'Hannity' on Biden trying to deflect blame on Afghanistan, Middle East policies

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Newt Gingrich: Sad not a single women's group on the left is up in arms about Afghanistan

Former Speaker of the House and Former CIA Station Chief Dan Hoffman discuss images coming out of Afghanistan and the future of women in the country

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity" August 16, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. 

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Welcome to HANNITY.

And tonight, Joe Biden has completely and totally, frankly, just humiliated
the United States in the world stage, any confidence the world had in our
country is now gone. Saigon Circa 1975 steroids. Former defense secretary
and CIA director, Leon Panetta, rightly calling it -- yeah, Biden's Bay of
Pigs.

And thanks to the ill-fated actions of our derelict, low-functioning
president, if you want to even say that, that's somewhat charitable -- the
absolute worst case scenario has been playing out before our eyes. Biden
ignoring the advice and the counsel of his top U.S. military commanders,
they wanted the slow evacuation of U.S. troops based on conditions on the
ground.

He ignored the warnings from our intel on the ground, and now, Afghanistan
has fallen to the Islamic extremists, the Taliban, in record time Kabul,
oh, they just said last week, oh, it will be 90 days -- the earliest that
they'll ever take over Kabul. It was overrun in a matter of hours.

Taliban fighters, they're now in control of a massive stockpile, guess
what, of Joe Biden U.S. taxpayer paid for weapons, ammo, vehicles, other
supplies abandoned during Biden's hasty retreat. He wasn't even smart
enough to take our munitions out.

Terrorists from al Qaeda and ISIS, they were freed from multiple prisons
all across this country. They soon will be plotting and planning their
future terrorist attacks on all of the U.S. and the rest of the world
fomenting terror. The American flag lowered over our embassy beyond
humiliating, as diplomats hastily were evacuated by helicopter to the
airport, the very thing Biden said wouldn't happen.

This viewer warning, what you're about to see is incredibly graphic, but
take a look at this horrific video. Earlier today, thousands of desperate
Afghan citizens fleeing certain death at the hands of the Taliban now
rushing to the tarmac of the airport trying to cling to a departing C-17
military plane some crushed under the wheels planes and others fell from
the plane mid-air, you know, during its ascent, hoping they might be able
to hang on and get out of there. Dozens of others desperately attempting to
board any and all commercial planes parked on the runway, at least seven
people died in the chaos.

And tonight, as we speak there are approximately ten thousand Americans
that are still at Kabul's international airport desperately attempting to
flee the country.

Joe, what are you doing? Six thousand U.S. soldiers now are in the process
of re-entering Afghanistan taken over by the Taliban to try to now secure
the airport to try and save Americans.

Without a doubt, a complete total failure of leadership, planning and
execution, and true to form as the disaster unfolded over the weekend, Joe
Biden was nowhere to be found -- aside from this bizarre photo showing Joe
all alone at Camp David crouching over an empty table during a Zoom call
and we got nothing from Biden all weekend while this was unfolding in real
time.

His press secretary wasn't available to circle back on anything. Jen Paki,
she was on vacation. If you wrote her, you got an auto reply from her email
account reading, I will be out of the office from August the 25th to August
the 22nd. Hope you're having a great vacation.

The vice president, Kamala Harris, was also MIA.

But today, well, finally, Joe Biden comes out of hiding for a very brief,
scripted speech by his staff before headed back to vacation where he blamed
everyone for this catastrophe but himself, but says the buck stops with him
-- but I blame him, him, him and him. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When I came into office, I
inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. The
choice I had to make as your president was either to follow through on that
agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban. So what's
happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The
Afghan military collapsed, sometime without trying to fight.

I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghans
civilians sooner. Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to
leave earlier.

I am president of the United States of America and the buck stops with me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: But I blame everybody else. And by the way, did he have any
problem overturning let's see President Trump's secure border wall, stay in
Mexico? Did he stop building the wall? Trump that stopped catch and release
now is Joe Biden's process and release, in the middle of a pandemic,
without vaccine passports, vaccine mandates, mask mandates and just send
people all over the country?

Same with energy independence -- yeah, he took us away from that too, has
no problem changing policies on everything.

To recap, Biden blamed the Afghan people, the Afghan military, the Afghan
president, the Afghan government and President Trump when all else fails
because laughably claiming that the buck stops with him. Pretty spineless
and pretty cowardly.

And, of course, Biden took zero questions following those remarks. I'm sure
he was too exhausted too much work spent a whole minutes and immediately
returned to his vacation at Camp David for more R and R and ice cream with
sprinkles on it.

But let's be honest, this speech would not have happened today if not for
the immense blowback from pretty much anyone with half a brain. Even Joe's
protectors and the media mob could not ignore the full disaster that this
is. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How does the Biden administration miscalculate this
intelligence so gravely?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a fiasco. This is -- you know, a big part of
life is execution or implementation and this is just malpractice. This has
just been a fiasco by any and every measure.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is not just about the overall idea of leaving
Afghanistan. This is about leaving hastily and ineptly.

Secretary Blinken, how did President Biden get this so wrong?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Joe Biden is going to be the face of the failure of the
withdrawal friends.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Friends and foes alike are calling this withdrawal a
fiasco, a debacle. And it is one that apparently the administration did not
fully appreciate or see coming.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no question the White House was wrong about the
length of time they had. Wrong about the strength of the Afghan military,
wrong about the reach of the Taliban.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In so many ways, this is completely on President
Biden.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: To sum up, Joe Biden did everything wrong. Remember, just one
month ago, Biden was assuring us that a Taliban takeover was not inevitable
at all because they had such a strong army and they had an air force and
everything and there was well-trained, some of the best trained soldiers in
the entire world, and only 75,000 Taliban.

No, that's not going to happen. Under no -- we won't have to be, you know,
taking people out in helicopters at the last minute. We won't have people
racing out of there. Wrong again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Is the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?

BIDEN: No, it is not.

REPORTER: Why?

BIDEN: Because you have the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped, as
well as equipped as any army in the world, and an air force, against
something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable. There's going to be no
circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy
in the -- of the United States from Afghanistan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Three hundred thousand well-equipped and they have an Air Force.
I mean, as good as any military on the base of the earth.

The exact opposite happened, Joe. These are the images of people being
lifted off the roof of our embassy over the weekend. When you said it
wouldn't happen -- yeah, you're Saigon, your Bay of Pigs.

And it gets worse. In June, Biden's secretary of state, this guy's a total
idiot, Tony Blinken, the guy that sucked up to China and took lectures on
human rights from them, as the Chinese are now threatening our military
bases day in and day out, they don't say a word. Well, he proclaimed that a
quick Taliban takeover was not possible. Yes, it was, don't we know that
now?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: One, we're not withdrawing. We're
staying. The embassy is staying. Our programs are staying and whatever
happens in Afghanistan, if there is a significant deterioration in
security, that could well happen. We've discussed this before. I don't
think it's going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.

So I wouldn't necessarily equate the departure of our forces in July,
August or by early September with some kind of immediate deterioration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Number one, you lied. Number two, people will die. Number three,
you arm the Taliban. And you need to be fired, number four.

Again the exact opposite happened. Now many are calling Biden's ill plan
retreat worse than Saigon. The Biden administration is actually begging the
Taliban - please, terrorists please? Please allow Americans to safely leave
the country two decades after 9/11.

Make no mistake: this is about so much more than just Afghanistan. The
world is watching our allies and enemies alike. They are witnessing Joe
Biden's pathetic weakness on the world stage it is humiliating and
embarrassing for this country.

Now, one of China's top newspapers, they're predicting that America will
abandon Taiwan, just like they did Afghanistan and now openly planning a
total reunification.

Let me interpret that for you, Joe, that means a takeover of Taiwan. And
meanwhile, Russia doesn't fear us either with all their cyber attacks.

They don't respect us as well, and they're now supplying all the energy for
all our Western European allies because you let it happen and you granted
him a waiver while simultaneously firing American Keystone XL pipeline
workers. Great job, Joe.

And after Joe gifted them with the new pipeline, well, the U.S. has now
endured a never-ending stream of Russian cyber attacks. The -- in Iran, we
have the mullahs now continuing to enrich uranium at an accelerated pace.
And, of course, Joe had the South Koreans give Iran $7 billion even after
Joe attempted to bribe them with more international currency.

In Afghanistan, we now have -- al Qaeda's safe haven is back. Biden's
steadily destroying America's standing on the world stage and now Americans
everywhere are left safe and less secure as they plot plan and scheme their
next 9/11 attack on America.

In his book, Obama's secretary of defense, Robert Gates, wrote that Biden
had been wrong on nearly every single major foreign policy and national
security issue over the past four decades. Remember, he didn't want to take
out bin Laden. And according to "Politico", Biden's former boss, President
Obama, even expressed a similar level of concern, telling a fellow
Democrat, quote, don't underestimate Joe's ability to bleep things up.

This is the difference, by the way, between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. For
all the snowflakes out there that got so -- oh, they got the vapors every
time Donald Trump set out a mean tweet and everything. Well, they feared
Trump. The world feared Trump.

When Donald Trump gave a threat, they believed him. Biden, they know, is
weak and not running the show. The world sees it. They're not influenced by
America's media mob and propaganda outlets.

America and the world deserves better. The world needs a strong America.
Sadly, under our Biden, I fear this is only the beginning and it's only
going to get worse.

Here with the full report, FOX News contributor, investigative journalist,
she has spent a lot of time there in Afghanistan, Sara Carter.

You've been working the phones now for three straight days. You've been
talking to key people that were providing very important intelligence and
interpreters to our troops on the ground the whole time. Their lives are
now in immediate danger. What's the status?

SARA CARTER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Their lives -- yeah, Sean, their lives
are in peril right now. I can't begin to stress to the American people and
to the viewers the terror that is reaping through Kabul right now. I've
been on the phone for the past three days with my friends I consider them
friends. There are some of the interpreters that worked with our troops on
the ground in Afghanistan.

These are the people that stood by our troops, men like my husband who was
wounded in Afghanistan in and lost his eyesight. They stood by them, they
worked with them and they were promised that they would be brought back to
the United States if something ever happened.

Now, the Taliban, according to my sources, is walking door to door, pulling
people out of homes. They actually have a mass lists and I know that some
people are already on these lists that they are searching for. People in
the United States are actually scrambling trying to get funding raised so
that they can move some of these people outside of Afghanistan if the U.S.
is incapable of doing so.

Kabul itself is falling apart. Kandahar has already fallen apart. People
that are in Kandahar and other provinces throughout Afghanistan can't even
make their way to Kabul. I've been told tonight that the airport is being
secured.

It was unbelievable for so many people in our military to watch those
runways and to see how insecure the airport was and for ten thousand
Americans, their lives are in peril as well because we don't know which
direction the Taliban is going to take.

Mullah Baradar, he spoke today. He's the head of the Taliban and said it
was so quick, they were able to enter Kabul without even a fight that he
himself couldn't even believe it.

I want you to listen to this phone conversation with one of my sources. I'm
going to keep their names out of this for fear that their lives are already
in danger. It could be in peril. But listen to this conversation we had
when the Taliban first entered.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

SOURCE: Taliban is coming here. All of children, woman, all of (INAUDIBLE)
to Pakistan with (INAUDIBLE) Taliban. Children is killed, me killed. I
don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARTER: Sean, he is terrified that his children will be killed. There are
people there with little girls, young girls, they're afraid that al Qaeda
is going to take them for their wives.

This is a terrible situation. Biden needs to stand on principle. President
Biden needs to get these interpreters out of there. They have to believe in
our word or they won't believe in us again -- Sean.

HANNITY: All right. Sara Carter, thank you for that report.

Now, let's turn to some remarks from former defense secretary and CIA
director, Leon Panetta, hardly a conservative, compared the situation in
Afghanistan to the Bay of Pigs. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This moment is what for Joe Biden, President Biden?

LEON PANETTA, FORMER U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: You know, in many ways, I
think of John Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs. You know, it unfolded quickly
and the president thought that everything would be fine and that was not
the case. But President Kennedy took responsibility for what took place and
I strongly recommend to President Biden that he take responsibility, admit
the mistakes that were made.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Joining us now with reaction, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North.

You spent a lot of time on the ground, by the way, in Vietnam and in
Afghanistan. I can only imagine what military families are feeling tonight
-- those that served multiple tours. Those that lost loved ones those that
came home with extensive permanent injuries.

Your take on all of this?

LT. COL. OLIVER NORTH (RET), CO-AUTHOR "WE DIDN'T FIGHT FOR SOCIALISM": 
Well, this is Biden's biggest blunder. It's his Saigon moment. Since 2001 -
- since you're talking about those who served there, more than 780,000 U.S.
troops have been deployed to Afghanistan, more than 2,300 died and nearly
20,600 were wounded and we're still counting.

There's more than 50,000 Afghan military and security personnel who've been
killed since October 2001.

Biden saying they didn't fight, he's dead wrong. This war has cost the
United States more than a trillion dollars and ending America's longest war
is the right thing to do. But doing the right thing the wrong way can
result in the kinds of disaster we see being played out right now.

In his speech today, he said that the goal 20 years ago is counter-
terrorism and he's proud to have opposed the Bush and Obama surges. He
claimed that he's going to stand by his decision that the buck stops here,
plagiarizing Harry Truman.

Over the horizon capabilities he says with air power can take care of
things in counterterrorism, dead wrong. There's no search and rescue left
for a downed pilot in Afghanistan or many of the other countries where
we're doing those kinds of operations. God help those pilots.

This is unfolded he said faster than we expected. Think carefully about
what that means, Sean. It means they expected this kind of thing to happen
eventually just not as fast, and he refused to take the very sage advice
from the Pentagon and the CIA don't do it this way. The Afghan military was
supposedly 300,000 well-equipped, not so. They started losing troops when
he set a withdrawal date, and the Taliban does not have an air force,
neither of course does the Afghan military because that air force has both
fled and it's been grounded because they pulled out the very first things
to go with the U.S. bases that's where they were maintaining those aircraft
from.

So he says it's wrong to order American troops to fight if Afghan troops
won't fight they did fight until he announced the date of withdrawal, which
should have been based on conditions on the ground, not date driven.

This whole thing is a catastrophe of his making.

HANNITY: All right. Colonel North, appreciate you. Thank you, sir, and all
your service.

And now, former CIA station chief, Dan Hoffman, former speaker of the
House, Newt Gingrich, both FOX News contributors.

Mr. Speaker, there is a clear distinction. Ollie North touched on it. The
Trump plan was based -- going to be based on conditions on the ground,
factor number one. Factor number two is Donald Trump was believed if Donald
Trump made a threat they believed it because he had a track record, while
ISIS grew under Biden and Obama, ISIS was systematically destroyed and
defeated under Donald Trump. He said it, he did it and the Taliban knew
damn well what would happen if in fact they didn't abide by any agreement
that went on. They wouldn't have tried this under Trump would be my
argument.

Your thoughts?

NEWT GINGRICH, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, look, I mean, first of all, I
don't know that Joe Biden has threatened anybody with anything so there's
no way of knowing the Biden world view seems to be attack your allies,
ignore your enemies, pretend that bad things aren't happening.

I mean, I watched a speech this afternoon, and I thought, if you -- for
most people, if you took what you were seeing live coming out of
Afghanistan, the crowds, the fear, the takeover by the Taliban and then you
looked at this speech by this guy who was clearly totally out of it, he has
no idea what's going on and his number one goal in that speech was to blame
anybody else.

He said, you know, the buck stops here, he didn't mean that. The buck
stopped with the Afghan army. The buck stopped with Donald Trump. The buck
stops somewhere else.

But the fact is this is a major American defeat. It's going to have huge
consequences. As you pointed out earlier, it's going to embolden the
Chinese, whether it's in Taiwan or the South China Sea or frankly they're
going to become allies of the Taliban, because they want the minerals in
which northern Afghanistan is enormously rich and they're going to be quite
happy. They don't care what the Taliban does to women. They just want the
minerals.

HANNITY: As recently as last Thursday, Dan Hoffman, and you worked all
these years in the intelligence community, they were telling us -- oh, at
best they didn't they wouldn't make it to Kabul for another days at least.

On every level, how could they have been so wrong? How could Joe Biden just
a couple of weeks ago be saying, oh, there's no -- it'll never happen. The
Taliban will never be able to get back in power, and yet now, they -- now,
it is the what, you know, emirates of Afghanistan, here we go.

DAN HOFFMAN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I mean -- 

HANNITY: Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan.

HOFFMAN: -- it's aspirational, wishful -- 

HANNITY: Yeah.

HOFFMAN: Yeah, it's aspirational wishful foreign policy, just as the
administration was arguing that if the Taliban wanted to receive
international recognition and foreign aid, that they wouldn't attempt to
take over the country by force. Well, that ignored the reality that China
and Russia -- not to mention Iran and Pakistan -- are going to support the
Taliban.

We -- our greatest ally in that region was the former government of
Afghanistan and what really concerns me going forward is that we used to
own the battle space, and we had a sizable intelligence community
footprint. So when we served our mission to find and fix those terrorists
so we could detect and preempt threats, we had the kinetic capability to
preempt them before they were visited on our shores. We don't have that
anymore and the Taliban controls the country.

So what I wanted to hear today and what I hope we hear soon from the
obvious administration is, what's the plan to deal with those threats?
We're a few weeks out from the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and irony of
ironies we are at greater risk now from Afghanistan than we ever have been
before.

HANNITY: Mr. Speaker, we got Americans there and we're not in control of
that country or that airport. How are they going to get those Americans
home?

GINGRICH: Well, I think they'll mostly gradually get out of there. But
it's very disturbing that apparently administration announced yesterday,
Americans wouldn't be automatically given any kind of priority, which is
the opposite of the policy we've always had up until now.

But, you know, I think there's a deeper thing here. The Taliban has been
around for a long time. They've had a set of goals. They are a religious
fanatic group. They're going -- what's going to happen to women and
President George W. Bush was exactly right today to say that the greatest
thing he fears is what's going to happen to young girls and to women.

And as you may remember when Callista was the ambassador of the Vatican,
she hosted a conference on religious liberty. We had a young woman from
Iraq who had been captured by ISIS and had been basically passed around as
a slave. That's the kind of stuff we're going to see in Afghanistan and
it's sad, that not a single women's group on the left is up in arms over
what's about to happen.

HANNITY: We're going to pick up on that on the other side of this.

Mr. Speaker, thank you. Dan Hoffman, thank you.

Speaking of which, the Taliban taking power in Afghanistan, China getting
ready to capitalize, Senator Marco Rubio has reaction.

And women couldn't work or go to school under the Taliban's last regime,
what is their future going forward? Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: Now tonight, America's power and America's might is in retreat
because not only is Joe Biden projecting nothing but weakness to our
enemies, but he's projecting weakness to our allies as well, because
according to justthenews.com. China's mouthpiece newspaper, that's the
communist Chinese, now suggesting that the U.S. will, in fact, abandon
Taiwan after the Afghan collapse. I don't disagree with them, sadly. How
long will it be before China capitalizes on this clear American weakness
and the lack of American resolve and a cognitively, you know, pathetic
president?

Sadly, I think the Chinese have zero fear about taking over Taiwan with Joe
Biden as president. Remember, our foreign adversaries, they're not exactly
influenced by the media mob and big tech mob. They know that Biden is not
up to this job. They know he's a cognitive mess.

He's failing on policy, failing on facts, failing to even articulate a
coherent vision on keeping America safe and secure, and he's too busy to
get his ass out of the chair and get back to work this weekend or stay at
work today.

Here with reaction, Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

You're on the intel community, Senator. I read -- I went back and looked at
a lot of your tweets. You had -- you warned them this would fail. You told
them exactly what would happen.

They ignored everything that you told them, and others. And the next step
is you predict this will now once again be a safe haven for groups like al
Qaeda moving forward.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): Yeah, Sean, not just did I tell them, but it was
a bipartisan warning, okay? You look at the intelligence, you look at
everything before us, it was clear that not only it was the worst case
scenario out there, it was the likeliest outcome that was going to happen,
and we kept insisting, what is the plan of this happens? What is the plan?

And they arrogantly and they smugly ignored it. They ignored everyone who
was warning them because they're the experts, they know everything, and now
we've seen the consequences.

There are two things now to keep in mind. Number one is Joe Biden was
elected promising competence, the return on normalcy, the return of
expertise to foreign policy, and we see that they can't even execute on
something like this and ignore the people who know something about it.

That does encourage people like China -- countries like China and other
adversaries not just to go out and try to undermine confidence in America,
but actually test America and think they can get away with it.

And the other is something that the Pentagon's already saying and we've
already been saying for close to nine months, the biggest problem here is
going to be now that al Qaeda is coming back to Afghanistan, let there be
no doubt. They are coming back. They will reconstitute. They will pose a
threat again and this administration has no plan whatsoever to prevent that
from happening.

HANNITY: China's in -- sorry, Russia is involved in cyber attacks against
this country, then they get a waiver for a pipeline and they get a summit
with Joe Biden.

China is threatening our military bases. They're threatening Japan's
military bases. They're threatening to take over an independent sovereign
country Taiwan. They're calling it reunification, and they're lecturing
America on human rights in Anchorage and our ever pathetically weak
secretary of state is allowing them to do so with no pushback.

So, my question is, why wouldn't the Chinese think that they can take or
reunify their term with Taiwan?

RUBIO: Foreign policy is a very tough business and a lot of it is not made
-- I know it's not made in the parlors of the capitals of the cities. It's
not made in these think tanks. It's not made by the commentary class.

It is hard-nosed nation-states making a decision, what can we get away
with, and if we do this, this -- what's going to happen to us?

And right now, with Joe Biden in the White House, our adversaries are going
to conclude that there are things they can get away with and they can do
because this White House is not strong, they're not prepared, they're not
even competent and I fear what that means. There's a big, big problem.

HANNITY: Isn't it -- it wasn't a difference, we're going to compare. I
know some people were so offended and you know their daily outrage at
Donald Trump's tweeting. But Donald Trump was able to get trade deals that
nobody thought possible because everybody believed that a trade war would
come and that he would follow through.

Our enemies knew and, for example, look at ISIS he defeated the caliphate.
You know, Biden Obama weren't capable of dealing with any such threat. They
don't seem to have -- there's no belief that Joe Biden will lift a finger
to stop anything here, which means these nations, their geopolitical,
geographical ambitions are going to be pursued and likely, they will be
successful.

RUBIO: Yeah, look, the war in Afghanistan had to come to a conclusion.
This couldn't go on forever, but it had to be done the right way. Not this
way. And what this way reveals is you can get away with things with this
administration and they're not going to take it seriously, they're not
going to know what to do about it.

And I look back at the Soleimani strike, and it was widely condemned, it
was called murder and execution. All kinds of people attacking President
Trump for doing it. I assure you, I assure you, a hundred percent, I know
for a fact that it impacted the psychology of the Iranian regime, and of
the group that Soleimani headed. It had an impact on them.

HANNITY: But they feared Trump. They feared him and they believed he was
capable of following through on his threats. That's number one and --

RUBIO: Well, and unfortunately, that's exactly what a lot about foreign
policy is all about is what do your adversaries believe they can get away
with. Not what you're saying, not what you're writing, what do they think
you will do? And the Soleimani strike sent the message. It was important to
do.

The guy was a smug guy that would walk around, fly around with impunity. He
thought he was untouchable until he wasn't. And it had an impact.

There's no fear of that happening under Joe Biden, none.

HANNITY: But the Trump plan was based on conditions on the ground and a
genuine fear that like Donald Trump wiped out the caliphate, that they
would be -- the Taliban would be wiped out similarly if they dare to try
this if Donald Trump was president. This didn't happen on Trump's watch.
This happened on Biden's watch, while Biden was on vacation and couldn't
bother to even take time to deal with it.

RUBIO: Because they operated under assumptions that were completely
ridiculous. The assumption was -- well, what if the Afghans stand up and
fight and really push back. If you make those assumptions -- yeah, they
could have held on for another six months or a year, but all the
indications were that as soon as the U.S. announced, they were leaving,
police officers would abandon post, the regular armed forces would abandon
post, and leaders would abandon the country.

That is exactly what happened. It's what they were told. That's what they
were warned what happened. They didn't care, and now, we see the
consequences of it.

HANNITY: All right. Senator, thank you for being with us.

What are the consequences of the Taliban -- the take over of Afghanistan,
what will it mean for women in that country because, previously, it meant
women couldn't go to work or to school. They were told how to dress. They
were told how to conduct themselves and, yes, many young women were taken
as child brides. Is that coming back?

Lara Logan, Lara Trump, they weigh in next.

And also, a programming announcement you don't want to miss, straight
ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: Also, tonight, Afghan women, they fear a return to the dark days
amid the Taliban takeover and Joe Biden's failures. According to reports,
militants now releasing violent prisoners, taking girls out of school,
women across the country are afraid to go outside for fear of abuse,
attack, even rape.

And the first female mayor in Afghanistan says she is a sitting duck and is
just waiting for the Taliban to come and kill her. Remember under the
Taliban's rule in the past, girls were prevented from going to school,
prevented from appearing in public without being fully covered, meaning
their face and having a male relative with them or going to work.

There are also restrictions on what health care they could receive, what
types of transportation they could take and they were severely limited on
when and where and if they could even work and were even subjected to
forced marriages abuse and rape and those who broke the rules -- well, they
face public flogging and even execution.

Here with reaction, FOX News contributor Lara Trump, along with FOX Nation
host Lara Logan, her show "Lara Logan Has No Agenda: 21st Century Terrorism
Revealed" airs at 10:00 p.m. right here on Sunday on the FOX News Channel
and on foxnation.com

Well, Lara Trump, I'll start with you. We know what life was like for women
under the Taliban last time. Why would we expect any different here?

LARA TRUMP, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I don't think we should. I think
it's going to be a horrible situation for women and for girls in
Afghanistan going forward now. You just detailed some of the horrific
things that happened in the past. Women were not able to be educated. They
were not able to work. They had to be fully clothed, only their eyes being
able to be seen. On public, they had to have a male escort and if not, then
they were publicly beaten or executed.

I saw a video earlier, Sean, of a young woman, she posted it on social
media from Afghanistan hysterically crying. I think she was 12 or 13 years
old saying, I know what awaits me, and I am terrified for my future.

So I'd like to know where are all the Me Too folks, where are all the
Hollywood elites, all the liberals who cry out and say that they support
women, they're for women's rights. This is a disgusting abuse of women's
rights that we are seeing happen take place before our very eyes and one
person holds -- is the reason that this is happening right now. It is
President Joe Biden.

It is shameful what is happening over in Afghanistan and probably, sadly,
what is to come for these women.

HANNITY: Lara Logan, you've been in many a war zone. The difference I see
is that the Taliban, they feared Trump and they believe Trump. They believe
what he said he would do. They watched him wipe out the caliphate here.

You know what life is like for women in the past under Taliban rule. Am I
wrong in my descriptions in any way?

LARA LOGAN, FOX NATION HOST: No, you're not wrong in your description in
any way, but you know, Trump fell into the trap. He was so much under siege
that his very first national security announcement, you know, on the
Afghan-Pakistan region was the first of its kind, to point the finger at
Pakistan and actually detail action that they were going to take.

But it was never enacted because that administration was prevented from
functioning, you know, from within. It was constantly under attack and
being undermined.

But, you know, Sean, what I have learned something quite significant
tonight that is being left out of the narrative here as the Biden
administration goes down this path, I was very shocked today when I heard
Biden actually say these words in his press conference. He said the Afghan
political leaders gave up and fled the country.

And I couldn't believe it because I have been in touch with the vice
president of Afghanistan and I know that days ago, he left the capital
Kabul and went to the Panjshir Valley where he joined the son of Ahmed Shah
Masood the very famous northern alliance commander and they are part of a
resistance. They haven't surrendered. They haven't given up.

And if you've been hearing the reports today about people going door to
door at the Taliban hunting down the Afghan commandos and wondering what
happened to the Afghan special operations forces and, you know, all the
stories about everything collapsing -- well, many of them I am told are in
the Panjshir Valley as part of the resistance.

A lot of them hid. A lot of them hid their equipment. Many of them fought
their way there some died along the way and they are dug into the Panjshir
Valley where they plan to fight.

They told me this evening when I was talking to them that the resistance is
very strong, the morale is strong and that they will never bow to tyranny
or terrorism that is backed by Pakistan and they will not dishonor the tens
of thousands of their colleagues who died fighting to defend the Afghan
republic which is something that they believe in.

And, you know, so it's really quite shocking that the Biden administration
is pushing these ideas that no one in Afghanistan would fight and also the
idea that, you know, Americans are doing the Afghans a favor.

HANNITY: But he said -- but Joe Biden was asked directly and he said no
it's one of the best equipped and prepared armies on the face of the earth.
They got 300,000 fighters. They got an air force, that this will never
happen. What we saw unfold here, even as late as last week, they were
saying, well, no, no, the earliest they could even get close to Kabul you
know three, four or five months down the road.

How could they be that wrong?

LOGAN: Well, you know, I will tell you I was speaking to people who were
in Kabul at the time. On the Afghan side, on the intelligence side, on the
American side, active duty people and retired people, contractors and
everybody universally said that what you're looking at now is what would
happen, except for one or two, you know, who were buried deep in trying to
salvage this.

And why? Because the Biden administration -- you know, going back to Obama
do you remember when Obama told the Taliban and everyone in the rest of the
world that the U.S. was leaving, it was done it was over and you know the
U.S. was gone. And so, it was really never -- it was just a question of
time from that moment on.

Plus, they told the Taliban the withdrawal. They told them what they were
doing, where they were. I mean, there were many signs -- I don't believe
for a second that U.S. intelligence didn't know that she was coming. I
think that all of that is fundamentally dishonest.

HANNITY: The Senate Intel told them everything. Last word, Lara Trump?

L. TRUMP: I just think it's a sad day for America, an embarrassing day for
America. Robert Gates, the Obama-Biden defense secretary, told us a long
time ago, Joe Biden had been on the wrong side of every foreign policy
decision he had ever made. We warned people this would happen and I take no
pleasure in saying this. We told you so. What a sad day for really the
entire world.

HANNITY: All right. Thank you both. Lara Logan, Lara Trump, thank you.

Coming up, we'll explain how Republicans -- they want answers after this
disastrous withdrawal.

Plus, we have an important big programming announcement. That is coming up,
straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: Now, Republicans tonight, they want answers for how the Biden
administration could have gotten this so wrong and embarrassed our great
country so badly and what it means for the future.

And just breaking moments ago, Vice President Kamala Harris, oh, she
finally woke up from a weekend nap, tweeting, quote: For two decades, our
courageous service members put their lives on the line in Afghanistan. We
will always be grateful and proud. Ending U.S. military involvement in
Afghanistan is the right decision.

Here with reaction, Republican Congressman Michael McCaul and Michael
Waltz, who himself served in Afghanistan.

Okay, Michael Waltz, the only problem is nobody -- nobody wants these
never-ending wars. There's a right way and a wrong way to get out. One
right way is not to leave your munitions, not to leave, you know,
multimillion dollar Humvees all over the place and other military caches,
et cetera. And it would have been smart to listen to our own intel
committees that told them it would happen if they did it this way.

REP. MICHAEL WALTZ (R-FL): Yeah, that's right, Sean. This is one of the
greatest disasters in modern American history. This is a disaster on
humanitarian grounds for women and minorities. It's a disaster for our
credibility.

Can you imagine what people in Taiwan or Ukraine are thinking right now
watching this unfold?

And the biggest thing, Sean, it's a disaster for our counterterrorism.
America is less safe. Al Qaeda 3.0 will come roaring back. Al Qaeda and the
Taliban are absolutely married at the hip.

But this time when we go back in, the Taliban are going to be better armed
with taxpayer-funded equipment. We have no bases in the region and we have
no local allies because they've all been hunted down.

I want to see resignations. Blinken and Austin and Biden all presided over
the reckless withdrawal from Iraq that led to the rise of the ISIS
caliphate and attacks all over the United States.

But here's the thing, Sean, I'm not going to wait for another 9/11 or Pulse
nightclub. We all remember Charlie Wilson's war. We need to take a page out
of his playbook. Congress had to force Biden to take care of our
interpreters.

We need to force him to support pockets of resistance. Lara is right. They
exist. I've been in touch with them -- that are willing to continue the
fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda.

We can't wait for another 9/11 as we roll into the 20th anniversary of
9/11/2001.

And, Congressman McCaul, I -- we have 10,000 Americans there, never mind
the interpreters which we actually did as Sara Carter reported promised
that we would get them out if it ever came to this. Well, their lives are
now in peril tonight.

REP. MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-TX): Right, this is a stain on the presidency. I
believe he has blood on his hands. When we got to word of this decision, we
kept repeatedly warning the administration, you have to get these
interpreters or Afghan partners out of there. They waited until the very
last minute and now this rushed to the airport to get them out and now we
don't even have planes leaving the airport.

Now, they're going to be left behind, Sean, and as Michael Waltz notes,
they're going to be slaughtered by the Taliban.

This president didn't listen to his generals. He didn't listen to the
intelligence community.

The IC assessment was very grim, Sean, going back to May, that, you know,
within months, the Taliban was going to take it over, the conditions would
deteriorate and that's exactly what happened. But yet he disregarded that,
listen to the State Department, his politicos in the White House, who told
him that, oh, we can get this deal with the Taliban struck in Doha.

Guess what? It didn't work. He can't strike a deal with the Taliban.

What I what I really despise most, Sean, is in the speech this afternoon
about blaming everybody but himself, including former President Trump.

I can tell you this: Trump would never have sat back and watched an
unconditional surrender of the Taliban to Afghanistan. He is the one who
crushed ISIS when the Obama Biden administration created this.

And I talked to national security adviser O'Brien, he told me in his
conversation, the president said he would never allow another Saigon again,
and then that's what exactly happened.

HANNITY: And he was warned exactly what would happen and it happened. And
I don't know if we're going to be able to get these people out of there.
They're Americans there, and other people's lives are at risk.

All right. Thank you both.

When we come back, a programming announcement you're not going to want to
miss, straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: All right. A quick programming note, be sure to tune in tomorrow
night, 9:00 p.m. Eastern. Former President Donald Trump will to join us
live, to talk about the disastrous situation in Afghanistan and more -- and
how he would have allowed conditions on the ground and the advice of the
intel community and our military commanders to actually give him the advice
and listen.

Don't forget to set your DVR.

And let not your heart be troubled.

Laura Ingraham, I know you have a great show tonight. I think you have
Secretary of State Pompeo, I'm guessing.

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