Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/23/21: Biden's Polling Numbers, Masks in Schools, Afghanistan, GOP Cringe, Jan 6th, Biden vs Generals, Neocons in Media, Afghan War Lies, and More!

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

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Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're going to be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are ripping this country apart. They are making millions of dollars doing it.

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to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Show looks a little bit different today. We're going to explain why in just a moment. We have some big updates out of Afghanistan. We'll bring you up to speed there. What the polling says about how Americans feel about all of this, some of it going against the media narrative. We also have some of the most cringe reactions to bring you, especially from the Republican Party on Afghanistan, an update on January 6th and what exactly happened there, and some new research on masking kids in

schools that I think you're definitely going to want to pay attention to. Lucas Koontz is also going to be on to break down his experience in Afghanistan. He's a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghan wars. We had him on Rising to talk actually about China, really super smart guy, works with Matt Stoller on antitrust stuff, running for Senate in Missouri. So excited to talk to him. But Sagar, why don't you explain to the good people first why we are doing the show from home today. Yeah, I got some personal news, as they say. I've got the big one, COVID-19 breakthrough case. I am officially one of the statistics, so that is me. So I thought I would just explain what it's like for people out there

possibly curious. So I took my test on Thursday evening. I wasn't feeling particularly well on Thursday. And I thought, you know, I was supposed to go to a wedding and there was all this other stuff. So I said, okay, you know, I got to be responsible, make sure that I'm good. Test came back positive. Honestly, Crystal, I could not distinguish it from a bad cold. And I think that that's mostly what it was like. I think I'm mostly on the tail end. I still feel a little bit fatigued. To be 100% transparent, I had two doses of Moderna, but I would say I was pretty sick. I had flu-like symptoms, a lot of congestion, had a fever for a couple of days, lots of fatigue. My taste was 40% of what it normally was, So it wasn't like a total loss.

As I texted you, I ate a bunch of habanero sauce in order to test. The side effect of that is it really clears the sinuses. So if you suspect you have the 1-9, I encourage you to try that little test for yourself. But that's it. I am officially one of the statistics. And I got to say, it does have me asking some questions about overall national policy, because, you know, you and I have been discussing this around, obviously, you know, getting vaccinated, this probably may have been much worse, you know, given my reaction, if I hadn't been vaccinated. So thank God for

that. And I encourage everybody, if you're not in order to go do so to protect yourself. But I do think that the breakthrough case numbers might be more than they are letting on. And I think the public health authorities should probably be transparent about that. There's probably a lot of breakthrough cases that aren't showing up at, you know, hospitals or clinics like you didn't, you felt well enough. You weren't worried about, you know, having to go to the hospital or you tell me you never had a moment. I don't think where you were thinking I might have to go to the hospital. So data like yours just may not be captured. Um, I think the most important thing to say with all of this is because you were vaccinated, you had confidence when you got it, that it was going to be a pain in the butt, that you were going to be feeling bad for a while, but that ultimately you were likely to be fine. So that I think is

really important for people to take away. But how do you feel now? And also, do you have any speculation about where or how you contracted it? Yeah, you know, I have no idea. So there are two really only options here, which is that I know that I was negative whenever I stepped back on a plane back to the United States because I had to get tested in order to come back to the US. Now, I either got it on the plane, but apparently air travel transmission is pretty low, or it's possible that I picked it up at the gym. But honestly, the more I've been doing reading, Crystal, this Delta variant is just so much more infectious at like a thousand times

more than normal COVID. I've been joking that it's as infectious as they tried to make us think that original COVID was, that it could honestly just be anywhere. It could be the grocery store. It could be the immigration line. When I was at the airport, I was around, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people. And in terms of mask efficacy and all that, it's really up in the air, um, whenever it comes to Delta. So I, you know, I want to be clear too, this doesn't change anything about how, about my public health commentary. And, you know, we'll get to that. I think, um, whenever we talk about school masking and more, I think it is important that we might have to have a little bit of mindset shift to say, yeah, I think, whenever we talk about school masking and more. I think it is important that we might have to have a little bit of mindset shift to say, yeah, you know, like this could be

an endemic disease. It could be one of those things where as long as you're vaccinated, you will not have to worry about death. I did not seek any doctor intervention because specifically, I didn't want to draw resources away from somebody else. I was like, you know, I don't need these antibodies or ivermectin or, you know, whatever, because like, I'm fine. I took some Tylenol. Yeah. I didn't feel too good for a couple of days, but you know, that's life. And I think that that, that really is kind of the mindset that we're going to have to transition to, especially when we're going into the winter, um, in order to avoid some of the war, more onerous restrictions that I fear they're going to try to justify given some of the rising case numbersous restrictions that I fear they're going to try to justify,

given some of the rising case numbers that we have across the country. Yeah. Another public health note here. There are reports of people seeking the veterinarian horse version of ivermectin. Please don't do that. Don't do that, guys. I confess, I did not ever stoop to the stoop to the levels of double masking taking uh getting in the car going down to the stables and being like can i get horse drugs you you're gonna be okay um please don't do that if you do get if you do get covid go your doctor, find out from them what course of treatment that they recommend, get vaccinated so that if you do end up with a breakthrough case like Sagar has, that, you know, you have confidence that, yeah, you're going to have a rough few days. And I

would say you were fairly sick and you're not the type, you're not a complainer. You're a push through kind of a guy. So when you said you felt really shitty, I knew it was, you know, you were, you were going through it. And so I'm glad you're kind of on the other side of it. Um, one other thing we should say is, you know, just in terms of the national statistics and what we know, uh, breakthrough cases, there is some protection from the vaccines, but that does seem to wane somewhat over time. The big thing that they definitely still protect against at a very high rate is hospitalization and especially death. Those are the things obviously we are most concerned about. So anyway, Sagar, I'm glad you're feeling a little bit better, although I know you're still a little tired, still a little run down from this whole

thing. We'll get there. I just want my taste bugs back. Um, so I can eat really spicy food, but yes, programming row, please, everybody. Thank you for bearing with us. It'll be a week. I fully expect to test negative within the next couple of days. And then just for as a precautionary measure, and then we should be back up and running, um, all next week. So bear with us and thank you very much. Yeah. And I guess that is the last thing to say. I decided to do, um do the show also not in the studio because obviously I was around Sagar quite a bit on Thursday when he started to feel bad. So I feel totally 100% fine.

I've been giving myself the home test every single day. I continue to test negative. But just out of an abundance of caution, I decided to also not be in the studio since Sagar's going to be on. It doesn't make that much of a difference anyway. So that is what you can expect for the week. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, can I just say a note on that? Those home tests, they are a lifesaver. I really encourage people to go and we should have had these months and months ago, but you can buy

them at CVS. It's like $25 for two tests and they're very, very accurate. I think it's like 99%. So that's something where, you know, you can save a trip to the doctor and expensive PCR and all of that. And you can just do it yourself. We're talking $12 a test. And it is really worth knowing if you're somebody who's suspecting, like I said, I did it out of an abundance of caution. I had no idea or I did not expect to get it. But I did. And I, you. And it's better that we have that information. So I hope everybody goes and tries to utilize that technology because it is important. All right.

So all of that being said, Sagar, there's some interesting polls out this morning about how people are feeling about Afghanistan. So this is a very important development here, which a lot of people are trying to spin. Now, let's go ahead and put this NBC News tear sheet up there on the screen, which a lot of people are trying to spin. Now, let's go ahead and put this NBC News tear sheet up there on the screen, which shows that the drop in job rating decline for Biden is precipitous. Now, they put in the headline amid COVID surge, Afghan withdrawal in the NBC News. This is important because even NBC is calling this, quote, the summer of discontent when Biden's approval rating is falling through 50% of the first time. And remember the Kristol and Saga rule, which is that

any public poll, you should just add plus four to plus six of Republican support, given the fact that we basically didn't see, we didn't see a lot of that show up in the 2020 election. But what I want to point people towards is the actual declines for Biden on COVID and that Afghanistan, Crystal, really doesn't have a lot to do with this job approval ratings. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, Mark Murray. So what he shows there is that Biden's job approval around all adults, 49%, and it was 53 in April. Disapproval, 48, was 39. So that's a nine-point increase in the explicit disapproval rating. And registered voters, relatively stable from 50 to 51. But the overall disapproval number, I think, is really getting at something, which is important.

But a friend of the show, Batya, let's go ahead and put her tweet up there on the screen, because I think she captured this, which I want to get across to everybody, which is that the drop for Biden. Yes, people don't necessarily approve of Afghanistan, but the 16 point drop in his handling of COVID is what has really led to his drop in approval, as she says, showing once more how the national media's views pro-COVID restrictions and furious about Afghanistan are the opposite of most Americans. And I think that that absolutely captures the dynamic. We're about to get to school masking and pandemic restriction and more. But I really do believe, Crystal, that the discontent in this country, I think really amongst people like us, as well as many diehards, people who went out, got vaccinated, did what they were supposed to do, but are still living with a lot of hysteria, a lot of talking

about, you know, different restrictions and more, are not grappling with the fact that this could be a real uprising against Biden and that Biden, by really, in my opinion, you know, kind of caving to the public health establishment, is doing doing himself the Democrats no favors come election time in 2022. My interpretation is quite a bit different, because if you look at it, the numbers are still very much in favor of, you know, things like masking, even vaccine mandates are more popular than honestly, I would have expected. But I think I think some of this is Biden's fault, and I think some of it is out of his control. There is a segment of the population that doesn't want to get vaccinated, and it really doesn't matter what Joe Biden says or does outside of a vaccine mandate, which would be incredibly

controversial, to get those people vaccinated. And that means that we are having a surge in coronavirus cases, as we are personally experiencing, although your vaccination status doesn't have anything to do with that. So some of that is kind of out of his hands. The part that is in his hands that I fully blame him for is that if you look into some of these numbers, there's a large number of the American people who think that he is not getting much done. And I think that criticism at this point is fair because he took so long, he was so obsessed with getting this bipartisan deal done that it has really hamstrung the rest of his agenda. Not to mention that he's decided to defer to the parliamentarian. He's decided to keep the existing Senate rules with regards to the filibuster in place. He's decided not to put pressure on Manchin. And so there is a sense of like he's stuck.

And the other pieces that were promised to the American people to help them and to continue to move the economy forward, you know, not just to get out of covid, but beyond those have not come to fruition. That is completely on him. And I think that's part of why you see this backsliding in both his handling of the coronavirus and also backsliding in terms of his handling of the economy. What I will say to your point is the people who do oppose the COVID restrictions are extremely motivated. Now, that matters a lot in the midterms, right? Which side is really amped up and really motivated. And I do think that's an issue for him. Part of why I thought it was really important, and I believe you feel the same, for us to do this analysis of the polls, which you should always take with a in midterms, partly because of COVID, partly because they didn't take more aggressive action to take control of things like redistricting

so that they had a more level playing field by which they could perform in the midterms. So I do think that they're in big trouble in terms of maintaining control of the House, certainly, and the Senate quite possibly as well. The media is going to say that's because of Afghanistan. And that's just not the case. If you ask voters in this NBC News poll, one of the things that they found is that Afghanistan is nowhere on people's list of the issues that are most important to them. For better or worse, because we care a lot about foreign policy here, but for better or worse, most Americans are more focused on domestic policy. That is likely to be

what they vote based on and whether they decide to show up to the polls or not in the midterm elections. So if Democrats ultimately lose the House and lose the Senate and the media goes all in on, oh, it's because he actually withdrew from Afghanistan, something that two-thirds of the American people support, and they try to pin the blame on that decision, you will have the data to know why that is complete BS. Absolutely. And a friend of the show, Trita Parsi, highlighted a brand new poll that actually came out, which amid the worst of the withdrawal, let's go ahead and put his tweet up there on the screen. Despite implementation problems, 60% of Americans continue to support withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is a poll conducted from August 17th to 19th. So think

about what exactly was going on in those days, actually only four or five days ago for Joe Biden's sake, but only 22% oppose Biden's decision and 67% want to prioritize domestic policy issues over foreign policy. So all we can do is underscore again and again, as you point out, and I think your interpretation makes quite a bit of sense because here's the counter to it, which is that if you're going to have a bunch of restrictions, then the only way to really make sure that that's okay with people is to deliver a massive domestic political agenda, right? And that's not happening. So he has the worst of it. So then what do people choose? They have to choose between no restrictions or they have to choose between basically nothing from the federal government,

which is it exactly? That's a terrible political sandwich. So I think he has kind of screwed himself in either direction. I got to tell you, Chris, I'm looking real close after we did that block on the Gavin Newsom recall election. And I am beginning to think that Newsom is in some serious, serious trouble. Because when I read this poll, I saw that 16 point drop in the handling of COVID. I mean, you can't think of anybody who personifies kind of the Biden mindset on that than somebody like Newsom. He's, you know, yes, Newsom sent out the checks and all that, but has been pro-restriction, kind of your, you know, prototypical mainline Democrat. So I think that he is in big, big trouble. But, you know, staying on the go ahead.

Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say on Newsom, something that's interesting there and I think also has some national implications. Potentially, I would say that that race by the polling right now looks like a jump ball. And as you said previously, the trend in recent years has been that the polls understate Republican support. So that's something we should take into account. Does that apply in California or not? We don't really know. But his approval rating is actually quite strong. Last poll, 57%. So he's significantly above water. But the question for the recall is who is going to show up? Who is motivated? And that's why the polls in terms of asking the

question, should we recall Gavin Newsom as governor? That's why it's basically split 50-50 as a little bit of an edge, but it's within the margin of error. That's basically where things stand right now, even though overall, if you ask people whose approval rating is actually relatively good. So it's a question of the people who are most motivated, who are most opposed to those restrictions, are the ones who are likely to show up to the polls. That dynamic could play out again in the midterm elections. The last thing I wanted to say is I think we have one more Axios tear sheet we can put up here about the fact that 62 percent do not think that the Afghan war was worth fighting. And actually, way more people are concerned now about domestic extremist groups than international extremist groups, which is a whole other

conversation. It's a whole other block later. 63% don't think the Iraq war was worth fighting. So basically the same as Afghanistan and in the NBC new new in the NBC News poll that you cited to start with, the number who say that the war was not worth it is the same now as it was in 2014. So yes, people are looking at these images. They're looking at the completely insane media coverage, which you're going to talk more about later. And they're not happy with how this particular withdrawal has gone. Do they support getting out of Afghanistan? Hell yes, they do. So entirely possible that over time, as some of these more heart-wrenching images fade from memory, that people come to really respect what Joe Biden has done here in contrast to what every other commander-in-chief in the past 20 years has been able to accomplish.

I think that's fundamentally going to be the dynamic. I did that whole monologue on Saigon. Everybody thought Saigon was a disaster. The next month, Gerald Ford's approval rating hit an all-time high with the number one achievement being given to Ford that he got Americans out of Vietnam. So I think that we are very much going to be repeating the same dynamic and to keep, when you're watching the polling and you're watching how the media is spinning it, dig in and actually look at where exactly the drop is coming from and think about what the real political consequences of that are. Yeah, indeed. Okay. All right. So speaking of COVID, COVID mania and more huge debate

happening. Crystal, I know this is happening in your own life too, around masking with children. A lot of people who I know who are parents are confronting this issue. School masking is actually quite popular in some of the polls that we've seen. So I want to be clear about that, you know, in terms of where people seem to support and more 66% is the last number that I saw. Whether that's true and and given the fact that pandemic restrictions pulled a lot more popular than they turned out to be in the 2020 election, you take that for what it will. But let's focus actually on the science, because this has ignited a massive debate in this country around schools and children. And I think it should. Children are our most precious asset. We should protect them at all costs. New York Magazine has a new piece around

the science of masking with children, which is pushing back against the CDC and the American Pediatric Association. Let's go ahead and put that tear sheet up there on the screen. The science of masking kids at school remains uncertain. David Zweig is the author of this new piece, and I'm just going to read a very relevant but I think important one, which is that in the author of this new piece. And I'm just going to read a very relevant, but I think important one, which is that in the realm of science and public health policy outside the United States, the implications of new CDC findings are not exactly controversial. Many of America's peer nations around the world, the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy have exempted kids with varying age cutoffs from wearing masks in

classrooms. Conspicuously, there's no evidence of more outbreaks in schools in those countries relative to schools in the United States where the solid majority of kids wore masks for an entire academic year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The other thing, Crystal, and I think you may have done, I think you did something on this while I was out, is that there's been a lot of criticism of the so-called landmark study of 93,000 kids in the first place. What they are pointing out is that both the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics, when they issued their student mask guidance, actually the study that they

point to to justify school masking did not include a null hypothesis around alternative pandemic mitigation measures, such as a hybrid model, social distancing, and more. And many prominent epidemiologists and public health experts have been criticizing both the organizations. The critical point here, both organizations, when they were asked and pressed by New York Magazine for evidence or underlying data and once they based their recommendations, the American Academy of Pediatrics did not respond to multiple requests. And the CDC replied that since children under 12 can't be vaccinated, they recommend universal masking. So

I think we should be very, very critical. I think we should be skeptical and analytical around what exactly masking for children means and whether the science is as robust as these people are beginning to say. I think people have understandably really erred on the side of extreme caution with regards to kids. I totally get that. As a mom, I totally understand where that's coming from. But I don't think that there's been enough concern about the costs that are being imposed on children in the name of keeping them safe. And that's the question that this article raises because look, my kids are 13, eight and four. Okay. Um, for my 13 year old to wear a mask, by the way, she's able to get vaccinated, but for her to wear a mask all day is no big deal, right? She's got those social skills already. She's not in that super early development phase. Um, my eight year old has a speech impediment

for, so for him to wear a mask all day, and especially in his speech therapy sessions, that's a burden. For my four-year-old, who's still in the midst of forming those like social interactions and social bonds, I think there's a real cost when she's going to preschool

of her face being covered, all the kids around her face being covered. And it's actually my mom's preschool that she goes to, but her teachers, including my mom, to have their face covered. So there is a cost of having kids universally masked. And what this piece and the questions that this study raises, are those costs actually worth it? The fact of the matter is there just hasn't been sufficient research on whether or not masking kids at school is an effective mitigation measure. The one really comprehensive study that they dig into in this New York magazine piece was actually studied done by the CDC of 90,000 kids. And it's the only one of its kind because they tried to isolate those different mitigation measures. So do you have kids socially distanced, for example? How many kids are in the classroom?

Do you have effective ventilation systems? Do you have the windows open? Do you have them masked? And this study did find a significant impact of whether kids were masked or not. Now, I think it's also important to say this does not mean, oh, masks don't work. It means if you've been around kids, the mask falls below their nose. The N95s aren't made to fit their faces. A lot of masks aren't, frankly, made to fit their faces. The cloth masks are less effective than the KN95s or the N95s. So there's a very big difference between in the abstract theoretical perfect conditions where everyone is perfectly masked with an N95 mask. There's a big difference from that and the reality of a bunch of little kids trying to keep a mask on their face all day.

So I think, number one, we should be considering the cost, especially of closing schools, but also of some of these mitigation efforts and the burdens they put on kids. And it's a crime that there hasn't been more effective and thorough research on interventions like this to this point. Yes, I know Delta is different. And I know that Delta is still new, and we're still learning about it. And so some of this is still up in the air. But we should have a lot more research to go on, on something as basic as do masks on kids actually work? Does this actually, you know, keep infection from spreading among kids into the adults that are around them? At this point, we just don't even really know the answer. No, we don't. And I think what makes me most angry is that people aren't taking the consideration of your children and the social development costs at all. The public health establishment is

whitewashing this completely. Just to pull the, you know, most insane example, Let me give you guys a taste. Put this up there on the screen. Dr. Ellie Murray, who is an epidemiology assistant professor at Boston University of Public Health. Here's what she says. Genuine cue for people more concerned about schools being closed and COVID. Are you aware mandatory schooling is barely a century old in this country. Maybe you're all grandparents at high school. What about your great-grandparents? Yes, education is important, but it's a pandemic. I mean, I guess the Unabomber would agree there, Dr. Murray. What I hate about this is the callousness towards children and the way that we don't seem to realize that so much of this could backfire with social consequences, which we're not even considering around, yes, could it perhaps

mitigate COVID? Well, as we said, we all really don't know the answer to that question. But what about as you're talking about social development? I mean, I told you this anecdotally, I was at a party and I met a baby who was more than a year or something old, and the baby had never been around people before. The only people that it knew were its parents and I think a caretaker. That's it. I mean, look, I don't know. I'm not a children's psychologist, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that could impact that child's development. Maybe we should be honest about what exactly that means. So that's really all we're trying to point to here, which is that there is a major push in order to try and shut down schools or the very most, very least, like put down, you know, universal masking and more. I could easily see, you know, given my

own experience with Delta, I could easily see, you know, a push in order to try and close colleges, Zoom. You know, I heard stories from somebody who had not been to college in like a year and a half. They're a junior in college and they didn't know where their classes were. Why? Because they hadn't spent any time on campus. I mean, imagine that. A junior in college and did not know where their classes were because they had not spent any time on the physical campus. You can say, Sagar, you're an idiot for caring about stuff like that. I'm just pointing to you as a very concrete example of there's a cost to what exactly we've been doing here. Well, and we also have to bear in mind that, look, at the beginning of the pandemic, we didn't know whether kids were going to be as at risk as adults. And if kids were as at risk, it would justify some extreme measures, right? So I supported closing schools at that point because we just didn't know. Well, now we know. And we know, thank God, that kids are at much, much lower risk. I believe the number that I read also from a David Wallace piece,

actually, in New York Magazine, is that kids' fatality rate if they're infected is 0.001%. Okay. Now, if you're a parent whose kid is infected and ends up in the hospital or God forbid ends up dying, then you would do anything to protect that kid. And so I don't want to minimize that whatsoever, but you've got to weigh what are the risks and what are the costs. And now at this point in the pandemic, even with Delta, because we can look at the data from the UK where there are a few months ahead of us and they still see that, yes, this thing is more infectious. It spreads rapidly. It's not quite as spreadable as chickenpox, but it's pretty dang close. It spreads rapidly, but it does not lead to a more significant incidence of severe illness, hospitalization, and death than the original

variant did. So we have to weigh those costs and those benefits. And we do know at this point, we know the way that mental health suffered. We know that addiction spiked and we know that there were hundreds of thousands of kids who just never showed up for school because the schools had been closed and because they had gone virtual and because things had been disrupted. So look, if you're, you know, professional managerial class family, you've got the resources to bring in tutors, you're working from home, you can work with your kids. It's kind of a pain in the ass, but you can do it. You can keep them up to speed. You know, you're going to be able to get them caught up. Then, you know, for the school to close out of an extreme abundance of caution, that may be the right risk level for you. But what about the kids whose parents don't have those time resources in order

to make sure that they're kept up to speed in order to make sure that their education continues to progress? We know that there's already been a tremendous cost to them. And I feel like that cost is there. There's an assumption that an overabundance of caution has no cost imposed to it. And that's just absolutely not the case. That's really well said. 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 BreakingPoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. All right. So we wanted to give you the latest news coming out of Afghanistan, especially with regards to where we stand on getting American citizens and

our Afghan allies evacuated. As of this morning, they actually evacuated another several thousand overnight. So these numbers are even improved from where they were yesterday. But the White House, as of yesterday, was saying that a few thousand Americans remain. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was on the Sunday shows yesterday speaking to exactly how many people have gotten out at this point. Let's take a listen to that. Chris, thanks very much. Last 24 hours, about 8,000 people on about 60 flights evacuated from Kabul airport. Since this effort began at the end of July, about 30,000 people all told on our military flights and on charter flights that we've helped

to organize and get out of the airport. Okay, so things are proceeding apace. I know they're still hoping to meet that end of August deadline that they had set. And again, as of yesterday, there were a few thousand Americans remaining. Hopefully today that number is even lower. President Biden has been, you know, repeatedly getting out in front of the American people, since apparently no one else other than us are going to make the case for this policy on television. He's been making it himself. He gave a speech yesterday at 4 p.m. and took a couple questions as well. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. I've continued to make progress since I spoke to you on Friday. We have moved thousands of people each day by U.S. military aircraft and civilian charter flights. In a little over 30 hours this weekend,

we've evacuated an extraordinary number of people, as I will detail in a minute, about 11,000 individuals. That number will change day to day as the air and ground operations in Kabul vary. Our first priority in Kabul is getting American citizens out of the country as quickly and as safely as possible. But look, that's the job. My job is to make judgments. My job is to make judgments no one else can or will make. I made them. I'm convinced I'm absolutely correct in not deciding to send more young women and men to war for a war that, in fact, is no longer warranted.

These troops and innocent civilians at the airport face the risk of an attack from ISIS-K from a distance, even though we're moving back the perimeter significantly. We're working hard and as fast as we can to get people out. That's our mission. That's our goal. And our determination to get every American citizen home and to evacuate our Afghan allies is unwavering. At the end of the day, if we didn't leave Afghanistan now, when do we leave? Another 10 years? Another five years? Another year? I'm not about to send your son or your daughter to fight in Afghanistan. I don't see where that is in our overwhelming interest. And the talk about how our interests are going to be impacted, let me tell you, you're sitting in Beijing or you're sitting in Moscow. Are you happy we left?

They love nothing better for us to continue to be bogged down there. So obviously, President Biden there continuing to make the case in a way that I think is very effective. Every time he comes on to speak, I get a little bit nervous that he's going to be cowed by these people on TV. But he's really standing strong in support of the policy. A couple of newsworthy things there. He talked about how they've extended the perimeter. That means outside of the airport so that, you know, a larger space is secured to help people be able to get to the airport. And I also think that it's important to note, yes, as we've said before, obviously, it's incredibly ugly. Obviously, the scenes we've seen have been heartbreaking. But so far, not a single American has died in this process, which is actually kind of incredible.

It's something you're not going to hear on television a lot. But that in and of itself so far is an amazing accomplishment. You know, Crystal, we've been getting, you know, a lot of criticism and I'm just going to push the button and I'll say it, which is that, look, I understand that the situation is harrowing. Yes, I understand that. But actually, what is the alternative? I've talked about this also. And I'll say this also about the Americans in Afghanistan. I don't want to sound callous, but the State Department's been telling these people to leave for months. The United States government can't force you to leave. If you want to stay, then you're going to stay.

And by all accounts, what it seems like is that the several thousand who were left in Afghanistan simply didn't expect the Taliban to take over as quickly as they did, along with the U.S. government. Now, I sympathize, and it is still and always will be the responsibility of the United States government to ensure those people safe passage. But you can't forcibly remove people from a country if they don't want to leave, especially people who are dual citizens. And everybody seems to sound like I or other people making this point are crazy. But if you think about it, many of these people said, you know, I think I've got a couple more months, I'm going to wrap up my affairs and more. There was a choice that was made. I will fully admit that it was made with imperfect information. I am not blaming them necessarily for staying. But as I once said, what was the alternative?

Many people have said, oh, we should have kept Bagram Air Force Base open. Okay, that's 70 kilometers away from the city of kabul so how are you going to get from kabul to baghdad are we going to airlift people back and forth i also want to highlight crystal some breaking news this morning which highlights the dangers of what i've been saying which is that the media is trying to push biden to extend the withdrawal deadline the taliban just this morning gave an interview to sky news in which they said, quote, it is a red line. President Biden announced that 31st of August would withdraw all military forces. If the U.S. or U.K. were to seek additional time, the answer is no or there will be consequences. Consequences

means war against American forces. And so, look, it's not pretty. 10,000 people, though, are being pulled out a day. I think that's pretty good. We have some news here. Let's put the New York Times tear sheet up there on the screen, which is that the U.S. has ordered six commercial airlines to help transport Afghan evacuees. These airlines are actually going to be transporting people from the hubs outside of Afghanistan to other countries where these refugees are going to await screening, background checks, and more before they'll be ultimately approved for entry into the United States. But I do not believe, and I'm going to talk about this in my radar, I know you are as well for my monologue, sorry about that, is that we need to present a very

realistic realm of what the options were. And I think that the people who are all saying, I was for withdrawal, but not like this, or I'm for withdrawal, but the withdrawal is going badly. Many of you are falling for, and I will show you this explicitly, the talking points of the neocons who never wanted to leave. In a way, Crystal, I actually respect the people who are for the actual forever war then the people who are disingenuously trying to point out you know oh i'm against this because of you know this particular implementation reason look if you weren't there for the last 20 years talking about how much of a disaster this war has been i just really don't want to hear it the you know the way the media has been playing this is as if the last 20 years in Afghanistan have been some sort of cakewalk. It's sunshine and daisies. Where were they when Afghan citizens, like you always say,

have been being slaughtered for the last two years by the Taliban and during the last civil war? The major news networks, according to one analysis, mentioned Afghanistan just five times last year. Okay. They did five minutes of coverage over the entire year while Afghan civilians were being slaughtered in part by our amped up bombing campaign and because of the civil war that continued to rage on. They didn't care about that. They did not care about that. So save me your crocodile tears in service of the military industrial complex now, if you didn't care about it then. I also love Matt Iglesias has been really great on this issue. It's sort of funny that we end up like, and this is actually what I'm going to talk about in

my monologue, that we end up being some of the most forceful advocates for Joe Biden and aligning with, you know, people like Matt Iglesias, who were not always on the same side of, anyway, it's been strange bedfellows. But he made this point that it was like, I can't believe, sarcastic point, I can't believe after a 20 year flawless mission, Joe Biden just comes out of nowhere to botch the whole thing. Who could have seen that coming? Listen, this whole thing has been a catastrophe from start to finish. And it's in part been a catastrophe because of military leadership who've been invested in keeping us there year after year after year, did not plan for this withdrawal, gave Joe Biden a horribly flawed

intelligence assessment that it was going to take months for the Taliban to take over, if not years. That obviously was wildly off base. And yes, I know they ran to their friends in the press to try to lie about that after the fact. But the truth is that they were completely wrong and gave the president very bad intel about what was actually going to happen after we withdrew our forces. So that's where we are. The American people still two thirds. It has not moved people one inch all of this coverage off of their position that this war was a disaster from the start and we never should have been there and it was time to get out. Everybody looking at these images, of course, of course, Americans are good people. They don't want to see our people left behind. They don't want to see our allies

left behind. They don't want to see these scenes of heartbreak that are unfolding at the airport, of course. But if you didn't care about what was happening to these same people over the past few years and you're now suddenly, you're suddenly a humanitarian when it's in the service of keeping us there forever, please, please. So that's effectively where we are in terms of the news. And as you said, Sagar, the very last update is that they have required, this is actually interesting little bit of history, they're requiring some of the commercial airliners to help support in ferrying people among bases and from bases back to the U.S. So they're not like flying into Kabul.

So they're, you know, a safe distance here, the commercial airliners. And apparently the power for that comes from the Civil Reserve Air Fleet created in 1952 after the Berlin airlift, where you can basically compel these commercial airliners to help you assist. And they've grabbed, I think it's like 18 airliners to help the passengers. So that's the very latest where things are in terms of evacuation. There have been, moving forward, there have been some really quite incredible reactions to all of this. And across both sides of the aisle, although we won't focus in

on some of the particularly noteworthy Republican responses to Biden's Afghan evacuation, which have been particularly unhinged. Let's hear from Lindsey Graham, who believes that because of this ending of a 20-year war, Biden should be impeached. If we leave one American behind, if we don't get all those Afghans who stepped up to help us out, then Joe Biden, in my view, has committed a high crime and misdemeanor under the Constitution and should be impeached. So not the people who lied us into war, not the people who lied repeatedly to the American people to convince them that this war was going well and we're making progress and the surge is working.

Not the commander in chiefs who claimed and promised the American people they were going to get out and never got around to doing it he wants to impeach Joe Biden who actually finally did the thing that he promised and that everybody wanted him to do yeah where's Lindsey on George W Bush oh wait he said George W Bush shouldn't be a peach oh you know Donald Trump Trump. And look, this is what drives me crazy. We were actually consistent voices on impeachment, on the Ukraine impeachment, especially. We were like, look, this is BS. Okay, I'm sorry. Like, yes, nobody's going to say that it was the perfect phone call or whatever. As I said, the part of that call that

bothered me the most is when the Ukrainian president bragged about staying in Trump Tower, not exactly whatever it came to, you know, the leveraging of the so-called leveraging of military aid, etc. But the same people who argued that impeachment should be this, you know, lofty thing, and I actually defended it at the time, are now like, the implementation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan is grounds for impeachment. It's just totally ludicrous. And we've pulled a couple of very good examples here from what exactly the actual interest of some of these people are is in making sure that this war continues, which makes me just seem, oh, maybe this isn't just about how they supposedly care for the poor Afghans.

Check this example out. Lee Fong of The Intercept points it out. Congressman Mike Waltz, who wants the US military to relaunch the Afghan war, just sold an Afghan-focused defense contractor for a personal profit of up to $26 million. And the deal was with a contractor responsible for training the failed Afghan National Security Forces. Now, I'm not saying that that is the case whenever it comes to Lindsey Graham. I've actually met Lindsey Graham. He is a legitimate ideologue whenever it comes to the forever war, a true neocon in his heart, which I guess he's principled. I don't know exactly what to say about that, but I understand from where he's speaking. And yet after the Trump years, it's beclowning yourself in order to try and point out that Joe

Biden should be impeached for this whenever clearly you set a standard that the impeachment bar should be so high. Now, my personal favorite example of the cringe here goes to the president's son, Don Jr. Our friend Richard Hanania pointed this out. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So Don Jr. tweets about how, and I'll get to this in my monologue, Tony Blair slamming Biden as an imbecilic threat. He says, quote, when America's greatest ally abroad, Great Britain, is so humiliated and dishonored that they held Joe Biden in contempt in Parliament for the lack of respect and communication, even lefties agree, you start to see how incompetently this went down. As Richard says, after trust our generals in the media and think of the afghan women phases of conservatism

we have moved on to think of our transatlantic alliances now i just give us an update has added the globe emoji to his twitter bio john jr what the hell is going on here i seem to recall a time whenever donald trump went to to Britain and everybody said, screw the British. We don't care what they think. And they had some stupid ass blimp. And then remember that idiot, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, or whatever his name was. Oh, my God. And everybody said, who cares what the London mayor? Well, what about now? Now we're what? We're British transatlantic bowing down before America's greatest ally and all that. Look, I like Britain. They want to hold our president in contempt. I don't really care what they have to say

whenever it comes to this. And Tony Blair himself- They have a lot of nerve. Actually, for doing this. But really what it is, is the absolute flip-flop that so many of these people have made. Let me just give you one example. I'm sorry to take up some of this time. Don Jr. yesterday was tweeting about how the White House is putting out falsified readouts, or incomplete readouts, of Americans' calls, because we didn't include this thing in our readout of our call where the French President Emmanuel Macron suggested that we should emphasize alliances or something like that. The Trump White House literally suspended all readouts of phone calls. Why? Because they

didn't want to put out the information and get into the exact scenario of leaving some stuff out. And so they just suspended all. Now, I happen to know that because I was a White House correspondent. But I just want to say to these people, shut the hell up. You have no idea what you're talking about. You're embarrassing yourself at the altar of ranked partisanship and just showing us all you have no principles whenever it comes to actually ending war.

Yeah. And even Lindsey Graham, who you're right, is a true believer neocon, unreconstructed, never saw war he didn't love. Right. So I guess at least he's principled. But I don't recall him floating impeachment for Donald Trump meeting with the Taliban at Camp David to broker a peace treaty. Now, look, that's an action that you and I both support because we're here. OK. And but if you were going to get hysterical about something, that seems like a pretty good candidate. And he may have been critical at the time, but he definitely was not calling for

impeachment over brokering a peace deal with the Taliban at Camp David. So all of these people, it's really been quite revealing because you also had a lot of people in the media who sort of like feign war weariness over the years. But then the second that they have a chance to advocate for us being there forever, they'll take whatever opportunity that they can to push for continuing the forever war and as you put it don't be fooled by they're trying to create this middle ground of like oh well we still want to get out but just not like this no there's two positions here you either want to get out and you accept that this is never going to be perfect you're never going to have the conditions met it's never going to be sunshine and You're never going to have the conditions met.

It's never going to be sunshine and rainbows when you end a 20-year failed imperialist project and the state collapses. That's not on the menu, okay? So put that out of your mind. You either want to get out and cope with the messiness that that entails, or you want to stay. And what we have seen from all of these partisan hacks, and again, plenty of Democrats too, by the way, who are saying they want to investigate Joe Biden over this, give me a break. But all of these partisan hacks and every corner of the media that is carrying water for the military industrial complex, you now know what their true colors really are in all of this. Yeah. And you know, I want to say this too. At least we're honest here. We're looking at the

scenes of the Kabul airport and saying, you know what? As terrible as it is, it's worth it. Let's make these people tell us that it's okay that 22-year-olds get blown to bits by suicide bombs for a corrupt government and for an endless mission. Why don't they defend that? Why didn't they have to sit in the media and come and defend the 20 years of failed war, the thousands of Americans who are dead, tens of thousands who are wounded, who the goddamn hell knows how many Afghans who have been killed in this war, how much money that we wasted over there. Why don't they go ahead and defend that? They won't. They'll point to implementation measures. They'll point to

this. I've got 20 years of receipts, Crystal, on implementation failures of the Afghan war. How about they come, they can sit on this show. We will go through every failed measure of the campaign. And you can tell me which one was worse. I know exactly which one was worse. Make them be honest. The dishonesty in this conversation is really what is driving me the most crazy of all. So well said. All right, we've got another interesting little nugget here for you. Okay, let's get to speaking of dishonesty and more.

So this is from Reuters exclusive. FBI finds scant evidence that the U.S. Capitol attack was coordinated. Now notice this is cited to sources. They say that the FBI has found the scant evidence that the January 6th attack was the result of an organized plot according to four current and law enforcement officials. This is very important, Crystal, because this isn't an official announcement from the FBI. There's not a forthcoming report. No, no, no, no, no. It's a leak to Reuters about people who are familiar with the investigation. Oh, and conveniently, this one just was completely buried by the mainstream media while they're fear-mongering for more war in Afghanistan. So here's what they say.

Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI believes at this point the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, who have been, according to the sources who were directly involved or briefed on the wide-ranging investigation. They say this, quote, 90 to 95 percent of these are one-off cases. You have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all these people to storm the Capitol and to take hostages. So why is this important? Because the media has sold us a pack of lies. And nobody here is down playing January 6th. Even if it was spontaneous, it was still really bad. Was it a coordinated

attack on the seat of democracy? Well, no. It was a bunch of yahoos who somehow were able to storm the Capitol and did actually attain the floor of the Senate and more. I think that symbolically is a total disaster, and they should be punished to the full extent of the law. But in terms of charges of domestic terrorism, the organization that was implied here, all of the focus on what the Oath Keepers and the three percenters, none of who I'm saying are good people. All of this was implied as a coordinated effort, Crystal, so that they could push a new domestic war on terror. And the more that we learn that the FBI themselves, who have all the incentives

in the world in order to play up the coordination angle, they can't even find the evidence. Well, okay. So on that, I disagree because, listen, I don't the FBI in particular and law enforcement in general lies all the time. They lie to the press all the time. The press believes them all the time. So you have every reason to be skeptical of what the FBI is spinning here. And in fact, they do have an interest in downplaying the level of premeditation because it made them look really bad. Right. That's a good point. Yeah, that's that's true. The fact that this happened and that they were so unprepared and that they hadn't apparently shared sufficient intelligence assessments for all of the relevant parties to have their ducks in a row. Like to me, this also smacks of a lot of cover your ass from the FBI and law enforcement.

However, what we do know and what we should look at is what's actually been charged. Okay, what have they been in? What charges have they actually been able to gather the evidence for that they think there's a decent chance of conviction? And we haven't seen the details of those. You know, yes, they planned to break into the Capitol. That part was premeditated, but they didn't really have any plan once they got in there. That was like as far as planning went, which kind of strikes me kind of strikes me as accurate here that that's basically as far as they got. We're going to storm the Capitol. Then what? I don't know. God will take care of it from there. Right. Our hero,

Donald Trump will come and save us or whoever they were counting on to do something. I would totally believe that they didn't really have it thought out since then. And again, what I think we should pay the most attention to is what has actually been charged and what are the details that prosecutors are actually able to, you know, to try to prove out? And even that you should be a little bit skeptical of. It's not like government prosecutors are the most honest or straightforward people either. But if even they aren't saying these sort of like high level conspiracies were afoot, then you should expect that it is somewhat less than what the

media has led you to believe in terms of the level of coordination and the actual danger in terms of the election being overturned. Your point about how they may want to downplay it to obscure their own failures is incredibly important. I did not even think about that, and you are 100% right. So let's make sure that we put that in there. Because actually, it's true. If they do say it was coordinated, it's like, well, what the hell were you doing? Yeah. Well, why didn't you disrupt it then? We know you have the lands of all these organizations. Right. Why didn't you disrupt it since all evidence currently indicates that you're doing a hell of a job of organizing these fellas in a whole other

sorts of areas? Yes, we're not going to talk about that one. I just think it's important we highlight this story because, look, was it bad? Yeah, it was a bad day. And it obviously looks pretty spontaneous. That doesn't actually downplay what it means in terms of the systemic failure of the Capitol police, the FBI, the federal government, the societal wide critique that a moron like Donald Trump can inspire millions of people to go and storm the U.S. Capitol. That's all can still be true. And it can still not justify a new war on terror, imply some sort of wholesale plot in order to destroy the country. You know, I see it every day, Crystal, as you

pointed out in that one poll that we covered in our A Block, which is that people are more concerned about domestic extremism than Islamic terror. What if neither are actually a big threat to your life right now? What if economic livelihood actually is? What if lack of class mobility is? What if I could go all the way down in terms of health care and but that's not what the people are being sold by the media and one of the major political parties and then the other political party has to gaslight everybody into trying to think that you know these were like good samaritans who had no idea what they were walking into let's all just be honest about what's happening yeah and i i always try people, like, if someone's trying to scare you, be very skeptical.

Because fear is an incredible motivator for people to allow things they wouldn't normally allow. To allow mass surveillance. To allow endless wars. To justify handing power over to an increasingly authoritarian government that you wouldn't normally do if you were thinking rationally. But look, people put their survival first and foremost, and that's a very understandable natural human instinct. Just make sure you're not getting manipulated by that into justifying things that you ordinarily would never even consider justifying. That's all I'm saying here.

Absolutely. 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. Okay, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, I've been asking myself a big question over the course of the past week or so, which is, how is it that Joe Biden, who has been wrong and bad in so many ways over his long career in Washington, actually did something not only good, but truly quite courageous in standing up to the establishments of both parties, in standing up to every corner

of the media, in being completely unwilling to back down. And actually, the New York Times added some details to help us understand exactly that question. So they have this write up where they say debating exit from Afghanistan, Biden rejected general views, general's views over two decades of war. The Pentagon had fended off the political instincts of elected leaders frustrated with the grind of Afghanistan. But President Biden refused to be persuaded. Now, the funny thing about this piece is that New York Times means this as like a negative piece, like Biden was out there on his own and he didn't listen to the sage generals who knew better who tried to warn him. But I read this piece in a very positive light because it gets

into some of the details of how Obama was persuaded to go against his initial instincts and what he ran on. And Trump was persuaded to go against what he ultimately ran on, wasn't able to actually get people out of Afghanistan. And Biden somehow was able to buck what all of these generals in a coordinated fashion tried to push on him. One of the details they have in this piece is that literally two days after inauguration, Lloyd Austin, Mark Milley, and three other top generals all came to him and said, we need 3,500 people there to stay. We need the Trump's peace deal was really stupid. I'm paraphrasing these, you know, those weren't the exact words, but it was really stupid because it wasn't conditions based. They put all kinds of pressure on him to change the peace deal, to make it

conditions based and to keep a force of somewhere around thirty five hundred to four thousand people there indefinitely. And Biden just flat out said no. So why is that? Why was he able to do what presidents before him for decades were unable to actually do and to stand up to that kind of pressure, knowing the way they're going to leak against you, knowing the way the media is going to handle all of this? There's a couple of key nuggets here. I think there are sort of three key factors. One of them, they have an interesting anecdote from Obama's memoir about how Biden really saw through the games that these generals were playing, especially with regards to Barack Obama, who, of course, was young and relatively new to Washington. So let's throw this quote up on the screen.

Again, this is from Obama's memoir. So he said that Mr. Biden was furious at generals who were trying to force a decision to commit additional troops into Afghanistan with leaks, saying that if more were not sent, the result would be mission failure. He wrote that Mr. Biden used a vivid epithet and warned Obama about generals who, quote, are trying to box in a new president. The vice president leaned forward, putting his face a few inches from mine and stage whispered, don't let them jam you, Mr. Obama recalled. So one of the factors here was just plain experience. He's been around Washington. He's seen from the inside as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. He saw what happened in Vietnam. And he saw up close and personal in the Obama administration on exactly this issue of Afghanistan, the way that the generals were able to roll and ultimately jam Obama. So he saw through their games and his experience actually helped him be able to resist the pressure this time. A second factor I think that was important here is he just truly had an actual ideological commitment to getting out of Afghanistan.

He fought with Obama. He fought with Robert Gates. He fought with Hillary Clinton during the Obama administration about committing additional troops to the surge in Afghanistan. He wanted a much smaller footprint and fought, you know, sort of vicious battles against them. He was also incredibly frustrated and disgusted with the Afghan government that we were propping up. One of the details from

this piece is that he was so disgusted and frustrated at one point that he once threw down his napkin and walked out of a dinner with then President Hamid Karzai. So he's also seen through the totally corrupt and inept Afghan leadership that we were propping up for many years and actually had an ideological commitment. He saw through the lies. He understood the lies. He knew that the mission had long been accomplished or gotten off track and become about nothing other than military industrial complex profits. So he was ideologically committed to it. But the third piece, and this part's not really contemplated in the New York Times piece that I mentioned earlier, is something that Sagar and I

have talked about here, which is that Joe Biden really has a kind of a chip on his shoulder, right? Obama, Hillary Clinton, all the smarty pants in the Obama administration, they all really looked down on him. They treated him as less than. They sort of humored him and dismissed him. And he felt that his way of doing politics, his sort of, you know, old school relationship based way of approaching politics, that that was really smeared at by Obama. And so as I was thinking through how he got to this uncharacteristic place of doing something so good in contrast to so much of his career, I really think it comes down to an intense desire to one up President Obama. And in fact, it's not just on ending the war that President Obama promised to end, but didn't actually end. It's also you can see those signs in other parts of his administration. So one of the critiques of the Obama administration was that they went too

small on the stimulus. So Biden comes in, he does a relief package that's much larger than what Obama had put on the table. Obama couldn't get a deal done in terms of bipartisanship. He could never get the Republicans to do a single thing with him. So that helps to explain why Biden has been so weirdly obsessed with this stupid bipartisan infrastructure deal, burning days and days and months and months to try to get a bipartisan deal done, because that was something that Obama could never, ever do. And then finally, Obama couldn't end the endless wars. And so it makes sense to me that out of a desire to one up him and out of a sort of like ego driven sense of grievance and the chip on his shoulder, he was willing and able to do the thing that Obama didn't. So look,

Joe Biden is still as flawed and still has made as many bad decisions as anyone has in this town. But I do think that that motivation of one-upping Obama and some of the peculiar parts of both his history in Washington and his own personality traits came together in a way here where he actually truly did something that was special, that was different, and that was ultimately Courageous Saga. It was interesting reading into this piece. And again, it's funny how the New York Times. 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, so what are you looking at? Well, I, as promised, taking a little bit of a look at the media response. And one of the things

I've tried to underscore to many of my friends who've been gaslit, frankly, by a lot of MAGA criticism is that by being one of these people who says, I'm for the withdrawal, but not like this, and amplifying many of the critiques, you find yourself on the side of the neocons who screwed up this world in the first place. The media in particular has been not discerning whatsoever about the credibility of the people that they cite in their critiques of Biden. So I pulled four separate pieces of criticism, which I have seen amplified by conservative media, which are direct people who were responsible for getting us into the quagmires of today. Okay, so let's start with one, my personal favorite.

My friend Kurt Mills over at the American Conservative pulled this one. The Wall Street Journal, quote, as Afghanistan reverts, Iraq makes steady progress. That's a claim. The byline on that is Paul Bremer. Now, for those who may not know who Paul Bremer is, Paul Bremer, which George W. Bush's pick

in order to head the Coalitional provisional authority in Iraq, he made the decision to pursue debathification in order to kick out all the Iraqis from their government and completely collapse that nation into a sectarian civil war. He is, by my estimation, probably the single most discredited figure of the entire Iraq war, save for George W. Bush. And yet, he's in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, trying to tout his own fake success and making sure that he points to what happened in Afghanistan as a failure and not his own dealings in Iraq, which collapsed that nation,

killed thousands of American soldiers, cost America a trillion dollars. In what world should we be elevating voices like Paul Bremer? Now let's go to the next one. This is another particular favorite who I've seen all over Fox News in the last couple of days. Ari Fleischer, he says, Biden's problem. He said Americans are not having difficulties getting to second airport. They are. He said Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. They are. He said foreign leaders are not criticizing his handling withdrawal. They are. His judgment and explanations are deeply flawed. Now, as Daniel DePetra shows, according to the Center for Public Integrity, Ari Fleischer made 109 false statements on the Iraq war. Ari Fleischer, for those who don't remember,

was working for George W. Bush during the war drum period for the war in Iraq and post 9-11. He, again, is a demonstrable liar whenever it comes to the war on terror, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq. Are you noticing a trend here on who exactly the elevating, who's being elevated in conservative media, you should be very cognizant of who you are finding yourself on the side of. I already highlighted how Donald Trump Jr. now is citing Tony Blair as some awesome figure of moral authority.

Put this up there. Tony Blair is broken, his long silence. He says the withdrawal was driven by imbecilic slogan of ending the forever war. Once again, just so everybody knows what's going on here, 2017, the United Kingdom, in their own internal inquiry into the war in Iraq, said that the former prime minister, Tony Blair, had not been truthful, quote, not straight with the nation over the Iraq war. He said specifically that Tony Blair tried to obfuscate his own responsibility in falling for WMD in Iraq, in pushing the lies as to why the Britons stood with the United States

in that invasion, and that he himself is a liar who lied to the British people. And yet he now comes forward and has the gall to criticize our president for doing what he couldn't do in terms of getting out of Afghanistan. So that's Tony Blair. And here's my personal and final favorite. Jeb Bush tweeting out an article about how Afghans need an underground railroad by Paul Wolfowitz. Now, I said previously that L. Paul Bremer might be one of the most discredited figures of the Iraq war. Paul Wolfowitz actually might be one who is even more so, or very much at least in the running here. Why? Because what we see there

is that Paul Wolfowitz was one of the chief people inside the Bush administration pushing for war in Iraq, permanent occupancy of Afghanistan, so-called democracy, the full neoconservative agenda whenever he was in the White House. These are the people who are being elevated by elite media. These are the people that you find yourselves on the side on. They are all proven liars. And Crystal, we have now given people so much information. John Bolton is being interviewed on CNN. We see Condoleezza Rice writing op-eds in the Washington Post. Not a single credible voice, not one, have I seen

on the media. I think that Craig Whitlock, who we had on this show of the Afghanistan papers, he was interviewed once on MSNBC. As far as I know, he was not interviewed so far on CNN. Where are the people exposing the lies of those who I just pointed out. These people have blood on their hands in the toll of millions, treasure that they have spent. And these are the people who, and I want to say, there are many people out there

who really were for withdrawal and are being gaslit by MAGA leaders into somehow finding themselves on the side of the Paul Bremers, the Paul Wolfowitzes of the world, of the Tony Blairs who are responsible for the neoliberal project that we have seen fail. I am just, I'm agave, really, at who the shamelessness of these people to number one, rear their heads, but number two, have the media elevate them. And then three, have MAGA, who, if anything,

is an indictment of these people, somehow embrace them. I'm going crazy here. All right, guys, we have a fantastic guest for you this morning who is just out with a really terrific op-ed about the Afghan withdrawal. Lucas Kuntz is director of national security policy at the American Economic Liberties Project and also a Marine veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Lucas, thank you so much for being with us. Good to see you, Lucas. Hey, Crystal. Thanks for having me. Thanks, guys. I should also mention, I left off there, you happen to be running for Senate in Missouri,

so we'll get to that in a moment. But just break down this op-ed that you just published. You said, essentially, you could sum up the Afghan war in two sentences. Yeah, and so it's basically that we have been lied to for a very long time and that what you're seeing was inevitable. And so what I mean by that is, you know, it's been really kind of eye-opening for me just to see how shocked people are by what's happening in Afghanistan right now. And that's not entirely fair because it was kind of surprising to me too when I first went there just to see what was going on on the ground. And I'll give you an example on that. And so for background, I was a Marine for 13 years. I actually was a foreign affairs officer for Afghanistan. I learned Pashto at Marine Special Operations Command, and then I deployed

twice to Afghanistan with Special Operations Task Forces. And on my first deployment in Afghanistan, it was the winter of 2012-13, I went to the Herat City Penitentiary, and my job was to talk to some Taliban folks who were there, which is what I did. And I still remember the first Taliban guy I talked to, I asked him the first Taliban guy I talked to, I asked him the first question. I said, you know, sir, do you know why you're here? And he looks me straight in the eyes and he says, yes, because I was trying to kill you. And I said, well, yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. Not me specifically, but Americans. And then I said, so what do you think? Where do you think this goes from here? And he says, well, either you guys let me out and I keep trying to kill you until you're gone or you keep me in here.

And then eventually you're gone and then I'm out and it's our country and that's what's going to happen. And and I can tell you, after interviewing the Taliban and then overseeing six thousand Afghan local police, kind of like their logistics and stuff, talking to local Afghans in their language, talking to Afghan security forces in their language. He was right. They were the most motivated and intense people I ever met. It's exactly what they intended to do. They were in it for the long haul, no matter what. And what you're seeing right now is the result of the Taliban getting to train and practice against the greatest fighting force in the entire world for 20 years. And if you want to be the best, you train against the best, right? Whether it's chess, football, running, whatever.

And they train against us for 20 years. And they are so much stronger and more powerful and put together than they were in 2002 or 2003. So for me, the real deal here is, uh, this was all covered up. No one knew about it. The media didn't pay attention to it. Uh, the, you know, our politicians were willing to just ignore that all this money and time we spent there, uh, was going to nothing except making the Taliban stronger and the inevitability that we're seeing right now. You know, Lucas, you write in here, quote, the truth is that the Afghan National Security Forces was a jobs program for the

Afghans propped up by U.S. taxpayer dollars, a military jobs program populated by non-military people or paper forces that didn't exist, and a bevy of elites grabbing what they could when they could. I think your personal anecdote there is very powerful. Could you just tell us again more? Because I still, even to this day, we know the numbers of corruption. We can talk about ghost soldiers all we want, but real stories from people like yourself who saw it on the ground is going to underscore for Americans just how hopeless the American mission in Afghanistan was. Can you just describe that for us? Sure. So in 2014, after, you know, we'd been there for what, 13 years, we had an Afghan partner force who was getting ready for the fighting season. And so there's kind of a

fighting season in Afghanistan that runs sort of spring through summer. And then in the winter, everybody's sort of like bunkers down again. And after 13 years, they weren't able to get their own food, their own ammunition, their own weapon systems, their own resupply, any of that stuff. And so at the last minute, it was my job to fly to Camp Moorhead, which was up by Kabul and all around the country to meet with logistics people. I was out west, our unit was out west, and make sure that they got what they needed in order to get through the fighting season. And so if we were there for 13 years and these guys couldn't get themselves ammunition, vehicles or any of the resupply they needed to fight an insurgent force, it was never going to happen. And so and so we did that for them. We did we did everything for them.

And none of that stuff was in the news and none of that stuff really got into the systematic dialogue. And so what I would say, and I think this is very important, is that we had in Afghanistan and in Iraq an institutional, systematic dishonesty that was designed to make it seem like the trillions of dollars we were spending over there was somehow worthwhile and that we were making progress. And if you're looking for great examples like on the ground, I can give you one, the perfect one. Anyone who was in the military training security forces in Iraq or Afghanistan will know this. When I went to Iraq in 2009, I led a police training team. And so what my job was, was to get the local police in, you know, Havana, Ramadi, Fallujah, Saqqa, Luwia, some of these towns in western Iraq, trained up and ready to defend themselves.

It was 2009. We were going to be leaving soon. And so so when I got there, they gave me this 20 page power deck, PowerPoint slide deck that was called a stoplight chart. And so what the stoplight chart had on it was all the capabilities that my partner force was supposed to be able to do. And if it was colored in green, it meant that they were ready to do it. If it was colored in yellow, it meant that we needed to work on that. And if it was red, it meant that they were in a mission failure status. So, you know, I get there, fresh Marine, first deployment, so excited to lead these 12 Marines and a Navy corpsman on missions around Iraq.

And I start flipping through the stoplight chart. I'm like, oh, man, these guys are really good, actually. You know, a lot of this is green. What isn't green is yellow. And there's maybe like one thing that's red that they'd never be able to do anyway. And so I'm pretty optimistic, just like the American people were optimistic. And then I started working with the Iraqi police. And I started to see, well, they should be red on this. They should be read on this. They should be read on this. And I, and I, and I just work with them for a little while. I'm like, whoa.

So I go to my hire and I'm like, can we, can we do a reassessment? I'd like to do a stand down a reassessment and re-rate them so that this, uh, you know, reflects what's actually I'm seeing on the ground. And, uh, what came back to me was that, no, we couldn't reassess them. And at the end of this, they're not allowed to go down on anything and they're going to actually have to go up in a few areas. And so that is, yeah, it's crazy, right? And so this is 2009. And so, you know, we leave all these places and there's this rosy story that, you know, Iraq is green, their security forces are ready. And what happened a couple of years later? A couple thousand dudes in pickup trucks calling themselves ISIS rolled over all these units and took them over despite what you saw on the stoplight charts.

It was the same thing in Afghanistan. It's just it's just this systematic dishonesty that is really causing us. It's it's just undermining faith in all of our institutions. I can go into that more, but I'll see if you got a question first. Well, I mean, that's it really is that for the first time as, you know, the American people are watching the way that the Afghan army just completely melted away and just how completely and utterly failed 20 years there ultimately were, they're finally seeing the truth that was hid from them for so long.

So it's not surprising that there's such shock, that there's such horror, that there's such a reaction to actually for the first time seeing with their own eyes the reality of what this mission has been for decades now. I wonder, Lucas, one of the things that's really fascinating to me about you is that you actually spoke Pashto, which means not only did you speak to members of the Taliban, as you were talking about before, but you talked to elites, you talked to regular Afghan people. What did they think about us? I'm sure quite a few saw us as sort of like foreign invaders or foreign occupiers, something they've certainly been familiar with in the in the area. What did they think of us and what did they think of the Taliban?

Yeah, well, so a lot of people, you know, I wouldn't say that the average Afghan really actually thought of us as an invader. I'm not going to say they wanted us there, but a lot of them did just because we provided stability. And really, the Taliban regime in the 90s was horrible. It was horrible for a lot of people. It may be horrible again. Obviously, we can hope it's not. Although I don't think hope is enough, we need to use our tools of statecraft, diplomacy, and everything else to try to influence that situation. But what most people saw us there as was a jobs program or a way to make money. And so there are reports of the Afghan president leaving with a helicopter and cars full of cash as he flees, like $169 million or something.

I don't know if that's true or not, but the fact that that sort of story gains traction is like, it's very emblematic of what was going on. And so just a lot of people, you know, I mentioned paper forces, or you mentioned how I wrote about paper forces, like a lot of these places, there were, the police didn't exist or the Afghan military didn't exist. They were just, they existed on paper and some officer or some politician in Afghanistan would collect the paychecks for them and then just keep them. And so, so what, what we really were is we were, we were a stabilizing force for places like Kabul, where, you know, it was a big city where there was a little bit of, I wouldn't call it progressivism, but sort of like a Western attitude to some degree. But, in the boonies, like, I mean, we weren't anything, you know, we were just

another force that was there fighting the Taliban or fighting somewhere else. And the only thing that we really provided was the occasional jobs program. I mean, you know, we built buildings, we worked on roads, we did wells, and we tried to contract Afghans for that. So it was really just a jobs and money program. I think that's one of the real tragedies about this is that, you know, our country was willing to spend 20 years, $2.25 trillion and almost 2,500 lives on a jobs program in Afghanistan. Or if you look at Iraq and Afghanistan, the whole area, $6.4 trillion, and we weren't willing to invest. Even right now, they're not willing to invest just a fraction of that right here in America. And that's, I don't know, that's terrible to me.

And I wish we weren't doing it that way. Lucas, I first became familiar with your work, with some of your systemic critiques around Pentagon buying and war. But when I came, I attended that briefing that you once gave, and I was really impressed by your ability to break down systemically what happened in the U.S. economy that crippled the Pentagon and its ability in order to remain competitive. I'm curious if you can apply that same analysis to the war itself. You have deep experience both in the country, but also within the actual bureaucracy. What went wrong here? How did all of these generals delude themselves into pressuring you to change the metrics, to line up the chain of command to the president? How did all the lies proliferate whenever you yourself are on the

ground with your own two eyes could be like, this is never going to work? How did this happen? That's right. And so can, you know, many, many thousands of other veterans. And I think the reason it happened is there is political pressure. And this comes from both parties, presidents of all sides, members of Congress, to make it look like this money that they're spending overseas is worthwhile. And so I have never been a general officer, but I presume you become a little bit political when you're up there and you have a career and a legacy that you want to protect. And so I'm not saying that people are evil here. That's why I call it systematic institutional dishonesty. It's all put together

to support a system that is ineffective and that really undermines American faith and institutions. And actually, I'd like to go into that for a second. So I actually think it's much bigger than Afghanistan. I think it's much bigger than Iraq. I think that what people are seeing in Afghanistan right now lays bare the fact that they were lied to. There was this institutional lie for 20 years there and that all the lives, all the time, all the money was a waste. When ISIS rolled through Iraq, they saw the exact same thing in Iraq. You know, when people see what happens in our economy here in Missouri, they feel they see the exact same lies. And so, I mean, look at what happened after the Great Recession here. Like

everybody, both parties again are saying America's recovered from the Great Recession in 2010, 2011. Well, you know, I'm from Missouri. I came back from Iraq in 2009 and I go to my old neighborhood to visit and I see the first house I ever lived in is bulldozed down. It's an empty lot. Like the corner store is now boarded up. The two grocery stores we used to use are gone. Like how are people going to trust a government that tells them the economy has recovered here in Missouri when they're seeing that? Like that's not a unique story. Or let's take the housing market, for example. Like in 2012, everybody said, oh, we've saved the housing market. The housing market has recovered. Well, my dad tried to sell the house that I joined the Marine Corps out of in 2012. And it sat on the market. This is in Jefferson

City, Missouri for two years. And he got $43,000 for a house that he owed 78,000 on. So when he's told that the housing market has recovered and all these people in Missouri are told that, and that's what they see, they don't believe. And so we have Iraq, we have Afghanistan, we have the economy, we have the housing market. And when you get bombarded by systematic institutional lie after lie after lie, you lose faith in what's going on. And now, you know what? This really makes me mad. We have all these people talking down to Missourians or talking down to other people, call them idiots, morons, whatever else, not for getting a COVID vaccine and not for believing in COVID. Well, here's the thing.

Your institutional lies for decades have made it so that people don't believe you when you say the truth anymore. And so absolutely people need to get vaccines, but we have created this massive hole in the truth that charlatans, you know, we got like Josh Hawley here and others in Missouri, these charlatans can just drive a truck full of lies through and no one knows what to believe

anymore. And to me, that's the real failing. That's the real problem. It's why I wrote the op-ed. We need to start speaking the truth right now, right now, or we're going to be in this, we're going to be mired in whatever catastrophe comes next where no one believes what the right solution is. OK, guys, thanks for bearing with us with our little home show because of my whole COVID situation. If you want to watch the rest of that interview, you can become a premium subscriber today. Link is down there in the description. We really appreciate all of the support that you give us. And we will see you all tomorrow.

We're not going to let this deter us. That's right. We will be back here tomorrow, guys. Have a great day. 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 on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps other people find the show. As always, a special thank you to Supercast for powering our premium membership. If you want to find out more, go to crystalandsager.com.

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