Hi, Welcome to Full Frontal!
I’m Samantha Bee, and we are back after two months away! Fortunately,
not much happened while we were gone. - The Delta variant surge across the country.
- The surfside condo collapse. - January 6th committee.
- Andrew Cuomo resigning. - The 2020 Olympic Games are officially underway.
- Wildfires burning across California. - Mike Richards has been fired as executive
producer of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. He was producing Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune,
but ironically, he lost it all because he was the Whammy. Americans have mostly been
focused on our problems at home, but right now, our government is reminding us just how
badly we can also f*** up things abroad. - Tonight, two decades of American fight
seemingly erased in roughly two weeks. Last weekend, chaos throughout the country as the
Taliban took province after province. - Thousands flooded the airport in a
desperate attempt to flee the Taliban. - A suicide bomb attack outside the
airport killing 13 U.S. service members. 60 Afghan civilians were killed, too.
- The U.S. carried out a drone strike in Kabul believed to be a suicide bomber. The
strike inadvertently killed as many as ten afghan civilians, including six children.
This is the tragic end of an American military occupation that spanned two decades, four
presidential administrations, and at least five different major trends in women’s denim. Skinny
jeans were done before the war in Afghanistan! The U.S. should have never invaded Afghanistan
without an exit strategy, and many people over the last 20 years are responsible for this crisis.
But luckily, conservatives have boiled all that history down to
one convenient explanation: Biden did it! - Joe Biden deserves to be impeached for a
high crime and misdemeanor of dereliction of duty. - You know, for President Biden to try to throw
all of this on the former administration is a lack of responsibility and accountability. He owns
this. Absolutely, a hundred percent, he owns it. - I think the President of the United States
should come out and say all bets are off. And I would start killing bad guys.
To be fair, Biden does deserve his share of the blame. You do kind of have to own it when
you’re overseeing the world’s worst f****** Irish goodbye. In fact, for months, advocates
urged the Biden administration to airlift out Afghan allies, just as the federal government
did after the Vietnam War. You know a situation is f***** when people are like, “Why can’t we
do it more like we did in Vietnam?” But as the world watches in horror as Afghans desperately
try to save their families, Republicans and a lot of the media appear to be much more concerned with
how this crisis moves the political football. - The overwhelming number of Americans now know
this country is heading in a horrible direction—just 29% say we are heading
in the right direction. And that’s a poll that's gonna take down Democrats in 2022.
- I take no comfort in the fact that this might be good for Republicans politically.
It’s true. The only thing that gives Dan Crenshaw comfort is making Pete Davidson feel bad for being
right. If a lot of the criticism of Biden seems hypocritical, well, that’s because it f***ing is.
Just last year, Trump and his administration bragged about making a withdrawal deal with
the Taliban. So it’s pretty rich to see them walking back their culpability now. Unfortunately,
as people across the political spectrum fight to point fingers away from themselves,
it’s going to be the Afghans left behind who will suffer the most severe consequences.
- Women have already been sent home from their jobs and universities.
-The stoning and lashing is already happening. What they are saying, it’s much different than
what they are doing on the ground. - As soon as they enter to the towns,
they start burning the cities, the businesses, and capturing the people, especially the people who
served with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. While the Biden administration did somewhat speed
up the evacuations and visa processing over time, it wasn’t nearly enough.
But at least fear-mongering conservatives were able to switch from worrying about Afghanistan
to worrying about people from Afghanistan. - I’ve talked to people who say that
90% of people that are coming to the country are totally unvetted.
- Is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of potentially
unvetted refugees from Afghanistan? - If history is any guide, and it’s always a
guide, we will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country, and in the coming months,
probably in your neighborhood. - Have any of these people been
vetted? Are you sure? I mean, a swarm of people loaded that C-17 transport the other night—840
people. Mostly men by the way, take a look.
“These refugees are a threat to our nation and even worse: total sausage party!” To be clear,
Afghans arriving in the U.S. are vetted. Most undergo a complicated 14-step process to apply
for a visa, and many are sent to other countries, where they undergo robust security screening. The
last step is singing all the words to America's song, “A Horse with No Name.” On Monday, the U.S.
officially finished with evacuation efforts, but left behind over 100,000 people who might
have been eligible for expedited visas but are now trapped under the complete control of the Taliban.
That includes many former interpreters for the U.S. who put themselves and their families’ lives
on the line to help our country. - Back in 2014 when I was there,
I used to work as a translator. I lost my brother because of working with Americans.
- What would the Taliban have done to you? - They were going to kill me right away.
- Zak trapped without any assurances from the country he had fought
alongside and risked his life for for years. - This is a worse and worse and dangerous
situation now here in Kabul, too. Calling this exit strategy a trainwreck
is an understatement. Last week, the Biden administration finally agreed to grant
humanitarian parole to some Afghans, allowing immigration processing for vulnerable Afghans
to be completed here in the U.S. That is great and will save lives. But it shouldn’t have taken
tragic images on TV to make us respond— just like how we shouldn’t have spent two decades
occupying a country. We screwed up how we went into Afghanistan,
we screwed up how we stayed in Afghanistan, we screwed up our “deal” to leave Afghanistan, and
now we screwed up withdrawing from Afghanistan. At every step, we f***** up. The least we can do
is give refuge to the very people whose lives and homes our aimless war devastated. Truly, it’s the
bare minimum. We helped create this mess, which means it’s our responsibility to help clean it up.
We'll be right back