The Megyn Kelly Show - Aftermath of Afghanistan and Julian Assange Allegations with Mike Pompeo and Jack Carr

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.520 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.740 Today on the program, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is with us, and I've been looking forward to this.

00:00:21.980 It's a great day to have him because President Biden's top military leaders are back on Capitol Hill this morning

00:00:27.120 for a new round of questioning regarding the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that ultimately led to just, I mean,

00:00:33.580 so much devastation, including the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and who knows how many Americans left behind.

00:00:40.300 The administration is saying 100. I've heard it put at 1,000. We really don't know is the truth.

00:00:44.880 General Mark Milley today back on Capitol Hill again yesterday when they were before the Senate,

00:00:48.940 now they're before the House Armed Services Committee.

00:00:50.960 He called the war a strategic failure and warned the Taliban remains, quote, a terrorist organization.

00:00:57.120 That maintains ties with Al Qaeda. So Mike Pompeo was a key figure in the United States,

00:01:02.460 beginning to pull out of Afghanistan after 20 long years of war under his then boss, President Donald Trump.

00:01:08.760 And he's my guest now. Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for being with us.

00:01:12.240 Megan, it's great to be with you. I've been looking forward to this as well.

00:01:15.600 I'm looking forward to our conversation today. A great deal.

00:01:18.300 So I confess I didn't know the extent of your background. You're a smart guy.

00:01:21.860 Number one in your class from West Point, Harvard Law School, almost as good as my alma mater,

00:01:27.780 Albany Law School, editor of the Law Review. You went on to do some six or seven years in Congress

00:01:35.880 from Kansas. And then Trump taps you to be the head of the CIA, which is amazing. That's got to be a

00:01:43.820 pretty cool elevation. And then up to Secretary of State. So I got to ask you the same question

00:01:49.760 that I asked Rick Grinnell, who is the DNI for a period of time under Trump. When you when you walk

00:01:55.260 in as the head of the CIA, like what's the first file you asked to take a look at? What's the first

00:02:01.500 thing you want to get your hands on? Yeah. So I was so Megan, thanks. And thanks for the kind words.

00:02:06.360 It was truly a privilege to be asked to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. I'd had a little

00:02:13.300 exposure to it. I served on the House Intelligence Committee. So I I knew a handful of people. But as

00:02:18.260 you know, Megan, there's nothing like when you're in charge. So I was under strict directions from my

00:02:24.280 son to make sure I read the UFO files first. Yes, of course. It's got to be it. And having read

00:02:31.560 everything you've read without disclosing anything, you know, too classified. What's your

00:02:36.140 conclusion? I think we're OK. I think we have bigger challenges today that we need to take on

00:02:41.220 and be sure we have right than than what I was able to see in those files. All right. You're not

00:02:45.280 I can't say much more than that, but I think that's a decent summary. OK, we're going to be OK. I'll

00:02:51.500 accept that for now since we have so much to go over. All right. Let's let's start with Afghanistan

00:02:55.760 and General Milley. He's been under cross-examination for, among other things,

00:03:02.660 calling his Chinese counterpart while President Trump was still president and allegedly assuring

00:03:10.300 him that the U.S. was not about to attack China and then going on to say, if we are going to attack

00:03:17.500 you, this is the allegation in the Bob Woodward by Costas book. I will give you a heads up. And

00:03:22.980 there was a lot of back and forth about that yesterday, saying that's insane. If you did

00:03:27.300 that, that could potentially be treasonous. You know, on and on it went. And he he made two points.

00:03:32.640 Number one, he said, I told Mike Pompeo after this happened, the then secretary of state about that

00:03:39.320 call. There was nothing inappropriate about it. And to prove it, I can tell you I went to the secretary

00:03:43.400 of state and told him about it. And secondly, he tried to clarify what exactly that exchange sounded

00:03:48.980 like. Let me get to him saying you knew all about it. Listen, on 31 December, the Chinese requested

00:03:56.060 another call with me. The deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia Pacific policy

00:04:00.620 helped coordinate my call, which was then scheduled for eight January. And he made a preliminary call

00:04:07.580 on six January. Eleven people attended that call with me and readouts of this call were distributed

00:04:13.680 to the interagency that same day. Shortly after my call ended with General Lee, I personally informed

00:04:20.800 both Secretary of State Pompeo and White House Chief of Staff Meadows about the call, among other topics.

00:04:28.660 So did that happen?

00:04:29.920 You know, I think the disconnect here, Megan, is the subject, what was actually said. I haven't seen

00:04:36.580 General Milley knock down what Woodward and Costa wrote. Having said that, I know Woodward and Costa

00:04:43.060 well enough to know that you should take everything they write with an enormous grain of salt.

00:04:47.380 The fact that General Milley chose to speak with him, the fact that General Milley chose to speak

00:04:51.420 with him at such great length, I find deeply troubling. But in any event, someone needs to

00:04:56.560 explain what's the disconnect. I heard what General Milley said he actually talked about on the call with

00:05:00.840 his Chinese counterparts. And I've read what has been reportedly going to be in this book. Those

00:05:07.600 aren't remotely the same. And I think that's what it gets to. I have no recollection of General

00:05:11.940 Milley briefing me in the way that he described. But if he said, hey, I spoke with my Chinese

00:05:15.680 counterparts yesterday, that wouldn't have been that wouldn't have been something particularly

00:05:19.800 memorable. It would have been relatively ordinary course. I spoke with my Chinese counterparts from

00:05:24.540 time to time as well. Every senior leader in America would do that. But it's the substance,

00:05:29.540 Megan. This is what you got to. And what I saw some of the questions about yesterday, if he in fact said,

00:05:35.480 we will not attack you until we warn you, that's that's just nutty, right? That's just

00:05:40.260 you would remember that. Yeah, it's certain that he did not tell Chief Meadows or I that because

00:05:45.640 I don't know if he told us he thinks he told us at the same on the same phone call. But I can promise

00:05:50.360 you that Chief Meadows would have called me immediately said, hey, we had a real problem

00:05:53.760 here. And if I'd have heard it, I would have I would have gone high and right. I'd be very surprised

00:05:59.660 if that's precisely how General Milley told the Chinese that I've worked with General Milley enough.

00:06:04.740 But if he told Woodward and Costa that he said that, this is something he has to account for.

00:06:11.240 That would be deeply inconsistent with his responsibilities, the senior military advisor,

00:06:15.720 senior military defense advisor to the president of the United States. And it would make no tactical

00:06:20.280 operational or strategic sense to tell the Chinese that because in the end, it wasn't going to be how

00:06:25.920 we rolled. It wasn't how the Trump administration rolled. We didn't warn our adversaries. We didn't tell

00:06:30.400 them that there would be a date certain we'd leave Afghanistan. We were very clear we were going to

00:06:34.680 use American power to protect America's interests. And we weren't about warning our adversaries of a

00:06:40.520 potential attack if it was inconsistent with our objectives. On Afghanistan, we had a date of May

00:06:44.920 1st, but we said it was conditions based. But but let let me stay on on Milley and this call for one

00:06:50.240 second. He did get into what specifically he said yesterday when we did this broadcast.

00:06:55.400 He had not yet been specifically asked, like, OK, well, what did you say later in the day?

00:07:01.740 He was asked that. This is soundbite number two. Let's listen to it.

00:07:05.900 You said you were, quote, certain that President Trump did not intend on attacking China. That's what you just

00:07:10.800 said. Correct. Yet you're quoted in the Woodward book is telling the shot the top Chinese communist

00:07:17.360 military commander, quote, if we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time.

00:07:25.400 Is that true, General Milley? Well, let me tell you what I actually said.

00:07:31.860 That's not true. I hope that let me tell you what I actually said, Senator.

00:07:35.800 What I said, if there's going to be a war, if there's going to be an attack,

00:07:40.080 there's going to be a lot of calls and tension ahead of time. But what you're going to get

00:07:43.780 caught, you're going to get caught.

00:07:44.580 Your testimony was that you were certain President Trump would not attack. That's your testimony this

00:07:49.180 morning. That is true. That is why would you. And I was I was communicating

00:07:54.420 to my Chinese counterpart on instructions, by the way, to deescalate the situation.

00:08:01.840 And I told him that we are not going to attack. President Trump has no intent to attack. And I

00:08:09.060 told him that repeatedly. And I told him if there was going to be an attack, there'll be plenty of

00:08:14.520 communications going back and forth. Your intel systems are going to pick it up. I said, I'll probably

00:08:18.700 call you. Everybody will be calling you. We're not going to attack you. Just settle down.

00:08:22.720 It's not going to happen. And I did it twice in October and January.

00:08:27.320 I think if you're giving a heads up to the Chinese Communist Party, I didn't give him a heads up.

00:08:32.140 We're going to attack because we weren't going to attack. If we're going to attack, I'm going to

00:08:35.080 call you to the president of the United States's intent.

00:08:40.060 He says that he told him, I'll probably call you. I don't know. You tell me my read of that as a

00:08:47.140 journalist is. That's a general under fire inserting words like probably as hedges. It's

00:08:52.660 pretty damn close to what Woodward put in the book.

00:08:55.700 I agree. That's pretty darn close to what's in the book.

00:08:59.720 Megan, let me just let me just give a bit of background. It is not it is not unheard of

00:09:04.100 for senior U.S. officials to make very clear what our red lines are. If you do X, we'll do Y.

00:09:11.180 Right. You want your adversaries to know that. If you if you learn that your adversaries think,

00:09:16.580 oh, my goodness, there's something going on and they are prepared to counter. Can you think they've

00:09:20.840 got it wrong? This is what you have red phones for. Right. Since you were a student of the Cold

00:09:25.840 War. Right. This is why you have the red line to make absolutely crystal clear what the reality of

00:09:31.760 the situation is. Those red phones are not used with the intention of giving your adversaries

00:09:37.840 notice or providing the warning or providing them a guarantee, which is what General Milley's

00:09:43.420 comments were dangerously close to, giving them a guarantee that says, look, I promise you we won't

00:09:48.080 attack until we've given you an idea of exactly what that's going to look like. That is that is

00:09:53.000 deeply troubling. We want to make sure that we are crystal clear. We don't want accidental wars.

00:09:58.260 We don't want accidental conflicts. We don't want ships at sea to collide with each other

00:10:02.860 accidentally. Those are worthy efforts to engage in your counterparts. But it is always with the idea

00:10:09.680 that you're protecting America's interests. Indeed, most importantly, you're preserving your

00:10:13.980 president's freedom to act in a way he needs to without giving anyone any notice or anyone any

00:10:20.480 advance warning. And I think General Milley, in his response yesterday, came dangerously close

00:10:24.680 to crossing that very line. What should happen to him, if anything?

00:10:28.400 I will say this. The fact that he spoke at such length with Woodward is inconsistent with his

00:10:35.660 duties as a general of the United States Army. So should he resign?

00:10:41.900 I always leave those questions to the individual. I must say, General Milley, it appears to me that

00:10:48.400 General Milley behaved in a way that is deeply inconsistent with the things that I learned when

00:10:51.860 I was a young cadet and that my five years of active duty service, I would I would not be talking to

00:10:57.640 reporters about conversations that I had with the chief rival for the United States of America to

00:11:04.000 a reporter like Bob Woodward. The only objective there, Megan, that I can identify, the only reason

00:11:08.860 I can actually think General Milley would have done that was to protect himself. It was a political act.

00:11:14.400 It was to tell his version of events. And the last thing to say here, Megan, and we haven't touched

00:11:19.120 on this, this is important. All the stuff that I've read about these top lines on the Woodward story

00:11:24.400 have is their predicate that on whatever this was, January 8th or December 31st, that there was this

00:11:32.180 craziness going on and that there was this real risk in the world. And Woodward is capturing that

00:11:39.860 in the conversations that General Milley had. So the point of Woodward's book is, look what Milley had

00:11:44.740 to do to stop President Trump. I want to tell everyone who's listening to this, that was just simply not

00:11:50.580 the case. I saw no evidence of this. There was no need for General Milley to be the guy who said,

00:11:56.660 yes, Speaker Pelosi, I'm going to make sure there's no nuclear weapon launch. I'm going to

00:12:00.260 make sure we don't start a war. I've heard with Iran or with China. I have to tell you that that's

00:12:05.220 not what I saw. I was in nearly every meeting with the president, not only for the entire four years,

00:12:11.260 but in those weeks leading up to the transition to President Biden, the whole predicate, the whole

00:12:15.460 case that General Milley, I think, was trying to shape and tell a story about is just fundamentally false.

00:12:20.320 He's he on the China thing. He said, oh, well, there was some traffic. We could tell that they

00:12:25.020 were they were starting to wonder whether we were going to launch an attack back on October 30.

00:12:30.220 And then on January 8th, two days after the Capitol Hill riot, he's painting Pelosi is calling him

00:12:36.520 saying, and I quote, he's crazy about President Trump. He's crazy. You know, he's crazy. And Woodward

00:12:42.540 has Milley saying, yes, I know, agreeing. Milley denied that yesterday. Well, let me ask you,

00:12:48.060 as somebody who was in the administration during that time, we all know President Trump did not

00:12:51.540 accept the results of the election and that he challenged them into court and otherwise for

00:12:56.260 weeks thereafter. But what do you make of that allegation? Because I've heard Republicans who I

00:13:01.160 like and trust say, if he were crazy, I would like to know because we could see another Trump run in

00:13:08.540 2024. I mean, what what was his mental state? How would you describe him in those days?

00:13:13.300 This is really easy. No crazy, Megan. None of us were.

00:13:18.040 That's it. No color. Come on. I mean, like he was angry.

00:13:21.580 This is this is this is the this is the media narrative of this is the this is the Joy Reid

00:13:26.960 CNN media narrative. Right. It was the media narrative for four years, five, if you count the

00:13:32.260 election cycle. Right. Right. That we were the rubes. We were the barbarians. We're going to tear

00:13:37.500 down America's central institutions that there weren't processes and controls. I I always respond

00:13:43.140 to that by saying, OK, let's look at the outcomes. Let's measure the performance outcomes. And I think

00:13:48.440 when you do that, it racks and stacks pretty nicely, certainly against the last eight months.

00:13:52.660 But I think it racks and stacks pretty nicely against the previous eight years as well.

00:13:58.120 And so this this narrative that somehow this there was it was zany or the zoo, which I think is what

00:14:05.200 General Milley's comments further further provide fuel for were inconsistent with my observations for

00:14:12.060 the four years I served in the national security. And of course, and the media spent four years

00:14:16.320 telling us that, you know, all Trump's lies and he's a serial liar. And yet it's a Russian asset to

00:14:22.420 boot. Yes. Yeah. And it's far less interested in Joe Biden's many lies like there's no more al-Qaeda

00:14:26.640 in Afghanistan. And this was a this was done an extraordinary success, the withdrawal and that

00:14:31.820 it wasn't going to collapse immediately, all that stuff. OK, so let's get on to Afghanistan and the

00:14:36.400 withdrawal and all that, because I saw you tweet the other day and I completely agree. Leaders take

00:14:40.060 responsibility. Joe Biden hasn't done that. He has not done that at the border. He hasn't done that in

00:14:44.640 Afghanistan. But I wanted to ask you about whether you should be taking responsibility. Donald Trump

00:14:49.800 should, because it was you two who struck this deal. And I know that you say it was conditions based.

00:14:54.800 You know, you struck it into February 2020. You signed a withdrawal agreement in Doha, Qatar with

00:15:00.440 with the Taliban co-founder. And it said, we're going to leave Afghanistan in 14 months on May 1st,

00:15:06.600 2021. And it had conditions that the Taliban was supposed to meet before we would withdraw.

00:15:12.720 They weren't supposed to let Afghanistan become a haven for terrorists. They were supposed to stop

00:15:17.100 attacking U.S. service members. They were supposed to start peace talks with the Afghan government and

00:15:21.900 consider a ceasefire with them. And then we were going to reduce our troops, which we started to

00:15:26.180 do thereafter. But the question is whether at the time we start with this at the time and thereafter,

00:15:33.280 did you believe that the Taliban was meeting our conditions? No. So why did we continue withdrawing

00:15:41.440 our troops while you guys were still in office? Because we were able to do that because we were able to

00:15:47.660 reduce the forces there on the ground, which President Trump had made a deep commitment

00:15:51.520 to executing. Right. He campaigned on this his entire time. The American people wanted it was, in fact,

00:15:56.900 the right thing to do. And we were able to do that. You know this, Megan. We we'd reduced our force

00:16:02.620 posture in Afghanistan multiple times. We increased our force posture multiple times over 20 years.

00:16:07.840 You adjust your forces to meet what you believe are the desired end outcomes so that you can protect

00:16:14.020 America's interests. Right. President Trump was always very clear. Mike, I want everybody out.

00:16:17.320 This is no secret. He tweeted it. Correct. He wanted our we wanted our young men and women home.

00:16:21.700 He wanted that war over. Yeah. Right. He wanted the war over. We were working diligently to achieve

00:16:27.440 that. One of the threads of our strategy was to try and convince the Taliban to sit at the table with

00:16:33.620 their Afghan fellow citizens and try and arm wrestle their way to peace and reconciliation.

00:16:38.360 We knew, Megan, this is a decade long process, maybe five years if you're lucky. We know the

00:16:44.880 history of Afghanistan. We weren't remotely naive, but we got them to sit at the table. The Bush

00:16:49.100 administration had tried and failed. Everyone had. We got it done. We had women sitting with senior

00:16:54.240 Taliban leaders, NGOs sitting with senior Taliban leaders. We didn't just sign an agreement with the

00:16:58.440 Taliban. I signed one with the Afghan government as well. So the the entire the comprehensive effort

00:17:04.140 involved to three pieces. One, getting our force posture right. We did that. You talked about the

00:17:09.220 fact we drew down. If you think about the trace of our forces there, the president in June of 17

00:17:14.840 actually increased the number of uniformed military personnel there. I should be careful. I should always

00:17:19.900 refer to that. Right. Uniformed military personnel on the ground went up. We then began to go down from

00:17:25.880 just over 15000 to 8600. We stopped. We paused. We evaluated the conditions on the ground. We worked

00:17:32.360 closely with General Miller, who was the commander of forces in Afghanistan to do that. We then went

00:17:37.160 down to I think the next step was 4700 and then ultimately down to the 2800. But each step along

00:17:42.620 the way, Megan, we evaluated the conditions on the ground. Are they doing the things that we need them

00:17:48.040 to do to secure America's interests, make sure we can get Americans out, make sure that we can

00:17:53.000 ultimately get our equipment out? Are they breaking with Al Qaeda? Will they will they do the things

00:17:58.680 necessary to reduce risks that were ever attacked from that place again? The president gave us each

00:18:04.480 of those missions, not just getting everyone out. And so on January 20th of 2021, we were at somewhere

00:18:10.820 around 2800 uniformed military personnel on the ground. And that was as far as we got because of

00:18:16.540 the conditions on the ground. And Megan, the last thing to say here is we did that and maintained

00:18:23.140 the force posture to protect America. We had a plan to do that. It was a deterrence model.

00:18:29.140 The Taliban knew we we quite readily attack them if they attacked an American. So that's why I think

00:18:34.980 they did not do that until the Biden administration came in. But we didn't have an American soldier

00:18:39.180 killed from the date you talked about, February 29th, 2020, until we left office. And it wasn't

00:18:44.600 because of the piece of paper. It was it was because the Taliban knew we were deadly serious.

00:18:49.340 They'd watched our strike on Qasem Soleimani. They'd watched us take down ISIS. And we knew

00:18:54.540 they knew if they moved on a checkpoint, if they moved in a way that was inconsistent with America's

00:18:59.220 interests, we would wreak all kinds of havoc on them. We had to do that a handful of times to

00:19:04.500 communicate clearly to them that we were going to do it. And sadly, when the Biden mission came in,

00:19:10.680 they ripped up that plan, set a political arbitrary end date, September 11th, 2021. And you can see

00:19:17.620 the end result. Well, but let me ask that because nothing in the deal that we struck with them

00:19:21.240 mandated that the Taliban stop its military campaign or refrain from capturing Kabul or agree

00:19:29.860 to an actual deal with the Afghan government. So what specifically were they violating that would

00:19:35.580 have caused us to leave those last twenty five hundred troops that Trump left and and Biden had

00:19:42.460 at the time we got to August? Yeah, I think that's an important

00:19:46.080 question. The single thing that the thing that frankly matters most that they are in violation of

00:19:51.000 was that we still hadn't satisfactorily achieved a set of conditions that we thought we could preserve

00:19:55.940 our capacity to reduce risk that we'd be attacked from there. A subset of that is their break with

00:20:02.140 Al Qaeda. The reason that we've gone to Afghanistan in the first place was the crushing

00:20:06.460 of Al Qaeda's component in Afghanistan.

00:20:09.160 But have they ever changed that? I mean, you tell me when I look back on the when you struck

00:20:13.340 the deal with the Taliban just prior to when you guys struck the deal. And every day thereafter,

00:20:18.040 the Taliban presence in Afghanistan has been I'm sorry, Al Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan

00:20:23.260 has been the same. They've been in some 13 of the counties or provinces, whatever you call them.

00:20:29.440 And the deal those two are friendly. And the Taliban never really stopped providing a safe haven

00:20:35.620 for Al Qaeda. They never did it. They said they'd do it. They never lived up to it. And they still

00:20:40.060 weren't living up to it. And they're still not living up to it now. Am I wrong about that?

00:20:43.600 Some of what you say is right. Some it doesn't quite capture the complexity of the arrangements

00:20:47.720 between the two of them and the important American interest that's connected to that.

00:20:52.200 Your point about the fact that they are friendly, absolutely true. The Siraj Akhani is number two guy,

00:20:57.260 part of the Taliban chain of command. I think he's now the minister of interior in Afghanistan. So

00:21:02.140 those ties are deep and strong and real. Having said that, we saw times too where they were in

00:21:07.840 conflict. They also gave us, I think because of massive American power, not because they loved us,

00:21:13.800 but they gave us the capacity to accomplish a mission. And we did that, right? You know how many

00:21:18.420 Al Qaeda were there when we showed up? There were fewer than 200 by the time that our administration

00:21:23.520 departed. Importantly too, Megan, the networks, right? When we think about America's counterterrorism

00:21:30.080 operations, sometimes we just focus on Afghanistan in a way that's not consistent with risk. And if

00:21:36.160 you're doing counterterrorism, it's about risk to the homeland, most importantly.

00:21:40.080 I mean, we got Bin Laden in Pakistan.

00:21:43.140 Al Qaeda's senior leadership today isn't in Afghanistan, Megan. It's not in Pakistan. It's in

00:21:49.340 Tehran. The senior operational leaders for global Al Qaeda, the people who build the networks that

00:21:55.580 threaten countries outside of their localities sit in Tehran, Iran today. We drove them out.

00:22:02.920 In fact, you know, there was a CIA strike on the number two Al Qaeda leader in Tehran

00:22:07.680 during our time. It was a beautiful operation. I'm incredibly proud of the work that we did there.

00:22:14.140 Soleimani.

00:22:14.420 No, not Soleimani. Al Qaeda.

00:22:17.220 Oh, you're talking Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leader.

00:22:19.000 Yes, no. Al Qaeda. This is something we have to make sure everybody understands. Al Qaeda's senior

00:22:23.700 leadership, the place that they are talking to their forces in the Philippines, to Al Qaeda in

00:22:28.080 the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen, to al-Shabaab, the place that global Al Qaeda runs its global network

00:22:35.340 today is not in Afghanistan. It's in Pakistan. It's not in Pakistan. It's in Iran. And just as a footnote,

00:22:42.120 this administration is now talking with the Iranian leadership in Vienna. I mean, it's nuts. They are

00:22:46.460 hosting Al Qaeda's senior leadership in Tehran. And our nation's leaders are talking about, can't we

00:22:53.320 all just get along? So we need to be mindful. When we think about Al Qaeda, we are faced with

00:23:00.700 this from Al Qaeda from multiple places, including still from Afghanistan. And so as we began to think

00:23:07.040 about how we maintain our counterterrorism posture, we, I recommended to the president that we could

00:23:13.760 withdraw our troops to the extent we did. Each time we evaluated the conditions, could we continue to

00:23:19.060 reduce risk in Afghanistan? I was never able to get to a place where I could tell the president that we

00:23:24.660 could get all the way to the end objective of getting everyone out. We were working along multiple vectors

00:23:30.020 to try and create that set of conditions. We, we didn't achieve the point where I could make that

00:23:34.740 recommendation. Well, let me ask you that. So, so let me, let's go back to August just last month

00:23:39.740 as the Taliban's taking over city after city in Afghanistan. And again, we've got 2,500 troops

00:23:45.740 there who had not been attacked since the time you signed that deal. But what the administration

00:23:49.420 says and what the generals were saying yesterday was the deal was about to expire. And on August 30th,

00:23:54.920 it had been posted, it had been extended. Let me just, let me just stop you there.

00:23:57.600 They're saying on August 30th, they would have come after us. The war would have ramped back up.

00:24:00.980 You had the generals yesterday saying we would have had to put 20,000 troops back in Afghanistan

00:24:05.020 if we hadn't pulled them. Yeah. Look, Megan, you're asking me to do something that I don't think

00:24:10.100 any previous secretary's space would have to speculate about what would have happened if we were still

00:24:13.760 there. Well, you, you say, you said Trump wouldn't allow this. Trump wouldn't have done this.

00:24:17.700 Megan, I wish the American people had allowed us to stay there because I know how we would have

00:24:23.060 responded because I know what we did. I can speak to what we did. When the Taliban moved in ways that

00:24:28.460 were inconsistent with protecting the Afghan senior security interests and America's interests,

00:24:33.860 we crushed them. We built a deterrence model. We made their costs in excess of the benefits they

00:24:39.600 thought they could derive. And so to suggest somehow that on some date, May 31st, I've heard people say,

00:24:45.760 I heard you talk about August there, on some date that the Trump administration would have ceased

00:24:50.360 its deterrence mechanism, right? We'd been fighting the Taliban for 20 years there.

00:24:55.440 We, the Trump administration understood how to continue to perform our CT function there,

00:24:59.900 protect Kabul, protect the, to, to keep the Afghan security forces together. I don't have to speculate

00:25:05.460 about whether we could do it. We did it. We did it for four years. And we, you just threw out a number

00:25:11.440 of 20,000 that someone may have suggested yesterday. We did it for an awfully long time and we never had

00:25:16.900 20,000 troops on the ground and we achieved it for four years, Megan.

00:25:20.640 Well, and that's what, I mean, the peace was kept. I mean, it wasn't perfect, but it was Afghan. It was

00:25:26.900 Afghan disorder, but it was, it was allowing us to continue to perform our counterterrorism mission

00:25:33.300 and protect the United States.

00:25:34.540 Well, that's the thing. So we, and we didn't have another major attack during that time during,

00:25:38.160 under Trump. Um, and the, and now we have our generals coming out and saying one's coming. I mean,

00:25:44.120 they're putting months on it, you know, 12 months, 24, 36. And then there's sort of this

00:25:49.020 collective shoulder shrug of, uh, okay, well, you know what? Welcome to what it's like to be a Gen Xer

00:25:54.360 to the young people today. Right. You, it's like, this is how we've been living since nine 11,

00:25:58.740 worried about another attack. And now they're going to have to worry about another attack.

00:26:01.800 Cause our generals seem to be saying, yeah, one's coming. Uh, so I want to ask former secretary of

00:26:05.660 state, Mike, Mike Pompeo about that. Um, in just one minute, going to squeeze in a quick break,

00:26:10.800 uh, and then come back to that topic. Welcome back everyone to the Megan Kelly show. My guest

00:26:21.520 right now is former head of the CIA, former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. Uh, so let's

00:26:27.600 talk about that because now they are pretty clear that we're, we're very vulnerable to an attack

00:26:33.840 by Al Qaeda from Afghanistan. Just moments ago, General McKenzie, the head of CENTCOM testified,

00:26:39.300 there's no indication that Taliban has broken ties with Al Qaeda. Oh, great. And so I'm kind of

00:26:45.940 stunned at the cavalier attitude. The generals, the administration seem to have about that very

00:26:52.320 real possibility. Your thoughts on it. Megan, I think what you're hearing from them is a little bit

00:26:57.820 of their reflection when they told the president that this risk existed. I'm confident they did.

00:27:04.060 They told president Trump this same thing for four years as well, right? That this risk was real.

00:27:09.040 And then we had to make sure that the conditions were right. So the Trump administration honored

00:27:13.100 that, right? That security risk. We, we didn't do what the Biden administration did. And I think

00:27:18.080 that's what you're hearing in their voices there. It is the case that the fact that we have fewer

00:27:23.500 Americans on the ground in Afghanistan, uh, now zero uniform military personnel creates, uh, uh,

00:27:30.360 ability for us to see what's going on there is, is reduced and therefore risk is increased.

00:27:35.460 I do want to remind everyone that's, that's true in lots of places in the world where there's

00:27:39.400 ungoverned space. We should all note, we have ungoverned space on our Southern border as well

00:27:43.860 now, uh, because we have cartels that have control and the Mexican government does not.

00:27:49.520 Um, when we think about risk is we think about CT risk around the world, we have done amazing

00:27:53.580 work for the last 20 years. I take no credit for this. So these are people who came along before

00:27:58.640 me and who built out a pretty robust set of, uh, counter-terrorism operational capabilities

00:28:05.140 that still exist, that are still working, that make it difficult to conduct a complex operation,

00:28:10.140 not impossible for sure, but pretty darn difficult. It is, it has served us pretty well these last

00:28:16.340 two decades. I hope that this administration will keep that set of capabilities in place. And now we

00:28:22.500 have one in Afghanistan where we have less insight, less visibility, and therefore,

00:28:26.620 less intelligence. And so I think they're rightly reflecting the fact that there is more risk today

00:28:32.560 now that the Taliban are in control of Kabul. Can you speak to the upset that a lot of soldiers

00:28:37.780 and servicemen and women are feeling in the wake of this Afghanistan debacle, the way we withdrew,

00:28:44.160 the way we abandoned our allies, you know, the people who helped us and some, some just feeling

00:28:50.080 like we, we lost, we, we, we lost, right? Like that we didn't have to lose, that we kind of

00:28:55.680 surrendered. Um, I, I've heard it from service personnel who are supportive of president Trump,

00:29:02.060 um, but didn't really love the Doha agreement. And from those who were supportive of Biden in general,

00:29:07.920 but can't stand the way he did the withdrawal. But I think there's a lot of malaise now and a lot of

00:29:12.800 sadness within the military community about the way America looks and what the blood and treasure

00:29:18.340 sacrifices were for. Um, I don't know, as somebody who was in the position you were in, what, what do

00:29:24.380 you want them to know? Yeah, three, three things come to mind as I listened to your question there,

00:29:28.720 Megan. First, um, their sacrifice was noble. It was important. The takedown of Al Qaeda, which we

00:29:35.840 successfully did, right? We took them from being a massive threat to the United States, sitting in the

00:29:41.480 caves of Tora Bora to a place where now their operational leadership is no longer in that space.

00:29:47.140 And for 20 years, we maintained a posture that has successfully prevented the same kind of attack

00:29:52.840 that we saw now 20 years ago. So they should, they should feel proud of the work that they did.

00:29:57.960 Absent that work, we, we, we take this as for granted now because we can look back, but absent that

00:30:03.300 work, I am, uh, as sure as you can be without being able to prove it. I am as sure as you can be

00:30:08.240 that we would have had a much greater likelihood that Al Qaeda would have been able to repeat what

00:30:13.040 they did. Their service was important. It was noble and it achieved really good outcomes. And

00:30:18.260 all of us who live in the United States today should be thankful for the work that every

00:30:21.880 soldier, every sailor, every airman, Marine, every intelligence officer and diplomat who served there,

00:30:27.840 they delivered that security for us for 20 years and they should be very proud of it.

00:30:32.300 Now, second thought is I understand their feeling. I feel it too. The debacle that was the

00:30:37.220 departure from Afghanistan is tragic. It didn't have to be that way. We, we always knew that

00:30:44.580 there would be a day. We didn't know when, when we could have fewer American lives at risk in

00:30:50.020 Afghanistan. I, I went to Dover air force base to see, uh, the families of those who had fallen when

00:30:55.740 their remains were returned here. It is heartbreaking that we lost so many in the 20 years. And we needed

00:31:01.460 to do the right thing to reduce the cost of the United States of America and the risk to our young men

00:31:06.380 and women, but it didn't have to end in a way which had no conditions and arbitrary political

00:31:11.860 deadline. And ultimately the chaos of the departure where we not only, not only left Americans behind.

00:31:17.840 And in your intro, Megan, you talked about how many, um, it's in the hundreds, uh, for sure.

00:31:24.040 I hear from people nearly every day who are trying to help extract Americans. We left Americans behind.

00:31:29.660 We left equipment behind. We didn't live up to the promises that America made to those who had

00:31:34.260 supported us for those 20 years or some part of those 20 years. And I understand why people are

00:31:40.140 saddened by that. It's, it's deeply inconsistent with the American tradition.

00:31:45.800 Can I ask you, um, some criticism from the former national security advisor,

00:31:50.040 Henry McMaster. He spoke to Barry Weiss. He pointed the finger at you at Trump and said,

00:31:56.380 you know, it's thanks to you guys that, that this happened. I'll play the soundbite and you can tell me

00:32:00.840 what you think. Our secretary of state signed a surrender agreement to the Taliban.

00:32:05.740 You're talking about Mike Pompeo.

00:32:07.300 Yes. And, and do you, do you know what happened next? The Taliban began to marshal weapons and

00:32:14.240 fighters. They left Pakistan, began to marshal for a major offensive timed for about this time,

00:32:20.660 right? Planned well in advance planned by the way, by Siraj Haqqani, who's a member of Al Qaeda

00:32:25.600 and the military commander of the Taliban. Okay. Tell me again, how there's this bold line,

00:32:30.620 you know, between the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It's laughable. Right. And then what they did is they

00:32:34.320 went to Afghan commanders at various levels and said, Hey, here's your alternatives. The Americans

00:32:39.800 already told you they're abandoning you. So either we can come to an agreement, you know, where we'll,

00:32:45.180 you know, we'll give you some payout, we'll give you free passage and everything. Uh, or the

00:32:49.060 alternative is we're going to kill you and your families. How about that for a deal? And so that's why

00:32:54.160 you saw the collapse. This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. I mean,

00:32:59.760 the Taliban didn't defeat us. We defeated ourselves. And we, and what's worse is we threw the Afghans

00:33:05.840 under the bus on our way out. Hey, if we were just going to leave, why the hell didn't we just leave?

00:33:11.180 Why did we force them to release 5,000 of some of the most heinous people on earth who immediately

00:33:17.080 went back to terrorizing the Afghan people? And before the ink was even dry, right? On this capitulation

00:33:23.100 agreement, they were attacking maternity hospitals, gunning down expectant mothers and infants.

00:33:29.140 They were, they were setting bombs in girls' schools and setting secondary bombs up outside.

00:33:33.640 So as they fleed the initial explosion, they could kill more of them, right? This is the enemy who we

00:33:39.220 surrendered to. Some tough words there from H.R. McMaster, your response to him.

00:33:43.540 Yes. Look, General McMaster had a view on Afghanistan. It was shared in other Republican

00:33:50.140 circles as well. That was about staying in Afghanistan with 100,000 troops forever.

00:33:56.900 That would have been their model. The generals are still saying they would have needed 20,000.

00:34:01.500 That wasn't the reality. It wasn't what the American people wanted. It wasn't what President

00:34:04.900 Trump campaigned on. I think that's why General McMaster didn't make it all the way through the

00:34:09.820 administration. The document that was signed in February was no more surrender document than Man

00:34:14.820 of the Moon. General McMaster knows that that was just good theater. He knows it wasn't a surrender

00:34:19.680 document. I can, I can tell you it wasn't a surrender document because I know how it was dealt

00:34:23.760 with for the, what would it be 11 months after the date we signed that document. We were still fully

00:34:28.760 engaged in our counterterrorism mission there and fully engaged in supporting the Afghan national

00:34:33.280 security forces as well. How about the release of the prisoners? That's, that's been

00:34:37.180 controversial. We, we made them release, no, we agreed to release 5,000 of their prisoners and some

00:34:44.340 of whom have gone on to lead the battle and were directly responsible for taking over the country

00:34:49.540 once we started our withdrawal. Yeah. I'm not sure the second part of that's accurate. I'd have to

00:34:54.460 see some evidence that some of those were there. I'm happy to review it. Could be the case.

00:34:58.720 These were Afghan prisoners. Uh, we were, we were working diligently to try and get to peace and

00:35:03.380 reconciliation. The Afghan leadership wanted that too. Remember they had a very contentious

00:35:08.360 presidential election. Uh, the government itself was corrupt. The Afghan government itself,

00:35:13.860 President Ghani was among the most corrupt leaders I had ever encountered in my time as

00:35:17.760 secretary of state. And Megan, you know, you know, the world, that's a pretty tall, that's a pretty

00:35:21.740 tall order. Uh, he was stealing money from the United States of America left and right. So we were left

00:35:27.460 with a very weak Afghan government trying village, trying diligently to deliver a model that could

00:35:34.060 ultimately get to something that looked like a Afghan government that represented all Afghans.

00:35:41.200 We knew this was on, and I'm not going to defend President Ghani. Um, but just follow up. There was

00:35:46.000 a wall street journal report in August saying many of the Taliban insurgents currently aiding in the

00:35:49.600 conquest of Afghanistan were once prisoners of the American backed Afghan government were in the 5,000,

00:35:54.440 the Taliban commander overseeing an assault on the key Southern city of Lashkarga is one of 5,000

00:36:00.700 former prisoners released by the Afghan government last year under pressure from the U S. And it goes

00:36:04.640 on to talk about some others who we, Megan, it could be, it could absolutely be the Afghans help people.

00:36:10.900 They released people, uh, all the time for 20 years. This, this went on. Uh, we were, we were doing

00:36:16.420 our best to kill bad guys and keep America safe. We didn't do a single thing. We, we got these guys

00:36:21.200 released. That's, that's the criticism. That's what we were, we were working to deliver on American

00:36:27.640 security. And we did that. We did that, Megan. There's, there's no, no, no one can dispute that during

00:36:33.640 the Trump administration, we delivered on the central things that mattered to the United States

00:36:38.680 of America. We, we were unashamed, Megan, talking about America first, we did it. And I'll never apologize

00:36:44.740 for the way that we delivered that outcome for the American people. We, we didn't set an arbitrary

00:36:49.880 date. We didn't pull our troops out. We didn't leave equipment behind. We didn't leave Americans

00:36:53.640 and, and Afghans who helped us behind. We, we delivered for our entire four years

00:36:58.020 inside the prison. There were some very bad guys outside the prison. There were some very bad guys.

00:37:02.120 I mean, this is, this is part of the difficulty of dealing with a country like Afghanistan and trying

00:37:06.000 to negotiate and end to a very long conflict.

00:37:09.740 Just one last thought to tie the prisoner release to the debacle that the Biden administration led

00:37:15.680 to is just, it's deeply disconnected from reality. I mean, it's all such a mess, right? Like Afghanistan

00:37:22.180 is a mess. The suggestion from Jake Sullivan and HR McMaster somehow that this prisoner release

00:37:28.200 resulted in the collapse of the Afghan government. The prisoners were released and there was no collapse

00:37:36.760 of the Afghan government, right? So this is a red herring thrown up by the Biden administration to

00:37:41.680 do what presidents should never do. And that's pass the buck from the central responsibility that

00:37:46.080 the deep, important responsibility you have as the president of the United States to protect America.

00:37:52.500 Okay. My guest at the moment is former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo up next. How concerned should

00:37:58.180 we be about the CIA's focus on becoming woke and highlighting agents professing their generalized

00:38:03.760 anxiety disorders in commercial ads? I only wish I were kidding.

00:38:13.880 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show, everyone. My guest right now is former secretary of state,

00:38:17.900 Mike Pompeo. All right. So I want to get to the woke military in one second, but first I've got to ask

00:38:22.280 you about this Yahoo reporting on Julian Assange. In addition to being the former secretary of state,

00:38:27.820 used to run the CIA, as we discussed. And their report a couple of days ago by Mike Isikoff, among

00:38:34.240 others, is that they who wrote for Yahoo, a long piece, an investigation in which they claim

00:38:40.360 to have spoken to more than 30 former US officials and revealed that in 2017, the CIA, which you were

00:38:48.180 running at the time, plotted to kidnap Julian Assange and even discussed plans to assassinate him.

00:38:54.320 They report that this sparked heated debate amongst Trump administration officials about the legality

00:39:00.140 and practicality of such a plan. Again, that some inside the CIA and the Trump administration

00:39:06.720 actively discussed killing Assange and even requested sketches and options for how to assassinate him.

00:39:14.840 True or false? Makes for pretty good fiction, Megan. They should write. They should write such a novel.

00:39:19.760 This is classic Isikoff. I can't say much about this other than whoever those 30 people who

00:39:27.860 allegedly spoke with one of these reporters, they should all be prosecuted for speaking about

00:39:32.620 classified activity inside the Central Intelligence Agency. Maybe they didn't. Maybe Isikoff just made

00:39:37.560 it up. But you should know, I take seriously my responsibilities to protect that information.

00:39:41.780 Second thing, there is no doubt, WikiLeaks is in fact a non-state hostile intelligence service.

00:39:51.040 They're actively seeking to steal American classified information. This isn't good reporting. This isn't

00:39:57.520 asking someone to leak. This is working to steal secrets from the United States of America. We have

00:40:03.420 a responsibility to protect that information. And the Trump administration worked doggedly every day

00:40:09.540 to do just that. I'm gleaning that the answer is therefore false. You're saying if it's fiction,

00:40:16.100 you deny the charges, you deny the report. So Megan, I read the article just the other day.

00:40:25.080 There's pieces of it that are true. Were we trying to protect American information from Julian Assange and

00:40:30.340 WikiLeaks? Absolutely yes. Did our Justice Department believe they had a valid claim, which would have

00:40:36.160 resulted in the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to stand trial here? Yes, I supported

00:40:41.000 that effort for sure. Did we ever engage in activity that was inconsistent with U.S. law? You know,

00:40:47.080 you know the rules here, Megan. You know precisely how the CIA operates in the sense of we're not

00:40:51.860 permitted by U.S. law to conduct assassinations. We never acted in a way that was inconsistent with

00:40:57.260 that, nor did we ever circumvent. There's some suggestion in this article that we circumvented the

00:41:01.660 lawyers to conduct these kinds of road campaigns. Well, we know we never acted in it because Julian

00:41:06.460 Assange is still alive. The reporting is that there was a plot that, you know, plans and sketches and

00:41:12.040 pretty detailed discussions. Yeah, I can say we never conducted planning to violate U.S. law,

00:41:19.540 not once in my time. Can I just ask you about it? Because I confess I wasn't all that up to speed on

00:41:25.640 what WikiLeaks had reported on this Vault 7. Vault 7 is it detailed the CIA's electronic surveillance and

00:41:33.780 cyber warfare activities from 2013 and 16. And apparently WikiLeaks Julian Assange got their hands

00:41:40.040 on it, reported on it. How damaging was that? Again, that response to efforts to take American

00:41:47.300 secrets is very sensitive stuff. Megan, I'll say this generically. When our secrets are still,

00:41:53.480 when we have deep efforts that the United States has been using to counter our foreign adversaries,

00:41:58.500 ones like we just spoke the first 30 minutes about, Al Qaeda, all across the world. When bad guys steal

00:42:03.780 those secrets, we have a responsibility to go after them, to prevent them from happening,

00:42:07.800 that from happening. And then once we find that they were able to do that, they were successful at

00:42:12.260 doing that, we have the absolute responsibility to respond. It is expensive. It is time-consuming.

00:42:17.420 Gathering this intelligence is hard work. It takes years to do and can take just minutes for it to be

00:42:22.860 stolen by groups like WikiLeaks. The dog is upset about it too. He's mad. He's not a Julian

00:42:30.780 Assange fan. Both of them are. Okay, so I got it. I've got it. Let me ask you one other question on

00:42:40.280 this. You guys labeled WikiLeaks a hostile intelligence service. Can I ask you what actions

00:42:46.820 did you want to see taken as a result of that? Megan, I can't say much other than we desperately

00:42:53.580 wanted to hold accountable those individuals that had violated U.S. law, that had violated the

00:42:59.820 requirements to protect and preserve our information and had tried to steal it. There's a deep legal

00:43:05.100 framework to do that. And we took actions consistent with American law to achieve that. I wish I could say

00:43:10.600 more. I simply can't. I got it. I got it. You're in a sensitive position. What do you make of,

00:43:14.140 do you think Assange was treated very badly? That's what Trump said.

00:43:19.000 No, Assange treated the United States and its people very badly.

00:43:24.240 He wanted Trump to pardon him at the end of the term. Trump declined to do that. So, you know,

00:43:29.520 we'll see. I mean, it doesn't seem like Trump may think he was treated very badly, but when asked to

00:43:33.440 actually, you know, give him a break legally, he didn't do it. Okay, let's see how the dog feels

00:43:38.000 about a woke CIA. He's going to be just as upset about that, Megan.

00:43:43.960 He thinks it's rough, really rough. Sorry. Sorry. Oh, Abby is covering her face. My assistant does

00:43:50.800 not approve of my stupid joke. Tell Abby I think it's a world class. I like it.

00:43:56.200 All right. So I only wish this were a parody, but this is an actual CIA recruiting video.

00:44:05.700 Here's how they're now trying to get CIA agents, analysts, et cetera. Watch.

00:44:10.200 I'm a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cisgender millennial who's been diagnosed with generalized

00:44:16.480 anxiety disorder. I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box checking exercise.

00:44:22.800 I did not sneak into CIA. My employment was not and is not the result of a fluke or slip through

00:44:29.780 the cracks. I earned my way in and I earned my way up the ranks of this organization. I am educated,

00:44:36.420 qualified, and competent. I refuse to internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can

00:44:42.960 or should be. I stand here today, a proud first generation Latina and officer at CIA.

00:44:49.560 OMG. What are we to make of that?

00:44:53.600 Lost. Just lost. You're a CIA. You're an officer of the United States serving the Central Intelligence

00:45:04.640 Agency. You're not a male CIA officer. You're not a female CIA officer. You're not a Latin CIA officer.

00:45:10.680 You're a CIA officer. This is what we should be focused on. We should be demanding excellence from

00:45:15.720 everybody who comes on to that team. Megan, you know this problem is much bigger than just the CIA.

00:45:21.140 We see it in our military today. We see it in every element of the United States government. Frankly,

00:45:25.480 we see it in the private sector as well, where we've lost this central idea of every American should be

00:45:32.540 tweeted fairly equally, regardless of their race or their gender. And now we've moved to a place where

00:45:38.960 we are telling our adversaries that we are retaining and recruiting our operatives in the United States

00:45:46.180 of America based on something totally unrelated and their excellence in conducting espionage.

00:45:51.640 Right. No one cares about you being cisgendered or it's all right. So Mike Pompeo sat here and he's

00:45:58.620 taken my tough questions for the better part of an hour, which I greatly appreciate.

00:46:02.520 Um, not everybody has the stones to do it. So hats off to you. However, I have to end on this happy

00:46:08.660 note that, uh, Mike and I first started corresponding a couple of Easter's ago when I posted a tweet of

00:46:15.460 my Easter cake and then he posted his, a tweet of his Easter cake. And this is how we first bonded.

00:46:22.200 And I have to ask you, is this your tradition or your wife's tradition or who actually baked that cake,

00:46:27.440 sir? I, again, I, I gotta, I, just like I told you the truth, the last hour,

00:46:32.200 my wife did the cake. I thought you're going to go back to, there's only so much I can reveal.

00:46:37.640 No, ma'am. That's an easy one. Well, I love it. I love your sense of humor. Listen,

00:46:42.760 I really do appreciate it. And next time you come on, we'll talk about 2024 and whether we're going

00:46:47.220 to see the name Mike Pompeo on one of those lecterns. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much

00:46:52.260 for being here. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Megan. All the best. Uh, up next bestselling author and

00:46:57.660 former Navy seal sniper, Jack Carr. Don't go away.

00:47:02.200 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show. Everyone currently the house armed services committee

00:47:10.760 is questioning general Milley. Uh, you recall he was before the Senate armed services committee

00:47:15.380 yesterday, today before the house, Congressman Matt Gates just grilled general Milley on his

00:47:20.600 knowledge of Biden's phone call with president Ghani. You recall there was an allegation that Biden,

00:47:27.220 he misled, he asked president Ghani to mislead, um, everyone about the Taliban's aggressive takeover

00:47:35.040 there. Gates said that general Milley spent more time talking with Bob Woodward for his new book

00:47:39.720 than he did worrying about Afghanistan. Watch this.

00:47:42.720 When did you become aware that Joe Biden tried to get Ghani to lie about the conditions in

00:47:47.860 Afghanistan? He did that in July. Did you know that right away? I'm not aware of what president

00:47:53.900 Biden, you're not aware of the phone call that Biden had with Ghani, where he said,

00:47:58.200 whether it is true or not, we want you to go out there and paint a rosy picture of what's going on

00:48:02.720 in Afghanistan. You're the chief military advisor to the president. You said that the Taliban was not

00:48:08.060 going to defeat the government of Afghanistan militarily, which by the way, they cut through

00:48:11.600 them like a hot knife through butter. And then the president tries to get Ghani to lie. When did

00:48:15.860 you become aware of that attempt? Well, there's two things there, Congressman, if I may. One is what

00:48:21.180 I said was the situation was stalemate. And if we kept advisors with there, the government of Afghanistan

00:48:26.880 and the army would have still been there. That's what I said. Whether that's right or wrong, I don't

00:48:31.920 know. No. So basically a dodge. He doesn't know about it. Joining me now, Jack Carr, a bestselling

00:48:37.260 author who spent 20 years as a Navy SEAL leading sniper teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jack,

00:48:43.300 thank you so much for being here. How are you doing? Great. Thank you so much for having me on.

00:48:46.860 So, you know, basically this is the generals there with their tails between their legs,

00:48:51.600 just getting hammered by yesterday, the Senate and today the House on the numerous

00:48:54.960 debacles that we've seen. I mean, every piece of this withdrawal has just been awful. There's really

00:48:59.400 very little for them to defend on substance. And, you know, the one person who's not there is Joe

00:49:05.000 Biden, who hasn't taken any responsibility so far. And the generals are sort of twisting in the wind

00:49:10.140 and trying to do their level best not to completely throw him under the bus. But you can see sort of

00:49:15.320 in the eyes and with the wink and a nod, they're all saying, we tried to warn him. He didn't listen.

00:49:20.840 Yeah, there's that. But there's also they are saying essentially the same thing that you just

00:49:26.360 discussed. Joe Biden is talking about on that phone call. Paint a rosier picture. Well, that's what

00:49:31.500 they did for 20 years. And you can go back and look at testimony to Congress, look at

00:49:36.340 interviews with Pentagon reporters, speeches to their troops when they talk to the American

00:49:42.120 public on different news shows. And they're painting a rosy picture this entire time. If

00:49:46.540 you go back and look at how many times they say progress or we're making progress, we're achieving

00:49:51.660 progress, we're meeting our goals. I mean, you can just plug and play all these different

00:49:55.660 generals over the last 20 years, with the exception of one who was was fired not long after he

00:50:01.520 essentially told the truth about what was happening in Afghanistan. That's General McKiernan. But

00:50:06.200 they said the same thing that the president was was saying on that phone call, painting that

00:50:10.420 rosier picture. But the president's phone call is interesting because you can see province after

00:50:15.400 province, city after city, village after village falling to the Taliban from early in 2001 up to

00:50:22.940 August. So it's it's so heartbreaking to see how all of this played out, especially after our initial

00:50:30.180 successes in 2001, particularly December 2001, which would be what Carl von Klauschwitz would have

00:50:36.820 called the culminating point of victory, which means that if you keep pushing these initial successes

00:50:41.280 and push past them, you'll turn those successes into failures. And that's when we had bin Laden in

00:50:46.880 Tora Bora. We had about 2,500 troops on the ground, but only 100 in those mountains. And they were

00:50:52.240 requesting additional forces to cut off bin Laden's escape route into Pakistan. And those requests were

00:50:58.240 denied. We had some Afghan partners on the ground. And I put that in quotations because we're just paying

00:51:03.040 them to be our partners at that time. And of course, bin Laden escapes into Pakistan. And then we have

00:51:07.840 what we saw for the next 20 years.

00:51:10.440 What do you make? I just had Mike Pompeo on and talk to him about should we have left more forces?

00:51:16.440 Should we know what should we have done? He denies that they would have pulled the forces out in any way

00:51:19.920 resembling what happened under Biden. But to the point of withdrawing in general, to the point of

00:51:24.840 just ending this thing after the 20 years, how did you feel about it?

00:51:28.640 Well, I felt that after December 2001, particularly if you are a student of history or if you just have

00:51:35.040 some common sense. And that's another thing that Klauschwitz said was the most important attribute

00:51:38.820 of a military leader was having common sense. Our military leaders seem to be missing that.

00:51:44.700 A lot of our elected officials seem to be missing that common sense component. And that is why so

00:51:50.160 many people, so many junior enlisted, junior officers who actually spent time in combat on

00:51:55.200 the ground, and then people that are just informed citizens with common sense could look at this

00:51:59.920 situation and say, why are we giving up Bagram? Why are we giving up a strategically advantageous

00:52:06.220 position? And then intentionally putting our troops in a disadvantageous position at the Kabul

00:52:11.740 airport. It just didn't make sense to anyone who would look at that with just a little bit of

00:52:17.980 common sense. So adaptability is that other thing that in warfare is extremely important. You're

00:52:24.380 adapting to the enemy. The enemy is always adapting to you. So it's a constant game of adaptation. And

00:52:29.560 typically who does that faster than the enemy ends up on the victorious side. We essentially threw that

00:52:36.860 away, decided not to adapt to changing conditions on the ground to stick with a timetable. It didn't

00:52:42.220 really make sense and played right into the enemy's hands, um, uh, psychologically as well as

00:52:48.040 tactically on the ground. And, uh, and we stuck with that and we saw that disaster unfold, uh, in August

00:52:53.700 before our very eyes. And, uh, to those of us who, who were on the ground there, I mean, it's,

00:52:57.680 it's so disheartening and, uh, and avoidable. That was the hardest part about it. It was avoidable,

00:53:03.120 even with the decision to, to get out. Um, what happened in August was that part was avoidable.

00:53:09.380 And that's what these generals seem to be saying yesterday, that they were placed in a position of

00:53:12.400 having to choose between Bagram and the embassy, and they did not have the troops to protect both

00:53:17.760 locations. And so they decided to go with the embassy thinking that the Afghans were going to

00:53:22.460 protect, uh, Bagram, which of course they didn't and completely imploded and the Taliban got control of

00:53:27.700 it. And then there was no, there's just been no reassessment. It wasn't until six days before we

00:53:32.660 were supposed to have everybody out that, that Biden even asked these guys to draw up a plan or

00:53:37.600 to get him some real information on what if we stayed longer? What are the options to stay longer

00:53:42.180 so we can do this more safely, more securely and get the hundreds of Americans who now,

00:53:48.020 according to Mike Pompeo are still there out. Oh, it's ridiculous. And we even had president

00:53:52.140 Biden sitting down with George Stephanopoulos saying, Hey, we'll move that date. We'll adapt here

00:53:56.120 if there are American citizens on the ground. And then of course we went right ahead and did not do

00:54:00.860 that. Uh, a lot of this, I think plays back. If you look at how many generals were fired, uh, during

00:54:06.100 the civil war by president Lincoln, if you look at how many generals were fired in the lead up to

00:54:10.220 world war two and during world war two, uh, by general George Marshall, uh, they fired people

00:54:15.320 until they got the right people in the right places to win those wars. Uh, we also had what was

00:54:21.080 called, it was the secretary was not the secretary of defense at that time. It was the secretary of war

00:54:26.580 and it was the war department, not the department of defense. And that changed in 1947. And we have

00:54:32.020 not had the best track record going forward because defense and war are almost two separate

00:54:37.820 things. You want to talk about defense, we can defend the borders of our country, but war is

00:54:41.920 actually focused on that one soul thing, uh, committing America's sons and daughters to a

00:54:47.480 conflict, understanding the nature of that conflict and crushing the enemy. And we haven't really done that

00:54:51.820 since 1947. I've heard you talk about this and sort of say, and we also haven't won a war since then.

00:54:55.820 So what, why is that? What, why is that the United States, such a military power with all of our

00:55:02.360 resources and all of our amazing fighters? Why can't those in charge managed to actually design

00:55:07.780 a plan that leads us into the winner's circle? I think it's because there is no accountability.

00:55:13.320 Uh, we're seeing that right now, um, back in 2007, I have a quote written down right here. And although

00:55:18.600 he was talking about Iraq, it really holds true for the military in general from 1947 on. And it's a

00:55:24.720 Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling. And he says, you know, article he wrote called the failure of

00:55:28.720 generalship. He said, as matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers a far greater

00:55:33.800 consequence than a general who loses a war. And we're seeing that right now. We have 600,000 weapons

00:55:40.040 left behind. We have 75,000 vehicles, 200 aircraft, uh, yet a private, if he loses his rifle,

00:55:46.060 there are major consequences. You lose all the rest of that sort of thing and lose a war. Uh,

00:55:50.620 guess what you fail upwards. Uh, you oftentimes get promoted, you retire, you go sit on the board at

00:55:55.920 an, uh, at a company that is attached to the defense industry in some way, shape or form.

00:56:00.820 And it's really that accountability piece, uh, that it holds true for junior level enlisted,

00:56:05.500 junior level officers, but not for our senior level leaders. And I think that's where we can make some

00:56:10.620 serious changes going forward is in the selection of our generals and then holding them accountable,

00:56:15.900 um, for their failures so that we can grow stronger as a country, as a military and apply these lessons

00:56:21.180 going forward as wisdom. Because if we don't, then those people who sacrificed, uh, over the last

00:56:26.680 20 years have done that, that sacrifice has been in vain. How would you do it? How would you select

00:56:31.700 the leaders, the generals? Uh, so there are so many more, uh, uh, the technological ways that we can

00:56:39.980 look at someone's, uh, career outlook, uh, rather than impressing your boss. Uh, and that's what we're

00:56:46.840 based on now. Essentially it's a turn of the 19th to 20th century type of an advancement system,

00:56:52.640 uh, where if you impress your boss and his view of you or her view of you, um, that, that dictates

00:56:58.880 whether you go forward or not. Well, guess what we have now? We have technology. We can assess people

00:57:04.540 based on peers, based on subordinates, more importantly, especially in the military and

00:57:10.200 leaders to get a more holistic view of this person. Is this the right person? Is this the leader

00:57:14.940 that we want taking our sons and daughters into battle? Um, so there are tools at our disposal that

00:57:20.420 we are certainly not using right now. It's still based on if your boss has a good view of you. And so

00:57:26.880 the actions that you take are, uh, are meant to give that boss the view that you want. So you can move

00:57:33.120 up in this chain of command and people look at it as a career. Good point. It's basically

00:57:37.400 the best ass kissers make their way up to the top positions. That's exactly right. Exactly what I was

00:57:44.420 thinking. That's so wrong. I mean, it's fine in corporate America, I guess, but in the military

00:57:49.360 that these should not be the criteria. No, no, exactly not. And, and, you know, the, for the

00:57:54.660 military, that's the sole purpose of the military is to take the country to war and to crush our enemies.

00:58:00.840 Anything that distracts from that mission. Uh, and we're seeing more and more distractions

00:58:04.200 these days, of course, with the rise of social media, it kind of makes it easier, um, to be

00:58:08.160 distracted for these people that are thinking ahead and thinking to their transition, maybe out of the

00:58:12.260 military and onto these different corporate boards here and there. But the sole focus of the military

00:58:17.500 is to go to war and win wars. Uh, if you go back and look at that track record, uh, you wouldn't

00:58:23.260 keep hiring the same coaches. If this was a sports team that keep losing these games and keep hiring

00:58:28.260 your coaches the same way, if you keep plugging and playing different people in there and they

00:58:31.760 keep losing the game and then you keep selecting them based on the same criteria, maybe it's time

00:58:36.920 to reevaluate and, uh, and do things a little differently. So what you're saying is it may be

00:58:41.020 not exactly part of the core mission to have the military read Ibram X. Kendi's how to be an

00:58:45.660 anti-racist. You might want to spend some more time with this, uh, on war by Carl von

00:58:51.340 Kloshwitz or a host of other books out there. And reading is such an important part of, uh,

00:58:56.440 of being an officer, being a enlisted in the military, that professional development. And to

00:59:02.880 have some of those books that aren't focused on making you a better operator, a better soldier,

00:59:07.420 better sailor, better airman, better Marine. Um, then those books are probably to drop to the

00:59:12.500 bottom of the list or not be on it. Uh, let's just focus on those books that are going to help us

00:59:17.300 win wars. And those books exist out there, uh, kind of like this one that our generals probably

00:59:22.240 should have spent more time reading rather than, uh, those things that are the new additions to the

00:59:26.360 current reading. I want to read it too. I haven't read that, but I will, but like, can you, can you

00:59:29.860 speak to going back to one of the comments earlier about the rosy projections? And of course we've got

00:59:33.500 the Afghanistan papers, which, you know, prove all of that by the Washington post, um, revealing just

00:59:39.260 the overstatement of rosy scenarios from the beginning on, uh, in Afghanistan, how we've been misled

00:59:44.720 our leaders, our presidents, our generals, and so on, they've all done it. Um, but you, I've heard

00:59:50.340 you talk about how at your level as a seal, how you'd see sort of initial projections. And then once

00:59:56.800 they got filtered up the line, they would change and they would always change in one direction.

01:00:03.440 That's correct. And there's a, uh, I think there's a meme out there that, that, that talks about it,

01:00:07.260 that shows the, uh, the private on the battlefield that passes up some information and then how that

01:00:11.460 changes at each level, as it goes up to the flag level officers. Um, but, uh, it's so interesting

01:00:17.520 to be on the ground in one of these places, Iraq, Afghanistan, and look around, see what's happening,

01:00:22.800 and then turn on the news and see these generals sitting in front of Congress saying something that

01:00:28.920 doesn't square up to what you're seeing with your own eyes on the ground. Um, and what, what happened

01:00:34.660 when general McKiernan was fired back in 2009, that sent a message to the rest of the general officer

01:00:40.520 Corps and those about to become general officers that if you say, if you tell the truth to the American

01:00:46.000 people, to Congress, to your troops, uh, then this is your future. You're going to be fired. So whether

01:00:52.600 they meant to or not, they sent this message to the rest of the military that you're continue going to

01:00:57.740 continue to sit in front of Congress. You're going to continue to talk to your troops, talk to the American

01:01:01.880 people and say, we are making progress. We just need more resources, uh, more funding, more troops to get

01:01:07.660 the job done. And each and every one of these guys did that except for the one general who was fired

01:01:12.660 for telling the truth. Remind us what happened with him. So he, in 2009, and he didn't even say anything

01:01:18.820 too horrible. Um, he just didn't say we're making progress and we're going to meet our goals. He said,

01:01:24.180 you know what, things are not going so well here. And he said that in a couple different interviews

01:01:28.860 and about a month or two later, he was fired. And the secretary of defense, uh, chairman of the joint

01:01:35.260 chiefs at the time, uh, Gates and Mullen, they couldn't really give a good explanation as to why

01:01:39.640 this person was fired. And somebody at that level hasn't been fired for something other than scandal,

01:01:43.720 um, really since, uh, general MacArthur was fired by Truman during the Korean war. So he just made a

01:01:51.220 few comments that weren't as rosy as some of the things that his predecessors had said. And then in

01:01:56.180 2009, he was fired. General McChrystal was then put in charge. And what is very interesting about that

01:02:02.600 is that when McChrystal did his strategic review and all these guys, they come in and they do a

01:02:06.840 strategic review and that's how it goes. And in his guess who was not mentioned in that strategic

01:02:12.280 review, Al Qaeda. And this is 2009. The reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place was to

01:02:20.140 destroy Al Qaeda and to deny it a sanctuary from which to plan, uh, attacks against the United States

01:02:25.500 in 2009, Al Qaeda is not even mentioned in the first draft of this strategic review by McChrystal.

01:02:32.180 Um, and once again, that's shift. That is a drift in the mission that happened very soon after 9-11,

01:02:39.700 December, 2001, we're shifting focus already to Iraq when president Bush asked Tommy Franks to come to

01:02:45.640 Crawford, Texas and asks him about a two front war, one in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, uh, the bond

01:02:50.940 conference, of course, in Germany where the Taliban are not invited to participate. And then us letting

01:02:55.400 bin Laden slip away in the, uh, the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, because the request for troops

01:03:01.080 were denied by those on the ground. So, uh, once again, it's failure after failure, after failure, 20 years.

01:03:08.260 And we had 20 years to adapt and try to get this right. And then we knew this date was coming. Uh, this

01:03:13.760 withdrawal date was coming and we still screwed it up about as, as the worst way we possibly, we couldn't have

01:03:19.620 done it worse. How do we've been actively trying?

01:03:21.720 Right. How we tried a couple, so much to follow up on in there. I want to start with the Al Qaeda

01:03:25.900 because I was just talking about them with Pompeo and he was saying, look, they've always

01:03:31.320 been there. And yes, we, we made significant progress after nine 11, our troops and so on, but they're

01:03:37.400 still there. And that we've heard the generals telling us that we're likely to see an attack

01:03:41.460 attempted by them from Afghanistan over the next 12 to 24 to 36 months. Oh, great. But Pompeo's point

01:03:48.980 was, you know what? They're, they're really more in Iran now than they are in Afghanistan and

01:03:53.880 they're elsewhere. And, you know, you can't sort of keep these troops going in all of these places

01:03:58.620 just to ensure total. This is my paraphrase just to ensure total security, uh, across the globe.

01:04:04.800 That's really not how that's not realistic. He was saying, look, we've got bad guys in Mexico

01:04:08.660 right now. We can't keep an eye on them because Mexico is basically run by cartels. We're not,

01:04:12.740 uh, boots on the ground in Iran either. You know, it was the right decision to pull the troops out of

01:04:17.500 Afghanistan, even though we won't be able to keep as close an eye on Al Qaeda though. Of course he

01:04:22.440 maintained that the Trump administration would have done it differently. So your thoughts on that,

01:04:26.120 because as a mom of three kids, I'm over here saying, well, why can't we? I, I want the troops

01:04:32.520 there. I want the Navy SEALs there. I want them watching. I don't care if it's 2,500, you know,

01:04:37.840 that's what the military guys want to do. They want to go over there and serve and do their active,

01:04:41.160 you know, theater kind of thing. So help me understand those points of view.

01:04:47.820 Yeah. The guys want to get after it. I mean, on September 11th, 2001, if you weren't deployed,

01:04:52.000 uh, you thought, Oh my goodness, I'm going to miss it. Everything I've trained for,

01:04:55.360 the country was attacked. We want to get in there, get after it, do our duty. Um, and of course that

01:05:01.340 didn't end up being the case. We had another 20 years to continue to go and, and, uh, and get after

01:05:06.500 it. But, um, yeah, in Iran, not that long ago, we had a senior Al Qaeda, um, uh, person assassinated.

01:05:14.220 People think it's Israel and CIA who knows, but regardless, the important part of that,

01:05:17.480 they were in Iran. We of course see that in Pakistan. Um, Al Qaeda is the worldwide organization.

01:05:22.760 Taliban of course is regionally focused in, uh, in Afghanistan and surrounding countries. Um,

01:05:27.840 but what's also happened over the last 20 years, and this goes back to our failure to adapt is we're

01:05:35.120 solely focused on, on Afghanistan here as the, as the place where, where planning can occur, uh,

01:05:40.500 for attacks on the homeland. And that's true in, in some sense. Um, but remember that the, the,

01:05:46.180 the plan for nine 11 was the idea for it was really hatched in the Southern Philippines. Um,

01:05:51.340 it was greenlit of course, in, in Afghanistan, but training took place in Germany, took place in

01:05:56.560 Florida, took place in San Diego, took place in Arizona. Um, and just over the last 20 years,

01:06:02.020 we've seen that ability to plan and train virtually just expand, uh, in ways that we, we couldn't have

01:06:08.560 envisioned in 2001 or 2000 or 1999. So, um, while it's, while we were focused on Afghanistan,

01:06:15.660 the enemy can see that too. And the enemy's always learning. They're always adapting. They're

01:06:19.120 always studying us. So what does that mean for them? Well, if we're focused here, if I'm the enemy,

01:06:24.400 maybe I'm going to go elsewhere to plan, to train, uh, and to green light some of these operations.

01:06:30.660 So, um, so whether it's virtual or other countries around the world, um, there are plenty of options

01:06:36.160 out there for Al Qaeda and their affiliates, uh, and, and even inspired affiliates or what we call

01:06:42.160 lone wolf type people to, uh, to plan and execute these attacks. So the battlefield has shifted and

01:06:47.960 changed. Hmm. I feel no better. I think about that too. I think about my kids and they asked me about

01:06:55.900 joining the military and that sort of thing. And it's a very difficult question to, to answer these

01:07:01.220 days. Um, because there are so many, uh, of course, benefits to investing in the country

01:07:05.940 that has given you so much freedom and so much opportunity. Um, but at the same time,

01:07:09.700 you look at our senior level leaders and you look at military and political. And, uh, as a parent,

01:07:14.780 it is very tough to, uh, to encourage your child to, uh, to serve in the armed forces.

01:07:18.940 But maybe this, maybe your, your belief and Pompeo's belief as well supports Trump's decision of

01:07:24.720 it's time to get out. You know, I've definitely been more in the camp of why not,

01:07:28.060 why wouldn't we have left that 2,500 man and woman force just to preserve eyes, you know,

01:07:33.600 uh, counterterrorism forces and eyes on the ground. And, uh, I mean, at least try to keep an eye on

01:07:40.060 Al Qaeda and make sure that some, I don't know, order remains there because it's in our strategic

01:07:47.000 military interest. But am I wrong? No, we do that other places around the world as well. Uh,

01:07:52.400 whether it's the, it's the Philippines, uh, or, or, I mean, hundreds of countries around the world,

01:07:57.220 we have a very small presence, uh, some very large, uh, but it all depends on the situation

01:08:01.560 and what that country, uh, will allow us to have, what makes sense, what's appropriate.

01:08:06.120 So maybe it was appropriate to leave 2,500 troops behind, um, in Afghanistan. It certainly seems like

01:08:12.140 as a, as a, as a, as a American citizen, we were given two options, stay or go, but, uh, very,

01:08:19.260 in very few cases are there only two options for something. You need to take back, take a step back,

01:08:24.860 take a breath, look at it holistically and, uh, and then adapt to a changing situation.

01:08:29.920 Perhaps that would have been a wise idea to leave, whether it's a thousand troops,

01:08:33.800 2,500 troops, 4,500 troops, but that is dictated by the situation on the ground and the relationship,

01:08:39.280 of course, with the Afghan government and what's happening there at the time. Um, I hope that we

01:08:43.860 were smart enough to leave a fairly robust, uh, intelligence apparatus behind, uh, meaning that

01:08:49.860 we have doesn't look that way from Pakistan. Uh, yeah, this is one of the things that we'll know

01:08:54.620 like 20 years from now when someone writes a book about it, uh, about how they ran agents out of

01:08:58.580 Pakistan now, because of the relationships they were able to forge and the agents they were able

01:09:02.180 to recruit over the 20 years that we were in Afghanistan. So, um, we'll see when someone writes

01:09:07.660 that book in 20 years. Well, that's fascinating. It's, um, it's like Pompeo, look, he was the secretary

01:09:12.960 of state. He wasn't the commander in chief. So Trump was the one making these calls. Trump wanted out

01:09:16.760 and Pompeo's job was to make it happen. And then Biden too, like he can't, he can't point the finger

01:09:22.640 at Trump. He's commander in chief right now. He, it was up to him to ensure a safe exit or to control

01:09:29.040 the exit or to decide I'm going to reevaluate this and leave behind some very small residual force

01:09:33.520 like we have all over the globe and other countries just to maintain some order. So there's a lot of

01:09:38.880 people to point the finger at here, but, um, Biden's the last man standing. He is the president

01:09:43.320 right now. And his attempt to take zero responsibility for this has fallen flat. I think

01:09:47.740 is as his poll numbers show, uh, my guest today is Jack Carr. He's a bestselling author. Number one,

01:09:53.480 New York times bestselling author who spent 20 years as a Navy seal coming up. I'm going to ask

01:09:58.100 him his thoughts on military officers speaking out against higher ups in what have become viral

01:10:03.400 videos. They're getting in trouble all over the place. Is this a good thing? Is it, is it a good

01:10:07.940 thing depending on what their message is, right? You got to be consistent on something like this,

01:10:11.700 should these sort of lower end soldiers be allowed to speak out? Um, contrary to orders,

01:10:17.400 think about it. Think about if they were saying something you didn't like, that's what makes it a

01:10:20.840 tough decision. Uh, plus his advice on raising strong and patriotic children. And in about 20

01:10:25.880 minutes, we're going to be taking your calls at 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496.

01:10:33.740 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show. Jack Carr is with me today. He is a bestselling author who

01:10:43.340 spent 20 years as a Navy seal leading sniper teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we'd love to know your

01:10:48.940 thoughts on anything we've discussed today. Uh, if you want to give us a call, now's a good time.

01:10:53.780 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496. Can we just spend one minute on Iraq? I, I realized people are

01:11:04.160 like, ah, Iraq, you know, quagmire. And I get it. Um, just with the benefit of hindsight. Now

01:11:11.320 that decision seems like such a disaster and possibly one of the worst military decisions ever made

01:11:19.560 by a president in American history. Do I overstate it? I don't think so. And of course,

01:11:24.780 the benefit of hindsight is, uh, is called that for, for a reason. It does seem that history

01:11:29.800 clearly points to a, uh, shift that occurred quite quickly after nine 11, uh, away from a primary

01:11:36.320 mission in Afghanistan to another one that possibly could have waited. But once again, uh, I like to

01:11:42.000 give the benefit of the doubt to those senior level leaders. I think they tried to make the best

01:11:45.800 decisions of a possible with what they had available at the time. But if you fast forward

01:11:51.380 a few years after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, uh, and you push that five years to the right as a,

01:11:58.160 uh, junior, um, enlisted guy on the ground, junior officer on the ground, you would not have been

01:12:04.560 allowed to execute a mission in Iraq based on the type of intelligence that we had that launched that

01:12:12.660 whole war that launched that whole conflict. Um, you really had to be sure you were going after the

01:12:18.620 right person for the right reason. You weren't being manipulated, um, that you had multiple different

01:12:23.760 human intelligence sources, multiple different technical sources, uh, and that you were doing

01:12:29.820 the right thing for the right reasons. We did not have that. We had some very, if you look back,

01:12:34.400 the intelligence that, uh, that pushed us into Iraq was very shaky.

01:12:39.160 Oh yeah. I mean, to put it charitably. So does it change the way we look at George W. Bush?

01:12:44.440 Uh, I, I look at it as that he made the right decisions with what he had at the time. We didn't

01:12:50.820 have that, uh, the benefit of five, six, seven, eight years at war from which to, uh, evaluate

01:12:56.160 intelligence, uh, apply these new, new technical intelligence capabilities to a problem set. Um,

01:13:02.240 they had some single source Intel that was very shaky. They had some technical corroboration,

01:13:08.400 not nearly as, uh, technically proficient as we have, as we have now. So I like to look at it

01:13:14.240 through that lens and perhaps I'm, uh, being too generous, uh, in that cause I do want to hold

01:13:19.460 these senior level leaders accountable, but I also have to put myself back in 2001, 2002, 2003,

01:13:25.100 uh, and look at what was available to us at that time.

01:13:28.680 I don't see, I'm not one of those people who's ever believed, you know, the Bush lied,

01:13:32.900 people died. Like, I don't think president Bush lied to get us into that war. People think he had

01:13:37.080 daddy issues based on what happened with his dad when he was president Saddam Hussein. I think he was

01:13:41.960 in earnest and trying to protect us. That doesn't change the fact that it was the wrong move, but I

01:13:47.000 do think there's a distinction in what we're seeing now with Joe Biden, who seems to be actively

01:13:51.960 misleading us, gaslighting us. I don't know, but the, you know, that this was, this was done

01:13:59.160 perfectly, or this was an extraordinary success. And the point was made by a representative Mike

01:14:04.720 Rogers, a Republican today. He's ranking member on the house armed services committee,

01:14:09.360 sort of calling him out on this. Here's what he had to say.

01:14:12.840 On August 31st, hundreds of Americans left behind the 13 service members murdered president stood in

01:14:18.680 the East room of the white house and called the withdrawal quote, an extraordinary success.

01:14:23.020 Close quote. I fear the president is delusional. I also fear that. Yes. And that's, that's not too

01:14:29.880 far removed from what our generals have been doing the last 20 years, once again, but it's so crazy.

01:14:34.500 At least if you were to go back, let's say 30, 40 years, at least people would defend their

01:14:38.980 hypocrisy or try to say, Hey, I'm not being hypocritical because of X, Y, or Z. Now it just

01:14:43.960 seems to be a normal part of political discourse where you're going to say one thing when the person

01:14:49.480 you're talking to, the American public is seeing something with their own eyes right here. And those

01:14:55.580 are two diametrically opposed, uh, things that you're, you're looking at. So it's, uh, I mean,

01:15:01.520 it doesn't bode well for the future of the nation. I hate to say that because I like to remain hopeful

01:15:06.140 and positive as much as I possibly can. Um, but where you see, uh, how divisive everything is,

01:15:11.840 how social media just lends itself to being, uh, more divisive and encourages us to, uh, to be more

01:15:18.120 combative and divisive. Um, I am not hopeful for where this path leads us, especially when we have

01:15:24.380 a commander in chief out there, uh, who is standing in front of the American people saying that this is

01:15:29.660 a resounding success when we're seeing leaving Bagram going to Kabul and we're seeing 13 dead

01:15:36.500 Americans come home in flag draped coffins. We're seeing that chaos. We're seeing the Afghans hanging

01:15:41.720 on to our C-17s falling to their deaths. We're seeing American citizens still left behind. Um,

01:15:46.800 I got texts this morning of American passports from veteran friends of mine who are over in

01:15:51.920 surrounding countries, right? They're still trying to get some of these people who helped us out and

01:15:56.440 actual American citizens. They sent me pictures of the passports, U S passports, uh, still trying

01:16:02.260 to get them out of the country, uh, essentially abandoned by the government of the United States.

01:16:06.380 Right. Despite an explicit promise from the president, let's talk about Stuart Shuler and

01:16:11.340 guys like him. Uh, so he spoke out, he's in the military. He spoke out, uh, about the disastrous

01:16:16.940 withdrawal and what then was told to be quiet and a direct order, like stop doing that. Cause that's

01:16:22.500 not allowed. And then said, well, I'm doing it again. I'm doing it anyway. Then spoke out about

01:16:26.680 the order telling him to be quiet. And now he's in the brig. Uh, here he is. And I'd love to get

01:16:31.680 your thoughts on whether this should be allowed. The reason people are so upset on social media

01:16:36.560 right now is not because the Marine on the battlefield, let someone down. That service

01:16:41.780 member has always rose to the occasion, done extraordinary things. People are upset because

01:16:46.080 their senior leaders let them down and none of them are raising their hands and accepting

01:16:50.800 accountability or saying we messed this up. And from my position, potentially all those

01:16:56.460 people did die in vain. If we don't have senior leaders that own up and raise their hand and

01:17:03.120 say, we did not do this well in the end. Without that, we just keep repeating the same mistakes.

01:17:11.380 This amalgamation of the economic slash corporate slash political slash higher military ranks are

01:17:20.640 not holding up their end of the bargain. I want to say this very strongly.

01:17:31.480 I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders,

01:17:38.460 I demand accountability.

01:17:40.800 So Scheller, uh, I guess is, I don't, I want to, it's S C H E L L E R. And, uh, his parents are now

01:17:48.900 calling for the resignation of our top military leaders as he sits in the brig. Uh, he's a Marine

01:17:53.580 officer, Lieutenant Colonel. Uh, you tell me whether it's okay. I mean, should he be allowed to have his

01:18:00.020 say?

01:18:00.460 Well, I agree with everything he said, and I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that any of it

01:18:04.900 is untruthful in any way, shape or form. Um, it's difficult because you have to know if you're

01:18:11.000 going to do something like that in the military, then you're going to, there are going to be

01:18:14.920 consequences. Uh, going to the brig is odd, um, though, uh, based on just my personal experience

01:18:20.340 in the military. Um, so I think there might be a little more to this, but I'm not, I have nothing

01:18:24.460 to base that upon. Um, but you have to know if you're going to do this, they're going to be

01:18:28.400 consequences. And essentially what you are doing is you're taking that rank off and you are throwing it on

01:18:32.560 the table and you are, uh, going to be leaving the military. Uh, you're making a statement by

01:18:38.360 doing that. And a very important one in, in this case, um, this one is so, uh, our hearts go out

01:18:44.920 on this one because you're seeing these senior level leaders, uh, sitting in front of Congress,

01:18:48.620 uh, still painting rosy pictures. You're seeing the disaster of the withdrawal. You're seeing the

01:18:53.940 failures of the last 20 years. You're seeing zero accountability at these senior levels. And then

01:18:59.380 you're seeing a Marine Lieutenant Colonel speak the truth on social media. In solitary confinement,

01:19:04.760 no less like, okay. I don't know what to make of that. That sounds like there has to be more to

01:19:10.000 this, but if there's not, then we have even bigger problems than, uh, than we've been discussing here

01:19:14.520 right now. Then you're getting thrown. He's sitting in Camp Lejeune down there. And I mean,

01:19:17.460 he said he was prepared to resign. Um, but you know, still, you're not allowed to, you're not allowed

01:19:22.060 to speak out like this while you're in uniform, uh, against the government and in your leaders

01:19:25.800 against orders. Uh, last question for you, before I let you go, I mentioned, I'd love to ask you

01:19:30.680 about raising patriotic children. It's so hard right now for many of us because the schools

01:19:35.380 and the towns and the media want to say nothing but negative things about America. They want to make

01:19:41.940 putting a flag out in your front yard, some sort of, I don't know, racist thing, political thing.

01:19:49.640 I mean, I don't listen to any of that, but I think a lot of people object to it and wish they had the

01:19:54.800 help of their community and raising little patriots. Uh, and I mean that the truest sense of

01:19:59.660 the word, not to know any political sense, your thoughts on it. That makes parenting even more

01:20:04.240 important today, rather than outsourcing that to a school district, whether it's public school,

01:20:08.200 private school, um, whatever it might be, it makes our job as parents are most important job out there

01:20:14.100 because, uh, now you have to counter so many other things than we had to count. Our parents had to

01:20:19.240 counter in the seventies and the eighties and the nineties. You're countering social media,

01:20:23.620 almost every single platform, uh, that has, has an agenda. Uh, the, your friends of our kids who

01:20:30.680 are influenced by those, uh, those same platforms, uh, every single input, uh, seems to be a negative

01:20:37.840 one when it comes to talking about the United States, our freedoms, uh, our opportunities and

01:20:43.640 why we have those. So at every chance I possibly get, I talked to our kids about the sacrifices made

01:20:50.480 by people from the inception of this country up through today that gave us these freedoms that

01:20:55.840 gave us these options and opportunities. And then what we owe these future generations and why social

01:21:00.440 media is, um, such a, such a negative part of our lives. These, these days, um, is because it counters

01:21:07.700 that. And it allows us to make snap judgments with a retweet based on information coming from someone

01:21:13.580 who also didn't put in the time, energy and effort to the study of a certain problem set or an issue.

01:21:19.120 Uh, and it just makes everything move to the negative. So I talked to our kids about that all

01:21:26.160 the time, uh, at my military retirement, I gave them each four gifts. Uh, I gave them a Bible and an old

01:21:33.320 brass compass, both to help guide their way. I gave them a hard bound copy of the constitution to,

01:21:40.420 the, so that they knew where our rights are enshrined, these God-given natural rights where

01:21:45.100 they're enshrined. And then I gave them a tomahawk, like the one on the wall behind me and said,

01:21:49.720 here's the means to defend it. So, um, as parents really it's, it's on us to, uh, to raise the next

01:21:56.300 generation of patriots. They're going to continue to make decisions that, uh, allow those other future

01:22:02.420 generations to have the same freedoms and options and opportunities that we all have.

01:22:06.080 Amen. Wow. You've been so brave in your opinions and your books are amazing. It's why you've met,

01:22:12.820 we've been met with such success, uh, but we'll be forever grateful for the sacrifices and the

01:22:17.600 risks you took on the battlefield. Former Navy SEAL Jack Carr. So nice to get to know you. Thank

01:22:21.700 you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Take care. Thanks to guys like that, right?

01:22:26.880 They give you a hope. You watch the generals, maybe not so much. You listen to Jack Carr, you think,

01:22:31.020 okay, yes, that's, that's what I know as our military. Uh, we'd love to get your thoughts on

01:22:35.880 it today. How about making him a general? Maybe we can recruit him back from the author ranks,

01:22:39.420 get him back out on the battlefield and do commanding troops. Give us a call on your thoughts

01:22:43.460 with on that at 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496. Do you feel sorry for the generals? Let me know.

01:22:52.860 Well, the phone lines are open. Give us a call now at 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496. We're

01:23:04.160 going to take our first caller who is Greg in Washington. Hey, Greg, what's on your mind?

01:23:08.720 Oh, you know, Hey Megan, uh, your screener asks, you know, what do you want to talk about today?

01:23:12.660 And I'm like, where do you even begin? If, uh, I kind of joked like if two years ago,

01:23:17.680 somebody would have told you what's even going on anymore. You would have thought it was some,

01:23:20.920 you know, weird science fiction movie or something, but it is where we are. So I thought

01:23:25.880 I'd just say something positive and, uh, your show's awesome. I've enjoyed, uh, immensely so

01:23:31.380 far, this format of the longer interviews, you know, you can really ask some good questions and,

01:23:36.500 uh, get a lot of information out of these people. So I wish you the best of luck and look forward to

01:23:41.840 listening to your show from now on. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You know,

01:23:45.680 I love the longer format too. It's like, if I had, if I had Mike Pompeo on the Kelly file at most,

01:23:52.780 if Debbie Canadian, Debbie were feeling generous, I'd get eight minutes with him. And that would be

01:23:57.700 huge. And she'd be like, I am Santa. And all I want to hear from you is thank you. Um, because

01:24:02.600 you only have 42 minutes of content and you have other guests and you got to squeeze it in. You got

01:24:05.540 to be fair to everybody. Somebody like Pompeo for an hour, that is such a treat. And that's why I say

01:24:11.960 that guy had stones to come on and sit there for it because I asked him some tough questions,

01:24:15.800 but look, you could tell the audience can figure out where he's, where he's vulnerable and where

01:24:20.400 he's not, where he's really got good positions and where he's got to sort of do the political

01:24:24.420 dancing. And it's just so much more illuminating and some guys will do it. Some guys are too scared

01:24:28.980 guys or gals. So I love it. I have to say, I think I found that so much more meaningful than,

01:24:34.420 um, just the up and down quick up and down on somebody, you know, jiffy quick and people who come on

01:24:39.300 know that's going to happen too. So, you know, they gotta, they gotta be willing to stand and

01:24:42.500 take it. No, it's, uh, I really enjoy it. And I think you're, uh, I don't know, just the cred you

01:24:47.500 bring to this whole thing. You're going to get some pretty incredible opportunities to interview

01:24:51.220 people. And, uh, again, look forward to it. Good job. Thanks, Greg. Oh, I appreciate it. All right.

01:24:56.580 So let's head on down to, uh, looks like Texas and Beth has got some thoughts. Beth, what's on your mind?

01:25:03.240 Yeah. Um, well, I, I actually have changed my questions for you. Lay it on me. Um, I'm a non-party

01:25:13.120 loyalist. And what I mean by that is I'm tired of the term being used as independent, right? I'm not a

01:25:33.240 right. Um, I have an uncle that has worked for the state department for years, retired now. Right.

01:25:44.140 And one of the confusing things has been over Afghanistan of, you know, we've got to call each

01:25:53.580 president that has been over 20 years. And honestly, one of the problems that I've seen

01:26:03.120 is that Trump didn't, didn't replace a lot of state department people. He was focused on judges and,

01:26:14.540 and that. And so one of my hard questions has been, why, why are we focusing on Biden when

01:26:27.120 the transition has been almost about, there were not people in place to handle that transition?

01:26:36.200 Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a fair question. I'm with you. I'm not a partisan. I don't have anybody's

01:26:40.240 team Jersey on my chest. They don't deserve a spot there. I don't, I don't have any party loyalty,

01:26:46.800 which drives some people crazy, but that's, I think it's a good trait in a journalist. Um,

01:26:51.580 so yeah, I think we have to be honest about the Trump administration's role in getting us here,

01:26:57.060 not to mention Obama before him and George W. Bush, as we talked about with Jack,

01:27:01.440 like how are we ever going to solve anything if we just come at it with our partisan lenses on and

01:27:05.520 then try to filter everything through that, everything through that is BS. You know, one of

01:27:09.740 the things I didn't get to with Pompeo, who was on my list, but there's so much to go over

01:27:13.020 was how, um, the Afghan applications for these special visas were slow rolled during the Trump

01:27:20.800 administration. And it's so much so that a lawsuit was actually filed against Pompeo and the Trump

01:27:25.500 administration for why, you know, there's, it seems intentional and these are not all good people.

01:27:31.080 You know, some people try to take advantage of it, but a lot of these guys did help us out and

01:27:34.080 we're trying to get their visas in place, understanding the war would come to an end and

01:27:37.140 we slow rolled it. And then Biden did nothing much to change that either. But you know,

01:27:42.100 now it's like, you can't sort of look at the situation as somebody who was in the Trump

01:27:45.020 administration and say, all those poor Afghans who helped us, you know, they're all stuck there

01:27:48.680 on the tarmac. It's like, well, you know, you could have gotten some of them off. That doesn't

01:27:52.680 take away Biden's responsibility, you know, to do it better and to do it in a more planned way,

01:27:56.740 blah, blah, blah. But you know, you gotta, gotta be honest about it, Beth. Thank you. Thank you

01:28:00.640 for being one of the people who's willing to be open-minded on it. Maureen in Ohio, one of my favorite

01:28:07.260 places. I used to practice law with a firm named Jones Day and they were based in Cleveland and

01:28:12.080 whenever I went to Ohio, I was like, this place doesn't get enough street cred for how gorgeous

01:28:17.260 it is, especially in the fall. Yes, we love Ohio too. O-H-I-O. I'm calling actually because I have

01:28:25.740 been a fan of yours for over 15 years. You actually got me through like some of the worst times when,

01:28:31.020 you know, my kids were little and they had nap time from one to three. I just focused in on you

01:28:36.080 and you kept me informed and I just absolutely have adored you since. I prayed for you when you

01:28:41.520 left Fox. I prayed for you when you were at NBC and I was praying that you would get a platform and I

01:28:49.040 just absolutely love you. And I wanted to let you know that your courage and the way that you speak

01:28:55.000 about empowering women and everything that you do for moms that are at home with their kids that don't

01:29:02.320 know how they can use their voice. You have just been so inspiring and I just want to thank you so

01:29:08.300 much. Oh, you gave me a little chill. Thank you. Oh, Abby too. Thank you so much. I really appreciate

01:29:15.260 it. Gosh, that, that makes me feel so good because I, I feel like stay-at-home moms in particular right

01:29:20.200 now are hugely important in these crazy culture battles that we're having because they're kind of the

01:29:26.280 most empowered money. I mean, listen, I've lived this firsthand money in these school districts. That's not

01:29:31.640 going to make the difference. It's man and woman power. It's people walking with their feet. It's people

01:29:35.640 getting on the school boards. It's people being the squeaky wheels and stay-at-home moms are like just

01:29:40.080 fierce. You know, they're the mama bears and good luck trying to shut them up. Maureen, thank you. Thanks

01:29:44.860 for watching me back on Fox and, and listening to me now. And thanks to all of you as well. Listen, I want

01:29:49.820 to tell you tomorrow, we're getting back to COVID and we're going to have Dr. Monica Gandhi. She's been

01:29:53.640 super smart on all of this. She's going to be here. Check out our show in the meantime on

01:29:56.980 youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. If you want to see it, touch your mouth.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 29, 2021

Aftermath of Afghanistan and Julian Assange Allegations with Mike Pompeo and Jack Carr ｜ Ep. 170

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