Jason Chaffetz, Fox News Contributor and Distinguished Fellow at the Government Accountability Institute and Peter Schweizer, President of the Government Accountability Institute and Host of the Drill Down, (TheDrillDown.com) discuss the long history of Afghanistan and the deliberate debacle we now find ourselves faced with on Biden’s watch.
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All right, news roundup and information overload on a Friday, eight hundred and nine, four one seaun if you want to be a part of the program. I am still in a state of utter anger, shock, and dismay at all of the absolute lies told by Biden at his statement four or five question press conference of even want to call it that this is Biden. We haven't heard of anybody, you know, not being able to get to the airport. We have secured the airport, we haven't secured the perimeter, Joe. We haven't heard of any cases at all of people not being able to make it to the airport. Well, that's the exact opposite of what your state department is sending out to people Americans in Afghanistan about we can't help you get to the airport. Oh and the airport gates may open or close without notice. Oh and use your best judgment about going, and we cannot ensure your safe passage. That's what they're telling him on the other side of this. You know, we played the questions earlier, but Biden, just and complete than we We've not heard of any case of anybody not being able to get to the airport. A complete and utter lie with all the videotape evidence to prove it. Listen, the military has secured the airport, as you mentioned, but will you sign off on sending US troops into Cobble to evacuate Americans who haven't been able to get to the airports safely. We have no indication that they haven't been able to get in Cobble through the airport. We've made an agreement with the Taliban. Thus far they've allowed them to go through. It's and they're interesting to go through. So we know of no circumstance where American citizens are carrying an American passport for trying to get through to the airport. But we will do whatever needs to be done to see to it they get to the the airport. We will see whatever needs to be done. Meaning there's no control. We have control of the airport, but we don't have control of one road to get to the airport, not one that is controlled by the Taliban. And they said they're going to let americans with passports through. Any American wants to come home, we will get you home. I want you to hear me. Now, I can't promise any outcome on all of this. I mean, he's contradicting himself all over the place. We made clear to the Taliban that if they get in the way and in any way, there was going to be a forceful response. No, there's not, Joe, because they've got fifteen thousand Americans. They'll use his human shields and hostages. Joe, they're terrorists. No, no indication of any people having difficulties getting to the airport. No. Well, the Taliban secures the perimeter and there's tons of personal stories images on the ground that contradict everything he's saying. You know, it's unbelievable, no question. I've not heard anything about our credibility being in any way that we've been criticized from from anyone around the world. Nobody. They don't have any partners. They've all been highly critical, and this is the mess that they left. We bring in Jason Chaffe, it's Fox News contributor now a distinguished fellow at the Government Accountability Institute, and Peter Schweitzer, the president of the Government Accountability Institute, host of drilldown dot com, which by the way, is extremely successful. You know, originally we had them booked for today to talk specifically about the twenty year War and this crushing defeat, and you know everything else in between, and the idea that the President of the United States is lying about the situation on the ground. But more importantly, Jason Chaffintz, I'll start with you. Well, I guess I probably should start with Peter, considering as your boss, but I'll start with you. But in all seriousness that they've had days they saw an advancing Taliban take over ten twenty thirty, forty fifty percent of the country in record time. This was happening. They had all the time to prepare for extracting every American, the sixty to seventy five thousand estimated afghanis that if they're left behind that will be killed. They did nothing. Now it's completely out of our hands. The control, the fate of our fellow Americans and our allies is in the hands of the Taliban. With the reports they go on door to door to identify any Afghani who supported and helped and assisted America in any way in the last twenty years, and then they're brutally murdering them right on the streets for the world to see. So it's not exactly as Joe portrayed. Today. We have no leverage at all because he gave that up. He did. We have the biggest, baddest military on the face of the planet. We have an intelligence community that has satellite imagery and technology that nobody else has. But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made a conscious decision months ago to do it this way. And remember they're on tape, they're on audio. Thing. Yeah, we have planned for every contingency. This chaos was built into the plan that we had put forward. But somehow the brilliant mind that is Joe Biden com Lars decided that they were going to close the Bagram Air Force Space, where we did have total control of the airspace and the ability to move airplanes in and out. They gave that up to protect the without extracting the Americans, the diplomats, the foreign service operators, the contractors, Americans with passports. We gave all that up to go do something else, and now we've got to rely on the Taliban. I have been to that Cobbal Airport. I have flown in and out of it. It took a convoy, a literally of army in an m wraps to get me in and out of it. It is exceptionally dangerous and there is no way that Donald Trump would have allowed this to happen. There is no way that that would be done under a different administration except they made a conscious decision sean to allow the Taliban to be in control the fate of Americans who are doing America's been in the Afghana staff. It was a conditions based on the ground agreement, but it was started with a phone call with the leader of the Taliban and President Trump himself as part of the deal that he had that Biden never followed up on. And by the way, to get out before the quote war seasons, as war historically is more likely this time a year, which is why Trump had a much earlier date for a drawdown withdrawal, but again based on conditions on the ground, but also backed by this threat. And I've talked to now numerous sources that were on the call that hurt it and that before we discuss anything, President Trump said, you saw what I did to the Caliphate in Syria, did you not? Yes? Okay, that will be nothing, if nothing, compared to if you do not abide by every comma and period in any agreement we might make that I will blow you into an entirely new century. Do you understand me? Apparently those words were spoken by Donald Trump got back in affirmative. We didn't lose an American in the Afghanistan for almost eighteen months, the last eighteen months of Trump's presidency, they weren't on the march or on the move because they feared and believed Donald Trump would do everything that he said. That fear no longer exists. Clearly, well, this is this is the piece through strength. The example to me is Ronald Reagan. Some of the most peaceful times we have with Ronald Reagan because he knew he had the biggest batist military wasn't afraid of firing on it. And Donald Trump took exactly the same philosophy. Is there any doubt in anybody's mind that if somebody did something to even one American, that Donald Trump wouldn't send every single asset in there to go take him out. Compare that too, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and you got to include Barack Obama who had some of these people in GMO and let him get back out on the battlefield when Big Godsy was happy, no assets were sent in. And does anybody believe that Joe Biden would actually pull the trigger. He didn't even want to go after Osama bin Laden for goodness sake. Peter Schweitzer, your reaction, Yeah, I mean, I agree exactly with what Jason said. But you know, Sean, if you look over the span of American history, I mean, we've had situations before where we've had American presidents, let's say, who were detached, who are not completely there. You think of Woodrow Wilson, you think of LBJ. But at least in those circumstances, we had people around the president who had the capacity, the knowledge, and the will to do the right thing, to to sort of carry out and protect American interests. What's troubling right now is you have Joe Biden who is detached, either because of age and because of a health condition that he has, or he's simply lying to the American people. But there's no question he's detached from sort of the reality on the ground. But the people around him, the Vice President, she is not involved in any way. And you look at the Secretary of State, the Secretary Defense, the National Security Advisor, you get the same kind of detachment. So this is this is a very troubling situation that I would say is somewhat unique in American history because nobody seems to be wanting to step up and actually fix the problem in the situation that we're in. And as Jason said, and as you mentioned, Sean, look, the world watches these events. You know, it is a global society in the sense that if something happens in Afghanistan, people in Beijing, China are aware of what's going on. And weakness breeds aggression. And we have seen nothing from Joe Biden on the international stage except for weakness since he became president. Well, I mean the fact that we saw them on the march, Peter, we watched them, We witnessed this, We've seen this coming for weeks. You know, at what point didn't anybody in our national security apparatus, intelligence apparatus, those around the president warned him. Now we're discovering that apparently the Pentagon did warn him, that intelligence agencies did warn him, the State Department did warn him. And now the question is why didn't he take their advice and the admonition. Seriously, do you have any answer to that, because I can't figure it out. No, it's hard to figure out. You know, what I like to Sean is imagine if you have a natural disaster like an earthquake, an earthquake happens, suddenly nobody's prepared. You're kind of in reaction mode. This was the equivalence of in twenty eighteen, we signed the peace agreement with the Taliban. This is basically saying, three years from now, on this date, there may be an earthquake, and Joe Biden extended actually the withdrawal that Donald Trump had scheduled for the spring. So the point is there's basically been three years of preparation, meaning that you're preses, but you have a new administration that comes in. They've got eight months. They've got eight months to prepare for an earthquake that the state departments, in some of the cables, we now know the Defense Intelligence Agency in twenty twenty was warning about this. We know that the CIA was concerned about it. They were all warning about this earthquake that was going to engulf the withdrawal American force of Afghanistan, and nobody prepared for it, nobody secured anything. And it is precisely the sort of terrible response from leadership, and that is very very hard to recover from because remember Sean, Joe Biden said two things to the world. He said, first of all, well, you know, Donald Trump is unpredictable. I'm going to be the adult in the room. I'm the guy that knows what he's doing. The second thing that he said was I'm going to be the one that has better relations with our allies than Donald Trump, that they're going to respect me more. Both of those things were never true. They are now both definitely not true because it's been demonstrated that the Emperor has no clothes, that Joe Biden does not have a competency to run the free world, and he has lost the respective allies that really had been built up in the Trump administration and has now basically completely gone. From The Wall Street Journal, Jason Chaffitz about two dozen State Department officials serving at the embassy in Cobbles sent an internal memo to Secretary of State Blincoln Anthony and Anthony Blincoln and another and other top State Department officials last month warning of the potential collapse of Cobble. Now, this was sent on July thirteenth, that is five weeks ago that the Taliban was rapidly gaining round and the city was vulnerable to collapse. They didn't listen, they didn't prepare, they didn't act, and this is now the result. Basically, Americans held hostage, their lives hanging in the balance on the whim of the feelings of a terrorist organization. Yet the warnings couldn't be any more clear, damning evidence the Biden administration was warned by its own officials of this disaster coming. I think we're going to continue to see more of that. I think you're going to see State Department cables. I think you're going to see intelligence reports that continue to stream out to show that the Taliban was gaining strength, there was movement, and just the very basics of what a leader should have been doing in securing the Americans that had passports and getting them out. I just I'm absolutely stunned that we would close our Air Force staate there at Bagram. I've flown in and out of Bagram. I've flown in and out of the cobble at Carsey Airport. I have been to all of those places, and I'm going to tell you one was secure, at least the secure as you could get it. The other one not so much, and they saw this march happening. But this is exactly the time, if you match it up, that Joe Biden was going out answering questions saying, oh the likelihood, oh near zero, this isn't going to happen. We planned for every contingency. They have this huge, massive security force in Afghanistan. Anybody who's been to Afghanistan knows that, with all due respect, most of those people were illiterate. And yet somehow we left tens of billions of dollars of American at that military equipment all back in the hands of terrorists. Were worse off now than we were before we went in to take out the terrorist threat. And if you look at the way Joe get if we get them out, and I'm just short on time, but if we do get them Mount Jason, it's not going to be because anything that Joe Biden and his administration did. It'll be in spite of it, but it will be basically the terms will be dictated completely by the Taliban. And to put Americans in that that situation is just unforgivable, a dereliction of duty that at a level I can't even imagine that we're even talking about Thank you both, Peter Schweitzer, Jason Chaffetz eight hundred nine four one, Shawn has our number. One of a lot more on all of this tonight on Hannity. When we come back, we'll get right to your calls straight ahead, and that's coming up. Eight hundred nine four one Shawn our number. Hey, you're listening to the best of the Sean Hannity Show. We'll have more of your favorite guest topics and memorable moments. That's all coming up all right, twenty five to the top of the hour, eight hundred nine four one, Sean our number. One of the things we have highlighted is life in the previous regime of the Taliban twenty years ago for women, it was despicable, and women now are being taken as sex slaves, even young girls taken as sex slaves for Taliban fighters. Women are not allowed to leave their house. They must dress a certain way or they will be beaten. Many have been beaten. Some have been beaten because they didn't like some Taliban fighters, didn't like the way they cooked, or they wouldn't cook for them anyway. Once one female Afghan journalist her life is on the line, she is chronicled her many moves to avoid the Taliban they are after her. After we play this well, you hear an incredible story about rescue effort of female judges from Afghanistan who will be murdered if they are caught by the Taliban. I don't know what will happen to me, because if you find me, they will kill They are checking for the people who always talked against them. Every day, I'm changing my address to be sure that they can't truck me. The Taliban to truck me down. They can't search for me. They can't find me, so I'm changing my adress. My friends are afraid because they think that they might be targeted because of me. I can't trust my friends. How sad is that Alison Renault is here to talk about her effort to save two hundred female judges from Afghanistan who prosecuted the Taliban. And Oklahoma mother of eleven, flew to the Mideast early this month to help rescue ten members of the country's all girls robotics team. Is now hoping to save more as a Taliban has taken over Cobble Anyway. Sixty year old Harvard grad master's degree in international relations and US space policy. Took it upon herself to save members of the Afghan Girls Robotic team. She flew into Cutter on August and ninth. They have to make it a hail, Mary called to a former roommate at the US embassy there to help the girls from the advancing Taliban, known for their oppressive treatment of women. Alison, thank you for being with us. What a courageous story, and from what I can tell, you've been able to save lives of innocent people. It's a pleasure to be with you. Sean, thank you so much for having me on the show. I was on a one way ticket to cut her and when I encountered my former roommate in the embassy in Cutter, she said, no need to travel, I've got this. You need to stay on the ground and help these these ladies to freedom. So it was falsely reported, and I just want to make sure that's clear doesn't take away from the story and the miracle of getting ten girls out of a city of eight million people in chaos. So just that media coverage alone got into the heart of Afghanistan with ask in women, and I began to receive christ for help night and day. In particular, women ask in judges. They have been fired, they are in hiding, they're being hunted, as you said, reports that two of them have been assassinated, one almost beat to death, and a video I received a couple of mornings ago of one of their colleagues being blinded. So these ladies are desperate. And you know, when I heard they first reached out to me just about the situation, I said, please send me a list of names and their emails, and I thought I would receive twenty twenty in women judges, and it ended up being two hundred and twelves that are in hiding, and it's quickly become Chimler's list. They have children, they have spouses, and honestly, Sean, what worked for the robotic team, the cutter of government really stepped up, along with our officials on the ground in Cabul, It's not going to work for this group. So I was back at scratch again, saying, you know, calling out to God really for let's start a new team. I need some help, and didn't put that really out on social media anything. And suddenly I began to get to text messages, one from former NASSA general counsel, good friend and mine of female which then she tapped into her illegal network. Yale Law School got on board. It's helped us compress the data quickly. Ambassadors to the EU, extraction teams on the ground, planes offered and you know, suddenly the hand of Providence has given us a dream team. So that's kind of the story of you know what's what's going on, but have more to share if you'd like to ask, Well, it sounds like your efforts have paid dividends, and there are other people, but I think now the situation has become quite untenable. Do you have any people actively that you working to get out now? To have people you're in contact with at Karzai International Airport, people that have been there for the terror attach Well, we were warned through intel on the ground in Kabul that the how came you have better intel, it seems than Joe Biden because I seemingly have better intel as well, because the CIA, the do D and everybody else in the world was trying to warn him to get out in April of May and nobody was paying attention apparently. But anyway, the gross that's okay. We were warned that the situation that the airport had been breached by ices a couple of days ago, Caliban had taken that missus I heard. I'm just telling you what I heard, that Taliban had taken control of air traffic control tower on the civilian side, and so we knew probably that our plan A to get them out on airplanes was not going to work. But we've been encouraging these ladies every day. Tell him to stay strong. If Plan A doesn't work, we're going to Plan B. Plan B doesn't work, we're going to We're going to D. And when the Americans evacuate, we're not leaving these ladies alone, and we're going to go after every single one of them. We're not going to leave one of them behind. And by God's mercy, he's going to help us. And Allison, how could you possibly if they're caught behind enemy lines of a terrorist organization and control of the country. What is Plan D? There is no Plan D. There always is a plan I worked. I was up at Nancy headquarters in Washington, DC, and one thing I learned was the mantra of failure is not an option. So we're not going to quit. I don't know how it's going to work, Sean, but we have other options. Besides I admire you. I'm grateful for your courage. You know, we had we had special ops forces on the ground for a week that wanted to go into Cobble and rescue Americans and they were told to stand down, just like Benghazi, again and again and again. And I've confirmed that from five separate sources that were briefed on the situation. I admire you, Allison. Anything that we can do or any information we can we can you know, pass on to you, pass on us will gladly share it with this audience. Thank you for all your efforts. Thank you, Sarah. Just a prayer, and just I just want to say a mister President, if you can hear me, we just need more time. We need more time. Eight hundred and nine for one, Shaan is our number. Nathan North Carolina, You're on the Sean Hannity Show. Yeah, hi, Sean, thanks for taking my call. So my biggest thing that I don't understand is I spent over thirty months in Afghanistan and over twenty of that was spent in Bogram Airfield, and I feel like that's kind of bearing the lead because people aren't really talking about this part of the story. We're trying to get all these people out through Cobble and that's just an airfield inside of a city. But what people aren't it's getting lost in translation, is the size of Bogram Airfield. This place is almost thirty square miles large, it has infrastructure. We've built this place up. It's almost a city at this point, and we could have easily housed all the people that we needed to get out of there, civilians, military personnel. We could have gotten our equipment out that way, and we just abandoned that before we even did the due diligence to get all of the other stuff that we needed now there. You know, obviously the human lives aspect is the most important part of this, and even like the hundred thousand people that we've gotten out in the last week or two, that easily could have been processed in that one airfield. It was our largest base in the entire theater. It was also an area where we could protect the perimeter the Trump Plan. It's fascinating and bringing this up because I've had this discussion with numerous senators and congressmen and former Trump officials at the highest level. That was part of the Trump plan, not just to never. We were never giving that air field back. We built it, we own it, and we were going to stay there for geopolitical purposes in case things got out of control. And remember the number one threat of president so the Taliban was if you move out of your area, we will obliterate you. And that was said before any other discussion went forward, and it was said numerous times throughout any discussions. And for the last eighteen months Donald Trump was president, not a single American died in Afghanistan. I think that speaks volumes about how they believed him. And like like you were saying, like we had the perimeter established. This wasn't just a chain link fence. We had concrete barriers around the place. We had guard powers every so often, multiple entry control points. We had the sea rams in place to protect from incoming enemy mortar and rocket fire. Like you know, we may have had to surge a little bit more troops back to that area, but it was a hardened location. It would have been easily defensible, a lot more so than just some random airport inside of a city that's already in a foreign hostile country, you know what I'm saying. Well, and all of it, as you know, was preventable. All of it was preventable. And you know, it's just to me, I'm kind of blown away that we've allowed America to disintegrate after twenty long years into this when the options were phenomenal for us in March, April, May, June, even even late even into July, right and with something like this, we definitely would have had you know, there should have been more of a plan. We could have been doing this for months. We didn't have to leave two hundred aircraft, seventy five thousand vehicles, over six hundred thousand weapons. But you know, we could have convoyed C five galaxies into that place. And if you've ever seen those things people be talking about the C sevent teams that were loading up with people. A C five galaxy, you can sit six buses inside of that thing. You know, we don't have to cram eight hundred people on top of each other. In C seventeens. We could do that as well. We have a very large fleet of those. But our capabilities when the military actually starts putting that rubber to the road, we can accomplish things that no one else on this planet can't. We could have been doing this for months. The intel seems like it has been there. Uh. You know, this may not necessarily be one hundred percent on Biden, but he is the decision maker in the end. But in the end, somebody's going to have to answer that for this just complete lack of planning, because there was you seem to you know, do you see more capable of being the commander in chief than our current commander in chief? Anyway, I appreciate your call. I wish I had more time for you. Thank you for your service. Sir Bernadette is in Long Island, New York. Bernadette, glad you called. I just wanted to say I have four boys. All four are currently serving. I have two special Forces. I know where three and my boys are. One I am is somewhere where I you know, am not. He was deployed and he is not allowed to tell me where he is. Obviously, I'm sure in the midst of all this, um, I just want to say that we leave no one behind. Mind is very serious for these men and women in our military. This is serious. These are their brothers and their sisters. And when we have a commander in chief as we have now, it totally freaked me out. I am telling you, I need the biggest bully in that White House. I am begging for President Trump to get back because I did not worry when he was our commander in chief as soon as Biden got in, however he got in, I am telling you I've been worried about something like this. He Joe Biden is in charge of this. He isn't currently the commander in chief of the United States. Elections have consequences, Yes, so I believe that laws were not followed, like partisan observers didn't observe. Yeah, that's why I've been pushing for election reform so hard and saying it's so important. But right now this is Joe Biden's disaster. He caused it. Now, I don't know what ideas President Trump or anybody else for that matter, might have considering how dire a situation they have now put us in. It's humiliated, it's disheartening, it's tragic, it's and it's tragic on a whole other level because we watched the march of the Taliban, and we could have stopped them cold. We did not, and there's no good reason why. There's never they've they've ever asked that important question. There's a few important questions. Why do you trust the Taliban? Why didn't you as the Taliban was on the march in April, in May and June and July. Why didn't you see this coming? And while you had control, why didn't you immediately step up evacuation plans? Why did you leave our military equipment behind eighty three billion dollars worth? You know, why did you you're bragging about having total control of the airport, Well, apparently not, and we know the Taliban had controlled the perimeter of the airport and the rest of Cobble that they had to admit. Why did you let that happen? I mean, I mean, And now the question is, and I don't I don't have the hand. Yeah, you're right, And what do we do now? There's a big question of the day. If anyone has that answer, I'm all ears because I really really don't have the perfect answer. Because it's not a perfect answer. Every option is extraordinarily dangerous, difficult, challenging, and will likely result in American deaths. But then, what's what's planed? B just leave them behind defend for themselves, and then we'll work on what diplomatic and economic options on the table. What we're going to start paying ransom for the Americans they left behind that we've got to make them pay back for all the money and all the equipment we gave them left for them. There were no provisions made for that. We didn't extract Blackhawk helicopters. Now we've got. Now we've got Taliban fighters flying Blackhawk helicopters. God help us quick break right back. What do you think when you hear an overwhelming number of consumers raved about how these products help them sleep better? CB Distillery dot Com promo code Patriot to save twenty percent. All right, that's gonna wrap things up for today, Hannity. Tonight, we have a special interview we don't want you to miss nineties. Turn on the Fox News channel. We'll give you the very latest on the ground as this timeline that Joe Biden is adhering to approaches very quickly on Tuesday. There'll be Monday our time, so we'll get into that. But the vice president of Afghanistan, who didn't flee the country like the president, will join us exclusively for his first interview. As they build the resistance in northern Afghanistan to take on the Taliban, can they defeat them? And what can the US do. We'll get to that and much more news you won't get from the media. Mob say a DVR Hannity tonight, Fox News. We'll see you then, Thanks for being with us, have a great weekend. God, pray for our fellow Americans in Afghanistan and others, and we'll see you back here on Monday. We'll see it tonight at nine