The Charlie Kirk Show - August 16, 2023


The Fall of Kabul Revisited with Jerry Dunleavy and James Hasson


Episode Stats


Length

30 minutes

Words per minute

164.16

Word count

4,933

Sentence count

378

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

23

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

James and Jerry Dunleavy discuss their new book, Kabul: A Very Important Book about the Disappearance of U.S. Troops in Afghanistan, Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden's Disastrous Departure from Afghanistan.

Transcript

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Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.
00:00:00.000 Today on The Charlie Kirk Show, a substantive and very important conversation about Afghanistan and Kabul with James Hassan and Jerry Dunleav.
00:00:11.000 Their book is called Kabul.
00:00:12.000 Check it out.
00:00:13.000 Very important book.
00:00:15.000 Email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:18.000 May we never forget what happened in Afghanistan.
00:00:23.000 Subscribe to The Charlie Kirk Show podcast and get involved with Turning Point USA, tpusa.com.
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00:00:30.000 Start a high school or college chapter today.
00:00:32.000 At tpusa.com.
00:00:34.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:34.000 Here we go.
00:00:36.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:37.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:39.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:43.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:46.000 I want to thank Charlie.
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00:01:18.000 There's a book that tells us about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the dishonorable, the debacle, you could say.
00:01:25.000 Kabul, the untold story of Biden's fiasco and the American warriors who fought to the end.
00:01:31.000 The media has decided to stop caring about this.
00:01:34.000 But Jerry Dunleavy and James Hassan are here to discuss and talk about their book.
00:01:42.000 Jerry and James, welcome to the program.
00:01:43.000 Thank you for taking time.
00:01:46.000 Thanks for having us.
00:01:47.000 So, Jerry, let's start with you.
00:01:49.000 You're an investigative reporter, mostly been focused on the Justice Department and the Intel community and also the national security space.
00:01:56.000 Tell us about why you decided to write this book and some of your big takeaways as you started the research.
00:02:02.000 Yeah, so up until very recently, I was just an investigative reporter.
00:02:07.000 Reporter at the Washington Examiner, but I was recently hired to help lead the investigation into Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
00:02:20.000 I helped lead that investigation being run by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, GOP led House Foreign Affairs Committee.
00:02:26.000 So I just want a quick disclaimer that I wrote the book before I joined the committee, and I'm here just in my personal capacity.
00:02:33.000 But this was a 20 year war.
00:02:36.000 2,400 Americans were killed during it.
00:02:40.000 Went there after 9 11 because Al Qaeda hit us, killed 3,000 people, and the Taliban was protecting and harboring Al Qaeda and protecting and harboring Osama bin Laden.
00:02:53.000 And they refused to turn them over.
00:02:55.000 They refused to break their alliance with Al Qaeda.
00:02:57.000 And for 20 years, they refused to break that alliance.
00:03:02.000 Our book is pretty honest about the state of play in Afghanistan when President Biden took office.
00:03:08.000 But the way that this withdrawal happened, The way that this withdrawal went down, deciding to do an unconditional withdrawal and an unconditional surrender to the Taliban, pulling all U.S. troops out before we had gotten Americans out, before we had gotten our Afghan allies out, before we'd even come up with a plan to get Americans and Afghan allies out,
00:03:35.000 before we had figured out how to keep the Afghan military on the field, to keep the Taliban at bay at least, while we worked to get.
00:03:44.000 Americans and Afghan allies out.
00:03:46.000 Closing Bagram, a strategic air base very close to Kabul, where it would have been much smarter and much safer to run an evacuation out of, a base that could have helped us with our air support in stopping the Taliban from taking Kabul.
00:04:05.000 An air base, by the way, that had a prison on it that held thousands of ISIS K terrorists, dozens of Al Qaeda terrorists, as well as hundreds of Taliban fighters.
00:04:18.000 One of those ISIS K terrorists was the terrorist who ended up successfully hitting Abbey Gate and killing 13 Americans.
00:04:26.000 If we had simply held on to Bagram as a base before we did all of this, that bomber would have still been in prison and the bombing likely wouldn't have happened, at least not by him. 0.84
00:04:41.000 And then, of course, we have the Taliban takeover before we've accomplished any of the things that we need to accomplish. 0.71
00:04:48.000 The U.S., all that we are holding on to. Is a small airport where we now have to try to do an evacuation of tens of thousands of people, over 100,000 people, all while having to rely on the Taliban, the same people we've been fighting for 20 years who have killed thousands of Americans on the battlefield. 0.66
00:05:08.000 That's what we have to rely on for security.
00:05:11.000 And obviously, we saw how it played out chaotic, dangerous, and ultimately deadly.
00:05:18.000 I have so many questions, but I want to get James in on the conversation here.
00:05:21.000 Your former army captain.
00:05:23.000 And graduate of the U.S. Army Ranger School and an Afghanistan veteran.
00:05:26.000 James, talk about your role in composing this book.
00:05:29.000 And then I have several specific questions.
00:05:32.000 I want to examine this from all angles.
00:05:34.000 So, James.
00:05:35.000 At the outset, we really appreciate that because that's one of the reasons why we decided to write the book is that we thought this whole incident had been whitewashed and we thought Americans deserve to know the truth.
00:05:45.000 So, we're very grateful for the time to explain in detail everything that we uncovered.
00:05:53.000 And to get back to your original question, I served there and then I had a small kind of role in one of the many veteran led efforts to try and get people out.
00:06:04.000 One of the things that struck Jerry and I when we were talking to so many of these 18, 19, 20 year old soldiers and Marines who were right on the front lines is just what they had to witness, then try and process afterwards.
00:06:25.000 Simply because the administration failed to plan, failed to heed any warnings from the military whatsoever, and ultimately just decided to speed up the withdrawal for political reasons.
00:06:38.000 Things like watching women throw themselves on razor wire outside of the gates to try and kill themselves so they wouldn't have to go back through the Taliban checkpoints that just brutalized themselves.
00:06:52.000 People who couldn't be evacuated grabbing the Marines' rifles, grabbing their weapons. 0.99
00:06:58.000 And pulling the barrel up to their head and saying, just kill me now.
00:07:02.000 And then watching in full view the Taliban execute American allies, Afghans who had served alongside us for decades in this fight. 0.97
00:07:14.000 As a veteran, it was very difficult to see.
00:07:19.000 And then having known people who were on the ground at the time and getting to know a lot of them, a lot of others since then, we just, This had to be a story to tell.
00:07:30.000 The bottom line is this was a political decision.
00:07:33.000 It wasn't a strategic decision at all.
00:07:36.000 And the results speak for themselves.
00:07:38.000 The book is Kabul.
00:07:40.000 Everyone should check it out The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End.
00:07:44.000 So, James, tell us when the news first came from DC.
00:07:49.000 Okay, we're pulling out.
00:07:50.000 Walk us through on the ground chatter when that news really started to spread.
00:07:56.000 Yeah, absolutely.
00:07:57.000 So, if you remember, people flooding the airfield and when the Taliban took Kabul, just a frenzied evacuation until the 26th, which is when the bombing itself took place.
00:08:09.000 But, you know, immediately, and this is kind of one of just the most, Unforgivable parts of it.
00:08:16.000 So immediately after we announced a withdrawal, you know, that was terrible for the Afghan military's morale and for their capabilities, you know, and all, you know, leading to the collapse that happened.
00:08:27.000 But at the same time, and this is what I want to emphasize, the U.S. government was telling American citizens who were in Afghanistan, they're painting this rosy picture that all is going to be okay.
00:08:39.000 You have months.
00:08:41.000 And then, despite all evidence to the contrary, and then And they even, at the time, closed down the embassy.
00:08:48.000 They shut down the embassy for a while for a COVID lockdown in the months leading up to the evacuation.
00:08:53.000 And then all of a sudden, Kabul's gone.
00:08:56.000 Our presence in Kabul, as we know it, is gone.
00:09:00.000 And all of those Americans are stranded.
00:09:04.000 And, you know, as Jared can tell you, many of them are still stranded today.
00:09:08.000 Hey, everybody.
00:09:12.000 Charlie Kirk here.
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00:10:14.000 So, Jerry, let's go through some of your reporting.
00:10:17.000 This was obviously political.
00:10:20.000 And those of us that are in media kind of saw this unfolding in real time and we were completely ignored.
00:10:26.000 Walk us through the earliest evidence that you have that Joe Biden and his team made the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
00:10:34.000 I mean, he's sworn in as president January 2021.
00:10:38.000 Spring, we were getting murmurs and rumblings.
00:10:41.000 So walk us through the timeline.
00:10:42.000 I think it's really important.
00:10:44.000 Yeah.
00:10:44.000 Well, keep in mind when Biden was running for president, he would often.
00:10:51.000 Sort of change a little bit what he was saying he would do. 0.63
00:10:55.000 But oftentimes he was actually promising that he would make sure to leave a small U.S. troop presence there to be able to continue to fight ISIS K and Al Qaeda.
00:11:06.000 Now, that was just not true.
00:11:08.000 It's actually not something that Biden ever intended on doing.
00:11:12.000 In the course of our writing our book, we were able to get some insights from people who were in some of these decision making rooms and very early on.
00:11:25.000 In Biden's presidency, like within the first few days, first week of being in office, one of the questions that he basically asked was, How quickly can we get out of Afghanistan?
00:11:35.000 And, you know, the question wasn't like, How quickly can we get Americans out?
00:11:42.000 How quick can we get our Afghan allies out? 0.93
00:11:44.000 It was how quickly can we withdraw? 0.98
00:11:46.000 And so that was what he was focused on.
00:11:48.000 And he decided it very early on.
00:11:51.000 I like to point this out.
00:11:53.000 When it comes to President Biden, I think a lot of questions get raised about his age, his fitness for the job, whether he's in charge of everything that's happening at the White House.
00:12:05.000 And often I think that these are fair questions to ask when it comes to him.
00:12:09.000 But when it comes to Afghanistan, You know, and you can read our book and see this for yourself.
00:12:15.000 This really was driven by Joe Biden.
00:12:17.000 This was his decision.
00:12:19.000 This is what he wanted.
00:12:20.000 This is what he decided.
00:12:22.000 He ignored all advice and evidence to the contrary because this is what he wanted to do.
00:12:28.000 His April 14th withdrawal speech makes it very, very clear. 0.91
00:12:32.000 This is when he announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops, rapid withdrawal, without any conditions, without forcing the Taliban to follow the conditions, you know, set forth in the Doha Agreement.
00:12:45.000 This April 14th withdrawal speech, Biden sets the withdrawal date for the 20th anniversary of 9 11.
00:12:53.000 That's clearly political.
00:12:54.000 There's no strategic reason to do that, but he wanted some sort of victory lap for the 20th anniversary.
00:13:02.000 I'm not sure what sort of victory lap he was hoping for, but that's what he wanted. 0.59
00:13:06.000 But the problem with setting a withdrawal date for September 11th or for any time in the summer is that we've been fighting Afghanistan for 20 years. 0.62
00:13:16.000 We know that this spring period, where he announced the withdrawal through the summer period, where he wanted the withdrawal complete, this is the middle of the Taliban fighting season. 0.77
00:13:27.000 This is when the Taliban is at its strongest.
00:13:31.000 And at the exact time that the Taliban was at its strongest, that's when we decided to immediately pull all U.S. troops.
00:13:40.000 And along with that, U.S. contractors, U.S. logistics, U.S. intelligence, all the things that the Afghan military.
00:13:48.000 Had been relying on to keep its planes flying, to keep its people fighting.
00:13:52.000 We kicked all of that out from under them at the exact moment that the Taliban was launching its biggest assault yet.
00:14:01.000 And so, I mean, it had extremely predictable consequences US pulls out, Taliban moves in, Afghan military falls apart, Americans get trapped behind enemy lines, Afghan allies get trapped behind enemy lines, and the Taliban takes the country before the US has done.
00:14:19.000 Anything to get the people that we need to get out. 0.57
00:14:23.000 The book is Kabul.
00:14:25.000 Very important, very timely.
00:14:26.000 May we never forget what the Biden regime did in Afghanistan.
00:14:32.000 Hey, everybody.
00:14:33.000 Charlie Kirk here.
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00:15:34.000 James, take as much time as you need.
00:15:36.000 The floor is yours.
00:15:38.000 Sure thing.
00:15:39.000 I was just going to provide a little bit of extra context to what Jerry was saying when he referenced fighting season.
00:15:44.000 And for those who are unfamiliar, and I'm all too familiar, the Afghan mountain passes fill up with snow in the late fall, basically till early spring.
00:15:57.000 And it makes it nearly impossible for people to pass from Pakistan to Afghanistan and really traverse any of that terrain.
00:16:03.000 So that's why most of the fighting happens in the spring and the summer, and why Joe Biden's decision, again, politically motivated.
00:16:10.000 To pick a midsummer date to begin withdrawing all forces from Bagram, which is a whole other thing we should get into.
00:16:18.000 Just the broader decision to withdraw at that time strategically made no sense.
00:16:22.000 And that's why, again, it just reinforces how political this decision was.
00:16:26.000 So I want to ask either of you can pick this up.
00:16:29.000 So you guys keep on saying it's, I agree, it's political, political, political.
00:16:32.000 I'm going to push you guys a little bit.
00:16:35.000 This feels as if Joe Biden had an ideological agenda more than a political one.
00:16:40.000 And what is the normie explanation here?
00:16:44.000 Jerry or Jerry, like what did he think was the best case scenario here?
00:16:47.000 Summer withdrawal, fighting season, arbitrary dates, ignoring advisors.
00:16:51.000 I mean, this is the way that traitors act.
00:16:53.000 I'm not saying why I do think he's a traitor for other reasons.
00:16:55.000 And I'm going to push you guys a little bit. 0.97
00:16:56.000 Like, what the heck?
00:16:58.000 If he's ignoring everybody and we have 13 dead Marines and he's ignoring the fighting season, what was the calculus here?
00:17:07.000 What is the best possible defense of Joe Biden here?
00:17:10.000 Because according to what you're saying, he was the driving force here.
00:17:13.000 He was the one that was defying the institutional expertise.
00:17:17.000 So help me understand.
00:17:19.000 Yeah, I'll let Jerry take this one.
00:17:20.000 I think.
00:17:21.000 Yeah.
00:17:22.000 Well, look, I wouldn't use the word treason related to this, but I would use the word dereliction of duty.
00:17:27.000 I mean, this was the commander in chief not following through on his duty as the president.
00:17:36.000 His duty, I think, to the Americans that were there, his duty to our Afghan allies, and his duty to the American troops who he put in danger because of this.
00:17:47.000 Let me try to get in Joe Biden's head here.
00:17:50.000 So.
00:17:52.000 President Biden was elected to the Senate when he was very young, in the 1970s, is at the tail end of the Vietnam War.
00:17:59.000 And I promise that this is relevant because he got there, he got to the Senate too late to make a big impact on the ending of the war.
00:18:09.000 So, how he decided to make his impact, make his mark on the war in Vietnam, was he was the biggest, most vociferous voice, political voice in America against helping save South Vietnamese allies.
00:18:25.000 And stop to oppose then President Gerald Ford's efforts to help the South Vietnamese who had helped us, help some of them escape the impending North Vietnamese takeover of the country.
00:18:39.000 He had a quote that I dug up from the Senate archives where he basically said, We don't have an obligation to 1,001.
00:18:46.000 We don't have an obligation to one South Vietnamese who helped us.
00:18:50.000 So that's kind of his mentality.
00:18:53.000 And I tend to think that he just sort of had that same mentality.
00:18:58.000 For decades now, because he had the same mentality when it came to Afghanistan.
00:19:03.000 I think it was flippancy.
00:19:05.000 He didn't really seem to take into account the broader consequences.
00:19:10.000 He felt ignored by the generals and the military brass when he was Obama's vice president.
00:19:19.000 Of course, Obama very famously ignored Joe Biden's advice not to conduct the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
00:19:30.000 Because Joe Biden opposed that.
00:19:32.000 So Joe Biden just doesn't get it.
00:19:35.000 He has the wrong mentality.
00:19:37.000 And this is just kind of how he's always been.
00:19:41.000 It's kind of my best explanation.
00:19:43.000 And that just kind of resulted in Afghan allies being left behind, Americans getting left behind, and American troops getting put in a really dangerous position where ultimately 13 of them lost their lives.
00:19:57.000 And I want to emphasize dozens of them injured, some of them with life altering injuries.
00:20:03.000 Sergeant Tyler Vargas Andrews lost two of his limbs.
00:20:07.000 Another service member, a female service member, is paralyzed.
00:20:10.000 So these are things to keep in mind.
00:20:11.000 I echo what Jerry just talked about.
00:20:16.000 The best way I would describe it is as a toxic combination of ignorance and self assurance.
00:20:22.000 Joe Biden never trusted the military leaders' advice. 0.95
00:20:27.000 In fact, Robert Gates in his biography wrote how Joe Biden, Secretary Gates' words, subjected Obama to water torture by saying every single day, you can't trust the military leaders, they're going to screw you.
00:20:40.000 And he famously told a biographer, well, They won't screw me.
00:20:45.000 And I'm paraphrasing that last part a little bit, and I forget the exact quote, but that's exactly, I think, the mentality that he had I know better, and go figure he didn't.
00:20:55.000 We actually have that tape.
00:20:56.000 I want to play Cut 52, Robert Gates, who I'm not a fan of, but he spoke some truth here.
00:21:01.000 Play Cut 52.
00:21:02.000 You wrote Joe Biden was a man of integrity.
00:21:05.000 Still, I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.
00:21:12.000 I think he's gotten a lot wrong.
00:21:13.000 You're talking all through the years.
00:21:15.000 As vice president, he opposed every one of Ronald Reagan's military programs to contest the Soviet Union.
00:21:22.000 He opposed the first Gulf War.
00:21:25.000 That list goes on.
00:21:27.000 So, what bothered me the most about this Afghanistan story, and James or Jerry, you could pick it, is that we saw this thing was falling apart, that it was obvious that the Taliban were taking territory.
00:21:37.000 They were on a high speed highway.
00:21:39.000 First of all, either of you guys, what the heck happened to the Afghan army?
00:21:42.000 We spent billions of dollars, tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:21:46.000 This thing was a joke, right?
00:21:47.000 So, where did all that money go?
00:21:50.000 Because I think that's an important part of the story.
00:21:51.000 They were supposed to be ready to defend themselves and they just vanished.
00:21:54.000 They evaporated.
00:21:55.000 They fold like a cheap suit.
00:21:56.000 And then, number two, what was going on in the Department of Defense and the Pentagon as they were obviously getting reports like, oh, Taliban is 80 miles out, Taliban is 40 miles out?
00:22:08.000 I mean, why was there no adaptation in real time to save Americans from a coming slaughter?
00:22:14.000 James, then Jerry, okay?
00:22:16.000 So I think taking those one at a time in terms of, What happened to the Afghan military?
00:22:22.000 First of all, the administration kept overstating the capabilities of the Afghan military.
00:22:27.000 They continually would say, oh, we have 300,000, they're fine.
00:22:31.000 And in reality, they were also inflating that number by a significant margin because they were counting local police, they were counting border checkpoints, they were counting all kinds of things that we would never say if we were talking about the strength of the US military, we wouldn't be talking about local police forces as well.
00:22:47.000 So it was a disingenuous talking point, number one.
00:22:49.000 Number two, it was a well known problem and it was known within the DOD, it was known within the administration.
00:22:54.000 That there were so called ghost units within the Afghan military where they existed solely just on paper.
00:23:01.000 And basically, there's a way for corrupt Afghan leaders to just pocket extra salaries, extra resources, that kind of thing.
00:23:10.000 That's kind of overarching. 0.67
00:23:12.000 That's step one.
00:23:13.000 And step two of that problem was when we pulled out, we just immediately just got rid of any enablers and they become completely reliant on our drone feeds or ISR to give them.
00:23:26.000 Intelligence to provide air support, maintenance for their aircraft.
00:23:31.000 And that was completely foreseeable.
00:23:33.000 And in fact, the Trump administration commissioned a study into exactly what would happen, the Afghan forces' ability, and the special forces in particular, to withstand and support themselves.
00:23:49.000 And the answer was essentially a resounding no.
00:23:52.000 So if you're going to withdraw, you need to do it in a way that you take those realities into account.
00:24:00.000 Secondly, what I would say about what was going on inside the Pentagon.
00:24:04.000 General Scotty Miller, who's just a legendary general who served in the Army's what's known as Delta Force now, or at least in common use of the term.
00:24:17.000 He was a Delta Force commander.
00:24:19.000 He's just about as accomplished as they come.
00:24:21.000 And he was tracking all of these local provinces falling in real time and just sending up warning signal after warning signal.
00:24:30.000 And the administration refused to listen.
00:24:33.000 And it's not just a refusal to listen, there's a dangerous.
00:24:38.000 Naivete at play as well, when the military was trying to convince the State Department to draw down the footprint of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, which at the time was the largest United States embassy in the world.
00:24:53.000 After the withdrawal, there were four diplomats roughly to every soldier who was there.
00:24:57.000 Then the acting ambassador at the time said, How can we influence democracy after the Taliban takes over if we don't have an embassy?
00:25:05.000 And that just kind of sums up how little they failed to grasp well.
00:25:09.000 Afghanistan. 0.99
00:25:11.000 It's something we should never forget.
00:25:12.000 The media has memory hold it, to use an Orwellian term.
00:25:17.000 Jerry, I want to start with you.
00:25:19.000 Chinese Communist Party, how does our greatest enemy, the CCP, connect to the tragedy of Kabul? 0.64
00:25:26.000 Absolutely.
00:25:27.000 Well, one thing I'll point out is that, by the way, we have an entire chapter in the book on the connection between the CCP and Afghanistan.
00:25:36.000 So I highly recommend people check it out because we dive into this.
00:25:41.000 Real deep.
00:25:41.000 But, you know, the Chinese Communist Party immediately began using this as a propaganda opportunity.
00:25:48.000 They call it the Kabul moment.
00:25:51.000 That's what they kind of term this.
00:25:52.000 And they immediately began using this to say, look, you can't trust the United States, right?
00:25:58.000 And pointing to Taiwan specifically, they were basically saying, what happens to Afghanistan, that is going to happen to you.
00:26:08.000 You can't trust the U.S., basically trying to demoralize.
00:26:12.000 Taiwan.
00:26:13.000 And you can almost trace a line, by the way, from them ratcheting up their military pressure on Taiwan to the fall of Kabul.
00:26:22.000 You know, they're also active inside of Afghanistan.
00:26:25.000 You know, we obtained evidence in the book that China has helped the Taliban with some intelligence, with helping ID interpreters and just collaborating with the Taliban generally.
00:26:38.000 And I point out that, you know, Iran has also used this as an opportunity to pressure.
00:26:47.000 Former Afghan commandos who work with the United States and Russia has attempted to recruit those former Afghan commandos to fight in Ukraine.
00:26:56.000 But China and these other countries see this as an opportunity to get real granular information about how the U.S. military operates, right, from people that worked with us for 20 years. 0.59
00:27:08.000 And then, you know, China's going to use that to figure out how to fight us when they need to.
00:27:13.000 Of course, China has also been taking advantage of, you know, attempting to take advantage of Afghanistan's. 0.84
00:27:19.000 Natural resources.
00:27:20.000 They have a lot of things there that you need to build up an economy and a lot of things there that could be useful to their military industrial complex as well.
00:27:30.000 One other thing to keep in mind is that Bagram was a very strategic base, not just for fighting the Taliban and ISIS K and Al Qaeda, but Bagram's actually pretty close to China as well.
00:27:43.000 Many people have noted, including former President Trump and plenty of others, national security experts, and on and on, that Bagram was very key for the U.S., not just in Afghanistan, but also regionally, including helping keep an eye on the Chinese. 0.97
00:28:02.000 China is seeing this as a win for them. 0.91
00:28:04.000 They're trying to fill the void. 0.87
00:28:05.000 They're allying with the Taliban.
00:28:07.000 They're the Taliban's biggest advocates on the world stage for getting the U.S. to send even more money into Afghanistan and even more money into the Taliban's coffers.
00:28:17.000 And so China sees this as a big win.
00:28:19.000 And I think the collapse of Afghanistan and NATO and the United States being in shambles, I think Putin looked at that.
00:28:27.000 And that was what we kind of assessed in our book as kind of the final thing that he needed, the final push he needed to invade Ukraine as well. 0.70
00:28:35.000 So China and all of our enemies, I think, benefited from this. 0.77
00:28:40.000 And we're obviously now in a more dangerous world than we were in 2021 before this debacle in Afghanistan. 0.89
00:28:47.000 Okay, final thoughts here, James.
00:28:50.000 Yeah, to stay on the CCP topic, one of the folks we talked to, as Jerry mentioned, helped or spoke about how the CCP was helping the Taliban track down interpreters.
00:29:04.000 And there's a very clear quid pro quo there because at the same time, That was alleged to be happening.
00:29:10.000 The Taliban was also clearing out ethnic Uyghur areas right on the border of Afghanistan and China that the CCP has long been concerned about, is the wrong word, but has long targeted.
00:29:25.000 And I just want to thank you also for a very, very substantive discussion.
00:29:29.000 I wish we could sit here for three hours and tell you everything we learned.
00:29:32.000 I have so many other questions too, but I'd encourage everyone just to read the book because it lays it all out.
00:29:37.000 The book is Kabul.
00:29:38.000 James and Jerry, thank you.
00:29:39.000 For your great scholarship here and research.
00:29:42.000 The audience will be blessed if they purchase your book.
00:29:44.000 Thanks, guys, so much.
00:29:45.000 Appreciate it.
00:29:47.000 Thank you.
00:29:47.000 Thanks, Charlie.
00:29:48.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:29:50.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:29:54.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
00:29:59.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.