The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 411 - Vacationing With The Taliban

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00:00:37.640 The good news is President Trump scrapped plans this weekend to hold secret talks with the Taliban at Camp David just days before 9-11. 0.74

00:00:46.120 The bad news is President Trump had previously made plans to negotiate with the Taliban at Camp David just days before 9-11.

00:00:53.400 We will examine foreign policy follies from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump.

00:00:58.200 Then, as partisans on the left and right jump in to attack President Trump,

00:01:02.780 as Trump gets a new primary challenger in the Republican Party,

00:01:06.060 we will agree with his credits with one caveat.

00:01:09.120 President Trump is the worst president in recent history, except for all of the other ones.

00:01:14.440 All that and more.

00:01:15.180 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:16.980 Winston Churchill said it of democracy.

00:01:26.880 He said democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other ones that have been tried.

00:01:30.940 President Trump, he is the absolute worst president we've had in recent history,

00:01:35.480 except for every single other one. 0.77

00:01:37.140 And we will get to that in one second, particularly with this Taliban blow up, 0.80

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00:03:16.180 All right, now we'll talk about less important matters like negotiations with the Taliban at Camp David,

00:03:21.720 the presidential retreat.

00:03:23.080 President Trump, we got word a couple days ago.

00:03:26.120 Actually, I think it was yesterday morning the story broke.

00:03:28.240 President Trump canceled what were secret talks planned with the Taliban just days before the 18th anniversary of 9-11.

00:03:35.980 And he does deserve credit for canceling those talks,

00:03:38.700 but he does deserve some criticism for planning the talks in the first place.

00:03:42.480 So what happened?

00:03:44.120 President Trump tweeted about this.

00:03:46.340 He explained the entire situation.

00:03:48.500 He tweeted out, quote,

00:03:49.480 Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and separately the president of Afghanistan

00:03:55.940 were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday.

00:04:00.760 They were coming to the United States tonight.

00:04:03.740 Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage,

00:04:07.880 they admitted to an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great, great soldiers and 11 other people.

00:04:14.780 I immediately canceled the meeting and called off peace negotiations.

00:04:17.760 What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?

00:04:23.420 They didn't.

00:04:24.460 They only made it worse.

00:04:25.960 If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks

00:04:29.380 and would even kill 12 innocent people,

00:04:31.640 then they probably don't have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway.

00:04:35.900 That's the key.

00:04:36.820 They probably don't have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway.

00:04:39.960 He concludes,

00:04:41.520 How many more decades are they willing to fight?

00:04:46.060 That's the question.

00:04:46.840 Now, just this tweet shows you President Trump's political acumen,

00:04:52.900 which is he is blaming a Taliban attack that killed one of our soldiers.

00:04:57.740 It just happened last week.

00:04:59.260 He's blaming that attack for calling off the peace negotiations.

00:05:03.040 The Taliban have been killing our soldiers for 20 years.

00:05:06.420 There's nothing new about this attack.

00:05:08.540 So the question is,

00:05:09.520 is President Trump responding to an attack or is he using the attack as an excuse to get out of the meetings?

00:05:14.400 I think it's the latter.

00:05:16.080 I think it's pretty clear that it's the latter.

00:05:17.800 But I think it's wise for him to do that.

00:05:20.000 It's a perfectly good way for him to get out of having these meetings.

00:05:24.240 The decision to disinvite them was a good meeting.

00:05:26.680 It shows, reportedly, a divide in the Trump administration between Mike Pompeo over at State Department and John Bolton, who is the national security advisor.

00:05:36.900 We'll get into that in a second.

00:05:38.440 But we shouldn't narrow in on why this was such a mistake in the first place, why it was such a mistake to invite them. 0.97

00:05:46.800 The Taliban are the worst people on earth. 1.00

00:05:50.520 They should all be put to death as quickly as possible, every last one of them. 1.00

00:05:55.240 The only way that I could get behind this meeting happening is if Trump invited them all into a room and then personally shivved every single one of them. 1.00

00:06:01.860 They are little devils, all of whom who should be executed by the United States. 0.99

00:06:07.180 Of all of the bad actors in the world, the Taliban are probably the most unrepentant terrorists out there. 0.99

00:06:15.120 However, they worked directly with Osama bin Laden.

00:06:18.460 They have the most direct connection of any group in the world to al-Qaeda and to the 9-11 attacks.

00:06:23.520 Most egregiously of all, these talks were scheduled just days before the anniversary of 9-11.

00:06:29.060 It's almost cartoonish how bad the timing was.

00:06:32.000 This was politically potentially a disastrous situation, even if the talks had gone well, even if they somehow got everyone in the room,

00:06:39.380 the president of Afghanistan and the Taliban and the president of the United States,

00:06:44.180 and they said, okay, we're going to stop the war in Afghanistan, we've come to this political solution, even then it looks bad.

00:06:51.680 Because you were inviting people who were responsible for 9-11 to U.S. soil, to the presidential retreat.

00:06:58.560 This is as prestigious a place as there is in the entire country, just days before 9-11.

00:07:05.240 It just looks like a victory for them.

00:07:06.840 It looks like they're gloating.

00:07:08.780 Absolutely terrible.

00:07:10.240 And by the way, the talks wouldn't have gone well.

00:07:13.080 They wouldn't have gone well, as President Trump concludes in his tweets,

00:07:15.940 because there is no evidence whatsoever that the Taliban can negotiate in good faith. 1.00

00:07:20.460 They are demons, they are devils, and they should all be wiped off of the earth. 0.99

00:07:24.180 Only God can judge, but the United States can arrange the meeting, and we have done that with the Taliban, 1.00

00:07:29.580 and we should do that with the Taliban.

00:07:31.280 They do not have any redeeming qualities.

00:07:33.500 I don't know how to put too fine a point on it.

00:07:38.160 People don't know this, though.

00:07:39.360 People don't know a lot about the Taliban.

00:07:41.080 They know a lot about ISIS.

00:07:42.420 They know a lot about Al-Qaeda.

00:07:43.880 ISIS spun off of Al-Qaeda.

00:07:45.360 Al-Qaeda was harbored by the Taliban.

00:07:47.080 But I found even in the 19 years or 18 years since the invasion of Afghanistan,

00:07:52.740 people don't really know a lot about the Taliban itself.

00:07:55.520 Who are the Taliban?

00:07:56.280 The Taliban are a terrorist group that took over Afghanistan in the mid-90s.

00:07:59.980 After they took over, everything got even worse.

00:08:03.880 You'd think things couldn't get worse in Afghanistan. 1.00

00:08:05.900 They did.

00:08:07.240 Infant mortality in Afghanistan rose to the highest level in the world.

00:08:12.280 A quarter of all Afghanis died before the age of five under the Taliban.

00:08:17.940 They committed war crimes with impunity.

00:08:20.440 They stole UN food supplies.

00:08:22.540 In just one case, they stole UN food supplies from 160,000 hungry and starving people.

00:08:28.940 Quote, four political and military weapons as a weapon.

00:08:34.860 They have run sex slave networks.

00:08:37.200 They would abduct their own people. 0.98

00:08:38.540 They would sell them into sex slaves to help prop up their regime or their pseudo regime.

00:08:44.520 They instituted strict Sharia law that flogged women for being seen with men in public who were not their own relatives.

00:08:51.120 The Taliban have accounted for 80% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in recent years.

00:08:56.500 Taliban murdered aid workers, murdered journalists.

00:08:59.700 They harbored, helped, and supported, and fought alongside Osama bin Laden before, during, and after the 9-11 attacks. 0.99

00:09:07.700 They are the worst people on earth.

00:09:12.300 Now, how do we deal with them? 0.99

00:09:14.260 Because all of that, you can say everything that's true about these little devils, the Taliban. 1.00

00:09:18.320 But the question that President Trump is trying to solve is the political question.

00:09:23.180 We've been in Afghanistan now for 18 years.

00:09:25.560 How much longer are we going to stay there?

00:09:27.040 How do we get out?

00:09:27.920 What is the resolution of this conflict?

00:09:30.960 There is a lot of misinformation, a lot of bad common sense going around.

00:09:34.360 We'll get into what it really looks like in Afghanistan, what a future looks like there, how we could ever come to some terms with the Taliban.

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00:11:26.420 So what do you do about Afghanistan?

00:11:28.360 There is a common refrain, a common canard out there, that Afghanistan is unconquerable.

00:11:35.380 You hear this on the left.

00:11:36.820 You hear it in the center.

00:11:37.760 You hear it on the right.

00:11:39.480 It's folly to go into Afghanistan.

00:11:41.440 It's unconquerable.

00:11:42.560 No one's ever conquered Afghanistan. 0.74

00:11:44.020 That's just simply not true.

00:11:45.880 That is unhistorical.

00:11:47.500 It's what happens when people don't study history for a long time.

00:11:50.700 Of course, Afghanistan is conquerable. 1.00

00:11:52.380 Many people have conquered Afghanistan over history.

00:11:55.460 The Taliban conquered Afghanistan just 25 years ago.

00:11:59.900 You certainly can conquer Afghanistan, but two, and now it's looking like three groups, 0.99

00:12:05.800 have failed to conquer Afghanistan very conspicuously.

00:12:09.500 The English, the Soviets, and probably the Americans.

00:12:14.940 The English failed to conquer Afghanistan in the 19th century.

00:12:18.540 The Soviets failed to conquer Afghanistan in the 20th century.

00:12:22.000 And the Americans, it looks like, have failed to conquer Afghanistan in the 21st century.

00:12:28.880 We didn't fail to conquer Afghanistan because it's unconquerable. 1.00

00:12:33.500 It's not like we lost a war.

00:12:35.520 We failed to conquer Afghanistan because we don't want to conquer it. 1.00

00:12:40.660 Of all those three, the only ones who really wanted to conquer it were the Soviets. 0.63

00:12:43.860 And even then, they were just fighting a proxy war in the Cold War with the Americans.

00:12:50.380 We don't want it.

00:12:51.640 We don't want Afghanistan to be the 51st state. 1.00

00:12:54.400 We don't want Puerto Rico to be the 51st state.

00:12:56.340 We might want Greenland to be the 51st state.

00:12:58.160 We'll have to see how those go.

00:12:59.280 That's the art of the deal.

00:13:00.380 If we want to invite anyone to Camp David for peace negotiations, we should probably invite the Prime Minister of Denmark so we can talk about how we're taking Greenland from them.

00:13:07.060 That's a point for another day.

00:13:08.480 We don't want Afghanistan. 1.00

00:13:10.380 We don't want to bring it in.

00:13:12.100 We don't want to build a country there.

00:13:13.400 We don't want to bring our country there. 0.99

00:13:15.180 So what do you do about it?

00:13:16.640 Because we have been in Afghanistan for a long time.

00:13:19.060 Now we recognize the head of state in Afghanistan.

00:13:21.880 His name is Ashraf Ghani.

00:13:24.860 He's the head of Afghanistan, but is he really?

00:13:26.740 The Taliban is coming back and reconquering territory.

00:13:29.560 And the Taliban sure doesn't recognize him.

00:13:32.960 So what do we do?

00:13:33.880 Certainly we should not be in direct official talks on U.S. soil with the Taliban.

00:13:38.640 It just doesn't make any sense because we don't recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

00:13:45.660 Now look, I'm all for realpolitik.

00:13:48.100 We can negotiate with anybody.

00:13:49.940 As long as it serves our interests and gets our troops home and makes us safer, we'll negotiate with anybody.

00:13:55.600 That's fine.

00:13:56.220 I'm not saying we need to play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules here.

00:13:59.660 However, statecraft and diplomacy are a very ugly thing, or they can be ugly, but it's hard to see the upside here.

00:14:06.740 What's the upside of negotiating with the Taliban on U.S. soil? 0.89

00:14:10.220 What's the upside to negotiating with the Taliban at the presidential retreat? 0.95

00:14:14.520 I guess you couldn't do it at the White House.

00:14:16.160 You'd probably see the Taliban walking down the street on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

00:14:20.300 They're walking up.

00:14:20.860 You'd probably get some press about that.

00:14:22.420 But you're going to get press even if they go to Camp David.

00:14:24.640 Again, direct negotiation with the Taliban on U.S. soil directly undermines 20 years of American war efforts.

00:14:35.560 It undercuts our actual national policy, which is to recognize the leader of Afghanistan as Ghani,

00:14:43.700 and it irritates everybody in the country. 0.99

00:14:46.800 Left, right, and center, everyone is irritated that we would have these despicable, disgusting devils, 1.00

00:14:54.920 all of whom should be killed and burned in hell, the Taliban, on U.S. soil, 1.00

00:15:00.000 days before the 18th anniversary of 9-11, in which they were complicit. 1.00

00:15:07.660 Trump realized this, and he called it off.

00:15:10.620 Good.

00:15:11.220 I'm glad to hear it.

00:15:12.140 What does this tell us about the Trump administration?

00:15:13.780 The political significance that's being reported on now, so take it with a grain of salt,

00:15:18.080 but this does ring true, is that this is a fight between the State Department and John Bolton.

00:15:24.500 It's a fight between Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who is the national security advisor.

00:15:29.540 The State Department generally has a kind of reputation for being more liberal and preferring diplomacy,

00:15:34.700 and, you know, John Bolton has a reputation for wanting to bomb everyone who's ever looked at him

00:15:40.760 across, across in the history of his life.

00:15:43.980 Pompeo reportedly wanted the talks.

00:15:45.940 Bolton did not want the talks.

00:15:47.160 I'm with Bolton on this, if the reporting is correct.

00:15:50.900 You know, I'm not against talks generally.

00:15:53.000 There was a big upside to the talks with Kim Jong-un, and I supported those talks with Kim Jong-un,

00:15:58.140 and I continue to support the Trump outreach to North Korea.

00:16:02.720 I pointed that out at the time.

00:16:03.940 But there was no upside to the Taliban talks, so it was good on the president to call them off.

00:16:10.480 You know, he wants to get out of Afghanistan.

00:16:12.760 We all want to get out of Afghanistan. 1.00

00:16:15.320 But President Trump needs to be very careful not to make the mistakes of Barack Obama,

00:16:20.420 which is being so excited about getting out of Afghanistan that you make mistakes,

00:16:24.840 and you bog us down in Afghanistan even longer.

00:16:27.120 That's what Obama did.

00:16:28.000 When you negotiate from weakness, when you give up too much leverage,

00:16:32.700 you put yourself in a more dangerous position than you were in the first place.

00:16:37.900 Fortunately, President Trump woke up to that.

00:16:40.040 It seems that he sided with John Bolton, which is a very good idea.

00:16:43.060 This is the general theme here, though.

00:16:45.660 You know, democracy is the worst form of government,

00:16:48.640 except for all of the others that have been tried.

00:16:50.380 President Trump, who we can criticize when he does wrong.

00:16:54.220 You know, we've criticized him a few times.

00:16:55.620 He made a few missteps.

00:16:56.380 You can say, you can go out there, believe the mainstream media narrative,

00:17:00.500 and you can say President Trump is the worst president in recent memory,

00:17:05.060 except for all of the other ones that we've tried.

00:17:07.880 That holds for the presidential candidates running against him in the Democratic Party.

00:17:12.200 That holds for his opponents in the Republican Party who are trying to primary him.

00:17:16.420 It's a joke, but they're still trying to do it.

00:17:18.540 And that holds even for past presidents.

00:17:21.800 Trump has made some mistakes.

00:17:23.460 Fortunately, in this case, he corrected that mistake before it actually occurred.

00:17:28.980 But overall, it seems like he's doing a pretty decent job.

00:17:32.580 You don't just need to take my word for it here.

00:17:35.200 You can even listen to James Mattis, who is Mad Dog Mattis, former Secretary of Defense,

00:17:41.340 widely admired by the country on both sides of the aisle.

00:17:44.120 Now, he is in some ways defending Trump here, and he's criticizing Barack Obama

00:17:49.440 because American policy in the Middle East is very, very complicated.

00:17:53.040 As Dr. Johnson said, all shallows are clear.

00:17:56.340 We'll see.

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00:20:26.020 Join the movement.

00:20:26.540 So don't take my word for it

00:20:29.400 that it's not just President Trump bungling the Middle East.

00:20:33.180 These problems started a long time ago.

00:20:35.460 President Trump inherited a lot of problems.

00:20:37.200 He's trying to resolve what is basically

00:20:39.060 America's longest-running conflict.

00:20:41.920 Secretary of Defense James Mattis has this new memoir out,

00:20:44.680 and it's getting played because he's attacking Obama in it.

00:20:47.460 He's not attacking President Trump.

00:20:49.460 And here's Mattis explaining why he won't attack President Trump.

00:20:52.340 I prefer having parted from the administration over matters of policy,

00:20:58.000 a disagreement, and I laid those out in the letter.

00:21:01.540 I think that what I now occupy are what I call the cheap seats.

00:21:05.620 I'm not responsible, so I can sit on the outside,

00:21:08.920 and frankly, it frustrates me sometimes to see people who speak so authoritatively

00:21:14.520 when they don't know the back-channel things going on

00:21:17.120 and when they have no responsibility for the outcome.

00:21:20.280 So the French call it a devoir de reserve, Christiane,

00:21:23.920 where you have a duty to be a quiet.

00:21:26.520 The President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense,

00:21:29.900 they have big responsibilities right now.

00:21:32.720 And I don't believe that I add anything to it

00:21:36.420 by representing contrary views or something like this.

00:21:40.580 There will come a time when it's right for me to talk about strategy and policy.

00:21:44.420 When might that happen?

00:21:45.860 I will know it when I see it.

00:21:47.320 But will it be before the next election?

00:21:49.660 I can't say that.

00:21:51.440 I love Mattis.

00:21:52.960 The guy is just so in control of himself.

00:21:55.920 Don't forget, Mattis was built up by President Trump as this great, incredible guy.

00:21:59.600 Then Trump started attacking Mattis.

00:22:01.220 He started going after him once Mattis left as Secretary of Defense.

00:22:05.000 And Mattis just is a class act.

00:22:07.220 The guy holds himself with such dignity.

00:22:10.800 There are some people in politics who hold themselves with the pretense of dignity.

00:22:14.140 They pretend to be, to have class.

00:22:18.280 Mattis really does seem like the real deal.

00:22:21.120 He says, I just don't think I should be attacking the sitting president from the cheap seats.

00:22:25.460 He says, well, when will you?

00:22:26.980 I'll know it when I see it.

00:22:28.780 Well, will it be before 2020?

00:22:31.120 I'm not at liberty to discuss that.

00:22:33.120 I'm not, I'm not going to give it to you.

00:22:35.500 Christiane Amanpour, who Drew calls Christiane Amanpour journalist on CNN.

00:22:39.780 He's just not going to give it to them.

00:22:41.620 I mean, he's exactly right not to.

00:22:44.120 So he won't hit Trump.

00:22:46.140 This is the right decision.

00:22:47.020 I think it is so despicable when former administration staffers start attacking their boss.

00:22:53.660 You know, in Dante, in Hell, he writes Dante's Inferno.

00:22:58.500 He divides up Hell between all the different sins and all the different sinners.

00:23:02.080 And then as Dante's going down through Hell on his way to Purgatory and then up to Heaven,

00:23:06.540 he's going down and he meets and he speaks to all of the different sinners.

00:23:09.780 So you have sins of the flesh, you know, early on, sins like lust, that sort of thing.

00:23:14.700 And then as you get lower, you get worse and worse sins, more evil sins, more wicked sins.

00:23:20.800 And at the very bottom, you have fraud and deception, people who are traitors at the very bottom.

00:23:28.700 And in the lowest circle of hell are those people who betray their benefactors.

00:23:34.340 They are the ones who are in the three-headed mouth of Satan being chomped down for eternity.

00:23:41.120 Judas, Brutus, and Cassius, those who betray Christ, those who betray Caesar, being chomped to death.

00:23:50.660 That is in Dante's mind, in the Christian imagination, the Christian understanding, the worst sort of sin in Hell. 0.97

00:24:00.560 That is what you see regularly in politics.

00:24:03.640 It tells you a lot about politics, that that is the main thing. 0.98

00:24:06.120 You go and you work for a guy and then you immediately leave and start trashing him and stab him in the back.

00:24:11.120 I remember this during the Bush 2 administration.

00:24:14.280 Scott McClellan was press secretary.

00:24:16.580 The minute he left, he goes out and he writes a tell-all memoir about how terrible Bush was.

00:24:20.280 And this has happened a lot in the Trump administration.

00:24:22.460 People leave and they stab him in the back.

00:24:24.500 Omarosa did that. 1.00

00:24:25.840 Anthony Scaramucci.

00:24:26.760 I actually like Anthony Scaramucci, but he did exactly the same thing.

00:24:29.520 Other people have left the administration, stabbed the guy in the back.

00:24:33.220 And Mattis is not going to do that.

00:24:34.780 Mattis is not going to debase himself to put himself in the lowest circle of Hell.

00:24:40.080 Very admirable.

00:24:42.040 He will, however, hit Barack Obama.

00:24:44.140 Because what Mattis is talking about in that interview is he does have a responsibility to give his thoughts on strategy.

00:24:50.460 This is a dignified guy.

00:24:51.820 He's spent a lot of time in the U.S. military.

00:24:54.360 He's a very learned guy.

00:24:55.680 They called him a monk warrior, I think.

00:24:57.820 He's never got married. 0.95

00:24:58.980 He would just read a lot of books and go fight and kill people.

00:25:01.180 So there is a time when he needs to give his thought on strategy, but he's not going to do it to the sitting president. 0.98

00:25:07.420 He will hit Barack Obama.

00:25:09.940 He just came out and savaged Barack Obama's handling of Iran, specifically something we didn't know about, an Iranian plot to bomb a cafe in Washington, D.C.

00:25:20.140 So here's Mattis' account of it.

00:25:24.140 He said that there was a plot backed by Iran to bomb a cafe in Washington, D.C.

00:25:30.000 And after this was foiled, Eric Holder, the attorney general, and Robert Mueller, yes, that guy, you remember Robert Mueller of the Mueller investigation, he was FBI director.

00:25:40.480 They came out, they held a press conference, and they treated it as a law enforcement matter.

00:25:45.480 Okay, we caught these criminals who tried to bomb a cafe.

00:25:48.480 They didn't treat it as a matter of statecraft, of foreign policy, even though it was backed by Iran.

00:25:53.880 And here is Mattis' account from the book.

00:25:55.840 He says, quote, had the bomb gone off, those in the restaurant and on the street would have been ripped apart, blood rushing down sewer drains.

00:26:03.540 It would have been the worst attack on us since 9-11.

00:26:07.380 I sensed that only Iran's impression of America's impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple miles of the White House. 0.51

00:26:15.640 Absent one fundamental mistake, the terrorists had engaged an undercover DEA agent in an attempt to smuggle the bomb,

00:26:22.640 the Iranians would have pulled off this devastating attack. 1.00

00:26:26.380 Had that bomb exploded, it would have changed history.

00:26:30.900 Why did the Obama administration play down this attack?

00:26:34.860 Because they were desperate for the Iran deal.

00:26:38.600 They were negotiating from a position of weakness.

00:26:42.120 They totally misjudged America's role in the world and our role in relation to our adversaries abroad.

00:26:49.820 Mattis goes on, he says, quote, in my military judgment, America had undertaken a poorly calculated long shot gamble.

00:26:59.100 He's talking about the Iran deal.

00:27:00.660 At the same time, the administration was lecturing our Arab friends that they had tried to accommodate Iran as if it were a moderate neighbor in the region

00:27:09.100 and not an enemy committed to their destruction.

00:27:12.960 That is a major, devastating mistake.

00:27:17.260 So while everybody today is going and criticizing President Trump for attempting to hold these Taliban negotiations,

00:27:24.380 by the way, I'm one of the people criticizing him for that.

00:27:27.580 Keep this in mind.

00:27:30.140 You've got to keep the context in mind.

00:27:32.340 Politics is all about context.

00:27:34.120 You're coming off the heels of a presidential administration that downplayed what could have been potentially the deadliest attack in the United States,

00:27:42.040 the most significant attack in the United States, since September 11th. 1.00

00:27:46.080 And they did that because of their own bungled, idiotic view of foreign policy. 0.99

00:27:51.780 Now, President, or rather, James Mattis goes on to defend President Trump again. 0.99

00:27:56.300 And you'll see, in just the way that Democratic strategists, different candidates are talking about the left and the right right now,

00:28:04.500 you see the context of all of this.

00:28:06.920 We are in extraordinarily trying political times abroad and with trying political times at home.

00:28:13.860 And in this, President Trump, with all his warts, I think comes out as the least bad option,

00:28:20.280 which makes him, by definition, the best option.

00:28:23.080 We'll get to that in a second.

00:28:24.200 We'll get to how politics is complicated.

00:28:26.000 We'll get to what that means for 2020.

00:28:27.980 First, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.

00:28:30.980 Head on over to dailywire.com.

00:28:34.240 What do you get?

00:28:34.680 You get me.

00:28:35.160 You get the Andrew Klavan Show.

00:28:36.100 You get the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:28:37.020 You get the Matt Walsh Show.

00:28:37.900 You get to ask questions in the mailbag.

00:28:39.600 That's coming up on Thursday.

00:28:41.120 You get Another Kingdom, which is, by the way, that's coming out pretty soon.

00:28:44.920 We're working on season three of Another Kingdom.

00:28:46.880 You get all of it.

00:28:48.780 And you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:28:50.660 Important every single day as this 2020 election goes onward.

00:28:55.000 Make sure to get that Tumblr or you will drown.

00:28:56.920 Go to dailywire.com.

00:28:57.800 We'll be right back.

00:28:58.340 You can probably hear it in my voice.

00:29:10.560 I'm a little bit under the weather today.

00:29:12.000 So it's very important for me to heat up my Leftist Tears.

00:29:14.760 This is, everyone has their own hot toddy recipe.

00:29:17.160 You know, they throw a little dash of whiskey, a little bit of honey, maybe some kind of tea or water.

00:29:20.980 For me, the secret to a really good hot toddy and the way to really clear yourself out is to add that little saline solution, which only comes, if you want the very best, in the form of Leftist Tears.

00:29:32.340 So you definitely need to get that Tumblr.

00:29:34.620 Mattis doesn't only go out and say, I'm not going to criticize Trump.

00:29:37.100 He doesn't only go out and say, I'm not going to assail the Obama administration for their idiocy, but he actually defends President Trump against some attacks that he judges unfair and that I judge unfair on MSNBC, specifically attacks that President Trump has undermined NATO since his inauguration.

00:29:54.980 In the last two and a half years, we've seen our alliances weakened in NATO, certainly in Asia and in Europe.

00:30:05.820 You know, Andrea, if you take a look at current events, you can always see the tensions because that's what grabs your attention is the tensions in those alliances.

00:30:13.920 However, right now, you see a NATO that I think we're into the fourth straight year or fifth straight year of the nations, almost all of them increasing their defense budget.

00:30:25.180 So I could say quantitatively, NATO is actually stronger today.

00:30:29.180 Now, there are political tensions.

00:30:31.220 Those tensions have always been there in NATO where the American presidents, I remember all the way back to President Clinton when I became aware of this issue.

00:30:39.640 President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, all saying the same thing President Trump is.

00:30:45.120 You've got to pay more.

00:30:46.460 The way I carried the message to NATO when I first went there as a secretary of defense was I've sat in this room and you've heard this message before.

00:30:54.420 But the American people are saying they will not care more about your children's future than you care.

00:30:59.960 You've got to pay your fair share.

00:31:02.580 Absolutely right.

00:31:03.520 And this is the key here, not just to defend Trump, though I think he has been very unfairly attacked on his handling of NATO.

00:31:08.960 He has achieved longstanding U.S. goals with regard to NATO by taking a tough line on it.

00:31:15.840 He's done everything exactly right on NATO and the attacks on his handling of NATO in particular are completely unfair.

00:31:22.620 But I actually don't, that's sort of secondary in Mattis' remarks.

00:31:26.160 What I'm interested in is he says that he's heard these kind of statements before.

00:31:30.300 He's given these kind of statements to NATO before.

00:31:33.140 Certainly since the Clinton administration we've heard this.

00:31:36.300 And that's the issue.

00:31:37.580 When it comes to foreign policy, presidents come and go and the foreign policy challenges remain the same.

00:31:42.440 And the national interests of different countries tend to remain the same.

00:31:45.940 And they tend to supersede the individual politicians and personalities who are in there.

00:31:49.800 So when it comes to Afghanistan, you can't just blame Trump.

00:31:52.900 You can't just blame Obama.

00:31:54.520 You can't just blame Bush who invaded Afghanistan.

00:31:56.220 You can't even just blame Clinton.

00:31:59.020 You can't just blame Bush one or Reagan.

00:32:01.360 These are problems that, that have spanned decades and decades and centuries and centuries.

00:32:06.440 You know, in the United States, who are we going to blame for this 18 year war we've had in Afghanistan?

00:32:11.840 Longest U.S. conflict in history just about.

00:32:15.320 Bush invaded.

00:32:16.320 Sure.

00:32:16.680 Obama said he was going to end those wars.

00:32:18.180 He didn't end those wars.

00:32:19.000 He expanded that war in Afghanistan.

00:32:20.720 Trump said he was going to end the war.

00:32:21.800 He hasn't managed to do that yet.

00:32:23.680 Clinton doesn't get off the hook though.

00:32:24.920 Bill Clinton is the one who failed to take action against Osama bin Laden, who then successfully launched an attack on September 11th,

00:32:33.880 which dragged us back into that war in Afghanistan.

00:32:35.920 Because when it comes to war, your opponents have a say too.

00:32:39.500 If Clinton or Bush had responded to the bombing of the USS Cole by, by bin Laden,

00:32:45.880 if, if, if Clinton had responded forcefully to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993,

00:32:51.060 the world might look very different today.

00:32:52.580 And our strategy in Afghanistan might look very different today as well.

00:32:57.460 So if you're going to attack a Trump on this, that's fine.

00:32:59.720 But make sure you, you give him his due and you give the correct criticism to his predecessors as well.

00:33:07.500 He may be the worst president that we've had in recent memory.

00:33:11.140 But what about all the other ones?

00:33:12.480 He's, it also, this kind of criticism that's coming in, when you look at his opponents on the left and the right,

00:33:21.260 it does seem they're quite a lot worse.

00:33:23.520 I mean, even David Axelrod, who was the chief strategist for Barack Obama, is coming out against Joe Biden.

00:33:29.620 He's coming out against the Democratic frontrunner.

00:33:31.660 He sent out a tweet over the weekend.

00:33:33.880 He said, quote,

00:33:34.940 It's one thing to have a well-earned reputation for goofy, harmless gaffes.

00:33:38.760 It's another, if you serially distort your own record, Joe Biden is in danger of creating a more damaging meme.

00:33:45.720 This was directly in response to Joe Biden lying about his, his record on the Iraq war.

00:33:51.540 Kind of like John Kerry said, I was against the war before I was for the war.

00:33:54.880 Joe Biden is now saying he never really supported the Iraq war.

00:33:58.060 The Bush administration lied to him about the Iraq war and what it was about, and he didn't really mean it.

00:34:03.680 And he's just lying.

00:34:04.520 He's lying about his support for the Iraq war.

00:34:06.620 This is what I really like about David Axelrod.

00:34:08.560 He is a really good political analyst because he's not a hack.

00:34:12.460 He was a hack for much of his career.

00:34:14.600 But then when he turned into an analyst, he really became a serious analyst.

00:34:19.200 And this is a big issue for Biden, which I've been calling for weeks and weeks now.

00:34:23.040 I said, it's not about the little lies.

00:34:25.400 It's not about the sort of things that politicians say to, to make people like them, to make them seem more sympathetic.

00:34:34.220 It's not about the glad handing.

00:34:35.700 It's not about the kisses on the forehead.

00:34:37.240 What it's about are the pathological lies.

00:34:39.800 What it's about are the serious lies.

00:34:41.620 You know, Joe Biden lied about the death of his wife and daughter, tragic death of his wife and daughter.

00:34:47.840 He baselessly smeared the other driver involved in that car accident in 1972 of being a drunk.

00:34:55.400 The police found the guy totally innocent.

00:34:58.700 The death haunted that driver until 1999 when he himself died.

00:35:01.820 And then immediately afterward, Biden smeared him as a drunk.

00:35:04.620 I mean, he's willing to tell these really deep lies. 0.94

00:35:07.140 And so goofy Uncle Joe who can't remember the details, that's one thing.

00:35:10.420 He can get past that in a campaign. 0.93

00:35:12.180 But Joe Biden, who's willing to tell all of these really serious, vicious, awful, needless lies, that's a different thing.

00:35:19.500 So you're going to run against President Trump because he has a unique relationship with the truth, let's call it.

00:35:23.960 He exaggerates his crowd sizes at his inauguration.

00:35:26.960 Okay, who cares?

00:35:29.520 If you're going to run against him on that, on the question of lying and honesty and integrity, you probably should be honest yourself.

00:35:36.320 And Joe Biden simply is not.

00:35:37.960 And David Axelrod calls it out perfectly.

00:35:39.920 You know, even the most allegedly nice, moderate, Midwestern, Christian, Democratic candidate, Pete Buttigieg, is a radical.

00:35:50.820 He's unlikable when it comes down to it compared to President Trump.

00:35:53.760 Here is Buttigieg, who only exists, his entire raison d'etre is to troll actual Christians by saying, 0.90

00:36:02.100 I'm more of a Christian than you.

00:36:04.420 Actually, Christianity is the opposite of what you think it is.

00:36:07.120 Uh-uh-uh, I'm a real Christian.

00:36:08.520 I'm not one of those Christians. 0.79

00:36:09.420 He's now defending post-birth abortion, not just abortion, not just abortion until the point of birth,

00:36:15.300 actually abortion after birth as both biblical and Christian.

00:36:19.160 Here he is on the radio show The Breakfast Club.

00:36:21.400 Now, right now, they hold everybody in line with this one kind of piece of doctrine about abortion, right,

00:36:29.780 which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally.

00:36:33.280 Then again, you know, there's a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath.

00:36:39.760 And so even that is something that we can interpret differently and take up me too.

00:36:46.340 But I think no matter where you think about the kind of cosmic question of how life begins,

00:36:51.940 most Americans can get on the board with the idea of, all right, I might draw the line here, you might draw the line there.

00:36:58.080 But the most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision.

00:37:02.080 Absolutely. And I think that if you're a man who's against abortion, you haven't gotten the wrong woman pregnant.

00:37:07.180 I mean, wife. I'm just saying, you know, I'm just saying we've had some slip ups and I've had a few.

00:37:14.040 There he is. There's the Christian candidate, Pete Buttigieg.

00:37:16.360 Pete Buttigieg is the worst kind of heretic. 0.98

00:37:20.480 Pete Buttigieg is the worst kind of anti-Christian because he just totally perverts and distorts and inverses the very gospel message. 0.93

00:37:28.920 He says, there's some language in the Bible about life having a relation to breath, which of course there is.

00:37:34.280 I mean, in the very beginning, God creates the world on his own breath, right?

00:37:37.700 And he creates the, on his breath, he creates the world.

00:37:42.800 And how does he create the world? By speaking it through the word, which is the incarnate God.

00:37:47.340 Here are some other lines just to criticize if Pete Buttigieg, or just to clarify, rather, if Pete Buttigieg is watching.

00:37:52.340 God created man in his image. In the divine image, he created him.

00:37:55.680 Male and female, he created them.

00:37:57.180 The act of creating human beings is to create them in God's image.

00:38:01.720 In Genesis, be fruitful and multiply, not be fruitful and then slaughter the baby before it's born.

00:38:07.940 I have brought forth a man with the help of the Lord.

00:38:10.560 Genesis, truly children are a gift from the Lord.

00:38:12.840 The fruit of the womb is a reward. 0.99

00:38:15.500 Doesn't sound very pro-abortion to me.

00:38:17.440 The prophet Amos condemns the Ammonites.

00:38:20.080 Quote, because they ripped open expectant mothers in Gilead,

00:38:23.260 exactly in the way that Pete Buttigieg is encouraging people to do.

00:38:27.800 In the Psalms, Psalm 139,

00:38:29.480 You knit me in my mother's womb, nor was my frame unknown to you when I was made in secret.

00:38:34.080 Psalm 22,

00:38:34.980 You have been my guide since I was first formed.

00:38:37.980 From my mother's womb, you are my God.

00:38:40.560 Until Pete Buttigieg rips me apart with forceps and a vacuum.

00:38:45.060 God, from my mother's womb, had set me apart and called me from his grace.

00:38:49.020 St. Paul writing to the Galatians.

00:38:50.920 I could go on and on and on.

00:38:52.300 I'm actually just quoting different lines compiled by Father Frank Pavone,

00:38:56.280 who's a terrific guy, head of Priests for Life.

00:38:58.780 You can just Google his article on this.

00:39:01.260 So many biblical references, but Pete Buttigieg doesn't care about that,

00:39:04.540 because he doesn't care about the gospel, 0.94

00:39:05.860 because he's a fake Christian and an anti-Christian, 1.00

00:39:08.280 the worst kind of heretic, a terrible radical, and an awful jerk, 1.00

00:39:11.580 which I have been calling for a long time. 1.00

00:39:13.500 I did a whole episode about how Pete Buttigieg is such a jerk. 0.99

00:39:16.860 These are the guys who say that they have some kind of moral credibility to criticize Trump, 0.99

00:39:21.960 because Trump has been married multiple times,

00:39:24.780 and he's slept with a lot of women, cheated on his wife.

00:39:27.040 Not defending any of those things.

00:39:28.720 Those are all terrible things.

00:39:30.340 Politics requires context, though.

00:39:31.860 Look at Pete Buttigieg.

00:39:32.740 Buttigieg, perverting the very word of God itself to justify slaughtering babies. 0.97

00:39:36.940 How absolutely despicable.

00:39:39.840 You know, he's not a member, it seems, of any sort of formally constituted church,

00:39:44.180 so he can't be excommunicated, but he certainly should be.

00:39:47.280 Buttigieg, those are the guys to the left of Trump.

00:39:49.080 Those are the nice guys to the left of Trump.

00:39:50.640 I didn't even get into the guys who are considered the actual sort of mean, crueler, radical types.

00:39:55.240 How about Trump's challengers to the right?

00:39:56.940 You know, President Trump now has.

00:39:58.240 This is big news today.

00:39:59.100 He has a new primary challenger in the Republican Party. 0.98

00:40:03.300 This one, the most ridiculous one yet. 0.96

00:40:05.480 Mark Sanford, former governor of South Carolina, 0.97

00:40:08.780 former congressman from South Carolina's 1st District,

00:40:12.060 and former lover boy who abdicated his office

00:40:15.520 so that he could go cheat on his wife with his mistress in Argentina.

00:40:18.720 Here is Mark Sanford making his announcement on Fox News Sunday.

00:40:22.080 I think we need to have a conversation on what it means to be a Republican.

00:40:25.060 I think that as a Republican Party, we have lost our way, and I'd say so on a couple of different fronts.

00:40:29.980 I'd say first and sort of the epicenter of where I'm coming from is that we have lost our way on debt and deficit and spending.

00:40:36.720 You know, one of the hallmarks of the Republican Party and the conservative movement has always been how much do we spend?

00:40:43.200 I mean, it was Milton Friedman's notion of the ultimate measure of government is how much it spends.

00:40:47.380 I think as a party, we've lost our way.

00:40:49.240 The president has called himself the king of debt, has a familiarity and comfort level with debt

00:40:54.260 that I think is ultimately leading us in the wrong direction.

00:40:57.760 We can get into those numbers, but the numbers are astounding.

00:41:00.880 Just take, for instance, as a data point, this last debt deal that adds $2 trillion of additional debt to our country

00:41:07.380 over the next 10 years, adds a third of a trillion dollars in new spending,

00:41:11.540 and really there wasn't conversation on that.

00:41:13.600 So I'd say the epicenter of where I'm coming from is we have got to have a national conversation

00:41:18.280 and a Republican conversation on where are we going.

00:41:21.620 What an unbelievably misguided announcement.

00:41:24.720 What an unbelievable, even if you're, I mean, it's so absurd that this man is running.

00:41:28.120 This man is maybe the biggest laughingstock of politicians in the country.

00:41:33.440 He's up there with Rod Blagojevich and a few other disgraced governors.

00:41:37.300 But even if he's going to do it, to roll out this campaign and basically say,

00:41:41.900 I'm running for president, vote for me because Trump spends money irresponsibly, who cares?

00:41:49.600 I mean, what he's doing here is he's running a campaign from 2010 in 2019.

00:41:54.440 2010, you had the rise of the Tea Party.

00:41:57.440 You had the debt and the deficit as central political issues.

00:42:00.680 Mitch Daniels, a guy who I tried to get to run for president, talked about the new red menace, 1.00

00:42:05.580 this one consisting of ink, how the debt was the big ticking time bomb.

00:42:09.000 I agree with that. I think it's a very important issue.

00:42:12.420 I was working in politics to try valiantly or as valiantly as we could to fix that problem

00:42:18.780 and everybody failed. All those politicians who tried to fix the debt failed.

00:42:22.740 Paul Ryan made good attempts to do it and he failed.

00:42:26.160 There is no political appetite to fix the debt and to fix the deficit.

00:42:30.120 So what do we conclude from this? To give up?

00:42:32.120 No. What I think the smarter people and the wiser observers of politics concluded is

00:42:36.380 that trying this fiscal only approach, we just talk about the debt, just talk about the deficits,

00:42:42.720 don't talk about anything else. One line that a lot of people were using at the time was social truce.

00:42:47.020 We're going to forget about the social issues for a second. We're going to put that on pause

00:42:49.800 and we're going to fix our debt and deficit. That approach is not workable. That approach is

00:42:54.280 fundamentally misguided. What we learned from that failure is that we need to fix the culture

00:42:59.820 in order to fix the fiscal situation. The pro the first problem is cultural. Andrew Breitbart called

00:43:06.880 it politics is down from culture. And what we know from Russell Kirk and many others is that politics

00:43:11.120 is down or that culture rather is down from religion. This guy, Mark Sanford and a lot of other old

00:43:16.620 guard establishment types did not get the memo and they're still running on the same tired platitudes. 0.96

00:43:21.920 The other reason that this is ridiculous. Notice I'm, I'd like to dismantle Mark Sanford's candidacy

00:43:28.620 simply on the policy arguments that he's making simply on the way that he's waging it. There's also

00:43:35.380 the character question, which is that this guy has absolutely no credibility. He's, he's running a

00:43:40.240 campaign based on responsibility, right? That's basically what he's saying. President Trump has been

00:43:45.420 irresponsible in office. So elect me and I will be more responsible. Elect me, Mark Sanford,

00:43:51.260 the guy who literally stopped showing up for work for weeks and then lied about where he was. People

00:43:56.620 said that he was on the Appalachian trail. Actually though, I, Mark Sanford went all the way to

00:44:01.520 freaking Argentina to cheat on my wife with my mistress in South America. Vote for me. Responsibility. 1.00

00:44:08.380 Sanford 2020. Are you kidding me? He is, he is cartoonishly irresponsible. One of the least

00:44:16.020 responsible politicians in recent history. Who are Trump's other challengers? Joe Walsh. Joe Walsh

00:44:20.780 is running. He's a one-term congressman. He was kind of a tea party guy. One of the most

00:44:25.860 bombastic personalities in that era of politics. He's running because Trump is too mean in his

00:44:32.100 tweets. Joe Walsh has sent far, far more offensive tweets than President Trump. Joe Walsh has been far,

00:44:38.580 far Trumpier even than Trump. And now he's running and saying, vote for me because I'm not as Trumpy as

00:44:42.900 Trump. As of five minutes ago, before that time, I was much more Trumpy. No credibility at all. And then

00:44:47.680 the other guy running is Bill Weld, who's a liberal Republican, totally liberal Northeastern

00:44:53.240 Republican, who is going nowhere. He ran as the vice presidential candidate on the libertarian ticket

00:44:57.800 in 2016. He's the other guy. These are the jokers. I get it. I get the argument when you say

00:45:02.720 President Trump has done bad things. Okay. Yeah. He's done a few things I disagree with.

00:45:09.540 Called him out for it. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we need to elect Mark Sanford instead.

00:45:13.500 What on earth are you talking about? And I don't think this is really going to matter because a

00:45:19.300 number of states are canceling primaries right now. And the anti-Trump forces, the guys trying to run

00:45:23.900 guys like Mark Sanford and Joe Walsh and Bill Weld are furious about this. Bill Kristol, whom

00:45:29.740 personally I still like, but he's really lost it on this Trump thing. He is shocked, offended,

00:45:36.780 terrified. He's comparing this to, you know, tin pot dictatorships in the banana republics. This is all

00:45:42.660 going around on Twitter because states are canceling certain primaries for the GOP. This has all

00:45:49.320 happened before. This has happened many times before. Arizona didn't hold a Democratic primary

00:45:54.200 in 2012. Why? Because Barack Obama was going to do it. 1996, Arizona didn't hold a primary in the

00:46:02.340 Democratic Party because Bill Clinton was already the president. Kansas didn't have a Democratic primary

00:46:07.760 in 96. And, uh, South Carolina, uh, didn't have a Republican primary in 1984 when Reagan was running

00:46:15.760 for reelection or in 2004 when Bush was seeking a second term. Uh, South Carolina also skipped in 96

00:46:21.560 and 2012 on the Democratic side. And in 1992, when there actually was a really serious primary challenge,

00:46:27.740 not a Mark Sanford primary challenge, like an actual one between Pat Buchanan and George H.W. Bush,

00:46:32.800 several states that year skipped the Republican primaries. Buchanan didn't whine about it.

00:46:37.480 Bush won it fair and square. This is totally normal. It's happened many times before.

00:46:42.320 All of it requires context. Even when you're talking about bringing the Taliban on vacation 0.87

00:46:47.980 with you to Camp David, which is egregious and I'm glad it didn't happen. When you're talking about

00:46:52.400 wars in Afghanistan, when you're talking about Trump's personal behavior, it's just this attitude

00:46:56.440 that we have in this country. Now we can so clearly see everyone else's faults,

00:47:02.120 but it's very difficult to see our own faults. We judge everybody else on their actions. We judge

00:47:06.760 ourselves on our intentions. We're plucking the little speck of dust out of our neighbor's eye.

00:47:10.240 Well, we have a giant plank in our own eyes. Again, just like the fiscal situation, just like

00:47:17.820 the military problems that we've had overseas and foreign policy. This is ultimately a cultural

00:47:24.220 problem. What do we want as a people? What sort of people do we want to be? You can't blame that

00:47:29.060 on your politicians. They are a reflection of you. You've got to fix that in yourselves. Can we fix

00:47:33.560 it in ourselves? That's ultimately the question that's going to be on the ballot in 2020. That's

00:47:38.160 our show. Tune in tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:47:42.160 I'll see you then.

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00:48:03.940 Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,

00:48:08.900 The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.

00:48:11.360 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner.

00:48:16.020 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis

00:48:21.640 Glover. And our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski.

00:48:27.380 Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

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The Michael Knowles Show - September 09, 2019

Ep. 411 - Vacationing With The Taliban

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