Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/17/21: Biden's Afghanistan Speech, MAGA Reactions, Vaccine Update, Newsom Recall, George W. Bush's Legacy, Lessons From Saigon, Afghanistan Papers, and More!

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

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that people don't want to get the vaccine that the media is by and large not telling you about, as well as an update on the Biden administration's position on booster shots. The California governor recall election has been kind of going on underneath the radar. Completely underneath the radar. It's funny because you know if this was happening in New York, that's where the media is located, there would be super fixation on it. Newsom is actually in some trouble here. So we're going to break down what that looks like and what the likely outcome is there. We also really excited to have Craig Whitlock on today. He is the reporter who broke the news about the Afghanistan papers who revealed all of the lies that our generals and top leaders and president after president have been telling

the American people about Afghanistan. He has a new book about the Afghanistan papers about to come out. He is going to join us and break all of that down for us. So we're super excited to have him today. But we did want to start with that big Biden speech. Yeah, I think the Biden speech is very important just to give people an up to the minute as of right now where things stand in Kabul. Flights have resumed from the Kabul International Airport. The Biden administration sending up to 7,000 troops to the airport in order to keep it secure. It seems that some sort of deal, Crystal, was struck with the Taliban because not a single attack has yet happened on the airport. The U.S. has reasserted control. That's right. Taliban is patrolling the streets in Kabul where things have, according to the reports, a sort of like eerie calm as people hunker down in their houses having no idea what's going to happen next.

It's very strange. The Taliban minister came out yesterday and said that there will be no reprisal killings, saying that we're having some sort of amnesty. Obviously, look, we should all be very skeptical of what comes out of the Taliban. It was on MSNBC, this dude. I actually was a fascinating interview. It was. I thought it was important. It's funny. I saw, this dude. I actually was a fascinating interview. I thought it was important. It's funny. I saw a lot of conservative, we'll get to this, but I saw a

lot of conservative takes me like, how dare MSNBC interview the Taliban spokesman? I'm like, look, they run the country. So, you know, in my opinion, it's probably worth hearing him out. Dreamly newsworthy. Yeah. I mean, interviewing Putin when he's a liar is also probably important, but once again, we'll save that. I think the Biden administration recognized that there were a lot of criticism. He hadn't come out, and he gave probably one of the most defiant and, in my opinion, courageous speeches that an American president has given in quite some time. We pulled two distinct snippets from that speech. Let's take a listen to that.

There was no status quo of stability without American casualties after May 1. There was only a cool reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan, lurching into the third decade of conflict. I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I've learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces. That's why we're still there. I'm now the fourth American president

to preside over war in Afghanistan, two Democrats and two Republicans. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth president. I will not mislead the American people by claiming that just a little more time in Afghanistan will make all the difference. Nor will I shrink from my share of responsibility for where we are today and how we must move forward from here. I am president of the United States of America and the buck stops with me. I mean, look, Crystal, honestly, one of the most courageous speeches I've heard from an American president in my lifetime. What we saw there, Biden also admitted, he goes, yeah, I'm going to be honest. It went way worse than I thought it was going to be. Yeah. Pointed out

the fact that the Afghan National Security Forces threw down their weapons and fled, that the president that we backed, Ashraf Ghani, assured him not even that long ago in a private conversation, no, I'm going to stick it out. Ashraf Ghani gave an interview May 17th, 2021, saying, I will fight and die for my country. Now he's in Tajikistan, reports out that he fled with a helicopter full of cash. The collapse of the Afghan army just could not be foreseen, even at the rate of the most pessimistic people. Yeah. And he admitted that. But more importantly, he said, yeah, I understand that the withdrawal is bad. I understand that the situation is horrible. But I am not going to reverse my

decision because doing so would mean putting American combat soldiers in the middle of an Afghan civil war and putting their lives at risk. For what? Ultimately, that government decided not to fight for itself. He reiterated that point over and over again. Given the media environment, combined with some of the most incoherent Republican messaging I've ever seen, everybody seems to be a 2005 Bush Republican now. I swear to God, I saw MAGA people retweeting Michael Gerson yesterday. And for those who don't know, Michael Gerson is the architect of the 2005 second Bush inaugural address about spreading democracy all over the world. And I'm like, you don't even know who you're in bed with here.

So I am just, I'm stunned that Joe Biden is the president. I would never have expected this from him to be truly the best anti-war president in the last 20 years. There's just really no other way to say it. I think you have to probably say of our lifetime. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this, what struck me, and I'm going to get to one quibble that I have with the way that he laid this out, but what struck me is that this was the most honest speech, certainly on foreign policy, maybe period, that has been delivered to the American people in my entire lifetime. And I am not that young at this point. Okay. He actually leveled with people and said, look, I know it's ugly. I know these images are, I think the word he used was heart-wrenching.

Everybody feels that way. But here is what the actual alternative was. He actually leveled with people. He actually respected the American people enough to say, look, this was the promise and the pledge that I made to you and that I made to our men and women overseas that I would not pass this forward to another president. And I stand by that decision. He was adamant. He was unrepentant. He was clear and forceful in articulating exactly what he had to say. It's interesting. I'll talk about this another day. But Nicole Wallace, of all people on MSNBC, said, look, 95% of people are going to listen to that speech and say, yeah, I agree. And 95% of journalists are going to disagree with it. And I don't know that those are quite the numbers, but there is a big divide between the way the elite media is portraying this and spinning it and the reality of what people actually think about what happened here. My one issue, my one quibble with this is he put a lot on,

oh, the Afghan army stood down and they wouldn't fight for themselves, etc. Who is going to fight for these corrupt warlords that we've been propping up for 20 years once the person who's paying the bills goes away? Of course they're not going to stand up and fight for that person. And honestly, look, let's be real. Yes, this happened a lot more quickly than even the most pessimistic prognosticators thought. However, everybody thought,

the intelligence assessment said, Taliban was going to take over, whether it was in a week or three months or 18 months or two years or whatever. They were on the move long before this official withdrawal actually happened. Ryan Grimm has a good sub stack out this morning talking about, look, part of why this is so messy and so ugly is, first of all, any time that you unwind a disastrous imperial failure that you've been engaged in for 20 years, yeah, it's going to be not pretty.

I 100%. It's going to be a mess, right? I completely agree. And so all these, oh, I would have done it different. Oh, please. Like, please, give me a break. This was going to be a messy, ugly, shameful disaster, period. Why?

Because this is the first time that the American people are actually seeing the truth of what we've been doing there for 20 years. And so, you know, political leaders, military leaders, they don't want to frame this as a surrender, which would involve an actual like negotiated surrender with the Taliban and ability for us to get our people on, et cetera, et cetera. They don't want to portray it that way. That's why you have some of this messiness, especially around refugees and getting our people out, which is something that I really hope the Biden administration does aggressively do whatever they can to get rid of the bureaucratic hurdles, to make sure we can take care of those people as best as we possibly can. But the reality is this was going to be ugly. That doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better. But like I said yesterday, I will by neocons and a lot of the mega industrial complex around, we wanted to leave, but not like this.

So let's go through the scenario. The scenario where we have right now is the Afghan military collapses. Kabul is surrounded by the Taliban. We have decided then that we are going to stick it out for the next three months in order to make sure that we can process visas, right? What does that entail? Let's be honest. That entails bombing the Taliban, initiating kinetic force against the group of which we have a peace treaty with, which means what? Which means weapons free on American soldiers. That means that we would have had to have sent thousands

of American combat troops to secure the perimeter of Kabul in order to make sure that we could get our people out over the next three months. If you want to sit and tell me that it was worth hundreds of Americans' lives in order to ensure that possibility, instead of a negotiated solution which we seem to be going towards, you are welcome to make that case. I reject it fundamentally, because what it would be is that we would be fighting for a force that didn't want to fight for themselves, for a government which was completely fake, corrupt, and obviously liars, both to our face and to their own people. That is the alternative. And I have just seen so much dishonesty here. I saw Senator John Cornyn smugly say, and I said this yesterday, but it bears repeating, we haven't lost a soldier in Afghanistan since February of 2020. a drone strike against that force, that's it. It's over.

We only had 2,500 troops there. In order to secure the perimeter of Kabul, we tried this. We actually did this in Baghdad in 2009. It took 100,000 American combat soldiers. I say no. I say absolutely not. I heard from so many service members yesterday who watched our segment and so appreciated it because nobody seems to be caring for their actual lives. Their lives are the ones. Treated like pawns. No, the media right now is agitating for those people to go and die so that Afghan girls can go to school for three more weeks. Listen, if enough Afghans care about Afghan girls going to school, they can mount up arms and they can fight for it. And I'm not saying that I don't support it. God

bless them. I feel terrible. But that does not mean that 25 year olds, 23 year olds, people from working class backgrounds should go and die for that. Yeah. This is the frustration that I see with the gaslighting from the Republicans whenever they're criticizing Biden, from the media in the way that they think, I love this. They're like, the withdrawal should have gone perfectly, like the whole war. Right, exactly. To your point, this is the most incompetent force on the face of the planet, both the Afghans and the United States military, in the way that we conducted ourselves. The Pentagon had 18 months to plan this. By the way, what was going on under the Trump administration?

That's a good question. That is a good question. Well, and I mean, there's a lot to say. One other piece I want to point out is this also goes back to something we talk about a lot on this show, which is the things the media chooses to fixate on. Yes. Okay, because Americans are good people, right Yes. Okay. Because Americans are good people.

Yes. Right? By and large, Americans are good people. They don't want to see suffering. They don't want to see women and girls afraid for their lives and people hunkered down. Neither do I. People at the airport trying to flake. People don't want to see that. And that, so they make sure to show you that in the context of trying to advocate for, let's go back to Afghanistan for a hundred years or whatever it is that they think would ultimately solve this problem, they didn't give a shit about Yemen. Oh, of course not. Which we helped to perpetrate through our Saudi allies, where you've

had mass famine, children starved. I mean, it's as horrific a humanitarian disaster as you can possibly imagine. But that would be uncomfortable for our Saudi allies. So that doesn't get shown to you. So they're also very, very selective in the things that they choose to get outraged about. They didn't give a shit about the Afghan people until this week. Of course. They did not care because the Afghan civilians have been getting slaughtered over the past few years. For three years. Casualties have been going up year after year. They didn't tell you that, did they? They did not care until it served their interests of war making, the interests of all the war profiteers that are based within a 50-mile radius of where we sit right now.

So it's all gaslighting. It's all extremely selective. Their outrage, their manipulation of Americans' true humanitarian impulses. And ultimately, it's disgusting because they're such liars and propagandists and so selective in their outrage. I couldn't. You know, it makes me so angry. And I hope that that comes across because watching these people preen, like we showed you yesterday with Richard Engel saying how shameful that we signed a peace deal with the Taliban. Why doesn't he go sit on the front line in Afghanistan and tell that to the people who lost, who are literally fighting and dying in order to try and fight for a fake Afghan government? Go ahead, Richard.

The ones that really get me because at least Richard is in the region. Sure. I can imagine how emotional it is when you're there, and you know people and how they're going to be affected. You've got people who are coming up to you like, help my son, help my daughter. That's a good point. The ones that really get me are the ones who are sitting in a studio like this.

Beating their chest. Beating their chest. Yeah. Who've never even been to the region. They certainly aren't sending their sons and daughters over there to to fight for something that you know the afghan people have have basically given up on at this point for the fight for this ridiculous i mean here's the other thing that's this is the ultimate of gaslighting we didn't go to go to Afghanistan because of the women and girls. We've never intervened in a foreign country to protect the rights of women and girls. Or should we? This is like the idea that that's what American foreign policy was about and that was ever our

goal in Afghanistan is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Look, I wish, I wish there was more we could do to protect the rights of women and girls and everyone else in Afghanistan and all kinds of places around the world. But if we have learned nothing from Vietnam and from Iraq and from Libya and from Afghanistan, it is the extreme limits of what we can actually do. Every single one of these projects of nation building, spreading democracy around the world, every single one is an abject failure that leaves us poor, that leaves innocent people dead, and leaves the country in question in a worse place than when we ultimately started. That's ultimately where it is. And look, I think we are going over this ground so carefully

and dismantling each and every argument because I have not yet, I didn't understand until this week how we could have had the lies of the war in Iraq. Like, you know, I was too young to really see it or remember it in real time. I've watched the tape, O'Reilly, all that other stuff, but I didn't really get it until I saw this week, the entire media industrial complex

combined with the uniparty message that what happened here was a disaster. And I love the term disaster, which I don't necessarily disagree with, but the selective use of that term to this and not to the sacrifice of 2,300 American soldiers, 20,000 wounded men, untold number of Afghans, they never used that term once. Where's the term for disaster? You know what the real disaster is? Is throwing people into a meat grinder and for nothing. Literally nothing. To make the Taliban stronger. Right. To make the Taliban stronger. Right. To make the Taliban, as Biden correctly said, and this is true, they are stronger today

in 2021 than they were in 2001. In fact, they are much richer. They are some of the world's best drug dealers. They've become much more cosmopolitan. Last year, they made $400 million off of the drug trade. These are much more cosmopolitan guys than the people of 2001. It's fascinating to see just how inverse of a success that we have had over there. Every year that we stayed in Afghanistan, things got worse. And as you said, the American people are good. Nobody wants to see people falling off of airplanes, crowding the tarmac at Kabul and more. But do they want to see their sons and daughters sacrificed for a fake government and a fake army? You should make the

people who are saying that we should have done this better, make them firmly articulate their vision for how that was going to happen. Because I can assure you with every fiber in my being that doing so would have required the sacrifice of at least 100 American combat soldiers. And I am very, very comfortable saying that I will take this trade any day of the week. It may sound callous, but that is what it means to actually care about your military, your people, and ultimately for the Afghans themselves.

If you believe in ending the forever war, then this is what it is always going to look like. I know that's very difficult for people to stomach, but I think it's true. I thought Matt Iglesias had a good point yesterday. I'm going to read his tweet. He said, imagine if Biden had announced that he'd learned zero progress had been made over the past 20 years. The Afghan National Army had no independent fighting ability. And as a result, he was dispatching thousands of fresh troops to the country to beat the Taliban. Yeah. Is that what you want? Yeah. Say it. Because that's the true alternative, okay? That is the real alternative,

not the fake, oh, we should have done it better. And if I were in charge, I would have, et cetera, that's the true alternative, okay? That is the real alternative, not the fake, oh, we should have done it better, and if I were in charge, I would have, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's the real alternative, is a new surge. And what did the last surge get us,

by the way? A pack of lies to try to spin the American public, which worked for a time, by the way, which even worked on me for a time, that, oh, things were improving, the surge was working. Remember that whole phase? Pack of lies. And that's what we're going to get to later with Craig Whitlock. Make sure you stick around for that interview because I really want him to lay out what people said in public versus the reality of what they confessed to what was actually happening on the ground in Afghanistan.

Because every president, every general, everyone who has been involved with this for the past at least 15 years has known the truth that what we've seen this week, this was how it was always going to end. And the reason no one was willing to do it is because exactly the scenes and the political risk that you see now. Kudos to Biden again. Look, it's not perfect. I'm not claiming that it is. But wow, I give him so much credit in the face of this absolute media onslaught, which he's no spring chicken. He knew was coming for him. And a lot of Democrats suddenly very quiet in the face of all of that to go forward as adamant and as clear as he did. All the credit I can possibly give.

Same. I've never seen, I have not seen an act of political courage like this in quite some time. On the other hand, not everyone has been so courageous, boys and girls. So our friends, our thought leaders, as if we might call them in the MAGA world, have been struggling with how to deal with this development. Because, of course, this is one area where Trump was really unequivocal about getting out of Afghanistan, ending the forever wars, a big part of his pitch back in 2016. And it was a part of his pitch this time as well. I think I read yesterday the Don Jr. tweet shortly before election day of him saying, yeah, when we were talking to Richard Hineni, of him saying, a vote for Biden's a vote for endless war. Donald Trump was going to get us out of Afghanistan.

You can go back and look at all the press releases, even Mike Pompeo is a total, you know, neocon hawk singing along at the same tune about we're ending the forever war, et cetera, et cetera. So, of course, Trump did not do that. Although to his credit, he helped to set us on this path where Biden eventually actually followed through and got us out of Afghanistan. So I do want to give him credit for that. And by the way, I also want to say, I hope you guys know that whether this was Biden or Trump, we would have had the same exact take, the same view of it. I would have given him all the credit in the world if this was Trump pulling us out of Afghanistan. They can go roll the tape from multiple periods when we were on rising. February 2020, when John Bolton resigns over the Doha negotiations. Yes. Both of us

were like, bye. Goodbye. See ya. Why did you ever hire him in the first place? December 2020, whenever he was trying to get the troops out, we did the same thing. Whenever the treaty was signed, I forget the exact date of the Doha Accords and more. When Mike Pompeo met with them, we did it. Whenever we saw the generals agitating against it. We did monologues at Rising.

This has been a longstanding position that we've held here. So Trump has dramatically changed his tune now that Biden has actually followed through and gotten us out of Afghanistan, something that over four years Trump was ultimately unable to do. So here's the statement that he put out yesterday, which is just kind of hilarious. We can throw this first tweet up on the screen. He puts out a statement hitting Biden, and he seems to be calling for the U.S. to take in Afghan refugees, something I wholeheartedly support but seems a little bit at odds with the Trump we knew of the past who did the Muslim ban and didn't care about the Iraqi you know, Iraqi translators that were stranded at the airport or stranded in Iraq who helped our men and women overseas. He says,

can anyone even imagine taking out our military before evacuating civilians and others who've been good to our country and who should be allowed to seek refuge? Look, I applaud you, Mr. President, for getting on board with expediting a refugee process, but a little bit different. A little incongruous. A little incongruous with kind of your whole ethos and vibe previously and your statements in the past. Just to give you a sense of what he was saying not so long ago, let's put this next tweet up on the screen, which is a previous statement from President Trump back in April when he says, Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do.

I plan to withdraw on May 1st and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible. So this is he's hitting Biden for pushing the timeline back to September 11th originally. Then it was moved up a little to August. So he's hitting Biden for not getting out soon enough. And he talked about this at one of his rallies, basically seeking to take credit for the eventual withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn't stop the process. 21 years is enough, don't we think? 21. They couldn't stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very tough to stop the process when other things were out.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It's a shame. 21 years by a government that wouldn't last. The only way they last is if we're there. What are we going to say? We'll stay for another 21 years and we'll stay for another 50. The whole thing is ridiculous.

So we're bringing our troops back home. I supported him. He was correct. We'll stay for another 21 years, then we'll stay for another 50. The whole thing is ridiculous. So we're bringing our troops back home. I supported him. He was correct. Thank you, Mr. President. That's why I supported you in 2017 whenever you were trying to go up against the generals. And I was very disappointed when you fell for their tricks and you surged troops in Afghanistan, ignited an air war, which was completely pointless. I supported Donald Trump whenever he, you know, as I said, pushed a peace deal with the Taliban in Doha. I thought it was one of the most courageous things that a president had done in a really long time. I supported him

inviting them to Camp David because I think that's what you do whenever you try to end a war. When Mike Pompeo met with the Taliban leader, I said, good, this is a good thing. You shake hands with the enemy. You shake hands with the man who killed your soldiers, and you say, let's end it. Let it end, because I believe in ending this war. And to watch these people, just, I have not seen the online ecosystem in more, more unhinged in so long. They're convinced that, as Richard Hanania said, they've now invented Trump into some Afghan feminist. And he himself seems to be playing into that canard. I seem to remember, Crystal, when Trump pulled out of Syria unceremoniously and told the Kurds to go screw

themselves, and a lot of them were massacred. By the way, I actually supported that decision at the time. You can go and you can roll the tape. because I said, as I'm saying now, which was, look, getting out's hard. And at the end of the day, it's messy. But, you know, when you're fighting up against a military industrial complex, you have to pull the rug out from under them and make a final decision. That may sound like familiar analysis that you heard defended on the likes of Fox News and a lot of other MAGA people. Suddenly, they're all Afghan, like, they're like Afghan non-profit NGO givers or something like that. And the lack of consistency here drives me nuts. This is what the culture war does and rots your brain. And actually, what's the saddest thing of all is it reveals that Trump does not actually have the principles

around this. And most likely what would have happened is he would have been played by the generals. I've been having this fight with some friends of mine who are like, this never would have happened under Trump. And I'm like, you know what? You're probably right. Because what would have happened is that the generals would have come to him and they would have said, oh, the fall of Kabul, you can't have that. And he would have been like, oh God God that's embarrassing because that he cares about optics and cares about his ego

and he cares about his ego and so what would he have done? He would have greenlit US troops on the ground fighting in order to protect Kabul and then what would have happened?

People would have died and there would have been a whole debacle and the generals would have invented a whole other reason well now they killed us now we have to stay.

We gotta go in. I watched him fall for this every single time. Let's all be honest about how he got played. Yeah. And at the end of the day, he failed, miserably failed in order to get us out of Afghanistan. December of 2020, he tried multiple times. Remember, he had that acting, acting defense secretary in his last month, trying to withdraw troops and the military said, screw you. We're not going to do it because they think, didn't think Biden was going to. Only Joe Biden has had the stones to stand up to the entire foreign policy establishment, his own generals who have been leaking against him. Like I've never seen the intelligence community who leaked against Trump. You know, the MAGA people understood that the president's hands can often be tied and that often that the set of circumstances that you will find yourself into are a result of the deep state taking action against you and trying to screw you over.

And now all of a sudden that disappears whenever it comes to Joe Biden. Joe Biden is the unitary executive, but Trump was just simply a man at the whim of these exotic forces. That's such a good point. That's such a good point. And the truth is, too, because that plays into why they didn't bother to prepare for this exit. Because clearly they were betting on it never happening. They were betting on being able to roll Biden the way they rolled Trump and the way they rolled Obama. They were- That's what they do. They were betting on,

we know how to, we got this handled. Don't worry, we know what to say. We're never leaving Afghanistan because there was so much money at stake. And for these dudes who are still in the military, the generals, they're looking at their post-military career, sitting on the boards of Lockheed Martin,

Boeing, et cetera, et cetera. So, so much money is at stake here. They didn't plan for this because they didn't think it was ever going to happen. They thought they would be able to do to him exactly what they did to Trump. So, I think you're right. Look, you have to look at the history of how Trump actually behaved when he was in office, and we saw over and over and over again the way he got rolled. Understanding the pressure that is brought to bear on these presidents when they want to make a decision that goes against the military industrial complex, that should make you respect Biden's decision here even more. Yes, yes. Because yeah, the MAGA, they understood how hard it was for, and he was

ultimately unable to do it, unable to overcome all of the fears that they put into it, into him, unable to overcome his terror of what the media would say about him if he faced the same sort of scenes that Biden is facing right now and the media onslaught that Biden is facing right now. There are a couple other notable entries here. You mentioned the culture war. And so this was another really just silly analysis here in terms of, you know, the failures and why the scenes we see coming out of Afghanistan are coming out of Afghanistan. This is from Senator Tom Cotton, where everything just gets filtered through like this stupid culture war lens. He says, it's clear President Biden and his Department of Defense have been more concerned with critical race theory and other woke policies than planning an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think the idea- I half agree with him, Crystal. I half agree with him.

What? What are you talking about? Congress talking about white rage while he should be doing this. The idea that President Biden- Okay, I didn't say Biden. Is like some critical race theory, woke whatever. I this. The idea that President Biden is like some critical race theory woke whatever is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. This dude is like 30 seconds from dropping an ethnic slur

every time he gets in front of a camera. That's true. He is not woke in any sense of the word. His generals are. The people who are supposed to be doing this are. Alright, we can blame them. But it wasn't because they were fixated on critical race theory. It's because they wanted the grift. That's what this is about.

It's not about, like, gender theory or critical race theory or whatever. It's because they wanted to keep the grift going, okay? Another one here for you. Stephen Miller suddenly also says, you hear a lot of desperate lying and revisionism today from Biden and co. Let's be very clear. Biden abandoned the Trump peace plan and exit strategy, which included powerful deterrence. Biden foolishly devised his own plan and crashed and burned. It's a flaming Biden wreck. Talk about revisionism. I mean, this guy actually followed

through and did the thing that your boss never had the stones to do, and this is what he has to say about it. I also, once again, I want to be clear here. You know what powerful deterrence means? That means bombing the Taliban, which means that we're at war with the Taliban once again. Which means what? How many times do I have to say it? This is the callousness which we talk about, plans and actions which we know will lead to American combat deaths just drives me up the wall. It's so easy to sit behind a keyboard and beat the drum, powerful deterrence. Taliban would have never, oh yeah, go and ask the 2,300 soldiers who have already died when the Taliban did,

whenever they stood up against the most powerful army in the world and continued to fight, became richer and more powerful as we spent $2 trillion trying to defeat them. Listen, I hate the Taliban as much as anybody, but I respect the hell out of them as an enemy and as a fighting force. And I care enough about the troops in order to know not to beat my chest and say powerful deterrence in order to try and score culture war points against the president who is actually doing what Donald Trump said that he would do. Trump has said it's not that we're leaving Afghanistan. He put out a statement yesterday. It's how we left. Once again, what the hell were you doing when you were president? You had plenty of time to process special Afghan visas, get people out, get the ball rolling.

You know why you didn't? Because your administration was completely incompetent. And you were more focused on trying to prove that the election was stolen than you were on actually trying to save American combat troops' lives. That's the truth. That's the truth. Let's face it and look at it squarely for what exactly we're dealing with. And I guess we have a final piece of Coke here. This is maybe my favorite.

Which is my personal favorite that you found. So I'll let you do this. This is Lauren Boebert, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. So first, on the left side of the screen, at least as I'm looking at it, I don't know if it's left or right for you guys. Anyway, it says, we've been in Afghanistan for more than half my life. We need to end the endless wars. February 21st.

Just back in February. Okay. Not that long ago after she's made a member of Congress and it was unclear at that point whether Biden was actually going to follow through and get us out of Afghanistan. So we've been in Afghanistan. It's time to end the endless wars. Now, she says, Joe has a 48-year history of making bad decisions and this weekend's foreign policy decisions to the list. Add them to the list, she says. So, I mean, at least I guess Stephen Miller was clever enough to craft some justification for why it's different now that Biden's doing the ending the endless wars versus when Trump was doing it. She doesn't even, she just straight out flip-flops without any sort of cover or justification, total mask off moment. And I guess I kind of appreciate it in that way. What I really learned from this is that nobody's learned a damn thing. The culture war has,

I mean, I knew this, but I didn't really know, is that people have rotted their brains so much that they're going to find themselves on the side of 2005 Bush neocon Republicans. I understand now how the Iraq war happened. I really do. Which is that these people hate libs so much that they're willing to sacrifice their principles. I tweeted on behalf of President Biden yesterday, and I had the most delicious maga cope in my replies that I've ever seen, Crystal. All of this revisionist history around, oh, Trump was this great president who had this awesome peace deal. Actually, I agree with that. And he would have gotten us out differently. No, there's actually no evidence of that whatsoever. If you support the withdrawal,

then you should, on balance, support Joe Biden here over the alternative. I will go to my deathbed believing that. But because these people, like I said, they didn't care about the Kurds. So they don't actually care whenever it comes to any of this. They're trying to weaponize it as a political tool against Biden. Unfortunately, I think they'll probably be successful in that. And they will definitely gaslight much of the Republican base into being pro-war again, because so many of these people just follow what a lot of these so-called thought leaders say. It's an amazing day to watch the Ben Shapiro neocons

once again be back in charge of the GOP. But honestly, it was probably inevitable given how so much of this is just rudderless, culture war brain worms that these people have ingested. There were so many instances that we really had trouble narrowing it down. Yeah, I know. We had so many examples.

I do want to mention our producer, James Sennis, from the America First Policy Institute. Oh, right. So these are supposed to be, like, not just the politicians who, of course, they're going to have their time. These are supposed to be, like, the serious policy, like, think tank types. And it was the same mess. Total flip-flop with some, like like flimsy cover of a justification. It just shows you the way that culture war and partisan tribalism just completely rots people's brains.

And when you got the elite media backing you up in those brain worms, then it's a particularly potent combination. But I hope now you guys will all see through all of that. Hey, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here we are again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to breakings.com, which you can click on in the show notes.

I had another news item we wanted to get to here. First of all, let me mention on vaccines that the news just broke that the Biden administration is planning on recommending a booster shot. So that would be for Pfizer, a third shot or Moderna, a third shot. But I think it's Pfizer that they've been focused on in this by and large. I know Pfizer is the company that has been pushing for these booster shots. It makes them a lot of money, of course. And I don't want to weigh in too heavily here. The preliminary data I've seen is that this may be important, especially for the elderly, for those who are immunocompromised. But I did want to tell you that's the very latest and we're going to research it or bring an expert on to tell you whether or not that really is justified or whether this was sort of like a cave to big pharma and their scare tactics and propaganda.

From what I have seen, there is a case to be made around booster shots only for the elderly. In terms of what we see, the data out—once again, I am not a doctor, so please don't take medical advice from me. But my general perusing of the people that I trust say that a booster shot may be useful for those who are of elderly or immunocompromised. But as I understand it, this guidance, and this is per the New York Times that broke this morning, is that they would recommend this to everybody in terms of eight months after your second shot. And so, look, I personally just think this is going to add to more vaccine hesitancy. I think that the idea that people now need three shots instead of two shots seems pretty ridiculous, given that Moderna and Pfizer both have great protection against regular COVID, even against Delta. It's pretty good. And look, the death rates don't lie, people. I've said it a million times. You get this shot,

you're not going to die from Delta. Will you get infected? Yeah, maybe. It's a cold or a flu. Okay. We live with that as a people. As long as you're not going to die and as long as your grandma especially is not going to die or your grandfather, the elderly, the immunocompromised, then look, I think we're good. Right. So the preliminary data I saw, apparently they're looking closely at what's happening in Israel because Israel is kind of ahead of us in terms of when people started to get vaccinated. So you're able to look at, okay, do these vaccines, their effectiveness wear off over time? And what that data is suggesting, according to the write-up I read, which is I think in the New York Times, is that, as you said, the effectiveness

does start to wear off even where it's concerned severe illness and hospitalization in elderly populations and in immunocompromised populations. So keep an eye on this and we will continue to do the research and make sure we bring to you the best information we can possibly find. The other thing that we wanted to talk about, though, is obviously vaccine hesitancy, big issue. We're kind of stuck. There has been a little bit of an uptick, especially as Delta has surged in areas where Delta has been, you know, really ravaging the population. You have seen people starting to get vaccinated at increasing rates, which, you know, it's sad that it had to come to that of actually fearing for your life, for the life of your loved ones around you. But that is, in fact, where we are. One, so most of the media conversation about vaccine hesitancy is just pure contempt, right?

It's just like, they only care to talk about one population, which is white conservatives, and especially white conservative men. They completely ignore the data about how, for example, in New York, only 27 percent of young black New Yorkers have gotten vaccinated. Basically, if you've gotten screwed repeatedly by government institutions in our health care system, there's a good chance that you're going to be a little skeptical of this vaccine. But there's been nothing but contempt coming from the media. And in particular, they have not focused on one really pretty obvious and just super practical reason why at least some segment of the population has not gotten vaccinated yet. It's not so much that they're vaccine hesitant. It's that they can't get a damn day off of their job so that

they can go and get the vaccine and manage whatever the side effects, which for some people are very real, might be. Our great friend Jeffrey Stein over at, why did I call him Jeffrey? I know I call him Jeffrey. Jeffrey Stein over at the Washington Post. He did the research here and looked at the survey data and about two out of 10, so a significant chunk of unvaccinated employees, according to Kaiser Family Foundation, said if their employer gave them paid time off, they'd probably get vaccinated. Three vaccine clinic representatives also said he went and reached out to people and talked to them about what they're finding are the reasons that people aren't getting vaccinated. And they said that time off, that was a real issue and one of a handful that they commonly hear

from vaccine hesitant people. I want to give you one anecdote here so that you can understand, you know, the reality people are facing and the costs and benefits that they're juggling here. Jeff talked to one 40-year-old who said he'd been working 60-plus hour weeks for months, no bump in his pay. He covers gaps, and he's a manager at a subway. To cover gaps in the store's schedule, they've struggled to find workers. He would like to get vaccinated. He believes everyone should get it, but said he just hasn't had the time or mental space to do it. Quote, by the time I'm out of work, it's time to go to bed. He said he would have gotten the shot months ago if he'd been offered

paid time off, but the store doesn't offer that benefit to get the vaccine or deal with the after effects or sick pay in general. Doesn't have health insurance either and said he had not seen a doctor in years. Subway did not respond to requests for comments. So here's someone who is not attached at all to the healthcare system, doesn't have a primary care physician who he trusts that he could go and talk to or that, you know, he would have easy access there, can't get a day off of work, is worried about missing time if, you know, okay, getting the shot is one thing, but then are you going to have a day where you don't feel up to being able to go into the workplace? And he's a manager. He's not even a regular employee.

Right. He makes $35,000 a year, so it's not like he's making a huge amount of money here. But this is the struggle that, I mean, we don't have paid time off in this country. And some employers, most white-collar employers, will give you the day off. If you're a working-class person at a restaurant,

at a gas station, wherever, very unlikely that they're going to give you the time off, certainly paid time off, to be able to go and get this done. Yeah, you're hosed. I mean, there's really no other way to say it. And I think that the same thing is very important about young Black Americans as well. Put this up there from The New York Times. 27%, 28%, sorry, of young black New Yorkers are vaccinated. And in general, what you see is a large amount of distrust. And what I have tried to point to is these Kaiser Family Foundation surveys, which is what Jeff's story is also based on, where they point out that two out of 10 of the unvaccinated say that they would fix it or that they would get vaccinated

if they had paid time off. And some people will say, oh, that's just not that many. At scale, that's millions of people. That's a lot of people. Millions of people. Hundreds of thousands of people. You take that 28 and you make it 35. You know what? That's a whole lot of people who probably live in intergenerational housing and are around their elderly relatives.

Maybe their elderly relative won't get vaccinated. But you know, these are the types of things where all we have to do, have some actual compassion for these people and just say, what's going on here? Tell me what's happening. I don't understand. It's okay if you don't understand. It's okay that you hold the position that you hold. And instead, just the hatred that we all seem, and I'm pointing not just to white people who've been left behind, black people, Latino, so many lower middle class folks who are rightfully distrustful of the entire system. I'm wrong. You see this booster shot thing? What are you supposed to think? Right.

I was told I can take off my damn mask. Now I can't. You know, I was in France where there's literal vaccine passports. You can't go out to eat, but they still have indoor mask mandates. What's happening? I actually have a certainty that I'm in a building where every single person is vaccinated. And why do I still have to wear a mask? No one can explain these things to me, which is, again, why I am seeing this only harden amongst people who are vaccine hesitant. I know people, frankly, even people like myself, who are vaccinated themselves, who are looking at this booster nonsense and the mask mandates and more and being like, what the hell is going on here? Well, and here's the other thing that is so galling is like, I mean, these media elites, the liberal ones in particular, you know, they were the forcefully making the case effectively against Medicare for all in the Democratic Party. They don't give a primary care. He hasn't been to the doctor in years. Okay. That's going to make you a lot less trustful.

You don't have a person you can go to who can tell you, like, here's the reality. I promise you it's safe. I've had many patients who have gotten it. They've been fine. Like, you are disconnected from the medical system. And that's the other part that you're not going to hear about in elite media is, like, there's a good reason that makes total logical sense of why you have a higher unvaccinated population here than you do in nations where they have a single-payer health care system and where everybody has a connection to the health care. That's not like my crazy lefty point of view. That was what Michael Brennan Doherty from the National Review told us, okay?

So it's so selective. They only care about like this one tiny sliver of people's health and of public health, and they care about it only with this one population that they want to, like, shame. Because, again, it's not really about public health. It's about culture war. There's one other thing that we don't have a tear sheet for, but this is downright psychopathic. There's a doctor who they had on MSNBC who said it's time to start denying people

who don't get the vaccine access to major medical treatments. That's like a libertarian dream. Liberal MSNBC, supposedly, right? They're saying we should deny people life-saving care if they don't get vaccinated. I mean, that is literally psychopathic. Let's play this game. These are the same people who would claim they support universal health care. Let's play this game.

40% of health care costs, almost 40%, are two things, dialysis and congestive heart failure, which are linked to what? Obesity. So should we deny fat people care in this country? Especially the uninsured fat are the people who cost us a lot of money. Maybe even some of you are jokingly nodding at that. I say no, absolutely not. We should do that. Or people who are smoking and giggling. Like, where does this, where does it end? Where does it end? I mean,

this is just, and you know what? I was really disturbed because I thought on Twitter, this is my naivete, that, you know, this was raw story, which is a liberal or progressive outlet. And everybody was in agreement. They're like, yeah, hate to say it, but that's what we should do. That's insane. That is so insane. And again, to talk about what we were just saying before, you're talking about disproportionately black and brown communities. You are talking about denying care to overwhelmingly, this is a working class and disproportionately black and brown population. Okay? 28% of young black New Yorkers are vaccinated.

That's it. Yeah. So 70% of them should be denied health care. The other 72%, you're saying they should be denied health care. Totally psychopathic. Just had to add that to the conversation that that's how insane these people have gotten. I'm glad you are because no, this is a legit, if they had the power, if you see what's going on in Australia, they would do that here if they could do it. And this is what they're talking about. And where does it end? Many of these black and brown Americans are the ones disproportionately more likely to be obese and to have comorbidities. So are you going to deny them health care on those fronts?

No. You know why? Because we understand that we have a lot of different problems in this country and some people are worse off than others. And that at least in terms of crisis care that nobody is going to die for want of health care generally i'm not going to say that that doesn't happen and yet this is complete callousness directed at the people who are most likely to suffer um in our economic system in our society yeah it's just and again coming from a group of people who claim to support health care as a human right. Right.

Until the person that needs the health care in their mind is some right-wing white dude, then screw them. Yeah, correct. That's the ethos. Yeah, let them just die of a heart attack. That's super, very, very compassionate that we have of a country there. Okay. We also wanted to make sure that we highlighted this story out in California. And as you said in the beginning of the show, if this was in New York or, frankly,

even in Florida or something, more accessible via the East Coast, then this would be completely different. But the polling that is coming out of this race, and I, of course, will give a grain of salt whenever it comes to the polling and more. Looks like it could be incredibly close for Gavin Newsom. So let's throw this up there on the screen from The Hill, actually, which wrote up this poll from CBS News. So there's a

four-point margin of error. Now, in this CBS News poll, the 52% of likely voters said Newsom should not be recalled, but 48% said that he should be ousted. And so just so people know, all that needs to happen in order for Newsom to leave this recall is for 51% of people to say, yes, he should be recalled. And then the person who receives the most amount of votes, not a plurality, would win. Now, under that scenario, you would have maybe a 51% recall and then only 20% or something supporting a candidate. That person could become the next governor of the state of California. This is 50-something million people live out there, okay? They have one of the largest GDPs in the world just as a state. This is a huge story.

And Newsom's failures, both on COVID, I mean, the lockdown hypocrisy, French laundry, crime is sky high all throughout California. There is the dissatisfaction with the disparity between the tax rate. And then you also just see like all these, you know, the state is basically run by the elite and basically completely fails lower middle class people who live there. So there's a weird dynamic going on here. And just so people understand some of the dynamics at play. First of all, this recall effort wasn't really picking up that much steam until he went in, you know, and in opposition to his own COVID lockdown,

teachers went to French Laundry and that entire, for this fancy, I think it was a birthday party or whatever, unmasked, indoors, all of that, and gets caught. That's when the recall really started to pick up steam. And they got enough signatures to actually take it to the voters. So that's important to sort of keep in mind. In terms of the mechanics of how this is going to work, this is important, and you laid it down. So voters will be faced with two questions. Question number one, do you want to recall Gavin Newsom? Okay. Now, if a majority says yes, then you go to question number two and people are asked, who do you want to replace him?

So the Newsom campaign and the Democratic Party writ large have had this awkward question of like, okay, obviously they're pushing people to vote no on question number one, but do we want to tell people like, but on that second question, here's who you should fill out. Yes. And so far their strategy has been just leave it blank, leaving it open to basically whoever Republicans or independents ultimately pick. One of the bizarre dynamics here is that Newsom's approval ratings are actually solidly above water. In this same poll, 57% of California adults approve of the

job he's doing and 43% of adults disapprove. So if you are looking at population writ large and you just ask him, do you like Gavin Newsom and how he's doing as governor? Actually, 57% say yes, which is pretty strong. The problem he faces is that those people who support him are not particularly motivated to come out and vote in this recall. So even in this CBS poll, if you're just looking at voters writ large, he's in better shape in terms of surviving the recall and that first question of just do you want Gavin Newsom recalled. But if you narrow that pool to likely voters, then it gets really, really tight and is right at the margin of error. The other thing we should throw into this mix is the fact that in polls in other states across the country, there has been a massive Democratic lean, meaning that Republicans

have consistently performed in state after state and national election after national election better than what the polls actually say. Is that the case here? We don't know. But that is another thing that you should factor in as you're looking at these numbers. In terms of the second question, who they would pick, let me tell you who they're not going to pick, which is Caitlyn Jenner, who stands right now at 2% of the vote. Isn't she still in Australia? Is she even in the country? It's impressive to get 2% when you are that well-known. Yeah, we are that famous. I mean, everyone knows.

Everybody knows who she is. Who Caitlyn Jenner is. She's at 2% in this poll. The person who, actually, the leading candidate right now is, don't know. So definitely still a jump ball here. But in terms of actual people, the leading candidate is a conservative talk radio host named Larry Elder. Don't know that much about him. Personally, Newsom's been painting him as he's to the right of Trump.

But we wanted to play you a little bit of one of his ads so you could get a taste of what he's all about. You know, another commercial, the candidate walks around while a voice tells you how great he or she is. Well, I can talk. The reason to recall Newsom is more than his gas tax hike. It's his incompetence, costing the state tens of billions, including fraud and corruption. His policies enable bad schools, high crime, more poverty. The poor get government aid, the rich don't need it, and the middle class is leaving. I'm Larry Elder. This is a fight for the soul of California. Recall Newsom, elect elder. The thing that I thought was interesting there, as he said, his tagline there was, it's a fight for the soul of California, which total rip off of Biden, but in a state that is

overwhelmingly Democratic. Overwhelmingly Biden. Not a stupid move. Didn't say the word Republican there either. No. Smart man. Now, we have a poll. Let's put that up there. Rob Pyers has this tweet.

Let's put it on the screen. Take a look at that in terms of how well he's doing. Twenty-three percent at the twenty-five percent saying we have no idea. Twenty-three percent Larry Elder. Twenty percent nobody. Then Kevin Paffrath. Inspiring choices there. Look.

Twenty-five percent I don't know, 20%, no one. I don't want to say that he's going to be the next governor of California. I frankly have no idea. But as you said, Trump actually did better in the state of California in 2020 than he did in 2016. Not only that, he won in areas like Orange County, in Asian areas, increased his Latino vote share in the state, in counties like LA and more. So that would tell you that there is some dissatisfaction with the, you know, liberal elite in California. Capitalize on that just enough and you could become the next governor with only 23% of the vote. And given the state of the country, given, well, the whole thing is messed

up. Why are they a one party state? I think it's a total joke, but that's a whole other, you know, that's a whole other conversation. Really what I do think is important is that when we look at this, the odds are that Democrats are probably being oversampled in these polls. That's the one thing that we've learned over and over again since 2016. Now, maybe the polls revert back to the pre-Trump era. I have no idea. But given the state of the country, given especially the dissatisfaction over lockdowns, LA County, San Francisco is now bringing in vaccine passports and more, I would bet that the most motivated people in the country are those most dissatisfied with these types of policies and would come out and vote. And to that point, I would not want to be Gavin Newsom today. I think

he has a true 50-50 chance right now. Well, the motivation is the key part. Yeah. Because again, his approval rating is actually pretty decent. 57% to 43%, not too bad. Better than Trump ever had during his entire presidency. So he's solidly above water there. But the question, who's going to turn out to vote? And as you said, and I think this is not just a problem for Newsom, I also think it's a bit of a bellwether nationwide. Republicans are pretty motivated. People who oppose the COVID restrictions seem to be much more motivated than Democrats who, by and large, went back to brunch. And the fact that the media has not really dug in on this, I think,

is also a problem for him because he's having an issue motivating people and convincing them that this is ultimately a real threat. So who knows what's going to happen here, but we wanted to put it on your radar, so to speak, as something that is definitely a possibility and is not getting a lot of attention from mainstream media. Yeah, that's right. Wow. You guys must really like listening to our voices. Well, I know this is annoying. Instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kosloff called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society.

You always need more Crystal and Saga in your daily lives. Take care, guys. Crystal, what are you taking a look at today? Well, join me, if you will, for a little trip down memory lane. It was way back in the fall of 2019, a whole two years ago, and now canceled star Ellen DeGeneres

had just gone to a Dallas Cowboys game where she sat in the owner's box alongside some notable luminaries. Look, this is, I took a video of who was next to me. Yeah. Fancy. So that was Portia, and that was Charlotte Jones Portia was talking to, and George W. Bush, and then in front of us was the tallest man in the world. People were upset. They thought why is a gay Hollywood liberal sitting next to a conservative Republican president?

Didn't even notice I'm holding the brand new iPhone 11. But a lot of people were mad and they did what people do when they're mad. They tweet. But here's one tweet that I loved. This person says Ellen and George Bush together makes me have faith in America again.

Faith in America again. She went on quite a bit more about how, yes, she's friends with George W. Bush because she should be nice to people who have different views. Something I obviously agree with, given my partnership here with Sagar. But Sagar did not lie as into war, commit tremendous atrocities, and destabilize

an entire region, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and untold trillions of dollars. No. Casually palling around with terrorists like George W. Bush and whitewashing their crimes is something else entirely. Wasn't just Ellen, though. Don't want to just pick on her. In the Trump era, the entire liberal media echo chamber got in on W Rehabilitation. Pundits fawned over the adorable relationship between Michelle Obama and Bush. Remember this photo of the two in a fond embrace? Michelle is standing behind Bush, wrapping her arms around him as he leans into her, a smile on his face, eyes half-closed in contentment. Bush was routinely held up as good and moral and decent. Why? Well, it was a useful foil for Donald Trump. Praising Bush allowed neoliberals and

never-Trump grifters the chance to add a bipartisan gloss to their opposition to Trump. An opposition that was rooted not in the corruption and assault on the working class that should have been the roots of a genuine Trump opposition, but in his uncouth manners and the fact that he brought in his own band of grifters rather than relying on the existing grifting class. Although in fairness, he did ultimately incorporate some of the existing grifting class as well, but I digress there. So the media needed Trump to be a unique evil for their ratings, and Democrats needed Trump to be a unique evil so that no one would have time to ask how the hell they could have lost to such a ridiculous person. He couldn't be another in a line of elitist, morally repugnant criminals because that would be a less gripping story, and because it wouldn't allow the previous Republican grifter class a chance to write their books and score their pundit contracts. Thanks to this media whitewashing project, neocons like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are wildly popular with the Democratic base. Shameless warmongers like Bill Kristol have been elevated

as sage voices of decency and democracy. George W. Bush propagandist Nicole Wallace hosts two hours on MSNBC. And many of the military men directly complicit in neocon lies can be found either as cable news contributors or as frequent esteemed guests and pundits. This project of liberal elite history revision was so complete that Colin Powell had a plum speaking slot at the DNC for crying out loud. Which leads me to my second point. No one benefited from this media environment more than Joe Biden. What do I mean by that? Well, think about it. Biden won because Democratic primary voters were persuaded to abandon any policy desires in favor of just beating Trump. And the people who made the case that defeating Trump should be the only concern,

and that Biden was the guy to do it, were exactly the kind of Bush-era leftovers that were elevated as resistance heroes in the Trump era. It was a one-two punch here. Bush-era generals and CIA ghouls helped to convince the Democratic base that Trump was, in fact, the unique evil. Then, those rehab neocon pundits, desperate to defeat Bernie in the left and left with no other options, convinced voters that only Biden could defeat Trump. They were joined in their mission by their new besties in the Democratic establishment in all of this. Just think about it. Even though he was the former vice president, Biden on his own was not even coming close to winning. He was losing not only to Bernie, but to Pete Buttigieg

and Amy Klobuchar. The man had no money, he barely campaigned, and when he did campaign, his advisors regretted letting him leave the basement. The whole project was wildly successful at manufacturing consent for the Democratic establishment at a time when voters were routinely telling pollsters that from a policy perspective, they really preferred something quite different. But there's a big cost to be paid for embracing and elevating these voices, and that bill has now come due. That cost is being paid by Biden and frankly by all of us right now in building support for his domestic agenda as deficit scaremongering and welfare queen politics creep back into the center of discourse. And that cost is really being paid most clearly right now

in the reaction to his exit from Afghanistan. Leaving Afghanistan is what the American people have wanted for years, and it is in fact what Biden promised on the campaign trail. But the hawks who backed him, they didn't think he really had the stones to do it, and they are melting down over the fact that he ultimately did. They can't believe that their grand imperialist project, which showered billions on the defense industry, is all over. In any sane world, the liars, criminals, and thugs who got us into this mess should be the last people that we hear from right now. Their panel comments, op-eds, and tweets should be laughed at if they ever even see the light of day. Instead, these people, aided by their liberal elite friends, have wormed their way back into the center of public discourse where they can make the case that we should stay in Afghanistan forever.

After four years of reframing George W. Bush as a cuddly grandpa who likes to paint, good luck trying to remind everyone that this dude in actuality was pure evil. And Sagar, you know, we warned of this. Yeah, we saw that. One more thing, I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform, or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, the media environment right now is something that I have not seen in quite some time. The entire apparatus seems united in pushing the narrative that somehow, that the way the

withdrawal from Afghanistan should have been sunshine and daisies. It is clear as day that these people have been asleep for the last 20 years as to the immense corruption, ineptitude, and incompetence that the United States military has displayed in that country. The main sticking point in contemporary political discourse is Saigon right now. America will never forget, many say, this is Biden's Saigon moment. And look, to be fair, Biden actually set himself up for failure when he said we wouldn't have a Saigon moment. Just remember that. But let's let him not let's not let him off the hook too easy. He had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy.

Six, if I'm not mistaken. The Taliban is not the South, the North Vietnamese Army. They're not, they're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the, of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable. So the question now is, where do they go from here? That, the jury is still out. But the likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely. Obviously, he was dead wrong there. And I guarantee you're going to see that clip on

loop from the GOP and anti-Biden people for some time. But the question arises, when people say we shouldn't have a Saigon moment, what are they really saying? Something that I was especially struck by yesterday when talking with Richard Hanania was his observation that if you want to really talk about Saigon and the South Vietnamese army, they at least held on for two years after the end of most U.S. combat operations. Afghanistan could not even hold on for three weeks. The fall of Kabul happened faster than the fall of Saigon. It faced no resistance, and the army that we spent $100 billion on collapsed within just a few hours. In many ways, it seems we did a better job in Saigon than we did in Afghanistan, which again raises the question, what use is Saigon as a metaphor?

Well, look, to me, what are people really saying? That we should have somehow fought it out with the North Vietnamese army in the streets of Saigon? That we never should have left? Should we have kept more troops in Saigon? Had an all-out war to have a more orderly withdrawal? Or did the final culmination of our time in Saigon signal the failure of a policy backing a corrupt government without the will to fight against an enemy that is far more dedicated to their cause than we ever will be? That's the lesson of Saigon to me. It is a lesson we should have learned in 2002, not 2021. The responsibility of the chaos that we see in Kabul lands squarely on the presidents and generals who lied to the American people just like they did in Vietnam.

And it rests upon the people who, like in Vietnam, threw away the lives of Americans and Afghans for a cause they knew was hopeless and that ultimately ended in disaster. A final payment for the years of disaster. There are also, seems to be a strange retconning of Saigon as some terrible domestic political moment for Gerald Ford in 1973. And look, I don't like bringing in domestic politics into this, but many Republicans seem to think that picking up on this is some great strategy to attack Biden. But this strategy belies the facts. Did you know in 1975, Gerald Ford's approval rating went up after Saigon? In fact, his approval rating went so up that in August of 1975, Americans said that Gerald Ford's greatest accomplishment as president was finally getting American soldiers out of

Vietnam. And remember, far more people served in Vietnam than ever served in Afghanistan. It was a much more politically salient effort in the country. Richard Nixon was literally elected specifically to bring peace with honor. But after everything was exhausted, when push came to shove, the American people at a time when hawkishness and pro-war sentiment was far more, far more salient than it was today, rewarded Gerald Ford for having the humility of saying, enough is enough, and finally pulling out. If you ask me, that is also courage. That is why I think Biden's decision to stand tall against the immense onslaught by the media

and the forever war industrial complex and more is courageous. No previous president has been willing to do that. And look, the situation is not perfect. Should Biden and the administration have done more to ensure the safety of our Afghan allies? Absolutely. But our hands were tied from the beginning. The basic fact is our mission there was not direct military occupation. It was supporting the Afghan government, trusting they may have a modicum of courage to actually stand and fight for their own country. And now given how quickly they folded up and left, that ties our hands and severely restricts

our options. We had two choices. Leave like we did in Saigon in 1975. Leave and admit the enemy that defeated us. We tried desperately. And once again, they showed us their resolve. Or we stay. We try and make it more orderly, but ultimately risk hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives in a prolonged battle that we were going to lose anyway by design. That is an easy choice on my part. As difficult and sad as it is that I know what the outcome brings. Which brings me to my final point. The hope of

the post-Saigon America was that we would be both humbled by our experience in Vietnam, and that in the future, only invest American blood and treasure when real national security interests are at stake. What actually happened is that on full display, it's in our media right now, somehow our sensible policy of leaving Afghanistan and admitting defeat is seen as some national stain. A real national stain is that we lost 55,000 American boys in Vietnam for nothing. And then we ignored and shamed their legacy on the wall nearby the studio by losing another 2,300 in Afghanistan. Not to mention how many veterans suffered when they came home from both of these wars. Instead, the elite foreign policy establishment, they see what is happening in Kabul as some sort of vindication of their own design.

When in the ultimate, really what it is, is the ultimate repudiation of their 20-year failed project. So I'm asking everyone today, learn the lesson of Kabul, the same lesson we should have learned from Saigon. Let's have some humility, and let's take care of our vets. Let's be extremely reluctant whenever we put their lives on the line, and let's actually honor the legacy of the dead. And that is, you know, it's funny.

We're honored to be joined now by Craig Whitlock. He's a journalist at The Washington Post, author of a new book on the Afghanistan Papers. It's called The Afghanistan Papers, A Secret History of the War. August 31st, 2021 is when it gets published. I'm encouraging everybody to go out there and buy it. Craig, thank you so much for joining us. You've been one of the foremost journalists on the front of revealing the lies of so much of the Pentagon has been telling the American public about Afghanistan. Obviously, that is very salient given the situation right now in Kabul. Can you just take us through your original report on the Afghanistan papers and the major revelations that were within that and how they relate to the situation on the ground in that country right now. Yeah, thank you. I think they

do help explain what's going on there now. You know, it's awful what people are seeing in Afghanistan and in Kabul, but there's been a lot that's been leading up to it. The Afghanistan papers are a series of interviews that the government had done with senior, mid-level, all sorts of hundreds of people who were key figures in the war over 20 years. The Washington Post had to sue the government under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain transcripts and notes of these interviews. And it took us three years to get our hands on them. And what they showed was that what the public version of what was going on in Afghanistan, what the government was telling the public, the American people, was always upbeat, was always rosy. And yet in these confidential interviews that they had done, it was just astonishing to see how pessimistic they were about the war.

You had ambassadors, you had generals saying, we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't have any fundamental understanding of Afghanistan. We didn't have a strategy. Our strategy was a mess. And this went on for three presidents. So again, the total contrast between what the American people were being told about the war, which was that we were winning or that victory was around the corner, and these private comments where they were saying the complete opposite. Wow. I want to underscore

what you're saying there, which is that they were knowingly telling the American people, for example, the surge is working. And they were privately saying directly, we were manipulating every single statistic here. And even when we tried to manipulate them or cherry pick which statistic we were going to put out, they still painted a grim picture. You know, one of the things that I would love for you to talk about is the big question has been like, why did the government fall so quickly? Why did the Afghan army deteriorate so quickly? I thought there was a pretty relevant quote here from Ryan Crocker, who's been telling the press lately that, you know, the way that the exit happened is an indelible stain on the Biden presidency. Privately, former Ambassador to Afghanistan under President Obama said, our biggest single project, sadly and inadvertently, of course, may have been the

development of mass corruption. And it strikes me that's a very important piece of information for understanding why this government clearly had very little public support and why it collapsed almost instantaneously. Yeah, there's another relevant quote from Ambassador Crocker in the Afghanistan papers where he was asked about the Afghan National Police, which is really a paramilitary police force. These aren't heat cops. These are pretty similar to soldiers. But he said Ambassador Crocker called the Afghan police useless as a security force. And he said the reason they were useless is because they were corrupt down to the patrol level that they preyed on the population. And I think that was an accurate assessment.

They were useless as a security force. And the Afghan population hated the police because the police always shook them down for bribes or did nothing to protect them. But, you know, that goes a long way to explaining why, you know, the Afghan security forces, as you said, just just melted away. They didn't have the support of the population. And they you know, they kind of had their fingers to the wind when it became clear that the Taliban was going to come out victorious. One thing I'm curious about, Craig, in all of your reporting and all of this, was there any attempt in order to apologize for how these people behaved? I mean, I see so many quotes in major national papers today from officials who are on the record in your stories telling the public a different one. There doesn't seem to be a lot

of reckoning, even in the same way that there was in the post-Vietnam era, with what actually happened in Afghanistan and the lies that the American people were told. You know, it's a really good point. There weren't many apologies. Frankly, there was one. There was an interview with Ambassador Nicholas Burns. He was a longtime diplomat. He was ambassador to NATO during the Bush administration. And he very bluntly said, looking back, we never really figured out when we were going to leave. What were we doing there and what criteria would we have that would enable us to leave Afghanistan. He says, I don't ever recall having a discussion

about that at the highest levels of the Bush administration. And he said, and part of that's on me. I'm along with everybody else. I played a role in this. And we do need to have some kind of reckoning and accounting for what happened there. And he was talking about a timeframe 15 years ago. But so I think he was reflective about that. But, you know, yes, you're right. By and large, very, very few people who were interviewed in the Afghanistan papers had that level of contrition or reflection for what's gone on. There's rightly and understandably right now a lot of focus on the humanitarian crisis, on the plight of women and girls in particular

in Afghanistan. But securing a humanitarian mission was not the original objective going into Afghanistan. In fact, part of what is revealed, what you reveal in the Afghanistan papers, is that a lot of the highest level people involved didn't really know what the objective actually was over time. Speak to that piece. Sure. I think people forget, but because it's been so long, that the original objective, the mission was very limited. It was to respond to the September 11th attacks and essentially destroy al-Qaeda or prevent al-Qaeda from doing a repeat attack like that. The original mission didn't actually include removing the Taliban from power. When President Bush announced the start of the war, he said he wanted to degrade the Taliban's military capabilities. But he wasn't saying we had to kick them out of power.

Now, that happened in pretty short order. But after that, things got really fuzzy in terms of what we were trying to do there. Al-Qaeda really disappeared from Afghanistan by March of 2002. By that point, its entire leadership had either been killed, captured, or had fled, like Osama bin Laden had gone to Pakistan. And we stayed because of a humanitarian objective at that point. It became clear that Afghanistan was in terrible shape. Economically, there was a real refugee crisis. There was real concern about famine. The country had been torn up by 20 years of war at that point. But it was never really spelled out to the American people how long we would stay, what the objectives were, and what criteria in Kabul, what do you make then of many claims that there was a different ability in order to wrap things up in this country in a quote-unquote more orderly fashion that didn't lead to it? In the papers that you discovered, do you see the genuine capacity for an effort like that? I'm just asking based upon what the officials

themselves have described of this army and of its government. Well, I think what you see is officials struggling to figure out what to do. You know, it's an old saying, it's a lot easier to start a war than it is to end one. And, you know, we've been playing that out for more than a decade now. It's been since 2011 that the Obama administration was trying to withdraw from Afghanistan. That's when we started reducing the number of troops there and set us on a schedule where we were supposed to have all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the end of Obama's second term. This was a campaign promise of his. That didn't happen, obviously. That's been about five years since then. And Obama, Trump, and now Biden have all been trying to get out of Afghanistan.

And it kind of has blown up on Biden here at the end. But I think Obama and Trump were facing the same challenges that they wanted to get out. They didn't quite know how because they had pinned their hopes on the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government. Yet each of those presidents knew that there was a real risk that they could collapse or that they wouldn't stay around very long and the Taliban was ascendant. So, you know, there's clearly in retrospect, there wasn't an easy way to withdraw there. I think there certainly could have been a better way in recent weeks than the Biden administration had planned for.

No question. But, you know, underlying all this, this is the problem with the war. We got into it, into this quagmire, and we couldn't figure out how to get out, even though we've been trying to for more than a decade now. And Craig, on the topic of, you know, why the people we're backing had so little clearly public support, what did these leaders in Afghanistan papers have to say about some of the warlords and other less than savory characters that we were allied with? There were some really unsavory characters that we were allied with in Afghanistan. A lot of them have just sort of fled the country in the last few days. You know, there was, I mean, we could go into a whole rogues gallery of them. But, you know, there's some of the, you know, one comment that really stuck with

me was from an army colonel named Chris Kalenda, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan, advised commanders of the U.S. military forces. But he was very blunt. He said, you know, things were so corrupt in Afghanistan, he likened it to a kleptocracy. And he said, you know, kleptocracy is sort of a fancy word to where the government only exists to stuff its own pockets. And he said this kleptocracy was so ingrained that it was like having stage four cancer. There really was nothing we could do to alleviate it. It had become such a part of the fabric of Afghan society and their government. And he was referring to the period, again,

during the Obama administration, during the surge of troops there in 2011. So here's someone who was involved at very, very high levels of the Pentagon and the National Security Council trying to figure things out in Afghanistan. But he was saying in retrospect that it really was a hopeless cause because the Afghan government was so corrupt. And again, this dates back 10 years, and it's only gotten worse since then. Yeah. Wow. Craig, I can't thank you enough for joining us for the work that you've been doing. One of the great journalists out there on this topic. And I encourage everybody out there, please go and pre-order Craig's book, buy it. We're both going to read it here. So thank you so much for joining us. Yeah. Thank you, Craig. The book, again, just so people know, The Afghanistan

Papers, A Secret History of the War. It's being published by Simon & Schuster on August 31, but available for pre-order now, which you guys should all go ahead and do. Craig, thank you so much for your work and your time this morning. Thank you, Craig. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Our pleasure. Thank you guys all for watching. I think both Crystal and I feel like this show exists exactly for moments like this, which is that, you know, at a time when the media and the entire establishment is united and just feeding people lies, this is exactly why we wake up and do what we do every day. And so if you guys can support us, it really does mean all the world. It makes this possible. The link is down there in the description to become a premium member. Watch the show an hour

early, all of that. But really what you're doing is you're helping us be able to give these, you know, give these perspectives, give a platform, a large platform to people like Craig who deserve a voice. I said to him before the interview started, he should be on every cable network in the country. Why isn't that perspective? And instead the warmongers are out there on television feeding people lives. So that's what we try and do here. I just want to be straight up about really what it is, the type of journalism and the type of perspective that you're trying, that you're supporting whenever you support us. So thank you. I don't think we've had a response to any of our shows as strong as the one to yesterday's show. No, yeah. Biggest one by a mile.

Yeah. And I think, you know, which in a way it was really hard to see because this is one of those instances where you clearly have, like, the bipartisan consensus. You can turn on any one of the cable newsnets. They're saying basically the same thing. And people don't know who to trust, who to believe. They're good people. They, you know, they want to feel like they're supporting the right things. They want to feel like they're, you know, backing something that's real and true. And so the fact that you guys put your trust in us to provide you with that information and also

with that perspective, I can't tell you how much it really means a lot to us. We're extremely grateful for it. So thank you. Thank you guys. Have a fantastic day. We're going to have some stuff for you tomorrow. We'll be back with a full show on Thursday. So we will see you then. Thanks for listening to the show, guys. We really appreciate it. To help other people find the show, go ahead and leave us a five-star rating apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast really helps other people find the show as always special thank you to supercast for powering our premium membership if you want to find out more go to crystal and saga.com have you ever thought about going voiceover. I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

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