Now, let's move on to
the hot takes,
because following news that Kabul
was controlled by the Taliban,
you have a number of right wingers.
Even some Democrats coming out with
some takes that I'd like to
respond to.
Why don't we start off with former
secretary of, I'm sorry,
Mike Pompeo.
Why don't we start off with
Mike Pompeo,
who wanted to jump in and comment
on why he believes that Biden's
withdraw has been a failure.
>> I think weak American leadership
always harms American security.
So this is in the context of
a Biden administration that
has basically abandoned the global
stage in favor of
climate change, right?
They've been focused on critical
race theory while the embassy is at
risk.
>> So former Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo argues that, well,
it's Biden's focused on critical
race theory and climate change.
First of all, as we all know,
anyone who's actually
paying attention,
living in the real world,
the Biden administration certainly
is not focused on climate change.
Certainly not to the extent that he
needs to be focused on climate
change, especially considering all
of the natural disasters we've been
dealing with recently, but
let's put that to the side.
When you're a Republican in America
and everything is seen through this
framework of culture wars,
even when it comes to something
as serious as foreign policy.
Even when you're talking
about a former Secretary of State,
they decided to latch on to
critical race theory to explain
the failures in Afghanistan.
I mean, it's pathetic.
>> No, all the Republicans have is
a distraction.
Why does Pompeo want to distract
you there with critical
race theory,
which Biden hasn't brought up?
It's right winger after
right winger,
bringing it up when it's not
even taught in any public school.
Every part of that is a lie,
I'm sick of their lies.
So but why does he bring it up?
As soon as you see a Republican say
squirrel, understand that they're
the ones that fault and they're
trying to cover something up.
Well it was Trump who decided to
withdraw and
set an earlier date than Biden.
I don't blame him for that.
You go back and
look at our coverage,
I gave him credit for that.
I said we should withdraw, and
I don't care
that I despise Donald Trump,
that is the correct decision.
Because on this show,
we are fair and we are objective.
And we knew the 21st year in
Afghanistan wasn't going to
make any goddamn difference,
because we're not like the rest of
the media.
Who's like, I don't know, man,
maybe maybe the 22nd year was
the lucky year.
No, it's absurd,
it was never going to work.
But Pompeo can't come back on here
and go, it wasn't me.
You were the Secretary of State
that negotiate a peace deal with
the Taliban.
And that's okay, just own it.
And actually,
I'd give you credit for
it instead of squirrel,
couldn't go raise theory.
>> No, it is amazing, because
Pompeo was the one during the Trump
administration who was like, no,
no, the Talibans are going to help
us with this withdraw, they're
totally agreeing with us, they're
negotiating with us in good faith.
So I mean, it certainly takes
a Trump administration official to
then turn around and pretend as
though he could read the tea leaves
from the very beginning.
Now, let's move
on to Mitch McConnell who would
much rather remain in Afghanistan.
He says via a statement that he
released, the United States had the
capacity to avoid this disaster.
We still have the capacity to
dampen its effects but
without a presence on the ground or
local partners, defending
the homeland from a resurgent al
Qaeda will be far more difficult.
So much like a John Bolton,
for instance,
Mitch McConnell would much rather
have boots on the ground forever,
indefinitely.
As if that's a decent option when
the people of Afghanistan certainly
did not have a favorable
view of the United States and
its invasion of Afghanistan,
they actually considered American
troops as occupiers, >> Of course.
>> Because they were, they were.
>> So look guys, I gotta give you
a little bit of history here
because it's so important.
So we invaded Afghanistan, first,
let's know, people are surprised at
the reaction in Afghanistan.
We invaded Afghanistan,
not like they invited us and
they were like, come welcome,
we'd love to have you.
>> Right. >> No, we dropped bombs
on their heads and invaded them.
And then on October,
that was on October 7th of 2001.
So it was less than
a month after September 11th.
They were sheltering Bin Laden and
Al Qaeda, that is true.
And but what a lot of people leave
though, is that on October 14th,
a week after the invasion,
the Taliban offered Bin Laden to
America.
But Dick Cheney and
George Bush said no, why?
Because they wanted more war.
Well, now everybody's
leaving this out.
It's in New York Times fishing,
go back and read it yourself.
In 2005, they wrote a piece saying
that actually,
Don Rumsfeld had Bin Laden cornered
in Tora Bora.
Well, after the offer that
the Taliban had, we had him,
we had Bin Laden.
And Rumsfeld told a top American
General to not pursue Bin Laden,
because it wasn't that they were
trying to end the conflict and
accomplish our mission.
The mission for Rumsfeld, Bush and
Cheney was more war, so that their
friends could get richer.
By the way, you say, well,
they're friends.
Are you sure they're their friends?
Dick Cheney ran Halliburton,
which was a defense contractor,
they gave him over $30 million in
a golden parachute.
That money was to start a war just
like this and the one in Iraq and
Cheney accomplish that mission.
So we had Bin Laden,
eight different ways to Sunday,
we could have left almost
a week after we entered.
Instead, we stayed 20 long years,
so that some of the worst most
corrupt people in the world not in
Afghanistan, but here in America.
The most corrupt people
in the world,
the defense contractors and they're
scum politicians who get paid by
them could continue that war.
How many thousands of Americans did
we lose?
How many tens of thousands and
hundreds of thousands of civilians
did we lose in Afghanistan for this
obviously hopeless war that the
media cheered on the entire time.
>> Let's do one more Republican hot
take before we show some love
to a Democrat.
Rick Scott, Senator Rick Scott
weighed in on this.
And said, after the disastrous
offense that have in Afghanistan.
We must confront a serious
question.
Is Joe Biden capable of discharging
the duties of his office or
has time come to exercise the
provisions of the 25th Amendment?
>> Shut up.
[LAUGH] >> You supported a mentally
feeble man who thought injecting
bleach into our bodies would
help with Coronavirus.
That guy, to say that he's mentally
unstable or
unwell is the least the best thing
I can say about Donald Trump.
And Rick Scott say's yeah, okay,
bleach, yeah, let's do it.
And now you're going to talk about
the 25th Amendment you moron.
Second of all, I don't know if
you know this, but your buddy Trump
is someone that authorized that was
drawn in the first place,
he wanted it done earlier.
And now the hilarious right
wing talking point that I see now.
If Trump is in office,
he would have handled,
he would have planned for
this better.
[LAUGH] Trump plan, plan.
He didn't plan for anything.
He'd even planned for
his own election.
And he said, I lost, I don't know,
let's start a coup.
I don't know, let's shoot your kit
vigilante since I think Apple is
destroying democracy.
I don't know, I didn't plan,
I didn't plan anything.
He was going to plan better,
are you insane?
I'm going to do one surprising
defense of Biden on the planning.
Look, he said during the press
conference today,
I asked our Afghan allies
many times can you handle this and
how long do you need etc.
And they said over and over again,
do not plan for us to withdraw,
because it'll create a crisis
of confidence.
And It'll make it more likely,
that there will be
a bigger surge against us, and
more likely that we lose.
Now, those guys were apparently
liars, and fools, and they got
destroyed instantly, right?
And by the way, of course,
as you probably have heard
the President of Afghanistan, ran,
tuck tail and ran instantly.
They entered Kabu,
this is the same son but
you told Biden, no, I got this.
Do you?
Now, he's got into me, they're
varying reports that he did ran
away to Tajikistan or Uzbekistan.
So he's got this from
the Tajikistan, okay?
No, you never had it,
all you did was suck more American
money into your pockets.
He probably has billions
stashed away.
I'm sick of the corruption, whether
it's in Afghanistan or in America.
>> It's not the United States role
to build democracies.
Clearly, that was not the objective
in the first place as I mentioned.
If that were the objective,
the United States wouldn't be doing
constant business with governments
like that of Saudi Arabia's.
And it's not our job to change
cultures in other countries either.
I think that the role of
the Pentagon and
the US military is supposed to
protect national security.
Not to go into other countries and
tell them what they should be like
and what type of government they
should form.
So that's my final opinion
on the war.
Overall, it was a complete nutter
failure, clearly,
an effort just to redistribute more
wealth to private contractors.
And now as Ceank perfectly
mentioned earlier,
you have the Taliban with weaponry
that was given to them essentially
by the US government.
I mean, it's absolutely shameful.
>> By the way, Anna, it's exactly
what happened with ISIS.
The Sudanese inside the Iraqi
military will be loyal to the Iraqi
state.
No, they instantly handed over
the weapons to ISIS,
the weapons that we gave him.
By the way again,
it's super ironic defensive job.
It's not even ironic,
I actually think on foreign policy.
He's like he voted for
all the wars.
He was terrible on that.
We called him out on that.
But after the war started he was
a rare voice of reason, you can see
it here because he's like, I don't
give a damn, I'm withdrawing.
This is bs,
it's never going to work, right?
And on Iraq, he said, we should
split it up into three countries
because he Sudanese will never be
loyal the share who run Iraq and
have the majority, and
that's exactly what happened.
He was absolutely right about that.
And so, my final point,
though, is back to what a failure
the Pentagon is.
So they told Joe Biden we got
this too.
It wasn't just the Afghan
leadership, it was the Pentagon.
They said we did all this planning,
and we did all the contingencies.
And yeah, if I'm Biden,
I'm furious at the Pentagon.
I thought you said you had all
the contingencies covered.
You never once considered that the
Afghan government was entirely full
of malarkey, as Biden would put it?
And you never once said to them,
hey, what if we got to get this
thing done out in a couple of
days or or a week or so?
And by the way,
if you want to hear Biden fault for
that, yes, of course,
he said in the press conference,
the buck stops with me and
that is correct.
So he should have held
the Pentagon's feet to the fire
earlier knowing what colossal
failures they are, that they were
never going to do anything right.
They proved it in spades here, both
in the 20 year stay where they got
nothing done, nothing at all, zero.
And in the exit, which
was a international humiliation for
America, brought to you by
the Pentagon and every corrupt
defense contractor in the country.