'Sunday Morning Futures' on American weaponry left in Afghanistan amid Taliban takeover

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Pompeo: US adversaries watching America 'destroy' its alliances amid Afghanistan exit

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discusses Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal, the impact on America's credibility and how Biden can restore trust with U.S. allies.

This is a rush transcript from "Sunday Morning Futures" August 22, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Good Sunday morning, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to "Sunday Morning Futures." I'm Maria Bartiromo.

Hostage to the newly armed Taliban, 80-plus billion dollars worth of sophisticated American weaponry left on the ground now in the hands of terrorists. Coming up: What went wrong? And can we recover?

This week, Americans in Afghanistan getting beaten up trying to get out of the country, passports being confiscated, Taliban soldiers going door to door to target anybody who helped the U.S. and Afghan forces, as new reports now surface that ISIS has returned to the terrorist haven of Afghanistan.

Coming up, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the way out.

Plus: The world is watching, but Joe Biden claims there is no impact to America's power and credibility on the world stage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: What is your message to America's partners around the world who have criticized not the withdrawal, but the conduct of that withdrawal, and made them question America's credibility on the world stage?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have seen no question of our credibility from our allies around the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: Coming up, Afghanistan war Army veteran and Senate Foreign Affairs member Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton is here on his efforts to get people out of the country and why Joe Biden closed the Bagram Air Base while thousands of Americans were still on the ground.

Plus: The Democrats are running away from the most important stories impacting the American people, Afghanistan and the wide open borders. Nancy Pelosi forcing the House to return early from vacation to vote on her massive tax-and-spend proposals.

GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy on what gets done this week, as Biden's budget still calls for defense spending to go down, but spending on a New Green Deal to go up.

And former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on the U.S.' cut and run out of Afghanistan and the consequences to come.

All that and more, as we look ahead right here, right now on "Sunday Morning Futures."

And first this morning, the Pentagon says that the situation in Kabul is fluid and uncertain. We have more breaking news here, as the attacks keep on coming.

The State Department was hit by a massive cyberattack with a possible serious breach notification by the Department of Defense and Cyber Command.

President Trump joined me this past week on "Mornings With Maria" on FOX Business to assess all of this, including Biden's Afghanistan pullout.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Maria, you don't take the military out first.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: You take the military out last. This is like the captain jumping off the ship as the ship is sinking. And it's crazy. It's too late now.

But you have to take the soldiers out first, and then -- out -- out first into the field. You have to take them back so that everybody's protected. The people have to come out of the country first. Then you got to get all your equipment. We have billions of dollars of equipment. They have brand-new Black Hawk helicopters. They have everything.

And last to come out has to be the soldiers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: And yet President Biden keeps defending his operation out of Afghanistan, dismissing an internal State Department memo dated back in July, July 13, in which his own officials on the ground in Kabul warned him that a Taliban takeover was imminent, and without U.S. troops there, Afghan security forces likely would not be able to stop it.

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: All kinds of cables, all kinds of advice, if you notice, that range from this group saying that -- they didn't it would fall when it would fall -- when it did fall, but saying that it would fall, to others saying I wouldn't happen for a long time and they would be able to sustain themselves through the end of the year.

I made the decision. I made the decision. The buck stops with me. I took the consensus opinion. The consensus opinion was that, in fact, it would not occur, if it occurred, until later in the year. So, it was my decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: And, according to The New York Times, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, as well as General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also warned Biden that this would happen, and yet he ignored those warnings.

Joining me right now is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He worked in February 2020, helping President Trump negotiate a conditional peace deal with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Mr. Secretary, it's always a pleasure to see you. Thanks very much for being here this morning.

Give us your reaction in terms of the pullout.

MIKE POMPEO, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Maria, thanks for having me on.

Look, we were determined to get this right. There were two things that President Trump wanted to do. Everyone knows that President Trump wanted to get our young men and women back home. We began the march towards doing that, but we always knew that conditions had to be right to achieve that and we had to have the situation the ground right to do that.

This administration just willy-nilly whipped the military out of there, leaving civilians, equipment, all of those things behind. We drew down from 15,000, or just over that, to about 2, 500. And we had kept, we had kept the order that had been there, right? We didn't have this chaos.

All the while, we took out 12, 500 soldiers. When we got to that point, we went back, we looked at the conditions. We wanted to get those last numbers out, but we never found the conditions right to do so.

And so we continued to pound the Taliban when they violated the agreement, right? When they moved on a checkpoint, or moved in a place that they weren't permitted to, we used American power and made clear to the Taliban that there would be real consequences.

What happened here, Maria, is you had a leader who was unprepared to do that. When the Taliban pushed on the Trump administration, we pushed back even harder and imposed real costs on them. When the Taliban pushed on the Biden administration, they withdrew to a commercial airport that in no way has the capacity to get our people out of there with the speed and alacrity that needs to happen to keep them safe.

This is an incompetent method of getting our folks out, and it presents real risk. I pray we get them all home. But I'm watching today even now. They haven't yet organized in a way to push the American power out in a way to make sure we can get Americans out of the country.

BARTIROMO: And things are getting dangerous and more severe by the minute. This morning, The Washington Post is reporting that those people going to the airport are getting beaten up.

And there were seven Afghan civilians killed outside the Kabul Airport, as Biden is set to update on evacuations later today.

Mr. Secretary, does Joe Biden understand what has taken place here? I mean, I don't -- I don't even understand why you would close the Bagram Air Base before getting all of your civilians out.

POMPEO: Well, I must say, given what he's told America and what we can see happening on the ground and the massive disconnect between those two, it certainly doesn't appear that he understands or, perhaps less, he's just not that interested.

He's more focused on spending $3.5 trillion or creating diversity inside of our military. It's impossible to explain how the president of the United States can go on TV and tell people that not only are people able to travel safely to the airport, when we can clearly see that that's not the case, but he told the world that our allies weren't concerned about what we were doing.

And you need only go to the British Parliament or listen to Macron or Merkel. All of them are concerned that they no longer can trust America as a partner and ally. So there is a deep disconnection between what President Biden has told the American people and what they can all see with their own eyes to be true.

This is dangerous. We're just a few months into this administration, and American leadership has already walked off the stage. I -- we have talked about this before, but President Biden talks about them -- that America is back. It looks like we're back. It looks like we're back to Barack Obama, America apologizing, American weakness, and our adversaries not fearing us and our friends not trusting us.

BARTIROMO: And we have to point out that many of the people on Biden's team, whether it be national security or in the State Department, were in fact in the Obama White House.

How capable are his defense and foreign policy teams, in your view, including your successor, Tony Blinken? We know that there was a memo emerged, revealed this past week indicating that Joe Biden was warned that this would happen this way, and he ignored the warnings.

POMPEO: Maria, there's no doubt it's the same team that was there for eight years, largely. They have all moved up one slot or two slots, but it's largely the same cast of characters with the same world view, right?

This is a world view that says America is the problem set. It's a world view that says that these details, these important details, right, closing Bagram, the major airflow hub for American forces and American equipment in and out of the country, and pulling out the military before the civilians got out, and not working with friends and partners to make sure this was coordinated, and, most importantly, not validating that the conditions on the ground were sufficient to actually execute this stage of the withdrawal.

Those are demonstrably geopolitical errors, tactical errors that this administration has made. They have not yet moved to fix them. I pray that we get this right. It's important not only for the people of Afghanistan and the Americans who are trapped there, but as important as -- as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and Chairman Kim stare at the United States today, they're watching this weakness.

They're watching America destroy its alliances. And this presents enormous risks to the American people right here at home.

BARTIROMO: Exactly.

And the mixed messages have been incredibly dangerous. Last week, President Biden told the Americans in Afghanistan to get to the airport, so that the U.S. can get them home. And then, this weekend, we were told, don't go to the airport. It's too dangerous. There are terrorists right outside the airport.

The gates are locked. They're confiscating passports.

What's going on? Should Americans go to the airport or not go to the airport?

POMPEO: Well, I must say, I don't have accurate situational knowledge of what's on the ground, although I have heard from some folks in the region.

It certainly sounds like passage to that airport is very dangerous today. America needs to work to secure that to reduce that risk. There are lots of ways to do that.

How about this, Maria, for a starting point? Make very clear that you're not going to beg the Taliban, you're not going to implore, you're not going to plead, you're not going to pay the Taliban. If Americans are harmed as they move to the airport, you're going to go and crush them, you're going to put real costs on them.

This is the model that the Trump administration had adopted. And each time we did that, each time we did that, we got a tactical response from the Taliban that respected the United States of America, because they understood that there were things that they would not be permitted to do, most importantly, harming Americans.

Remember this, Maria. From the time we began our peace and reconciliation effort, our conversations, from the time we signed that deal in February 2020, not a single American was attacked by the Taliban in a serious way, and there wasn't a single American killed.

That wasn't because -- that wasn't because of the document and we were going to go to court to enforce this document. It was because we demonstrated American resolve and power. And when you don't do that, this is the kind of thing, this chaos that you're seeing today in Afghanistan is precisely what ensues when America fails to lead.

BARTIROMO: So they have already broken whatever agreement was made in Doha.

POMPEO: Oh, of course.

BARTIROMO: I'm talking about the Taliban.

I mean, was this a coup?

POMPEO: Between the folks in Afghanistan, right?

President Ghani was corrupt himself. The leaders in the other regions, we were talking to all them. Remember, we didn't just sign an agreement with the Taliban. We had one with the Afghan government too. We were talking to folks in the north and folks in the west.

This country has been a mess for an awfully long time. Its elections have been incredibly fraught. This is -- this is a country that has had political uncertainty for an awfully long time. Our mission set was very clear, Maria. Our mission set was to make sure that we were able to get our young men and women home and, second, to make sure that we were never attacked from this place again.

And we worked diligently to make sure that, as we saw the conditions on the ground, that we withdrew in a way that provided maximal certainty that we would never be attacked from this place again.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

POMPEO: This chaos you're seeing today. Maria, I think this drastically increases the likelihood that, someday, some ungoverned space in Afghanistan will lead to an attack, maybe not on America, but on American interests somewhere in the world.

BARTIROMO: Right.

And they have the weaponry now to do it.

POMPEO: They sure do.

BARTIROMO: Mr. Secretary, I want to take a short break.

And I want to get back and come back and talk about something you touched on. And that is the longer-term consequences of all of this, and then what actions the U.S. military needs to take now to prevent the Taliban from driving Afghanistan further into a terrorism state.

We will be right back with Secretary Mike Pompeo.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BARTIROMO: Welcome back.

And we're back with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, also a FOX News contributor.

Let me point out that we are also following the latest on Tropical Storm Henri. You can look on the side of your screen to get the very latest. We will be doing that all day.

Mr. Secretary, I have got to get your take on the consequences of this cut-and-run pullout of Afghanistan.

Historian Bernard Lewis worried that the greatest danger to global stability is when America comes to be seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.

This is something Larry Lindsey posted last week. And I want to bring up this Global Times tweet. This -- of course, The Global Times is the international mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party.

And as soon as we saw the cut and run out of Afghanistan, the editor in chief of Global Times tweets this: "After the fall of the Kabul regime, the Taiwan authorities must be trembling. Don't look forward to the U.S. to protect them. Taipei officials need to quietly mail-order a five-star red flag from the Chinese mainland. It will be useful one day when they surrender to the People's Liberation Army."

Your thoughts on the long-term consequences and what that tweet from The Global Times indicates, Secretary?

POMPEO: Well, Maria, The Global Times is a propaganda mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, so I just -- that's just them poking fun at a weak administration in America.

But here's the truth of the matter, is, this debacle will certainly harm America's credibility with its friends and allies. It's already being talked about. You have seen some of it publicly. But there's lots of talk in private about, can this president, can this American leadership team that's been assembled around President Biden, can they actually deliver? And

so my wisdom would be this. So, there is an enormous amount of damage to American credibility. How about starting today to rebuild that credibility? You can think of half-a-dozen things off the top of your head that could begin to demonstrate to the world that we're not harmless, indeed, we're powerful.

How about this? Walk away from the negotiations in Vienna? Tell the Iranians, nope, we're done. We are out. How about this? Help the Taiwanese closed on some of the defense and trade deals that we started with them, start actually delivering those weapon systems. Same for the Emiratis. We have an F-35 set with them. Why don't we move that forward, demonstrate that we're going to be good partners to the Emiratis?

If you're President Zelensky in Ukraine, you have to be worried. How about if the United States began to work closely with the Ukrainians to make sure that we were going to prevent Vladimir Putin from taking another chunk of Ukraine, like they did under the Obama administration?

How about this, Maria? How about announcing today that we're not going to show up in Beijing for the genocide Olympics, we're not going to send our kids there and supplicate -- become supplicants to the Chinese Communist Party?

These are the kinds of things that world leaders are looking for. They're looking to show American resolve and strength. I hope that the Biden team has it within them to deliver on these kinds of clear actions, not just words, but actions that will convince leaders around the world that we remain a strong force, a strong partner.

And that will tell our adversaries a lot too. It'll tell them that you cannot challenge the United States without real costs being imposed on you.

BARTIROMO: All incredibly important analysis.

Why aren't we doing what the French government is doing, going in there and getting Americans out, the way they're getting their French out?

POMPEO: It's been a long week, Maria, but I have to tell you, maybe the most disheartening moment was when I heard our secretary of defense say that we didn't have the capability to do that.

That is nonsense. That is nonsense. I'm a veteran. I know the capabilities of our young men and women. We could deliver, just the same way the French and the United Kingdom are delivering for their people. To hear that defeatist mentality, to say that we don't have the capacity to do that, first of all, it's untrue.

What they have not demonstrated yet is the will to do this. I hope they will find that.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

POMPEO: I hope they will find that steel, that resolve. I pray that we get all these Americans home. We have an obligation, a solemn obligation, to make sure that we're able to do so.

BARTIROMO: Secretary Pompeo, before you go, a question none of us want to ask you, but I must.

Is Joe Biden mentally capable to be in this role at this moment in time?

POMPEO: Well, I will tell you, this has been a really tough week to watch our president just be so disconnected from the reality we can all see.

I pray that they get this right. I hope that President Biden is up to the task. Today, he's demonstrated that, in Afghanistan, he has failed. The incompetence demonstrated this past week has been tragic. It will have long-lasting implications. I hope they're able to right the ship and get this right.

I know every American wishes that for our entire country.

BARTIROMO: Of course. And we are all patriots.

Secretary, thanks very much for weighing in this morning.

POMPEO: Thank you, Maria. Thanks for having me on.

(CROSSTALK)

BARTIROMO: We, of course, will talk soon along the way, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Coming up: Will President Biden's massive blunders in Afghanistan blow up his tax-and-spend economic agenda in Washington?

Nancy Pelosi still pushing for passage, having called the House of Representatives back tomorrow to vote.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is here. He will weigh in on her priorities and the dangerous state of affairs for America right now.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): This is what happens when you withdraw. You - - some stuff, some equipment is left there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: That was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissing the roughly $80 billion of U.S. weaponry left and now seized by the Taliban as "some stuff," she called it.

This stuff includes Black Hawk helicopters, assault rifles, an A-29 attack plane, all of which could be inspected by the Taliban and/or the Chinese Communist Party and used to kill civilians or attack U.S. interests, as we just heard from Mike Pompeo.

Joining me right now is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. He is demanding that the Gang of Eight receive a classified briefing on the Biden administration's plan to evacuate American citizens out of Afghanistan.

Congressman, it's good to see you. Thanks very much for being here.

Have you seen that plan yet?

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): No.

And this is not what happens when you leave. Maria, I have heard that the Taliban now has more Black Hawk helicopters than Australia, one of the Five Eyes that's connected to America. Could you imagine that? Even if the Taliban cannot learn to fly those, where will they go? They will go in the hands of Iran, of Russia or of China.

They have just rebuilt a military. I imagine Iran will be in there collecting our drones, our missiles. This is not what should happen. This is an atrocity. And this is an embarrassment on the world stage that Joe Biden has provided us. This has set us back decades.

And for the Democrats to bring us back into Congress to try to pass a new election law that would ban -- it's unconstitutional, but would ban I.D. voting, to try to spend almost $5 trillion.

The only focus of this Congress or this administration would be to get every single American out. But when you listen to the secretary of state or secretary of defense, they will use the term "as many as we can."

That is not the answer. We have the ability to get it out. We just need the authority from the president to send our troops out to bring those Americans home. That was what -- we owe it to the American public.

BARTIROMO: I think you have made so many important points there that I want to go back to and zero in on.

Number one, somebody else mentioned this to me this weekend, that the president keeps saying anybody who wants to leave Afghanistan will be able to leave Afghanistan. Is he playing word games with us? Is he going to get to August 31 and say, we have rescued anybody who wanted to leave, and those who didn't want to leave are still there?

Why say -- of course the Americans on the ground do not want to be controlled by the Taliban. They want out. So what is he trying to say there?

MCCARTHY: Remember what he said on Friday, that Americans will not have difficulty getting to the airport. They are.

That Al Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan. They are. That foreign leaders are not criticizing America. They are. That the border is secure. It is not. Directly after that press conference, we had a conference call for Republicans and Democrats.

Pelosi praised the president and the actions.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

MCCARTHY: I listened to the secretary of state and secretary of defense. And I laid into them with the idea, stop saying as many Americans.

What we want to see is that every American.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

MCCARTHY: And why can the French and the British go out and get their citizens and why can't America?

The only thing that is holding back is the will to do it and the authority from this president. How can he get it so wrong? Or is he just not remembering it? This is an atrocity that will harm this nation for years to come, empower our adversaries, and it's making our allies continue to question.

I have heard from ambassadors not knowing where America will be in the future. We have heard from world leaders, even to Tony Blair. And you have watched what China is trying to do to Taiwan, what Russia is talking about to the Baltics or the Eastern Europe.

And what -- he has now empowered Iran, which will probably have American weapons soon.

BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.

MCCARTHY: And now we're hearing ISIS is possible along the airport?

Why is this president either lying to us or not knowing the truth of what's going on and trying to defend it, but only calling on the press that is predetermined?

BARTIROMO: Well, on that Tony Blair comments, I was just reading the story. Tony Blair calls this an imbecile move. That was reported earlier.

But you a moment ago mentioned the H.R.1 voting bill. And I want to get back to that, because I have got to tell you there are viewers of this program who have lost faith in the Republican leadership, lost faith in Mitch McConnell and in you, because we do not know if you have your arms around free and fair elections.

How come there's no discussion about all of the states that are changing their voting laws right now? How come there's no discussion about the audit going on in Arizona right now? What are you going to do? Can you prove to the American people that you are in control here and able to ensure that we will have free and fair elections in 2022 and 2024?

MCCARTHY: Well, first and foremost, Maria, you can see it's not in law. So, the answer is yes, we can.

Secondly, if you watch what the states have -- and we have worked with it. Georgia has passed an election law that now more people are registered to vote than at any time before, and it's making it very difficult to ever cheat again.

We have watched state after state where Democrats have left the state. That is where the real difficulty lies. But now we have got them back into Texas. We are doing exactly what the constitutional says -- Constitution says, not to make this a national campaign, but empower the states and where we're going.

We're fighting every step of the -- every single day. We watched the Democrats, because they could not pass H.R.1, they're bringing up H.R.4 now, while thousands of Americans are being held hostage in Afghanistan? That is their priority?

BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.

MCCARTHY: Because they know they're going to lose this election.

Nancy Pelosi is only down to four votes, and they want to spend another almost $5 trillion to bring us greater inflation?

BARTIROMO: That's right.

MCCARTHY: President Biden said he's going to bring us back. He's brought us back to the '70s, being held hostage in Afghanistan, oil prices the highest that we have seen, begging OPEC to produce more.

And now we're watching that they are trying to cheat within elections, inflation at a number we have not seen. This is Jimmy Carter on steroids.

BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.

MCCARTHY: And this is just eight months into this administration.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

MCCARTHY: So I will promise you this, just as we have done each and every day. We will fight just as we're going to fight this week, and we will win.

And the next century will be the American century, because we know how to govern.

BARTIROMO: All right, I like that promise.

Real quick, before you go, you and your colleagues came back early from vacation to vote tomorrow. What does this week look like? Is Joe Biden's economic agenda going to get blown up as a result of this massive mistake in Afghanistan?

MCCARTHY: I hope the focus of Congress is just on the thousands of Americans who are in Afghanistan right now, to make sure we protect those service men and women that can bring those Americans home, instead of listening to Nancy Pelosi saying she's having a conversation with the president about election law, about passing trillions of more dollars to bring greater inflation.

Why aren't they protecting the border from those 5,000 prisoners who have just left Afghanistan...

BARTIROMO: OK. OK.

MCCARTHY: ... and come -- have the hope of coming across our borders?

BARTIROMO: Yes, we will see about that.

You have been to the border. You have seen it firsthand.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, wonderful to have you this morning. Thank you, sir.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: We know of no circumstance where American citizens who are carrying an American passport are trying to get through to the airport.

And we're working on a variety to verify that number of Americans that are still in country as we work on this, because we're not -- don't have the exact number of people who are Americans are there.

What interests do we have in Afghanistan at this point with Al Qaeda gone?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: Just three concerning statements made by President Biden during his address to the nation on Friday.

He also promised to bring home any American who wants to come home, contradicting his own defense secretary, who said we do not have the capability to rescue large numbers of Americans right now.

Joining me right now is Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. He is an Army veteran. He served in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009. He sits on the Senate Judiciary and Armed Services Committee.

And we are honored to have him this morning.

Senator, first, thank you so much for your service to our great country.

This all must be personal to you. How do you see it?

SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR): Thank you, Maria.

Well, for so many veterans who served in Afghanistan or their Gold Star family members, this is tragic, heartbreaking. It's sad.

But it's also infuriating, because it was not just predicted -- predictable, it was predicted that Joe Biden's ill-conceived, ill- planned decision to rush our troops out in the middle of the fighting season could lead to this kind of chaos that we see now, where we have anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 Americans stranded behind Taliban lines, unable to get to the airport, in direct contradiction to what Joe Biden said as recently as Friday, which his own secretary of defense was immediately contradicting him about.

My office has been on the phone with hundreds and hundreds of Americans and Afghans who report Taliban gangs outside the airport beating people with sticks and pipes and chains, confiscating passports, confiscating visas.

It is not a free passage situation in Kabul right now to the airport. And it remains that way today. That's something that Joe Biden needs to stop today. He needs -- needs to commit to getting out every American and stop playing word games by saying things like, well, every American who wants to go or as many Americans as we can.

It needs to be clear. We will get out every American from behind Taliban lines.

BARTIROMO: Yes, it certainly has not been clear.

Is this a hostage situation?

COTTON: Yes, Maria, in effect, these Americans are hostages to the Taliban. They may not be under lock and key in a jail. But if the Taliban control all the airports once we leave and they control all the border crossings, then we are going to be a hostage to fortune to the Taliban's goodwill to those Americans.

I know there's been a lot of comparisons this past week to Saigon in 1975. I would say that this has been much worse than what happened in Saigon in 1975. But the scenario that troubles me more going forward is the prospect of Tehran 1979...

BARTIROMO: Well...

COTTON: ... when the ayatollahs took 52 Americans hostage, and it paralyzed America for more than a year.

Again, we have 10,000 to 15,000 Americans who are, in effect, hostages to the Taliban right now, Joe Biden needs to make it clear to the Taliban that we're not leaving until everyone is gone, and if they're injured, then we may do the Taliban now exactly what we did in 2001.

BARTIROMO: Well, look, it's important to point out the number of troops in Afghanistan right now. Talk about that.

And I want to get your take on what the motivation was to close Bagram Air Force Base first. I mean, he closed this air base on July 5. Tell me what implications that had, even as he is shutting down the one opportunity we have to protect people while there are thousands of Americans on the ground in Afghanistan.

First, the point about the number of troops on the ground in Afghanistan today.

COTTON: Yes, Maria, I think this illustrates very well Joe Biden's incompetence in handling this withdrawal.

When he announced the withdrawal back in the spring, we had about 2, 500 troops in Afghanistan. We now have 7,000 troops in Afghanistan, Maria, to try to get Americans out. So, we have almost three times as many troops in Afghanistan to get out of Afghanistan as we had when Joe Biden announced that we were getting out of Afghanistan. Nothing could probably better indicate the incompetence of Joe Biden in executing this withdrawal.

And then, when you talk about Bagram Air Base, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs made it pretty clear the other day that the military was given a maximum troop level that they could have in Afghanistan starting around July 1, and that to control both the embassy and the airport, as well as Bagram, required more troops than that, and they were not allowed to have that troop -- those troops there.

So they had to shut down Bagram. Why would they shut down Bagram, a massive air base where we had the ability to sustain thousands of troops and Afghans with multiple runways? Well, I have to wonder if it's because Joe Biden, who has mistrusted our military leaders going back to the Obama era, didn't want that air base to be open, whether that was on purpose, or, in effect, it meant that we did not have our massive air base available to support our own citizens to keep the Taliban at bay, as we had an orderly withdrawal of those citizens.

BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.

COTTON: And now, look, we have an airport right in the middle of downtown Kabul with the Taliban and even threats of ISIS right around the perimeter threatening civilians and our troops alike.

BARTIROMO: So where is this going?

I mean, ISIS on the ground. We are actually talking about talking to the Taliban. We have not deemed them a terrorist organization. Why not? And should we be really negotiating with a group that just performed a coup overtaking Afghanistan?

COTTON: Well, Maria, I think this is an example of the implications of Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal, is that now he has to do business with the Taliban.

The Taliban have checkpoints set up all over Kabul. They're controlling, in many cases, access to the gates at the airport. His priority needs to be getting American citizens out. But he needs cooperation, to a degree, from the Taliban to do so.

So, he's operating from a position of tremendous weakness because of his ill-planned execution of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And I'm very worried that, if Americans remain in Afghanistan, if Joe Biden won't commit to getting every American out, then that will be the case going forward.

And that will only empower the Taliban to provide safe haven to organizations like Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Al Qaeda, remember, attacked us from Afghanistan in 2001. And they want to do it again. And Afghanistan, because of its unique geography, hundreds of miles away from the oceans or away from friendly neighbors, and the concentration of foreign terrorist groups there, has the unique threat of being able to launch -- plan and launch attacks again from a safe haven to which Americans really have no access.

BARTIROMO: This is such...

COTTON: Joe Biden has been saying that we have some kind of over-the- horizon counterterrorism capability.

And that is about as accurate as what he's been saying about the orderly nature of this withdrawal.

BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.

This is such an important point that you make in terms of the U.S.' capability to conduct intelligence, conduct anything from a position of not having any presence in the country.

Tell me what you see as a long-term implication here, Senator, because I have been talking about the Bernard Lewis quote about global stability and destabilizing a global community because of the perception of America not to be trusted as a friend.

COTTON: So there's the immediate threat from Afghanistan, Maria.

Again, because of the concentration of foreign terrorists in Afghanistan, because you're probably going to have more terrorists surging to Afghanistan on the heels of the Taliban's victory here, and because of its remote geography, hundreds of miles away from the oceans, surrounded by unfriendly neighbors, unlike countries in the Middle East and Africa like, say, Somalia and Yemen and Syria, where our military has the opportunity and the ability to strike against terrorist targets, there's going to be a growing threat from Afghanistan.

But then, when you consider the image that this projects the world -- around the world of Biden's impotence, you already see countries like China threatening Taiwan and saying that America won't come to their aid.

So, this is going to reverberate, unfortunately, for many years to come.

BARTIROMO: All right, Senator, good to have you. Thanks very much for your insights this morning.

Of course, we will be watching and catching up with you soon, Senator Tom Cotton.

Coming up: a crisis at the border, disaster in Afghanistan, and a credibility breakdown for the U.S.

Newt Gingrich reacts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): This is Joe Biden's America, terrorists being more aggressive. The Taliban control Afghanistan. The cartels control the border. And China keeps being as aggressive as they can.

That is the world we live in today, again, because you don't have any kind of competence, I think, projected from the Oval Office.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: That was Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan with me last weekend on this program on how Biden's radical policies are destroying America. And that's just seven months into the presidency.

Joining me right now is former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. He is a FOX News contributor.

Newt, it's always a pleasure to talk with you.

Assess what we're seeing.

FMR. REP. NEWT GINGRICH (R-GA): Well, I think the big thing to realize is that this is just the opening of what will be a nightmare.

You have Beijing, the Chinese communist government saying, it makes Taiwan look pretty delectable, because nobody believes Biden would fight for Taiwan. You have Iran, I think, with a very, very radical brand-new president...

(COUGHING)

GINGRICH: Excuse me -- saying, we think -- we like -- we get to be more aggressive with Israel, more aggressive with Saudi Arabia.

You have the Southern border, which has basically collapsed, and where you have people coming in with COVID, people coming in with criminal records, no controls of any kind.

And, of course, you're now going to have a stream of terrorists coming out of Afghanistan, knowing that, if they can get to the Southern border, they can get in the U.S. easily. So I think you have a heightened threat there.

You go through item after item, and Biden is about to have sort of a crisis of crises, so many different things going wrong.

And why would anybody believe him? I also think it's going to make it harder for them on Capitol Hill. I think the Democrats have got to be -- as they watch all this unfold, they have got to be in a state of shock that they have a president who is this weak, this confused, this wrong, and this angry at anybody who tells him contradictory things.

So, I think we are -- we're facing three very, very dangerous years of a Biden presidency...

BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.

GINGRICH: ... in a world -- well, it's a world where there are predators.

That's what these people don't get. I mean, there are countries out there, Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan and in the South China Sea. There are people out there who really want to hurt us.

And we now have a president sending them a signal that you might as well beat up on the U.S. because their president won't do anything to defend them.

BARTIROMO: And when we spoke over the weekend, you said, look, we still don't know what the Taliban is going to do.

GINGRICH: Well, I think that's right.

I mean, you have -- you have a seventh century, deeply committed, Sharia-based group who really do believe in an alternative world. This has been one of the things which, frankly, even back with George W. Bush, we could never win the argument inside the American leadership.

These are not people you can negotiate with.

BARTIROMO: Right.

GINGRICH: Their vision of the world is fundamentally different than ours.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

GINGRICH: And you either have to defeat them, or, after 20 years, they defeated us. That's what happened.

BARTIROMO: Newt, meanwhile, Kamala Harris is packing her bag. She's going to California to fund-raise for Governor Newsom.

We're going to talk about election integrity and the California election when we come back with Newt Gingrich.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BARTIROMO: Welcome back.

We're back with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

While Afghanistan burns and thousands of Americans are desperate to escape the Taliban control, Vice President Kamala Harris is getting set to travel to California this week to fund-raise and lobby for Governor Newsom.

Newt, it's just incredible that we haven't heard a peep from the vice president or many Democrats. They're running away from this story.

GINGRICH: Well, look, the Democratic Party, they have a remarkable talent, almost like musk ox, where they gather together no matter what. They know that there are wolves out there. And no matter how bad their leader is, they stick with him.

And there's been very, very deep pressure not to break, not to say what you really think.

And in the case of Harris, the vice president's job is to stand near the president and smile and be supportive. Why they happen to pick sending her to Saigon -- or, rather, to Ho Chi Minh in -- to Vietnam at this time is a little strange. But I don't think they thought that Afghanistan was going to collapse this fast. So they didn't think about the optics of the two places.

She's on the way back from Asia. Newsom, the governor of California, is in deep trouble. She's his very close ally. Frankly, what people ought to look at is, this is going to be an election where they go all out to steal the referendum.

The secretary of state of California has now said, you can print your own ballots. I mean, you think about this. You talk about the opposite of election integrity. They're going to allow you to print your own ballots. They're going to allow people to come around and harvest your ballot.

So, the unions will be out there, and they will make sure that everybody votes, even if they don't vote. And I think this may well be the most rigged statewide election we have seen probably in at least a half- century.

And I think people should look carefully at this, because there's pretty good evidence that, if Newsom is in a straight, honest count, he probably -- he has a good chance of losing. But if they can stuff every ballot box in California and they can cheat in every way possible -- and so she's part of raising the money to pay for the cheating.

I mean, it's just that simple. It's not complicated.

BARTIROMO: That is so extraordinary.

GINGRICH: Yes.

BARTIROMO: And that is the reason we continue to focus on all of these audits going on across the country. We want fair and free elections.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, thanks very much for that. Wonderful to see you.

GINGRICH: Thank you.

BARTIROMO: An honor to check in with you. Thank you, sir.

That will do it for us on "Sunday Morning Futures."

Stay with FOX News. We are covering Tropical Storm Henri.

I'll see you next week.

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