'Special Report' All-Star Panel on more Americans leaving Afghanistan

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Critics bash Biden as Americans remain in Afghanistan

White House correspondent Peter Doocy has the details on 'Special Report'

This is a rush transcript of "Special Report with Bret Baier" on September 8, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE:  We will use every diplomatic, economic assistance tool at our disposal, working hand in hand with the international community, first and foremost, to ensure that those who want to leave Afghanistan after the 31st are able to do so. 

We have been assured, again, that all American citizens and Afghan citizens with valid travel documents will be allowed to leave. 

As of now, the Taliban are not permitting the charter flights to depart. 

They claim that some of the passengers do not have the required documentation. 

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BREAM:  Let's bring in our panel to discuss the latest developments on Afghanistan, Byron York, chief political correspondent of "The Washington Examiner," Kimberley Strassel, a member of the editorial board at "The Wall Street Journal," and Juan Williams is a FOX News analyst. Great to see all of you tonight. 

Byron, I'll start with you. An evolution in what we have been told about getting Americans and other allies out. We are at the mercy of the Taliban in nearly every way in that situation. Are you confident everyone left there who wants to leave will get out? 

BYRON YORK, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER": Absolutely not. You just played a story of increasing American weakness. If we didn't have weakness in influence when we had 5,000 troops in the country, we certainly don't now. So, today, you had Secretary of State Blinken saying, I'm going to quote it now, an immediate way the Taliban can demonstrate its willingness to respect freedom of movement is by allowing the departure of charter flights with properly documented passengers. Now, that would be great. That would be really, really nice. But we're in the position of actually asking the Taliban to do this. And our position seems to be weakening by the day. 

BREAM:  And I continue, as many of us do, to hear from people there on the ground who say -- we constantly hear this phrase from the administration, Americans who want to leave, or Americans who want to stay, what they're telling me there on the ground is there are American citizens who want to leave, but there are members of their family who don't have the right documents and can't leave. So it's not that they are dying to stay in Afghanistan, but they are caught now in an untenable situation, which leads to something that Senator Tom Cotton, Republican, has said on this point. 

Here's what he said. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TOM COTTON, (R-AR) SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE:  It continues to be the case that we have perhaps hundreds of Americans effectively held hostage by the Taliban inside of Afghanistan who are probably trying to extract who knows what kinds of concessions from the Biden administration. 

I worry that they will grant those concessions because they simply want Afghanistan off the front pages and out of the minds of the American people. 

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BREAM:  Juan, there has been some semantic arguments about this, whether they're stranded, they're hostages, they're unable to leave, they're trapped. These are people who cannot get home here to the United States. 

JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST:  Well, I think we have to help people who are in need of help, especially if they have the proper papers. 

Now, clearly, some of these people don't have the proper documentation as we have been told, and we know the American immigration asylum system can be difficult. But given this emergency situation, I think we should be doing everything possible to help those people. 

I think leaving any war zone is going to be difficult, Shannon. And leaving this one has proven to be difficult and messy, and it's happened on Joe Biden's watch. The buck stops with him. To be fair, this has been a 20-year effort, and I think there is lots of bipartisan failure on exhibit here. 

Obviously, President Bush started. President Obama continued it. President Trump continued. Joe Biden, to his credit, didn't kick the can downtown road to avoid the difficult mess of leaving a war zone with the domestic criticism that was sure to follow. But we have got to help people. That's the way I feel. 

BREAM:  Well, there will be an analysis for years to come over the way that we left, despite the fact that most agreed it was time to go. But we are now back with the Taliban in charge, it appears, at this point. Kimberley this is a State Department statement about the government that's come together. They're saying "We note the announced list of names consists exclusively of individuals who are members of the Taliban or their close associates, and no women. We are also concerned by the affiliations and track records of some of the individuals. We understand that the Taliban has presented this as a caretaker cabinet. However, we will judge the Taliban by its actions, not words. We have made clear our expectation that the Afghan people deserve an inclusive government." 

OK, so Kimberley, no women, lots of Taliban people, including somebody who has a $10 million bounty on his head from the U.S. That's who is leading the show right now. 

KIMBERLEY STRASSEL, "WALL STREET JOURNAL":  What did they think was going to happen? Really, what did they think was going to happen? We went in there in part, obviously, because of 9/11. But the world had also witnessed the Taliban's barbaric behavior for years. And nothing about them has changed. The Biden administration understood that even as they were making a flawed decision to precipitously leave the country. 

You also had the administration telling us that one reason it was time to go and go quickly is because we had defeated the terrorist threat there, even though there was amazing evidence every day that they are working hand in glove with all kinds of affiliates, including Al-Qaeda. Now they are inviting all of these people back. We have folks who were in Guantanamo. We have the head of the Haqqani Network who is going to be essentially running the police department there. And they are basically living right up to the exact type that they were from 20 years ago. 

So, everyone could see this coming a mile away. The notion that we are safer is ridiculous. Afghanistan has just become a major ongoing problem for us again. 

BREAM:  Byron, is this a case of misunderstanding the reality on the ground, or sort of a willful blindness about wanting to change the perception of the reality? 

YORK:  Well, the statements coming out of the State Department seem incredibly naive. But we should say the U.S. obviously failed to stand up a government, an Afghan government. That failure took four presidents to actually happen. The problem now the way the Biden administration has done this and the fact that it did not take care of all the business before leaving, leaving the United States in a supplicant position with zero assets in Afghanistan. 

BREAM:  Panel, stick around, much more to discuss. Up next, the Biden pivot away from Afghanistan continues. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  We're the only country in the world that goes into a crisis, and when we come out of it, we're stronger than before we went in it. That's by building back better. 

Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy, and the threat is here. It's not going to get any better. This is much, much bigger than anyone was willing to believe. 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For this guy to pull this -- to leave them in ruins and leave Americans behind. Leave Americans behind, that's -- crazy. He will leave you behind. 

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BREAM:  We're back with our panel, the president there trying to speak out on climate change and getting a bit of heckling in the process. Let's take a look at the Real Clear Politics average of how he is doing right now. His poll numbers have been dropping. His approval is at 45.3 percent on average, disapproval 49.5 percent. Juan, those numbers have been steadily moving in the wrong direction for the president. They were before Afghanistan, and since the chaotic withdrawal they have only continued downward. But he wants to move on to a different part of his agenda. Does he have the political capital to do it? 

WILLIAMS:  Well, I think that it's clear that long before the withdrawal, you had Afghanistan as the forever war, the forgotten war. And now without U.S. troops on the ground, Shannon, I think it's going to be in the rearview mirror pretty soon. 

What Biden is doing, though, politically is pretty sound strategy. He's talking about local politics, things like the storm damage, people left in the dark, people suffering flood damage to their property and homes, left homeless in some cases, and also about the rise in COVID. He has got a speech scheduled for tomorrow, a major speech on COVID and what we should do going into the future. 

So this is, to me, the politics of the moment. And I think that he is moving in the right direction in terms of his own political strategy. 

BREAM:  I thought it was interesting today, in "Politico" there was an article that talked about behind the scenes that there are staffers within the Biden administration that want him to stop talking, Kimberley, that they don't like some of his riffing or going off on topics when they need to so tightly control moving some of his domestic agenda forward? 

STRASSEL:  Yes, that was a pretty remarkable story, saying that they actually mute him. But, again, this is something that everyone in America is seeing. 

And I have to disagree with Juan a little bit here. It was very, very clear from the beginning that the reason that this administration continued to push on with this artificial August 31st deadline despite being requested by allies, international allies, and members of Congress to please put the mission first, is they wanted to draw a line underneath this and turn and pivot back to their domestic agenda. 

I think the problem with that is it doesn't necessarily stop the headlines from coming. And we are still going to be hearing about the people who have been left behind, the terrorists who are taking over positions in the government. And Joe Biden can pretend, he can ignore it, but Americans understand the complete disconnect. And I think the real risk to the administration is it makes him end up looking callous. It makes him end up looking as though he is ignoring a crisis and a problem. And that will not be good for his poll numbers, and it will be harder for him to push through a domestic agenda as members of his own party try to begin to distance themselves from that. 

BREAM:  "Wall Street Journal" talking about those attempts to move forward with the domestic issues says this, "He is seeking to press his legislative agenda and redouble efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic after Labor Day, but the tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan may cast a long shadow over the fall. The White House and congressional Democrats believe that the infrastructure and the broader legislative package are widely popular. It's a passage of those proposals as key to solidifying support ahead of the midterm elections." Byron, will it work? 

YORK:  Well, that's why he is desperately trying to change the subject, because, if you look at Biden's job approval for handling the mess in Afghanistan, it's in the 20s. That's down with George W. Bush in the worst days of Iraq. But he's still underwater, the problem is he is still underwater with other things. His handling of the economy, approval of that is under water. And even with COVID, which has always been the most important part of his approval rating, the number of Americans who approve of the way he is handling this has gone down significantly. 

And I think what you are going to see tomorrow is an effort to try to show the American people that his administration is on one page, and it knows what to do next in the COVID crisis because the administration has seemed confused. It has had mixed messages. And it, frankly, hasn't had a lot new to think and say about COVID in the last few weeks as people have been so worried about the Delta variant. So he really is trying, I think, to get control of what was his strongest issue. 

BREAM:  The administration also investing heavily in the Newsom recall effort and fighting that out in California. Quickly, Juan, is it going to be a sort of a litmus test for looking ahead to 2022 how that goes, or is it sort of its own outlier?

WILLIAMS:  I think it's an important step. Obviously, for Democrats, there is a lot on the line here. You think about the future of the court, Shannon, something you know a lot about, but also even Senator Feinstein, who at 88 could retire any moment. So all of that is at play and driving. 

So I think this is all part of an effort by Democrats to focus on issues where they do have control. They got out 120,000 in the evacuation. I think they can take some pride in that. But this has been a messy exit, as we have all said today. And they have to deal with that reality. 

BREAM:  They do. And a number of Americans as we heard the hecklers there earlier in the northeast this week are not going to let that go away. OK, when we come back, panel, tomorrow's headlines. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BREAM:  Finally tonight, a look at tomorrow's headlines. Juan, kick us off. 

WILLIAMS:  General Robert E. Lee's statue is coming down. It's come down today in the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia. The 100

-- I think it's a 12-ton statue, Shannon, was removed. It was put up more than 130 years ago today. 

BREAM:  Kimberley, on to you. 

STRASSEL: Democratic fault lines explode as they jump in to reconciliation. Joe Manchin says no more than $1.5 trillion. Bernie Sanders says no less than $3.5 trillion. Fights over a lot, here comes the fireworks. 

BREAM:  There are some headaches coming for the White House on that front. 

Byron, round this out? 

YORK:  Mine is related to Kim's. White House, Manchin $2 trillion apart on spending. You hear these compromises where they meet in the middle, but does each side really give up $1 trillion? We'll see. 

BREAM:  We will. Panel, thank you very much. 

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