The Young Turks - Kabul Bombings

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

War Hawks of CNN and Team Trump Caught Making Up Nonsense about Kabul Bombing. An apparent suicide attack rocked U.S. evacuation efforts in Afghanistan as President Biden's deadline to leave the country approaches. Rep. Seth Moulton and Rep. Peter Meijer are pushing back on the criticism of their unapproved trip to Afghanistan. Moulton is now saying he was rescuing families. Ron DeSantis says President Biden should follow Florida's lead on COVID. Children are now being hospitalized in record numbers across the United States, and doctors are warning that it could get worse as schools begin to reopen. Rebel sheriffs are freaking out over COVID vaccine mandates that don’t even exist. 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. The new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card.

And then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterC. and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash the iPorter to learn more. All of a sudden, T.Y. All of a sudden, T.Y.T. Jake Huger, Anika, with you guys, giant day ahead.

You know it, I know, the American people know it. Obviously serious news that we're gonna have to start with, which is Afghanistan, and then we'll do the whole range because that's what we do at TYT. It's called the news, go. All right, 12 US service members in the Kabul airport have died following two alleged bombings near the Kabul airport.

ISIS has taken responsibility. One of them has been reported as a suicide. bombing, it's likely that the second is also a suicide bombing. Now, this has to do with the fact that, of course, you have America and its allied countries trying to evacuate citizens, American citizens in the case of the U.S. and also Afghan allies of ours out of the country. We need the cooperation of the Taliban in order to do that, and the Taliban is supposed to be providing the security at the checkpoints to ensure that some nefarious figures,

including suicide bombers, don't enter the airport. Now, one of the bombers got caught at the checkpoint and decided to detonate the bomb anyway. But one individual, one ISIS fighter, did manage to get through the Taliban checkpoint. And during a press briefing today, generals are saying that the US is relying on the Taliban to do some of the initial security, but they say that some of them are good at providing that security, some are not as good. So it doesn't appear at the moment that the Taliban just allowed the suicide bomber to get through. It seems that whoever was at that checkpoint obviously didn't do a good job in ensuring that

the person was who he claimed he was. So go ahead, Jake. Yeah, so that gets to one of my points. So right now, of course, as usual, cable news is yelling at the top of their lungs that it's all Joe Biden's fault. Now, if you watch the Young Turks regularly, you know that we think a lot of things are Joe Biden's fault. But I just don't think that this is one of them, the bombing in particular, right? So have they not done a good job of planning the exit? Yes.

But that leads to the second point, which is the same as the blame for the bombing. So CBS is Nancy Cordes is their White House correspondent. came out today and said, this is quote the worst day of the Biden presidency. So now look, in some ways it's true. A lot of service members died and obviously this is bringing down those poll numbers, both the politics and the policy, the reality of people not being able to get out, et cetera, right? On the other hand, well, isn't it also the worst day for the Pentagon? I mean, so somebody let them through the checkpoint.

Maybe it was Taliban person originally, and remember Taliban and ISIS are enemies, we have to remind people of that a thousand times, right? And maybe it was somebody on the ground for us, right? Now I'm not blaming the folks that had to stop the bomb at the last second, that's nearly impossible. But if you're saying that, and this happened in social media, I said, look, why aren't we blaming the Pentagon? So what?

The Pentagon is totally faultless, but it's all the President's fault. Why aren't we blaming the intelligence agents, the CIA? You want to blame all of them? Great, I agree, okay? But if you just want to say no, and in fact, of course, somebody respond and said, no, you know, how could the Pentagon possibly know what was going to happen on the ground? Well, then how could Biden know? How can you say that Biden should have known, but none of the generals should have known? The CIA shouldn't know, intelligence agency

shouldn't know, but somehow magically the president should know. Can I jump in real quick? Because fact of the matter is the Pentagon and Biden specifically did know that there was a threat by ISIS, which is what they had been repeating over and over again this week. because there were people, of course, trying to flee the country, so people are trying to get into the airport. Biden has warned American citizens on the ground in Afghanistan. Please don't do that because it creates more chaos in this situation. And we're worried about ISIS fighters targeting U.S. citizens and our allies as we're trying to do these evacuation efforts. And so the warnings were there. Of course, they didn't know that there was going to be a very specific. specific attack on this day and it was going to be carried out the way it was.

But they had Intel indicating that there were some serious threats. And I think that a lot of the commentary that you see, whether it be on cable news or on Twitter, it tends to be very black and white, like everyone's looking for a scapegoat, right? And I understand the human desire to find the scapegoat. But at the same time, getting troops out of Afghanistan was always going to be a messy situation. Biden have prepared it better, I guess. But no one's really provided specific examples of what the administration was supposed to do to plan the evacuation efforts better. We unfortunately, unfortunately need the cooperation of the Taliban who now has control of Afghanistan. And yes,

the Taliban and ISIS, they are not friends. They do not get along. They are enemies. And so it's, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So look, the smart critique that is, balanced and spread across all the people who deserve it is great. There's nothing wrong with that. Has the exit been smooth? Don't be ridiculous. Of course it hasn't been smooth. So should you, does the buck stop with the president? Yes. Pentagon, CIA, if you blame all of them and say they didn't do this right. And obviously they didn't do nation building, right? Obviously, the Afghan military was not ready to stand up. The Pentagon's been lying for 20 straight years. If you said it like that, no problem, right? But if you pick and choose,

And the thing I can't abide by is dumb criticism. So Biden clearly has a deal with a Taliban to let us out and not kill Americans on their, on our way out. Now, people then criticize them for that deal in weird ways. They're like, you shouldn't do a deal with Taliban. So what? He shouldn't have done the deal. And the Taliban would then be shooting fish in a barrel as we're leaving and killing all of our guys. Why would that make sense?

Oh, you should prove how tough you are by bombing the Taliban now. But then they would murder every American in Afghanistan that isn't already at the airport. That's about 1,500 Americans, let alone the people who work with us who are Afghans. Please try to be smart. Now, that's what I love about our audience. Our audience understands that. But God, when you look at cable news, they're like, oh, don't do deal. No, Taliban bad.

Okay, and ISIS bad, Taliban bad, so they must be working together. No, you schmucks. ISIS, K and Taliban hate each other. And you've got to deal with the Taliban if you want the safest exit possible. And is it going to be perfect? Of course it's not going to be perfect. It's a mess of a country, thanks to the goddamn Pentagon who ruined that country for 20 straight years. Yeah, that's exactly right.

I mean, this war has been a failure from the very beginning. Remember, we went in to Afghanistan with the intention of bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, which, by the way, the Taliban at the time, offered Osama bin Laden up. to the Bush administration and they rejected the offer and decided to invade Afghanistan anyway. And all we've done is emboldened the Taliban to the point where they have our sophisticated weaponry now, the weaponry that we provided to the Afghan military that no longer exists. Now with that said, I do want to- No, I'm sorry, before you move on, Anna.

Sure. I want to build on the point you just said. If they were doing real news, right now cable news would be telling you, this debacle is brought to you by, of all the presidents throughout the 20 years, the people most responsible by far are is, is George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, right? Bush was theoretically president. Cheney was making decisions. Rumsfeld made that specific decision, but all three are at fault there. Because the Taliban had surrendered 20 years ago. And we wouldn't take their surrender. I mean, you want to talk about some serious mistakes that Biden has made on the exit. They would pale in comparison. They wouldn't be 1% of 1% of the mistake

of not accepting the Taliban surrender, can we get any truth in the news in America? No, because corporate interests dominate all of the decision making when it comes to situations like Afghanistan, really. I mean, you see it in the way it gets played out in commentary on cable news and on network news, and you see it in the way that these generals are handling the situation and commenting on it themselves. They all have ties to private defense contractors, they're all furious that we're leaving Afghanistan because all they can think about is fattening their own pockets. And I feel awful for the people of Afghanistan. Because our involvement in that war, our decision to go in 2001 wasn't really about nation building. And it was not about

bringing anyone to justice. It was all about making money. And that's what this is. As the Pentagon has been telling the American people, no, no, no, we're nation building. It's working. It's working. This new Afghan government, you know, we're propping it up, but pretty soon we'll be good to go. Obviously, no, not good to go, not good to go. They planned on being in that country forever. That was the plan. And so now we're in this awful situation. I want to go to this video of Joe Biden because he did just give a press conference about what happened this morning and he specifically had a threat toward ISIS K.

To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this, we will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command. I've also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS K assets, leadership, and facilities. We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose in the moment of our choosing. I believe you will authorize additional forces to respond to that attack inside Afghanistan. And are you prepared to add additional forces to protect those Americans who remain on the ground carrying out the evacuation operation?

I've instructed the military, whatever they need, if they need additional force, I will grant it. So that was from a press conference that just took place. Obviously, we don't have much to provide in terms of detail. Like he says that, you know, we're going to go after ISIS K. What does that mean? What does this operation entail? But obviously, understand that we just lost 12 U.S. service members, and he has to have to have. this tough talk, it's just that we don't have any details regarding what he genuinely plans to do moving forward in regard to ISIS K and getting retaliation for what they did. Yeah, so back to more dumb critiques, right? So he, and so first let me just say, I always find that kind of tough talk to be ridiculous.

So you're the President of the United States, you have the most powerful military and theoretically the best intelligence agencies, but I don't believe that for a second. They're just miserable at their jobs. Larger bureaucrats sitting under their desks at the CIA, at a former CIA agent literally telling me in an interview that people sleep under their desks during lunch. They're bureaucrats. They're incompetent. They haven't known a thing about Afghanistan this entire.

So they're going to find ISIS K and the guys who did it. I don't believe it. But even so, you have all those things at your disposal. You don't have to go around and be like, we are going to hot them down. And we're going to be like Clint Eastwood and, what was it, Charles Brown? And I'm gonna put in quarters in a sock and I'm gonna roll it up and I'm smashing them in the face like a 1970s Vigilante movie. I got it. I got it. I got it. You're gonna go try to kill them, okay? And you should go try to kill them. You could be understated a little bit more understated, but you can't be though? But he can't though and that's why what I was getting at. Thank you, Anna, because normally if you actually have

thousands of nukes at your disposal, et cetera, you could be understated. But he's doing that because of the critique from cable news. and mainstream media. Bingo. And so they're like, if he doesn't say, I'm gonna rip their heads off and, you know, poop down their throat or whatever the hell he's gonna say, right? And down their necks, they're gonna be like, he didn't say it up, you didn't want to suck their blood. It's all Biden's fault, it's all Biden's fault, right?

Bring it more military. And that's why he had to say the thing at the end about, I'm gonna give the military whatever they want, because everyone in television is screaming, the military is awesome. Why don't you have them stay longer in Afghanistan? Why do you use the military more? Those are the same ninkapoops, those idiots that did nothing for 20 years in Afghanistan.

But there's not a single goddamn mainstream media reporter that'll tell you the truth. No, I mean, look, to your point, I was of course curious to see what mainstream media was reporting on this, what kind of commentators they were having on, what kind of pundits they had on today. And one exchange that really stood out to me was this back and forth between Jake Tapper and Jim Shuto. Now, I want to be clear about something. The Taliban is not in any way allied with ISIS. The attack that happened this morning was carried out by ISIS. Now, with that said, there is absolutely no intel indicating that the Taliban and ISIS work together. It's important to remember that.

It's important to know that context. as you listen to Jim Shuto, just floating something out of thin air. But the U.S. is leaving. Is this more have to do with ISIS K trying to establish itself or the rivalry with the Taliban? Multiple ideas. As you know, these groups thrive on chaos, right? I mean, their power is built on fear. Multiple intents, it seems. One, you have a competition in that country among terror groups for prominence. Isis K is something of an offshoot of the Taliban a number of years ago. That said, we shouldn't imagine that these groups don't remain connected in some way, right? I mean, that can be misleading as well, because oftentimes they have shared interests.

And that's why relying on the Taliban to be your kind of first ring of security around that airport has risks involved, right? And we've seen those risks bear out. Connected in some way. Now, to utter that sentence, you'd have to provide some sort of evidence. At least a hint, right? Look, I'm speculating here. However, because of these details, I speculate that maybe the Taliban was working with us. But that, he didn't even do any of that.

He didn't do any of that, connected in some way. How, how? Where did you get that from? Is there anyone in the Intel community? And by the way, they love to rely on scoops from the intelligence community, which of course has its own interests in perpetuating war. But even in this case, there's no one in the Intel community saying that the Taliban's working with ISIS.

And look, a lot of the commentary today, in my opinion, what was more of these individuals beating war drums, fear mongering, trying to scare the American people to think that there's a growing threat now that we're withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. And our involvement in that war has been nothing more than a complete and utter failure and disaster. We have only destabilized that country further. Okay, he said they have shared interests, really? Well name him, Jim.

What shared interest do they have? Because they otherwise, they seem to be killing each other. That's not a shared interest. You know what it reminded me of, of the Dick Cheney going on television and lying about how Iraq and al-Qaeda were connected? And they came from the same geographic area as if they were allies. When in reality, Iraq led by Saddam Hussein was not a friendly country to us, and Saddam was a terrible, brutal dictator. And al-Qaeda was awful. But they hated each other.

That's relevant if you're a smart person. So if you just want to say, me, can't tell Muslim apart, I hate all of them. Okay, is that some weird combination of right wing and James T. Kirk? Anyway, okay, well, then I can't help you because you're choosing not to use your mind. ISIS, K, and Taliban hate each other. What do you mean shared interests? They didn't just bomb American interests. They also bombed the Taliban in that checkpoint.

So I'm sure the guy they blew up, didn't have a shared interest with them. So and so that's why it's trying to get you to think, well, I can't tell them apart and the reporters can't tell them apart. And what do we need? What's the answer? More military, more military, right? And so, by the way, these guys, the ridiculous critics of Biden will now then turn around. And so when Biden says, I'm going to go chase them down and I'm going to kill these ISIS K guys who killed our guys today. And when they eventually do some version of that, guaranteed some of the critique will be,

those guys were fighting the Taliban. Now you're helping the Taliban. This is outrageous. Okay. Now, there's a good argument that you shouldn't, like, get out. Get out, get out. Don't go back in. Don't go do bombings.

You're not going to find who ISIS K is in the mess of Afghanistan. And Taliban and ISIS K are about to kill each other and shred each other to pieces anyway, right? Stay the hell out, right? So that's a fair argument. But what will be an unfair argument is when he goes to bomb ISIS K, they'll say, now you're helping the Taliban. And now speaking of unfair argument, it's Donald Trump. So today he came out and said about all this.

What a terrible failure, no vetting. Now, it's not about our guys getting killed. And it's not about we didn't rescue enough Afghans who helped us. Right. It's the opposite. Real quick, 60 Afghans also died today, 140, I mean, the videos are so gruesome, so awful. I mean, do you think he cares about any of that?

Of course not. So yeah, IsisK, by the way, then had a couple of people on the ground who then opened fire with some version of automatic weapons into the crowd. So just started mowing people down, civilians, okay? So Trump says about our Afghan allies, interpreters, people who helped their troops, etc. He said, how many terrorists will Joe Biden bring to America? Now, meanwhile, people will, right-wingers are now turning around and going, oh, yeah, Trump should get credit for the withdrawal, but if he was in charge, we're going to do the great exit, man, and he would have saved all those Afghans.

No, he just told you he wouldn't have brought any of them in. He would have said, oh, we have to do further vetting, and that means we're going to leave him behind. Taliban's not letting anybody else out. They said, you can take the Americans out, but after August 31st, you're done. No Afghan is allowed to leave, okay, and the ones, and they're going to find, they have the biometric information for the people who helped us. We created that information, and then as soon as the Afghan military ran and we ran, they grabbed,

the Taliban grabbed that information. They're going to go systematically execute everyone who worked with us, who remains in the country. And Trump and many other conservatives now are saying, good, good. Let them. Yeah, I don't want them coming here, so let's vet them for longer while they get murdered all over Afghanistan by the Taliban. So don't tell us Trump would have done it better.

Trump would have done it way worse than he just told you he would. Why are we pretending like Trump was some sort of foreign policy genius? He was a complete, utter disaster. I mean, speaking of abandoning our allies, what did we do to the Kurds who were assisting us in defeating ISIS in Syria? Trump just had a weekend call with Erdogan. Erdogan told him, hey, pull the U.S. troops out of this region of Syria where the Kurds Trump did exactly that, Turkish forces came in, just started slaughtering the Kurds.

Our allies who helped us defeat ISIS in Syria, that's what happened. So I'm not surprised at all that Trump would have that take in regard to our Afghan allies on the ground in Afghanistan. One last thing about Trump, for his ridiculous defenders, they're like, oh, he was going to withdraw anyway, man, was he? He had four years. Why didn't he do it? Well, if he's so against U.S. imperialism and the deep state and the CIA and the Pentagon, he doesn't believe any of those generals, et cetera, and he was going to be a tough guy who withdrew. He had four long years.

Why didn't he do it? There was bipartisan support. They passed a resolution to get the United States out of Yemen. And he ripped that up. He's like, no, I'm going to keep going. Oh, yeah, he's definitely an anti-imperialist hero. Yeah. So he wanted to stay in Yemen and helped the murderers that right.

on Saudi Arabia. But last thing on Afghanistan, look, your best case argument, if you're a right winger who thought Trump was going to be a hero that could withdraw us, and he didn't, that's a fact. I don't know if you guys listened to any facts anymore. Maybe they'll say six months from now, oh, no, it was Trump who withdraw us? They probably will because they don't care about anything, right? But if you are saying that, your best case scenario is Trump was so incompetent, he couldn't figure out a way to withdraw them in four long years. So he needed a real competent president leader like Joe Biden actually do the withdrawal, or he didn't actually want to withdraw them.

He just wanted to get the best of both sides. Oh, I want to withdraw them, but don't worry, military, I'll do everything you tell me to do, right? Okay, so your so-called great leader was at best an incompetent buffoon who did nothing that he promised, including withdrawing from Afghanistan. We're gonna take a short break, and when we come back, we have more details and updates on this story, so stick around. All right, back on TYT, Jankana, with you guys.

Quick shout out to the Twitch community, which I love so much. Tell me what to put, gave 2,345 bits and gifted a sub. Love you guys for that. And thank you to Samma Lynn, the Kind Dragon for the Raid, kind indeed. Love our community. We'll talk more about the YouTube community later in the show. All right, more news. Joe Biden took a question, made a point to take a question from Peter Ducey today during a press conference.

And of course, the press conference was held to address the fact that 12 U.S. service members and 60 Afghans died following two bombings near the Kabul airport. Now, let's take a look at what Peter Ducey's question is and how Biden responded to it. Wait, wait, wait, let me take the one question from the most interesting guy that I know in the press. That's you. Mr. President, there had not been a U.S. service member killed in combat in Afghanistan since February of 2020. You set a deadline, you pulled troops out, you sent troops back in, and now 12 Marines are dead. You said the buck stops with you. Do you bear any responsibility for the way that things have unfolded in the last two weeks?

I bear responsibility for fundamentally all that's happened of late. But here's the deal. You know, I wish you one day say these things, you know as well as I do, that the former president made a deal with the Taliban. that he would get all American forces out of Afghanistan by May 1. In return, the commitment was made, and that was a year before. In return, he was given a commitment that the Taliban would continue to attack others, but would not attack any American forces.

Remember that? I'm not being serious. No, I'm asking you a question. Because before, no, no, no, wait a minute. I'm asking you a question. Is that accurate, the best of you're not? All right. There's a second part to that interaction, but, Jank, I'm going to go to you first.

How do you react to that? So, first of all, don't tell him that he's the most interesting man. But it's obviously that he wanted to take the question from Fox News because he had that Trump talking point prepared and he wanted to get it out. And so overall, that was well played. If you ask him a question back and expect an honest answer, you gave an honest answer. Yeah, the buck stops with me, right? You think Fox News is going to be an honest answer back?

Of course not. They're not going to ever criticize Donald Trump. They're not going to say something. And in this case, not even criticism. I think it's a good thing that Trump made a deal with the Taliban. And so you could turn back around if you're a right wing and if a Democrat ever did, I can you make a deal with the Taliban? No, in order to withdraw from a country, you got to make a deal with the people who are in power.

The Taliban was in power, obviously de facto, and now in reality. So it's a totally fair point to say, hey, if you're going to blame me for withdrawing, well, your guy's the one who wanted to withdraw and made the deal of withdraw in the first place. How could that possibly be wrong? That's obviously correct. I just don't understand what the alternative would be, right? So for those who are now critical toward Biden, for the collaboration with the Taliban to evacuate U.S. citizens from the country, well, as we know, those negotiations started under Trump,

but I don't even blame Trump for that, right? Like, as you mentioned, you give him credit for that as well. Like, what was the alternative to that, though? What was the alternative? If they're in power, if they're in charge of Afghanistan, how else would we evacuate U.S. citizens, U.S. troops, personnel? How would we get them out without the Taliban attacking them? I just don't, I don't know what the alternative would be. But with that said, let's go to the second part of the exchange. Basically, you said you squarely stand by your decision to pull out. Yes, I do, because look at it this way, folks.

And I'm going to, I have another meeting for real. But imagine where we'd be if I had indicated on May the 1st, I was not going to renegotiate evacuation date, we were going to stay there. I have only one alternative, pour thousands of more troops back into Afghanistan to fight a war that we had already won relatives of why the reason we went in the first place. I have never been of the view that we should be sacrificing American lives to try to establish a democratic government in Afghanistan. Our interest in going was to prevent al-Qaeda from re-emerging, first to get bin Laden, wipe out al-Qaeda in Afghanistan,

prevent that from happening again. So I've said a hundred times. Terrorism is metastasized around the world. We have greater threats coming out of other countries. A heck of a lot closer to the United States. We don't have military encampments there. We don't keep people there. We have over their rising capability to keep them from going after us. Ladies and gentlemen, it was time to end a 20-year war. Thank you so much.

He's right about that. He's absolutely right about that. So I think he handled that perfectly. Yeah. So this part is indisputable. He's like, what were to stay? as Anna said, even before Biden said it. Okay, so what, we're going to put 10,000 troops more, 20, 100,000, how long were we're going to stay?

Five, ten more years? It's absurd. No, withdraw. By the way, don't let the media lie to you. Three quarters of the country is in favor of withdrawal. Yes, Biden's overall popularity has taken a beating here because every single person in the media is criticizing him 24-7. But the important part of that clip is notice that's Fox News asking a pointed question about whether it was right to withdraw. Because if you'll notice, if you go on social media, people will pretend whether they're in favor of cable news or Fox News or right wing.

And there's this amazing coalition of like the establishment and the right wing beating up on Biden together because the establishment loves the military industrial complex and the right wing. doesn't care if it's right or wrong. They just want to attack Biden, right? So that's Fox News criticizing the withdrawal. But when you go on social media, they all pretend like, oh, no, no, no, we're just criticizing the exit. No, no, no, oh, you guys are being unfair. You're just supporting Joe Biden for no reason.

We're just worried about the exit. We're not worried about the withdrawal. Then you go on television. No, they're worried about the withdrawal. They wanted us to stay forever and ever and ever in Afghanistan. And that includes Fox News. They're wrong, they're 100% wrong. You could of course talk about how the Pentagon, the CIA, and Biden collectively did not do the exit right.

But you cannot say that the withdrawal was not right. If you say that, you're being absolutely absurd and almost no American actually agrees with you. Well, let's get to our next story because I wanted to talk a little bit about something we covered yesterday with two congressmen going to Afghanistan with an unauthorized trip, just to do a little PR stunt. Imagine if they had done that today. Representatives Seth Moulton and Peter Meyer are playing defense today after taking an unauthorized trip to Afghanistan, specifically to Kabul, where as we found out today, two suicide bombings took place.

Now unfortunately and tragically, 12 U.S. service members died as a result of those bombings. 60 Afghans died and 140 more Afghans were injured. But prior to that happening, both Seth Moulton, a Democrat and Peter Mayer, Mayor showed up because they, I don't know, wanted to do a PR stunt, why were they there? Well, Moulton is super defensive and recently got interviewed. He said that he had requested permission to travel to Afghanistan multiple times in the past few months, but had been turned down, Molten, a Marine veteran said he was spurred to take the trip when he attempted to get four Afghan families out of Kabul on flights, managing to get

one family out, he claims. Which, I'm just going to say, I don't believe him. After they had, you know, gone to Afghanistan in this unauthorized trip, what was the message coming from both of these congressmen? That we need to remain in Afghanistan longer. That even in If we remained in Afghanistan past the August 31st deadline and extended it to September 11th, it still wouldn't be long enough to ensure that we evacuate everyone we need to evacuate. Essentially beating the war drums, let's stay there as long as we need to. And I should also note, as I mentioned on the show yesterday, that Moulton has taken over $200,000 in campaign contributions from defense contractors, and that doesn't even account for

the dark money that he's likely received from defense contractors. He also said the following during this interview with the Boston Globe, I got several not just families, but groups through the gates. It's amazing that people think this is about politics when it's about innocent lives and saving people who have given everything to us from torture and death. Every single person that we can get through the gates

who is one of our allies, that is the difference between freedom and death. And then he also noted because he has been scolded for this trip. The scoldings mean nothing when we're saving a few lives. But in reality, did they really save any lives? All they did was take up space on planes that were meant for the U.S. citizens and Afghan allies were trying to evacuate out of the country. Honestly, and I hadn't even thought about the fact that they had to take

a flight back and take up two seats. That's probably two people dead because we couldn't fit them on a plane on the last day. And so maybe we get the great majority of the Americans out, But we're definitely going to leave some Afghans behind, and apparently two more because of these clowns. He says, you know, we asked many times when we were turned down. Well, that might be an indication of something. If somebody told me as deeply incompetent as the Pentagon is, but they told me, hey, going to Kabul right now is not a great idea. It could put you in a lot of danger and could put others in danger trying to protect you, right? I'd probably take that pretty seriously.

In fact, don't be ridiculous. Why are you going to Kabul in the middle of this mess? Just to try to seem like a hero, it's absurd, of course, there was real safety issues. And in fact, as Anna said, what if they'd gone today? There's a decent chance that one of them or both of them would have been blown up. What are you going to do? What do you, like in the middle of a bomb? You're going to somehow fight off the bomb?

It's so ridiculous. No, you're going to die. So you got super lucky that you went on the right day instead of the wrong day. And you should just have the decency to shut up about it. So in terms of why they went, you know, Moultonists say, we were there to be superheroes and saved lives. And they pulled people through the gates. What, the military wasn't going to let them in the gates?

Do you know something we don't know? Or is this people in specific that did not have permission and you pulled them through the gates? Or did they already have permission? And if they didn't have permission, why did you bring them in? Who are they? No answers to any of that, right? Instead, oh, yeah, I was there, man. It was me.

It wasn't the troops. else. It was me who saved their lives. Really? So then you ask Meyer, and Meyer has a totally different reason. This is a Republican who went with it. We actually have clips of his interview with Brett Baer, and notice that he has different reasons for why he went. Let's watch. You traveled there with Congressman Seth Moulton from Massachusetts. How did it come to pass? Thank you, Brett. Both Seth and myself have been actively engaged on what's called the special immigrant visa issue. Those were visas. in a program for individuals who had loyally served the United States in places like Iraq and

Afghanistan. There have been a tremendous backlog of these cases. And in April, when President Biden announced that he was continuing the initial plan for withdrawal that started under President Trump, we urged the administration to address this backlog. We had to know what was going on on the ground in Kabul. And we have not had information we need from the administration and realized that we were being lied to up and down, and we needed to see for ourselves. Right now, they have done everything they can to obstruct the situation, to deny this reality, and frankly, to hide facts from the American people. I'll be honest, I did not support the decision to end our operations on August 31st before I went.

After talking with commanders on the ground, I trusted their judgment, and I believed it. That is what I want to take back to my fellow members of Congress. Currently in Doha, we visited Al-U-Dade Air Base earlier, which is one of the largest staging operations for this mass evacuation, again, to be able to report what is going on so that Congress can not only exhibit oversight, but share and understand what resources need to be provided to those who are on the ground right now so they can continue to save lives in this chaotic moment. In other words, I just wanted to look out for my daddies who are helping to fund my campaign, and the defense contractors, that's certainly a factor in this. But the other factor

is, I just want to do the PR stunt, right? Because they want to, they want to sell themselves as these brave heroes who are somehow more competent in the evacuation effort than the troops we have on the ground and the personnel that we have on the ground. I mean, this is, again, like, one of the most ridiculous, selfish and, like, it's incredibly dumb to do this. And they're not the only ones. Apparently, there was a private jet that was full of it. It had a congressional delegation that was trying to do the same thing. They luckily got turned back. Yeah, this is, okay, so I can't stand photo ops. And so this is a glorified photo op. By the way, that applies to everybody. So Fred Thompson was a former actor and senator from Tennessee, and he used to drive

up to campaign in his limo and get into a red beat up pickup truck and go around. And the press never told anybody that he actually came in a limo, they would do the photo op with the red pickup truck. And by the way, both the left and the right, when they go to the border, and they just look at the border. And they're like, oh, this is the border, now I know. Yeah, I already know. I don't need to go and look at a piece of dirt and go,

this is the border, right? It's just a photo op. And then when they go to war zones, this is the biggest photo op of all. I mean, McCain, Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman, they loved that crap. They'd always go, and they were so strong, And brave, everybody got the perimeter, right?

Everybody's got the perimeter girl locked down. We don't want any. They probably cost people's lives trying to do extra protection and security for them. And like what Meyer says here, we need to see with our own eyes. What are you seeing with your own eyes? Are you walking around Kabul? Don't be absurd. What are you seeing with your own eyes?

No, you're going to be in any. And by the way, reporting is that they largely stayed inside the building, which is good. They should stay inside the building. But what did you see inside the building? Except for Moulton claiming that he went outside like a super here and pull people through the gates, right? It's just, it's politicians being at their cheesiest.

And then finally, Moulton, there's one good piece of news here, because Moulton in the last couple of decades would have been a classic establishment Democrat, and this cheesiness would have worked. So they love veterans who are pro-business and take endless corporate cash, and that's Seth Moulton. So like if he ran in the 1990s or the 2000s for president, which by the way, you probably don't remember, but he ran for president in 2020, okay? If he'd run two decades before that or just a decade before that, he would have been celebrated. Oh, Seth Moulton, he knows he's been to war zones. He's taking pictures there. And he'll give business

interests anything they want. That's how great Seth Moulton is. But now that stuff is so outdated. You have to be more sophisticated. You have to be a bit smoother liar like Buttigieg, right? And so when Moulton ran for president, you know what he got in every poll? Zero percent. Now remember that the margin of error is about 3% in a normal poll. So there's some chance Moulton might have been polling at negative 3%. That's how unpopular he is. So please spare me your opinion.

P.S. I know there is no such thing as negative 3%. You get it. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, we'll move off foreign policy for a bit. talk about how Ron DeSantis thinks that the Biden administration can learn a thing or two from his leadership, his leadership, he claims, on COVID-19. Come right back. All right, guys, Jane and Anna with you guys. We have normal bonus episode for members tonight, as we always do. But next week, we're going to have Ask Me Anything. So if your YouTube,

member at producer or higher level tier three or tier four, you get to ask us any question you want. So go to the community tab and make sure that you participate in that because that's one of the privileges that you have. The join button below isn't just for joining. It's also for upgrades. So you could upgrade to that level to ask us questions. So hit that button below the YouTube video if you're watching this live. Thank you. All right, Casper. As the state of Florida continues to be one giant hotspot for coronavirus, the governor of the state, Ron DeSantis, to claim that President Joe Biden could really learn a thing or two from his wonderful leadership in responding to the pandemic. Let's hear what he had to say.

You're just now the new enemy of the state. President Biden's going after you harder than the Taliban. How are you, Governor Ron DeSantis, prepared to handle that? We'll be standing up against his failed policies at the border, his failed policy. He said he was going to end COVID. He hasn't done that. We are the first state. to start the treatment centers for monoclonal antibodies. Having great success with that, that should have been a bigger plan, a bigger part of this whole response throughout the country from the beginning. But at the end of the day, I think he's trying to find a way to distract from the failures of his presidency. And so he thinks that he can attack Florida. Sometimes he attacks

Texas because we're Republican states. No, it's incredible. I mean, Florida currently is number one in the country in terms of coronavirus related hospitalizations. And Ron DeSantis, the governor of that state, looks at that situation, and he's like, great success, he's Borat. Borat is the governor of Florida. Complete and utter moron, why don't we take a look at what that great success looks like? That is the state of Florida, and the reason why everything is in dark red is because You see COVID cases spiking in every single part of that state.

All right. So let's take a look at how Florida looks compared to the rest of the country. Oh, would you look at that? Florida tends to be a lot redder than the rest of the country. And the red, of course, indicates higher numbers of new COVID cases. But, you know, Grand DeSantis looks at that and thinks great success, great success. I mean, look, we're doing these new treatment centers and it's working. How about encouraging the residents of Florida to get vaccinated?

But I forget, Rod DeSantis only does that for his wealthy donors, who he insured. He insured he got the vaccines to first. That was Lakewood Ranch and Palm Beach, which we'll get to in just a second. Jenk, I can't help myself, I want to show one more thing. You look at this list of states with the highest number of hospitalizations. Florida is number one, number one. Look at that. They have more than 17,000 Americans hospitalized in the state of Florida right now. These are unvaccinated COVID patients. It could have been avoided. The situation is so dire that

Orlando urges residents to conserve water because of surge in COVID hospitalizations. Liquid oxygen used in hospitals and water treatment is in short supply as more critically ill patients need respiratory therapy. So officials in Orlando, Florida are telling their residents, please conserve water, we're in a dire situation. We need to ensure that we're able to treat these coronavirus patients. Take short showers, don't water your lawns. It's insane. Okay, so now to be fair to Florida, they're number one in hospitalizations, but per capita.

But they're only number three in deaths, thanks to Louisiana and Mississippi, two other deeply red states, who thought it was a brilliant idea not to take any precautions. But I wanna go back to that hospitalization graph that we showed you guys, because I want you to see the context. So you'll see that the per capita is in the middle, and you see that Florida is the highest at 80, eclipsing Alabama and Louisiana Mississippi, et cetera. By the way, that means that Florida next week will lead in deaths, because more hospitalizations lead to more deaths.

So Florida caught up to Louisiana, Mississippi, et cetera, and he's going to pass them in deaths if this trend continues. But I wanted you to see also the national average there, which is 29. So Florida is almost three times as bad as the national average. Well, that's what happens if you don't take any precautions. And if you don't take precautions, you don't get 29, you get 80. And so that is, those 17,000 people, you know a certain percentage of everyone going to die. I'll give you last week's stats from Florida.

This week is way worse than last week, and next week's going to be even worse, right? But last week's stats were 212 people dying in Florida. every single day from coronavirus. Almost all of them are unvaccinated. Almost all of them were preventable. Yep. But DeSantis chose not to prevent them. That's 1,400 dead in one week.

I mean, imagine if anything else had killed 1,400 people in Florida. And the governor said to everybody, what's the big deal? I can't believe people are criticizing me. Just because I didn't take. Because remember, guys, when there was no vaccine, it was harder to blame leaders, right? Now, if they said absurd things like you should inject bleach into your lungs, you say, hey, that's not a good idea, right? But at least they couldn't say, hey, take the vaccine and you'll be safe.

Because there was no vaccine. Now there is a vaccine. You could actually totally prevent that in your state. DeSantis is actively choosing not to. And finally, it's actually getting through the citizens of Florida, which I'll tell you about in a second. Yeah, no, I actually have a lot more to add to this because it's infuriating. I think Ron DeSantis should be prosecuted for what he's doing because he's intentionally lying to the people of Florida knowing full well that the vaccine is effective, knowing full

well that wearing masks helps to keep people safe, but he's intentionally pandering to right-wing conspiracy theorists and lunatics for his own political career, and people are dying as a result of that. All right, so I'll tell you exactly why I believe this. I have evidence. His donors, his wealthy donors were able to skip ahead of the line to get the vaccine first. His donors will mostly reside in Lakewood Ranch and Palm Beach. Now, let me give you the details on how this went down. And this proves that he knows about the effectiveness of the vaccine, but still lies and will not encourage ordinary non-wealthy Floridians to get vaccinated. So Florida's rollout started pretty typically.

The first doses were given to healthcare workers and nursing home residents in early December of 2020. But then a few weeks later, Governor Ron DeSantis, breaking from CDC guidelines, announced that he would not vaccinate teachers and essential workers next, but instead put seniors first, making everyone or anyone 65 or over eligible for the vaccine. Now that led to a frenzy because understandably, older Floridians wanted to get vaccinated as soon as possible. But here's the thing, the doses were not distributed

evenly throughout the state. They were concentrated in two specific areas, Lakewood Ranch and Palm Beach. So a federal complaint raises other questions about the governor's vaccine distribution decisions and alleges Governor DeSantis was discriminating when he handpicked communities for pop-up sites across the state.

One of those communities was Lakewood Ranch in Manatee County just south of Tampa. In February, the governor, announced he was giving 3,000 doses to the community. Now why would he do that? Why would he focus on Lakewood Ranch? Well, it turns out Lakewood Ranch developer Pat Neal has donated $135,000 to the Friends of Ron DeSantis pack. You know, don't you guys wonder all of those conservatives who talk about a global cabal and oh, the elites, don't you ever wonder why the elites were in a frenzy to skip ahead of the line and get vaccinated? And don't you wonder why your

Your beloved Ron DeSantis is discouraging you from getting vaccinated. Well Anna, they're beginning to wonder that and I've got the numbers on that. But first, from time to time we read members and super chats on the show because we'd love doing the show with you guys. You guys make really smart points. So GA Jackson wrote in, DeSanto is literally killing more Americans than the Taliban. Well, that's indisputably true. Of course, DeSantis is going to say, no, well, I didn't specifically kill them.

I just told them to take massive risks with their life, and they wound up dead. So, not my fault. I mean, if we're comparing actual numbers, it's not remotely close. Imagine, but I like that comment, because imagine if the Taliban was killing over 200 citizens in Florida every single day, and the governor wouldn't do anything about it. And the governor was like, no, I'm not even going to let the schools ban the Taliban. You think, what are you doing? They're killing children, 12 people every single day.

He's like, I don't care. I don't care. I think it's no big deal, right? But when coronavirus does it, he pretty much encourages it. So now the numbers have moved to Florida. Democrats are always against him in Florida. The independents had turned against him because of how incompetent he's handled this lately. But now even the Republicans have said it's too much.

52% of Republicans saying he's handling this poorly in Florida. Now, why is it getting all the way to the Republicans? Remember, the right wing, they don't care about anybody that is outside of them and their community. Unless it affects them, they don't care. But now there's so many of them dying that it's affecting them. So even the Republicans are saying, this looks really bad. Maybe this guy's not such a genius like everyone on Fox News is telling me. So let me give you the numbers real quick.

He implemented a ban on mask mandates in public schools and threatened school districts with cutting their funding if they implement. a mask mandate. The Biden administration had to step in to tell the districts, implement the mask mandates, don't worry, we'll make up the difference if your funding gets cut by the state. That's the kind of governor, Ron DeSantis is. It's disgusting. Which goes to some of these numbers. 61% of Floridians believe the rise of cases was preventable in Florida. And so, obviously, DeSantis did not prevent it. Sixty three percent believed the masks are effective. By the way, that number should be. so much higher. Still 37% of Floridians go, mask, what do they? What do I need them for?

We're about to pass Louisiana, Mississippi, and the most amount of deaths. What do I need that mask? But yes, 63% saying, duh, of course you need the mask. And 60% of Florida residents support requiring faculty and students to wear a mask while in school. So the state has turned, and now a significant majority say that DeSantis is very wrong to say that they should not have those mass mandates in the schools. And remember, in that interview, DeSantis is like, but Biden said that, you know, we'd be finished with COVID by now, what happened? No, it's because of morons like you.

We could be out of this awful situation, but with all these red states refusing to encourage their residents to get vaccinated. I mean, in Vermont, 68% of people in Vermont are fully vaccinated. In Florida, it's 52%. In Alabama, which has the lowest vaccination rate, 37% fully vaccinated. Look, there's a cure. Well, there's a way to prevent coronavirus. And then unfortunately, for some folks, there is no cure at all, but there's ways to treat it.

But even more, unfortunately, there's no way to treat dumb. And so all these guys think, no, I don't care that Uncle Bob died. I rather still listen to Tucker Carlson and all. all the right wing knuckleheads in the media telling me that if I'm a tough guy, I'll take horse dewormer instead of taking what every doctor in the world says I should take. Well, enjoy your toughness all the way to the grave, unfortunately. All right, that does it for our first hour, but stick around for the second hour, because if you think that we've had enough of the stupidity in red states regarding COVID,

We've got a father in Texas who has really found a way to strip down to the core of this issue. We'll be right back. Florida's ground zero for God's waiting room. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen 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.