Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/30/21: Hurricane Ida, Afghanistan Update, Media Warmongering, Eviction Moratorium, Vaccine Statistics, Calls for Biden's Resignation, Elite Accountability Crisis, Lessons from Afghan War, and More!

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.tech/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXlMerch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Dr. Parsi’s Work: https://www.tritaparsi.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast,

so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app,

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.

To help support our mission of making all of us hate each other less, hate the corrupt ruling class more, support the show. Become a Breaking Points premium member today where you get to watch and listen to the entire show, ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get

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. First of all, nice to be back in the studio. Great to be back. Nice to have you back at full strength. So thank you for that.

And we do have a whole lot to get to this morning. First of all, the evacuation mission in Afghanistan, as it has been, is coming to an end. Tomorrow is that deadline. We also got some bad news out of the Supreme Court. Not unexpected, but still the eviction moratorium has been ended. That has thrown millions of lives into chaos and uncertainty. We'll update you on that. Some major updates on who is getting vaccinated and what the very latest numbers are that you don't want to miss.

We also have Dr. Trita Parsi in to talk about Afghanistan and the Middle East more broadly. Also, programming note for you guys in terms of the future of this week. Quick programming note, because I know there's been some confusion. I want to make sure that you all have it. I'm back here in the studio. We've got Monday and Tuesday lockdown. Crystal is taking off at the end of the week. Marshall will be in then on Thursday. Then next Monday, obviously, is Labor Day. We're not having a show for everybody. Marshall will be in then on Thursday. Then next Monday, obviously, is Labor Day. We're not having a show for everybody. Marshall will be back, and then we are all good to go. So, gotten many emails. Don't worry. Everything's fine. It's a very crazy period, and I just happen to have had COVID, which screwed everything up.

So, I'm sorry, Crystal, but I'm so happy to be back. Yes, indeed. It is nice to be back in the studio. It's just not quite the same from home. But we wanted to start this morning with the devastating scenes coming out of Louisiana as Hurricane Ida slammed into the coastline there as a Category 4 storm. This was 16 years to the day since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, causing massive loss of life and devastation. Now, the levee systems and the pumps that are in place now are much stronger than they were back then, but still the scenes that we're seeing this morning are quite catastrophic. Everyone has lost power in New Orleans. That's more than a million people in the area without power. It is going to be steaming hot there this week, so that in and of itself is a dangerous situation. Extraordinarily high winds. This was tied for the strongest storm ever to hit Louisiana and is one of the strongest storms to ever hit the United States of America.

You can see this from The New York Times. So the storm could be among the strongest to hit Louisiana since the 1850s. We now know it actually tied for the strongest with that storm that was in the 1850s and Hurricane Laura from last year. So truly devastating impacts. There are reports this morning not only of those power outages due to catastrophic damage. We also have reports that some levees in the area have been overtopped. There are areas that have been hit extraordinarily hard. Houma, Louisiana, some of the scenes coming out of there are devastating.

Part of what happened here, Sagar, is both because the Gulf is eight degrees warmer than normally due to climate change. That caused more moisture to be picked up by the storm. There was also what they call a brown water effect. Louisiana has received, again, because of climate change in part, more rain than usual. So the ground was already saturated. Of course, Louisiana famous for its marshes and bayous anyway. That allowed this storm to maintain Category 4 strength for hours. Okay, this is relatively unprecedented.

And Houma, Louisiana is one of those places that was just in the heart of the storm, the worst part of the storm. And it sat there for hours and hours and hours and did not weaken and did not really significantly move for a long time. So we are just now really getting a sense of how devastating this is. We have some incredible video. This is crazy to me that they're even able to get these shots. This is from inside the eye of Ida. So you can see, actually, for those of you who are listening, you can see a blue sky. You can see the sun shining.

This is in the middle of the eye of this storm. And, of course, we know, meanwhile, on the ground, absolute devastation taking place. As I mentioned before, we can put the Axios tear sheet there up on the screen. Everyone in New Orleans has lost power. Catastrophic outages there, more than a million people. That's going to be an incredibly significant problem. Those levees, the pumps that help keep New Orleans safe that were, you know, rebuilt and refurbished after Katrina. Those are now running on generators.

There's also hospitals in the area that have been damaged. I'll get to a little bit more on that in a moment. We can see we've got another video here. This is from Grand Isle, Louisiana. This is one of the first places that was hit by this storm. You can see, for those of you who are listening, there's a tree, massive amounts of water. You can hear the wind whipping and the rain falling in just an unbelievable way. And there are so many videos out there of the type of damage.

Roofs being pulled off. You can see this tree is now toppling over from the roots. Homes have been devastated, neighborhoods, roads impassable, power lines down, all of those impacts that you would expect. And as I was just mentioning with regards to the hospitals, one of the major challenges here is that the hospitals are all full due to coronavirus patients. Louisiana is the state that perhaps in the country right now is hardest hit by COVID. Ordinarily, this whole region was under mandatory evacuation. Ordinarily, that would mean the hospital patients as well. But there's no hospitals in the surrounding area that can take the patients because they are all full of COVID patients. Let's take a listen to

the governor and what he had to say about that yesterday. We had four hurricanes last year during COVID, but we had a small fraction of the number of people in our hospitals that we currently have. We have more people in the hospital today, 2,450 with COVID than we had at any point before this current surge. And when Hurricane Laura hit last year, we only had about 300 in the hospitals. So evacuating hospitals is not going to be possible because there's nowhere to bring those patients to. There's no excess capacity anywhere else in the state or outside the state. And so we're really worried about prolonged power outages. That's terrible. Yes, absolutely terrible.

And several hospitals were damaged. They are all running on generators now because all of the power is out. In New Orleans, there was a report of one hospital where the generator failed temporarily. They had to move patients from the ICU with the nurses and the doctors manually ventilating them and keeping the air pumping in their lungs. Thank goodness that generator is back online as far as we know this morning, but truly dire conditions down in Louisiana this morning. Yeah, it is really devastating. I wanted to make sure that we could keep everybody updated. And right now we know that a million people don't have power, including almost the entire city of New Orleans. And so I saw a breaking report this morning. Obviously, this is a dynamic story,

but a city official was telling local reporters there that despite the complete lack of power and the significant flooding, they're not yet sure of what exactly is happening. But they say there's no, quote, disastrous structural damage as of yet that they are aware of. So that is where the situation stands. But I think that COVID really is the major story here. It's Louisiana, it's Mississippi, it's a lot of these states in the deep south where you see the most amount of people who are in the ICUs. And that was a other part of the issue is that there was no excess capacity in order to move these COVID patients. So a lot of thoughts right now with the doctors and the nurses who like stayed with these patients in these hospitals. I can't even imagine. I did see a video where a hospital literally had its roof lifted off in southern Louisiana.

So that is really what the state there is right now. The president, White House all declared state emergency, freeing up disaster relief funds. The real challenge right now is a complete lack of power, which just stops a lot of the reporting from coming in. So as I understand it, the storm has moved on from its most like devastating conditions as of literally right now at this moment. So what that means is it's all about disaster assessment. With the assessment, with the lack of power, it's making it so that reporting around who exactly and where resources and other things need to go is what's really difficult. And I saw that really one of the most devastating parts was

that a lot of people in the middle of the storm were unable to contact emergency responders. We're having a lot of difficulty. And they even got some reports, you know, in the more southern parts, not necessarily in the city of New Orleans, where people were having water all the way up to their chest. And so I was really fearful waking up this morning, we were going to return to some Katrina like situation, people up on their houses, rooftops, you know, having to, I've always, you know, you always read about like, if your house is flooding, cut a hole in your roof. And I'm like, I cannot imagine having to do that. So New Orleans was very hard hit, but it was not as hard hit as some other areas, Houma being one of them. And in some of those southern lying parts of the state, levees were overtopped,

and they have seen huge amounts of flooding. We know that one person has lost their life. I believe that they were struck by a tree. And as we are able to assess this morning, we're going to see if there was additional loss of life. And of course, pray for the best and pray for the smallest amount of damage and loss of life in particular possible. It seems like they did a pretty good job of evacuating as many people as possible. Of course, there are always people who just literally don't have the means to be able to go anywhere. As you were saying with regards to COVID, one of the concerns as well is if you have people escaping to shelters in these sort of congregate

settings, what does that mean again for the spread of the virus? Of course, great concern for those people who are stuck in the hospitals there and were unable to evacuate. So again, in part what made this storm so damaging and so devastating is the fact that it really lingered. It strengthened to a category four, again, tied for the strongest storm to hit Louisiana in history, stronger than Katrina. And it stayed in place moving very, very slowly and not weakening for hours. So some of these smaller towns were just battered for hours and hours on end. And Sagar, I actually, after Katrina, at the time, this was like another lifetime ago, I was working for a federal government contractor

that worked for the U.S. federal courts. And I was part of a team that went down to Louisiana in the wake of Katrina, and then they also were hit, I don't know if you guys remember, with another storm right after that, Rita. Hurricane Rita. And my job was like the most bureaucratic thing imaginable, helping people to enter in their expense reports of what they could actually claim as expenses, justifiable expenses from the federal government for

reimbursement. But in working with people, you heard their whole stories of, you know, we just grabbed what we could, we left, we thought we'd be gone for a day, and now everything is completely devastated and people's lives turned completely upside down. So for those people who may have lost everything in floods or structural damage, my heart just goes out to them because I've heard those stories directly firsthand, and that sense of loss, that sense of catastrophe that just everything is gone is really hard to imagine. So we're going to keep you updated here. One other note, all of the, of course, Louisiana famous for their oil refineries. A lot of oil refining that happens in this country happens down in that region.

It's almost all 100% offline. What does that mean for you, even if you're not in the storm area? It's going to mean that gas prices are probably going to go up a bit. We have a tear sheet that we can put up on the screen here of a tweet. Basically, about 10 cents increase you're looking at. So nothing catastrophic here. Certainly, the biggest concern is over the devastation from the storm itself and whatever loss of life as we wake up this morning and really are able to assess the damage. There it is. Gas prices in southeastern and mid-Atlantic markets likely to rise by about 10 cents per gallon because of those oil refineries being offline. And, of course, another question is if there are any damage to those refineries, any damage to the nuclear power plants or other surrounding industrial sort of facilities that are in that area.

So we'll watch for that as well. That's the major question. You know, I have a similar kind of interesting experience with Katrina, which is that my town called Station had a bunch of people who actually came from New Orleans, refugees. And it was the same thing where they thought they were going to stay for a week and then they stayed for several years because there was nothing to go back to. Some people never went back. The city of Houston had the same thing, a massive influx of people from New Orleans. I really remember it well, people coming in via bus. And again, they thought they were just going to be there for a couple of days, maybe like a month. And then it turned into just having to begin a new life. So same thing. Texas, we lived through a lot of hurricanes. So I have a lot of sympathy and I know how much, how, how, uh, how scary it can be whenever, you know, that one

of the, I remember Rita really well, um, because people were so freaked out post Katrina, um, and just having to prepare for that and being worried that the storm was going to hit you. So really thinking about everybody down in Louisiana today, and especially given the COVID situation, that's what always makes it so much worse. Um, to have thousands of people literally hooked up to life-saving equipment. You're just going to sit there as a doctor and you're just praying for that generator. So those are the people I'm really thinking about. And guys, I'm just going to say it again. It's not an accident that we keep getting these extreme catastrophic weather events one after another after another.

We've always had hurricanes. We've had periodic, very strong Category 4, Category 5 hurricanes. But the fact of the matter is, part of why this storm was so strong is because the water was warmer and because there was more water already on the ground. That's what the experts are saying. It's undeniable that this was impacted by the changing climate. And so, you know, this is the reality that we're living in now. And I just pray that we're able to rebuild there. I pray that there's very small loss of life and that we can move forward and perhaps do something better about that situation. Another big story, obviously, that we've been following closely, though, is what's going on in the ground in Afghanistan.

Yeah. So it's August 30th right now. And that means the evacuation is beginning to wind down. August 31st, the deadline for removing troops there. President Biden, the administration, all basically saying that we're not going to give way. And so obviously we haven't been able to update you all since that horrific attack on American soldiers at the Abbey Gate at the Hamid Karzai International Airport. It killed 13 U.S. service members and dozens, and I mean up to 200, number of Afghans, including young women and children. ISIS-Khorasan, which is the ISIS-Afghan affiliate, Khorasan meaning like Afghanistan and Pakistan, that group is the one that claimed responsibility for the attack. It was a complex suicide attack that, you know, clearly was a direct hit on American service members.

I watched the briefing right afterwards from General McKenzie. And the way he put it just makes it seem so grim. And it really highlights what we ask of our service members, which is he's like, look, we have to screen these people. Somebody's got to look them eye to eye. That has to be an American service member. To process those people, there's no way to avoid that. It just shows you what immense danger they're in, even after a number of checkpoints and more. But let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen from The New York Times.

The evacuations from Kabul are beginning to wind down in the several hundred to thousand. We're not seeing the removal of like 12,000 to 13,000 to 20,000 people per day. The current number stands at around 100,000. The American citizen number is relatively unclear. Right now, as of what I have been able to find, the most updated figure is 500 American citizens who are left somewhere in Afghanistan. The difficulty, though, Crystal, is that per the administration, several hundred of these people don't want to leave. Many of them want to stay. Some of them are dual citizens. Some of them have families who aren't necessarily could qualify for leaving some businesses, whatever. You know, it's a complicated situation. Some of those people, they do not want to leave Afghanistan. the fate is relatively up in the air at this point. We'll get to the deal that is struck in a second, but let's go ahead and put this next one up there on the screen in terms of what is happening on the ground. So you'll recall that after that attack, the president said,

we're going to hunt down, we're going to kill whoever's responsible for this. Well, we had a US airstrike actually in the city of Kabul, which, quote, eliminated a vehicle with a substantial amount of explosive material that posed a, quote, eliminated a vehicle with a substantial amount of explosive material that posed a, quote, imminent ISIS-K threat to the Kabul airport. And we wanted to bring you this, especially given the news most recently, which is that that attack not only killed whoever this ISIS-K person is, but it also killed a lot of women and children. I think it's like nine children surrounding that entire thing. I cannot think of an incident which just shows you the horrors of war and exactly why I think both of us are very resolute about wanting to get out in the first

place, which is who are the ones who ultimately pay the price for all of this? The people who were killed in Afghanistan, the American service members, were between like 20 and 31 years old. Think about that. And the majority of them were in their 20s. Like we have some profiles of, we have a photo there of some of their caskets coming back with the president attended a dignified transfer yesterday. I mean, that's what drives it home about who are the people who pay the price for this war. Throw the New York Times tear sheet up there. Some of them were, you know, one of them was 20 years old, had a baby on the way, three weeks, you know, just had it on the way, the announcement. Staff sergeants, two women, one of whom had posted a photo of herself with a baby.

You can see her there. Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole Lee Gee of Sacramento, California, who said, quote, I love my job. And she posted there with a child. And, you know, she saved that child. But there's a lot of other children that died in Kabul in just the last, you know, 24 hours. And it just highlights how horrific this entire thing is. And so, you know, you look at what's happened and there's been so much political hay that have been tried to make around all of this, but all it does is drive to me both the horrors of war and why we needed to

get the hell out in the first place. I have seen, Crystal, there's a lot of, like I said, amateur logisticians out there. So they're pointing to a very pivotal moment in the fall of Kabul, which is that in Doha, there was a meeting between CENTCOM's commander, who is the U.S. commander of all the forces in the Middle East, and this political representative of the Taliban. And the Taliban is like, look, either you can take control of the city of Kabul or we can do it and you guys take the airport and you get your people out. And people are saying, look, see, we had a chance to hold Kabul. Let me tell you everybody here something. I happen to remember a little battle called Fallujah. And I remember how even a huge force of Marines were unable to fight and hold this city. And I also remember the surge in Baghdad,

in which it took, what, tens of thousands of troops in order to hold that city. What you saw in that suicide attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport was a cakewalk compared to what it would have looked like to hold the entire city of Kabul, a city of 6 million with multiple checkpoints. We would have had to deploy all the forces in all of CENTCOM's region to even attempt such a gamble. And then what would it have meant? What did I already say about having to look people eye to eye whenever you're at a checkpoint? This is how many of our troops died in Iraq, holding these checkpoints, suicide-borne, vehicle-borne IEDs that come and crash into and kill everybody. That happened over and over and

over again. So there's a lot of criticism right now around the withdrawal, but I just want to highlight what the alternative was. The alternative was holding the city. And that means many, many, many more American dead. People pretend like all of these actions, including staying indefinitely, are without risk. I mean, that's what everyone should see here. Every minute that our servicemen and women are on the ground, they are in dire danger. Exactly. Every day that you extend is another day where their lives are at risk. I don't understand how people can't see that. I mean, to me, when I see this horrific loss of life, I can't understand how anyone would look at that and say, that's why we need to stay longer.

Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? And also, like you said about the Afghan civilians who were just killed in this American drone strike, including young babies, two, three, four-year-old children. Is the media going to care about these particular Afghan civilians? Okay, because they seem to only care about the ones who are paying the price because of us leaving. They don't seem to care so much about the ones who are paying the price because of us staying. So they only care about the cost of ending the war, not the cost over the 20 years of this war. Some of these service members, 20 years old. I mean, we're talking about they were babies, babies on 9-11, literally. Literally, yeah. Literally. And they're still there fighting,

losing their lives for something that happened when they were infants in their mother's arms. This is insanity. It's absolute insanity. And Glenn Greenwald said on Twitter that, you know, nothing could be a more fitting and tragic end to this war than an American drone strike, killing babies and civilians, and then military commanders lying about it, which is what's happening this morning. This is horror after horror. And I cannot understand looking at this situation and saying anything other than we need to get out now and we should have been out years and years ago. to focusing on evacuating our service members from Kabul airport rather than Afghan civilians. As Sagar was saying, about 110,000 plus people have been evacuated, which is tremendously more than what anyone predicted could have possibly been accomplished, which is rather incredible

given the circumstances. However, the last piece of news we have for you here is that the U.S. and 97 other countries have announced, we can throw this tear sheet up on the screen, that they do have a deal with the Taliban to continue evacuating Afghan allies after August 31st. We still, look, it's the Taliban. their word for it or relying on them or trusting them. But at least there is some indication that the Taliban says they're going to allow for safe passage for our Afghan allies. So we'll continue to work with these 97 other countries to evacuate who we can in terms of American citizens and our Afghan allies after this state. So there is some hope there that at least some additional people can get out. People have a lot of skepticism around this, and I don't blame you. But what I would tell you is to recognize the reality of the situation.

We do not have either the political will or the military force right now in order to endure the number of casualties that it would require to hold the city of Kabul or to remain there indefinitely. If we stay past August 31st, then that's it. Already this morning, we saw five rockets that were fired at Hamid Karzai International Airport. Luckily, one of the only good things the military is decently good at in the war on terror is actually countering like rockets, right? And so that ended up working out. So that's great. But that means it would have happened incessantly over and over. Go and talk to anybody who served in country, in Iraq and Afghanistan, at the heights. They were terrified of rockets, especially in Iraq,

on these bases. And they would have alarms. And a lot of people were killed that way. So this is just to recognize that staying longer is going to put thousands of American soldiers at risk. And we have a diplomatic ability in order to at least try to get our people out through those means. Now, look, we have the ability to impose tremendous military and economic costs on the Taliban if we want to. Actually, this is one of the smart things that the Biden people have been saying. The Taliban have no desire to return to the pariah state of 1999. They were under tremendous international sanction. They had no ability to trade. That's one of the reasons that their own government,

given the civil war, one of the things their opponents could point to is that actually their government was bringing shame to them internationally. So they want more than anything, diplomatic recognition, the ability to have trade, the ability to conduct themselves as a semi legitimate nation amongst the concert of the world. So what does that mean? Well, we have the UN and the UN Security Council. We can actually impose tremendous costs on the ability for them to conduct themselves. And second, we can also, we have this superiority of air power to do whatever we want to them militarily, even when all of our people are out.

And so I would just point to that as a pretty good amount of leverage in order to see if they're going to uphold the end of the deal. And not to mention, we've already frozen billions of dollars in Afghan reserves. So that's an immediate point of financial leverage. And they know they're going to have to deliver economically. Afghanistan already, with the amount of aid dollars, U.S. and other international aid dollars that are going out of the country right now, they recognize that the economy is basically in free flow. I mean, this is one of the other things I was reading. It's just like a practical matter. The banks are closed right now.

There have been protests outside of the banks. They're very worried about a run on banks. The banks are closed right now. There have been protests outside of the banks. They're very worried about a run on banks. People go to the ATMs. They can't get cash out. So people are already freaking out about that. Also, frankly, one of the big cash crops in Afghanistan has been opium. That's how they make their money. The U.S. has just looked the other way in some instances. In other instances, we've partnered directly with the drug kingpins in various parts of the country. Taliban is claiming to crack down on opium production as well. We'll big economic issue for them as well, because this is the way that for many years, a lot of Afghan farmers have been able to earn their living. It's a largely rural country. And even though much of the land can't be farmed because it's so mountainous, you still have a majority of citizens who engage in farming as their livelihood. So they have massive economic challenges. The U.S. has a lot of financial leverage that can be applied here. I do not support the indefinite freezing of billions of

dollars of Afghan reserves, by the way, because that does nothing but impose cruelty on the people of that country. But to use as a point of financial leverage to be able to get our people out and as many of our Afghan allies as possible, yes, 100 percent, I support that. I completely agree with you. And anyway, all of this is to be said, yeah, look, they can be bloodthirsty murderers, but they're also bloodthirsty murderers who need to now run this country and have to try and maintain some sort of legitimacy. And people all seem to think that just because somebody, you know, is your enemy, that they don't also have to act rationally whenever it comes to, you know, protecting their own interests. Like that was one of the things I saw around the ISIS attack.

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. Actually, yeah, let's go ahead and get to this next piece because it directly ties what I was just previously talking about, which is that immediately after these service members, before we even knew their names, by the time that, you know, before even the wounded were on their way to Germany to undergo surgery, we saw the media kick itself into the highest gear of fear-mongering and war-mongering that I have seen in quite some time.

The worst single example that I saw in the immediate aftermath of the deaths of 13 American service members, they invited on former General H.R. McMaster, who was the national security advisor under Trump, to baselessly float one of the most ridiculous conspiracy theories with zero pushback on none other than CNN. Let's take a listen to what he said. This is what we're facing. This is what happens when you surrender to jihadist terrorists. And I think, Jim, what's important about this, you may hear this is ISIS-K or whatever, but these terrorist organizations exist in an ecosystem along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and now all across Afghanistan in which they share people and resources.

You know, Siraj Akhani is the military commander of the Taliban, and he's a central figure in al-Qaeda. This is a myth, right, that the Taliban is separate from al-Qaeda and these other groups. I would not be surprised in any way if ISIS-K was used, their Kabul attack network was used as a cutout for the Taliban so they can humiliate us on the way out and still continue to play us. Because I don't think they think we're serious people, Jim. I mean, so, so our weakness is encourage them to be emboldened. So, uh, there's no evidence of that whatsoever. And the CNN guy, all he has to say, Jim Sciutto is, yeah, okay. Uh, here's my, well, actually, so get this, the first person that the Taliban killed whenever they took over the city of Kabul

was the ISIS commander who happened to be in prison. You know why? They have been at war in Nangarhar province near the Pakistani border since 2014 whenever they developed because ISIS and the Taliban have completely different, you know, interpretations, if you will, of radical jihadism. I know this because this is what I used to do for a living. And in terms of the declaration of the caliphate internationally, all of that, the abuse of force against their own fellow Muslims, although the Taliban itself have violated that against the Hazaras many times. More of what I'm saying, though, is that these

groups hate each other. They challenge each other for legitimacy in that region, and there has never been any evidence going all the way back to 2014 they're working together in any way. And yet he is out there saying that, oh, it's possible that it was used as a cutout. You cannot baselessly float conspiracy theories around the killing of 13 American service members right after their deaths so irresponsibly like that. It's wildly irresponsible, even if it was plausible, which it's not. Yeah, it's not. Because as you just said, I mean, we actually back the Taliban in their fight against ISIS. ISIS views the Taliban as basically like a sellout. Taliban, their-

And Al-Qaeda, who he also says that they're- Goals have been to dominate Afghanistan. ISIS and Al-Qaeda have this global jihad philosophy. They are very different groups, and ISIS and the Taliban hate each other. And when I first heard this clip from H.R. McMaster, I only heard it and I didn't see who the reporter was, that it's Jim Sciutto. Okay, so I just assumed like, oh, this is some CNN dummy who doesn't know anything enough to be like, you know, these two groups don't really like each other, right?

Jim Sciutto is their senior national security correspondent and has been since 2013. Before that, he worked for Obama. If anyone, yeah, before that he worked as a government official for Obama. If anyone at that entire network should know this very basic fact, it is that man. And same thing with H.R. McMaster. OK, this is not an instance of, oh, they just don't know any better. No, he's lying. He knows better. OK, he knows the truth. He knows these groups hate each other, but he wants to spin and gaslight and freak out Americans. Why? Because part of, as soon as Biden actually committed to getting out of Afghanistan, we started seeing these stories about, oh, terrorism, oh, be very afraid. Listen, I'm not saying that it's not an issue. I'm not saying it's not something that we don't need to be concerned about and keep our eye on.

There are a lot of other countries that have more active jihadists that pose more of a direct threat to the United States than Afghanistan at this point. You're going to invade them as well? You want to occupy them too? I mean, that's, but yes, that's, actually, they would love that. Actually, they would love that. And that's why he comes up with this instant invention of a completely insane and baseless conspiracy theory. You might even call it misinformation.

Yeah, oh, I would absolutely call it misinformation. And here's a reminder from Matt Iglesias about what exactly, how the media covers it, and the shamelessness that these people have. Put this up there on the screen. The very first month that McMaster was on the job, 49 people were killed during an hours-long assault on a military hospital in Kabul. I actually remember this attack, and it was ISIS gunmen who were coming through the Sardar Duad Khan military hospital in Kabul that attacked. Some of them were dressed in white hospital robes.

Forty-nine people were killed in the hours-long assault, and 63 people were injured. It's barely a blurb. At that time, I was actually writing about all this stuff for a living, and it was maddening. I've spoken here publicly. One of the things that turned me against the war so vociferously is having, at that time, to write obituaries of kids who were not just younger than me, a lot younger than me. I remember these 19 and 20 year olds who stepped on an IED while they were out on patrol against ISIS in Nangarhar province, out in Afghanistan, all the way back 2016, 2017. Getting the media to cover it, it was impossible. It was like me and a couple of other Pentagon people. That was it. Nobody cared about their lives at the time. There were 20, 30 people a

year getting killed then. Nobody cared. It was like basically relegated to the back pages. The families were suffering just as much as these families were. And you know what? Every once in a while, they would get coverage on local news. The local news are always the best because, you know, it's the high school or whatever. Yeah, they're connected. That would hold, and there would be like some ceremony at home. Nothing. CNN was talking about Mueller. That's what they were talking about, Russiagate, when all of this was happening. That's true.

Just remember, in terms of their selective outrage. And who else did they decide in order to bring onto their network? Leon Panetta. He was a defense secretary under Obama. So they love this, former Obama secretary. Listen to what he has to say. For the real mindset of the national security establishment here in Washington, the deaths of 13 American service members only confirms to them that we have to stay forever.

Let's take a listen. So he is sticking with the August 31st deadline. I mean, he's made it clear that even after that, they'll do whatever they can, but he's sticking with it. He is not extending it. It is what it is, is what he says. So do you agree with that? Is it right to stick with this August 31st date? Well, Erin, bottom line is that our work is not done in Afghanistan.

I know we'll be removing our troops by a certain date. But the bottom line is our work is not done. We're going to have to go after ISIS. I'm glad the president said that we're going to hunt them down and make them pay a price for what they did in killing our warriors. And we should. We're going to have to go back in to get ISIS. We're probably going to have to go back in when Al Qaeda resurrects itself, as they will with this Taliban. They gave safe haven to Al Qaeda before. They'll probably do it again. So, yeah, you know, I understand that we're trying to get our troops out of there.

But the bottom line is we can leave a battlefield, but we can't leave the war on terrorism, which still is a threat to our security. She just sits there and accepts it there. Mr. Secretary, with respect, what evidence is there to say that the Taliban are going to allow Al Qaeda to resurrect themselves as it's a direct violation of the agreement that we have and would actually be the perfect pretext for us to reinvade them or bomb them, you know, to the back to the Stone Ages. We could easily do that. And that's actually a literal predicate

for also our use of military force under that agreement. Why would they have an incentive to do that? Look, if they do so, then okay, let's go. But, you know, that's not necessarily in the cards. And yet he pushes this with absolute certainty. We're going to have to go back in. I'll remind the secretary that the entire ISIS campaign in Syria was largely accomplished by use of air power and through the actual locals, not some of whom have we backed in terms of what happened there. But they're the ones that fought in that war, or the Iraqi security forces.

Why is there not a plausible alternative here that that could happen in this particular case if that dramatically unlikely scenario even resurrects itself? It just shows you that they only have one speed. We have to go back. We have to stay. We have to stay forever. And really, as the 20th anniversary of 9-11 begins to come back up, and I just can't help but think, it's unbelievable how nothing has changed. Nothing has changed in these people's minds. I mean, we talked about last week that poll that they were like, this was the most hawkish framing possible where they're like, what about if allowing the Taliban to take over meant that al-Qaeda was going to gain a foothold in Afghanistan?

People were like, no, we should still get out, should still get out. This war on terror scaremongering just doesn't work the way that it used to. But as you were saying, look, the Taliban are rational actors in protecting their interests in a certain sense. They regret harboring bin Laden because it's what led to their, we had them destroyed, by the way. They offered to surrender, by the way, which we should have taken, but we didn't because of our own hubris and arrogance way back in 2001, 2002. So that is what led to their destruction. They aren't anxious to revisit that particular history.

So there's that just as a matter of fact. And again, the ability of these people to just float some random shit that has no basis in whatever and receive no pushback. And they know they're not going to get any pushback on CNN, is insane, nor would they have gotten any pushback on MSNBC or Fox News either, by the way, where they have their own insanity spinning of a very similar variety. But also, let's not forget who Leon Panetta is.

This guy was involved in the surge, which we were all told was working. What happened, Leon? The Afghan surge. What happened, Leon? I Afghan surge. What happened, Leon? I thought that the Afghan surge was a success. And if you go and look at the Afghanistan papers, he's one of the people that was directly lying to the American people over years and telling us how great this was all going. So why don't you tell us there, Leon Panetta, how great this all went and what a wonderful, excellent mission this ultimately was because he was many of these people now earn their living

through being part of the military-industrial complex. So this is from Adam Johnson on his sub-stack, which is called The Column. He calls out New York Times' Peter Baker, who wrote this analysis piece, quote-unquote, which is what they do here is when their reporters are super opinionated, rather than just labeling it as an op-ed, they put this analysis label on it to enable them to sort of like give you their opinion, but pretend it's actually news. And so who did he reach to for an independent, neutral opinion on what was going on in Afghanistan. A woman named Megan O'Sullivan, who she says, you know, that Biden has been painting this as either we get out or we stay.

But in fact, there was this glorious middle ground. So she's presented as this independent analyst. Never does he disclose that she's a board member of Raytheon. Raytheon, which has massive financial interest in continuing a presence in Afghanistan and any other country in the world indefinitely. That seems like a relevant piece of information to include in your quote-unquote reporting about what quote independent experts have to say about Afghanistan.

This is one example that Intercept went through and gave like 10 other ones of people who are being called on by cable news bookers and by the New York Times and Washington Post and everyone else to act as if they're just independent, neutral experts who have direct financial interest in staying in Afghanistan that are never, ever presented and disclosed. And it's disgusting. Yeah. And I know you said the American people aren't there, but I don't know, Crystal. I have seen people who two years ago were all about America first and all about, you know, changing just completely flip on a dime whenever it comes to this. And honestly,

I think that this amount of propaganda, it is going to have an effect. And I know that the polls are dramatically going to be impacted in terms of COVID and the economy for Biden. But I think that this is going to have, it's not necessarily about Afghanistan itself. It's just about when you're already getting smacked on two different issues and having a third. It just creates this cycle. And the worst part is, is that this is going to show Biden that when you, or any president, if you cross these people, they will do everything in order to destroy you. That the system is completely architected against you. And so in the future, whenever there's a decision that might come, let's say another Libya decision, that's actually the perfect example. Some sort of Libya thing where NATO and the foreign policy hawks want us to go in. The natural inclination of the president then, Obama at the time, was, no, I don't want to do

this. But you get boxed in and you realize the media is going to make it so that every death, or whatever, in Benghazi is on your head. Does Biden have the fortitude to stand up to that? I mean, he did in this case, maybe not the next. And maybe another more craven president comes after that. Oh, with Kamala Harris. Pete Buttigieg. Donald Trump again. Frankly, even many of the Republicans who have seen him on the top stage here, they've all turned on a dime. So what does that mean? That means we're screwed. And so

watching this has personally been one of the most like black pilling incidents that has happened to me in a really long time in terms of how much the media can move discourse, how much it can move public opinion and the way that the establishment, even if they are out of touch with the majority of the American people, they can control all of your universe of options so that they always win no matter which course that you take here. Well, there are two different pieces here. There's number one, the American people still support getting out of Afghanistan. And the answer consistently has been yes. The moment that, you know, if Biden were to turn around and be like, we're going back in, people would be like,

what? Hell no. That's different from, you know, they try to separate these two things out and say, yes, of course we still want to get out. But the way that Biden did it is so bad. And people have really bought into that. I mean, that's like an overwhelming opinion of he's and and we will both acknowledge this has been this has not been great. And Joe Biden, not known for his competence throughout his entire career. His press conference is bad. It didn't look good. Press conference was bad, but I mean, way beyond a press conference. And this also falls on the military, which had months and months to plan for this and apparently didn't really bother to. But ultimately, the buck stops with Biden. And there's no doubt that this has all been

extraordinarily chaotic and messy. And I'm sure in the aftermath, there will be actual tactical, strategic decisions that could have been made that would have led to a better outcome. I don't deny that whatsoever. But I think what the media has been very effective in doing is I do think they have tremendously damaged Biden. I mean, his approval rating has taken a big hit. In part, that is definitely because of the economy and definitely because of COVID, some of which is in his hands, some of which is not in his hands. But there is no doubt. This has given him, I think, the aura of incompetence and bumbling is the biggest thing that people take out of this. And frankly, they're not off base

from reading that into Biden. Because again, taking, let's put his presidency aside, like throughout his career and as vice president, he is not known as a organizationally efficient manager and competent executive. That's not his thing. Okay. So I don't think it's actually crazy for people to take that away from him. Democrats were already screwed in the midterms. That's just the fact of the matter. They didn't do what it takes to redistrict. That would have given them somewhat of a chance. They would have to buck history, which is against them and against whatever party is in power. People are feeling jittery about the economy. Delta is in really bad, I mean, it's really bad right now. It hit us here at breaking points and is impacting, you know, hundreds of thousands of people across the country right now.

So politically, I think he's in really dire shape, and you're exactly right. The only things that the media actually praised Trump for were when he took militaristic actions, when he did strikes in Syria, when he took out Qasem Soleimani, and then suddenly CNN loved him. So their one overarching ideology where they will stop just being shameless partisan cheerleaders is when it comes to militarism. They are all committed militarists. You go against the military industrial complex, you will pay such a price. If you, you know, launch a new war, drone strike civilians, whatever it is. I mean, that's the only thing they've really praised him for is these drone strikes, which we're learning killed Afghan babies. So that is the one

consistent thread running throughout all of partisan media. There you go. All right. We also have some additional really bad news here regarding the eviction moratorium. Again, like I said, this is not unforeseen. However, let me just throw the details here up on the screen for you. The Supreme Court has ruled that Biden's eviction moratorium exceeded the authority of the CDC. This was expected because the last time that Trump's eviction moratorium was upheld by the Supreme Court, it was actually Brett Kavanaugh who had a little note there that said, listen, I'm going to go along with this for now, but this really, if we're going to extend it further, it really needs to be done through an act of Congress.

Everybody knew that. Everybody saw that. It was pretty plain to see. Nancy Pelosi didn't do anything. Joe Biden didn't do anything. Yeah, they waited until the last minute. Came down to the deadline. And clearly, Joe Biden was not planning on doing anything. He was hoping this was just going to quietly expire and they're going to keep moving forward. No one was really going to notice because the media was wrapped up in something else. But it turned out Cori Bush really shamed him and shamed Pelosi as well by sleeping out on the Capitol steps and calling a lot of attention to the plight of, you have millions of American families who are at risk of eviction now with this moratorium expiring. So what they did at the time is they said, okay, listen, we don't know if this is going to pass judicial muster,

but at least if we craft a new eviction moratorium that's more limited, there's a fig leaf of a legal justification. Maybe, just maybe, we might get somewhere with that. But more importantly, it gives people a little more time so that more of that rental relief that was appropriated could go out the door. I'm going to get to that. Pause for a moment on that. Let me get to that in just a moment because the immediate impacts of the end of the eviction moratorium are already being felt. I could throw this tear sheet up on the screen. This is local from the Mississippi Free Press. Mass evictions already underway in Mississippi and Starkville. This is another state really hard hit with COVID. We know that when people are evicted and have housing instability, that also leads to the spread of the virus. In this particular instance, this entire apartment

complex, everybody is being evicted. And it's actually not clear that the moratorium even would have saved them because under Mississippi law, there's a new owner. They wanted to kick everybody out, apparently refurbish the place. So dire situations like this starting to unfold all the way across the country. But as I was saying, the original idea was, we're going to buy some time here so we can get more rental relief out the door so that landlords can be made whole so that tenants can stay in their properties and we don't face a mass homelessness crisis. Did any of that happen? No, no, it didn't. Let's throw the next tariff sheet up on the screen. Rental relief barely picked up at all in July. Okay. So people did not, in fact, towns and

states and the federal government did not, in fact, get their act together and say, my gosh, we've got this ticking time clock. We know this is likely to get struck down. We've got to get the money out the door. Got to get the money out the door. That did not happen. Only a tiny fraction of the rental relief dollars have gone out. So it's 1.5 billion went out the door in June. Only 1.7 billion went out the door in July. So a little uptick. And only about 5 billion of the 50 billion that was appropriated has actually gone out the door. So this program has been a complete failure. People are now screwed. The media doesn't seem to care. And there's a genuine crisis now on our hands. It's one of the stunning things I think on this is that this is an area where the lack of competence in the Biden administration is just so stark.

Like 89% of these funds haven't been withdrawn, and there really is, like, no coverage of it whatsoever. I do think that it was foolish in the first place in order to try and sign this because the Supreme Court was blatant about it. There's a 6-3 conservative majority. They were like, look, Kavanaugh was like, I'm not going to let this stand. And then Roberts obviously went along with that, the same with Amy Coney Barrett, and it got struck down.

So now you're in this crazy situation. Now it's obviously going forward. The rental relief didn't get out the door. I'm not exactly sure. Somebody needs to do a good explainer here of why these people are so incompetent that they're unable to disperse funds. You have money sitting in the bank, and somebody needs it. What's going on here? Yeah.

I think it's also incredibly unfair, which is that a lot of landlords, you know, basically held, you know, they had to hold on for months and months. I'm seeing stories out now that's actually screwing a lot of normal people, which is that in places with the eviction moratorium, they're demanding like six months rent upfront because they're like, we can't evict you. So you have to, who has six months rent sitting in the bank? I once had to do two months rent up front and it was like the worst thing ever. And so I can't even imagine somebody who's in dire straits. It distorted our whole rental market when the reality is we planned for this entire situation.

The money was there and it was supposed to have gone out. So that's the real failure. Now you have the landlords, you know, campaigning for the eviction moratorium because they're not even getting the money. You have the tenants who are ultimately going to get screwed. The small ones, in particular the landlords, they're done, I think. They probably have to sell. And, you know, now people are going to be homeless.

So it's just a story of government incompetence all the way around that just comes together to screw over normal people. And not a lot of people are covering it. That's the worst part. That Mississippi article, where are you going to see that anywhere else? I already know the answer to that. That is exactly it. The latest number is, say, 6 million Americans behind on their rent at risk of eviction. That's a disaster. That is a disaster. I had the numbers of how many were foreclosed on during the Great Recession, and it was not even into the millions. Okay, so you're talking about a potentially huge crisis.

And as we discussed before, I mean, few things are more devastating to people than losing a place to live, especially when you have kids and you have that instability. They need to be going to school. They need to have just a stable place that they can go home to. You end up either if you're in a group congregate setting, that's a terrible state of affairs. If you end up couch surfing at a friend or neighbor relative's house, that can also put vulnerable children at risk. It's one of those things that starts a devastating downward spiral. It becomes very

difficult to get a job because you don't have a fixed address. All of these compounding problems. And no one seems to care. Very little from the elites here in D.C. Very little from the media, which is more interested in trying to get us back into or start a new war right now. That's where their attention lies. And, like, look, I get it. There's a lot going on right now with the storm and going on with Afghanistan. But I would think that 6 million Americans

potentially becoming homeless might merit a news item. That's just me. Well, Mississippi in particular, you know, it's the hardest hit state. That's it. And they were totally wrecked. They had no plans in order for all of us. I was reading a big article this morning and, you know, their ICUs are filling up nearly all the way because I was reading a big article this morning, and their ICUs are filling up nearly all the way because they also have a large unvaccinated population. That's right. It's just terrible.

Yeah, it absolutely is. And speaking of coronavirus, we have some new numbers for you this morning, both good and bad. Some good ones. So the good ones, at least, let's start with that one. Let's put that up there on the screen, which is that we had 1.1 million shots, highest single day total in nearly two months. That's from the White House. Now, a lot of that is frankly just driven by what happened with the Delta variant. And we have seen a huge spike in cases, the most that we've seen almost since January, and the number of deaths also creeping back up over the $1,000 a day, or 1,000 deaths a day mark, unfortunately. But what that really does show us is that the profile of the unvaccinated and more is also

beginning to shift. So let's put this up there from the New York Times, which actually did a pretty good investigation. One of the things that we told you repeatedly is that black Americans were most likely to be unvaccinated per capita. That's actually changed quite a bit. And really, Crystal, that confirms some of the data that we dug into from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is that what the Kaiser Family Foundation showed us was that black Americans at the time, and this is when Delta was less prevalent,

were much more likely to be in the wait-and-see approach. And we're saying, hey, look, if I think I'm at risk, then I'm going to do something about it. Given Delta, it seems that a lot of people have done something about it. Really the group that remains now, it's largely white Americans, many of them older, a lot of them Republicans. But really what we're trying to do here is just show the data and we want to do what the media is refusing to do. I don't want to shame anybody here.

It's not about shame. It's about pointing out the facts and then maybe talking about different strategies and more that might convince people to get vaccinated. My own particular case turned into some culture war thing. I saw some people arguing about it. Online. You have to stop reading shit online. I know, I really do. You've got to stop reading real life.

I had nothing else to do. I was trapped in my house. Okay, so here's what people were like, but Sagar, you got COVID even though you were vaccinated. Now, actually, there's a lot of new studies, especially given the UK and more, where if you have a breakthrough case of COVID and you're vaccinated, you have something like super immunity. So that's great for me. Congratulations. But really what it is, is that my particular case, people are saying, well, if you can still get COVID after you're vaccinated, then what's the point? Well, the point is, is that if you look at the ICU and death number, that the vast majority of the people in the ICUs and who are dying are people who are unvaccinated, especially those

with comorbidities and those who are ill in the elderly population. And here's the other thing. Just because I got a breakthrough case of COVID, just because I got COVID while I was unvaccinated, in the aggregate, population-wide, you are still less likely to get COVID whenever you're vaccinated than if you're not. Now, it may not be, you know, 40% or whatever that they're saying, but something I've tried to emphasize on the show so many times is that in the aggregate, little bits of percent matter. We are a country of 330 million people. If it decreases the chance of overall population wide spread by 10%, guys, that's millions of millions of people. And then each individual

person who is infected then becomes a vector for infection for others. So you have to think in a very, very holistic way. If you're young, I understand. You know, Sagar, you're a young guy. You're 29. You're healthy. You got COVID. Yeah, it still didn't feel good.

I'm not going to lie to you. I'm going to tell you exactly the truth, which is, yeah, I still got it. I still didn't feel good. And I was vaccinated. So what's the point? The point is, is as I just told you, overall population, you're still less likely to get it. And in terms of the actual effects for the elderly, those are the ones that we should care the most about. And so I choose to look with compassion to a lot of these people who won't get it. I understand, you know, exactly why and what they don't trust in more. And if you're young, and I've gotten many questions, so I want to make sure I address this here. That's why I personally think that you should

get vaccinated from a population-wide level so that you can look to that. It's not just about yourself. You know, I was always probably going to be fine. But, you know, if there was a chance that we could make sure that somebody elderly, somebody with an immunocompromised or more couldn't, that's a different story. Well, and also, when you did get it, you knew because you were vaccinated. You were very, very, very unlikely to end up in a hospital and, God forbid, dead. I mean, that's what it really protects against. So, yeah, there are breakthrough cases. You're case in point.

A lot. Right? There are a good number are breakthrough cases. You're case in point. A lot. Right? There are a good number of breakthrough cases. But as you said, if you get vaccinated, you're less likely to get a case, but you may still get a case. If you do, you're not going to end up in a hospital, and you're not going to end up dead. That seems like a pretty good outcome. And you're less likely also to spread it to the community, and that's really important. You know, this data on who is getting vaccinated, it's actually quite interesting because if you look at, they kind of break things down into

these two groups, this one that's basically wait and see, and the wait and see group, a lot of them have waited and seen, and they're starting to get vaccinated. That's why you see this uptick, especially in places that are really hard hit right now. They're weighing the cost benefits. They're going, okay, I was a little nervous about the vaccination, but I know people who are getting sick. I know people who are getting hospitalized. I don't want that to be me or my kids or my parents or whoever it is. That wait and see group disproportionately are black and brown.

The definitely not group disproportionately white. And by the numbers, very little that looks likely to persuade them. The top things that people said might lead them from the definitely not group to ultimately get a shot, one was free transportation, which I found kind of interesting. Another one was if the vaccination was required for them to be able to fly. And another one was if it was available from their personal physician. But we're only talking about roughly 10% of people in those groups who said that any of those things would be persuasive for them. So you have a group that just is hardcore. They've bought into some of the conspiracy theories. Some of the people that they trust the most in the news space or

in the pundit space or in the political space have been wildly irresponsible about what the information and the lies that they're telling people. And unfortunately, you know, they've bought into it. And like you said, I have nothing but compassion for people and the way that they've been lied to and gaslit to the point that, you know, there's a large chunk of Americans who just aren't going to trust what the media tells them, aren't going to trust what the federal government tells them. And frankly, those institutions haven't really earned anyone's trust. So that's the perspective from which I understand it. You've had a couple of really sad, relatively high profile deaths of conservatives who had been either, you know, anti-mask or

sort of dabbled in anti-vax rhetoric. One was a Texas activist named Caleb Wallace, who was an anti-mask protest leader and has now passed away from coronavirus. Really sad situation here. And his wife told the newspaper that he began experiencing symptoms on July 26, but refused to get tested or go to the hospital. Instead, he took high doses of vitamin C, zinc aspirin, and ivermectin. And of course, you know, don't do that without doctor's guidance. Don't go and get the horse shit from the veterinarian. I mean, really, honestly, it's, but what has really been disgusting though is a lot of the like triumphalism. Yeah, they're cheerleading this. I pulled two guardian tears to show you the way that they write it. It's terrible.

It really is disgusting to cheer for someone's death. And there's another one, a Tennessee radio host who'd criticized these sort of like mocked vaccine efforts. Phil Valentine is 61 years old, and he now has also died of COVID-19. His family said, told listeners before he died that he wants his listeners to know that while he's never been an anti-vaxxer, he regrets not being more vehemently pro-vaccine. These are horrific, heartbreaking stories leaving behind families, leaving behind children. nothing to celebrate or cheerlead. And to see the way that it has been celebrated in some corners, including in official media outlets, is really disturbing and ultimately disgusting. It also reminds me of that story that we covered about the doctor who went on MSNBC and was like, I don't think that people who are unvaccinated should even get medical care. What? What? It's so crazy. And actually, personally, Phil had me on his radio show when I was like 22 years old, like when I just started out. And he was a really nice guy. And he had a misguided view, in my

opinion. But that doesn't mean you should cheerlead his death. And I think that that's really the gross part about this. And everything I see around all of this is that we would just be a little bit better off by giving some people not even the benefit of the doubt necessarily, but just approaching it and being like, okay, what's going on here? Many people will tell you, like I said, I was addressing the young, I had so many young people message me and like, see, see why I'm not getting vaccinated. Yeah, I get it. Like, look, you're probably going to be fine. But you got to think about from a broader societal perspective about the cost to you, which is getting sick, you know, slightly whenever you get it, maybe. And then if you do get a breakthrough case, you're not going to feel great. Okay. That is baked in.

I will feel better knowing that I'm protecting somebody who is older, right? Or at least tried to do so. I think that that is probably worth it, especially when the entire thing is free. We've now had a billion and a half people or something who've been vaccinated across the globe. Probably the greatest study that you could ever want, right? I think that that stuff is really important. And so really what it is, is just talk to people. And if you don't want to get vaccinated, okay. But that doesn't mean we're not going to deny you healthcare. I think that's so insane. We tell people not to be fat and a lot of people, you know, what is it? 70 something percent of of the fat or whatever? People in the country are fat. Are we going to deny, you know, diabetes care?

No, that's completely insane. Or lung cancer. Or lung cancer from smoking. Or, you know, liver issues because you drink too much. Because of alcoholism, exactly. Yeah. Please, it's insane. The whole thing is just, we just need a little bit more compassion, you know, for everybody else.

That is very well said. Wow, you guys must really like listening to our voices. While 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 Sagar in your daily lives. Take care, guys. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?

Well, you know, if there's a core theme to this show, it's probably this. Don't let the culture war rot your brain. Pause for a moment. Think especially during the most emotionally charged times and especially when people who align with have a vested interest in pushing the limits of what type of political rhetoric that you are okay with. It is easy to be against something and see reason when it is not convenient for you. It is a lot harder when it's inconvenient. So that's where I find myself today. Do I like Joe Biden? No. Did I vote for Joe Biden? No. Did I ruthlessly criticize him throughout the Democratic primary and general election? Yes. And yet, do I want Joe Biden to resign over the horrific deaths of 13 American service members in Afghanistan on Thursday?

No, because it's an incredibly stupid idea. And yet, I once again find myself in a massive political minority on the right. And it only took hours after the final death toll from the attack was revealed for GOP legislators to come out of the woodwork. Senators Hawley, Senators Blackburn, Congressman Madison Cawthorn, many others. I've seen the idea take hold amongst the grassroots as it spreads, and it is really worth pausing here to just say to all of you, stop. For God's sake, please stop. I don't like Joe Biden as much as the rest of you, but let's really think this through. And let's start with the obvious. Whenever Democrats wanted to impeach Trump over a questionable at best phone call with the

Ukrainian president, I seem to recall every single one of these people decrying it as a partisan witch hunt. All of the right, it seems, started rereading Federalist papers and spoke of impeachment in lofty terms. How only in the most extraordinary circumstances could Congress reach for that lever? I was among them. So was Crystal. You can go back and you can roll the tape if you're interested. Along every step of the way, we decried that process as a pointless distraction from the real problems of the country, how it cheapened the process of impeachment itself, how ultimately it would politically backfire. And every single one of those things turned out to be true.

Many of the people calling for Joe Biden's resignation, they loved those takes at the time. Then came January 6th and emotions were hot, perhaps hotter than they are today amid the chaos in Afghanistan. And again, I stood up and I said the same thing on January 11th when I came out against impeachment of Trump for the same reason. Impeachment, resignation, whatever you want to say, it's anti-democratic. And so you better be damn sure whenever you're doing it that you're acting not only in the best interest of the people, but of the precedent that you set that can stand the test of time.

And that is just to cover my bona fides on this matter. Now let's turn to Joe Biden. Let's really consider what these Republicans are saying, that Joe Biden should resign or be impeached because of the deaths of 13 American combat soldiers in Afghanistan as a result of withdrawal. So are we saying that every single military operation that's botched from here on out

rises to the level of impeachment or resignation? Need I remind you Donald Trump greenlit a very sketchy terrorism raid in his very first week of office that actually resulted in the death of an American Navy SEAL? Or need I remind you that four Green Berets were actually killed in Niger for seemingly no reason except extreme incompetence by their chain of command and because of a directive from the then-president to pursue ISIS wherever they are. How about this? Before Trump's pursuit of a peace deal with the Taliban, his failed Afghan strategy pushed American combat deaths in Afghanistan to a five-year high, well over 40 American combat deaths. Should he have been impeached or should he have resigned

over that? Take Trump out of it. Should George W. Bush have resigned because of the failure of 9-11? Should Obama have resigned because of his failed Afghan strategy that cost us thousands of American lives, untold number of Afghans, and wasted a trillion dollars? Should JFK resign because of the Bay of Pigs? Should Truman have resigned because of the fall of China? Should FDR have resigned because of Pearl Harbor? I can go on endlessly, and I scaled up those examples of the disasters to show just how absurd it is these claims for resignation are, and to show you how it would, of course, come back to bite the GOP next time they hold power while the Democrats hold the House and the Senate. And it just so happened to have been the case, oh, I don't know, like two years ago. The culture war has rotted people's brains to only slowly push our republic further towards decline,

like some sort of banner republic where people impeach and imprison each other over petty offenses to simply hold in the reins of the oligarchy. Principles aside, this is also still one of the dumbest ideas imaginable. So Joe Biden has three and a half years left on his term. If he resigned, it would be worse. You know why? Because the diversity dean herself, Kamala Harris, would be president. And look, as bad as Biden is, I could promise you. If you're angry about what's happening in Kabul, I'm right there with you. Whether you fully blame Biden or not, we may disagree. But I urge you, again, think about what you're really saying. You want to normalize resignation calls and impeachment for foreign policy events like this?

You are putting us on the same road that the Democrats did when they impeached Trump over the Ukraine phone call. Many Republicans spoke in lofty terms at the time and seem to have forgotten that rhetoric today. And that's the problem with this country. Almost every single person in public life is completely full of it. That means most people are relegated to saying, well, he's full of it, but at least he aligns more with me. That's the road to hell. And I reject it fundamentally. I think the best part about this country is we're allowed to think for ourselves. And so no matter how you feel right now, consider what I have said. And if you still come to a different conclusion, that's fine. I just hope that you thought about it a little bit. That's the one, Crystal. It just drives me crazy.

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. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller had seen enough. Hours after watching our servicemen and women come under attack with 13 more lives lost, he wanted one very simple thing, accountability. Not just for these attacks, but for the years of failures and lies that

ultimately led us to this war. I want to say this very strongly. I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, I demand accountability. But the reason people are so upset on social media right now is not because the Marine on the battlefield let someone down. That service member has always rose to the occasion, done extraordinary things. People are upset because their senior leaders let them down and none of them are raising their hands and

accepting accountability or saying, we messed this up. What I'll say is, and from my position, potentially all those people did die in vain if we don't have senior leaders that own up and raise their hand and say, we did not do this well in the end. Without that, we just keep repeating the same mistakes. And for his honesty and demand for accountability, he was relieved of duty. Rules are rules after all, they'll say. But are they really? Who do duty. Rules are rules after all, they'll say. But are they really? Who do these rules actually apply to after all? Because for 20 years in Afghanistan, an elite band of criminals lied to us, sanctioned atrocities, cost hundreds of thousands of lives,

trillions of dollars, because they were either cowards or they were directly on the take. Not a single person who lied or justified war crimes or thought it was a good idea to enable allies who were corrupt, drug-dealing warlords with child sex slaves, not one of them has faced a moment of accountability. But for this Marine, suddenly the rules are the rules. The only one held accountable is the one who dares to be honest about the compounding failures of those who have real power. And worse than escaping with no accountability, those who committed the gravest crimes and told the biggest lies can instead be found sitting in their mansions, penning op-eds to appear in the nation's top newspapers.

Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, George W. Bush even had the gall to release a statement. The economists dragged down Henry Kissinger, the Cold War architect of countless Latin American atrocities, to offer his thoughts on Afghanistan. If you are a beltway elite, there is literally no crime so great it can't be forgiven, normalized, or whitewashed completely. Or you might find those culpable for the misery in lives and destabilization and death offering their sage

advice on CNN or Fox News or MSNBC while they collect fat paychecks from the defense contractors who are the only true winners of the war in Afghanistan. The Intercept dug into some of the details here. You got people like General Petraeus, who helped author the Afghan disaster, now called on unironically to offer their thoughts while also cashing in on the failure. Petraeus serves on a big cybersecurity company board and is a partner at a private equity company with major investments in the defense industry. And for some godforsaken reason that I will literally never understand, cable news bookers keep asking John Bolton for his thoughts on the whole matter. So this Marine lost his job for blowing the whistle on these many years of failure, but those who authored the criminal failure,

they are richer and more successful and more esteemed than ever. I wish I could say that this was just about Afghanistan, though. In fact, of the many crises that are facing America today, an utter lack of accountability is one of the most dire for undermining the whole project that we call America. Wealthy tax cheats, they get away with skipping out on their obligations

while the IRS goes after poor single moms in Mississippi. The sociopaths who crashed the entire global economy, they got a bailout. And struggling homeowners had their lives destroyed. Low-level drug dealers and users

get thrown in prison for life, but the Sacklers, who addicted millions, get off with their fortune intact and zero jail time. Julian Assange is in prison, but the men who committed the war crimes he exposed, they walk free. Edward Snowden can't ever return home for fear of being locked in prison for the rest of his life. But the men who systematically illegally spied on Americans, they also walk free and are part of the same circuit of cable news bloviators and war profiteers as the ones who lied about Iraq and Afghanistan. Steven Donziger, he sits imprisoned in his home. While Chevron execs who persecuted him and destroyed the lives of countless indigenous people, they continue to get rich. The company has yet to pay a single dollar in restitution, even as they have spent

millions to destroy Donziger's life. Literally everywhere you turn in American society, you see the same story play out time and time again. Elites act with criminal impunity, and average Americans are casually fired, criminalized, lives destroyed for even the smallest infraction. And if you blow the whistle on the crimes of American imperialists or their corporate allies, forget about it. They will do whatever it takes to destroy you. Is it any wonder that the QAnon nuts fantasized about rounding up elite criminals for mass prosecutions? Who wouldn't want to imagine that a mass accountability could be just around the corner? Because, of course, in reality, no such reconciliation is anywhere on the horizon. The crisis of elite accountability continues indefinitely and with dire consequences.

Societies simply cannot function without some baseline of legitimacy. And legitimacy cannot exist without some baseline of elite accountability. It's not a lot more complicated than that. And in the meantime, cynical politicians exploit the discontent for their own terrible purposes. Obama's hope and change curdles into Trump's overt cruelty, which morphs into the fatalism and profoundly low expectations of the Biden era. We have stopped imagining we can do anything other than basically muddle forward. So that's one more lesson from Afghanistan, that those most culpable face zero accountability, so long as they have the right connections, right pedigree, right class status, and those who suffer

the consequences of elite failure had better keep their mouth shut or else. As if a single person needed another opportunity to learn this truth about justice and accountability in America. And Sagar, obviously this ties directly into your monologue about how all these calls for Joe Biden to be impeached, where are the calls for all these other people? We have a great guest standing by, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute, Dr. Trita Parsi, longtime friend of the show. Sir, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. You know, I saw a tweet that you elevated. Let's put this up there on the screen. I thought it summed things up really well, and I'd love your reaction. So let's go ahead and put it up there. And what it is, is around elite failure here in the United States, about how in America,

the U.S. foreign policy establishment had a real opportunity this week to confront and learn from its 20-year failure in Afghanistan. And instead, like in Iraq, it refused, blaming it all on poor execution. And America can never fail. It can only be failed. What exactly do you make of the hysteria of the coverage and of the establishment's reaction to withdrawal of Afghanistan in these times right now? Well, Sagar, put yourself in their shoes for a moment. Their crimes, their lies, their mistakes are so unforgivable. So their only way of escaping justice is to double down and triple down on those very same lies and hoping that they can just continue doing it as long as possible. Because if they were to admit the

mistakes, they would not be forgiven because these mistakes and these crimes are unforgivable. And that's part of the problem here. So you're absolutely right. There is a failure upwards because they're all protecting each other right now. Same thing happened with Iraq. The reason why there was no accountability for it was because almost everyone in D.C. were part of it or supporting of it. So we need the really complete overhaul in order to be able to break free from this pattern. And just looking at what happened with the latest drone strike that turns out killed several civilians, including a two-year-old child. To me, it just captures exactly what was wrong with our presence there, because the main recruiting tool of the terrorists were people whose family members were killed, civilians, and as a result,

they joined Taliban or ISIS because they were seeking revenge against Americans. And then they target those Americans and other civilians. And this vicious cycle just continued. And it's been going on for 20 years. And everyone else who's been supporting it, as you've noted, have only been failing upwards. What do you think that the lessons, the real lessons from 20 years in Afghanistan should be? Well, first of all, we have absolutely no business doing nation building in countries that we have no knowledge of, do not understand, are not even intellectually curious enough to understand and find out about their cultural circumstances, etc. Let me give you an example. When the Soviets

sought to occupy northern Iran right after World War II, or actually towards the end of World War II. You know, they sent in a vanguard, but it wasn't spies or counterintelligence people. They sent in cultural anthropologists to map out how Iranian society worked, where the power centers were, how just the cultural and the political culture of the place in order to minimize the inevitable challenges that comes with an occupation. Compare that to the number of Arabic-speaking Americans that were sent into Iraq. Three percent of those who were sent into Iraq spoke Arabic. So we don't even have the curiosity of trying to find out what place it is that we're trying to turn into ourselves. We have to come to terms with the reality that America is not the answer to every problem in

the world. And it certainly is not the answer to the problems of Afghanistan. The problems of Afghanistan has an Afghan solution, not an American solution. And that's the thing, Professor, we see a lot of talk here about this is a diminished to American power. You know, this is we're letting China run the region. I mean, it seems in my view that the Chinese love nothing more than to have us bogged down in Afghanistan, endlessly wasting trillions of dollars, military presence and more. You know, if they want to go ahead and try with this mess, something tells me that they're probably too smart to actually do something about it. What do you make of so many of those in DC talking

about how this is a diminished to American power, you know, now we'll have less say in the ability to, you know, have, you know, the affairs of the world and more. What is your response to that? If you are interested in projecting American interests? You know, when you have no argument that shows why it actually lies in the strategic interests of the United States to do something, that's when you rely on these fake arguments about credibility or that the Chinese are going to take over. I mean, during the Cold War, whenever you needed to get something done in the United States, something that actually wasn't really helpful, you would invoke the Soviet card. You have to do it because if you don't, the Soviets will get

there or the Soviets will do X, Y, and Z. China is now starting to become the new Soviet Union. Iran was the Soviet Union of the Middle East for a very long time. It's what you do and what you say when you don't have an argument, when you cannot defend your suggestions on the basis of American interest. You know, the media, oftentimes they can play partisan cheerleaders, but on the basis of American interest. You know, the media, oftentimes they can play partisan cheerleaders, but on the issue of militarism, they're absolutely consistent. They praise Trump for his most militaristic actions. The more liberal inclined outlets turned on Biden when it came to him ending the conflict in Afghanistan, and they did that immediately. What are the costs of the consistent militarism of the U.S. media?

Well, we see that cost every day. You have such a divided country right now in the United States because of the manner in which all the resources that are being spent here are going to a very limited few. I mean, as you mentioned in your earlier segment, this was not a development program of Afghanistan. This was a development program of Northern Virginia, where all of these different defense contractors and all of these retired generals are currently living. So we see how the country is being further and further divided because this inequality that comes with this militarism, this empire, is inescapable. So this is part of the reason why John Quincy Adams 200 years ago to today said America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. Because if it does, it may become the dictatress of the world, but it will come at the cost of its own spirit and its own liberty. And that is exactly what we're seeing here in the United States. Yeah. And you know, the final thing here,

sir, which is that there's a lot of talk about, you know, the American, as you said, not only credibility, but that this will show our allies and the rest of the world that we are weak. You know, China is going to move on Taiwan or, you know, any such action like that. What do you think of that argument? I don't think much of that argument at all, because I think, again, it's what you say when you don't have any arguments. And let me shift the conversation slightly to another point, which is that obviously the images of Afghanistan have become very, very grasping. And this is what the media has been showing because of the deaths.

And it's understandable. But there's some other images that just took place in the Middle East that are a direct consequence of the United States leaving the region that are far more consequential, though not as grasping. And that's the images of the Iranian, the Saudi and the UAE foreign ministers meeting together at the summit that was put together by the Iraqi government. A summit that was put together, a diplomatic initiative by regional powers themselves to figure out how they can resolve the problems of the region diplomatically by talking, which would not have taken place if many of these countries could continue to hide behind American military power. It's not going to grasp the headlines in the same way, but it's actually far more consequential and a direct consequence of the

U.S. starting to withdraw from the Middle East. That is a great and excellent point. Very good point. Dr. Parsi, it's always great to have you and have your expertise. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Give the dog a pet for us. I will. All right. Thanks, everybody, for watching. It's so amazing to be back here in the studio. Take note of those programming notes I made at the top of the show. And if you can support us, we are eternally, eternally grateful here. It's been just one of those weeks or two weeks now with Afghanistan where I'm just so grateful to be able to inject this sort of conversation into not necessarily the mainstream, but at least know that there are millions of people who care somewhat and are going to say to the mainstream media, no, we want an alternative perspective because that was what was missing out during the Iraq war. And I can tell

you all the same conditions are still ripe here in Washington. I've got personal people in the institution, right? How dare you say that? That three over and but luckily, eight of you. And so that, you know, we are just so grateful. Let me just say, one of the things I was most proud of during these past week of is we had a fantastic voice on Luke Coons. Yeah, that's right. Who served in a lot of people, Yeah, that's right. I'm all about. And. Battening the. Ball of. Gastro.

Excerpt. D. C. M. 15 minutes for the regular. Show. And. Tim.

Subs. Cable. He. Was. Good. So compelling. Even though his. When they were.

Trying to. How. Booked. On. Lawrence. So. So. Dummy. And.

A. Full. Hours. On. Me. Santa. And. Multiple. Hours. On. Scene a couple hours on CNN. So at least there was one lone voice out there on cable news. And we were the first to have him on and draw attention to him so that he could ultimately have some bit of an impact on cable news and bring at least somewhat of a different narrative

into the mainstream. So I actually felt really great about that because it also showed, you know, one of the things that we've tried to do and part of why we try to have higher production values and the set design and like the whole approach that we have is that hopefully there is some bit of mainstream crossover so that we're not just talking to people who are kind of outside of that mainstream system. And in this instance, there was that sort of connect that makes a big difference. Such a good point. The Afghanistan paper segment we did, that got over 100,000 views.

And almost immediately afterwards, I believe it was booked on MSNBC. Same thing. So that's, look, it's not us. It's you. It's your voice. People see us at the top of the podcast charts or they see our views and more. And they know that there are at least people out there who care about what we're talking about. And so it gives me life in order to try and do this.

And thank you all so much for your support. We really appreciate it. We will see you all tomorrow. See you all tomorrow. 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. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about

understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery.

Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.