Joe Biden shows the world that his empathy is an act with a blame shifting, nasty, vindictive and bloviating speech championing his Afghanistan withdrawal. And the fallout will be toxic. Ben Shapiro explains why Joe Biden is a fraud, a liar, a leaker, a narcissist, a bully, and a fraudster, and why he should never have been in office in the first place. He also points out that the only time Joe Biden ever seems to be able to muster any empathy is when asked tough questions about the suffering of the people being left behind in Afghanistan. And that has nothing to do with the soldiers who died in Afghanistan, or the people who are living under the Taliban, for that matter. And what is empathy really about? It s about calling upon your own wellspring of personal grief in order to project it out to the world so that people will sympathize with you. That is not acting empathetically, that s not you being an actor, that is you being a fool. And Joe Biden does not understand grief, he only understands personal tragedy. And so he does nothing to help others understand the grief of others who are experiencing a completely different set of circumstances. And what does that really mean? Ben Shapiro argues that when it comes to empathy, it s not about empathy, but it s about how to be an actor and how to take the brunt of what they are saying and internalize it not how to empathize with them or how to feel better it s just how they are feeling the pain of someone else the pain they are experiencing and how they are feeling that they are feeling it is not feeling it . they are not being their pain what they experiencing it or you are doing it and how they feel so that they should be to be it . And that is trying to feel it to this in order why they is a good thing can t be that s doing it. - Ben Shapiro - The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by Express VPN iTrust - Protect your data from big tech with VPNiTrust - Visit ExpressVpn Protect Your Data from Big Tech with VPNTrust? - vpn.
00:00:00.000President Biden shows the world that his empathy is an act, with a blame-shifting, nasty, vindictive, and bloviating speech championing his Afghanistan withdrawal, and the fallout will be toxic.
00:00:23.000We'll get to all the news in just one moment and plenty of it there is.
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00:02:09.000And this is becoming increasingly clear.
00:02:11.000Because what true empathy is about, just interpersonally, is when you don't agree with the person that you are empathizing with.
00:02:19.000And when you have to take the brunt of what they are saying and just internalize it.
00:02:24.000Hey, if all your empathy really is, is performative, if all your empathy really is, is calling upon your own wellspring of personal grief in order to project it out to the world so that people will sympathize with you, that is not you acting empathetically, that is you being an actor.
00:02:53.000It's been happening consistently over the past several weeks.
00:02:56.000When asked tough questions about the suffering of the people being left behind in Afghanistan.
00:03:00.000When he is asked about the people who are going to be living under the Taliban and the people who are going to be murdered by the Taliban, Joe Biden has shown no empathy.
00:03:08.000When it comes to the American service people who came home in caskets from Afghanistan, Joe Biden has shown little or no empathy.
00:03:15.000The only time Joe Biden ever seems to be able to muster up even an iota of empathy is when he invokes his son, Beau, who died of brain cancer at the age of 46.
00:03:24.000And that has nothing to do with the soldiers who died in Afghanistan, for example.
00:03:30.000It has nothing to do with the suffering of the people under the Taliban or the people who worked with us who will be undoubtedly executed.
00:03:37.000It turns out that human beings all over the course of history have had personal tragedies in their family.
00:03:43.000Okay, relying on that personal tragedy to suggest that you understand all grief everywhere or that your grief is suddenly akin to the grief of others who are experiencing completely different circumstances is quite foolish and quite empty.
00:04:00.000And yet that's what Joe Biden does on a regular basis.
00:04:02.000And I point this out only because the redeeming feature of Joe Biden, according to his greatest advocates, is this empathy.
00:04:09.000And yet it's been not only not on display over the past several weeks, it is completely absent.
00:04:15.000Joe Biden is not only unempathetic to people who deserve his supposed empathy, he is downright cruel to them.
00:04:23.000I give you a couple of examples to begin today because that's really what his speech was about last night.
00:04:28.000It was about no empathy for the people left behind, no empathy for the people, the 38 million people now living under the predations of the Taliban.
00:04:35.000It was about defensive, bloviating nastiness.
00:04:39.000Which really is what Joe Biden is politically.
00:04:40.000People have known this on Capitol Hill his entire career.
00:05:10.000So, you'll recall that the President of the United States went to Dover Air Force Base to greet the incoming caskets of 13 service members who were killed in Kabul.
00:05:20.000In large measure, thanks to his garbage policy of allowing the Taliban to provide security for people trying to get out of the country, and also of not holding Bagram Air Base so he had no actual security buffer, So the parents of many of these members, service members, went to Dover Air Force Base.
00:05:38.000And Biden wanted to meet with them, and so they did.
00:05:40.000Their stories are somewhat chilling on an emotional level.
00:05:45.000Because George W. Bush, during the Afghanistan war, during the Iraq war, he routinely used to call parents of people who had fallen, service members who had fallen, given their lives in service of country.
00:05:56.000He routinely used to go quietly to Dover Air Force Base without press coverage, without the media there snapping his photo.
00:06:02.000He used to do that all the- and he used to take abuse from people.
00:06:05.000He used to take all the understandable emotional rage that parents were directing against him, and he used to just take it.
00:06:12.000So here's the account of Mark Schmitt.
00:06:15.000He's the father of Jared Schmitt, who died in this suicide bombing in Kabul, talking about his encounter with Joe Biden.
00:06:23.000Well, initially I wasn't going to meet with him, but then I felt I owed it to my son to at least have some words with him about how I felt, and it didn't go well.
00:06:39.000He talked a bit more about his own son than he did my son, and that didn't sit well with me.
00:06:46.000According to Schmidt, Joe Biden started talking about Bo, and he said, I'm not really interested in hearing about Bo right now.
00:06:53.000I want to talk about my son, since my son was the one who was just killed in the line of duty.
00:06:58.000And instead of Biden understanding that, Biden actually got angry.
00:07:02.000Instead of Biden saying, I hear you and you're right.
00:07:52.000The other father, he said, I actually leaned into my son's mother's ear and I said, I swear to God, if he checks his watch one more time, and that was only four times in, I couldn't look at him anymore after that, considering especially the time and why we were there, I found it to be the most disrespectful thing I've ever seen.
00:08:05.000Jen Psaki, by the way, dodged when asked about whether Biden was looking at his watch.
00:08:08.000She was asked directly about this yesterday.
00:08:10.000Here was the press secretary of the United States, who essentially has become Joe Biden's night nurse.
00:08:14.000Every evening, Joe Biden does something to crap the bed, and then every morning, Jen Psaki comes in and has to clean it up.
00:08:19.000Here she was trying to dodge the question about whether Joe Biden was checking his watch.
00:08:22.000Let's just remember for a second that if Donald Trump had done this, if he had gone to a ceremony for fallen service members with the caskets coming off the plane, and he had been checking his watch, Can you imagine the outcry and the justified uproar?
00:08:36.000Is the president looking at his watch and does he have a message to those people who felt that they were offended?
00:08:44.000Well, I would say his message to all of the family members who were there, those who were not even in attendance, is that he is grateful to their sons and daughters, the sacrifice they made to the country,
00:09:00.000Okay, so they're just going to say empty words about all of this.
00:09:17.000And this is what Joe Biden does all the time.
00:09:19.000Something bad happens and then he talks about what it feels like to be in grief.
00:09:23.000As though, somehow, this is supposed to make him empathetic.
00:09:27.000He's going to talk about his own pain and this makes him empathetic.
00:09:56.000We'll get to more of this in just one second.
00:09:57.000First, let us talk about the simple fact that you don't want to go to the auto parts store.
00:10:02.000Would you want to stand in line for a long time and then get to the front and then finally they ask you a bunch of details about the car, you answer them, and then they're like, yeah, bro, we're going to order it online and then we'll upcharge you.
00:11:04.000This empathetic policy has now resulted in a wide variety of people being left behind in Afghanistan.
00:11:10.000Those people include, apparently, 24 students from Sacramento who are still stranded in Afghanistan, according to the Sacramento Bay, quote, at least 24 Sacramento area students are confirmed to be stranded in Afghanistan as turmoil continues in Kabul, according to school officials.
00:11:24.000San Juan Unified School District staff said 24 students, down from the initial estimate of 150 students, had not returned to campuses since the start of the 2021-2022 school year.
00:11:35.000Apparently, staffers at the Sacramento Congressman Ami Berra's office contacted San Juan Unified and are working with the district to bring the students back safely, but they are still stuck there.
00:11:47.000Meanwhile, it turns out that a three-year-old has been stranded there as well.
00:11:54.000The three-year-old boy was born near Sacramento, according to ABC7 News.
00:11:59.000He's going through a harrowing ordeal right now, unable to escape Afghanistan.
00:12:02.000We're hiding his identity and that of his father, a social worker, and other family members who are all U.S.
00:12:06.000permanent residents for fear of them being captured by the Taliban.
00:12:10.000So, as we will learn pretty shortly from Joe Biden himself, probably what happened is that they called the three-year-old and he didn't pick up the phone.
00:12:16.000So really, it's his own fault that he is stuck there.
00:12:18.000Other people who are stuck there include an Afghan interpreter who saved Joe Biden's life, but now is stuck there.
00:12:23.000According to the Wall Street Journal, 13 years ago, Afghan interpreter Mohammed helped rescue then-Senator Joe Biden and two other senators transit in a remote Afghanistan valley after their helicopter was forced to land in a snowstorm.
00:12:33.000Now, Mohammed is asking President Biden to save him.
00:12:38.000Mohammed, who asked not to use his full name while in hiding, told the Wall Street Journal, Don't forget me here.
00:12:42.000Mohammed, his wife, and their four children are hiding from the Taliban after his years-long attempt to get out of Afghanistan got tangled in the bureaucracy.
00:12:49.000They are among the countless Afghan allies who were left behind when the U.S.
00:12:52.000ended its 20-year military campaign in Afghanistan on Monday.
00:13:36.000citizens and their family members still in country should, quote, keep a low profile and notify a trusted person of your travel and movement plans and make contingency plans to leave when it is safe to do so that do not rely on U.S.
00:13:58.000government left its own journalist behind in Afghanistan, according to Josh Rogin at the Washington Post.
00:14:03.000The administration was warned early and often about the 600 or so employees, contractors, and family members who work for U.S.-sponsored news organizations under the umbrella of the U.S.
00:14:12.000Agency for Global Media, a federal agency funded by Congress.
00:14:15.000They include journalists working for Voice of America and Radio Free Europe who have worked in Afghanistan for years at great personal risk.
00:14:21.000The Taliban has killed four RFE journalists since 2016 through suicide bomb attacks.
00:14:26.000The company's journalists routinely receive death threats from the extremists.
00:14:29.000Now, the leaders of these organizations say the State Department promised to get everybody out before August 31st, only to later renege on that promise amid the chaos and confusion at the Kabul airport.
00:14:38.000By the way, I'm receiving notes from people who were actually at Kabul airport when all of this was happening, and there were apparently many situations in which the airport was filled with people ready to evacuate, and then they were just emptied out and handed over to the Taliban.
00:14:50.000Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, he says it's disheartening so many professional journalists employed by American-funded news organizations have now been left behind with their families.
00:14:58.000These Afghan allies are among the people most endangered at the present moment for the good work they have done over the course of the last two decades.
00:15:04.000Meanwhile, the Taliban, of course, is going around and killing people.
00:15:08.000According to the BBC, there's growing evidence that the reality on the ground is different than the rhetoric coming from the Taliban.
00:15:24.000Now, sources inside Afghanistan, as well as some who recently fled, have told the BBC Taliban fighters are searching for and allegedly killing people they pledged they would leave in peace.
00:15:32.000Several sources confirmed Taliban fighters last week executed two senior police officials Haj Mullah Akhazqai, the security director of Badghis province, and Ghulam Sak Akhbari, the security director of Farah province, video footage shows Akhazqai was kneeling, blindfolded, his hands tied behind his back before he was shot and murdered.
00:15:57.000So in one second, we're going to get to Joe Biden's speech last night, which was breathtaking in its arrogance, astonishing in its temerity.
00:16:03.000And this is a president who apparently has never made a mistake, ever.
00:16:11.000It really is an amazing, amazing thing.
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00:17:38.000It turns out that when you leave hundreds of American citizens behind, And then when you leave probably thousands of American green card holders behind, and tens of thousands of SIV holders behind, and a myriad number of Afghan allies who worked with us, and millions of people who actually don't want to live under the predations of the Taliban, it turns out you don't look empathetic.
00:17:55.000It turns out you look like a piece of bleep.
00:17:57.000That's what it turns out you look like.
00:17:59.000And when you do so in absolutely cowardly fashion, refusing to answer questions from the press, giving mush-mouthed statements every couple of days, lying overtly throughout the entire process, talking about how everybody will get out, talking about how we're going to stay long enough to get everybody out, talking about how every contingency here was planned, it turns out people don't like you.
00:18:19.000It turns out they think that your empathy is merely an act at that point.
00:18:24.000And you can see this in Joe Biden's poll numbers, which have now sunk into the low 40s.
00:18:36.000Because he is not competent, and he is not capable, and he is not the quote-unquote empathetic grandfather figure that so many people thought they were electing.
00:18:50.000He has his Secretary of State Tony Blinken give a full ridiculous speech in which he looked like he was delivering a hostage video.
00:18:55.000He's looking slightly off camera at his cue cards.
00:18:58.000You had the CENTCOM commander, Kenneth McKenzie, go out there and humiliate himself by saying a bunch of stuff like the Taliban are now our best friends and we handled this beautifully.
00:19:08.000And finally, Joe Biden emerges after delaying his speech.
00:19:10.000He was supposed to give a speech yesterday about 1.30 Eastern time, and then it was about 2.45 Eastern time he was supposed to speak.
00:19:15.000And then finally, he came out after three o'clock, which is his normal way.
00:19:20.000I don't know what's going on behind the scenes over there, but they have not hit a time for him to, like they're much better about hitting timelines in coordination with the Taliban than they are with actually keeping their schedule with regard to the press.
00:19:30.000They routinely call a time when he's going to speak to the press and then they just kind of blow right through it.
00:19:35.000So finally he emerges and he proceeds to give a 30 minute diatribe.
00:19:57.000Everything he has done here was part of the plan, except when it wasn't part of the plan, and if it wasn't part of the plan, that's everybody else's fault but his.
00:20:04.000Joe Biden has said repeatedly the buck stops with him.
00:20:06.000The American public are holding him to that right now.
00:20:09.000But he doesn't want to be held to that.
00:20:32.000They should have just gotten out earlier, obviously.
00:20:35.000The President of the United States is a pathetic spectacle at this point in time.
00:20:40.000And once again, The key to all of this is understanding that it has utterly undercut his image of himself and his image on the world stage.
00:20:49.000Not because everyone thought he was an expert.
00:20:52.000Not because everybody thought that he was fluent in foreign policy.
00:22:05.000The impression that Joe Biden is somebody who cares deeply about America, about American citizens, that this is somebody who, you know how many times over the course of his campaign, He tweeted that he's going to build a society where we leave no one behind.
00:22:18.000And now he is physically leaving behind Americans with the worst people on Earth, the Taliban.
00:22:24.000And actually, I should say like the second or third worst people on Earth, because actually the Taliban is not even as bad as Al Qaeda or ISIS, which the Taliban is currently hosting.
00:22:33.000This is a guy who posed as he was going to unify America around solidarity.
00:22:50.000Joe Biden is compassionate to one person and one person only, Joe Biden, which is why when he speaks about grief, he doesn't speak about anybody else's grief.
00:22:57.000He speaks about his own personal experiences of suffering and grief.
00:23:01.000He did it again in his speech last night.
00:23:07.000But if a politician has one pitch, and a pitch ain't competence, and the pitch is not coherence, the pitch is, I'm a nice person, and then that falls apart, you have to ask yourself, what exactly is his pitch for staying president at this point?
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00:26:11.000It was a historic win for the United States to turn over the country back to the people who committed 9-11 or provided cover for those people.
00:26:28.000Well, what about, you might be asking yourself, what about the 13 dead service people because you decided to hand security over to the Taliban?
00:26:59.000I was just at Dover Air Force Base for the dignified transfer.
00:27:05.000Yeah, checking her watch every five seconds and insulting the military parents.
00:27:08.000By the way, does he ever mention here why it was that they were facing a crush of enormous crowds seeking to leave the country?
00:27:14.000And why they had to face down ISIS-K terrorists?
00:27:17.000At no point does he actually mention this.
00:27:18.000The reason this happened is because he gave up Bagram Air Base, which exists outside of Kabul.
00:27:23.000The reason that this happened is because he decided to hand over local security directly to the Taliban, the Washington Post has reported, instead of taking the Taliban's own offer of allowing the United States to maintain control of Kabul at least long enough to evacuate our people.
00:27:38.000At no point is he going to take the blame for that, even though this is, again, a complete Biden policy.
00:27:42.000See, everything was masterfully handled.
00:27:45.000And the military's challenge is, well, those were natural.
00:27:47.000Those are just how things were going to be.
00:27:52.000So remember, Captain Compassion over here, the blame game is, so normally, if you're a compassionate, you normally say, you take the hit, you move on.
00:28:13.000In July, he was explicitly telling people it would not be like the fall of Saigon, that the Taliban did not have the ability to take over the entire country quickly.
00:28:24.000There's another story from the Daily Mail today, July 23rd, that That Biden actually called the now departed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and he saw that the Taliban had been making gains and he asked Ghani to lie about it.
00:28:40.000He asked Ghani to say to everybody that everything is going fine, apparently.
00:28:51.000Biden apparently said to Ghani that he wanted Ghani to lie to people.
00:28:57.000He said, quote, I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan is things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban.
00:29:03.000There is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.
00:29:10.000So he knew things were going badly and he told Ghani to lie about it.
00:29:13.000Here is Joe Biden explaining, however, that, you know, we had an assumption about the Afghan military holding.
00:29:19.000No one could have predicted this, but we had contingency plans.
00:29:22.000Number one, a lot of people did predict it.
00:29:23.000Number two, he knew what was going on.
00:29:25.000And number three, he did not have a good contingency plan.
00:29:29.000That assumption that the Afghan government would be able to hold on for a period of time beyond military drawdown turned out not to be accurate.
00:29:40.000But I still instructed our national security team to prepare for every eventuality.
00:30:04.000He said, we were told that we could have six to seven hundred troops.
00:30:07.000If, by the way, their contingency plans have been so excellent, why did we have to re-insert thousands of troops on the ground in order to effectuate this evacuation?
00:30:15.000And if there were such a great contingency, why are there still literally tens of thousands of people we made promises to still stuck there?
00:30:23.000Okay, so he continues along these lines.
00:30:33.000On the other hand, I deserve all the credit.
00:30:34.000Like, he was all over the place because when you don't have an actual defense, you just have to throat at the wall.
00:30:41.000And that's what Joe Biden is doing right here.
00:30:42.000Okay, so he continues along these lines.
00:30:45.000So we were ready when the Afghan security forces, after two decades of fighting for their country, And losing thousands of their own did not hold on as long as anyone expected.
00:30:59.000We were ready when they and the people of Afghanistan watched their own government collapse and the president flee amid the corruption and malfeasance, handing over the country to their enemy, the Taliban, and significantly increasing the risk to U.S.
00:31:21.000It was all part of the plan, but the Afghan military completely collapsed, and that's because they're corrupt and terrible.
00:31:26.000So I just have a question for Joe Biden.
00:31:27.000At any point here, are you going to mention the fact that you completely withdrew close air support, as well as all American military contractors from Afghanistan, and destroyed the military from the within, and announced that we were going to leave?
00:31:41.000According to Joe Biden, there was not only a plan to deal with the complete collapse of the country.
00:31:45.000There was an extra, an excellent plan for the evacuation, which doesn't explain why we have all these people still stuck on the ground over there and no personnel.
00:31:52.000But according to Joe Biden, all part of the plan.
00:31:56.000And you have to be a moron to believe him.
00:31:58.000You have to be a clinically stupid person in order to believe this stuff.
00:32:02.000Here is Joe Biden talking about the wonders of his plan.
00:32:06.000As a result, To safely extract American citizens before August 31st, as well as embassy personnel, allies and partners, and those Afghans who had worked with us and fought alongside of us for 20 years, I had authorized 6,000 troops, American troops, to Kabul to help secure the airport.
00:32:30.000As General McKenzie said, this is the way the mission was designed.
00:32:36.000It was designed to operate under severe stress and attack.
00:32:43.000Okay, so if you designed the mission, then who's to blame for leaving the Taliban in control of security and getting 13 American service members killed?
00:32:50.000Well, it's either your plan or it ain't your plan.
00:32:53.000Okay, but then this also leaves a question.
00:32:55.000If this was such a well-designed and brilliant plan, why are there so many people left behind enemy lines, right?
00:32:59.000A normal plan, you said you were going to take care of every contingency, a normal plan would have, you know, dealt with the fact that we now have at least hundreds of American citizens behind enemy lines and an unspecified number of green card holders.
00:33:11.000By the way, remember how at the very beginning of this, they were saying there were 10,000 to 15,000 Americans in Kabul?
00:33:15.000Remember how that shrunk all the way down to 6,000?
00:33:18.000It's because they started excising anybody who's a green card holder.
00:33:21.000If you're an American green card holder, you no longer count.
00:33:24.000If you're somebody with legal papers, you're no longer counted.
00:33:27.000So they just redefined who got to count as an American for purposes of getting them out, even though green card holders have the same rights from the U.S.
00:33:36.000That's how they played the statistical game.
00:33:38.000Anyway, you might be wondering, if it was such a great plan designed by this brilliant piece of human genius, then why are so many people left behind?
00:34:17.000and offers to help them leave Afghanistan all the way back as far as March.
00:34:23.000After we started the evacuation 17 days ago, we did initial outreach and analysis and identified around 5000 Americans who had decided earlier to stay in Afghanistan but now wanted to leave.
00:34:41.000Our Operation Allied Rescue ended up getting more than 5,500 Americans out.
00:34:50.000Okay, so here he says, well, you know, in March we were telling people to leave.
00:34:53.000Yeah, and in July you were saying the country definitely was not going to fall.
00:35:04.000All these people trying to get out, probably their fault.
00:35:07.000Everybody's fault except for this doddering fool.
00:35:12.000Now we believe that about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan with some intention to leave.
00:35:20.000Most of those who remain are dual citizens, longtime residents who had earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan.
00:35:32.000The bottom line, 90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave.
00:35:41.000And for those remaining Americans, there is no deadline.
00:35:46.000We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out.
00:35:51.000If they want to come out, but they don't want to come out, right?
00:37:46.000You can try them worry-free for 30 nights, free shipping, free returns, and my listeners get an exclusive 15% off your first set of sheets with promo code Shapiro at bollandbranch.com.
00:38:15.000We dissect the trending political and cultural topics and moments.
00:38:17.000Sometimes it gets serious, as it did last time.
00:38:19.000I'm super excited to tell you, Backstage in October is going to be staged a little differently.
00:38:24.000Instead of just tuning in from home, you will be able to see us live and on stage at the Ryman Auditorium, right here in Nashville, doing what we do best.
00:39:48.000Just yesterday, The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that sent a clear message about what the international community expects the Taliban to deliver on moving forward.
00:40:00.000Notably, freedom of travel, freedom to leave.
00:40:05.000And together, we are joined by over 100 countries that are determined to make sure the Taliban upholds those commitments.
00:40:15.000Those countries do not include Russia or China, as I have noted, but nobody else seems to care.
00:40:19.000And you're asking yourself now, why would we trust the Taliban?
00:40:43.000And we will not give it to them if they do not let the Americans out.
00:40:47.000Or alternatively, we'll just send them bags of cash.
00:40:49.000Here's the President of the United States talking about why we can rely on the Taliban.
00:40:53.000The Taliban has made public commitments broadcast on television and radio across Afghanistan on safe passage for anyone wanting to leave, including those who worked alongside Americans.
00:41:09.000We don't take them by their word alone, but by their actions.
00:41:14.000And we have leverage to make sure those commitments are met.
00:41:18.000The leverage comes in the form of our massive military power we just withdrew, and also the incredible leverage we have over the money that we hold.
00:41:27.000You know, we have capacity to hold their bank accounts, and we can totally withhold those bank accounts if they, oh wait, they have American citizens over there.
00:41:36.000So yeah, we are kind of going to do whatever they want to do.
00:41:40.000Okay, then Joe Biden had to spread the blame around because it turns out that no matter how much horse manure he tries to turn into gold, it's still horse manure.
00:41:47.000So he's got to spread it around, right?
00:41:49.000So again, just to recap, the people who are to blame are Americans stuck in Kabul, the Afghan National Army, Let me be clear.
00:41:58.000Leaving August the 31st is not due to an arbitrary deadline.
00:42:00.000It was designed to save American lives.
00:42:01.000his own military commanders. Everyone is to blame except for the only one who made the call this jackass. And so here he was going after going after Donald Trump.
00:42:12.000Let me be clear. Leaving August the 31st is not due to an arbitrary deadline. It was designed to save American lives. My predecessor, the former president, signed an agreement with the Taliban to remove U.S.
00:42:31.000troops by May the 1st, just months after I was inaugurated.
00:42:36.000The previous administration's agreement said that if we stuck to the May 1st deadline that they had signed on to leave by, the Taliban wouldn't attack any American forces.
00:42:52.000He continued along these lines and then he laid out the false binary.
00:42:55.000Either we left in ignominious defeat and left a bunch of Americans behind and rushed out of there.
00:43:00.000Based on a deadline set by only one person, Joe Biden.
00:43:03.000Or we're gonna have to go to total cataclysmic war.
00:43:06.000There's no evidence to suggest this is the case.
00:43:09.000He's just pulling this directly out of his ass.
00:43:10.000This is the same exact sort of logic that was used with regard to Barack Obama's Iran deal, which was, there are only two choices, nuclear annihilation with Iran, or this crappy deal I bring you, right?
00:43:21.000Joe Biden is doing the same thing here.
00:43:22.000Our only two options were not to maintain the status quo with every so often a ratchet up of troops, a ratchet down of troops.
00:43:29.000No, there are only two options, either complete pullout Or, complete, utter warfare.
00:43:33.000Tens of thousands of Americans dead in the streets.
00:43:44.000Either follow through on the commitment made by the last administration and leave Afghanistan, or say we weren't leaving, and commit another tens of thousands more troops going back to war.
00:44:02.000Between leaving or escalating, I was not going to extend this forever war.
00:44:10.000And I was not extending a forever exit.
00:44:15.000Okay, that one is going to come back to bite him.
00:44:17.000I was not extending a forever exit because I promise you we're going to be carrying out operations in Afghanistan for some time to come if he plans on keeping any of his commitments.
00:44:23.000The only way that the quote unquote forever exit is over is if he really does mean to abandon all of these people.
00:44:30.000Okay, so he wasn't done spreading the blame.
00:44:32.000So it's Trump's fault, even though, again, the Trump deal with the Taliban was conditional.
00:44:36.000And I was not a fan of the Trump deal with the Taliban.
00:44:57.000By the way, Joe Biden blaming Trump is kind of amazing considering last week he said himself no matter what Trump had done, he would have done this.
00:45:05.000Once again, Joe Biden speaking out of both sides of his mouth, but that may just be because he has lost all elasticity in his face at this point.
00:45:12.000In any case, Joe Biden then decided it's not enough to blame Trump.
00:45:16.000He's also going to blame his own military advisors.
00:45:19.000If you're blaming me, blame the military too.
00:45:21.000What a man he is, standing for his own strategy and his own plan, standing for his principles this way.
00:45:27.000What a brilliant orator and an incredible leader.
00:45:30.000Here he is just crapping all over his own military advisors.
00:45:34.000The decision to end the military lift operations at Kabul Airport was based on the unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisors, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and all the service chiefs and the commanders in the field.
00:46:07.000It was his call, because he's so smart, and because it was such a great move.
00:46:10.000But also, it was Trump's fault, and the Afghan military's fault, and the Americans stuck in Afghanistan's fault, and his commanders told him to do it.
00:46:16.000So really, the buck stops with all of them, unless you like the decision, in which case the buck stops with Biden.
00:46:22.000And then, he says, and now, join me in grateful prayer.
00:46:26.000To me, since I'm the one who made the decision.
00:46:31.000For now, I urge all Americans to join me in grateful prayer for our troops and diplomats and intelligence officers who carried out this mission of mercy in Kabul and at tremendous risk with such unparalleled results.
00:46:52.000When he says, I want you to give a prayer for the troops and diplomats and intelligence officers, what he really means, and we all know it, is I wish for you to give a grateful prayer to me.
00:47:02.000I was the creator of this policy, unless you don't like it, in which case it was really everybody else, but it was so brilliant and so well done.
00:47:41.000Continues, and here he really gets to the meat.
00:47:43.000After he's done blaming everybody else, here he gets to the meat.
00:47:45.000This is why Joe Biden had to make the decision to leave Afghanistan now, when we had 2,500 troops on the ground, zero combat casualties since February of 2020, a foothold to fight terrorists, Al Qaeda and ISIS, to prevent the retaking of the country by the terror-housing Taliban.
00:48:03.000Here is why it was necessary that we pull out, and also how he made no mistakes.
00:48:08.000Right, so first of all, let's just start with this.
00:48:10.000A lot of people were asking, Joe Biden, why didn't you pull people out sooner?
00:48:15.000If you thought that we needed to get out and August 31st was the deadline, why didn't you start the evacuation sooner?
00:48:20.000According to Joe Biden, Joe Biden has never made a mistake.
00:48:45.000Imagine if we had begun evacuations in June or July, bringing in thousands of American troops and evacuating more than 120,000 people in the middle of a civil war.
00:48:59.000There still would have been a rush to the airport, a breakdown in confidence and control of the government.
00:49:06.000And it still would have been very difficult and dangerous mission.
00:49:10.000Okay, so now he's gonna rely on counterfactuals.
00:49:14.000What if there had been, like, a massive civil war, and we had evacuated people, there would have been a rush to the- like, he has no proof of any of this.
00:51:10.000So the evidence of this is pretty much non-existent.
00:51:13.000But Joe Biden continues to rely on this in the same way that, again, the Obama administration relied on the lie that there were moderates in Iran who were emboldened by our nuclear deal with them.
00:51:21.000To those asking for a third decade of war in Afghanistan, I ask, what is the vital national interest?
00:54:22.000Again, I'm spending a lot of time on this because I think this is the only true justification for what Joe Biden just did that we are going to get, which is he has a pig-headed, stubborn, and idiotic view of how world affairs works, and he's going to cram it down, and he does not give a damn who pays a price for that.
00:54:38.000He doesn't care how many Americans will have to die in Afghanistan to make that happen.
00:54:41.000He doesn't care how many Americans will die here if the terrorists come back.
00:55:06.000We will maintain the fight against terrorists in Afghanistan and other countries.
00:55:12.000We just don't need to fight a ground war to do it.
00:55:17.000We have what's called over the horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground, or very few if needed.
00:55:27.000you We've shown that capacity just in the last week.
00:55:33.000We struck ISIS-K remotely days after they murdered 13 of our service members and dozens of innocent Afghans.
00:55:45.000And to ISIS-K, we are not done with you yet.
00:55:52.000So I noticed that one of those really, really great drone strikes may have killed an entire family.
00:55:59.000And that might be because we didn't have eyes on the ground and we were relying on the Taliban to do our spotting for us.
00:56:06.000Also, it turns out that launching a drone attack from six hours away in Qatar is not exactly the same as having close air support with Americans on the ground and American contractors on the ground and American allies on the ground.
00:56:17.000Afghanistan is going to turn back into the black box that it was in 2001, and it's going to be Joe Biden's fault.
00:56:21.000But I am enjoying the irony of Joe Biden saying, we've withdrawn.
00:57:20.000We're engaged in a serious competition with China.
00:57:23.000And there's nothing China or Russia would rather have, would want more, in this competition in the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan.
00:57:36.000Mm. So, yes, that's exactly what China and Russia wanted was for us to stay. Weird, because they're pretty happy that we left. Okay, finally, Joe Biden gets to the sort of Biden doctrine.
00:57:46.000Okay. The problem is that he's lying. So he says that there are only two principles that should guide American foreign policy. And it is difficult to argue with these two principles.
00:57:54.000The problem is that Joe Biden doesn't actually hold by any of these principles. Here we go.
00:57:57.000As we turn the page on the foreign policy that has guided our nation the last two decades, We've got to learn from our mistakes.
00:58:32.000One, he says we have to set missions with clear, achievable goals.
00:58:34.000Oh, I've noticed that you have been saying that equity should be the guiding principle of all American domestic policy.
00:58:41.000Also, you want to sign on to climate change agreements that have no clear, definable goals, end dates, or actual strategies involved.
00:58:47.000And also, you say that you want to stay clearly focused on the fundamental national security interests of the United States.
00:58:51.000Would that involve handing over Afghanistan to the Taliban and the Chinese, or would it not?
00:58:57.000What do you define as the clear national security interest of the United States?
00:59:01.000The reality is Joe Biden's actual policy is weakness at home and bloated incompetence, well, weakness abroad and bloated incompetence at home.
00:59:32.000And he talks about how, you know, we're going to support the Afghan people through diplomacy, because again, squeaky bunnies are going to make this happen when military force has not.
00:59:42.000But perhaps the most galling line in all of this, he talks about the spending in Afghanistan.
00:59:49.000Understand, this is coming from a president who has proposed 10 to 12 trillion dollars in new spending in the United States.
00:59:59.000He's seeking to pass a $3.5 trillion budget right now, on top of a $1.1 trillion infrastructure plan, on top of a $2 trillion stimulus plan earlier this year.
01:00:09.000But he's really upset about spending, guys.
01:00:13.000After more than $2 trillion spent in Afghanistan, costs that researchers at Brown University estimated would be over $300 million a day for 20 years in Afghanistan, for two decades.
01:00:38.000You take the number of $1 trillion, as many say, that's still $150 million a day for two decades.
01:00:47.000What have we lost as a consequence in terms of opportunities?
01:00:52.000I mean, that's an enormous amount of spending, you know, like $300 million a day for two decades, that $2 trillion spent over the course of 20 years.
01:02:24.000And inevitably, the consequences of this will be felt for decades.
01:02:28.000As those consequences become clear, he ain't gonna be able to rely on the fact that people feel bad for him because of what happened to his son to get him out of it.
01:02:35.000Here is Joe Biden invoking Beau, cynically, I mean just cynically.
01:02:42.000If you're 20 years old today, you've never known an America at peace.
01:02:48.000So when I hear that we could've, should've, Continue the so called low grade effort in Afghanistan at low risk to our service members at low cost.
01:03:03.000I don't think enough people understand how much we have asked of the 1% of this country who put that uniform on, willing to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation.
01:03:17.000Maybe it's because my deceased son, Bo, served in Iraq for a full year.
01:03:24.000I'll just note here, there have been 35,000 calls to Veterans Affairs about suicidal veterans since the beginning of this pullout.
01:03:32.000If you talk to veterans of the Afghan war, you're gonna be hard-pressed to find any of them who agree with Joe Biden's policy here or think it's good or are going to be sympathetic to Joe Biden because his son served in Iraq and then died years later of brain cancer.
01:03:45.000It's so opportunistic, it's so cynical, and it's so unempathetic.
01:05:08.000coming out in strong defense of Biden is the most predictable move of the day. Meanwhile, MSNBC's Rick Stengel was out there defending the president along the most bizarre lines.
01:05:17.000Here was Rick Stengel defending Joe Biden.
01:05:19.000Here's a disastrous withdrawal. When the British left Afghanistan in 1842, 4,500 troops left Kabul and one Englishman 11 days later arrived in Jalalabad.
01:05:38.000When the British left India in 1947-1948, just pulled out, over the next few years, 2 million people died as that country was divided in half.
01:06:13.000That, you know, the real problem here is, of course, you wait for it, Republicans weaponizing it.
01:06:17.000It's that Republicans have kept weaponizing this thing.
01:06:19.000NBC News actually had the temerity to tweet that out, quote, And here's the reality.
01:06:23.000wielding the issue as a political weapon against President Biden in the hope it will damage the Democratic Party and help them recapture control of Congress.
01:06:30.000But will Afghanistan matter to voters?
01:06:41.000But if it doesn't matter to Americans that Joe Biden abandoned, abandoned human beings to the Taliban for no reason other than his own pride and vanity, then we deserve whatever we get.
01:06:52.000All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
01:06:54.000In the meantime, go check out the Michael Knowles show today.
01:06:57.000He discusses the story of the GOP congressman missing in Afghanistan.
01:07:00.000You can hear more details about that over on Michael's show that is available right now.