The Young Turks - Ilhan Schools Morons

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

Ilhan Omar calls out Fox News's "hateful rhetoric" over Afghan refugees. MAGA goes full nativist on refugees fleeing Afghanistan. Huge stockpiles of U.S.-made weapons and aircraft are now in Taliban hands. How to actually get a Trump voter vaccinated. The Biden Administration pushes plans for a third booster vaccine, but experts say we should focus on the unvaccinated and places struggling to access the vaccine first. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. What's up. Casparian and John Iderola, host of the damage report and a good friend of mine who is nice enough to do both hours of the show with me today. I'm greedy. I want as much as I can get. In fact, if you could leave, that would be best. So today on the show. I mean, I'm not going to pass up that offer. So I'm a little under the weather today. I do not have COVID. So my energy levels are not where

they need to be. So John was kind enough to help me do the show. So thank you for that. But I promise you, the show is going to be excellent. We have a lot of important stories to get to, including the continuation of the white replacement conspiracy theory playing out in regard to the refugee crisis in Afghanistan. So of course, we have a certain responsibility to help the very individuals who assisted the United States military in Afghanistan, but of course the right wing in America wants to turn our backs on them. Because they want a fearmonger about Muslims. We're right back to the same debates that we were having during the Syrian refugee crisis.

Later in the show, we'll talk a little bit about a disgruntled employee who retaliated against the company that fired her. Does she deserve 15 years in prison for the alleged crime that she has committed? Okay, that I think is a super interesting question. We'll get to that story in the second hour. But for now, please like and share the stream. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell them about this show, help support us. It's an easy way to do it and it helps to get the algorithm in place. So more and more people see the program.

And as always, you can join as a member by going to t.yt.com slash join or click on that join button if you're watching us on YouTube. Without further ado, let's get to our first story. Afghans are so desperate to flee Afghanistan that people like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, the usual suspects don't really seem to care about the fact that body parts of Afghans were found in, I mean, it was basically found on the landing gear of a flight that was leaving Kabul. I mean, it's difficult to even think about it. That's how desperate people in Afghanistan have been to flee the country.

Now the Taliban has taken control. Now Fox News is going out of its way to rehash more of the white replacement conspiracy theories in regard to the Afghan refugee crisis. But before I get to what some of them have said, I do want to share some details about what I alluded to, which is that the Air Force acknowledged on Tuesday of this week that human body parts were found in the wheel well of an American military C-17 cargo plane that took flight amid chaos at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan's capital Kabul. Air Force officials have not said how many people died in the episode Monday, but said the service

was investigating the loss of civilian lives as a crowd of Afghans, desperate to escape the country after their government collapsed to the Taliban, climbed onto the plane's wings, and fell from the sky after it took off. These are people who are desperate to find safety, but they're being painted as potential terrorists. So let's hear what they had to say about potentially taking in Afghan refugees here in the United States. If history is any guide, and it's always a guide, we will see many refugees from Afghanistan

resettle in our country in coming months, probably in your neighborhood. And over the next decade, that number may swell to the millions. So first we invade and then we're invaded. Is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of potentially unvetted refugees from Afghanistan? All day, we've heard phrases like, we promised them. Well, who did? Did you? Yes, yeah, it is our responsibility. Given the fact that the United States decided to engage in that war for two decades,

And we did make promises to Afghans who assisted us in that effort. We do have a responsibility to take in refugees. Yes, we do. John, I'd love to- Yeah, well, of course, look, Fox was hardly alone in beating the war drums for Iraq and Afghanistan, but they certainly did it and kept it up year after year after year. Why would they feel at the end after all of this any need to actually, like, like respect those who suffered the most like I yeah I when you were talking about the

people in the wheel well who thought that they might be able to escape or those who climbed on the outside of the plane knowing that there was basically no chance whatsoever that they'd survive like virtually everyone in the media like think about their own life experiences that they will bring to an analysis of that like I look back over my life I've never been in anything you know one one hundred as bad but I also know that Tucker Carlson hasn't been in anything even close to that like what's the worst thing that's ever happened to him, like a wire from his trust fund was delayed a business day or something. But we turn to those people to know how we should think about

those who were willing to almost certainly die to get away from certain death. Right. It's incredible. I mean, the, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. And I certainly am not surprised that this is the kind of commentary that we're getting from the very people, by the way, who engaged in fear-mongering about the Taliban, about al-Qaeda in the lead-up to our invasion of Afghanistan. Now they're turning around and painting those who are fleeing the brutality of those groups as these dangerous people who might not even get vetted. The vetting process for refugees is insane. I mean, there are 20 steps involved.

It literally takes years and years for refugees to get accepted to the United States after that thorough vetting process. So they're painting it as, oh, the United States, you know, the government, they don't know what they're doing. They don't do the necessary vetting. Did we even make any promises to these people? We did. But, I mean, just think about what the Trump administration did to the Kurds in Syria. I mean, the Kurds assisted us in defeating ISIS in Syria. And then after one phone call with the Turkish president, Erdogan, Donald Trump decided,

yeah, yeah, we're going to go ahead and pull troops out of this region of Syria, essentially paving the way for Turkish troops to come in and butcher the Kurds. That's what the United States did. We turned our backs on the Kurds. We're now turning our backs on Afghans who assisted us in this failed war. And I want to also play this video featuring Charlie Kirk, who is, again, using white replacement conspiracy theories to push back against the notion that we might help people in their moment of desperation, even after they helped us.

President Joe Biden's Department of Defense will accept 30,000 Afghan refugees in the military installations following the collapse of Kabul. Boom. political transformation. Let the country crumble. Do you know there's 5 million displaced people in Afghanistan now? Joe Biden is stepping up and he's allowing a flow of people from the Middle East into America. Thank you, Joe Biden.

You're such a hero, so benevolent, you're so respectful, you're so compassionate. Do you see what's going on here? What's going on here is Joe Biden wants a couple hundred thousand more Elon Omar's to come into America to change the body politic permanently. I gotta say if that were true, if this were a move to bring in more Ilhan Omar's, I'd co-signed to that. That would be fantastic, I think Ilhan Omar is fantastic, a progressive member of Congress who actually fights for the powerless, but you know, she also happens to be Muslim, visibly so, and it makes people like Charlie Kirk super uncomfortable.

Well, that's why he didn't even have to explain why that would be a bad thing. Exactly. someone fleeing persecution would come to this country, grow up here in this culture, and then want to give back by being elected representative. So why is that a bad thing? You're not going to explain? Oh God, did anyone else get like a shiver up their spine when he did that? It's really bad.

I mean, there's a lot of bad people in the media on the right, but he's among the most unwatchable. Yeah, they don't, they don't care about virtually any of the arguments they're making. It's not about changing the buddy politic with 30,000 voters in a country of like 340 million people or about them being terrorists, about them being unvetted. I wish they would be a little bit more honest and only Tucker Carlson really comes that close to this. He thinks that they're dirty, he doesn't like their religion, he doesn't want them here. He doesn't consider them people like other people. We have the tapes for Media Matters, we know what he was saying

about the Iraqis, about them being semi-literate primitive monkeys who don't know how to use toilet paper and forks. He's just an old school racist, that's all he is. The others will try to try to make it about politics or about national security or whatever, but he's fairly clear. He doesn't want them here because he thinks that they're dirty. He would, I'm sure he would expand that even farther. He is a rich, elitist white individual, the vast majority of white people he wouldn't want to be caught dead in a small room with. But definitely, if you're coming from Afghanistan, he just doesn't want you here

because he hates people that don't look like him. That's it. Yeah, look, I'm not interested in hearing anything regarding national security from anyone who justifies and defends what happened. at the nation's capital on January 6th. People who think that that was totally fine, people who watched those videos of Capitol police officers, being attacked the way they were,

including one of them who nearly got shot by his own gun until one other person intervened and prevented it from happening. Like, people watch that video, okay? And I'm talking about Fox News pundits, I'm talking about people like Charlie Kirk. And then turn around and said like, no, that was totally fine. There was nothing wrong with what happened that day.

But then they fearmonger. about Afghan refugees, people who assisted the U.S. military in Afghanistan, people who in some cases actually protected U.S. soldiers during that two-decade-long failure of a war. I mean, that's who these people are. Ilhan Omar responded to the garbage that we just shared with you in those videos. Let's hear what she had to say. There are people who've helped us in this mission. There are people whose lives are going to be at risk, and we have to do everything that we can to bring them to safety.

And we've done this many a times where we have evacuated people, airlifted them into safe spaces so that we can properly vet them and have them come to the United States as vetted refugees. I know a little bit about that, you know. I know what it's like to be a child in a family scrambling for safety in a war-torn country. I know the rigorous process you go through to get bedded as a refugee. We are the most vetted people who come to the United States. The process is long and it doesn't just end. When you arrive on the shores, it continues for years until you are eligible for citizenship at five years of entrance. And so I really hope that people understand that there is a certain promise that we've made and we can't break that promise.

And that's not a promise that the United States made, but it's also a promise that our NATO allies have made. It's a promise that neighboring countries should fulfill. And we have to do everything to make sure that there is a multinational coalition leading this effort. Now, unfortunately, there really isn't much of a coalition leading this effort. You look at the countries involved, the countries that have responded to calls to take in refugees, the United States might take in about 20,000. I mean, when you consider our total population, 20,000 is nothing for anyone who's terrified of Afghan refugees, you're not even going to notice.

Okay, you're not even going to notice. And it's going to take years and years for them to be able to. get approved to resettle here in the United States. You look at a country like Iran, which yes, does share a border with Afghanistan. They've already taken in 3.5 million Afghan refugees. That is a problem that we created as the United States. We have implemented crippling sanctions against Iran. Their people are suffering as a result in the middle of this pandemic.

And they've still agreed, by the way, to take it more Afghan refugees. Now, they're hoping that they can find a way to repatriate people in a safe manner. But they've already got 3.5 million Afghan refugees in their country now, in their country that's being crushed by the United States as we speak. After they followed through on their side of the deal regarding the Iran nuclear deal that Trump, of course, then turn around and ripped up because he wanted to escalate potential war with them. So that's what the United States is doing. That's what Iran is doing for all of the fear mongering that we hear about Iran in the U.S. press. I mean, it's just, it's shameful. The UK has agreed to taking in 20,000 refugees over several years.

The details of that are a little unclear to me, like why over several years? Like, do you take like a couple thousand the first year? I don't know. But they've agreed to 20,000. But other than that, I don't see any. You mentioned Canada. Canada said that they were going to. Canada, yes, is going to accept some refugees, so credit where credit is due, but it's not nearly enough, right? And then, you know, the other thing I wanted to just quickly mention is that, you know, you have, like, Turkey is fortifying its borders.

Like, we're not taking anybody. The United States reached out to Uganda and was like, yo, can you guys take in some Afghan refugees? We're reaching out to Uganda? Richest country in the world is reaching out to poor countries and pushing the problem that we created onto them? I mean, it's just, it's so disgusting. Yeah, it's absolutely sick. I just randomly looked up like, what's the population of Mar Vista?

It's 60,000. It's like, we're talking about a tiny fraction of that spread across the entirety of the United States. Yeah. It's ridiculous. And so, Ron, you said 3.5 million. I had an overestimate in my mind of their population. They're like an 80 million person country where many times say it's just ridiculous. And like Joe Biden is at least in theory doing what they belatedly pretend they wanted to be done under Trump.

They supposedly wanted to pull out of Afghanistan because Trump wanted to do that. So he's doing that and what they've landed on as a movement and we're seeing more and more examples of that and it's getting more vitriolic with every passing day is Biden was wrong to do the thing that Trump did, even though if Trump was here and the exact same thing could happen, they'd be perfectly fine with it. We definitely shouldn't bring in any refugees. And also, and I'm sure you've noticed it, a growing, the Taliban's kind of awesome in a number of different ways. They can't help themselves with their Lauren Boberts with them building back better.

And the talking about how awesome their military strategy is, you have people like Nicholas Fuentes, just literally like listing the things conservatives agree with them for. Right. So yeah, why wouldn't Tucker Carlson be against the refugees? The refugees are presumably Afghans who don't want to live under a hard right dogmatic conservative religious movement, which neither you or I would too. We'd flee that. Right. He rightfully fears that they're probably more liberal, open-minded sorts of Afghans. And so he doesn't have any interest in that. We're desperately here trying to get people like him to join the 21st century. He doesn't want people like that coming into our country who are ready to be a part of that experiment.

So it's, yeah, they're going to be awful. The real question is to what extent are they going to influence Joe Biden? Are they going to scare him into lowering even the 30,000? I'm a little concerned. I don't even think he's going to accept 30,000, right? So here's what we know so far about the numbers of refugees from Afghanistan that we've already accepted and what the future looks like. So U.S. officials have said the evacuations will continue, meaning evacuations of U.S. citizens. And three military bases in the United States are prepared to accommodate up to 22,000 evacuees.

Okay? As of July 31st, 2021, the U.S. had only admitted a whopping 494 Afghan refugees for the fiscal year 2021, which ends September 30th. A year earlier, only 6004 were resettled by comparison in 2016 during former President Barack Obama's final complete fiscal year in office. The U.S. admitted more than 2,700 Afghan refugees. But again, guys, like I don't, I also don't want to give the Obama administration too much credit. We're the ones who created the crisis to begin with. We have the responsibility to deal with it. Okay, what we're talking about millions of people who are suffering, when we're talking about

people who are fleeing for safety because we created an unstable situation there, we have a responsibility to write our wrongs to the best of our ability. But I mean, look, to be fair, you look at the history of the United States, and we failed to write our wrongs in so many different areas. I mean, genocide of Native Americans, slavery of African Americans, and the conversations that we have about writing our wrongs today center around banning critical race theory in elementary schools. What it doesn't exist in elementary schools. That's America. Don't even acknowledge it. These are not going to be the people that are going to care what happens to people in

Afghanistan are suffering. And it's very predictable. I wish that Joe Biden was stronger in the face of it, the word coming out from the White House that he's terrified of being criticized. He could take in five. One family from Afghanistan, they would do hundreds of days of coverage of it. So you just need to do the right thing. Like someone was mentioning in the chat, like, you know, thanks to like Trump and Republicans, didn't we clear out like 500,000 people last year? We got room coming up every day. Thanks to governors and places like Florida and Texas, five, 600 people dying needlessly every single day. So talking to me about room and about replacement. The whole thing is just so absurd, so two decades of needless suffering. And we figured out we're finally gonna pull out, but I think we can make it as bad as possible along the way. Yeah, I mean we're very good at bungling anything related to foreign policy. We gotta take a break, but we're not done with this topic. The angle focusing on Stephen Miller's disgusting comments on Laura Ingram's show need to be discussed.

disgust, and luckily it's not just the two of us who are pushing back. We have someone who's trying to help with the refugee crisis who has some pretty strong words for Stephen Miller, so stick around. Welcome back to TYT, Anna Casparian and John Ida Rola with you. John, tell everyone what you're serving up over at the damage report. Oh, God, okay, well today was big news Wednesday with Jared Jackson. So what do we talk about? Well, we talked about the introduction of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and Georgia taking the next step towards taking personal control over Fulton County's election process.

What Sean Hannity has been using to Hawk products on his radio show. It's the most awkward case of it's ever. We're gonna talk about that too. Yeah. Jared and I had some versions of our own. But anyway, yeah, well, we had fun. It was serious, but also had some laughs. Gotta say, man, J.R. is killing it lately.

His hosting is fantastic on the Friday Power Panel, so definitely check him out. He hosts most Fridays for the second hour, and he's just doing such a great job, and he's a regular on the damage report. Every Wednesday. Yeah, every Wednesday. Big news Wednesdays. Props to J.R. I'm loving it. All right, well, let's get to our next story. This happy mood needs to obviously be destroyed by this next story, unfortunately.

Let's get to it. Stephen Miller was, unfortunately, on one of the more unfortunate shows on Fox News, Laura Ingrams, to make the case for why the United States should reject Afghan refugees. Joining me now, Stephen Miller, former Trump senior advisor, founder of America First Legal, Stephen, again, we want to help the Afghans who helped us in a meaningful way, a verifiable way, and there are many of those. But should we trust the Biden administration to carefully vet these folks? Not only should we not trust the Biden administration to do so, the simple reality is that we no longer are in control of this central apparatus in Afghanistan to be able to vet anybody.

The Taliban has all of the control of the government now. So the notion that people could just show up at a checkpoint and demand resettlement into the United States, So we could have any idea about their background, their belief system, where they come from. Now that the U.S. bat government has fallen, it's just an impossibility. Well, I mean, that was yet another example of how a man who literally worked for a presidential administration does not have the expertise, the knowledge, be anything to serve in those kinds of positions. He is an absolute moron. I mean, there are only two possibilities here. Either he's a moron, and he literally doesn't know how the vetting process for refugees

works, or he's intentionally lying because he is a white supremacist. Or both, it could be both. But who knows, maybe this is a good opportunity, right? Maybe this is a good teachable moment for Stephen Miller. Maybe he's open to information about how our government works and how people are vetted if they're seeking asylum in the United States. if they're trying to settle as refugees in this country, because it's actually a very lengthy and difficult process. Let me share the details real quick, and then John, I'll go to you, because I, this is going to take a while though, because there are 20 steps, starting with

registration, not with the Taliban, okay? Registration with the United Nations, that's the first thing a refugee needs to do. Interview with the United Nations, refugee status granted by the United nations if the United Nations decides that this person does in fact deserve refugee status. At that point, referral for resettlement in the United States, interview with the State Department contractors, first background check, higher level background check for some, like Syrian refugees, for instance. Then another background check. So at this point, we're dealing with the third background check. And the refugees name is run through law enforcement and intelligence data bases for terrorist or criminal history. Some go through a higher level

clearance before they can continue. A third background check was introduced in 2008 for Iraqis, but has since been expanded to all refugees ages 14 to 65. If they pass that portion of this vetting process, they move on to step number nine. First fingerprint screening, photo taken. Then after That second fingerprint screening, because you know, the first time you do the finger, their fingerprint might change. Could smudge. Might smudge. Who knows?

Then step 11, third fingerprint screening. The refugees fingerprints are screened against FBI and Homeland Security databases, which contain watch list information and past immigration encounters, including if the refugee previously applied for a visa at a United States embassy. Fingerprints are also checked against those collected by the Defense Department during the operations in Iraq. So this is specifically, I mean, this applies to everyone, but the article that I was reading was specifically covering Iraqi refugees and what they have to go through. But understand, we're not having a conversation about like, oh, can we really rely on information

from the Taliban? That's not what the government does. That's not what this process relies on. Step number 12, case reviewed at United States Immigration. That was just the first 11? No, there's 20, there's 20 steps, okay? Step 13, some cases referred for additional review, so Syrians have to undergo the additional review. And that's all because Syrian refugees became incredibly politicized toward the tail end of Obama's second term.

For political reasons, purely political reasons, there's nothing that indicates that Syrian refugees are more dangerous than other refugees. Step 14, extensive in-person interview with Homeland Security Officer. You know what, I apologize, John. Now jump in, because obviously this is taking too much time and I feel bad that you're being filibuster. Well, I've just been listening to it. I've already given up on trying to get into the country.

So I can only imagine how difficult it is actually going through it. Look, so yes, it seems now absurd to think that like there was like a notebook in an office in Kabul that had all the data. And we lost it, so I guess we can't do it anymore. But the good side of this is, you know, assuming we can get this video to Stephen Miller, I think this is gonna make him feel a lot better because he was obviously torn up over the possibility that we wouldn't be able to admit more refugees. He just hated it.

He was accurately describing the process, he just hated that we couldn't do it. It's just such, he spent, like, and that's why he's there on the show. It's because the only thing he was an advisor for in the Trump administration was, Hey, have you ever thought about not having any refugees, any immigrants of any kind? It was a novel idea he came up with. And that was it. That was all that he did for four years. It was not only his only purpose during the Trump administration, it's the only thing he cares about.

And by the, and the position that he had, the radical position that you, and I know Jank talked about this a lot over the past few years, it was the swelling of the position from no illegal immigrants. to no immigrants, basically. And Tucker Carlson just yesterday on his show said, we shouldn't be putting, letting anyone into the country until we get our problems solved or whatever, which is one of those vague things that doesn't mean anything. And he's not just talking about it.

He means let's not have immigrants anymore. We came in, my, I don't care if I'm Irish, if I'm German, whatever, we got in. Now close the doors and we'll just coast on this from now on. That is their actual position. And so, yeah, they bring him on and they get, you know, what wisdom they can from Stephen Miller as his body rapidly rots away. But that's the position of more and more people on the right, that there is no need for immigration whatsoever. Now, a little later in this video, we're going to get to a veteran who decided to rip Stephen Miller to shreds, and you don't want to miss that. But I got to finish the rest of the steps.

I think it's important for people to know. I think it's important for Stephen Miller to know. Again, this is an opportunity, right? So step 14 was extensive in-person interview with Homeland Security Officer. Then you get to 15. Homeland Security approval is required. So after that, if they are approved screening for contagious diseases, then they have to go through a cultural orientation class, okay? To make sure that they are assimilated into American culture.

Then they're match- I've got to take that class. I'm really curious, which's in that class now. Wouldn't you want to know? Yeah, yeah, I do, although my, look, I want to be proud of my country. You know, this is where I was born. And don't get me wrong, I'm, I am proud of parts of this country. I think that there are a lot of wonderful people in this country.

When you see this kind of stuff, it's, it goes beyond embarrassment. I mean, it's just like, this government represents us. And I'm not just talking about the Biden administration. The U.S. government represents Americans overall. And think about the amount of brutality that we've engaged in through our foreign policy. The fact that we're still implementing crippling sanctions against countries like Iran after our government decided to pull out of the Iran nuclear nuclear. They accepted 3.5 million Afghan refugees over the years. and their economy is completely and utterly destroyed because of U.S. sanctions.

Like all of this pain and suffering that we're spreading across the globe, like, I feel a lot of shame about that. Yeah. So I don't know, I don't want to be, I don't want to know what's in that cultural orientation class because it's just crushing. All of this is crushing. 18. Matched with an American resettlement agency, 19, multi-agency security check before leaving

for the United States. And then finally they get to step 20 and they have to go through a final security check at an American airport. So this is a vetting process that literally takes several years, like dozens of steps. And to treat this as if like, oh, we don't know what we're doing. We're just, oh, we're going to have to rely on information from the Taliban. That's not what happens. He's lying. This is who Stephen Miller is.

Now, I felt a little bit of comfort after hearing the interview that you're about to watch. So this was on CNN. It features an Afghan war veteran named Matt Zeller. He did fight in Afghanistan. His life was saved by an Afghan individual. And he feels a lot of responsibility to withhold the promise that the United States made toward the Afghans assisting us in that war. But better yet, he has words. Let's just put it that way for Stephen Miller.

Let's watch. As far as I'm concerned, he personally is as complicit as the Taliban in these people's deaths. He should be held accountable for war crimes. He spent the entirety of the Trump administration purposely trying to prevent these people from coming here. I've had meetings with him and his ilk. I brought the interpreter who saved my life to some of those meetings.

We met with a lady by the name of Andrea Loving. She's the deputy council for the House Judiciary Committee for the GOP. Janice and I were sitting in a meeting with her. She is Stephen's counterpart at the time in Congress. We were debating about whether or not Congress should allocate more visas for these people. She then articulated what his platform was. I pointed to Janice and I said, you know, this is a gentleman who saved my life. Maybe you've just never had a chance to meet in Afghan.

And so it helped to put a face to these people's names. And they looked at me and they said, you're doing nothing but letting Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in our country and it's our job to stop you. Wrong. These are our people. There is no us and them. There's just an us. And you know what?

Stephen Miller never wore a uniform a day in his life. He's a privileged little brat. Yep. He is a privileged little brat. And to be quite honest, you watch the entirety of that interview, it was good. he's more, he's even worse than that. Like the fact that he like revels in hatred, like he loves it. He loves being a hateful little conniving, I don't know.

Yeah, you can see he's got dead little eyes. Let's not gloss it. You look in his eyes and you see nothing. There's no humanity remaining. Yeah, I mean, that's just that's the random first shot the V-roll brought up. But no, he's just, he is a reanimated scale. sent back to our world to do evil. That's, that's all it is. And unfortunately, he was able to cozy up to power under Trump. And now because he was near Trump for a while, they're going

to bring him on the news every once in a while. But you can count on him. Everything he says when he opens his mouth is going to be a born. It's going to be immoral. We do have an obligation of these people. We can not only make good on the promises stated or otherwise and do something objectively moral in saving these people, but we can make our country stronger and better by bringing them in. Absolutely. And look, I think that Hillary Clinton actually did a pretty good job several years ago explaining why the United States is responsible for what happened in Afghanistan, but more importantly, responsible to the people of Afghanistan.

Let's watch this old interview that she did with Greta Van Custrade on Fox News. To be fair, we had helped to create the problem. We're now fighting. How? Because when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, we have, this brilliant idea that we were going to come to Pakistan and create a force of Mujahideen, equip them with Stinger missiles and everything else, to go after the Soviets inside Afghanistan. And we were successful. The Soviets left Afghanistan, and then we said, great, goodbye, leaving these trained people who were fanatical in Afghanistan and Pakistan, leaving them well armed, creating a mess, frankly, that at the time,

we didn't really recognize, we were just so happy to see the Soviet Union fall, and we thought, okay, fine, we're okay now. Everything's going to be so much better. Now you look back, the people were fighting today, we were supporting in the fight against the Soviets. And now after 20 years in the Afghanistan war, all of that weaponry, all of that gear that was given to the Afghan National Army, that's now in the hands of the Taliban. So you can kind of understand, why the people of Afghanistan are trying to flee for safety. Yeah. We gotta take a break. When we come back, I promise we'll switch gears to not cheery news.

We've got more updates on COVID that you do not want to miss. So we'll be right back. Welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. You know, before we went to break, I promise that we would switch gears. But we do have one more Afghanistan related story that's important to do. You lied. I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but this is, how can we not? How can we not cover the fact that the Taliban now has all this weaponry that we gave to the Afghan National Army that no longer exists? So let's talk about that.

Not only has the Taliban taken control of Afghanistan, they've also taken hold of the weapons and even the aircraft that the U.S. military supplied to the now defunct Afghan National Army. So we're dealing with a group of people who initially the military was supposed to be fighting, but the issue is now the hollow government that was propped up by the United States, now that that's gone, all of that stuff, it ends up in the hands of the tolerance. So I want to talk about that a little bit, and I want to get specific about it, because we've implied it, we've talked about it a little bit on the show, but here are the details. Built and trained at a two-decade cost of $83 billion, and let's stop for a second. The $83 billion was specifically for the Afghan security forces, but they collapsed so quickly.

And the ultimate beneficiary of the American investment turned out to be the Taliban. They grab not only political power, but also U.S. supplied fire power in the form of guns, ammunition, helicopters, and more. And by the way, the $83 billion invested in the Afghan forces over 20 years is slightly more than what Washington budgeted last year for food stamp assistance for about 40 million Americans, just to kind of put things in perspective. So not only did the United States fail in its war in Afghanistan, we, further destabilized that country and we empowered the Taliban with American made weaponry

and aircrafts. Yeah, and I guess hypothetically they were put in a little bit of a difficult position because you send over all the weapons, you send over the helicopters, the combat aircraft, fighting vehicles, things like that. They had various estimates of how long the National Army would be able to hold up. They did an interview actually within the last couple of hours saying they thought it might be weeks or months or possibly even a couple of years. None of them seem to think it would last forever. So in theory, you take that stuff back to the extent that you even can once it's in the hand of the security forces, but then you assure that the fall will be even slower, or you leave it hoping that that buys a little

bit more time, but then it'll almost certainly be taken over. We've really got the absolute worst situation, which is it didn't buy any time anyway, and then it was taken. Right, and then it was taken, exactly. Also, I don't think enough attention has been paid to the faulty intelligence from the Pentagon. I mean, how did they think that the government that was being propped up by the United States would have any staying power, any lasting power? Clearly, they were either lying to the American people and to the government, or they just did. had faulty intel, which both things can be true, of course. I mean, we know about all of the drone strikes that were carried out with faulty intel,

but it's okay because all those civilians who died were just considered collateral damage, right? Of course. By the way, one other thing that's interesting, when the story of the Taliban taking over Kabul broke, there were videos of them in the presidential palace. And one of the Taliban members happened to be a Gitmo detainee. So I share that little piece of information with you because all of our actions lead to a reaction.

All of our actions abroad, whether we feel it as Americans or not, lead to some sort of consequence. And I think that one of the biggest mistakes Americans can make is assume that since it's happening abroad, it's happening far away, it has no impact on us, but it does. So next time you hear clowns like Bill Maher question why Muslims and other countries hate us, understand that when we're bombing innocent civilians, when innocent people are losing their family members or their own lives, I mean entire communities become radicalized against us. Doesn't mean that they all become, you know, part of insurgent groups or anything like that.

Some of them do, of course, but understand that like you can't just go around brutalizing people and assume that like, no, we're the good guys, why do people hate us so much? Why is there so much hostility toward the United States? We go in and we destabilize entire countries, and then when there's any backlash at all, we pretend like we did nothing wrong. Yeah, well, and I know, you know, since we're sort of marking, you know, a major turning point in these decades long history between the US and Afghanistan, we're obviously wondering what lessons will be learned, what lessons can be learned. But as you just pointed out,

we can't get people to understand why some people in these countries might not like the United States. Right. Like the most core, seemingly easy to understand question, we can't get that across. So I am not expecting much coming out of this. And I don't know if you saw the interview that the National Security Advisor had with some reporter, I think it's C-SPAN earlier today. Yeah, implying, you know, that this is getting out of Afghanistan as representative of something like a Biden doctrine, that he is going to be less interested in nation building and those sorts of things. We'll see, I don't know, because I don't know how much we can expect that any other member of government has learned from this. You know, they might be willing to pull out. They know that it's unpopular.

I mean, just listen to his, listen to Biden's rhetoric on China. Now, it doesn't mean that Biden is going to take the same approach. to China that we did with Afghanistan, I mean, that would be incredibly stupid. I mean, especially considering China is a country that's been building up its military capability for quite some time now. But even if we don't engage in an actual physical war with China, and it's limited to a so-called cold war, that by itself is disastrous when we're dealing with the biggest threat to national security, which is climate change. You need cooperation and collaboration with all countries, all major countries, certainly. That includes Russia, that includes China.

It doesn't mean that you have to engage in a love affair with them, but you have to find a way to diplomatically collaborate with them to war, like to in some way mitigate the biggest threat to national security. And by the way, it's not just me saying that climate change is the biggest threat to national security. The Pentagon says that climate change is the biggest threat to national security. You guys were worried about refugees now from Afghanistan. Climate refugees, I mean, we're already seeing that today. Yeah. But climate refugees, that's going to explode in coming years. But back to the weaponry that the Taliban now has hold of.

So Vice reported that there are experts who are keeping track of these weapons and how much they're being sold for on the black market. And they are being sold on the black market. So not only is the Taliban going to be using these weapons, they're also selling them. And so Mitchell Porthello says that already prices are dropping on the American style M4 assault rifles and other weapons systems widely distributed to the Afghan National Army. And that's according to Dubai-based security researcher studying the question on contract for regional governments who asked not to be named. for obvious reasons, the endless stockpiles of weapons seized by the Taliban as they took over the country will end up on regional markets because collectively, Afghanistan is already awash in light and medium weapons.

And there are some videos going around showing the Taliban kind of taking inventory of the U.S. made weaponry that was given to the Afghan National Army that no longer exists. So what you're looking at there, that's what our taxpayer dollars funded and provided to a military that no longer exists in Afghanistan, a government that no longer exists in Afghanistan. No, they got the pistols too. Yeah, no, I think that that would probably crack, like, top 50 best arsenals in Texas owned by an individual, probably. I love that, like, we obviously have a lot, there's a lot of differences between the United States and Afghanistan, but the idea that looting all of these weapons, Basically, it just gets thrown into the market because everybody already has a gun anyway. Like there are some similarities between us in Afghanistan.

Jesus. I know. And then the final part of this is it's not just the weapons, it's also, you know, helicopters and other pretty important material that we gave to the now defunct Afghan National Army that now the Taliban has. In Mazar Sharif, Taliban fighters could be seen examining UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and an A-29 Tukano attack plane. Lots of fun. That's great. But with those planes relatively complex to operate, the real prize for the Taliban will be the MI17 Russian-made transport helicopters that have been long operated in the region. Actions have consequences, and we paid for this. While we paid for all this stuff with little to no debate in Congress, they're currently nickel and diming the American people in the middle of a pandemic. When it comes to infrastructure, I mean, the pandemic continues.

Are we going to get stimulus checks for people? Are we going to make people whole? Are we ever going to make people whole in this country? No. But when it comes to these kinds of weapons, which end up in the wrong hands, time and time again, No debate, no discussion, we keep doing it over and over again. Yeah, yeah. Did you see the response from the defense contractors to all of that stuff being taken by the Taliban?

Awesome, let's do it again. I don't even think they care. What's the difference? They got paid. No, they're lobbying Congress right now to do more. Yeah. You know, it would be a funny joke I might tweet it. It's like, hey, so we're not in these countries anymore.

Like, can we cut the defense budget? D-Dun-Dun, no. Nothing makes any sense. There's no logic to any of this. But do you guys get why? we increase the defense budget every single year. Yes, a huge part of it is to enrich military contractors. But the other half of it is we're spreading weapons all over the world, which then could be used against us. Could be used against soldiers and American soldiers

in various countries that we're occupying right now. Well, then we should not be there. We should not be there, clearly. That seems a good solution. But yeah. More importantly, let's not engage in these wars. Remember, the The Taliban on multiple occasions offered to turn over Osama bin Laden to the Bush administration, and they declined the offer several times. This war was never about bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. This war had a profit motive behind it, and I think it's abundantly clear.

Anyway, let's move on to other news. I promise you there is other news today, unfortunately not Chiri. Beach County, Florida has declared a state of emergency in response to the strained and overwhelmed hospital system. The number of new coronavirus patients continues to increase. The vast majority of those hospitalized, of course, are unvaccinated. And they need help, they need resources. And hospitals nearby in neighboring counties are unable to accept new patients themselves. So the Palm Beach County Commissioner, Melissa McKinley, proposed issuing the emergency after all 12 beds,

and that's a problem in and of itself. All 12 beds in the intensive care unit at a local medical center became occupied, 11 of which were for patients with COVID-19. McKinley said that some ambulances have been forced to wait outside hospitals for hours with sick patients because emergency rooms are full. So real great that, you know, Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, decided to push back against people wearing masks,

tried to ban school districts from implementing mask mandates. That's who Ron DeSantis is. In the meantime, you have counties in the state of Florida declaring a state of emergency because they don't have enough hospital beds to provide care for COVID patients, again, the majority of whom are unvaccinated. So this is a devastating disaster. It's just especially when you consider how much more privilege we have in the United States compared to other countries. We have access to the vaccine, whereas a lot of poorer countries have no access at all.

We have the resources to take care of our people, we don't do it. It's just we have failed in the response in this pandemic in every single way from the very beginning. Yeah. Yeah. It's truly amazing that we can get to this point where not just like that the case numbers are going up, that's bad enough, but that we can be in a similar position to where we were more than a year ago when it comes to hospitalizations. When not only there's so many raw, more vaccinated people, but that it's disproportionately

affecting those who are most at risk of dying or being severely hospitalized as a result of it. We're still in this position when it comes to the hospitals. Can you imagine if the original COVID that hit us was the Delta variant? Like we obviously have not been lucky in many ways, but like it is so much rougher, so much more transmissible, so much more deadly. I don't know what would have happened if that had hit us first. But the reason I think that you can see in so many of these southern states, them falling into the exact same position they were in nine months ago, is that there were no political, domestic consequences for their failures last year.

Right. Is Governor Abbott like gonna lose his reelection bid? Is there like a recall DeSantis, you know, thing going around from last year? No. No. Like when the pandemic wasn't that bad two months ago in some of these places, none of the conservatives, the unvaccinated cared. We told them it's gonna get really bad.

It is now. Do they care now? No. No. when it's bad. You know why they don't care, John? They don't care because they've gotten vaccinated. Well, the political leaders. Political leaders. Ronda santa says Governor Abbott has surely. Which is why, by the way, Governor Abbott not only has been vaccinated, now that he's tested positive for COVID, he had a breakthrough infection. He's being treated with regeneron,

even though his symptoms were described as non-existent. So, you know, but that's the thing. America has two systems, one for the wealthy, the privilege, people in positions of power, and then one for everyone else. So while they very intentionally spread disinformation regarding the pandemic for political gain, the very people who voted them into these positions of power to represent them. They're the ones who suffer, they're the ones who died, they're the ones who get turned away at the hospital because they don't have enough hospital beds. And I want to just quickly touch on the fact that the hospital that was cited in the first graphic only had 12 ICU beds. Look, that is

a product of capitalism, right? The reason why we have so few hospital beds to begin with is because it's not profitable to have a ton of hospital beds to just sit empty. Yeah. Right? So cut costs, minimize the number of hospital beds, and guess what? That puts us in an incredibly bad situation when we deal with a pandemic like this. The county, oh, go ahead. In our defense, we've only had a year and a half since the first time it happened of complete hindsight that we should be able to use that we're not. Profit motive is always going to come before human lives in the system.

It's just the truth. Well, and again, like it's just I don't know that there has ever been as successful an effort in anything of politics and media to get people to not care about something they desperately need to. Like it is one thing if you are trying to convince people that a crisis is coming and you fail. We care about climate change, so we've been experiencing that for years. But like, if you were to go to Jurassic Park and be like, I think the dinosaurs are going to break out and they don't listen, okay, I get it, there's electric fences. But like this is The T-Rex is eating one person you're talking to, and the other is like, I think it's a hoax.

But that's how successful it's been. It's been amazing. Like, not only all these people have died, like, what percentage of people in Florida know someone who's died? It has to be a significant number. It is. They still don't care. They have been trained not to care and certainly not to cast any blame, not in anyone

who actually had any effect on it. They're mad, to some extent, in Florida, against, like, Fauci. They don't like Biden. They hate the people who are asking them to take it seriously. It's serious now, they hate the people that warned them. I've never seen anything like it in my life in any area. You know, one of the things that has proven to be effective in terms of getting people vaccinated is let's say you're dealing with a business that will not allow unvaccinated people to come in, right? Or something, some government thing, that event or whatever, something that requires people

to be vaccinated, right? What they'll do is they'll ask, like, are you vaccinated? They say no, they'll have someone there to administer vaccines, right there on the spot. And they make it incredibly easy for people to get vaccinated. And more often than not, people are like, okay. Because when you get rid of all of the barriers, and look, I don't think that there are many barriers to begin with, but fine, I guess it is a little different if you have someone right then and there who's ready and willing to administer the vaccine. We got to try different things.

What if it's mobile? Yeah. But don't do that because people like Marjorie Green have told people their patriotic duty is to pull their gun out if somebody comes in their door. Yeah, I mean, these people are dangerous. And I, at this point, I don't know if it's a good idea to show up at people's homes. I think it's actually- I don't know who would do that work. They'd be too scared. I wouldn't do it. I certainly wouldn't do it, right? And for those who are engaging in that. These people are courageous given the current, you know, climate in the country. But if there are any, even if they're minor, barriers in place, try to get rid of them and see if that can increase the vaccination rate. But we need to get people vaccinated,

guys. It's the best line of defense against this virus, which is why you're seeing these hospitals completely overwhelmed with unvaccinated COVID patients, which, by the way, also leads to people who need to go to the hospital for other purposes, getting turned away, being denied care when they need it. That's what's happening across the country, but certainly in states like Texas and Florida right now. All right, well, we got to end our first hour. When we come back, just come back. I was going to say, when we come back, I'm going to lighten it up.

But just come back, okay? We do the news here. We're news people. We'll see you to just a few. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.