The Megyn Kelly Show - Chaos and Violence, in Afghanistan and Chicago, with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and John Kass ｜ Ep. 148

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

00:00:12.080 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, chaos. Chaos abroad,

00:00:19.280 lawlessness here at home in cities like Chicago, and we're going to take a look at all of it.

00:00:24.480 We're going to start the show with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is going to speak to the ridiculous notion

00:00:33.200 that the Biden administration has now placed human rights at the center of its foreign policy,

00:00:40.760 taking assurances from the Taliban about how they're going to protect human rights and women's

00:00:46.320 rights and so on, as though the Taliban is somehow different from ISIS. Ayaan's got some insights on

00:00:53.420 that. This, as what we see in Afghanistan today, is street protests breaking out against the takeover

00:00:59.820 by the Taliban, demonstrations in at least two cities now, as the Taliban moves to form a new

00:01:05.160 government, as the people object, as the people we left behind try to salvage something resembling

00:01:12.780 a normal life. They're not getting out. Our attempt to help those who helped us get out of the country,

00:01:19.880 and even the Americans who are left there now and the Europeans have been thwarted, continue to be

00:01:24.700 thwarted as the efforts are underway. And there is a real question about what kind of a void America

00:01:32.220 has left behind, not just in Afghanistan, but in the world as a leader. After Ayaan, we're going to be

00:01:38.740 joined by John Cass, because I don't know if you've been paying attention to what's happening here

00:01:42.900 domestically with our crime rate, our shootings, our murders. There was a guy in New York City who was

00:01:47.980 attacked with a hatchet as he was at the ATM at 530 in the evening in the middle of Manhattan

00:01:53.160 two days ago. There are two little girls shot in Chicago, a baby shot in the head, a police officer,

00:01:59.140 29 years old, shot to death 10 days ago in Chicago. And on and on it goes. And the the mayor,

00:02:06.820 her lieutenants don't seem to give a damn. There's no Black Lives Matter protest there. As we talk about

00:02:13.860 human rights, what about the human rights of those little babies? What about the human rights of those 0.98

00:02:17.580 little girls in our cities? You know, it's there are two different things, but the violence 0.99

00:02:23.760 is jarring and needs attention by all of us. John Cass, who is a longtime reporter, he's he was born

00:02:33.520 in Chicago. He was a columnist for the Chicago Tribune for, oh, I think it's 30 plus years covering

00:02:39.780 politics and so on. He just left out of a desire to be independent, not have his voice stifled and sort

00:02:45.920 of speak the truth, write the truth. He was a liberal no longer. And he is he's telling the

00:02:52.820 truth about Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the crime right there and what happened with the shooting

00:02:57.120 death of Officer Ella French and the cops who turned their backs on her. And he's going to tell

00:03:02.400 that truth to us. Stay tuned for a powerful show with two really smart, insightful people.

00:03:08.200 That's in one minute. I've been thinking about you all week, dying to talk to you about this

00:03:17.380 and get your take. And in particular, let's kick it off with Biden's explanation for for the way this

00:03:25.200 was handled, for the decisions that he's made. And what he really wants us to know is that human rights

00:03:32.320 are now at the center of America's foreign policy and that human rights will not be protected

00:03:38.740 by endless military deployments. But with our diplomacy, our diplomacy is going to protect,

00:03:46.360 let's say, the women in Afghanistan and others who are suffering there. And we should trust Biden

00:03:52.340 to handle this well, I guess because he's handled the departure so well out of Afghanistan.

00:03:59.100 Your thoughts on that human rights now the center of his foreign policy?

00:04:04.120 Well, first of all, I think just to stand right in front of the American people and the world and

00:04:09.760 lie as he did, as bold faced, you know, the statements he made about the withdrawal was going

00:04:18.340 to be all orderly. I haven't seen anything more chaotic, I think, in my lifetime. And then you look at

00:04:24.580 the promises he makes about human rights and how that is just the opposite of exactly what's

00:04:31.060 happening. People in Afghanistan are dying. The Taliban are back now more empowered than they were

00:04:37.020 before. They are going to strip women of all of their rights. You're going to have, you know, 1.00

00:04:42.880 one of the most extreme forms of Sharia back again in Afghanistan to haunt the women of Afghanistan, 0.99

00:04:48.560 where we spent 20 years trying to send them to school, get them to participate in public life.

00:04:55.200 They're going to be removed from the streets now. They're going to be subjected to those draconian

00:05:00.340 punishments. Most people don't remember, but you'll get the floggings back. You'll get the 0.99

00:05:04.960 amputations and the stonings back. Women won't be allowed to be on the streets. And any woman who dares 1.00

00:05:12.760 to defy the Taliban is going to be subjected to some of the stuff. I don't know if you remember the

00:05:17.440 Time Magazine photograph of Asiya Bibi, the woman whose nose and ears were cut off because she

00:05:25.400 disobeyed her husband. You're going to get that type of thing again. And this time the Taliban have 0.98

00:05:30.820 way more power than they did before. Wouldn't you have respected him more if he would have come out

00:05:36.320 and said, I understand human rights are about to go off a cliff in Afghanistan. The Taliban cannot be

00:05:42.400 trusted for anything when it comes to human rights. However, we're now going to treat Afghanistan 1.00

00:05:47.300 the way we treat North Korea, the way we treat China and what it's doing to the Uyghurs. We were 0.96

00:05:52.260 sorry. We're sad, but we're basically now going to treat it like it's not our problem. That at least

00:05:58.020 would have been honest. But to to pull everyone so haphazardly to to leave our allies who helped us

00:06:05.660 behind. He doesn't care about what's happening to the women. Obviously, he would have done. He would 0.99

00:06:09.540 have handled this differently, would have left it maybe a residual force. But now so he wants credit

00:06:14.380 for being a protector of human rights as he completely disregards them.

00:06:18.340 No, he's very comical. I've never had any kind of respects for Joe Biden. And I think the kind of

00:06:24.900 ideology that he's reintroducing, this is going to be Obama 2.0. It is going to be to take pride 0.58

00:06:31.340 in surrender and in retreats and in American weakness. But then all along present it as morally

00:06:36.780 superior. That is where we're back at. Biden doesn't have the presence of mind and the intellectual

00:06:44.740 capacity to at least say it like it is. Yeah, I think a lot of people may have decided may have

00:06:50.040 thought, OK, it's a terrible decision, but you own that decision. But don't lie to us. Don't tell

00:06:56.240 the world a lie. And so for him to present, first of all, the whole thing as this black and white

00:07:02.020 thing where it was only withdrawal, one option, or stay there forever in the forever war, to present

00:07:08.900 it that way, I think that is the first and most important lie. Because it wasn't like that. We

00:07:14.200 were there for 20 years, but we had a small military footprint that is to prop up the Afghani government,

00:07:21.640 which we all understood was weak and corrupt. But that option was cheaper and better for human

00:07:28.080 rights for Americans. And remember, we went 20 years ago to Afghanistan to pretend to prevent that

00:07:36.240 country from being a safe haven for terrorists. Now we've brought those terrorists back, handed

00:07:42.740 Afghanistan to them on a tray and said, you can even have all the assets that we had given the Afghan 0.71

00:07:49.620 government because the Afghan government that we were propping up is gone. So the Taliban is stronger

00:07:54.940 today more than ever. That is going to embolden not only the jihadis in Afghanistan, but the jihadis

00:08:01.340 everywhere. That's exactly right. Let's talk about that. I want to talk about how they're emboldened.

00:08:06.660 But just on the way of news, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, was questioned yesterday

00:08:12.260 just how much of our U.S. weaponry has fallen into Taliban hands because we had been arming the Afghan 0.92

00:08:18.440 National Army and they're no longer in existence. So the Taliban has everything we gave to them. And 1.00

00:08:24.840 it's to the tune of billions, billions of dollars of equipment, including guns, ammunition, helicopters,

00:08:30.480 and more that we've given over the course of two decades. And the answer was, and I quote,

00:08:35.120 we don't have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense material has gone,

00:08:39.820 but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban.

00:08:42.880 Right. It has. And not only that, but we we don't have control of the cities. We don't know

00:08:51.000 exactly where all the Americans are right now who we've left behind. We don't know where the

00:08:54.800 it's I've heard the numbers any place between 30 and 80,000 allies who helped us, who we can't get

00:09:00.100 out 15,000 Americans. So you've got the Taliban, the bad guys who are still in touch with Al Qaeda. 0.91

00:09:04.880 We're told they're in at least 15 provinces in Afghanistan now with access to our weapons

00:09:11.820 and emboldened. So let's get to that point of they're they're feeling stronger than ever.

00:09:17.700 Yes, they're feeling stronger than ever. For them, the narrative is renewed that America is weak.

00:09:23.780 It's cowardly. It's dishonorable. America is a traitor. They'll ask. They'll talk to you about

00:09:28.940 human rights and civilization and progress. But then at the very last moment, they just let you

00:09:34.860 fall like that. So I think it's not just what's going to happen to the weapons and the money that

00:09:39.720 we left behind. It's also what's going to happen to the people that we train members of the Afghan 1.00

00:09:45.220 military. Those who don't get killed, they'll be forced to teach the Taliban members how to operate 1.00

00:09:53.500 those weapons. They'll be forced to tell them American secrets. They'll be told they'll be made

00:10:01.000 to do all sorts of things. And in some ways, they may even be persuaded to switch sides. Why would

00:10:05.880 they not? These people are incompetent. They're incompetent. They have absolutely no moral compass.

00:10:13.800 And they haven't only betrayed our allies in Afghanistan, but they've also I mean, what does the

00:10:21.340 government of India now think of us? What kind of alliance would they want to with the United States

00:10:25.360 of America? What about our European allies? What kind of alliance do you think? We didn't even give

00:10:29.340 them any kind of warning that we were leaving. And then what kind of message does this send to China,

00:10:35.180 to Iran, to Russia? Right. It's just a display of weakness. And are they more or less likely to get

00:10:41.980 aggressive with their neighbors now, you know, when it comes to, let's say, Taiwan or the Russians with

00:10:47.720 with respect to their cyber attacks? I mean, what have we opened ourselves up to by behaving so

00:10:53.060 ineptly and demonstrating such weakness? Yeah, we are now living in this fantasy land that we were

00:10:59.680 being invited to by the Biden administration that we are going to display weakness, but we'll just

00:11:05.520 present it as strength. They talk about human rights. I've been looking at some of the materials that

00:11:10.820 this State Department has been distributing to other countries. And it's all woke. It's all about

00:11:17.160 identity politics that we are exporting from here to the rest of the world. And so now we are not

00:11:23.700 only seen as weak and as cowardly and as corrupt, but we're also seen as just mad.

00:11:30.640 It's a joke. We're talking about here, we're talking about changing the language to birthing people 1.00

00:11:38.080 from women. We now need to refer to it as chest feeding instead of breastfeeding out of respect for 1.00

00:11:43.800 minority rights. And yet we are essentially handing power over to the Taliban in Afghanistan,

00:11:49.940 where you tell me what they're going to start doing to women flogging. Yes, all that. The Taliban's 0.98

00:11:55.360 now talking a good game. They've they've gotten some press training. But Joe Biden knows very well

00:12:00.940 what they're about to do to the women there. And they've never made a secret of it. They will,

00:12:05.680 first of all, pretend. And I don't know even for how long they'll continue this pretense,

00:12:09.920 but they want to get a grip in the country. And then from there, they will move into telling the

00:12:16.940 people of Afghanistan they are in charge and the norms have changed. They control those norms and 1.00

00:12:23.200 laws and values. And then they're going to implement it. And you're going to get, they've said it over and

00:12:28.220 over again, the Emirate of Afghanistan. That is like the caliphate of ISIS. So in terms of what will

00:12:36.420 then happen, we're going to see all that gruesome stuff from a few years ago that ISIS was doing, 0.74

00:12:41.980 the beheading, selling women into slaves, the mass murders. Remember all those people who are lined up

00:12:48.680 and who are shot because they weren't Muslim enough for the ISIS, for the ISIS leadership.

00:12:54.740 We're going to see all of that. We're going to see the mass graves. We're going to see the

00:12:58.500 destabilization of the countries around. We're going to see the worst elements within the Pakistani 1.00

00:13:04.500 military, regroup and feel again, emboldened that they have, that they're in control. And that has

00:13:12.400 implications for Pakistan that then in turn has implications for that very fragile relationship

00:13:19.580 between Pakistan and India. It emboldens the mullahs in Iran. I mean, this is just, it's so bad,

00:13:27.520 so myopic. And then for the administration to come out and just tell these childish lies.

00:13:33.980 Oh, man, they think we're fools. I think they think we're fools. I think that this,

00:13:38.280 they think that this is going to help them in the election for next year's Congress and 2024's

00:13:45.020 presidential election. That is the calculation. When I listened to Biden's speech on Monday,

00:13:49.900 I thought he was talking as if he was on the campaign trail, not a commander in chief,

00:13:55.440 but as a campaigner in chief. And this, that's what, six, seven months into his government.

00:14:03.040 And the way this is all being presented is it's the American people who want it. It's the American

00:14:09.560 people who are tired of this forever wars. It's the American people who wanted the troops back.

00:14:14.840 We didn't have that many troops in there. And it's all very, very, I mean, taking the American people 0.98

00:14:22.360 and thinking that they're such fools, that they're so dumb. Remember, that's to begin with Obama 1.0 is

00:14:30.480 what gave us Trump. And now it's Biden. And I don't know what that's going to give us.

00:14:34.540 Well, that's the thing. So I think he was solving a problem that almost didn't exist.

00:14:39.840 You know, it, yes. When Trump was in and we have 15,000 troops still there, that was a lot.

00:14:44.040 And Trump, Trump drew it way down. But where were the protests in the streets here about the 2,500

00:14:50.300 troops we had left after the Trump, you know, Trump drew it down to 2,500 in January when he left

00:14:54.920 office, right before he left office. I don't remember people protesting in the street saying,

00:14:58.640 get those, get those men and women out of there. What I remember was we had a relatively 0.99

00:15:02.820 stable period of peace where we weren't that worried about Al Qaeda launching attacks against

00:15:08.780 us from Afghanistan, thanks to the blood and treasure we'd spent over there or the prior 20 1.00

00:15:13.760 years and the maintenance, imperfect though it was, thanks to the guys we still kept there.

00:15:19.020 And now we, it seems like we've created this problem for ourselves. For what? For what? I bet

00:15:24.100 you if you asked those 2,500 men and women and their families, would, would you have stayed? They

00:15:28.620 would have said gladly in service of my country. Yes, I would have done it.

00:15:31.440 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There was no pressure to withdraw from Afghanistan. There was no domestic

00:15:36.280 pressure. There was no external pressure. I don't understand why it's a priority. People

00:15:41.180 here in America are talking about the pandemic. They're talking about the economy. That's the

00:15:44.960 things that affect us right now. And that's the things that they promised. They got elected

00:15:49.520 on those, on that basis, that they were going to do something about these big problems, domestic

00:15:54.900 problems, but also international problems. And then they choose, they pick something that,

00:15:59.740 okay, wasn't perfect. The Afghani government is corrupt that we installed there. Afghanistan 1.00

00:16:06.780 was no Switzerland. But why pick a problem that, yeah, as you say, was almost non-existent

00:16:13.920 and then make it into a mountain? It is, it's incomprehensible. And I think the whole world

00:16:19.020 is looking at the Biden administration and thinking, what is this now? The previous administration,

00:16:24.260 we had a man who was erratic at the helm, but the individuals who served were responsible.

00:16:31.300 Most of them were sane people, you know, the John Boltons and the Pompeos, McMaster, all

00:16:36.700 of these people, they probably disagreed on many things, but they agreed on the most fundamental

00:16:41.600 things. And that's why people were able to talk Trump out of doing something as stupid

00:16:46.380 as this. Here, we have a senile man at the helm, and we have an administration who live

00:16:51.840 in fantasy land. They've lied to themselves, they're ideological, and they have absolutely

00:16:57.400 no moral compass.

00:16:59.700 Mm-hmm. And now the finger pointing has already begun because Biden got up there on Monday

00:17:04.380 and said, I didn't know, you know, the intel community didn't tell me that I should expect

00:17:10.520 this, you know, and that was the one thing he sort of admitted, like, yeah, it happened

00:17:13.420 faster than anybody could have anticipated. And now already today, the leak war has begun.

00:17:19.160 The intel agencies and the military brass are out in the New York Times and the Wall Street

00:17:23.420 Journal today saying, we told him, we did warn him. Again, the White House continued to deny

00:17:28.180 that, but the New York Times headline today is, contradicting Biden, reports warned of rapid

00:17:33.660 collapse. And then in the Wall Street Journal, it's, Biden knew risks of a hasty withdrawal.

00:17:39.360 They're coming out and saying, by July, many intel reports had grown more pessimistic,

00:17:45.140 questioning whether any Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether

00:17:49.220 the government would hold on. This from the Journal, talking about how they had been warned

00:17:54.740 and Biden pushing back, saying no one had said it was inevitable and that there was not

00:18:00.540 a high degree of confidence placed on any of the warnings he was given. So we've got our

00:18:04.920 leaders pointing at each other, Ayaan, no one taking responsibility for what actually went down

00:18:09.400 there. Meantime, our entire counterterrorism intelligence has been essentially wiped out

00:18:15.680 in Afghanistan. We don't have a military base. We don't have an airport. We've got no way of going

00:18:20.320 back in there, really, as of the time we get out in a couple of days. And the American people are

00:18:25.380 going to be left holding the bag.

00:18:26.260 The American people are left holding the bag. And then the international world, the allies we

00:18:31.120 created. Remember, I think most people forget this, but in the wider Middle East, we had brought

00:18:37.680 people in, we educated them in our universities, and then we installed them in those governments.

00:18:42.220 These people are now working with us and or at least have been working with us until

00:18:46.820 last week. And if you try and look at this from their perspective, where they see jihadis everywhere

00:18:55.920 emboldened and the terrorist attacks will start all over again, fast in Muslim countries and will 1.00

00:19:02.460 affect Muslim majority countries. Terrorists, jihadis are already active in Africa. They're active in

00:19:08.100 South Asia. And then they'll continue their activities in Europe or their attempts at destabilizing 0.99

00:19:13.880 Europe through immigration, through terrorist attacks, through all that sort of thing. And

00:19:18.900 then we're going to see terrorism back on our soil again. And when we do that, whether it's this

00:19:24.740 administration or the next administration, and we go out and we ask for allies to help us, what

00:19:31.160 kind of response do you expect to get? What kind of response do you expect to get if we try and

00:19:37.440 assemble allies to help us with the China equation against China? What kind of response

00:19:43.780 do you think we're going to get? This is similar to what Trump was saying. Trump gave an interview

00:19:48.400 to Sean Hannity last night and was warning of in particular what China is going to do next.

00:19:54.640 Listen here. It will affect our relationships for years to come and decades to come. I will say when

00:20:00.540 China watches this, they're so happy and they're laughing at us. This is the greatest embarrassment in 0.99

00:20:07.740 the history of our country. There's never been. And let me tell you, we haven't stopped. This is not

00:20:12.520 ending. We have all of those thousands of Americans over there and others. And you're saying,

00:20:18.640 how are they going to get? They have a Taliban ring around the airport. He should have gotten 1.00

00:20:22.940 the civilians out first. Then he should have taken the military equipment. We have billions of dollars

00:20:27.980 of brand new, beautiful equipment. Take the equipment out. Biden put us in this position.

00:20:34.440 I mean, he's got a point. He's got a point. But now the former administration is blaming the new

00:20:39.920 administration. And then within the administration, as you say, all this leaking has started.

00:20:44.660 All this. This is going again to feed into the there was always a great amount of anti-Americanism

00:20:51.560 in the world. Trump was hated by our adversaries. And sometimes he was also hated on a domestic level.

00:21:00.580 Now you have the hatred against America, but an America that is also seen as weak. And he's

00:21:06.640 absolutely right. This is going to affect us for decades to come in a negative way. Maybe one good

00:21:12.340 thing that may come out of this is that our national press corps is going to take this seriously. And when I

00:21:19.100 say seriously, I mean, not just scrutinizing the administration, they don't like and cheering

00:21:24.940 on one they fantasize about, but actually scrutinizing all administrations. The people who

00:21:32.660 hold key positions in foreign policy in this administration were not properly scrutinized.

00:21:40.580 Yeah. I mean, clearly they've embarrassed the country. Who's going to get fired? Who's going to be

00:21:47.520 held accountable? Um, we have abandoned our allies. And I think about, uh, there was a woman,

00:21:53.320 she, she escaped, she, she got to Delhi and Afghan woman who was, she put a, she put the fine point 0.99

00:22:00.040 on it saying, you know, her experience and how, what was likely to happen to other women thinking

00:22:05.060 about women like her. Listen here. I can't believe the world abandoned Afghanistan. Our friends

00:22:13.100 are going to get killed. They're going to kill us. Our women are not going to have any more rights. 1.00

00:22:18.040 And, and women like her, Ayan, who are trying to get out right now from Afghanistan, they can't, 0.99

00:22:22.460 we didn't, we should, we needed to do it before they can't get out. Even though we now have 4,000

00:22:27.780 troops there. And there are some flights being conducted by us, by Germany, by others, but there

00:22:34.560 was a German airport, uh, transport that, that left near empty. A German military, a 400 M airbus

00:22:40.540 has a capacity of over 100. It took off with just seven people on board on Tuesday because the

00:22:45.900 Taliban has now set up checkpoints on the way, like all around the airport. And you can't get

00:22:50.620 through the checkpoint unless you show them your phone. And then they check your phone for any

00:22:54.700 communications in English. And that's how they're identifying people who helped us. And those people

00:23:00.240 are not getting on airplanes out to Germany, the United States, or any place else.

00:23:05.300 Yes. And that's also because we gave up that Bagram air force and we did it before we removed

00:23:11.420 Americans or allies and friends and the people in Afghanistan who helped us. And some of the

00:23:17.760 women, because you can't remove all of the women of Afghanistan out of Afghanistan and all of the 1.00

00:23:23.360 women in Afghanistan will be stripped of their rights. And what about homosexuals? We're going to 1.00

00:23:29.140 see, again, scenes of them being thrown away, thrown down tall buildings. And so while it's, this is just

00:23:35.140 too, this is too crazy. This is completely our, this administration was so absorbed with microaggressions,

00:23:45.060 what you can't, can and can't say. And this whole narrative that America is systemically racist, we are the

00:23:51.400 bad guys, that they forgot how to deal with the real world and macroaggressions. And we're going to pay the

00:23:58.260 price for that. You have a piece out today, Unheard. And it's, it's amazing. It hits all the right

00:24:05.440 points. And you point out to that point you just made, we've reached a point where we proudly flew

00:24:09.780 the LGBT flag from our embassy in Kabul when the going was good. But now we've abandoned Afghanistan's 0.98

00:24:16.560 gay population to the Taliban. Oh, great. So we flew the flag. So, you know, good for us. We can feel 1.00

00:24:21.500 good about ourselves. Yeah. That is Biden's understanding of human rights. We go, we do all

00:24:28.080 the virtue signaling we can. And then when the going gets tough, we just go. We just tell them to go to

00:24:35.800 hell. That's what we did. And Afghanistan is going to be hell under the Taliban. And we, and I don't

00:24:42.020 know, this is one of the things that I find fascinating. All of these fantasies about the

00:24:47.180 Taliban coming to the table and negotiating in good faith and that they're going, they're a changed 1.00

00:24:52.720 people. When we've seen just a few years ago, what ISIS did in Iraq, jihadis, these radical Islamists,

00:25:01.300 they are committed to their convictions. It's what they want. It's what gives them the will to fight.

00:25:09.140 They're not going to negotiate with America in good faith because they preach in the mosque and at home 1.00

00:25:14.820 and everywhere that America and what America stands for is evil and that it's their job to

00:25:21.200 finish that off, to make sure that never happens, that those values of liberty and equality and

00:25:26.980 women's rights and gay rights, that those values are never adopted because they preach every day on a 0.98

00:25:32.320 religious basis that all that is evil. So when they come to power, what makes you think that they're

00:25:38.020 going to act any differently? And how many times do you want that to happen before you wake up and

00:25:43.360 realize it's just not true? Take the world as it is, not as you fantasize it to be.

00:25:48.560 They're saying all the right things. Let's talk about that for a minute because people are going

00:25:53.860 with these assurances as though we have some reason to believe them. The Taliban comes out and 0.53

00:26:00.240 says, this is also from your piece, Taliban governor of the Andar district, this is quoting you,

00:26:05.840 quoting the guy, we assure this to people all over the world, especially the people of Afghanistan.

00:26:10.280 Islam has given rights to everyone equally. Women have their own rights. How much Islam has given 0.99

00:26:16.040 rights to women? We will give them that much. A different Taliban spokesperson says women should

00:26:23.680 be in the government structure according to Sharia law. And there were other similar statements by other

00:26:30.940 Taliban representatives trying to make us feel like it's a whole new Taliban. I on, you know,

00:26:37.340 it's a new day. Women are going to be in the government. Women are going to go to, girls are 1.00

00:26:40.860 going to go to school. That's another thing they said. And they're going to be treated equally under

00:26:45.600 Sharia law. Yeah. They're telling the Americans who they think of as infidel. They're telling the

00:26:51.220 infidels what they want to hear. But in between the lines, they're actually being honest. They're 0.99

00:26:57.220 saying the rights that they're going to accord to women are Islamic rights, Sharia. And the way that 0.98

00:27:03.800 they're going to have a relationship with the rest of the world will be dictated by Sharia or Islamic 0.99

00:27:10.280 law. So in many ways, they're just being honest. It's we who are the fools because we never, I mean,

00:27:16.560 and I'm talking about this administration and the people who serve it, they have never taken the

00:27:21.560 trouble to actually understand what Sharia is, what Islamic law entails. They've always bought into 1.00

00:27:27.240 those assurances, whether it's from the Saudis or whether it's from the Taliban or even, I remember

00:27:32.800 I sat in one meeting where one guy said, maybe we could negotiate with ISIS. And this was at the

00:27:39.880 height of ISIS's cruelty. And I was thinking, what makes you think that? Because they all think that

00:27:46.520 Sharia is misunderstood and that maybe the Taliban have now come to their senses and that they're going

00:27:52.220 to implement a different kind of Sharia than the one they implemented in the 1990s. That's the kind 0.97

00:27:58.320 of fantasy land these people live in. Meanwhile, the Taliban's already going door to door, according

00:28:03.140 to the reports out there now, claiming child brides, raping young women. And then the principle over

00:28:09.760 there is once a girl's been raped, she's expected to marry her rapist. Otherwise, the family will be

00:28:15.020 disgraced. Reports of women being forced to cook for the Taliban. And when they come back for the third 0.85

00:28:21.560 time and the women don't have enough food to serve 18 Taliban members, she's brutally murdered.

00:28:27.920 And I hesitate to get too detailed on this, but we had Sean Parnell on recently and I'd read his book

00:28:32.940 talking about his service in Afghanistan. And I don't I never like to get too dark because it's

00:28:37.040 just there's only so much our souls can take in. But suffice it to say, the Taliban and his accounts 0.53

00:28:42.800 of dealing with them while fighting for the U.S. and Afghanistan, the Taliban engaged in this

00:28:48.380 systematic torture and rape of young children, boys and girls. I'm not going to get too detailed

00:28:57.000 again on the torture, but they tortured them while they were raping them. You tell me whether

00:29:01.980 anyone over here is so stupid as to take the word of these same barbarians now just because it makes

00:29:10.260 us feel better about having cut and run. And also then to present it as we are now going to achieve

00:29:17.120 human rights through diplomacy. So you're going to have diplomatic ties with an outfit that is raping 0.99

00:29:24.560 and torturing children, boys and girls systematically. And I think they haven't we haven't talking of

00:29:30.560 darkness. We haven't even started talking about what the minorities are going to face in Afghanistan. 0.82

00:29:36.240 So think about the Hazaras who are Shia and their women. And it's some of these minorities that when 1.00

00:29:43.120 America went into Afghanistan who thought it now appears wrongly that America was going to give them

00:29:52.880 a lifeline out of that kind of barbarian, barbarity and brutal powers of the Taliban. And when you think 1.00

00:30:02.960 about the Taliban, I think we think about them only in terms of how fanatical they are and how they're

00:30:10.960 married to this eighth century idea of radical Islam. But they're also a tribe. They're the Pashtun.

00:30:19.600 And people in America don't understand how these tribal ties operate. The Hazaras and the other

00:30:27.600 minorities who worked with the Americans are seen by the Pashtun as traitors. So even those who,

00:30:34.240 the Pashtun who are not radical, radical Islamists, will still have to apply the tribal code of revenge. 0.96

00:30:43.520 And revenge then comes in these ways of massacring, of torturing, of raping, of taking the women as slaves.

00:30:53.680 And this is to, it's to communicate to all within that context. And in that country, we are now in

00:31:02.400 charge. And this is going to be your plight for betraying us. These people are seen as traitors.

00:31:10.880 Well, so that's the difference, Ayan, between the North Korea situation, right? That's the difference.

00:31:16.320 And, you know, we weren't in China setting up the Uyghurs. You know, we were in Afghanistan.

00:31:23.600 We lured people into the fold saying, help us, help you, and we'll have your backs on the back end.

00:31:30.880 And now we've left without fulfilling our promise. That's what makes this different and not a situation

00:31:36.320 where we can just as easily say, well, you know, human rights violations are committed by a lot of

00:31:40.160 bad countries all over the world. We have to decide whether it makes sense for Americans to fight those

00:31:44.000 fights. We helped stir this up. We made promises we're not keeping.

00:31:48.000 Absolutely. And those, those of us who are outraged about the ramifications for human beings in

00:31:53.920 Afghanistan, for women, for gays, for minorities, religious minorities, and others, we are being

00:32:00.960 dismissed as, we can't do that all over the world. It's not America's job to be the policeman of the

00:32:08.160 world. And, and that's the kind of ridiculous dismissals we are being given. But remember,

00:32:13.680 we went into Afghanistan to make sure that we're not hit again on American soil, that we don't 0.67

00:32:20.800 leave them a safe haven to recoup and to organize these terrorist attacks from. And they're going

00:32:28.000 to do that. And it's going to embolden all the jihadists in the world, whom we, a few years ago,

00:32:33.360 because we destroyed ISIS and because ISIS destroyed their narrative, their ideology through the kind of

00:32:42.160 gruesome attacks that they were inflicting on people, we've now empowered all of those people

00:32:48.400 back again. Al-Qaeda is going to regroup. ISIS is going to regroup. They're all going to work together

00:32:54.400 again. Even in our own country, we have members of the Muslim Brotherhood as there are members of the

00:32:59.440 Muslim Brotherhood everywhere. All of those, those who put on a nice face of civility and they put their

00:33:05.920 suits and they shave their beards. Those, yeah, maybe that's, those are the ones that they think

00:33:12.080 of as diplomats. Those guys and the ones who are actually carrying out the executions and the torture

00:33:19.200 and the rapes, those people are now going to sit together and say, this is how to deal with America

00:33:24.800 and the West in general. You, you call it a watershed moment in Western decline. Can you expand on

00:33:34.000 that? Well, it's again, it's scenarios where now the whole world is looking at us. You said China's 0.74

00:33:39.840 laughing at us. It is true. China's laughing at us. We, I think, European countries are thinking, my

00:33:45.920 goodness, if this is the America that we have now. So I think what we're going to see is, and I hope it 0.79

00:33:52.640 doesn't happen. This is exactly what we don't want. But when it comes to decline, what you see is a

00:33:59.680 disintegration within the civilization where we are at each other's throats and we don't trust one

00:34:04.880 another and we're, we're engaged in infighting. And that emboldens adversaries like China, like Iran,

00:34:13.360 like Russia, like the international jihadi community. And they just see their moment now to,

00:34:22.080 that they could seize. And I hope that, um, I hope that we don't, we don't descend into that kind of

00:34:28.880 internal sin and into that kind of decline. This decision, um, by the Biden administration,

00:34:35.520 it's the Biden administration that owns this. They have forced us into this decline. This is that

00:34:40.880 watershed moment. Ayan, thank you so much for coming on for your expertise and for, as always,

00:34:48.240 shining a light on a dark situation. Thank you, Megan. And thank you so much for doing what you

00:34:53.200 can do, what we can all do to, to help. Up next, we're going to be joined by John Cass,

00:34:59.760 who's going to talk about the violence here at home. And in particular, the city of Chicago today

00:35:04.800 at 3 p.m. Chicago time, there will be a memorial service for officer Ella French,

00:35:09.600 a 29 year old cop in Chicago, who was shot in head point blank range on duty about 10 days ago,

00:35:17.360 uh, by a criminal who she pulled over for an expired registration. Her partner was also shot

00:35:23.280 twice in the head and a third time in the shoulder. This in a city in which mayor Lori Lightfoot, who,

00:35:29.040 by the way, our guests, John Cass supported, uh, that's changed. Uh, she, she ran and said,

00:35:35.680 you know, as she ran for mayor, she said she was going to clean up the city, 0.92

00:35:38.480 that she was going to cut back on the city crime. Always an issue there. She took office in 2019,

00:35:44.240 wanted to reduce gun violence. Well, let me give you the stats in 2016,

00:35:47.280 4,300 some odd people were shot in Chicago 2019. When she took office number went down to 2,600

00:35:55.280 or so. And in 2020, the number back up 4,135 people. That's a 36% increase from 2019. And through July,

00:36:06.880 2021, uh, they're already up over that record setting year to 2,528 people shot in Chicago.

00:36:15.920 Think about that. Think about that. Hundreds of them children. This woman in the wake of those

00:36:26.000 numbers decide to turn her back on cops. Cops are the ones getting thrown under the bus 1.00

00:36:31.040 by her. And now they're turning their backs on her. John Cass with the latest in the numbers

00:36:36.880 in Chicago and nationwide in a minute.

00:36:39.600 John Cass, how are you? Hey, Megan. How are you?

00:36:47.040 I'm a big fan of yours. Thank you so much for doing this.

00:36:49.840 I can't tell you, I really appreciate it, especially when I'm starting this new,

00:36:54.320 new thing. Yeah, no. Well, I think it's going to be great. You being out on your own. I really do.

00:36:59.120 You know, as somebody who's doing that herself, it's nice not to have a corporate overlord. I feel

00:37:03.680 like I can see it in your writing, by the way, um, which has just been, I mean, it's always been

00:37:07.520 amazing, but I just feel like you're unleashed and it's amazing. All right, so let's get to it. So

00:37:12.480 this weekend alone in your city and the city I love as well, Chicago, where I lived for five years,

00:37:17.760 um, violence, at least 52 people were shot, nine people dead, including a seven year old girl named

00:37:24.640 Serenity, whose six year old sister was also shot in the chest in the right armpit, but she remains

00:37:29.760 alive. No arrest made, um, in 2020, 4,135 people were shot in Chicago. It's, it's crazy that number.

00:37:41.200 Think about that. 4,135 people were shot in Chicago. It's, and the numbers are on the rise

00:37:49.680 under this mayor in, in Chicago, more than 230 children have been shot this year, meaning kids

00:37:57.760 under 17, 230. Uh, and you say about all this, what, what is to blame and what is in this mayor's

00:38:06.880 head as she's blaming rhetoric on social media for being damaging. She's a disaster. I supported her. 0.99

00:38:14.640 Um, I liked her. I thought she would be a breath of fresh air to a city that has basically destroyed

00:38:22.000 itself through corruption, but, uh, she's a disaster. The, uh, Cook County state's attorney,

00:38:30.400 Kim Fox is a disaster right now. We have 100, about 100, uh, accused murderers out on the street, 1.00

00:38:43.600 arrested, but out on electronic home monitoring. And every day there's a story about, or almost every

00:38:51.680 day story about someone on electronic home monitoring or someone that has, um, been released on bail or

00:39:00.800 low bail, uh, that goes out and shoots someone else. And those little children, those two little

00:39:07.360 sisters were found hugging each other. Oh God. It, it's beyond belief. And today, Wednesday, um,

00:39:21.760 the city prepares to, uh, say goodbye to, uh, officer Ella French, who was shot just, um,

00:39:30.480 um, recently murdered in a, in a police stop of a automobile. Two brothers have been charged

00:39:41.040 and the cops at the hospital turned their back on Lori Lightfoot when she approached. 0.56

00:39:47.680 It's never been so bad. Megan, you were here. You, you know, that there was, there was always

00:39:53.920 problems in any big city. You have problems. And in many big cities like New York and Chicago,

00:39:59.760 the relationship between the police and the, uh, political authority is sometimes not good, but

00:40:10.320 right now we're in a city of chaos. It's a city of anarchy and, uh, politicians just talk and talk

00:40:19.040 about, you know, the, their rhetoric is social justice warrior rhetoric. They talk about equity.

00:40:25.840 I don't know what the, what's the equity and shooting little children and, and people of color being 1.00

00:40:32.960 gunned down and street gang wars. And they don't even have the guts to say street gangs. They talk

00:40:39.760 about gun violence. But as you know, um, every suburb of major metropolitan areas has a lot of guns.

00:40:50.400 The people have guns in the suburbs of New York and the suburbs of Chicago and Los Angeles and Detroit.

00:40:58.720 And they're not shooting each other. They're not slaughtering each other. So there's something else.

00:41:05.280 And, uh, you've been talking about it for years, Megan, you, you understand the social decay,

00:41:11.680 the lack of the father in the home, um, lack of edge, a good education. The education systems are broken.

00:41:21.840 It's, uh, it's bad. And right now Chicago is unmoored.

00:41:27.120 Yeah. And you have, let's talk about Ella French because you have her out there at 29 years old, 1.00

00:41:34.640 uh, along with her two partners, just trying to affect a traffic stop for expired registration.

00:41:40.000 She'd been on the force for three years. She's already been decorated. Speaking of shooting young

00:41:44.160 kids, she was one of the officers who took a one month old baby and mother to the hospital on July

00:41:50.720 2nd. The baby had been shot in the head during a mass shooting. I mean, it's, uh, you know,

00:41:57.360 we can get into where the hell's black lives matter. Not there. You're never going to know 1.00

00:42:01.440 the name of that baby. We're not going to know what serenity's last name on a placard by any signs

00:42:06.240 or protests in the streets, um, with them. It's all about whatever cop did one bad thing here or

00:42:12.320 there. It's not about this. They don't, this, this group of people's men forgotten. These kids

00:42:16.640 don't matter to them. So Ella French is out there. Yeah. I'll give you the floor one second, 1.00

00:42:22.080 but Ella French is out there at age 29 and trying to affect this traffic stop. 1.00

00:42:28.080 Some sort of a scuffle, I guess, takes place toward the back of the car towards the trunk

00:42:33.360 and she was shot point blank in the head. And her partner was shot three times as well, twice in the

00:42:39.920 head. He's now paralyzed and blind in one eye. And the third cop managed to grab his gun. The other

00:42:46.080 two had their guns holstered. She, she had her gun holstered. So it's not like she was shooting at

00:42:50.640 these guys. The third cop finally got his gun out and managed to shoot the suspects who ran and

00:42:55.440 thankfully some, some citizens detained them. Um, and the officers in Chicago, John are livid at what

00:43:04.960 this mayor and those in charge have done to them and said about them. Yes, Megan. Um, what,

00:43:11.440 when she got in, uh, Lori Lightfoot, uh, a former federal prosecutor made a point out of starting a 1.00

00:43:21.360 rhetorical war with the Chicago police, a union representative was coming to the podium to speak

00:43:29.760 at a city council meeting. And she said something in a hot mic, like who is this bleeping clown

00:43:37.520 or something like that? I remember I was there. I don't have the exact quote. I wrote a, wrote a

00:43:44.240 column about it. She sided with the Chicago teachers union, which is, uh, generally hard left,

00:43:53.680 maybe not all the members, but the leadership is hard left and, uh, castigated the police

00:44:02.240 again. And again, there are people that told her, you can't fight a two front war. You can't fight

00:44:07.760 crime and by fighting the police. And, uh, you know, you can't help education by caving to the

00:44:16.960 teachers union, but she just marched along on her own drum. She was getting a lot of love from MSNBC

00:44:25.280 and, you know, the progressive, uh, far left liberal stations. And she just loved it. The New York

00:44:32.800 Times would take down what she said as if it was wisdom. And, uh, those police officers,

00:44:40.560 they went, they approached the car without their guns drawn. And in West Englewood, I was born there

00:44:49.040 years ago. It's you, you stop, they want these cops to make police stops, stop cars that they,

00:44:58.000 if they see something wrong. And this one was, uh, I think, uh, the probable cause of something like,

00:45:04.960 um, don't hold me to it, but bad license plate or something like that. And they cannot draw,

00:45:12.160 have their guns drawn. I'm not talking about Megan going up to the car with your pointing your gun 1.00

00:45:18.880 at, at the, uh, at the people in the car. No, but maybe at your side. And the other thing is with

00:45:29.120 all this political correct nonsense and black lives matter and all this stuff that were social justice 0.81

00:45:35.360 warriors that dominate, uh, urban American politics, because it's not just in Chicago, but all over the

00:45:43.920 country, um, you get a sense that not only, you know, cops are on the defensive and in a fetal position,

00:45:51.760 but politically, but also Megan tactically. So they show up, there's a confrontation. They don't want

00:45:59.600 to put their hands on people. They're afraid to do that because they don't want to be on someone's video,

00:46:06.320 lose their jobs, not be backed up by their police command, by the mayor's office. And so they're on the

00:46:13.040 back foot. They're hesitant. And in that, I'm not saying that happened in this case, but in many

00:46:20.640 cases they're hesitant. And so that hesitancy can be deadly. And they know that the mayor and the,

00:46:30.320 the press is not going to, they're not going to have these cops backs at all. They don't.

00:46:36.400 I mean, there's some reporters that I guess do. I mean, I've, I've criticized police officers when

00:46:43.760 they, when they, I think they did wrong. There was a 96 year old man, uh, on a, in a walker

00:46:52.480 shot by police with beanbag, uh, rounds. He was killed. Beanbag rounds, 12 gauge beanbag rounds at

00:47:01.840 maybe six feet, eight feet. He was killed, but, uh, his name was John Raina. He was an old white guy.

00:47:11.200 The cop was black in it. And, uh, I guess it didn't make a big national story, but if you switch,

00:47:18.080 I mean, I don't look at people like, you know, I don't think people are defined by their race,

00:47:24.560 but if you look, uh, if you just switch races instead of a, instead of an old man surviving,

00:47:33.760 uh, Burma and world war two, make them a Tuskegee airman and make the, uh, the officer 0.99

00:47:43.360 named like Kelly or O'Reilly or Cass or Pappas. It's a different story. And all this stuff contributes to

00:47:55.040 you've done these stories. The, the, the families, I mean, you've done these stories. The families of

00:48:00.800 the police are just, they don't know what to do. They're, they're under siege 24 seven. All they're

00:48:08.080 doing is waiting for their, you know, the spouse to come home, dad to come home, mom to come home.

00:48:15.600 And we see that they don't sometimes. Well, you've been writing about how

00:48:19.920 the mayor doesn't have their back. Kim Fox. She's the one who dropped the charges on 1.00

00:48:24.720 Jussie Smollett. Um, among others, she's a catch and release prosecutor. So this is not a

00:48:29.840 law and order type woman. Um, the, the, the criminal justice system is letting, 1.00

00:48:34.640 letting these defendants out with slaps on the wrist. This guy who shot, um, Ella

00:48:42.640 Imante, his name was, uh, Imante Morgan, 21 years old. He was on probation for robbery,

00:48:52.320 then committed allegedly a hit and run against an old man who flew from the windshield of the van.

00:48:58.240 This guy Morgan was driving, uh, and still was not behind bars. He was out there on the

00:49:04.720 streets of Chicago. This is the guy who shot her in the head. Uh, so the cops are really like the

00:49:10.960 only line of defense right now because the system isn't really going after the bad guys and the cops

00:49:17.840 are demoralized. They're understaffed. Some are questioning why, why there was a 29 year old woman

00:49:23.280 who's only three years on the force doing traffic stops in that area, you know, which did she really 0.90

00:49:27.440 have the experience, but who else is coming, right? Who, who they don't have that many people to put

00:49:32.640 out there. So the cops, no wonder the wives and the spouses are worried that they, they have no backup. 0.99

00:49:39.120 And they're upset that young officers like, you know, I mean, there was an older officer on the scene,

00:49:45.920 but you've seen these rookies walking up and down Michigan Avenue. You know,

00:49:51.840 they just get out of the academy and they're released, you know, to walk up and down Michigan

00:49:56.320 Avenue and play the role of scarecrow, uh, which is what we do a lot. We have a lot of scarecrow policing

00:50:04.640 and they look at themselves, check themselves out, you know, in the, uh, windows of the shops,

00:50:11.280 the young guys, young, young women, they're proud. They have no clue. It takes a while. They don't have cop eyes yet.

00:50:21.680 Some of them wear sunglasses, you know, they're not, they're not ready. They're not ready to, to,

00:50:29.920 to look at someone who's a violent threat and back them down with their eyes. And all this is because

00:50:38.320 of, uh, there was, you know, there was, uh, over cops overdid it years ago. We had,

00:50:46.880 we had John Burge and, and, and, and, uh, police cases like this. I'm not saying it didn't happen,

00:50:54.480 but the majority of police officers are just trying to help. Like,

00:50:58.320 all the French, you joined the force to make a difference, to help the people who needed it.

00:51:04.880 And, uh, you mentioned George Soros.

00:51:08.000 He spent, uh, $2 million to elect Kim Foxx and Lori Lightfoot endorsed her for reelection.

00:51:18.960 And, uh, I got in a big controversy with my own newsroom that were, was upset that I would dare,

00:51:27.360 uh, write about, uh, George Soros. So

00:51:31.680 So I left, but I'm still writing and you're, you're independent now, uh, free of corporate.

00:51:40.720 Can, are we the, can others do this story that you are doing and that I'm doing?

00:51:47.040 I mean, I'm just, I'm just sick because it's happening not only in Chicago, in Philadelphia,

00:51:52.840 in Los Angeles, all across the country, we have catch and release prosecutors.

00:51:58.800 In Philadelphia, this past, this past weekend, uh, another five people were killed. By the end of

00:52:07.360 this past Friday, the city had recorded 329 homicides, which is a 26% increase from the same

00:52:12.720 period last year, which was already setting records in the COVID pandemic as crime rose. So we're going

00:52:19.120 up from the record years, 329 homicides so far this year in Philly, New York, just this past weekend,

00:52:25.320 15 people shot three dead, no arrests this, this year so far, 1100 shot in New York. Again,

00:52:32.200 11% up over last year, which set records too. Yeah. It's not just Chicago, but Chicago is awful.

00:52:40.120 And I wonder because I, you know, when I lived there, John, I was there 95 to like early two thousands.

00:52:46.280 And it was, that was back when we still had the housing projects, Cabrini green,

00:52:51.800 and everyone knew to stay away from that area. That's where the gangs were. You know,

00:52:56.200 if you stayed on Michigan Avenue, what they call magnificent mile with all the shops and Neiman Marcus,

00:53:01.960 you know, you don't have to worry about your safety, you know, you didn't know, right?

00:53:06.920 No, but I, I'm reading bad reports. So what's, what's happening now?

00:53:11.960 What's happening now is that, um, people, there's a new poll out and WGN television did a new poll.

00:53:19.640 65% of the people in Chicago are considering leaving, uh, if crime doesn't, uh, doesn't, uh,

00:53:27.880 stop or, or isn't reduced. Uh, Lori Lightfoot is underwater. Kim Fox, the state's attorney,

00:53:35.880 the Soros state's attorney is, uh, underwater. And I think 35% give her, she's got an approval rating

00:53:43.400 of 35%. And, uh, when they asked about the poll, she came out with, uh, uh, she played the race card.

00:53:52.360 Oh boy. You know, she said basically that, uh, crime is more complicated and, and, uh, media

00:54:00.440 shouldn't examine only the, uh, only two actors in the, in the broad issue that are black women. 1.00

00:54:09.720 It really, I don't Kim Fox, Lori Lightfoot, uh, Joe Biden, anybody, I don't care. And the people

00:54:17.560 of Chicago don't care what your race is. They just want to be safe. They want to feel that

00:54:23.960 they put their kids in the car, in the back of the car, they won't be shot.

00:54:29.240 And in, in the loop now, you know, when you were here as a lawyer in Chicago, downtown sort of

00:54:35.480 business district. Yeah. When you were here as a lawyer and I believe, uh, uh, uh, intern for a

00:54:42.920 new station, um, the loop was in the period you're talking about, the loop was safe. Now there are

00:54:52.120 gangs of kids and, and young men and women robbing, slapping, beating people up and they are arrested

00:55:03.000 and then they're released. So the whole thing is, um, is a city of anarchy.

00:55:11.560 They there, some people call it now shy rack with, you know, and you know why, and I know

00:55:18.040 some have said that's an insult now to Iraq. Um, it's hard to believe when I was there in mayor

00:55:24.520 daily was the mayor. You could eat off the sidewalks in Chicago. I mean, it was, you know,

00:55:29.220 very well run may have been somewhat corrupt, but boy, oh boy, it was very well.

00:55:33.860 It was not somewhat corrupt. It was a lot corrupt. Well, and not just Chicago, right? Illinois too.

00:55:39.700 It's got governors just almost as great as our governors in the great state of New York.

00:55:44.020 We've had serial problems in this department. Um, but you never had to worry about that kind

00:55:49.780 of crime in the loop. That's where people, that's where the lawyers went to work. That's where the

00:55:52.740 business guys went to work right on the side of the Chicago river that winds through so beautifully

00:55:57.540 with the bridges and the people take the architecture tours on the boats and the tourists come

00:56:01.940 through. Um, and the L goes around and you can see sort of the downtown pumping Chicago at work.

00:56:06.900 It was always isolated the crime in, in one area. And now, now it's different. Can I ask you about

00:56:14.020 the race card though? Because one of the most stunning things of the Ella French awful controversy

00:56:19.540 was, um, first we'll get it. We'll get to the cops turning their back on the mayor and what the

00:56:24.740 mayor's office did to stop the cops from honoring her, her, her body as it came from the morgue.

00:56:32.660 But I want to ask you about the mother of the defendant again, in Monte Morgan and his brother,

00:56:37.940 Eric Morgan, they were taken to the hospital. They were shot and the mother, she comes out.

00:56:45.620 Okay. One was shot. She comes out and she plays the victim. She plays the victim. She speaks with the 0.59

00:56:51.540 reporters before she goes into the hospital where she then caused a scuffle. Uh, and now she's under 0.57

00:56:57.380 arrest for her assaulting a police officer, but listen to how she frames this issue. My boys are not

00:57:04.340 monsters. What people trying to paint them to be at all, at all. There is another side.

00:57:13.940 I don't believe a damn thing. CPD says. And I can guarantee you this. My boys was afraid.

00:57:24.100 I'm afraid. Our young black women, not only young black women, young black men.

00:57:28.740 Like I just said, I'm afraid. Adults are afraid of the CPD.

00:57:31.940 I'm Monte Morgan, my son. Okay, hold on. Was there a security guard there?

00:57:36.020 I want to see my son. Oh, hold on.

00:57:37.860 Monte! Monte! Don't touch me! Get away from me!

00:57:43.940 Stop! Get away from me! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Put your hands behind you! 0.99

00:57:55.780 Please let me see your son! Please let me see your son!

00:58:01.620 Okay, so I guess she was doing a live stream from her, from her phone. I, I'm sorry, John,

00:58:06.020 I have no sympathy for her. None. Zero.

00:58:08.740 Performance art. She was having performance art. She did a live stream while she was going to see

00:58:14.260 your child. She wanted a confrontation. She got a confrontation. Um, that's part of the deal now,

00:58:21.780 you know, in, uh, policing, everything is on video and young cops like Ella French may, I can't get into 0.99

00:58:31.860 her state of mind at the, you know, she's now passed, but there are many and older ones. Every

00:58:38.820 time they, they, they make an arrest, they're thinking, am I going to lose my pension? Am I going

00:58:44.580 to lose my job? Will the mayor or the police chief not have my back? It's debilitating. And, and who looks

00:58:54.660 for, as you know, Megan, who looks for weakness? Criminals. The, and I don't want to, you know, I'm,

00:59:02.340 I'm, I'm, I used to be liberal. I'm not, uh, although I grew up, you know, I woke up, but, uh,

00:59:08.180 uh, I'm not always in support of police, but these, uh, criminals street, violent people,

00:59:19.120 gangbangers that we don't even call them gangbangers, um, look for weakness. They look

00:59:24.880 for hesitancy. And, uh, part of it is that is a social media thing. I mean, it's like you, if,

00:59:33.180 if we believe the charges against her son and that'll play out in the criminal justice system,

00:59:36.800 we hope, um, you know, he, he committed a robbery, he hit an old man with his car and then he shot

00:59:43.160 two cops in the head, one, two bullets in his brain, another Ella French 29, who's now dead.

00:59:48.460 I don't care about this woman's tears or process stations or performance art at all. So what is

00:59:55.260 at the heart of these crime rates? What is it? Is it, do we blame the guns or might we blame

01:00:00.180 the schools? Might we blame homes that have no dads in them? What are the cultural causes behind

01:00:07.480 the crime rate? Because the mayor's not admitting the truth, but John will next.

01:00:15.380 The cops are too undermanned to actually run around and get all these guys as they're busy

01:00:19.640 committing more crimes. Not only the police, Megan, what about the witnesses? Um, let's say a crime

01:00:26.000 happens and you get witnesses to, you know, point the finger, at least in lineups at somebody,

01:00:33.900 uh, that committed something terribly violent. And that person ends up walking around on a home

01:00:42.540 monitoring bracelet or the bracelet is plugged in, uh, you know, into the cigarette lighter of their car,

01:00:50.680 which has happened on occasion. And, uh, how are you, and you see that person and that person sees you,

01:00:58.380 you're a witness. What do you do? It's a good point. So there, and how does that corrode?

01:01:06.220 See, look, the corrosion of, of, uh, urban culture is largely due to lack of fathers and

01:01:17.140 terrible racist public schools that, uh, uh, treat black kids and my, and brown kids like afterthoughts.

01:01:27.740 All the, the kids are there just to provide money, uh, for the, uh, teachers unions and the, uh,

01:01:37.080 teachers unions and the vendors and the political administrators. They're just the cash cow and

01:01:43.280 they've been treated like this for generations. And you, you'd, you'd think that the, the urban

01:01:49.160 politicians of today, when they talk about, let's go into the root causes, you think they'd ever go

01:01:55.860 there? You think they'd ever talk about the welfare state or, um, the, the abysmal public education

01:02:05.320 that requires, in my view, uh, immediate school choice to save some of these kids? No, they don't

01:02:13.440 because they're locked in. They're locked into the rhetoric in the, and the party talk and the city.

01:02:19.860 Tell me, but I, I spent some time interviewing moms in the past few years while I was at NBC in Chicago.

01:02:26.540 We took a trip out there and it was very eyeopening. And these are all inner city moms, uh, mostly,

01:02:32.340 mostly mostly black women whose sons were in jail or sons had committed murder or sons had been

01:02:39.340 murdered. And they were talking about how, you know, the lines are drawn in these communities

01:02:44.120 where you can't go past a certain street, you know, cause that area is controlled by a different

01:02:48.700 gang and, you know, whatever the Hispanic area and the black area and this area and that area.

01:02:53.620 And so they're, they're prisoners in their own homes in some situations, communities. So they can't get

01:02:59.560 out. There's no such thing as school choice, of course. Um, but they talk about how like they,

01:03:04.940 their kids don't leave the house all day cause they're worried they're going to get shot.

01:03:07.900 They have to stay inside. It's not, I mean, think about how you live and how I live. It's like,

01:03:13.540 they don't have, they can't go out on a lawn and play. There's no, there's no opportunities,

01:03:18.760 like living in a war zone. I said, why don't you leave? Why don't you try to get out? Why don't you

01:03:22.420 take one trip to get, just to get the family out, get in the car and go, you know, which is a sort of a,

01:03:27.360 well, maybe that's a white suburban woman question, right? But I asked it and, uh, they 0.99

01:03:32.380 said, we don't want to leave. All our friends are here. All our families are here. We want our

01:03:36.940 communities to improve. Poverty's a state of mind, Megan. Um, when the Greeks and the Irish came over 1.00

01:03:46.700 here, uh, our lives would have been different, you know, in those days. Uh, but poverty is a state

01:03:54.680 of mind. And the only way to get out of it is through education and public education in urban

01:04:00.740 areas is run by, uh, political organizations that don't respect the minority kids that are locked

01:04:09.540 into them. Look, if I were to go to a school in, in those areas, if I were going to go to a public

01:04:15.560 school in those areas, what would I see? Listlessness, um, lack of, uh, reading, you know,

01:04:26.580 uh, some of these kids and the teachers have it tough too. If a kid shows up at school, a little

01:04:33.760 boy and doesn't even know his own name, um, can't, doesn't know the colors, can't count to 10.

01:04:40.360 This is difficult for a teacher, but there are committed parents who are locked into these

01:04:47.680 communities. And I think school choice is their only way out. Um, it's the only way for them,

01:04:55.520 true school choice to find something that will help their children. And as far as the neighborhoods

01:05:02.760 that you're talking about people, you can't send your kid across the street to a park in Chicago

01:05:08.500 in some neighborhoods, in some neighborhoods, the kids are, I just had a paramedic, a friend of mine

01:05:14.860 and you know, the paramedics are the ones who keep the murders down because the urban paramedics

01:05:22.200 save lives every day in those ambulances. And, uh, I remember he was talking to, uh, he had little

01:05:31.380 children in the, in the, in the, in the living room with mom and dad, both bludgeoned, they bludgeoned

01:05:38.040 each other and the children saw it. And the, and Pat Fitzmaurice says to one of the children,

01:05:47.480 why don't you guys can go play in the park? And the father looked at him and gave him a dirty look.

01:05:52.640 And he said, my kids can't go play in the park. What are you crazy? And that's where we are.

01:06:03.020 So, I mean, the difference, the, the, the potential difference between life and death

01:06:08.320 in too many circumstances are the cops and the cops aren't respected. They've been demonized for the

01:06:15.720 better course of a year, uh, including by those in charge, like mayor Lightfoot. And,

01:06:20.800 and now in the wake of the Ella French death, this is just so telling. Um, the cops are angry and

01:06:27.320 they're expressing it in ways we haven't seen that often. She, she showed up at, was it at the

01:06:33.220 hospital, John, when they turned their backs on her? Yeah, she showed up at the hospital. She wanted,

01:06:39.040 uh, she was told by the, um, by the family, not Ella French's family, but the family of the officer,

01:06:45.980 uh, who lost his eye and it was, and they were trying to save him that, uh, they didn't want to

01:06:52.820 talk to her. The family didn't want to talk to her. I mean, she's been demonizing the police, 1.00

01:06:58.740 uh, since she got in, they didn't want to talk to her and she shows up anyway, knowing this

01:07:05.940 and they turned their backs on her. And now, uh, and no one seemed, no one was upset. And then she

01:07:13.660 lied about a ritual that, um, has been going on since, uh, the beginning of Chicago, when a police

01:07:21.280 officer is shot, the, uh, when the bot and killed when a police officer is killed in the line of duty

01:07:30.320 and the body is brought to the County morgue or we call it the Cook County medical examiner. Now,

01:07:35.860 um, police officers line up and, um, they slow roll the ambulance through the cop's salute.

01:07:47.960 And they're usually a bagpipe and a drum. And she lied about it. She said there were some groups that

01:07:57.480 wanted to hijack, uh, the proceeding. And she was said, and Ella French's parents had to get to the 0.97

01:08:06.000 morgue and we just couldn't. And she supports her first deputy who said, basically, we don't quote,

01:08:15.120 we don't have time for this shit. Cops cannot, it's not hate. They loathe her. They loathe her. 1.00

01:08:23.540 They loathe them all. And, um, it's not a good thing. And now there's a funeral coming up Thursday

01:08:32.700 for Ella French. And I think it'll be the first time in my memory. And I've only been

01:08:38.120 covering Chicago politics here from the belly of the beast for what? 600, 700 years like Methuselah.

01:08:45.220 And I've always seen mayors, um, offer something in the eulogy. And I believe that she's not going

01:08:55.880 to do it. So she tried to say, Oh, well the coroner put in place new rules thanks to COVID. And that's

01:09:06.060 why my first deputy said, we're not doing this shit. And, and referred to, you know, the passage

01:09:12.860 of the body isn't it, get it in there. Um, so that's, she's, she's, and then that turned out

01:09:19.000 that that was a lie. That was a blatant lie. She was caught in that.

01:09:22.580 She was caught in it, Megan. And, uh, it's a, here's a little bit of inside baseball,

01:09:27.600 but the coroner's office is controlled by her political rival, the boss of the party in Cook

01:09:34.240 County, Cook County board president, Tony Preckwinkle. And, uh, to think that Tony Preckwinkle

01:09:43.220 would give her cover for anything is so naive. So on another level on the inside baseball level

01:09:51.800 in Chicago, um, she's proven herself incompetent again and again and again. And I regret not that

01:09:59.240 smart. So here, here's the, here's another piece of it, John, the press, when they get in front of

01:10:05.020 her, that this is what they're concerned about with the cops turning their backs and an officer

01:10:10.920 dead and another one paralyzed is the disrespect of the office that was shown by those officers.

01:10:19.520 And this is how, this is how she spun it. Take a listen. 0.97

01:10:23.960 What about respect for the office? Not just respect for you personally. Look, I think that's

01:10:30.000 a bigger question. Um, and I, and I appreciate your point. It's not about me. We are living

01:10:38.040 in a time where people don't respect each other. So this is a larger question than what may have

01:10:44.080 happened with 10 or 15 officers on Saturday night. It's why do we think it is okay for people

01:10:51.560 to engage in such nasty, vicious talk orally or worse on social media. So the larger issue

01:11:02.560 is people have to be better humans, better human beings. And it doesn't matter if they're

01:11:08.660 police. It doesn't matter if they're an elected official or a reporter. We need to be better

01:11:14.640 humans to each other.

01:11:15.560 I'm inspired.

01:11:16.560 I'm inspired.

01:11:17.560 Yeah, I'm inspired by, um, her. She showed her example, right? When she told the pet,

01:11:25.560 the last president, uh, I have two words, two letters for you and F and a U publicly. She, uh,

01:11:34.200 attacked the police in the great Bobby rush popcorn scandal because cops who had been working 18

01:11:41.560 hour days during the riots and the looting that she didn't stop and didn't, I guess, wasn't

01:11:47.800 able to, uh, as far as her command abilities, uh, they, they crashed out in Bobby rush's office 0.94

01:11:55.680 because they were protecting it. And a couple of them had popcorn, you know, from the office

01:12:02.560 popcorn. And she had a news conference on it, condemning them. The Bobby rush and Bobby rush,

01:12:10.560 you know, you, you know, Bobby, the Congressman from Chicago, he said, uh, he was screaming,

01:12:15.600 what happened to my popcorn, my popcorn. And I were, we just, the city, the loop was destroyed,

01:12:23.360 right? This, the streets, the building, the businesses were torn down, burned in those mostly

01:12:31.620 peaceful protests. And, uh, and she's worried about the popcorn. So basically coppers,

01:12:40.280 I'm surprised it took this long for them to turn their backs on.

01:12:45.320 And now, uh, as we go into the year leading up to the midterm elections nationally, um,

01:12:52.080 there's a real question about whether this type of policy, I mean, Biden and his allies can deny it

01:12:58.920 all they want, but the squad, these far left progressives in the house, they're on tape,

01:13:04.540 defund the police. You can't deny it. It's fine. The Senate had a vote recently where,

01:13:08.400 um, one of the Republicans said, I want to add an amendment, you know, saying we're against defund

01:13:13.800 the police. And Cory Booker stood up there, a new Senator from New Jersey said, uh, great. Thank you.

01:13:18.360 This is a gift to the Democrats because they all voted, um, in favor saying we also are against

01:13:23.940 defund the police and you gave us a chance to prove it. But that some paper vote saying what in

01:13:32.360 theory are you for or against is meaningless. All these Democrats are on record. It's one of the

01:13:37.340 reasons why in the post-mortem and why the Democrats lost so many house seats in the last

01:13:41.800 election that you had the more moderate Dem saying, what are we doing? We have to stop doing

01:13:46.040 this and saying this, the American public is not for it. And you tell me whether there is a level

01:13:52.000 of disrespect for what the American people know in their guts about who's doing what to the cops

01:13:58.780 and who's responsible for these rising crime rates. Yeah. The, these are the same personalities,

01:14:05.760 you know, they're political, right? They told us that we'd win in Afghanistan too. I mean,

01:14:11.780 they'd say anything they'll say anything. And in this case, it helps them to play the race card because

01:14:19.560 they, they, they, they fortify their own base by being anti-cop and sort of a leftist Marxist attack

01:14:29.780 on authority. And then they get upset when they're called on the anarchy that they helped grow and the

01:14:38.880 people see through it. Um, the problem is Megan, that once people are so afraid, um, with,

01:14:49.560 chaos and anarchy in, in cities like Chicago, unmoored history tells us that they tend to, um, react

01:14:59.780 in a, in, you know, harshly in other ways, seek, uh, some sort of strong man to protect them. Or

01:15:09.760 we, we, we, we see now that, uh, Joe Biden, uh, who authored the crime bill in the nineties is now

01:15:19.500 apologizing for it to black lives matter. And then Democrats are now expecting people to, uh, 0.79

01:15:27.840 stand up for them and protect their homes and their lives. Because what do you want? What do people

01:15:34.520 want? They want to be able to be safe. They want their garbage picked up. They don't want their kids 1.00

01:15:40.740 shot at school. They want to be able to have a beer in their backyard without, without getting shot.

01:15:48.160 And there are people in Chicago right now, uh, who are watching television in their own closets.

01:15:56.140 There's you've, you may have done stories like this. They put old ladies, put the plywood and other 0.98

01:16:05.520 wood in closets to protect them from being shot as they watch their soaps or their programs on TV.

01:16:16.920 Don't leave me now. We got more coming up in 60 seconds.

01:16:26.140 Just this week, a 70 year old woman was shot in Chicago. She, she was out, she was driving her car

01:16:32.160 and two suspects came up. Uh, she was on her way to work and they ambushed her. They shot her through

01:16:38.900 the driver's side window. She was able to drive off a bit, but they chased her and shot her again

01:16:43.340 multiple times. 70 year old woman car was riddled with bullets. She's dead. The six and seven year old

01:16:48.860 girls hugging each other. One dead, one shot. The one year old baby shot, um, in New York,

01:16:56.140 by the way, just, just yesterday, crazy video broke out of the financial district. John, again,

01:17:02.000 this is not a high crime area. The financial districts of a wall street, a guy, 51 years old

01:17:08.380 in there taking his money out of a vestibule five 30 in the afternoon. It's not, it's not like,

01:17:11.900 you know, we went three AM and, um, there was a suspect who came in who had an ax and a hatchet

01:17:20.920 and started chopping up this man who fought for his life. Thank God lived. Um, and then as soon

01:17:28.180 as the guy sort of went down, the, the guy who'd been attacked, the guy started smashing all the

01:17:34.140 ATMs. I don't know his story. He hasn't, I guess, been caught yet, but you know, the homeless problem

01:17:40.060 grows. People who have serious mental illnesses who are just let out in the street in the name of,

01:17:44.460 you know, kindness, right. But no plan has been made for them. And then the citizenry has to deal

01:17:49.220 with deranged criminals who the system won't take care of, who break into the ATM vestibule in the

01:17:55.040 middle of the night and chop you up in the middle of the day and chop you up. There's a, there's a,

01:17:59.580 a name, uh, I know you probably remember, but, or may, but I don't know if all the audience will

01:18:06.780 Bernard gets. Yeah. The vigilante. Right. That's going to happen. I mean, there'll be some scared

01:18:15.520 little white guy, you know, with the stick on his, that is in his pocket and he'll be so terrified

01:18:24.500 by all this stuff that he'll pull it and we're going to have another, I can, you know, it's a

01:18:33.060 ritual. We have, uh, the, the phones and the, uh, the, the same suspects and the usual suspects come

01:18:41.980 out and make a, make a, the speeches and it's just bad. And people always vote with their feet.

01:18:55.460 New York has seen this Chicago scene, seeing it, Los Angeles, all the big cities are seeing it.

01:19:03.560 People vote with their feet.

01:19:04.900 Well, I hope that people show the same respect of those in charge in places like Chicago as,

01:19:12.120 as mayor Lightfoot and her deputies have shown Ella French and others like her calling her Ella

01:19:17.980 Fitzgerald, one of the mayor's top deputies, not even bothering to know her name, refusing the cops

01:19:23.520 attempt to honor her, one of their brethren with the bagpipes in that salute. It's disgusting. It's

01:19:29.920 the least, it's literally the least that they can do for these guys and gals and they, and they won't

01:19:35.180 John. I, I love your writings. I think you're a treasure and, uh, I really, really appreciate

01:19:41.120 everything you've done. And I'm so glad you're independent and totally unleashed. We'll continue

01:19:45.840 to promote the johncastnews.com as well and have you on just whenever you want to come back. I'd love

01:19:50.520 to talk to you. I'm going to buy some ads on Megan on your podcast. Sold all the best. All right.

01:19:59.260 Thank you.

01:20:04.800 Whatever you do, do not miss this show on Friday. Marcus Luttrell is here along with his brother,

01:20:11.000 Morgan. We postponed this interview. You may remember he was going to be our guest over the

01:20:15.940 July 4th weekend. And then we had the chance to get him together with his twin brother. And we

01:20:20.200 thought, Oh, we'll wait for that. That'd be great. And it just so happens that we have him now this week

01:20:25.260 of all weeks. Think of how good this interview is going to be. I haven't yet done it. We're taping

01:20:30.260 it on Thursday. It's going to air on Friday. Um, I'm already kind of emotional about it. What this guy

01:20:36.080 sacrificed, what his brother sacrificed. You've seen it in the movie and read it in his book,

01:20:43.500 lone survivor. What does he think about the dereliction of duty we've seen by our commander

01:20:50.280 in chief, by generals around him when it comes to honoring the legacy and the sacrifice made by our

01:20:57.380 guys over there. Couldn't think of a better time to have him on really, really looking forward to

01:21:02.220 talking with him and bringing it to you. You can make sure you don't miss it by subscribing to the

01:21:06.960 show that way. It'll pop up on your phone. You know, remind you, um, that we have that and go

01:21:12.000 ahead and hit download. And also please, while you're there, give us a five-star rating that helps

01:21:16.500 out the show, get more circulation and a review would be lovely to let us know what you thought

01:21:21.380 of today's interview of Ion of John Cass and the violence abroad and at home. Right. Um, love to

01:21:27.540 hear from you all. And in the meantime, we'll talk on Friday. Thanks for listening to the Megan

01:21:33.180 Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear. The Megan Kelly show is a devil may care media production

01:21:41.020 in collaboration with red seat ventures.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 18, 2021

Chaos and Violence, in Afghanistan and Chicago, with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and John Kass ｜ Ep. 148

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