The Ben Shapiro Show - What Did Biden Know And When Did He Know It? | Ep. 1323

00:00:00.000 Joe Biden continues to maintain he had no clue Afghanistan was about to fall, but his own State Department had a report predicting just that.

00:00:06.000 The White House desperately seeks excuses, and the left continues its attacks on Ron DeSantis over blocking mask mandates.

00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:12.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:19.000 This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:22.000 Don't like big tech and the government spying on you?

00:00:24.000 Visit ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.

00:00:26.000 Well, first, we begin with the latest from Afghanistan, where the situation continues to be just awful.

00:00:32.000 We now have tape of toddlers being pulled over the airport wall by American forces because people are so desperate to get their kids out of Afghanistan ahead of the Taliban that they are handing their own children, like small babies, over to the American military.

00:00:45.000 Here's what that tape looks like.

00:00:47.000 It's just a disaster area.

00:00:56.000 Meanwhile, video has been taken outside the airport, apparently showing people basically being crowded into a ditch by the Taliban.

00:01:04.000 These are supposed to be people who are waiting to enter the airport.

00:01:07.000 Again, this is not an organized withdrawal, shall we say.

00:01:13.000 And of course, you can hear the gunshots, so things are going beautifully right outside the airport.

00:01:22.000 Sounds great.

00:01:25.000 Meanwhile, the Taliban spent the day yesterday celebrating, because after all, it was the anniversary of the independence of Afghanistan.

00:01:32.000 According to the New York Times, Kabul was many things on Thursday.

00:01:34.000 The chaos at the airport was matched by calm in other pockets of the city.

00:01:37.000 Some businesses resumed work.

00:01:39.000 Many people were trying to get on with their lives.

00:01:40.000 Others weren't hiding afraid for theirs.

00:01:42.000 Women were scarce. 0.99

00:01:43.000 There were some signs of Taliban restraint.

00:01:45.000 But also clear evidence its members patrolling the streets were not afraid to wield force.

00:01:48.000 In fact, there is a story from CNN.com about a photographer who was basically got the hell beat out of him by the Taliban.

00:01:55.000 And then when they realized he was a reporter, they started trying to take selfies with him.

00:01:58.000 So everything is well organized over there.

00:02:00.000 The president of the United States is supposed to address the nation on Friday, apparently.

00:02:05.000 As the United States tries to ramp up its troubled evacuation in Afghanistan, Biden is expected today to address the furor over the sluggish process, stymied by mayhem in Kabul and delays in Washington, that threatens to strand thousands of Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban takeover.

00:02:19.000 Biden is expected to speak at 1 p.m.

00:02:20.000 in Washington.

00:02:21.000 He's defended the pullout from Afghanistan while promising not to abandon the Afghans who risked their lives.

00:02:26.000 Well, I mean, he's walked back that promise pretty clearly, as we'll see in just one moment.

00:02:30.000 The United States has rushed troops and diplomatic reinforcements to Kabul in recent days to speed up visa processing for Afghans. 0.94

00:02:36.000 American commanders are negotiating daily with their Taliban counterparts to ensure the evacuees can reach the airport because we are pathetic. 0.70

00:02:43.000 We're begging the Taliban. 0.95

00:02:45.000 When we say negotiating with the Taliban, we mean begging the Taliban. 0.98

00:02:48.000 The British and the French have been sending out military patrols to go pick up their citizens and bring them to the airport. 0.99

00:02:53.000 The United States, however, is hunkered down behind the walls of Kabul Airport, fearful that if the United States walks out, the Taliban will attack them, and then Joe Biden will have to overturn his promise to get all the troops out by August 31st and insert more troops into Kabul, turning a disaster area into a full-scale conflagration, all because the man is a moron. 0.97

00:03:13.000 Thousands are waiting fearfully outside the airport gates, according to the New York Times, where Taliban soldiers have attacked people with sticks and rifle butts. 0.84

00:03:20.000 As Afghans clutching travel documents camped outside amid Taliban checkpoints and tangles of concertina wire, anxious crowds were being pressed up against blast walls, with women and children being hoisted into the arms of U.S.

00:03:31.000 soldiers on the other side.

00:03:34.000 The Taliban's unpredictability and history of brutality have set off a rush to escape, especially among Afghans who worked alongside U.S.

00:03:39.000 and NATO forces. That of course is no surprise given the fact that so many people are going to be left there murdered. I mean that is the Taliban are apparently going door to door according to Daily Wire. The Taliban are intensifying their search for Afghans who help the United States and have a list of people they intend to quote-unquote question and punish which is code for murder according to a Thursday report from the New York Times based on a document prepared by the United Nations.

00:04:04.000 The development seems to complicate assurances from the Biden administration that the Taliban are somewhat reformed from their previous iteration.

00:04:10.000 Biden seemed to hint at a changing interpretation of the Taliban's newfound commitment to freedom in his recent interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

00:04:18.000 Meanwhile, the Taliban are also going door-to-door seeking Christians.

00:04:21.000 They are searching through phones for Bible apps to make sure that there are no Christians in country. 0.99

00:04:26.000 According to the Daily Wire, Afghan Christians are reportedly fleeing to the mountains in a desperate attempt to escape the Taliban who are going door-to-door trying to kill them.

00:04:33.000 Things are going great, in other words.

00:04:36.000 An underground church that partners with Frontier Alliance International has reported that the Taliban are targeting Christians for death. 0.80

00:04:41.000 According to FAI, the Taliban has a hit list of known Christians they are targeting to pursue and kill.

00:04:46.000 The U.S.

00:04:46.000 Embassy is defunct.

00:04:47.000 There is no longer a safe place for believers to take refuge.

00:04:50.000 All borders to neighboring countries are closed.

00:04:51.000 All flights to and from have been halted with the exception of private planes.

00:04:54.000 People are fleeing into the mountains looking for asylum.

00:04:56.000 They are fully reliant on God, who's the only one who can and will protect them.

00:05:00.000 The Taliban are going door to door taking women and children.

00:05:02.000 The people must mark their house with an X if they have a girl over 12 years old. 0.99

00:05:05.000 So the Taliban can take them. 0.95

00:05:06.000 If they find a young girl and the house was not marked, they'll execute the entire family. 0.99

00:05:10.000 If a married woman 25 years or older has been found, the Taliban promptly kill her husband, do whatever they want to her, and then sell her as a sex slave. 0.96

00:05:16.000 This is according to, again, the Frontier Alliance International, a Christian NGO.

00:05:21.000 Meanwhile, US-allied Afghan forces are completely in hiding, according to the New York Times.

00:05:26.000 Thousands of Afghan security force members managed to make it to other countries over the past few weeks as the Taliban advanced.

00:05:31.000 Others managed to negotiate surrender and went back to their homes.

00:05:34.000 Some kept their weapons and joined the Taliban.

00:05:36.000 They were all part of the sudden atomization of the national security forces.

00:05:39.000 The United States and its allies spent tens of billions of dollars to arm, train, and stand against the Taliban.

00:05:44.000 Tens of thousands of other Afghan grunts, commandos, and spies who fought to the end, despite the talk in Washington that the Afghan forces simply gave up, have been left behind.

00:05:51.000 They're now on the run, hiding and hunted by the Taliban.

00:05:54.000 There's no way out, said Fareed, an Afghan commando, in a text message to an American soldier who fought with him.

00:05:58.000 Fareed, who agreed to be identified by first name only, said he was hiding in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, trapped after the regular army units had surrendered around him.

00:06:05.000 I am praying to be saved, he said.

00:06:08.000 Militants are threatening to arrest or punish family members if they can't find the people they are looking for, according to former Afghan officials.

00:06:14.000 Most spoke on condition of anonymity to protect friends and loved ones still hiding in Afghanistan.

00:06:19.000 The Taliban is combing through records of the Ministry of Defense and Interior and the headquarters of Afghanistan's spy service, drawing up lists of operatives to search for.

00:06:27.000 There are more and more reports militants are exacting swift and fatal revenge when they are found, which of course is not exactly a shock.

00:06:34.000 So things are going beautifully.

00:06:35.000 In a second, we'll get to the latest on the evacuation efforts, which are a complete bleep show.

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00:08:02.000 Alrighty, so meanwhile, the United States has planned to get people out, continues to be not much.

00:08:07.000 According to Jackie Heinrich, who is writing for Fox News, she's the White House correspondent.

00:08:12.000 She says that sources have told her the State Department is looking for non-military ways to stage and move Americans and others in Kabul as an alternative to military forces being deployed into Kabul for rescues.

00:08:22.000 So I guess we're going to, you know, just send randos into Kabul to try and bring Americans through the gauntlet that has now been created by the Taliban around the Kabul airport. 0.77

00:08:30.000 The State Department did not dispute this information.

00:08:31.000 They said, quote, Our first priority is the safety and security of the American people.

00:08:35.000 We will continue to uphold that commitment.

00:08:36.000 Oh, will you?

00:08:37.000 The State Department, above all of the other departments, is the one to blame.

00:08:40.000 The State Department is a disaster, disaster area.

00:08:42.000 Meanwhile, John Kirby over at the Pentagon, he's the spokesperson, he was asked, you know, you keep saying that we're trying to get our people out, and yet we have not deployed any military patrols to go pick up Americans who are stranded in Kabul.

00:08:53.000 Why is it that the Brits and the French can do it, but we cannot? 1.00

00:08:58.000 If the British can take their paratroopers and they can get in vehicles and go get their people and get them to the airport, why can't the U.S.

00:09:05.000 do that?

00:09:06.000 If there is a deal with the Taliban to provide safe passage, why is it left to the Americans outside of that ring to get there on their own?

00:09:15.000 Why can't we send vehicles to go get them?

00:09:18.000 We have not seen any great impediments to the safe passage that the Taliban have agreed to facilitate.

00:09:26.000 Americans are getting through those checkpoints, and they are getting onto the base on the airfield, and they are being flown out of Kabul.

00:09:33.000 Okay, that is not exactly what we are hearing from on the ground, where we are hearing that many Afghans, certainly the Afghans are stuck in Kabul, but many Americans are not willing to run the gauntlet because they're afraid of walking outside their front door.

00:09:44.000 And the Taliban's mercy lasts as long as the Taliban's mercy lasts. 0.92

00:09:47.000 I mean, let's face what's going on here.

00:09:48.000 The reality is when we say we're negotiating with the Taliban, what we mean by that is we're bribing them. 0.95

00:09:52.000 This is going to come out over the next six months, I promise you, that the United States is sending pallets of cash to the world's worst human beings because Joe Biden couldn't keep it in his pants when it came to withdrawing from Afghanistan.

00:10:03.000 I mean, that really is what's going on here.

00:10:06.000 According to Defense One, evacuation operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport are starting to normalize, but with the stark reality that U.S.

00:10:13.000 movements, including any troop extension past August 31st, now must be negotiated with the Taliban, the Pentagon acknowledged on Thursday.

00:10:20.000 John Kirby said, quote, I think it's a fundamental fact of reality of where we are, that communications and a certain measure of agreement with the Taliban on what we're trying to accomplish has to occur.

00:10:28.000 About 7000 people, a mix of Americans, Afghans and other foreign nationals have left Kabul on U.S.

00:10:32.000 military aircraft since noncombatant evacuation operations began last week.

00:10:37.000 has flown about 12000 people out of Afghanistan since July.

00:10:37.000 U.S.

00:10:41.000 However, We've still got thousands and thousands of Americans who are still stuck in Kabul and tens of thousands of Afghan allies who are stuck in Kabul.

00:10:49.000 At a State Department press conference Thursday, spokesman Ned Price acknowledged processing has been slow but was improving.

00:10:54.000 He says there are 6,000 people at the airport right now who have been fully processed by our consular team and will soon board planes.

00:11:00.000 In the meantime, however, there are planes that are leaving literally half empty.

00:11:06.000 20 planes were expected to depart overnight on Thursday.

00:11:08.000 The state will double the number of consular officers on the ground by Friday, says Ned Price.

00:11:13.000 We'll have the capacity we need to process as many individuals as we can fill the flights.

00:11:17.000 The evacuation has more of a rhythm in the last 24 hours, he said.

00:11:21.000 For example, U.S.

00:11:22.000 troops have opened and manned more gates at the airport, allowing faster processes of evacuees.

00:11:27.000 And the crowds that swarm the tarmacs have been pushed out, but there are currently more airplane seats than there are passengers, which means that the processing is not going all that well.

00:11:36.000 would like to move between 5,000 and 9,000 people per day.

00:11:36.000 The U.S.

00:11:39.000 Over the last 24 hours, they flew out 2,000, said Taylor.

00:11:43.000 There are at least 15,000 Americans still in Kabul and more than 70,000 Afghans who worked with the U.S.

00:11:48.000 government and their families.

00:11:51.000 All of those people are going to be stopped, by the way.

00:11:53.000 Even the U.S. 0.95

00:11:54.000 citizens may hesitate to move from their homes, according to Defense One.

00:11:57.000 The U.S.

00:11:57.000 government said Wednesday it cannot guarantee their safe passage.

00:12:01.000 Price said every report of someone unable for whatever reason to reach the airport is something we take seriously.

00:12:05.000 We're doing everything we can mechanically, logistically, but then, of course, there's also the diplomatic element of this as well.

00:12:11.000 So, in other words, no.

00:12:13.000 Americans are still stuck there, and this process is not, in fact, going particularly smoothly. 0.99

00:12:17.000 Meanwhile, there was this debacle over the last 24 hours where the United States State Department apparently was selling flights.

00:12:25.000 I'm not kidding you.

00:12:26.000 They were selling flights for essentially $2,000.

00:12:28.000 According to Politico, even though U.S.

00:12:32.000 officials tell NatSecDaily and others that evacuation flights from Kabul will be free, people trying to catch a plane in the Afghan capital say differently.

00:12:39.000 One person said State Department staff were seeking large payments up to $2,000 from American passengers and even more from non-U.S.

00:12:45.000 citizens.

00:12:47.000 When we relayed what this person told us to the State Department, a spokesperson didn't deny this is happening.

00:12:51.000 This spokesperson said, U.S. law requires evacuation assistance to private U.S.

00:12:54.000 citizens or third-country nationals be provided on a reimbursable basis to the maximum extent practicable.

00:13:00.000 The situation is extremely fluid.

00:13:02.000 We're working to overcome obstacles as they rise.

00:13:04.000 So now they're trying to walk this back.

00:13:07.000 They're saying, no, no, no.

00:13:08.000 Now we're going to make the flights free.

00:13:09.000 But it took the press discovering that they were trying to charge people trying to escape Afghanistan $2,000 in order to leave for that to become an issue.

00:13:16.000 All right.

00:13:17.000 So this all has international implications as well.

00:13:20.000 Apparently, the United States asked, we're not we're not the point.

00:13:23.000 We're just asking our enemies for help.

00:13:24.000 And they're all like, ha ha ha ha ha.

00:13:26.000 Here's the latest on that.

00:13:27.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a June 16 summit meeting with President Biden, objected to any role for American forces in Central Asian countries at all, senior U.S.

00:13:37.000 and Russian officials said, undercutting the U.S.

00:13:39.000 military's efforts to act against new terrorist dangers after its Afghanistan withdrawal.

00:13:43.000 Remember.

00:13:44.000 Joe Biden said that we would still be able to carry out the over-the-horizon missions we needed to.

00:13:48.000 We'd have air bases.

00:13:49.000 We'd be able to still monitor terrorist traffic in Afghanistan.

00:13:52.000 No, we won't.

00:13:53.000 I mean, end of story, no.

00:13:54.000 We don't have any resources on the ground.

00:13:56.000 We have no bases in country.

00:13:57.000 And we have no bases anywhere nearby.

00:13:58.000 Pakistan cut a deal with the Taliban to kick us out.

00:14:00.000 And Russia is denying us the ability to build any bases or have a base anywhere nearby.

00:14:05.000 The previously unreported exchange between the U.S.

00:14:07.000 and Russian leaders has complicated the U.S.

00:14:09.000 military's options for basing drones and other counterterrorism forces in countries bordering landlocked Afghanistan.

00:14:15.000 That challenge has deepened with the collapse over the weekend of the Afghan government and armed forces.

00:14:20.000 The exchange also indicates Moscow is more determined to try to maintain Central Asia as a sphere of influence and to expand cooperation with the new American president over the turmoil in Afghanistan, former and current U.S.

00:14:29.000 official said.

00:14:31.000 Yeah, no bleep.

00:14:33.000 There's a shock.

00:14:34.000 You mean the Russians aren't interested in helping us?

00:14:36.000 Who could have foreseen this cataclysmic event?

00:14:39.000 Who could have foreseen that the Russians and the Chinese and the Taliban might not be all that helpful to us in fighting terrorism?

00:14:45.000 Without access to Central Asian nations like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, or Tajikistan, the U.S.

00:14:50.000 would need to rely on bases in Qatar, other Arab Gulf states, and U.S.

00:14:53.000 Navy aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean to fly aircraft to Afghanistan.

00:14:57.000 Flight times from the Gulf states are so long, a U.S. 0.73

00:14:59.000 drone might spend more than 60% of its mission flying to and from Afghanistan from a U.S.

00:15:04.000 base in Qatar.

00:15:05.000 That would limit the time for conducting reconnaissance or carrying out strikes over the country, because the drones basically run out of fuel.

00:15:11.000 So this is all going really, really, really well.

00:15:14.000 The good news is that Joe Biden is enamored with it.

00:15:17.000 He loves it.

00:15:18.000 He loves it.

00:15:19.000 And when he's not lying about how he got to this decision, here's how he got to the decision.

00:15:23.000 He woke up one morning, he had his can of Ensure, he watched part of an episode of Matlock, and then he farted out his decision.

00:15:29.000 That's how he came to this decision.

00:15:30.000 There's no logic to it.

00:15:31.000 He was told in advance by pretty much everyone that this was the world's worst decision.

00:15:35.000 He was told by his DOD that he needed to leave some skeletal troops there, at least until the evacuation was complete.

00:15:40.000 He was told by his State Department this was a mistake.

00:15:42.000 He was told by everyone this was a bad idea.

00:15:44.000 But bad ideas have never stopped Joe Biden before.

00:15:48.000 That's kind of amusing.

00:15:49.000 When Donald Trump was president, there was all this talk about how, you know, Trump isn't really running his administration.

00:15:53.000 The people around him are running his administration.

00:15:56.000 And in reality, many of the people around Trump were constant checks on his bad ideas.

00:16:01.000 Very often, Trump would have a bad idea, militarily speaking.

00:16:04.000 Like, what if we precipitously pulled out from Syria?

00:16:06.000 And James Mattis would step in and go, you know, Mr. President, you can't do that.

00:16:09.000 It's a bad idea.

00:16:10.000 And Trump would go, okay, fine.

00:16:11.000 And then he would listen.

00:16:13.000 Joe Biden listens to no one, and so his advisors have just gone along with the worst foreign policy decision in my lifetime.

00:16:19.000 I just went right along with it and enabled it.

00:16:22.000 After advising him, it was a terrible idea.

00:16:24.000 There was no internal bucking.

00:16:25.000 There were no leaks to the press.

00:16:28.000 There was no talk in advance about how this was going to go.

00:16:31.000 They just went along with it.

00:16:32.000 They let the addled old man figure out what the policy would be.

00:16:35.000 A policy that he had locked in from 2010 and on, even though the war in Afghanistan has radically shifted since 2010, given the fact that we radically downscaled our troop commitment in Afghanistan post-2014.

00:16:45.000 The United States has not had more than 12,000-13,000 troops in the country at any time since 2014.

00:16:52.000 And at the time that we left, we had 2,500 troops officially in country to provide, again, a base from which to fight terrorism.

00:17:00.000 But Joe Biden, at least, he has sort of these moments of refreshing honesty because every so often it breaks through.

00:17:06.000 And Joe Biden did this interview with George Stephanopoulos.

00:17:09.000 Would you have withdrawn troops like this even if President Trump had not made that deal with the Taliban? 0.89

00:17:12.000 I would have tried to figure out how to withdraw those troops, yes.

00:17:15.000 Because look, George.

00:17:16.000 Qatar with the Taliban, and we had to abide by that deal. 0.99

00:17:20.000 And now Joe Biden's like, yeah, whether or not that deal was made, I was going to do it, which is the actual truth.

00:17:25.000 Would you have withdrawn troops like this even if President Trump had not made that deal with the Taliban? 0.89

00:17:30.000 I would have tried to figure out how to withdraw those troops, yes.

00:17:34.000 Because look, George, there is no good time to leave Afghanistan.

00:17:42.000 15 years ago would have been a problem, 15 years from now.

00:17:45.000 The basic choice is, am I going to send your sons and your daughters to war in Afghanistan?

00:17:53.000 In Afghanistan in perpetuity. 1.00

00:17:56.000 Okay, so when he says there's no good time to leave Afghanistan, the answer to that is right, which is probably why we should have left some skeleton troops there at a minimum. 1.00

00:18:04.000 But he was committed to this.

00:18:05.000 He's committed to this.

00:18:06.000 By the way, there's news breaking this morning that the situation in Afghanistan is getting worse.

00:18:10.000 According to Sasha Ingber, who's a national security reporter for Newsy, previously at NPR and National Geographic, a source says, situation in Afghanistan is rapidly deteriorating. We've had Americans get beaten throughout the night. One of them, an American woman, was beaten twice, even though she was carrying a U.S. passport.

00:18:25.000 There are reports of sheer chaos breaking out again in Afghanistan.

00:18:30.000 For all the talk about how this thing is starting to lock down, it continues to be chaos at the airport in Afghanistan.

00:18:38.000 It's a disaster area.

00:18:40.000 And yes, Joe Biden was warned about this.

00:18:42.000 Yes, Joe Biden was warned.

00:18:44.000 Of course he was.

00:18:45.000 Now, Joe Biden lied about that.

00:18:47.000 He went on Stephanopoulos and in the course of about 30 seconds said he wasn't warned about it.

00:18:50.000 And then realized that that was going to be outed as a lie.

00:18:53.000 And then he went to the I don't recall defense, right?

00:18:55.000 The I don't recall defense in politics is what you do.

00:18:57.000 It's the lawyerly way of avoiding any sort of actual blame.

00:19:01.000 Because if you don't recall, that can't be argued with.

00:19:05.000 And since everybody assumes that Joe Biden has some form of memory loss anyway, it's actually credible.

00:19:10.000 Here's Joe Biden going from I was never told to I don't recall in the space of about 30 seconds.

00:19:15.000 Your top military advisors warned against withdrawing on this timeline.

00:19:18.000 They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops.

00:19:19.000 No, they didn't.

00:19:21.000 It was split.

00:19:22.000 That wasn't true.

00:19:23.000 That wasn't true.

00:19:25.000 They didn't tell you that they wanted troops to stay?

00:19:26.000 No, not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a time frame.

00:19:32.000 All troops.

00:19:34.000 They didn't argue against that.

00:19:36.000 So no one told, your military advisors did not tell you, no, we should just keep 2,500 troops.

00:19:41.000 It's been a stable situation for the last several years.

00:19:43.000 We can do that.

00:19:44.000 We can continue to do that.

00:19:46.000 No, no one said that to me that I can recall.

00:19:48.000 No, okay, and you can tell he's lying right there, right?

00:19:51.000 He realizes he's trapped himself and that he's lying.

00:19:54.000 In fact, we know for a fact that he was informed by many of his advisors that this was a terrible idea.

00:19:58.000 This has been widely reported.

00:20:00.000 In fact, back in April, Jen Psaki confirmed that some advisors were telling Biden to leave troops, right?

00:20:05.000 This is publicly.

00:20:07.000 Can you explain the rationale for why President Biden went against the advice of military commanders who recommended leaving 2,500 troops on the ground in Afghanistan?

00:20:18.000 Well, I think that's an overcharacterization of every military leader, and I don't think they've all provided their point of view.

00:20:25.000 No military commander wants to stay forever.

00:20:27.000 They insist that this is not some, insist this is not the time to leave, some opponents of his decision.

00:20:33.000 Oh, so I was told that there was no opposition to that by Joe Biden right then, right?

00:20:38.000 He doesn't recall anybody saying that to him.

00:20:40.000 We now have reports from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, from pretty much every major media publication saying that Joe Biden was told by everyone, up to and including, by the way, Lloyd Austin, his Secretary of Defense, as well as The wonderful Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

00:20:54.000 He was told by everyone this was a bad idea.

00:20:56.000 And he went ahead and he did it anyway. 0.97

00:20:58.000 Because he's a stubborn old coot. 1.00

00:20:59.000 And he has decided that his bad foreign policy ideas need to be... As Barack Obama once said about Joe Biden, don't underestimate Joe's ability to screw things up. 0.80

00:21:07.000 Yeah, well, the American people did, and now we're gonna pay for it in a pretty serious way.

00:21:12.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second, because we now have the breaking story that the State Department overtly informed Joe Biden this was gonna be a disaster, like weeks ago.

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00:22:36.000 Okay, so here is the big story of the day.

00:22:38.000 The big story of the day, aside from the fact that the situation in Afghanistan continues to be just an utter Complete disaster area.

00:22:46.000 Richard Engel reporting this morning.

00:22:48.000 There's an internal State Department cable that warned that Kabul would collapse in July.

00:22:50.000 and Afghans who worked with US and NATO is rapidly becoming a chaotic humanitarian airlift.

00:22:56.000 Just complete chaos breaking out over there.

00:22:58.000 There's an internal State Department cable that warned that Kabul would collapse in July.

00:23:01.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, an internal State Department memo last month warned top agency officials of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the US.

00:23:10.000 's August 31st troop withdrawal deadline in Afghanistan, according to a U.S.

00:23:13.000 official and a person familiar with the document.

00:23:16.000 The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban's advance was imminent and Afghanistan's military may be unable to stop it.

00:23:25.000 The cable was sent via the State Department's confidential dissent channel.

00:23:28.000 and warned of rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces and offered recommendations on ways to mitigate the crisis and speed up evacuation.

00:23:37.000 The cable was dated July 13th.

00:23:40.000 July 13th.

00:23:40.000 Now, the reason I mentioned the significance of that date is because five days earlier, Joe Biden had gone on national television and assured the American people the Taliban would not take over the country and this would not look like the Saigon.

00:23:50.000 Five days earlier.

00:23:53.000 As of last weekend, some 18,000 Afghans who applied for the U.S.' 's special immigrant visa program, as well as their families, remained on the ground in Afghanistan.

00:24:02.000 In all, 23 U.S.

00:24:04.000 Embassy staffers, all Americans, signed the July 13th cable.

00:24:07.000 official said there was a rush to deliver it, given circumstances on the ground.

00:24:07.000 The U.S.

00:24:10.000 The cable was sent to our wonderful Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and the Director of Policy Planning, Salman Ahmed.

00:24:16.000 Blinken received the cable and reviewed it, according to people familiar with the exchange, who added that contingency planning was already underway when it was received, and that Blinken welcomed their feedback.

00:24:26.000 State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to address the cable, but told the Wall Street Journal, Blinken reads every dissent and reviews every reply.

00:24:33.000 The existence of the confidential State Department cable adds to an expanding debate involving the White House, Pentagon, and intelligence services over what U.S.

00:24:40.000 officials understood about assessments of Afghanistan's stability.

00:24:45.000 Again, it is very clear at this point that Biden was warned eight ways from Sunday.

00:24:49.000 It is very obvious to anyone who is watching that this was a disaster area unfolding.

00:24:54.000 And Biden couldn't care less.

00:24:55.000 He couldn't care less.

00:24:58.000 It is incredible how this glowing This giant glowing sun of empathy.

00:25:04.000 President Biden has no empathy whatsoever for what's going on on the ground over in Afghanistan.

00:25:08.000 For the Americans who are stuck there, for the Afghans who are stuck there, for anybody.

00:25:12.000 Because he wanted to do the things that he wanted to do and his umbrage begins when you start asking him tough questions.

00:25:18.000 This has been true, by the way, throughout his career.

00:25:20.000 There was always this picture of Biden that he was a wonderful, warm guy.

00:25:23.000 Anytime he was asked a tough question by literally anyone, Throughout his campaign, he turned into the look fat guy.

00:25:28.000 You remember that?

00:25:29.000 There was a guy, a Bernie Sanders supporter, who asked him a tough question, and he started insulting him as fat.

00:25:33.000 I mean, that's who Joe Biden is.

00:25:36.000 So in this interview with George Stephanopoulos, he was just fully delusional and in umbrage mode.

00:25:41.000 So at one point, by the way, he mentioned that he said, we don't have any troops in Syria, which is weird since we have 900 troops in Syria.

00:25:47.000 But I mean, the man can be forgiven that since he doesn't remember what he had for breakfast this morning.

00:25:52.000 But more than that, he then did this.

00:25:54.000 This is an amazing clip.

00:25:55.000 Joe Biden told George Stephanopoulos, nobody's being killed at the Kabul airport right now.

00:25:59.000 He said, everything's fine over there.

00:26:01.000 Still a lot of pandemonium outside the airport.

00:26:03.000 Well there is, but look, but no one's being killed right now.

00:26:06.000 God forgive me if I'm wrong about that, but no one's being killed right now.

00:26:10.000 No one's being killed and then he knocks on wood.

00:26:13.000 He knocks on wood.

00:26:14.000 You're the President of the United States.

00:26:17.000 He's knocking on wood that no one's been, you know what could ensure that no one gets killed over there?

00:26:21.000 If you hadn't abandoned the country without any plan whatsoever.

00:26:24.000 That would ensure that nobody got killed.

00:26:26.000 Or, if you said to the Taliban, listen, you let all of our guys in, or American air power is going to start going after you.

00:26:32.000 Maybe all fun and games for the moment, but just remember, we still have the most powerful Air Force on planet Earth, so you let all of our people through right now, or the bombs start falling on the heads of your soldiers.

00:26:42.000 But he's not doing any of that.

00:26:43.000 And by the way, he's wrong.

00:26:45.000 When he says that people aren't being killed at Knock on Wood, here is CNN yesterday.

00:26:50.000 Since the Taliban seized Kabul on Sunday, 12 people have been killed.

00:26:53.000 That, according to the Reuters news agency.

00:26:56.000 Taliban fighters toting machine guns and a soundtrack of gunfire are fueling this unease and anxiety among Afghans.

00:27:04.000 Look here, CNN photographer capturing these images.

00:27:07.000 Huddled masses outside Kabul airport's east gate.

00:27:10.000 Rows and rows of men, women, and children clustered together, waiting on a way out that for some may never materialize.

00:27:16.000 And by the way, a lot of people are pointing out people who don't want to Take in some of these Afghan refugees.

00:27:21.000 Again, if you're a translator with the American Armed Services and you have American soldiers who are vouching for you, it seems to me that your case to be brought into the United States as a refugee is pretty good.

00:27:31.000 But in any case, if you're talking about this, a lot of people have been saying, look at how many men there are in these photos.

00:27:35.000 Right, because those are the ones who worked as the translators.

00:27:37.000 There weren't a lot of women who were working as translators for the American Armed Services in Afghanistan. 0.99

00:27:41.000 In any case, Biden's just lying when he says nobody's been killed.

00:27:44.000 No, a lot of, I mean, people fell from airplanes, dude, on tape, on tape.

00:27:49.000 But remember, Captain Empathy over here, he's never been empathetic toward this sort of stuff.

00:27:54.000 I mean, if you go all the way back, like to the actual fall of Saigon, Remember that Joe Biden actually said by the actual fall of Saigon that the United States had no obligation to evacuate a single member of South Vietnam, like not a single person.

00:28:09.000 We had abandoned them to their fate.

00:28:10.000 Hundreds of thousands of people got into boats to float off the coast of Vietnam to escape the onrushing communist hordes.

00:28:16.000 And Joe Biden said this, quote, I do not believe the United States has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals.

00:28:22.000 Other than perhaps an estimated 1,800 diplomatic personnel assigned to foreign embassies in Saigon, the United States has no obligation to evacuate one or 100,000 in one South Vietnamese.

00:28:32.000 As I read the language of the bill, the evacuation of Americans in South Vietnam conceivably could be endangered because of the provisions also permitting the evacuation of untold numbers of foreign nationals. 0.94

00:28:40.000 So this goes back 40 years for this jackass. 0.94

00:28:43.000 I mean, it's amazing. 0.99

00:28:44.000 It goes back almost half a century.

00:28:47.000 Joe Biden's complete lack of care about people who are being victimized by the regimes that the Democrats have empowered.

00:28:55.000 It's pretty incredible.

00:28:57.000 Meanwhile, by the way, forget about the Afghan nationals for a second. 0.90

00:28:59.000 The Americans are still stuck there. 1.00

00:29:02.000 Now, the State Department's been trying to downplay that.

00:29:04.000 Here was Ned Price yesterday saying that the Americans being blocked from the airport, they're a small number.

00:29:08.000 It's just congestion.

00:29:09.000 It's not chaos.

00:29:10.000 This is contrary to every report we were receiving from on the ground.

00:29:14.000 We have a relatively large cadre of consular officers on the ground in Kabul right now.

00:29:20.000 They are in regular and constant contact with American citizens.

00:29:23.000 I can tell you that they have received, as of a couple hours ago, a small handful of reports from American citizens who weren't able to reach the airport for whatever reason.

00:29:34.000 We've seen the reports of congestion.

00:29:35.000 My understanding is that things are moving quite efficiently at this hour at the airport now.

00:29:44.000 Oh really?

00:29:45.000 Things are moving well now?

00:29:46.000 Clarissa Ward reporting for CNN says, quote, this is one of the most harrowing things I've experienced.

00:29:50.000 What is she talking about?

00:29:51.000 The scene at the Kabul airport.

00:29:54.000 According to the Washington Post, a chaotic and dangerous dynamic at Kabul's airport showed few signs of relenting Thursday as thousands of people attempting to board flights faced beatings by Taliban guards, the crush of heaving crowds, and interminable spells in the dust and heat while waiting to escape Afghanistan.

00:30:08.000 Several people said Thursday they'd received confusing signals from the U.S.

00:30:11.000 about how exactly they were supposed to leave, citing emails from the State Department urging them to go to the airport, only to find there was no one to receive them or to answer their questions on how to board flights.

00:30:20.000 We arrived at 6 a.m., said a 39-year-old librarian, a dual U.S.-Afghan citizen who came with his wife and two kids after receiving an email invitation from the State Department.

00:30:28.000 From 6 a.m.

00:30:28.000 until 6 p.m., the gate did not open.

00:30:30.000 There is no person to address our concerns.

00:30:32.000 And now we are learning that the Taliban is targeting journalists who report on the chaos.

00:30:36.000 The German broadcaster Deutsche Welle said a close relative of one of its journalists had been murdered by Taliban fighters.

00:30:42.000 The relative was shot as militants went house to house searching for the journalist in Western Afghanistan, according to the news organization.

00:30:50.000 And, um, you know, Clarissa Ward and her crew are now inside the airport.

00:30:54.000 But she's saying that, again, inside the airport, it is not a lot better than it is outside the airport.

00:30:58.000 The Pentagon spokesperson, by the way, Ned Price, he can't, or John Kirby, rather, he can't even say how many Americans are even in Afghanistan at this point.

00:31:05.000 How many American citizens remain in Afghanistan?

00:31:09.000 I don't know.

00:31:10.000 The State Department would be a better place to go for an estimate of how many Americans are in Afghanistan or in and around Kabul.

00:31:15.000 That is not a figure that the United States military would know.

00:31:20.000 And I think, as you also know, not every American citizen in another country... There's no obligation that they register their presence.

00:31:30.000 And that you can have a perfect, accurate count.

00:31:34.000 Okay, in order to make anybody believe that the Biden administration has any level of control, the Biden administration has now been put in the position of becoming the PR wing for the Taliban.

00:31:43.000 This is not a surprise.

00:31:44.000 You saw that the Obama administration did the exact same thing with Iran.

00:31:47.000 Obama came into office wanting Iran to be established as a sort of regional power for no reason at all.

00:31:53.000 Because again, he had perverse foreign policy ideas that made no sense in the real world.

00:31:57.000 And so what this meant is he wanted to cut a deal with the Taliban, with the Iranians. 0.83

00:32:02.000 So he lied to the American people.

00:32:03.000 And so did Ben Rhodes, his national security advisor.

00:32:05.000 They just lied.

00:32:06.000 They went out there and they said that there was a moderate wing of the Iranians, and we were emboldening the moderate wing of the Iranian government, and then we spent years defending the Iranian government.

00:32:16.000 Oh, really, they're moderate.

00:32:18.000 Oh, really, they're moderating.

00:32:19.000 Oh, really, they're getting better.

00:32:20.000 Oh, you know, they're really not so bad.

00:32:22.000 Is there anything really to worry about?

00:32:24.000 They're going to get better, guys.

00:32:25.000 I mean, they want to be legitimate players on the world stage.

00:32:28.000 We became the PR wing for the Iranian mullahs, even as they fostered terrorism around the region, even as they murdered tens of thousands of people in places like Syria and Lebanon and Yemen. 0.86

00:32:39.000 Even as they funded Hamas, right? 0.68

00:32:41.000 It was the United States and Barack Obama's administration who were soft-peddling the evils of the Iranian regime.

00:32:46.000 Now we're doing the exact same thing with the Taliban. 0.96

00:32:48.000 Because you see, in order to make Americans believe everything is going to be okay in Afghanistan, we have to believe that the Taliban are a different sort of Taliban.

00:32:55.000 Maybe they're changing their stripes.

00:32:56.000 You know, no guarantees.

00:32:57.000 But maybe they're going to be better this time around.

00:33:00.000 Now, is there any evidence whatsoever, like at all, that they're better this time around?

00:33:04.000 They're literally just shooting people.

00:33:05.000 They're going around and hunting journalists.

00:33:08.000 They pledged the same thing in 96 when they first took over Afghanistan that they have now, which is pardon for everybody. 0.83

00:33:13.000 And then by pardon, they mean you will be dead.

00:33:15.000 I mean, that's basically what they mean.

00:33:17.000 But you've now turned the White House of the United States into a PR wing for the worst people on Earth, the same way that Obama did with the Iranians. 1.00

00:33:25.000 So here, for example, is the president of the United States, Joe Biden, saying, you know, The Taliban, they're probably going through some sort of existential crisis right now.

00:33:32.000 You know, they have to decide whether they want to be part of the international community.

00:33:35.000 Here's the thing.

00:33:36.000 They've already decided.

00:33:37.000 The answer is no, and they are not going through an existential crisis.

00:33:40.000 The West is going through an existential crisis because the West has no idea what it believes.

00:33:44.000 The West doesn't know what it stands for, aside from the evils of supposed inherent white supremacy embedded in all of our institutions and Transgenderism. 1.00

00:33:54.000 The West has basically very few principles to which it is certainly committed at this point.

00:33:59.000 We don't know what we stand for.

00:34:00.000 We don't know why we stand for the things we stand for.

00:34:02.000 We are going through an existential crisis.

00:34:04.000 The Taliban are going through a victory dance because a bunch of regressive barbaric cavemen from the 8th century just defeated the most powerful military in the history of the world. 0.98

00:34:14.000 By the way, for the second time, right?

00:34:15.000 Because they did this to the Soviets in the 80s. 0.52

00:34:18.000 So now they're proclaiming victory on the exact same thing, even though really the two instances shouldn't be comparable.

00:34:24.000 The United States was holding the line in Afghanistan with 2,500 troops.

00:34:28.000 The difference is the Taliban have a 1,000-year time horizon and we have about a 20-year time horizon in the United States.

00:34:33.000 We get bored after 20 years and we're like, oh, well, this is an endless war.

00:34:36.000 You know what an endless war means to the Taliban?

00:34:37.000 You know what an endless war means to the people in Afghanistan?

00:34:41.000 Afghanistan has essentially been in a state of war since at least 1979.

00:34:46.000 So an endless war to them does not look like an endless war to us. 0.95

00:34:49.000 And so they can declare victory after having their asses kicked all over the map for 20 years because they outlasted us. 0.95

00:34:55.000 But in any case, Joe Biden has now become the PR wing for the Taliban. 0.98

00:34:58.000 This is what he has to do now.

00:35:01.000 I think they're going through sort of an existential crisis about do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government?

00:35:12.000 I'm not sure they do.

00:35:14.000 But look, they have.

00:35:15.000 They care about their beliefs more.

00:35:16.000 Well, they do.

00:35:18.000 But they also care about whether they have food to eat, whether they have an income that can make any money.

00:35:23.000 and run an economy.

00:35:25.000 They care about whether or not they can hold together the society that they, in fact, say they care so much about.

00:35:32.000 What an absolute joke.

00:35:34.000 The president of the United... There he is.

00:35:35.000 They want legitimacy in the same way that Hamas wants legitimacy, guys. 0.69

00:35:38.000 It's all these terrorist groups.

00:35:39.000 They just want legitimacy.

00:35:41.000 The president of the United States is now running cover for the Taliban. 0.65

00:35:44.000 That's the only thing you can take away from that clip.

00:35:46.000 I'm not sure that they want legitimacy.

00:35:48.000 But, you know, they do want to make sure that they can run the economy.

00:35:51.000 They want to make sure.

00:35:51.000 I mean, wouldn't they want to be welcomed into the family of nations?

00:35:54.000 By the way, it's this exact same sort of arrogance that led to a lot of the nation building project in the first place.

00:35:59.000 They're just like us, guys.

00:36:00.000 They want to make sure that their that their country still runs.

00:36:03.000 They have the same priorities we do.

00:36:06.000 John Kirby at the Pentagon was specifically asked whether the Biden administration considers the Taliban an enemy.

00:36:10.000 Now, this should have a pretty obvious answer.

00:36:13.000 The answer is yes. 0.99

00:36:14.000 The Taliban are the worst people on the planet. 0.99

00:36:17.000 The Taliban are responsible for thousands of Americans' deaths. 1.00

00:36:20.000 The Taliban are going around murdering our allies. 0.91

00:36:22.000 Yes, they are our enemy. 0.67

00:36:23.000 They've continued to be our enemy.

00:36:24.000 But because Joe Biden just surrendered to them, he now has to say that it's not a surrender by pretending they're not our enemy.

00:36:29.000 So that's what John Kirby does here.

00:36:30.000 He just avoids the question as to whether the Taliban are our enemy.

00:36:35.000 Does the U.S.

00:36:35.000 military consider the Taliban an enemy?

00:36:39.000 Our focus right now, the thing we're working against right now, is time and space.

00:36:46.000 And we want to get as many people out of Kabul as we can in as little amount of time as we can. 1.00

00:36:53.000 That is called a not answer at all.

00:36:55.000 The question was, are the Taliban our enemy?

00:36:57.000 And the answer was, we're trying to get Americans out. 0.90

00:37:01.000 So I guess we're the PR wing for the Taliban now.

00:37:03.000 That's exciting.

00:37:04.000 In a second, we'll get to what Joe Biden's calculus here is.

00:37:06.000 Because it's pretty obvious what his calculus is.

00:37:08.000 Why he's doing all of this and what his angle here is.

00:37:11.000 Because you look at this and I look at this and we say this is the worst foreign policy disaster of the last 40 years, at least since the fall of Iran in 79. 0.63

00:37:18.000 Maybe since the end of World War II, considering it's so self-inflicted.

00:37:21.000 I mean, at least when Iran fell, we really had very little to do with it.

00:37:24.000 When it comes to this, we are the complete cause of it.

00:37:27.000 I think it's the worst foreign policy disaster for America.

00:37:31.000 Man, honestly, I'm hard-pressed to think of a worse foreign po- The end of Vietnam was not even as much of a foreign policy disaster as this is. 0.69

00:37:40.000 Truly.

00:37:41.000 But Joe Biden has a plan.

00:37:43.000 We'll get to the actual plan in one second.

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00:38:45.000 All right, we'll get to more on the disaster in Afghanistan.

00:38:48.000 Plus, we'll get to COVID as well.

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00:40:35.000 Meanwhile, the media reaction to what Joe Biden is doing is beginning to rush in.

00:40:45.000 It is not good.

00:40:45.000 So what does Biden think that he is doing here?

00:40:47.000 According to Reuters, Biden basically thinks he's going to wait it out.

00:40:50.000 Reuters says President Joe Biden is brushing off criticism of his administration's chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal because he and his aides believe the political fallout at home will be limited, according to White House allies and administration officials.

00:41:00.000 That, of course, is not a giant shock, considering that he said 10 years ago that uh F that with regard to whether there would be consequences for withdrawal Nixon and Kissinger got away with it which is an amazing thing considering that neither Nixon nor Kissinger were actually responsible for the Vietnam withdrawal.

00:41:15.000 Gerald Ford was president at the time Nixon had been gone for a while and it was the Democratic Congress that actually caused the Vietnam withdrawal in the first place but the idea here is that he's just going to be able to outlive this.

00:41:26.000 Joe Biden will just outlive this, right?

00:41:28.000 We'll all forget about it.

00:41:29.000 We'll all move on.

00:41:30.000 I am not nearly so sanguine, particularly since it seems like this administration is still trying to figure out whether or not they're going to leave people behind.

00:41:37.000 Breonna Keillor over at CNN, she actually asked directly the White House communications director, This would be Kate Bedingfield. 0.52

00:41:46.000 She asked her directly, are you prepared to leave people behind in Afghanistan?

00:41:50.000 And Kate Bedingfield said, we're doing everything we can to get as many people out who want to get out before the August 31st deadline.

00:41:56.000 Who set that deadline?

00:41:59.000 That's the Taliban setting that deadline, right?

00:42:01.000 I have a feeling that if you leave a bunch of Americans there, Kate and Joe, I have a feeling that the fallout may not be limited. 0.99

00:42:06.000 I have a feeling that people are going to be kind of pissed if you leave thousands of Americans in Kabul because you were so stupid that you left them in the hands of the Taliban. 0.98

00:42:15.000 Meanwhile, the British and the French somehow are sending their paratroopers in to get people out. 0.99

00:42:19.000 I have a feeling Americans might not take particularly kindly to all of that.

00:42:22.000 One of the things that has fascinated me about the situation in Afghanistan right now is the media coverage thereof.

00:42:29.000 Because the media coverage has been really good, like really accurate, quite good, hypercritical of President Biden, everywhere from like the European press to the American press.

00:42:39.000 And it got me wondering why?

00:42:40.000 Why are the media, and this is literally the first time in my lifetime that a Democrat has done something egregious and the media have been all over it.

00:42:47.000 The media never do this.

00:42:48.000 Even when Bill Clinton was getting caught in the Oval Office with his pants down, the media were like, oh, well, you know, boys will be boys.

00:42:55.000 Even when it was Barack Obama completely botching things in Iraq to the extent that ISIS rose, it was, well, you know, that was really the consequence of a bad Iraq war and he can't really be blamed.

00:43:04.000 And after all, it was Biden who was going to go, it was Obama who was going to go in and fix the problem.

00:43:08.000 This is the first time I've ever seen, I think in my entire adult lifetime, Where Democrats do something so egregious that even the media are forced to look at it and go, this is horrifying.

00:43:18.000 And it really is across the spectrum.

00:43:19.000 There are very few media defenders of the Biden administration at this point.

00:43:24.000 CNN's Clarissa Ward has been doing excellent work on the ground at CNN. 1.00

00:43:28.000 She, of course, is incredibly brave.

00:43:29.000 She's been on the ground in Kabul dealing with all of this.

00:43:31.000 And she is leading the charge here.

00:43:35.000 The lack of clear information.

00:43:36.000 The rumor mill is in overdrive.

00:43:38.000 There's hysteria.

00:43:39.000 You have Taliban fighters with whips, with guns.

00:43:43.000 You have US and UK soldiers who are not allowing people in.

00:43:47.000 You have mixed messaging coming through about what kind of paperwork you need and how you can get on a flight and where you can go.

00:43:53.000 I mean, it is just An absolute mess.

00:43:57.000 And we heard President Biden say yesterday in his comments to ABC News that this is not a failure.

00:44:03.000 And I think a lot of people outside that airport, particularly those taking the kinds of extreme actions we're just talking about, would like to know, if this isn't failure, what does failure look like exactly?

00:44:15.000 Okay, and you're hearing the same thing from Jay Tapper over at CNN.

00:44:17.000 You're hearing the same thing from MSNBC's Kelly O'Donnell, who says Biden is pretty obviously ducking the press at this point, which he pretty clearly is.

00:44:24.000 Does the White House have a good explanation so if the president now says chaos was inevitable?

00:44:31.000 Then, are they acknowledging that he misled us?

00:44:34.000 So was that mislead a month ago on purpose?

00:44:37.000 Because they didn't want to offend the Afghan government?

00:44:39.000 Well, they're not acknowledging that discrepancy yet.

00:44:42.000 We've had no opportunity, no briefing, no ability to get a real sense of that.

00:44:47.000 What they are saying is that they had planned for and expected that there could be a fall, but the timing has been what they've been focused on.

00:44:55.000 That it wouldn't be as precipitous as we have seen happen.

00:44:58.000 Okay, everybody acknowledging this is a mess.

00:45:00.000 The New York Times' Jonathan Martin, he says, yeah, it's pretty clear that the Biden administration is lying to us.

00:45:04.000 You have the president talking about chaos being inevitable.

00:45:07.000 Sure, the chaos was inevitable if you're talking about a Taliban takeover of Kabul, if you're talking about a dangerous situation and just the crumbling of humanitarian and human rights.

00:45:16.000 But it was not expected to be chaos when you're talking about evacuating embassy staff at the very last minute, evacuating and trying to figure out what to do with the Afghan staffers at the very last minute.

00:45:24.000 That was not predicted and that should have been handled.

00:45:27.000 He said the opposite the previous month, and I think that's the big challenge for him politically is that he has a paper trail of statements literally, as Joe Biden would say, saying the opposite than in fact what happened.

00:45:39.000 And I think there's no willingness on his part to acknowledge his previous statements here and sort of eat that.

00:45:46.000 My first time in my adult lifetime that the media are actually covering this stuff accurately.

00:45:49.000 The first time.

00:45:51.000 And, you know, it does raise the question as to why.

00:45:54.000 I think there are a couple of answers.

00:45:56.000 The first answer is that the media actually thought Afghanistan was the good war.

00:46:00.000 Many of them were embedded with American troops.

00:46:01.000 Many of them got to know Afghans on the ground.

00:46:04.000 And now they are realizing that they've been lied to by Joe Biden.

00:46:08.000 And I think they're insulted by that.

00:46:10.000 And they should be insulted by that.

00:46:12.000 All right, meanwhile, the situation with regard to COVID has continued to be the narrative that Joe Biden hoped props him up.

00:46:18.000 And so, so much right now is Joe Biden blowing things in Afghanistan and then turning and wheeling and trying to clock somebody over COVID.

00:46:24.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:46:25.000 It was Joe Biden who promised on July 4th that we were done.

00:46:28.000 And if he had set the metrics properly, we would have been done on July 4th.

00:46:31.000 Meaning, does every adult in America have the ability to get the shot?

00:46:35.000 The answer is yes.

00:46:37.000 So, what are we talking about now?

00:46:39.000 Really, what are we talking about?

00:46:41.000 The Democrats set an unrealistic standard with regard to COVID.

00:46:45.000 And the unrealistic standard was zero COVID.

00:46:47.000 They will never acknowledge this, that their goal is actually zero COVID.

00:46:50.000 But that is their goal.

00:46:52.000 And that goal is not realistic, because COVID is going to be with us until the end of time.

00:46:57.000 There are hundreds of millions of people who have COVID right now.

00:47:00.000 There are hundreds of millions of people who have already had COVID.

00:47:02.000 We already have a large majority of the adult population of the United States that has had either COVID or the jab at this point.

00:47:10.000 So there's no end point.

00:47:11.000 There's no end point for the Democrats.

00:47:13.000 And so Democrats continue to try and manufacture this idea that they know how to deal with COVID.

00:47:19.000 And the Republicans are obstructing that in the hopes that the American people will blame Republicans for, number one, Joe Biden's failure to set any sort of actual reasonable metrics with regard to COVID, number two, Democrats' broad-scale desire to lockdown and mask people for the end of time, and three, to distract from his gigantic, enormous, historic, world-historic failure in Afghanistan.

00:47:39.000 And so they're going to go right back to the COVID drawing board.

00:47:41.000 So Ron DeSantis has become their target of opportunity.

00:47:44.000 They've hated DeSantis since the beginning of the pandemic because he presides over the oldest state in the country outside of Maine, which again has seven people in a moose.

00:47:51.000 DeSantis has performed admirably.

00:47:52.000 I live in Florida.

00:47:54.000 It is a relief to see a politician who actually follows the data and recognizes that mask mandates are completely useless.

00:48:01.000 There is no actual evidence that mask mandates, not masks, mask mandates do anything.

00:48:05.000 When it comes to Delta, it is pretty clear that cloth masks are very ineffective.

00:48:10.000 OK, this is not me saying this.

00:48:11.000 This is Michael Osterholm, the former Biden advisor, saying this.

00:48:14.000 There's people like Scott Gottlieb pointing out that cloth masks are not particularly effective against Delta because the viral load on Delta is much, much higher than the viral load on the Alpha variant, B117.

00:48:25.000 So...

00:48:26.000 When Ron DeSantis says there's no evidence that kids should be masked in schools, he is absolutely correct.

00:48:31.000 Now, let's be clear about what Ron DeSantis has done in Florida, by the way.

00:48:34.000 He has not said that kids cannot mask in school.

00:48:36.000 That's not what he said.

00:48:37.000 He has said that local school districts will not receive funding if they ban kids from school for not masking.

00:48:42.000 That is a difference.

00:48:44.000 The media have lied about this.

00:48:44.000 They've said that he's banned masks in schools.

00:48:46.000 That is not correct.

00:48:47.000 If you want to mask your kid in school, you are still capable of doing so.

00:48:50.000 There's no evidence you should.

00:48:51.000 There's no evidence that masking in school is particularly effective.

00:48:55.000 First of all, kids are not good at wearing masks.

00:48:56.000 Second of all, most of the kids are wearing cloth masks.

00:48:58.000 Third of all, if you want to mask your kid with an N95, I suppose you're free to do so, although there are a lot of studies suggesting that mask masking around kids is not good for their mental development, and that there may be physical consequences to kids breathing in their own carbon dioxide all day.

00:49:12.000 But, putting all of that aside, Ron DeSantis has not handled things poorly.

00:49:16.000 We are seeing upticks in virtually every state in the Union.

00:49:18.000 Florida, it looks like, by the way, already has seen its peak in terms of cases and deaths, according to Worldometers.

00:49:23.000 You can see the case numbers are already declining over the last week or so.

00:49:26.000 The death numbers have been declining pretty steeply over the last week or so in Florida, despite the media focusing incessantly on Florida.

00:49:31.000 Not Louisiana, which is an actual large-scale rolling disaster, but Florida, because Louisiana has a Democratic governor, Florida does not.

00:49:38.000 But DeSantis, Was ripping Biden and the Democrats hope to redirect toward COVID because again, they don't want anybody talking about Afghanistan.

00:49:45.000 Here is a Ron DeSantis slamming Biden.

00:49:48.000 I think Trump was right to say we needed to come home from Afghanistan. 1.00

00:49:52.000 How you do that matters.

00:49:53.000 When you're leaving thousands of Americans to fend for themselves behind enemy lines, that matters.

00:50:00.000 When you're leaving billions of dollars in military equipment for our enemies to just take, that matters.

00:50:06.000 It's going to make that area a disaster. 0.92

00:50:08.000 Obviously Americans are at risk.

00:50:10.000 And Sean, you know who's looking at this?

00:50:12.000 China.

00:50:13.000 Russia, North Korea, all of our adversaries are taking the measure of Joe Biden.

00:50:18.000 And they see that this is not somebody who's capable of leading with conviction and leading on the world stage.

00:50:25.000 Okay, everybody knows this.

00:50:26.000 So Joe Biden's idea is let's redirect toward COVID.

00:50:30.000 And let's do it with policy that is never ending.

00:50:33.000 The masking of children has become the point du jour.

00:50:36.000 This is the thing that Democrats and the left would love to talk about, is masking kids.

00:50:40.000 So, Anthony Fauci, who can always be counted on to take a series of conflicting decisions, and can also be counted on to do so with great confidence.

00:50:47.000 Like, he'll take two positions that are in complete conflict with one another over the course of a year, and then he will say each with equal confidence.

00:50:53.000 So here he is saying it's time to mask up kids again.

00:50:55.000 Can he cite a study like one study showing that mandatory masking of children has been effective?

00:51:02.000 The answer is he cannot, because those studies do not exist.

00:51:04.000 The answer is he cannot, because those studies do not exist.

00:51:06.000 There is no evidence that masking of kids is effective.

00:51:09.000 Or, by the way, necessary.

00:51:10.000 Because, thank God, the Delta variant is no more deadly for kids, as far as the data that we have seen, than was the Alpha variant, which means it is highly not deadly for kids.

00:51:18.000 Again, I'm going to say to you, the CDC statistics on age, okay?

00:51:23.000 Here are the CDC statistics on age.

00:51:25.000 I'm looking at them right now.

00:51:27.000 Okay, according to the CDC, a grand total, this is updated as of August 18th, 2021, two days ago, the grand total of people in the United States under the age of 18 who have died involving COVID-19, involving COVID-19, right?

00:51:41.000 Not just of COVID-19, involving COVID-19.

00:51:43.000 This is the CDC's language.

00:51:45.000 Zero to 17, a cohort of 73 million Americans, 361.

00:51:50.000 We are not seeing a radical uptick in death among the young.

00:51:53.000 We're not.

00:51:53.000 Okay, anybody who's telling you differently is lying to you.

00:51:56.000 It is not true.

00:51:57.000 I looked at the stats a week ago.

00:52:00.000 Since August 11th, a grand total of seven children, people under the age of 18, have died of COVID-19 in the United States, out of a cohort of 73 million.

00:52:08.000 Okay, no, we are not seeing a radical exponential spike in death rates for kids.

00:52:14.000 But if the left can convince you that your kids are in danger, they can continue to focus in on an issue where they think they have a winning hand.

00:52:20.000 Because then they get to claim that Republicans just don't care if kids die.

00:52:23.000 Here's Anthony Fauci doing this routine.

00:52:26.000 Masks are an important thing for the mitigation of the transmission and the acquisition of infection.

00:52:33.000 They are very important, particularly when you have a highly, highly transmissible virus in the form of the Delta variant.

00:52:42.000 And that's the reason why, when you talk about the extra added degree of protection, even in a school system where you may have vaccinated teachers and some of the children may be vaccinated, you want to wear a mask To protect the children so that they could continue to be in school, in person, in classes, so that we don't get the deleterious effects on the child of, again, keeping them out of school.

00:53:08.000 You want to do that, but you want to do it safely.

00:53:11.000 Okay, notice the lack of logic here.

00:53:12.000 Okay, so he says, we have to make sure that we mask all the kids because otherwise the kids might get sick.

00:53:17.000 Okay, now, number one, kids who are getting sick from COVID, as a general rule, and I'm talking statistically, do not get seriously ill from COVID.

00:53:25.000 Okay, so then he says, we have to make sure that we don't shut down schools, right?

00:53:28.000 We have to keep them in school.

00:53:30.000 I have a question.

00:53:31.000 What is your standard for keeping them in school?

00:53:33.000 Seriously, what is your standard?

00:53:34.000 If your standard, because this shows that all they care about is zero COVID.

00:53:39.000 If your kid had a cold, okay, let's just take a completely different disease, a different coronavirus.

00:53:43.000 Your kid had a cold in school.

00:53:45.000 Your kid transmitted that cold in school to the other kids.

00:53:48.000 Did they shut down the class?

00:53:49.000 Has that ever happened anytime in your entire life?

00:53:51.000 Did it happen when you were a kid or when your kids are kids?

00:53:53.000 Of course not. 0.98

00:53:54.000 That's very silly.

00:53:56.000 So, case count is not necessarily what matters here.

00:53:58.000 The question is, is anyone getting seriously ill among the children?

00:54:01.000 If the answer is no, why are you shutting down classes?

00:54:04.000 Why?

00:54:04.000 You actually have to explain what is the metric for shutting down classes.

00:54:07.000 The metric seems to be zero COVID.

00:54:09.000 If there are no cases of COVID among kids, we keep the classes open. 1.00

00:54:12.000 But what I am saying is that that is an idiotic standard. 0.99

00:54:15.000 Why should I care particularly much if a bunch of kids get colds? 1.00

00:54:19.000 I never have before.

00:54:21.000 I don't particularly now.

00:54:23.000 And if we're worried about the teachers, the teachers should all be vaccinated.

00:54:26.000 And if they don't want to get vaccinated, they can wear an N95. 0.51

00:54:28.000 That one's on them.

00:54:29.000 What we are really doing here, and everybody knows it, is we are masking up the kids to protect the teachers or to make people's faint-hearted parents feel better about themselves.

00:54:37.000 That's what we are doing here.

00:54:39.000 Hey, that is not rooted in data linked to danger for children.

00:54:43.000 Because again, the danger to children from COVID is exorbitantly low.

00:54:47.000 Extremely low.

00:54:48.000 361 kids dead over the course of the last year and a half.

00:54:52.000 Every one of those is a tragedy, but 361 kids under the age of 18 have died in the United States from COVID over the course of the last year and a half at the same exact period of time.

00:55:02.000 Same exact period of time.

00:55:03.000 The number of kids who have died from other diseases is much, much, much higher.

00:55:09.000 The number of kids who have died from, for example, pneumonia is 865 over the course of the same amount of time.

00:55:16.000 Even the flu, which basically didn't exist last year, got wiped out by COVID apparently.

00:55:20.000 Even 188 kids died of the flu in the last year and a half.

00:55:23.000 So about half the number of kids died of the flu as died of COVID.

00:55:27.000 If you're looking at the amount of deadliness, you have to look back at the Asian flu epidemic that happened in 2009, 2010. 0.99

00:55:33.000 That particular flu epidemic didn't actually It was more deadly for kids than this is.

00:55:39.000 Like, there is no metric here.

00:55:40.000 None at all.

00:55:42.000 Which, by the way, I mean, this is... This, by the way, is the reason... Sorry, not the Asian flu, the swine flu.

00:55:49.000 The swine flu from April 2009 to April 2010 resulted in about 1,282 deaths of kids under the age of 18.

00:55:55.000 Okay, so it's deadlier.

00:55:58.000 Did anybody shut down schools for it?

00:56:00.000 Of course not. 0.98

00:56:01.000 That's incredibly silly. 0.94

00:56:03.000 Okay, but they continue to argue about masking kids. 0.96

00:56:05.000 Why? 0.83

00:56:06.000 Because it allows them to do the political thing of suggesting that Republicans are the worst people in the world.

00:56:10.000 So here, for example, is Don Lemon doing just that. 0.73

00:56:11.000 Again, completely data-free, just nonsense.

00:56:15.000 How is it freedom to force children who are too young to be vaccinated into schools where they could be exposed to a deadly virus surrounded by people- Pause it for a second.

00:56:23.000 Hold on a second.

00:56:23.000 So, where they could be exposed to a deadly virus?

00:56:26.000 Not for them!

00:56:27.000 Not for them!

00:56:29.000 Where are the stats showing this is a highly deadly virus for children?

00:56:32.000 They don't exist.

00:56:34.000 They don't exist.

00:56:35.000 But this Claude is saying this sort of stuff to scare the hell out of parents.

00:56:39.000 I know this is happening because in my own community, there are a bunch of parents who are freaked out about COVID hitting their kids when the stats do not bear it out.

00:56:46.000 They do not bear it out.

00:56:48.000 At all. 0.91

00:56:49.000 And by the way, there's no evidence that even if you mask your kids, it's gonna do a damn good thing.

00:56:53.000 There's no evidence of this.

00:56:55.000 Anyway, here's Don Lemon.

00:56:56.000 Again, this is all political.

00:56:57.000 This is not data-driven.

00:56:58.000 It is not science-driven.

00:57:01.000 Putting politics ahead of life-saving science, like those governors are encouraging people to do, it is just depraved.

00:57:09.000 People are dying all across this country.

00:57:11.000 People with loved ones who are grieving tonight.

00:57:14.000 These are people who didn't have to die.

00:57:16.000 Okay, stop it right here. 0.99

00:57:17.000 Okay, he's such a liar. 0.91

00:57:20.000 These are people who didn't have to die. 0.97

00:57:22.000 If only we had mask mandates.

00:57:23.000 Mask mandates have not worked anywhere on Earth.

00:57:26.000 There is no evidence that mask mandates, not masks, mask mandates.

00:57:30.000 Because here's the thing, when people are scared of the virus, they mask up.

00:57:32.000 You don't need a mandate.

00:57:33.000 When people aren't scared of the virus, it doesn't matter if you have a mandate, they don't mask up.

00:57:37.000 And when it comes to COVID, when it comes to the Delta variant, cloth masks ain't doing the job.

00:57:41.000 You need an N95 or a KN95, according to best available data.

00:57:45.000 By the way, in Sweden, they never masked kids.

00:57:48.000 According to Martin Koldorf, who's a professor at Harvard Medical School, quote, with open schools and no masks for ages 1 through 15 in Sweden, there were zero COVID deaths among its 1.8 million children during the first wave.

00:58:00.000 Teachers had a lower risk than average of other professions.

00:58:03.000 So we knew early on that schools are safe without masks.

00:58:07.000 And we also know that the UK didn't really mask.

00:58:11.000 According to Fortune.com, as Delta infections spiked, COVID cases in schools actually fell.

00:58:19.000 For parents wary of sending their kids off to school, here's a rare bit of comforting data.

00:58:22.000 Fewer than 1 in 100 school students and staff in England tested positive for COVID-19 in June.

00:58:27.000 The capper.

00:58:27.000 There was no mask mandate in the schools at the time.

00:58:31.000 This came as Delta variant cases were peaking across not just England, but the whole of the UK.

00:58:37.000 And again, Other countries are not super crazy the way that we are apparently.

00:58:42.000 Here's the head of the UK Department of Education or an advisor named Dr. Susan Hopkins talking about why kids don't need masks.

00:58:49.000 In looking at it, we've talked to educationalists, public health and clinical specialists, and the consensus view is very strongly to not advise school children at primary school age to wear face coverings.

00:59:01.000 This is for two reasons.

00:59:02.000 One is that they can have difficulties wearing them and keeping them on all day, and the second part of that is that it's really important that they can see facial expressions in order to develop their communications and language skills.

00:59:14.000 Okay, yes, correct.

00:59:16.000 Okay, so the UK has it.

00:59:17.000 What about us? 0.99

00:59:19.000 We're doing so much crap that is superstitious pagan nonsense. 1.00

00:59:21.000 Okay, another element of the superstitious pagan nonsense. 0.99

00:59:23.000 Remember all of these plastic barriers that people have put up?

00:59:28.000 Yeah, so all last year in my kid's classroom, for example, they had these plexiglass barriers in front of them, right?

00:59:32.000 This is supposed to block COVID.

00:59:34.000 For some odd reason.

00:59:35.000 My kid, sitting behind a plastic barrier.

00:59:38.000 Not on all four sides, right?

00:59:39.000 Not like it was a box made of plastic.

00:59:41.000 Like, just a screen in front of them.

00:59:43.000 This was supposed to block COVID. 0.99

00:59:44.000 Now, according to the New York Times, it turns out that's crap. 0.79

00:59:47.000 Tara Parker Pope says COVID precautions have turned many parts of our world into a giant salad bar with plastic barriers separating sales clerks from shoppers, dividing shoppers in nail salons, and shielding students from their classmates. Intuition tells us a plastic shield would be protective against germs. 0.95

01:00:00.000 But scientists who study aerosols, airflow, and ventilation say much of the time the barriers don't help, and probably give people a false sense of security.

01:00:06.000 Sometimes the barriers can make things worse.

01:00:09.000 Research suggests that in some instances, a barrier protecting a clerk behind a checkout counter may redirect the germs to another worker or customer.

01:00:15.000 Rows of clear plastic shields, like you might find in a nail salon or a classroom, can also impede normal airflow and ventilation.

01:00:22.000 Under normal conditions in stores, classrooms, and offices, exhaled breath particles disperse, carried by air currents, and, depending on the ventilation system, are replaced by fresh air roughly every 15 to 30 minutes.

01:00:32.000 But, if you erect plastic barriers, that can change airflow in a room, disrupt normal ventilation, and create dead zones where viral aerosol particles can build up and become highly concentrated.

01:00:42.000 Says Lindsay Marr, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, and one of the world's leading experts on viral transmission, quote, If you have a forest of barriers in a classroom, it's going to interfere with proper ventilation of that room.

01:00:53.000 Everybody's aerosols are going to be trapped and stuck there in building up, and they will end up spreading beyond your own desk.

01:00:59.000 OK, so just to get this straight, over the course of the pandemic, we went from masks are bad, according to Fauci, to masks are not only good, but the best.

01:01:07.000 Two, we need plastic barriers, super important, too.

01:01:09.000 Plastic barriers may, in fact, make things worse.

01:01:12.000 Two, we have to have six feet of distancing, but also six feet of distancing comes from absolutely nowhere.

01:01:17.000 Like if you ask the CDC where six feet of social distancing comes from, they have no idea.

01:01:21.000 It's a standard that comes from nowhere.

01:01:23.000 But it's all the science, guys.

01:01:24.000 It's the science because Don Lemon says it's the science.

01:01:27.000 And by the way, anybody who is worried about getting a vaccine, a Moderna vaccine, if they're young, right?

01:01:32.000 If anybody who actually looks at their own risk factors and says, listen, I think I'm young and I'm healthy, I'm probably not going to get super sick from COVID-19 because just the odds are in my favor.

01:01:43.000 And, you know, I'm not super comfortable with, like, the Moderna vaccine.

01:01:46.000 Those people are apparently anti-vax crazies, according to everybody.

01:01:50.000 Quote from the Washington Post today.

01:01:51.000 today, federal health officials are investigating emerging reports that the Moderna coronavirus vaccine may be associated with a higher risk of a heart condition called myocarditis in younger adults than previously believed, according to two people familiar with the review.

01:02:02.000 The investigation, which involves the FDA and Center for Disease Control, is focused on Canadian data that suggests the Moderna vaccine may carry a higher risk for young people than the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, especially for males below the age of 30 or so.

01:02:14.000 you The two people who described the investigation spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.

01:02:21.000 Moderna did not respond to a request for comment.

01:02:24.000 In a statement, the CDC said its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has and continues to review reports of myocarditis and pericarditis following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination.

01:02:33.000 CDC, FDA, our vaccine safety partners are actively monitoring these reports.

01:02:37.000 One individual said the Canadian data indicates there might be a 2.5 times higher incidence of myocarditis in those who get Moderna compared with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

01:02:46.000 It's still extremely rare.

01:02:47.000 So again, this is not an anti-vaccine point.

01:02:50.000 I still think that all factors being taken into consideration for nearly everyone, the vaccine is a good idea.

01:02:57.000 At least for people who are not children. 1.00

01:02:59.000 But people who are looking around and saying, I feel like I'm not being told all the risks, I mean, that's not totally irrational, especially, again, if you are very young and if your risk factors are very low.

01:03:12.000 Again, to go back to those CDC death data by age, it's not just that this thing is very not deadly for kids.

01:03:18.000 This thing is not particularly deadly for adults who are under the age of 30.

01:03:23.000 If you look at the actual statistics from the CDC across the course of this entire pandemic, The entire pandemic.

01:03:31.000 More people in the United States aged 18 to 29 have died of pneumonia than have died of COVID in the same period.

01:03:39.000 Right?

01:03:39.000 So, it's much more deadly than the flu for people who are 18 to 29.

01:03:42.000 Like, a lot more deadly than the flu for people who are aged 18 to 29.

01:03:46.000 But it's not more deadly than pneumonia.

01:03:49.000 And also, again, like, you are a rational human being.

01:03:53.000 You get to take your risk factors into account.

01:03:55.000 But the idea here is that if you take risk factors into account, this means that you're very bad.

01:03:59.000 Here's the bottom line.

01:04:00.000 Everybody gets to make their own decision now.

01:04:02.000 We are all rational human beings.

01:04:03.000 We all get to make our own decision about our own health.

01:04:06.000 When it comes to whether to take a vaccine or not, I have my ideas of whether you should take it.

01:04:10.000 I think, generally, you should.

01:04:11.000 Unless you have some really compelling reason not to, I think you should take the vaccine if you're an adult.

01:04:16.000 With that said, We all have our free choice.

01:04:19.000 It's been available for a while.

01:04:20.000 We're now done.

01:04:20.000 But the left has to keep this alive, and they must keep this alive explicitly for political purposes.

01:04:26.000 And now, more than ever, they have to keep it alive for political purposes, because as we exit the summer and we enter the winter, and the Delta spike shifts from the seasonally hot states like Florida and Texas, and shifts into the Midwest and maybe into the Northeast, you're gonna start seeing all the COVID talk start to fade just a little.

01:04:44.000 It can't be quite as political as it's been.

01:04:46.000 And right now is the time to make hay for the Democrats.

01:04:49.000 They have to make hay right now because their president is completely destroying America's foreign policy.

01:04:53.000 And it turns out that their push for tyranny at home is not all that popular either.

01:04:57.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with an additional hour of content.

01:05:00.000 First, you cannot forget to end your week by checking out The Andrew Klavan Show.

01:05:03.000 Drew's show is every Friday.

01:05:04.000 He's got an exciting evening planned for you.

01:05:06.000 Head on over to dailywire.com at 7 p.m.

01:05:08.000 Eastern, 6 p.m.

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01:05:09.000 Tune in.

01:05:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:05:10.000 Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

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01:05:21.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

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01:05:41.000 Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

01:05:44.000 You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned to blood.

01:05:51.000 But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 20, 2021

What Did Biden Know And When Did He Know It? | Ep. 1323

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