
Speaker 1: Let's put it on the screen. Take a look at that.

1071
00:57:58,040 --> 00:58:00,880
Speaker 1: In terms of how well he's doing eighty three percent

1072
00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:03,520
Speaker 1: at the twenty five percent saying we have no idea

1073
00:58:03,600 --> 00:58:07,400
Speaker 1: twenty three percent, Larry Elder twenty percent, nobody than Kevin Pafrath,

1074
00:58:07,560 --> 00:58:10,280
Speaker 1: so firing jers look twenty five percent, I don't know

1075
00:58:10,480 --> 00:58:14,240
Speaker 1: twenty percent nowhere. I don't want to say that he's

1076
00:58:14,320 --> 00:58:16,360
Speaker 1: going to be the next governor of California. I frankly

1077
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:19,120
Speaker 1: have no idea. But as you said, Trump actually did

1078
00:58:19,240 --> 00:58:22,160
Speaker 1: better in the state of California in twenty twenty than

1079
00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:25,560
Speaker 1: he did in twenty sixteen. Not only that he won

1080
00:58:25,600 --> 00:58:29,280
Speaker 1: in areas like Orange County, in Asian areas, increased his

1081
00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:31,960
Speaker 1: Latino vote share in the state in counties like La

1082
00:58:32,400 --> 00:58:35,240
Speaker 1: and more. So that would tell you that there is

1083
00:58:35,360 --> 00:58:39,320
Speaker 1: some dissatisfaction with the you know, liberal elite in California.

1084
00:58:39,720 --> 00:58:43,240
Speaker 1: Capitalize on that just enough and you could become the

1085
00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:46,320
Speaker 1: next governor with only twenty three percent of the vote,

1086
00:58:46,600 --> 00:58:49,560
Speaker 1: and given the state of the country, given well, the

1087
00:58:49,600 --> 00:58:51,200
Speaker 1: whole thing is messed up. Why are they a one

1088
00:58:51,240 --> 00:58:53,120
Speaker 1: party state? I think it's a total joke. But that's

1089
00:58:53,120 --> 00:58:56,600
Speaker 1: a whole other you know, that's a whole other conversation. Really,

1090
00:58:56,680 --> 00:58:59,200
Speaker 1: what I do think is important is that when we

1091
00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:03,560
Speaker 1: look at this, the odds are that Democrats are probably

1092
00:59:03,680 --> 00:59:06,120
Speaker 1: being over sampled in these polls. That's the one thing

1093
00:59:06,160 --> 00:59:09,720
Speaker 1: that we've learned over and over again since twenty sixteen. Now,

1094
00:59:09,800 --> 00:59:12,120
Speaker 1: maybe the polls revert back to the pre Trump era.

1095
00:59:12,560 --> 00:59:15,440
Speaker 1: I have no idea, but given the state of the country,

1096
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:20,400
Speaker 1: given especially the dissatisfaction over lockdowns, La County, San Francisco

1097
00:59:20,520 --> 00:59:23,160
Speaker 1: is now bringing in vaccine passports and more, I would

1098
00:59:23,360 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 1: bet that the most motivated people in the country are

1099
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:29,240
Speaker 1: those most dissatisfied with these types of policies and would

1100
00:59:29,240 --> 00:59:31,600
Speaker 1: come out and vote. And to that point, I would

1101
00:59:31,640 --> 00:59:33,280
Speaker 1: not want to be Gavin Newsome today. I think he

1102
00:59:33,400 --> 00:59:36,240
Speaker 1: is a true fifty to fifty chance right now. Well,

1103
00:59:36,600 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 1: the motivation is the key part, because again, his approval

1104
00:59:40,280 --> 00:59:43,600
Speaker 1: writing is actually pretty decent fifty seven percent to forty

1105
00:59:43,640 --> 00:59:46,480
Speaker 1: three percent. Not too bad, better than Trump ever had

1106
00:59:46,680 --> 00:59:51,360
Speaker 1: during his entire presidency. So he's solidly above water there.

1107
00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 1: But the question who's going to turn out to vote?

1108
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:57,280
Speaker 1: And as you said, and I think this is not

1109
00:59:57,400 --> 00:59:59,000
Speaker 1: just a problem for news, and I also think it's

1110
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:03,160
Speaker 1: a bit of about weather. Nationwide. Republicans are pretty motivated.

1111
01:00:03,600 --> 01:00:08,919
Speaker 1: People who oppose the COVID restrictions are much more seem

1112
01:00:08,960 --> 01:00:12,200
Speaker 1: to be much more motivated than Democrats who buy and

1113
01:00:12,280 --> 01:00:13,880
Speaker 1: large went back to brunch And the fact that the

1114
01:00:13,960 --> 01:00:16,760
Speaker 1: media has not really, not really dug in on this,

1115
01:00:17,760 --> 01:00:19,640
Speaker 1: I think is also a problem for him because he's

1116
01:00:19,680 --> 01:00:22,840
Speaker 1: having an issue motivating people convincing them that this is

1117
01:00:23,200 --> 01:00:26,920
Speaker 1: only a real threat. So who knows what's going to

1118
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:29,440
Speaker 1: happen here, but we wanted to put it on your radar,

1119
01:00:29,560 --> 01:00:32,840
Speaker 1: so to speak, as something that is definitely a possibility

1120
01:00:32,960 --> 01:00:35,959
Speaker 1: and is not getting a lot of attention from mainstream media.

1121
01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 1: Yeah that's right. Wow, you guys must really like listening

1122
01:00:38,440 --> 01:00:40,480
Speaker 1: to our voices. Well, I know this is annoying instead

1123
01:00:40,480 --> 01:00:43,160
Speaker 1: of making you listen to a Viagra commercial. When you're done,

1124
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:45,760
Speaker 1: check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kasloff

1125
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:48,040
Speaker 1: called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper

1126
01:00:48,120 --> 01:00:51,520
Speaker 1: issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always

1127
01:00:51,560 --> 01:00:54,800
Speaker 1: need more Crystal and soog in your daily lives. Take care, guys, Crystal,

1128
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:58,040
Speaker 1: what are you taking a look at today? Well, join

1129
01:00:58,160 --> 01:01:00,919
Speaker 1: me if you will, for a little trip down memory lane.

1130
01:01:01,440 --> 01:01:04,280
Speaker 1: It was way back in the fall of twenty nineteen,

1131
01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:07,240
Speaker 1: a whole two years ago and now canceled. Star Ellen

1132
01:01:07,320 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 1: DeGeneres had just gone to a Dallas Cowboys game where

1133
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:13,560
Speaker 1: she sat in the owner's box alongside some notable luminaries.

1134
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:16,400
Speaker 1: Look this is I took a video of who was

1135
01:01:16,640 --> 01:01:42,960
Speaker 1: next to me activity, Yeah, fancy so so that was

1136
01:01:43,040 --> 01:01:45,680
Speaker 1: Porsia and that was Charlotte Jones. Porsche was talking to

1137
01:01:45,800 --> 01:01:47,680
Speaker 1: in George W. Bush, and then in front of us

1138
01:01:47,800 --> 01:01:50,320
Speaker 1: was the tallest man in the world. People were upset.

1139
01:01:50,440 --> 01:01:53,000
Speaker 1: They thought, why is a gay Hollywood liberal sitting next

1140
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:56,439
Speaker 1: to a conservative Republican president. Didn't even notice I'm holding

1141
01:01:56,480 --> 01:02:01,200
Speaker 1: the brand new iPhone eleven. But a lot of people

1142
01:02:01,240 --> 01:02:03,240
Speaker 1: were mad, and they did what people do when they're mad.

1143
01:02:03,320 --> 01:02:06,600
Speaker 1: They tweet. But here's one tweet that I loved this person,

1144
01:02:06,640 --> 01:02:08,880
Speaker 1: says Ellen and George Bush together makes me have faith

1145
01:02:08,920 --> 01:02:15,720
Speaker 1: in America again. Mm faith in America. Again. She went

1146
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:18,280
Speaker 1: on quite a bit more about how, yes, she's friends

1147
01:02:18,360 --> 01:02:20,520
Speaker 1: with George W. Bush because she should be nice to

1148
01:02:20,560 --> 01:02:23,880
Speaker 1: people have different views, something I obviously agree with given

1149
01:02:23,920 --> 01:02:27,160
Speaker 1: my partnership here with Sager. But Sager did not lie

1150
01:02:27,240 --> 01:02:31,280
Speaker 1: us into war, commit tremendous atrocities, and destabilize an entire region,

1151
01:02:31,440 --> 01:02:35,040
Speaker 1: cousting hundreds of thousands of lives and untold trillions of dollars. No,

1152
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:39,800
Speaker 1: casually pilling around with terrorists like George W. Bush and

1153
01:02:39,960 --> 01:02:44,480
Speaker 1: whitewashing their crimes is something else entirely Wasn't just Ellen, though,

1154
01:02:44,640 --> 01:02:46,440
Speaker 1: don't want to just pick on her. In the Trump era,

1155
01:02:46,600 --> 01:02:51,080
Speaker 1: the entire liberal media echo chamber got in on w Rehabilitation.

1156
01:02:51,600 --> 01:02:56,240
Speaker 1: Pundits fond over the adorable relationship between Michelle Obama and Bush.

1157
01:02:56,680 --> 01:02:59,360
Speaker 1: Remember this photo of the two in a fond embrace.

1158
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:03,080
Speaker 1: Michellis standing behind Bush, wrapping her arms around him as

1159
01:03:03,120 --> 01:03:06,120
Speaker 1: he leans into her, a smile on his face, eyes

1160
01:03:06,240 --> 01:03:10,440
Speaker 1: half closed in contentment. Bush was routinely held up as

1161
01:03:10,680 --> 01:03:14,160
Speaker 1: good and moral and decent. Why well, it was a

1162
01:03:14,280 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 1: useful foil for Donald Trump. Praising Bush allowed neoliberals and

1163
01:03:18,680 --> 01:03:21,840
Speaker 1: never Trump grifters. The chance to add a bipartisan gloss

1164
01:03:21,920 --> 01:03:25,320
Speaker 1: to their opposition to Trump, an opposition that was rooted

1165
01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:28,000
Speaker 1: not in the corruption and assault on the working class

1166
01:03:28,040 --> 01:03:30,480
Speaker 1: that should have been the russ of a genuine Trump opposition,

1167
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:33,160
Speaker 1: but in his uncouth manners and the fact that he

1168
01:03:33,280 --> 01:03:35,600
Speaker 1: brought in his own band of grifters rather than relying

1169
01:03:35,680 --> 01:03:39,160
Speaker 1: on the existing grifting class, although in fairness, he did

1170
01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:43,280
Speaker 1: ultimately incorporate some of the existing grifting class as well,

1171
01:03:43,360 --> 01:03:46,920
Speaker 1: but I digress there So, the media needed Trump to

1172
01:03:47,040 --> 01:03:50,200
Speaker 1: be a unique evil for their ratings, and Democrats needed

1173
01:03:50,200 --> 01:03:52,400
Speaker 1: Trump to be a unique evil so that no one

1174
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:54,120
Speaker 1: would have time to ask how the hell they could

1175
01:03:54,120 --> 01:03:56,920
Speaker 1: have lost to such a ridiculous person. He couldn't be

1176
01:03:57,240 --> 01:04:00,520
Speaker 1: another in a line of a leadist, morally repugnant criminals,

1177
01:04:00,600 --> 01:04:03,560
Speaker 1: because that would be a less gripping story, and because

1178
01:04:03,640 --> 01:04:06,840
Speaker 1: it wouldn't allow the previous Republican grifter class a chance

1179
01:04:06,880 --> 01:04:10,000
Speaker 1: to write their books and score their pundit contracts. Thanks

1180
01:04:10,080 --> 01:04:14,360
Speaker 1: to this media whitewashing project, neocons like Liz Cheney and

1181
01:04:14,680 --> 01:04:19,000
Speaker 1: Adam Kinsinger are wildly popular with the Democratic base. Shameless

1182
01:04:19,040 --> 01:04:22,960
Speaker 1: warmongers like Bill Crystal have been elevated as sage voices

1183
01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:27,160
Speaker 1: of decency and democracy. George W. Bush, propaganist Nicole Wallace

1184
01:04:27,240 --> 01:04:30,880
Speaker 1: hosts two Hours on MSNBC, and many of the military

1185
01:04:31,040 --> 01:04:34,400
Speaker 1: men directly complicit in neocon lies can be found either

1186
01:04:34,440 --> 01:04:38,040
Speaker 1: as cable news contributors or as frequent esteem guests and pundits.

1187
01:04:38,560 --> 01:04:42,480
Speaker 1: This project of liberal elite history revision was so complete

1188
01:04:42,960 --> 01:04:46,720
Speaker 1: that Colon Powell had a plum speaking slot at the

1189
01:04:46,880 --> 01:04:50,200
Speaker 1: DNC for Crying out Loud, which leads me to my

1190
01:04:50,280 --> 01:04:53,560
Speaker 1: second point. No one benefited from this media environment more

1191
01:04:53,920 --> 01:04:56,120
Speaker 1: than Joe Biden. What do I mean by that, We'll

1192
01:04:56,160 --> 01:04:59,680
Speaker 1: think about it. Biden won because Democratic primary voters were

1193
01:04:59,680 --> 01:05:04,040
Speaker 1: persone to abandon any policy desires in favor of just

1194
01:05:04,280 --> 01:05:07,240
Speaker 1: beating Trump, and the people who made the case that

1195
01:05:07,360 --> 01:05:11,000
Speaker 1: defeating Trump should be the only concern and that Biden

1196
01:05:11,160 --> 01:05:13,360
Speaker 1: was the guy to do it were exactly the kind

1197
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:17,040
Speaker 1: of Bush era leftovers that were elevated as resistance heroes

1198
01:05:17,160 --> 01:05:19,520
Speaker 1: in the Trump era. It was a one two punch here.

1199
01:05:20,000 --> 01:05:23,160
Speaker 1: Bush era generals and CIA ghouls helped to convince the

1200
01:05:23,200 --> 01:05:26,080
Speaker 1: Democratic base that Trump was in fact that unique evil.

1201
01:05:26,640 --> 01:05:30,840
Speaker 1: Then those rehab neo con pundits desperate to defeat Bernie

1202
01:05:30,880 --> 01:05:33,480
Speaker 1: in the left and left with no other options, convinced

1203
01:05:33,520 --> 01:05:36,800
Speaker 1: voters that only Biden could defeat Trump. They were joining

1204
01:05:36,840 --> 01:05:39,560
Speaker 1: their mission by their new besties in the Democratic Establishment.

1205
01:05:39,640 --> 01:05:42,040
Speaker 1: In all of this, just think about it, Even though

1206
01:05:42,080 --> 01:05:44,680
Speaker 1: he was the former vice president, Biden on his own

1207
01:05:44,800 --> 01:05:47,720
Speaker 1: was not even coming close to winning. He was losing

1208
01:05:47,840 --> 01:05:51,160
Speaker 1: not only to Bernie, but to Pete Buddhages and Amy Klobashar.

1209
01:05:51,440 --> 01:05:54,240
Speaker 1: The man had no money, he barely campaigned, and when

1210
01:05:54,240 --> 01:05:57,240
Speaker 1: he did campaign, his advisers regretted letting him leave the basement.

1211
01:05:57,680 --> 01:06:01,720
Speaker 1: The whole project was wildly so successful at manufacturing consent

1212
01:06:01,840 --> 01:06:04,640
Speaker 1: for the Democratic Establishment at a time when voters were

1213
01:06:04,720 --> 01:06:07,919
Speaker 1: routinely telling posters that from a policy perspective, they really

1214
01:06:08,000 --> 01:06:10,720
Speaker 1: preferred something quite different. But there's a big cost to

1215
01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:13,600
Speaker 1: be paid for embracing and elevating these voices, and that

1216
01:06:13,800 --> 01:06:17,160
Speaker 1: bill has now come due. That cost is being paid

1217
01:06:17,240 --> 01:06:19,600
Speaker 1: by Biden, and frankly by all of us right now

1218
01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:22,959
Speaker 1: in building support for his domestic agenda as deficit scare

1219
01:06:23,080 --> 01:06:25,640
Speaker 1: mongering and welfare queen politics creep back in the center

1220
01:06:25,680 --> 01:06:29,120
Speaker 1: of discourse. And that cost is really being paid most

1221
01:06:29,200 --> 01:06:32,959
Speaker 1: clearly right now in the reaction to his exit from Afghanistan.

1222
01:06:34,120 --> 01:06:38,360
Speaker 1: Leaving Afghanistan is what the American people have wanted for years,

1223
01:06:38,880 --> 01:06:41,720
Speaker 1: and it is in fact what Biden promised on the

1224
01:06:41,800 --> 01:06:44,760
Speaker 1: campaign trail. But the Hawks who backed him, they didn't

1225
01:06:44,800 --> 01:06:46,400
Speaker 1: think he really had the stones to do it, and

1226
01:06:46,480 --> 01:06:49,280
Speaker 1: they are melting down over the fact that he ultimately did.

1227
01:06:49,760 --> 01:06:53,600
Speaker 1: They can't believe that their grand imperialist project, which showered

1228
01:06:53,880 --> 01:06:57,560
Speaker 1: billions on the defense industry, is all over. In any

1229
01:06:57,680 --> 01:07:01,120
Speaker 1: sane world, the liars, criminals, and thugs who got us

1230
01:07:01,200 --> 01:07:03,560
Speaker 1: into this mess should be the last people that we

1231
01:07:03,680 --> 01:07:06,440
Speaker 1: hear from right now. Their panel comments, op eds, and

1232
01:07:06,480 --> 01:07:09,560
Speaker 1: tweets should be laughed at if they ever even see

1233
01:07:09,600 --> 01:07:13,520
Speaker 1: the light of day. Instead, these people, aided by their

1234
01:07:13,600 --> 01:07:16,520
Speaker 1: liberal elite friends, have wormed their way back into the

1235
01:07:16,600 --> 01:07:19,200
Speaker 1: center of public discourse where they can make the case

1236
01:07:19,240 --> 01:07:23,280
Speaker 1: that we should stay in Afghanistan forever. After four years

1237
01:07:23,480 --> 01:07:26,720
Speaker 1: of reframing George W. Bush as a cuddly Grandpaly likes

1238
01:07:26,760 --> 01:07:29,640
Speaker 1: to paint good luck, trying to remind everyone that this

1239
01:07:29,840 --> 01:07:34,120
Speaker 1: dude in actuality was pure evil and Sagar, you know,

1240
01:07:34,600 --> 01:07:37,640
Speaker 1: we warned of this. We saw the one more thing

1241
01:07:37,720 --> 01:07:40,160
Speaker 1: I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about

1242
01:07:40,160 --> 01:07:43,440
Speaker 1: my podcast with Kyle Kolinski. It's called Crystal, Kyle and Friends,

1243
01:07:43,480 --> 01:07:46,440
Speaker 1: where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky,

1244
01:07:46,600 --> 01:07:49,800
Speaker 1: Cornell West, and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any

1245
01:07:49,880 --> 01:07:53,240
Speaker 1: podcast platform, or you can subscribe over on substack to

1246
01:07:53,280 --> 01:07:55,280
Speaker 1: get the video a day early. We're going to stop

1247
01:07:55,320 --> 01:07:58,320
Speaker 1: bugging you now. Enjoy all right, Sager, what are you

1248
01:07:58,360 --> 01:08:01,320
Speaker 1: looking at? Well? The mediaronment right now is something that

1249
01:08:01,440 --> 01:08:04,280
Speaker 1: I have not seen in quite some time. The entire

1250
01:08:04,440 --> 01:08:08,240
Speaker 1: apparatus seems united in pushing the narrative that somehow that

1251
01:08:08,400 --> 01:08:11,720
Speaker 1: the way the withdrawal from Afghanistan should have been sunshine

1252
01:08:11,800 --> 01:08:14,760
Speaker 1: and daisies. It is clear as day that these people

1253
01:08:14,960 --> 01:08:17,760
Speaker 1: have been asleep for the last twenty years as to

1254
01:08:17,840 --> 01:08:22,280
Speaker 1: the immense corruption, ineptitude, and incompetence that the United States

1255
01:08:22,400 --> 01:08:25,720
Speaker 1: military has displayed in that country. The main sticking point

1256
01:08:25,800 --> 01:08:30,200
Speaker 1: in contemporary political discourse is Saigon. Right now, America will

1257
01:08:30,240 --> 01:08:33,960
Speaker 1: never forget. Many say this is Biden's Saigon moment, and look,

1258
01:08:34,040 --> 01:08:36,639
Speaker 1: to be fair, Biden actually set himself up for failure

1259
01:08:36,920 --> 01:08:39,240
Speaker 1: when he said we wouldn't have a Sigon moment. Just

1260
01:08:39,320 --> 01:08:41,840
Speaker 1: remember that. But let's let's not let him off the

1261
01:08:41,880 --> 01:08:45,000
Speaker 1: hook too easy as yet entire brigade breaking through the

1262
01:08:45,080 --> 01:08:49,400
Speaker 1: gates of our embassy. Six. If I'm not mistaken, the

1263
01:08:49,840 --> 01:08:53,280
Speaker 1: Taliban is not the South of the North Vietnamese Army.

1264
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:58,240
Speaker 1: They're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's gonna

1265
01:08:58,240 --> 01:09:00,559
Speaker 1: be no circumstance for you to see people being lifted

1266
01:09:00,640 --> 01:09:04,799
Speaker 1: off the roof of a embassy of the United States

1267
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:09,760
Speaker 1: from Afghanistan. It is not at all comfortable. So the

1268
01:09:09,880 --> 01:09:13,400
Speaker 1: question now is where do they go from here? That

1269
01:09:13,840 --> 01:09:16,320
Speaker 1: the jury is still out, but the likelihood there is

1270
01:09:16,360 --> 01:09:20,519
Speaker 1: going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the

1271
01:09:20,560 --> 01:09:25,519
Speaker 1: whole country is highly unlikely. Obviously he was dead wrong there,

1272
01:09:25,640 --> 01:09:27,360
Speaker 1: and I guarantee you're going to see that clip on

1273
01:09:27,439 --> 01:09:30,080
Speaker 1: loop from the GOP and anti Biden people for some time.

1274
01:09:30,479 --> 01:09:33,960
Speaker 1: But the question arises when people say we shouldn't have

1275
01:09:34,040 --> 01:09:37,280
Speaker 1: a Sigon moment, what are they really saying? Something that

1276
01:09:37,360 --> 01:09:39,880
Speaker 1: I was especially struck by yesterday when talking with Richard

1277
01:09:39,920 --> 01:09:43,200
Speaker 1: Hannania was his observation that if you want to really

1278
01:09:43,240 --> 01:09:46,400
Speaker 1: talk about Saigon in the South Vietnamese Army, they at

1279
01:09:46,479 --> 01:09:49,360
Speaker 1: least held on for two years after the end of

1280
01:09:49,520 --> 01:09:53,439
Speaker 1: most US combat operations. Afghanistan could not even hold on

1281
01:09:53,760 --> 01:09:58,000
Speaker 1: for three weeks. The fall of Kabble happened faster than

1282
01:09:58,040 --> 01:10:01,600
Speaker 1: the fall of Saigon. It faced no resistance, and the

1283
01:10:01,800 --> 01:10:05,000
Speaker 1: army that we spent one hundred billion dollars on collapsed

1284
01:10:05,080 --> 01:10:08,000
Speaker 1: within just a few hours. In many ways, it seems

1285
01:10:08,040 --> 01:10:11,080
Speaker 1: we did a better job in Saigon than we did

1286
01:10:11,160 --> 01:10:15,080
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, which again raises the question, what use is

1287
01:10:15,200 --> 01:10:18,960
Speaker 1: Saigon as a metaphor? Well, look to me, what are

1288
01:10:19,040 --> 01:10:21,840
Speaker 1: people really saying that we should have somehow fought it

1289
01:10:21,880 --> 01:10:25,120
Speaker 1: out with the North Vietnamese army in the streets of Saigon,

1290
01:10:25,520 --> 01:10:28,040
Speaker 1: that we never should have left. Should we have kept

1291
01:10:28,120 --> 01:10:31,120
Speaker 1: more troops in Saigon, had an all out war to

1292
01:10:31,200 --> 01:10:34,680
Speaker 1: have a more orderly withdrawal, Or did the final culmination

1293
01:10:34,880 --> 01:10:37,600
Speaker 1: of our time in Saigon signal the failure of a

1294
01:10:37,680 --> 01:10:41,400
Speaker 1: policy backing a corrupt government without the will to fight

1295
01:10:41,560 --> 01:10:44,400
Speaker 1: against an enemy that is far more dedicated to their

1296
01:10:44,479 --> 01:10:47,759
Speaker 1: cause than we ever will be. That's the lesson of Saigon.

1297
01:10:47,840 --> 01:10:50,280
Speaker 1: To me, it is a lesson we should have learned

1298
01:10:50,320 --> 01:10:53,080
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, not twenty and twenty one.

1299
01:10:53,400 --> 01:10:56,439
Speaker 1: The responsibility of the chaos that we see in Kabal

1300
01:10:56,680 --> 01:10:59,920
Speaker 1: lands squarely on the presidents and generals who lied to

1301
01:11:00,120 --> 01:11:03,640
Speaker 1: the American people, just like they did in Vietnam. And

1302
01:11:03,800 --> 01:11:07,400
Speaker 1: it rests upon the people who, like in Vietnam, threw

1303
01:11:07,479 --> 01:11:11,040
Speaker 1: away the lives of Americans and Afghans for a cause

1304
01:11:11,240 --> 01:11:14,839
Speaker 1: they knew was hopeless and that ultimately ended in disaster,

1305
01:11:15,400 --> 01:11:19,080
Speaker 1: a final payment for the years of disaster. There are

1306
01:11:19,200 --> 01:11:22,680
Speaker 1: also seems to be a strange retconning of Saigon as

1307
01:11:22,760 --> 01:11:26,360
Speaker 1: some terrible domestic political moment for gerald Ford in nineteen

1308
01:11:26,439 --> 01:11:29,599
Speaker 1: seventy three. And look, I don't like bringing in domestic

1309
01:11:29,640 --> 01:11:32,600
Speaker 1: politics into this, but many Republicans seem to think that

1310
01:11:32,720 --> 01:11:35,920
Speaker 1: picking up on this is some great strategy to attack Biden.

1311
01:11:36,640 --> 01:11:40,040
Speaker 1: But this strategy belies the facts. Did you know in

1312
01:11:40,200 --> 01:11:45,439
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, gerald Ford's approval rating went up after Sigon.

1313
01:11:45,920 --> 01:11:49,200
Speaker 1: In fact, his approval rating went so up that in

1314
01:11:49,320 --> 01:11:53,479
Speaker 1: August of nineteen seventy five, Americans said that gerald Ford's

1315
01:11:53,640 --> 01:11:58,439
Speaker 1: greatest accomplishment as president was finally getting American soldiers out

1316
01:11:58,560 --> 01:12:02,920
Speaker 1: of Vietnam. Remember, far more people served in Vietnam than

1317
01:12:03,000 --> 01:12:06,360
Speaker 1: ever served in Afghanistan. It was a much more politically

1318
01:12:06,439 --> 01:12:10,320
Speaker 1: salient effort in the country. Richard Nixon was literally elected

1319
01:12:10,400 --> 01:12:14,560
Speaker 1: specifically to bring peace with honor. But after everything was

1320
01:12:14,640 --> 01:12:18,200
Speaker 1: exhausted when push came to shove, the American people at

1321
01:12:18,240 --> 01:12:22,360
Speaker 1: a time when hawkishness and pro war sentiment was far more,

1322
01:12:22,880 --> 01:12:26,200
Speaker 1: far more salient than it was today, rewarded Gerald Ford

1323
01:12:26,400 --> 01:12:29,800
Speaker 1: for having the humility of saying enough is enough and

1324
01:12:29,960 --> 01:12:33,519
Speaker 1: finally pulling out. If you ask me, that is also courage.

1325
01:12:33,800 --> 01:12:36,200
Speaker 1: That is why I think Biden's decision to stand tall

1326
01:12:36,439 --> 01:12:39,439
Speaker 1: against the immense onslaught by the media and the forever

1327
01:12:39,560 --> 01:12:44,599
Speaker 1: war industrial complex and more is courageous. No previous president

1328
01:12:44,800 --> 01:12:48,360
Speaker 1: has been willing to do that. And look, the situation

1329
01:12:48,600 --> 01:12:51,400
Speaker 1: is not perfect. Should Biden the administration have done more

1330
01:12:51,439 --> 01:12:54,880
Speaker 1: to ensure the safety of our Afghan allies. Absolutely, but

1331
01:12:55,040 --> 01:12:58,519
Speaker 1: our hands were tied from the beginning. The basic fact

1332
01:12:58,640 --> 01:13:02,519
Speaker 1: is our mission There was not direct military occupation. It

1333
01:13:02,680 --> 01:13:06,160
Speaker 1: was supporting the Afghan government, trusting they may have a

1334
01:13:06,400 --> 01:13:09,040
Speaker 1: modicum of courage to actually stand and fight for their

1335
01:13:09,080 --> 01:13:12,519
Speaker 1: own country. Now, given how quickly they folded up and left,

1336
01:13:12,880 --> 01:13:16,560
Speaker 1: that ties our hands and severely restricts our options. We

1337
01:13:16,720 --> 01:13:19,920
Speaker 1: had two choices. Leave like we did in Saigon in

1338
01:13:20,040 --> 01:13:23,599
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, Leave and admit the enemy that had

1339
01:13:23,640 --> 01:13:27,120
Speaker 1: defeated us. Try. We tried desperately, but once again they

1340
01:13:27,200 --> 01:13:30,880
Speaker 1: showed us their resolve. Or we stay, we try and

1341
01:13:31,000 --> 01:13:35,240
Speaker 1: make it more orderly, but ultimately risk hundreds, if not thousands,

1342
01:13:35,280 --> 01:13:38,320
Speaker 1: of American lives in a prolonged battle that we were

1343
01:13:38,400 --> 01:13:41,639
Speaker 1: going to lose anyway by design. That is an easy

1344
01:13:41,760 --> 01:13:44,640
Speaker 1: choice on my part, as difficult and sad as it

1345
01:13:44,760 --> 01:13:47,679
Speaker 1: is that I know what the outcome brings, which brings

1346
01:13:47,720 --> 01:13:50,280
Speaker 1: me to my final point. The hope of the post

1347
01:13:50,360 --> 01:13:53,320
Speaker 1: Saigon America was that we would be both humbled by

1348
01:13:53,360 --> 01:13:56,639
Speaker 1: our experience in Vietnam and that in the future only

1349
01:13:56,800 --> 01:14:01,120
Speaker 1: invest American blood and treasure when real national security interests

1350
01:14:01,200 --> 01:14:04,759
Speaker 1: are at stake. What actually happened is that on full display.

1351
01:14:04,840 --> 01:14:08,000
Speaker 1: It's in our media right now. Somehow our sensible policy

1352
01:14:08,080 --> 01:14:11,479
Speaker 1: of leaving Afghanistan and admitting defeat is seen as some

1353
01:14:11,880 --> 01:14:15,880
Speaker 1: national stain. The real national stain is that we lost

1354
01:14:15,920 --> 01:14:20,200
Speaker 1: fifty five thousand American boys in Vietnam for nothing, and

1355
01:14:20,280 --> 01:14:23,160
Speaker 1: then we ignored and shamed their legacy on the wall

1356
01:14:23,240 --> 01:14:27,560
Speaker 1: nearby the studio by losing another twenty three hundred in Afghanistan,

1357
01:14:28,040 --> 01:14:30,760
Speaker 1: not to mention how many veterans suffered when they came

1358
01:14:30,840 --> 01:14:34,360
Speaker 1: home from both of these wars. Instead, the elite foreign

1359
01:14:34,400 --> 01:14:37,800
Speaker 1: policy establishment, they see what is happening in Kabul as

1360
01:14:37,880 --> 01:14:41,160
Speaker 1: some sort of vindication of their own design, when in

1361
01:14:41,320 --> 01:14:44,840
Speaker 1: the ultimate really what it is is the ultimate repudiation

1362
01:14:45,120 --> 01:14:48,960
Speaker 1: of their twenty year failed project. So I'm asking everyone

1363
01:14:49,000 --> 01:14:52,560
Speaker 1: today learn the lesson of Kabol, the same lesson we

1364
01:14:52,640 --> 01:14:55,840
Speaker 1: should have learned from Saigon. Let's have some humility, and

1365
01:14:56,000 --> 01:14:59,280
Speaker 1: let's take care of our vets. Let's be extremely reluctant

1366
01:14:59,400 --> 01:15:01,639
Speaker 1: whenever we put their lives on the line, and let's

1367
01:15:01,760 --> 01:15:04,960
Speaker 1: actually honor the legacy of the dead. And that is

1368
01:15:05,400 --> 01:15:09,040
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny like when John. We're honored to

1369
01:15:09,080 --> 01:15:11,439
Speaker 1: be joined now by Craig Whitlocke. He's a journalist at

1370
01:15:11,439 --> 01:15:14,320
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, author of a new book on the

1371
01:15:14,360 --> 01:15:17,960
Speaker 1: Afghanistan Papers. It's called The Afghanistan Papers, A Secret History

1372
01:15:18,320 --> 01:15:20,680
Speaker 1: of the War. August thirty first, twenty twenty one. Is

1373
01:15:20,680 --> 01:15:23,160
Speaker 1: when it gets published. I'm encouraging everybody to go out

1374
01:15:23,200 --> 01:15:25,840
Speaker 1: there and buy it. Craig, thank you so much for

1375
01:15:25,920 --> 01:15:28,320
Speaker 1: joining us. You've been one of the foremost journalists on

1376
01:15:28,400 --> 01:15:30,560
Speaker 1: the front of revealing the lives of so much of

1377
01:15:30,640 --> 01:15:34,040
Speaker 1: the Pentagon has been telling the American public about Afghanistan.

1378
01:15:34,439 --> 01:15:40,400
Speaker 1: Obviously that is very salient given the you know, situation

1379
01:15:40,600 --> 01:15:43,280
Speaker 1: right now in Kabble. Can you just take us through

1380
01:15:43,840 --> 01:15:47,559
Speaker 1: your original report on the Afghanistan Papers and the major

1381
01:15:47,680 --> 01:15:50,320
Speaker 1: revelations that we're within that and how they relate to

1382
01:15:50,400 --> 01:15:53,479
Speaker 1: the situation on the ground in that country right now? Yeah,

1383
01:15:53,600 --> 01:15:55,920
Speaker 1: thank you. I think they do help explain what's going

1384
01:15:55,960 --> 01:15:58,599
Speaker 1: on there now. You know, it's awful what people are

1385
01:15:58,640 --> 01:16:02,720
Speaker 1: seeing in Afghanistan and Cobble, but there's been a lot

1386
01:16:02,800 --> 01:16:06,280
Speaker 1: that's been leading up to it. The Afghanistan Papers are

1387
01:16:06,439 --> 01:16:11,000
Speaker 1: a series of interviews that the government had done with senior,

1388
01:16:11,360 --> 01:16:14,080
Speaker 1: mid level all sorts of hundreds of people who were

1389
01:16:14,200 --> 01:16:17,040
Speaker 1: key figures in the war over twenty years. The Washington

1390
01:16:17,080 --> 01:16:20,639
Speaker 1: Post had to sue the government under the Freedom Information

1391
01:16:20,760 --> 01:16:24,160
Speaker 1: Act to obtain transcripts and notes of these interviews, and

1392
01:16:25,600 --> 01:16:27,639
Speaker 1: it took us three years to get our hands on them.

1393
01:16:28,120 --> 01:16:33,400
Speaker 1: And what they show was that the public version of

1394
01:16:33,479 --> 01:16:36,200
Speaker 1: what was going on in Afghanistan, what the government was

1395
01:16:36,280 --> 01:16:40,040
Speaker 1: telling the public, the American people was always upbeat, was

1396
01:16:40,120 --> 01:16:44,120
Speaker 1: always rosy, and yet in these confidential interviews that they

1397
01:16:44,160 --> 01:16:48,720
Speaker 1: had done, it was just astonishing to see how pessimistic

1398
01:16:48,880 --> 01:16:52,640
Speaker 1: they were about the war. You had ambassadors, you had

1399
01:16:52,720 --> 01:16:55,680
Speaker 1: general saying, we didn't know what we were doing, we

1400
01:16:55,800 --> 01:17:00,760
Speaker 1: didn't have any fundamental understanding of Afghanistan, we didn't have

1401
01:17:00,880 --> 01:17:04,040
Speaker 1: a strategy, or strategy was a mess. And this went

1402
01:17:04,120 --> 01:17:09,200
Speaker 1: on for three presidents. So again, the total contrast between

1403
01:17:09,280 --> 01:17:11,880
Speaker 1: what the American people were being told about the war,

1404
01:17:12,040 --> 01:17:14,920
Speaker 1: which was that we were winning or that victory was

1405
01:17:14,960 --> 01:17:19,519
Speaker 1: around the corner, and these private comments where they were

1406
01:17:19,600 --> 01:17:22,880
Speaker 1: seeing the complete opposite. Wow, I want to underscore what

1407
01:17:22,960 --> 01:17:26,880
Speaker 1: you're saying there, which is that they were knowingly telling

1408
01:17:26,880 --> 01:17:29,840
Speaker 1: the American people, for example, the surge is working, and

1409
01:17:29,960 --> 01:17:35,000
Speaker 1: they were privately saying directly, we were manipulating every single

1410
01:17:35,080 --> 01:17:38,439
Speaker 1: statistic here, and even when we tried to manipulate them

1411
01:17:38,880 --> 01:17:41,080
Speaker 1: or cherry pick which statistic we were going to put out,

1412
01:17:41,320 --> 01:17:45,240
Speaker 1: they still painted a grim picture. You know. One of

1413
01:17:45,360 --> 01:17:48,040
Speaker 1: the things that I would love for you to talk

1414
01:17:48,080 --> 01:17:51,240
Speaker 1: about is the big question has been like why did

1415
01:17:51,280 --> 01:17:54,599
Speaker 1: the government fall so quickly? Why did the Afghan army

1416
01:17:54,840 --> 01:17:58,719
Speaker 1: deteriorate so quickly. I thought there was a pretty relevant

1417
01:17:58,800 --> 01:18:01,519
Speaker 1: quote here from Ryan Crocker, who's been telling the press

1418
01:18:01,680 --> 01:18:03,720
Speaker 1: lately that, you know, the way that the eggs had

1419
01:18:03,760 --> 01:18:07,760
Speaker 1: happened is an indelible stain on the Biden presidency privately,

1420
01:18:08,160 --> 01:18:11,639
Speaker 1: former Ambassador Afghanistan or under both president under President Obama

1421
01:18:11,720 --> 01:18:16,200
Speaker 1: said our biggest single project, sadly inadvertently of course, may

1422
01:18:16,280 --> 01:18:19,519
Speaker 1: have been the development of mass corruption. And it strikes

1423
01:18:19,600 --> 01:18:23,320
Speaker 1: me that's a very important piece of information for understanding

1424
01:18:23,760 --> 01:18:26,439
Speaker 1: why this government clearly had very little public support and

1425
01:18:26,600 --> 01:18:32,360
Speaker 1: why it collapsed almost instantaneously. There's another relevant quote from

1426
01:18:32,439 --> 01:18:36,639
Speaker 1: Ambassador Crocker in the Afghanistan Papers where he was asked

1427
01:18:36,680 --> 01:18:40,480
Speaker 1: about the Afghan National Police, which is really a paramilitary

1428
01:18:40,600 --> 01:18:44,240
Speaker 1: police force. These aren't eat cops, These are pretty similar

1429
01:18:44,280 --> 01:18:48,200
Speaker 1: to soldiers, but he said Ambassador Crocker called the Afghan

1430
01:18:48,320 --> 01:18:51,760
Speaker 1: police useless as a security for US, and he said

1431
01:18:51,800 --> 01:18:54,719
Speaker 1: the reason they were useless is because they were corrupt

1432
01:18:54,800 --> 01:18:57,720
Speaker 1: down to the patrol level, that they preyed on the population.

1433
01:18:58,200 --> 01:19:01,320
Speaker 1: And I think that was an accurate assessment. You know,

1434
01:19:01,640 --> 01:19:04,880
Speaker 1: they were useless as a security for US, and the

1435
01:19:05,320 --> 01:19:08,519
Speaker 1: Afghan population hated the police, because the police always shook

1436
01:19:08,560 --> 01:19:11,760
Speaker 1: them down for bribes or did nothing to protect them.

1437
01:19:11,880 --> 01:19:14,599
Speaker 1: But you know, that goes a long way to explaining why,

1438
01:19:15,880 --> 01:19:18,280
Speaker 1: you know, the Afghan security forces, as you said, just

1439
01:19:18,479 --> 01:19:21,440
Speaker 1: just melted away. They didn't have the support of the population,

1440
01:19:22,080 --> 01:19:24,559
Speaker 1: and they you know, they kind of had their fingers

1441
01:19:24,600 --> 01:19:26,679
Speaker 1: to the win when it became clear that the Taliban

1442
01:19:27,160 --> 01:19:31,320
Speaker 1: was going to come out victorious. One thing I'm curious about, Craig,

1443
01:19:31,520 --> 01:19:33,880
Speaker 1: in all of your reporting and all of this, was

1444
01:19:34,040 --> 01:19:37,920
Speaker 1: there any attempt in order to apologize for how these

1445
01:19:38,000 --> 01:19:41,280
Speaker 1: people behaved. I mean, I see so many quotes in

1446
01:19:41,360 --> 01:19:44,800
Speaker 1: major national papers today from officials who are on the

1447
01:19:44,920 --> 01:19:49,280
Speaker 1: record in your stories telling the public a different one.

1448
01:19:49,479 --> 01:19:52,320
Speaker 1: There doesn't seem to be a lot of reckoning, even

1449
01:19:52,360 --> 01:19:54,120
Speaker 1: in the same way that there was in the post

1450
01:19:54,240 --> 01:19:57,760
Speaker 1: Vietnam era, with what actually happened in Afghanistan and the

1451
01:19:57,840 --> 01:20:01,400
Speaker 1: lies of the American people were told. You know, it's

1452
01:20:01,400 --> 01:20:04,960
Speaker 1: a really good point. There weren't many apologies. There were, frankly,

1453
01:20:05,040 --> 01:20:09,639
Speaker 1: there was one. There was an interview with Ambassador Nicholas Burns.

1454
01:20:09,720 --> 01:20:14,720
Speaker 1: He was a long time diplomat. He was ambassador to

1455
01:20:14,960 --> 01:20:19,360
Speaker 1: NATO during the Bush administration. And he, you know, very

1456
01:20:19,439 --> 01:20:24,400
Speaker 1: bluntly said, you know, looking back, we never really you know,

1457
01:20:24,720 --> 01:20:26,640
Speaker 1: figured out when we were going to leave, you know,

1458
01:20:26,800 --> 01:20:29,519
Speaker 1: what were we doing there and what criteria would we

1459
01:20:29,640 --> 01:20:33,120
Speaker 1: have to that would enable us to leave Afghanistan. He says,

1460
01:20:33,160 --> 01:20:36,120
Speaker 1: I don't ever recover or recall having a discussion about

1461
01:20:36,160 --> 01:20:38,960
Speaker 1: that at the highest levels of the Bush administration. And

1462
01:20:39,040 --> 01:20:40,880
Speaker 1: he said, you know, and part of that's on me.

1463
01:20:41,920 --> 01:20:44,760
Speaker 1: You know, I'm, along with everybody else, I played a

1464
01:20:44,840 --> 01:20:47,360
Speaker 1: role in this, and we do need to have, you know,

1465
01:20:47,520 --> 01:20:50,599
Speaker 1: some kind of reckoning and accounting for what happened there.

1466
01:20:50,640 --> 01:20:53,559
Speaker 1: And he was talking about a time frame fifteen years ago.

1467
01:20:53,760 --> 01:20:56,240
Speaker 1: But so I think he was reflective about that. But

1468
01:20:56,840 --> 01:20:59,479
Speaker 1: you know, yes, you're right, by in large, very very

1469
01:20:59,560 --> 01:21:02,719
Speaker 1: few people who were in interviewed in the Afghanistan papers

1470
01:21:03,560 --> 01:21:07,560
Speaker 1: had that level of contrition or reflection for what's gone on.

1471
01:21:08,640 --> 01:21:11,759
Speaker 1: There's rightly and understandably right now, a lot of focus

1472
01:21:12,000 --> 01:21:16,040
Speaker 1: on the humanitarian crisis, on the plight of women and

1473
01:21:16,120 --> 01:21:21,280
Speaker 1: girls in particular in Afghanistan. But you know that wasn't

1474
01:21:21,920 --> 01:21:26,040
Speaker 1: securing a humanitarian mission was not the original objective going

1475
01:21:26,120 --> 01:21:28,800
Speaker 1: into Afghanistan. In fact, part of what is revealed. What

1476
01:21:28,920 --> 01:21:32,160
Speaker 1: you reveal in the Afghanistan papers is that a lot

1477
01:21:32,240 --> 01:21:35,560
Speaker 1: of the highest level people involved didn't really know what

1478
01:21:35,800 --> 01:21:41,040
Speaker 1: the objective actually was over time speak to that piece. Sure,

1479
01:21:41,160 --> 01:21:44,040
Speaker 1: I think people forget, but because it's been so long.

1480
01:21:44,120 --> 01:21:48,160
Speaker 1: But the original objective, the mission was very limited. It

1481
01:21:48,360 --> 01:21:53,479
Speaker 1: was to respond to the September eleventh attacks and essentially

1482
01:21:53,600 --> 01:21:57,120
Speaker 1: destroy al Qaeda or prevent al Qaeda from doing a

1483
01:21:57,240 --> 01:22:02,320
Speaker 1: repeat attack like that. Original mission didn't actually include removing

1484
01:22:02,400 --> 01:22:05,920
Speaker 1: the Taliban from power. When President Bush announced the start

1485
01:22:05,920 --> 01:22:08,680
Speaker 1: of the war, he said he wanted to degrade the

1486
01:22:09,280 --> 01:22:13,800
Speaker 1: Taliban's military capabilities, but he wasn't saying we had to

1487
01:22:14,040 --> 01:22:16,400
Speaker 1: kick them out of power. Now. That happened in pretty

1488
01:22:16,439 --> 01:22:19,760
Speaker 1: short order, but after that things got really fuzzy in

1489
01:22:19,880 --> 01:22:22,160
Speaker 1: terms of what we were trying to do there. Al

1490
01:22:22,280 --> 01:22:26,000
Speaker 1: Qaida really disappeared from Afghanistan by March of two thousand

1491
01:22:26,000 --> 01:22:29,760
Speaker 1: and two. By that point, its entire leadership had either

1492
01:22:29,880 --> 01:22:33,519
Speaker 1: been killed, captured, or had fled like Asama bin Laden

1493
01:22:33,560 --> 01:22:37,320
Speaker 1: had gone to Pakistan, and we stayed because of a

1494
01:22:37,520 --> 01:22:40,880
Speaker 1: humanitarian objective. At that point, it became clear that Afghanistan

1495
01:22:41,760 --> 01:22:46,839
Speaker 1: was in terrible shape economically. There was a real refugee crisis.

1496
01:22:47,560 --> 01:22:50,439
Speaker 1: There was real concern about famine. The country had been

1497
01:22:50,520 --> 01:22:53,679
Speaker 1: torn up by twenty years of war at that point,

1498
01:22:54,040 --> 01:22:56,080
Speaker 1: but it was never really spelled out to the American

1499
01:22:56,160 --> 01:22:58,880
Speaker 1: people how long we would stay, what the objectives were,

1500
01:22:59,400 --> 01:23:02,040
Speaker 1: and you know, what criteria we need to do achieve

1501
01:23:02,200 --> 01:23:05,960
Speaker 1: before we felt like the mission was accomplished. Yeah, and Craig,

1502
01:23:06,000 --> 01:23:08,960
Speaker 1: you know, in the midst of everything that's happening in Kabble,

1503
01:23:09,280 --> 01:23:12,880
Speaker 1: what do you make then, of many claims that there

1504
01:23:13,240 --> 01:23:16,800
Speaker 1: was a different ability in order to wrap things up

1505
01:23:16,840 --> 01:23:20,040
Speaker 1: in this country in a quote unquote more orderly fashion

1506
01:23:20,479 --> 01:23:22,639
Speaker 1: that didn't lead to it, like do in the papers

1507
01:23:22,680 --> 01:23:26,040
Speaker 1: that you discovered, do you see the genuine capacity for

1508
01:23:26,160 --> 01:23:29,360
Speaker 1: an effort like that. I'm just asking based upon what

1509
01:23:29,560 --> 01:23:32,680
Speaker 1: the officials themselves had described of this army and of

1510
01:23:32,760 --> 01:23:36,360
Speaker 1: its government. Well, I think what you see is officials

1511
01:23:36,360 --> 01:23:38,759
Speaker 1: struggling to figure out what to do. You know, it's

1512
01:23:38,800 --> 01:23:40,920
Speaker 1: an old saying it's a lot easier to start a

1513
01:23:41,000 --> 01:23:43,680
Speaker 1: war than it is to end one. And you know,

1514
01:23:44,080 --> 01:23:46,559
Speaker 1: we've been playing that out for more than a decade now.

1515
01:23:47,040 --> 01:23:51,240
Speaker 1: It's been since twenty eleven that the Obama administration was

1516
01:23:51,320 --> 01:23:55,679
Speaker 1: trying to withdraw from Afghanistan. That's when we started reducing

1517
01:23:55,760 --> 01:23:58,560
Speaker 1: the number of troops there and set us on a

1518
01:23:58,640 --> 01:24:01,360
Speaker 1: schedule where we were supposed to all US troops out

1519
01:24:01,400 --> 01:24:04,640
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan by the end of Obama's second term. This

1520
01:24:04,840 --> 01:24:08,799
Speaker 1: was a campaign promise, it is now that didn't happen. Obviously,

1521
01:24:08,960 --> 01:24:15,280
Speaker 1: that's been about five years since then, and Obama, Trump,

1522
01:24:15,360 --> 01:24:17,320
Speaker 1: and al Biden have all been trying to get out

1523
01:24:17,320 --> 01:24:20,000
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan, and you know, it kind of has blown

1524
01:24:20,080 --> 01:24:22,519
Speaker 1: up on Biden here at the end. But I think

1525
01:24:22,680 --> 01:24:25,960
Speaker 1: Obama and Trump were facing the same challenges that they

1526
01:24:26,000 --> 01:24:29,120
Speaker 1: weren't quite they wanted to get out, they didn't quite

1527
01:24:29,200 --> 01:24:31,320
Speaker 1: know how because they had pinned their hopes on the

1528
01:24:31,360 --> 01:24:35,120
Speaker 1: Afghan security forces in the Afghan government. Each of those

1529
01:24:35,200 --> 01:24:37,519
Speaker 1: presidents knew that there was a real risk that they

1530
01:24:37,560 --> 01:24:40,439
Speaker 1: could collapse or that they wouldn't stay around very long.

1531
01:24:40,479 --> 01:24:44,599
Speaker 1: And then Taliban was ascended. So you know, there's clearly

1532
01:24:44,720 --> 01:24:47,240
Speaker 1: in retrospect, there wasn't an easy way to withdraw there.

1533
01:24:47,479 --> 01:24:49,280
Speaker 1: I think there certainly could have been a better way

1534
01:24:49,680 --> 01:24:52,479
Speaker 1: in recent weeks than the Biden administration had planned for,

1535
01:24:52,720 --> 01:24:56,000
Speaker 1: no question, But you know, underlying all this this is

1536
01:24:56,080 --> 01:24:58,720
Speaker 1: the problem with the war. We got into it, into

1537
01:24:58,800 --> 01:25:01,880
Speaker 1: this quagmire, and we couldn't figure out how to get out,

1538
01:25:02,120 --> 01:25:03,920
Speaker 1: even though we've been trying to for more than a

1539
01:25:04,000 --> 01:25:08,280
Speaker 1: decade now. And Craig on the topic of you know,

1540
01:25:08,600 --> 01:25:12,759
Speaker 1: why the people were backing had so little clearly public support.

1541
01:25:13,640 --> 01:25:16,920
Speaker 1: What did these leaders in Afghanistan papers have to say

1542
01:25:17,080 --> 01:25:19,800
Speaker 1: about some of the war lords and other less than

1543
01:25:19,880 --> 01:25:23,920
Speaker 1: savory characters that we were allied with. There were some

1544
01:25:24,080 --> 01:25:27,640
Speaker 1: really unsavory characters that we were allied with in Afghanistan.

1545
01:25:27,720 --> 01:25:29,680
Speaker 1: A lot of them have just sort of fled the

1546
01:25:29,760 --> 01:25:33,080
Speaker 1: country in the last few days. You know, there was

1547
01:25:33,560 --> 01:25:35,759
Speaker 1: I mean, we could go into a whole rogues gallery

1548
01:25:35,840 --> 01:25:40,439
Speaker 1: of them, but you know some of the One comment

1549
01:25:40,520 --> 01:25:42,799
Speaker 1: that really struck with me was from an Army colonel

1550
01:25:42,880 --> 01:25:47,679
Speaker 1: named Chris Kolenda, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan advised

1551
01:25:47,720 --> 01:25:51,840
Speaker 1: commanders of the US military forces. But he was very blunt.

1552
01:25:52,040 --> 01:25:55,560
Speaker 1: He said, you know, things were so corrupt in Afghanistan.

1553
01:25:55,680 --> 01:25:59,880
Speaker 1: He likened it to a kleptocracy. And he said, talk

1554
01:26:00,360 --> 01:26:03,719
Speaker 1: sort of a fancy words where the government only exists

1555
01:26:03,800 --> 01:26:07,680
Speaker 1: to stuff its own pockets. And he said, this kleptocrisy

1556
01:26:07,880 --> 01:26:11,519
Speaker 1: was so ingrained that it was like having stage four cancer.

1557
01:26:11,600 --> 01:26:14,200
Speaker 1: There really was nothing we could do to alleviate it.

1558
01:26:14,680 --> 01:26:17,400
Speaker 1: It had become such a part of the fabric of

1559
01:26:17,520 --> 01:26:20,479
Speaker 1: Afghan society and their government. And he was referring to

1560
01:26:20,560 --> 01:26:23,519
Speaker 1: the period again during the Obama administration, during the surge

1561
01:26:23,560 --> 01:26:27,000
Speaker 1: of troops there in twenty eleven. So here's someone who

1562
01:26:27,200 --> 01:26:30,440
Speaker 1: was involved at very very high levels of the Pentagon

1563
01:26:30,680 --> 01:26:33,400
Speaker 1: and the National Security Council trying to figure things out

1564
01:26:33,400 --> 01:26:36,880
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. But he was saying in retrospect that really

1565
01:26:36,960 --> 01:26:40,160
Speaker 1: it was a hopeless cause because the Afghan government was

1566
01:26:40,240 --> 01:26:43,519
Speaker 1: so corrupt. And again, this dates back ten years and

1567
01:26:43,720 --> 01:26:46,880
Speaker 1: it's only gotten worse since then. Yeah. Well, Craig, I

1568
01:26:46,960 --> 01:26:48,800
Speaker 1: can't thank you enough for joining us, for the work

1569
01:26:48,840 --> 01:26:51,280
Speaker 1: that you've been doing. One of the great journalists out

1570
01:26:51,280 --> 01:26:53,760
Speaker 1: there on this topic. And I encourage everybody out there

1571
01:26:54,040 --> 01:26:56,640
Speaker 1: please go and pre order Craig's book. Buy it. You

1572
01:26:56,720 --> 01:26:59,040
Speaker 1: know we're both going to read it here. So thank

1573
01:26:59,080 --> 01:27:01,000
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you Craig.

1574
01:27:01,080 --> 01:27:03,320
Speaker 1: The book again, Just so people know, The Afghanistan Paper

1575
01:27:03,400 --> 01:27:05,760
Speaker 1: is a secretory or history of the war. It's being

1576
01:27:05,760 --> 01:27:08,439
Speaker 1: published by Simon and Schuster on August thirty one, but

1577
01:27:08,640 --> 01:27:10,760
Speaker 1: available for pre order now, which you guys should all

1578
01:27:11,000 --> 01:27:12,600
Speaker 1: go ahead and do. Craig, thank you so much for

1579
01:27:12,680 --> 01:27:14,280
Speaker 1: your work and your time this morning. Thank you, Craig

1580
01:27:14,840 --> 01:27:18,920
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Thank you our pleasure. Thank you guys

1581
01:27:18,960 --> 01:27:21,760
Speaker 1: all for watching. I think both Crystal and I feel

1582
01:27:21,920 --> 01:27:25,599
Speaker 1: like this show exists exactly for moments like this, which

1583
01:27:25,680 --> 01:27:28,000
Speaker 1: is that, you know, at a time when the media

1584
01:27:28,120 --> 01:27:31,360
Speaker 1: and the entire establishment is united and just feeding people lies.

1585
01:27:31,720 --> 01:27:34,400
Speaker 1: This is exactly why we wake up and do every

1586
01:27:34,760 --> 01:27:36,560
Speaker 1: do what we do every day, and so if you

1587
01:27:36,640 --> 01:27:38,880
Speaker 1: guys can support us, it really does mean all the world.

1588
01:27:39,000 --> 01:27:41,479
Speaker 1: It makes this possible. The link is down there in

1589
01:27:41,520 --> 01:27:44,000
Speaker 1: the description to become a Premium member, watch the show

1590
01:27:44,040 --> 01:27:45,720
Speaker 1: an hour early, all of that. But really what we're

1591
01:27:45,760 --> 01:27:48,320
Speaker 1: doing is you're helping us be able to give these

1592
01:27:48,520 --> 01:27:52,519
Speaker 1: you know, give these perspectives, give a platform, a large

1593
01:27:52,560 --> 01:27:55,719
Speaker 1: platforms people like Craig who deserve a voice. I said

1594
01:27:55,760 --> 01:27:58,000
Speaker 1: to him before the interview started. He should be on

1595
01:27:58,080 --> 01:28:01,120
Speaker 1: every cable network in the country. Yeah, why isn't Why

1596
01:28:01,240 --> 01:28:04,680
Speaker 1: isn't that perspective? And instead the warmongerers are out there

1597
01:28:05,000 --> 01:28:07,720
Speaker 1: on television feeding people live, So that's what we try

1598
01:28:07,760 --> 01:28:10,160
Speaker 1: and do here. I just want to be straight up

1599
01:28:10,400 --> 01:28:12,840
Speaker 1: about really what it is, the type of journalism and

1600
01:28:13,040 --> 01:28:15,200
Speaker 1: the type of perspective that you're trying that you're supporting

1601
01:28:15,320 --> 01:28:18,040
Speaker 1: whenever you support us, So thank you. I don't think

1602
01:28:18,080 --> 01:28:20,439
Speaker 1: we've had a response to any of our shows as

1603
01:28:20,479 --> 01:28:24,720
Speaker 1: strong as the one to Yesterdays show. Yeah, yeah, and

1604
01:28:25,000 --> 01:28:27,479
Speaker 1: I think you know which, which in a way it

1605
01:28:27,560 --> 01:28:30,040
Speaker 1: was really hardened to see because this is one of

1606
01:28:30,120 --> 01:28:33,680
Speaker 1: those instances where you clearly have like the bipartisan consensus.

1607
01:28:34,000 --> 01:28:35,720
Speaker 1: You can turn on any one of the cable news

1608
01:28:35,800 --> 01:28:39,559
Speaker 1: nets they're saying basically the same thing, and people don't

1609
01:28:39,880 --> 01:28:42,479
Speaker 1: know who to trust, who to believe they're good people.

1610
01:28:42,640 --> 01:28:44,479
Speaker 1: They you know, they want to feel like they're supporting

1611
01:28:44,520 --> 01:28:46,720
Speaker 1: the right things. They want to feel like they're, you know,

1612
01:28:46,880 --> 01:28:50,040
Speaker 1: backing something that's real and true. And so the fact

1613
01:28:50,040 --> 01:28:53,200
Speaker 1: that you guys put your trust in us to provide

1614
01:28:53,240 --> 01:28:56,320
Speaker 1: you with that information and also with that perspective, I

1615
01:28:56,400 --> 01:28:58,720
Speaker 1: can't tell you how much it really means a lot

1616
01:28:58,800 --> 01:29:01,280
Speaker 1: to us. We're extremely grateful for it. So thank you.

1617
01:29:01,439 --> 01:29:04,280
Speaker 1: Thank you. Guys, have a fantastic day. We're going to

1618
01:29:04,320 --> 01:29:06,120
Speaker 1: have some stuff for you tomorrow and we'll be back

1619
01:29:06,160 --> 01:29:08,360
Speaker 1: with a full show on Thursday, so we will see

1620
01:29:08,400 --> 01:29:24,800
Speaker 1: you then. Thanks for listening to the show, guys, we

1621
01:29:24,920 --> 01:29:27,280
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. To help other people find the show,

1622
01:29:27,400 --> 01:29:29,320
Speaker 1: go ahead and leave us a five star rating on

1623
01:29:29,400 --> 01:29:32,880
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Really helps

1624
01:29:32,920 --> 01:29:36,120
Speaker 1: other people find the show. As always special thank you

1625
01:29:36,280 --> 01:29:39,840
Speaker 1: to Supercast for powering our premium membership. If you want

1626
01:29:39,840 --> 01:29:42,639
Speaker 1: to find out more, go to Crystalansager dot com