In this episode, we talk about what's going on in Afghanistan, the latest in the Biden administration, and celebrate the fact that Andrew Cuomo is out of office. We also talk about the recent reports that the CIA Director secretly visited Taliban in Kabul.
00:10:04.360If they again build an area that is free passage for terrorists and they start blowing up our buildings, we're going to be back in there again.
00:10:12.240Don't dismiss this as if it's over because that's the whole problem with leaving.
00:10:17.380Don't count on Joe Biden to actually find a spine.
00:10:23.560But eventually, we're going to go back in there and we're going to have to deal with a Taliban that has all this equipment.
00:10:29.120Well, they'll have all that equipment anyway, because Joe Biden's son is allowing Chinese to come in and spy on our military and buy things, you know, through bribery, et cetera, et cetera.
00:10:46.000And China is going to give them all of that.
00:10:48.900I mean, did you see that China, I think Saudi Arabia and Russia and Iran have just made a deal and China and Iran, I'm sorry, China and Russia have also made a deal with the Taliban.
00:11:06.580I think there's an axis of evil that is being formed.
00:11:11.860And we strangely are trying to form our own apparent axis of evil.
00:11:49.920We blow up all the weapons from one remote button.
00:11:52.360I want why I want a drone that when they take off with a drone and they go to bomb somebody, it just flies back to the United States and lands safely.
00:12:01.300I want a button that makes I want it to just you know how they have those like ink packets that when you steal money from a bank, they explode.
00:12:09.700I want basically some version of that in every weapon we give to anybody else.
00:12:14.100So at some point when we decide they've gotten to the wrong hands, we just press the button and they all just go away.
00:12:19.280I don't think that you've gone far enough.
00:12:21.860I would like the night vision goggles that if you steal it or, you know, we just leave it behind, you push a button and knives go through your eyes.
00:13:06.720I'm I mean, I mean, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and I am probably going to be in the region for a little while.
00:13:12.320I'm covering the situation from neighboring countries and some of the fallout and just kind of hammering in these twilight days of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
00:13:23.380So, first of all, tell us what you think is going on.
00:13:53.160I'm receiving calls and emails really just every 20 minutes from somebody new just in desperation of how do they get there.
00:14:01.680But but, you know, what I'm seeing from other countries, though, I received notifications today from Australian government who are actually mobilizing the Australian citizens and visa holders there to a particular place,
00:14:14.560a hotel near the airport and actually physically taking them in a in a helicopter.
00:14:21.280So we're seeing that being done also by the Brits.
00:14:24.080And it's frustrating to see that the U.S., the mighty U.S. is not able to do that.
00:14:29.140And we're not allowing our great men and women who serve this country to leave the wire to do their job that they're there to do and that most of them want to do.
00:15:08.800I just this is sort of a collective denial that's happening from the administration.
00:15:12.140And it's extremely frustrating because, you know, I'm one of the people that has to look at these Afghans and speak to these Afghans every day and try to explain to them why my government is not able to help them,
00:15:26.420even though they are citizens or they're people that that have supported the U.S.
00:15:30.100or they have the correct paperwork and visas.
00:15:32.660And it's just like banging your head up against a brick wall.
00:15:36.700I'm just not sure why the president is digging his heels in like this and refusing to acknowledge the brevity of the situation.
00:15:44.020So they said the White House says we're going to be able to get all Americans and everybody who holds a proper visa out by the 31st.
00:15:55.020I don't think there's a prayer of that happening unless something changes today dramatically.
00:16:04.920And my really, in my opinion, what that is going to take at this point is Khalil Azad's office in Doha to have some very serious and stern discussions with the Taliban leadership that they have been talking to now for several years.
00:16:19.220The only way I see that becoming is, you know, if the Doha leadership is able to somehow rein in many, many rogue elements, which, you know, we could spend all day talking about that, too, and allowing people to get through.
00:16:33.280And what I what I sort of foresee happening is possibly American citizens being allowed through.
00:16:39.640But Afghan Americans or Afghans with American visas, they're going to be the ones that the Taliban is basically not wanting to leave.
00:16:48.800And the Taliban have been very open about that thing.
00:18:08.280Or people that they can exert, you know, a terrible control and a terrible life over.
00:18:14.340You know, if they want to keep them alive, it would be in a power trip basis.
00:18:17.800And to to really, you know, put them in jail, talk to them, make their lives incredibly miserable.
00:18:23.700So I guess the more people that you can control, you know, the more power the Taliban seems to think it has.
00:18:30.720But, yeah, they just they won't let them go.
00:18:32.600And I think that is it's just it's sort of terrifying.
00:18:35.780And I think, you know, part of the problem, too, is that the leadership has been in Doha.
00:18:41.740And so they don't really have any control over the many rogue elements.
00:18:45.080And mind you, 7000 of the most hardened Taliban fighters who have been sitting in Bagram prison for the past 10, you know, upwards to 20 years have just been released last week by the Taliban when they took over the air base.
00:19:00.900I mean, you know, we're seeing the release of Bagram.
00:19:04.420I'm not we're seeing the release of Taliban prisons all over the country.
00:19:07.140But the release of the Bagram ones, that's the bad of the bad.
00:19:09.920So mind you, they're in their first week of freedom.
00:19:12.100So, you know, it just gives me chills to think what's what's happening there.
00:20:07.980I know so many women who have gone to become doctors and lawyers and teachers and just doing really incredible things.
00:20:15.100And now to think that their lives are going to be relegated to a dank basement.
00:20:20.320And every time they step out of the house, they're going to have to be completely covered and accompanied by a male relative.
00:20:25.780They're not going to be able to work or go to school or to really have any sense of be seen or heard.
00:20:32.060So it just is it's just an unfathomable thought.
00:20:35.960It's just especially in urban areas like Kabul, where women have just yeah, they have grown up to have these these rights or just to think that that has been stripped away from them like that.
00:20:47.680I just I can't even wrap my head around it right now.
00:20:51.180Tell me about your your escort of the Taliban out.
00:20:59.840So what happened was my photographer, Jake and I, we were we had a base in Kabul and we're actually planning to be both of us have spent considerable time in Afghanistan before and we were planning to be here through to November.
00:21:11.180So about three months really capturing the end of the era in terms of the US and then, you know, how Afghanistan was going to survive in that first little chapter.
00:21:21.420We we weren't quite envisioning things to to fall the way that they did.
00:21:25.820So we were there working Kabul for a little while and decided to go up to Mazar Sharif, which is the northern province.
00:21:32.780And it was actually the province where the US first came in after 9-11.
00:21:37.620And it was the first one taken back from the Taliban.
00:21:40.380And if anyone's seen the movie 12 Strong, I think it's called, you'll see that there is a Marshall Dostum who was sort of heralding that first group.
00:21:48.200And he's someone I spent a little bit of time with a couple of years ago interviewing in Turkey.
00:21:53.200And so coming back, we thought we would I would go and visit him again and do another interview.
00:21:58.920And there was sort of this lot of hope that his forces combined with some other northern alliance leaders in the north were joining with some of the Afghan SF commandos and look to be a viable fighting force against the Taliban who were quickly taking a lot of the northern provinces.
00:22:15.840But Mazar is an extremely anti-Taliban place.
00:22:21.040And so it wasn't like that they had any community support that they may have had in other provinces that are in the south or along the Pakistan border, which tend to be a little bit more sympathetic to the Taliban.
00:22:34.380I believe it was Thursday of the week before last.
00:22:37.360And, you know, we got there and it was just it was this vibrant city that I'd grown to know and love and the markets were full and people were out and we were I was going around interviewing the shopkeepers and I was outside there sort of very have a very famous blue mosque.
00:22:53.520And I was outside there in the park and sitting with the women, talking to the men, talking to people that have fled other northern provinces who were escaping the Taliban.
00:23:01.840And and things just felt very full of life.
00:23:04.040And I'm I was sitting there just trying to think, how is this place on the verge of being attacked by the Taliban?
00:23:10.480I, you know, nobody sort of seemed too concerned.
00:23:13.200And I thought, well, you know, maybe everything's fine.
00:23:15.300And I I kept in very close contact with a lot of my Afghan security officials who said, no, there's no way Mazar is ever going to fall.
00:23:22.480And if it does, it's going to be a long way away.
00:26:31.960And so what happened was there was a deal struck between one of the top ANA, Afghan National Army leaders in the area who was just appointed by Ghani, mind you, a week before this happened.
00:26:45.120He was appointed and he and a bunch of other kind of leaders all struck a deal with the Taliban in advance to basically hand over the city.
00:26:55.220They got their money or whatever it is they got.
00:26:58.200They were all off into Uzbekistan or whatever, they'd all left the country.
00:27:03.460These poor men, and this is what upset me most when President Biden was blaming the Afghans for running away.
00:27:10.200These poor men, some of them very young kids, some, you know, boys, young men, I should say, some of them being very experienced fighters, were basically left to the slaughter.
00:27:21.540They didn't know a deal had already been struck for them to surrender.
00:27:26.480And my contact in the commando said to me, you know, he got to four o'clock that afternoon and they were just being overwhelmed and overrun.
00:27:34.000And he said, then somebody came in and told him that basically everybody had left.
00:27:39.420He just said, you know, basically they were just told you guys just need to run because the city's already been handed over.
00:27:44.580So if you keep fighting, they'll just kill you.
00:27:46.360So these poor young men and women are fleeing toward the Uzbek border and then they sort of get there and they're dumping, you know, whatever, you know, this is a sad bit, too.
00:27:56.520You know, they're having to dump their weapons and dump their vehicles and things.
00:28:00.880And they're trying to get into Uzbekistan, which I think had to end up shutting the border because it was so overwhelmed.
00:28:06.760So they were really left to the slaughter.
00:28:08.400And I and I can't blame them at that point for wanting to run away when they know that their own leaders on their side had already sold them out.
00:28:39.500So basically, long story short, the only way we realized that we were actually going to get out of the city was to to have the Taliban take us out.
00:28:47.800There's no way we could have passed those ourselves safely.
00:28:50.100So the Taliban, through some very careful diplomacy, thankfully, some really great State Department people, plus the Uzbek consul in Mazar was extremely helpful.
00:29:28.640And they made nothing, no effort to hide the fact they wanted a very stringent interpretation of of Sharia and that, you know, women were going to be covered and stuck into their basements.
00:29:40.900And, you know, anyone who steals was going to get their hand cut off.
00:29:45.440And having said that, they were very polite to me because I was a foreigner and I recognize that I know that my Afghan friends and colleagues are not going to be given the sort of treatment that I received, you know.
00:30:03.080So I was lucky, but that luck won't be extended.
00:30:07.260I would love to have you back on, maybe even perhaps later this week, just to talk about some of your other experiences and to be able to, because you've been everywhere.
00:33:08.940This is the event that pays for the light bills and everybody's salary and everything else.
00:33:15.860So when I go on the air and say 100% of the money goes to, I can say that with assurance because I've put on a show or something that people will buy tickets to to come and help us.
00:33:48.460She's an Oklahoma mom that saw the Afghani robotics team, the girls on the Afghani robotics team, and she thought, these kids are in trouble.
00:34:08.660She wanted to help get them out, and she did.
00:34:46.540And, you know, I met these, I worked in the space industry in Washington, D.C. after obtaining my master's at Harvard at 50, 55 years old in 2016.
00:34:56.780And the doors swung open for me to walk into this field.
00:35:01.920It's been an honor to work with our best and brightest and humble and genius people.
00:35:08.500And one thing they taught me was failure was not an option.
00:35:11.700They make science fiction fact, and they are really unstoppable.
00:35:18.600I was invited to be on a very prestigious board of directors that I actually don't even deserve to be on called Explore Mars.
00:35:25.440They advocate in Washington, D.C. for human space exploration.
00:35:29.240And each year we have a conference in D.C. where we bring in a lot of leaders to promote and to talk about exploration.
00:35:38.160We decided we would bring over these five girls on the Afghan robotic team.
00:35:43.860And Elon Musk actually paid their way.
00:35:47.620These girls came, and our goal was to allow them to immerse themselves in the space industry, to brush shoulders with astronauts, and to dream big.
00:35:57.180And I immediately had a connection with these girls, having so many daughters, and I think it was vice versa.
00:36:03.900And one of the things they requested after going to the White House and museums was, Allison, we just want to go to an amusement park.
00:36:10.960And I thought, and so I quickly raised the money in about 15 minutes for all these girls to go.
00:36:16.040And I had video of them there, and they just had an amazing time.
00:36:20.140You know, sometimes kids just need to be kids.
00:36:22.400But I kept in touch with them for a couple of years through text.
00:36:25.980And in December of 2020, they began to request, hey, we're going to graduate high school.
00:36:30.460We'd like to come to the United States to get our degrees in engineering.
00:39:26.060And hats off to that government for stepping up.
00:39:29.360I will tell you, there are a lot of very brave Muslim countries that are stepping up.
00:39:37.020And they are terrified because they know the weakness of the West right now.
00:39:42.700And they also know if they're outed, they will have all kinds of problems from Hezbollah and ISIS and, you know, the new Al Qaeda, et cetera, et cetera.
00:39:54.840And they're doing remarkable things, just truly remarkable things.
00:40:47.200So I just want to commend all the people that were involved.
00:40:50.240What a tremendous job they did and how fast they leapt into action.
00:40:54.680You know, sometimes you think it's someone that's full of power and influence that you're going to get a hold of that's going to do the job for you.
00:40:59.840But here was this little roommate of mine that God connected me with.
00:41:04.880And suddenly it exploded and it began to work.
00:41:09.300And I'm just shocked how one willing person who cares, God can use them.
00:41:29.260Because of the media coverage I've had over the last few days, the cries for help from within Afghanistan from women who are in hiding, professional women who've been fired, who are being hunted, who are being tortured.
00:41:41.220Reports last night of two killed and shot.
00:41:43.360And these are professional, educated women.
00:42:01.000I thought it would be, I thought there'd be 20 people, and it was 212 women Afghan judges in hiding, Supreme Court, that are, and I asked my commando friends on the ground that are helping me, and they said, yes, they will be the first to die.
00:42:13.580They'll be the first to die because they have imprisoned men.
00:42:17.720They have imprisoned people who are beating their wives.
00:42:28.760You know, we've got a NASA, former NASA general counsel friend of mine working on this, along with the Yale Law School, who are assembling all the data of these women, submitting all their information to state department.
00:42:44.780I've got an extraction team on the ground, and I think, and I've got an ambassador that reached out to me over the European Union that says, I'm going to find asylum.
00:42:53.820He's already called so many countries, and they're working on it as well.
00:42:56.460But the one thing I'm missing is planes.
00:43:42.360Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na naonal na na na na na na na na na na na na na wa na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na ba na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na