Tucker: Our leaders are running out of ways to criticize the Taliban

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Tucker: Our leaders are running out of ways to criticize the Taliban

'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host calls 'neoliberal' ideas 'grotesque' and 'ridiculous'

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

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON
TONIGHT. 

Joe Biden went on television today, this afternoon, and talked to the
country about Afghanistan. He said among other things that we had no
choice, but to leave, and on that question he is right. The United States
should have left Afghanistan 19 years ago when it became obvious that Osama
bin Laden wasn't there and had fled to Pakistan. There was no reason to
stay in the country. 

And the longer we remained, the worse it was always going to be. The
question is and the relevant question today is how exactly do you get out?
Just because something is necessary doesn't mean you get to ignore the
details of it. If you learned you needed an emergency appendectomy, would
it matter to you who performed the operation? A surgeon with a scalpel or a
drunk guy with a pocket knife? Yes, it would matter to you. 

But it didn't matter to Joe Biden apparently. He barely mentioned the
withdrawal today. Biden did the necessary thing in the ugliest possible
way. If you've been watching television during the day, you've probably
seen this footage. It's terrified men in sandals clinging to the side of a
C-17 as it attempts to leave Afghanistan. 

This is the iconic photo of the moment. It's the final humiliating scene of
the American occupation of Afghanistan. That means that after 20 years and
trillions of dollars, our leaders couldn't manage to pull off an orderly
retreat. They couldn't even secure a single runway, and that's the main
lesson of the fall of Kabul, we are led by buffoons. They have no idea what
they're doing. We know that now. They are imposters. 

Everything they touch turns to chaos, not just there, but here. These are
the people who run the Amtrak station in Midtown Manhattan, the one that's
filled with drug addicts. They are the people in charge of the power grid
in the State of California, they have no useful skills, and yet somehow,
these same people assured us they were going to turn Stone Age Afghanistan
into Modern Belgium. Remembering it now is bitter and hilarious. 

At this point, our leaders are so discredited, they are running out of ways
to criticize the Taliban. Is the Biden administration really going to
attack the new government of Afghanistan for forcing women to cover their
faces? Are American diplomats actually going to lecture Taliban leaders
about toppling statues? Probably not going to happen. That's how much
credibility our leaders have lost, how much moral authority they have
squandered in the past 20 years. 

But most of what they've lost is their self-awareness. They have none. 

Until just this weekend for example, they had no idea how badly they were
failing in Afghanistan. Here is John Kirby of The Pentagon explaining that
calm down, America. Everything in Kabul is under control. 

Keep in mind, we have not edited this tape and it's not from last year.
This is three days ago. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY (RET.) PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Kabul is not
right now in an imminent threat environment. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Oh, good job, John Kirby. You think he'll keep his job? Of
course, he'll keep his job. A man who is willing to defend pregnant fighter
pilots can work in Washington forever, and so can Mark Milley of the Joint
Chiefs and the rest of the woke clowns at The Pentagon, generals who are
much more worried about white rage in West Virginia than they are about our
enemies abroad. 

When was the last time these guys won a war? Seriously? They hate it when
you ask that question, nothing bothers them more, but what's the answer?
When was that? 

And while we're at it, how about the Intel Agencies? Their job is very
specific: Give policymakers some rough sense of what's going to happen in
the world especially on the big questions so they can make wise decisions.
How is the Intel world doing on that? Let's see. 

The collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11, the fall of Kabul -- not small
things, major history changing events. They missed all of those completely.
They had no idea. So, why are they still there? Well, because someone has
got to read your text messages, got to make sure you're not making fun of
trans-people or anything like that. 

And then there's the Biden administration overseeing all of it, the group
led by the senior credit card shill from Delaware and staffed by power-
hungry non-entities who believe they are God. Hubris? That doesn't describe
the vibe at the current White House, it's much more grandiose than that,
and there is far less justification for it. 

Here is our sitting national security adviser for example. He is 44 years
old. As far as we can tell, he has never had an actual job. Outside of
school, he has no accomplishments whatsoever. Watch this highly respected
Rhode scholar explain that in fact everything you're seeing on TV from
Afghanistan is a victory. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, MSNBC HOST: How do you explain getting this so wrong? 

JAKE SULLIVAN, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, first Savannah, to be
fair, the helicopter has been the mode of transport from our embassy to the
airport for the last 20 years. 

GUTHRIE: But you know the latter point. 

SULLIVAN: That is -- that is -- 

GUTHRIE: It's not the helicopter. 

SULLIVAN: That is how we move people back and forth. 

GUTHRIE: It's not the mechanism. No, no, it's the last minute scramble.
You know that. It's the last minute scramble when the assurances from the
President himself were this was not what we were going to see. 

SULLIVAN: The reason that there are U.S. forces at the airport
effectuating a successful draw down of our embassy, securing the airport to
be able to get other people out is because the President pre-positioned
those forces, thousands of them in the Gulf so they could be moved in
rapidly in the event that there was a rapid collapse. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Oh, so they are effectuating a successful drawdown of our
embassy, so that's what we call it when you burn your files and flee in a
helicopter from approaching gunfire. You're just effectuating another
successful drawdown. Woohoo. 

We could go on. We could torture you with the failures and the details. We
haven't even mentioned our quote "Secretary of State Tony Blinken," a man
so mediocre you gasp when you hear him speak. Can you really be that dumb
and run the Department of State? Yes, you can. 

And the last several decades of American foreign policy prove that you can.
Afghanistan is not the first country our leaders have left worse than they
found it, the list of those countries is long and sadly, it is growing. 

Part of the reason is that for decades, left-wing academics in the U.S.
have used the developing world as a laboratory to test their theories about
how societies ought to be ordered, but aren't. Over time, they've
constructed a parallel government of NGOs that work alongside our Pentagon
and our State Department as well as with the United Nations to impose
radical social engineering projects on the world's poorest people who have
no say in the matter. 

Over the past 20 years for example, Congress has allocated close to a
billion dollars to export academic feminism to Afghanistan. Where did that
money go? Well it went to programs like a two years Master's Degree in
Gender and Women's Studies offered at Kabul University, something Afghans
apparently never knew they needed. 

Another U.S. government effort meanwhile funded quote, "activities that
educate and engage Afghan men and boys to challenge gender stereotypes."
Right? They weren't doing that enough. 

And of course, always and everywhere, our leaders enforced the most
American of all cultural exports, affirmative action. American-funded
gender advisers demanded that women compromise at least 10 percent of the
Afghan National Army and a still larger proportion of that country's
political leadership. Thanks to American imposed gender quotas, dozens of
women ultimately were installed as representatives in Afghan's Parliament.
How did that work? Well, the whole thing was a sham, as always. In fact,
many of these new female legislators had never been to the provinces they
claimed to represent. 

Almost nobody in Afghanistan liked any of this, by the way, and why would
they? As one USAID official conceded in a classified report quote:
"Focusing on gender made things more unstable because it caused revolts."
It caused revolts? But officials kept doing it, they kept pushing radical
gender politics anyway because they could, because they were in charge of
these Stone Age people they were going to educate. 

This is the face of the late American empire, gender studies seminars at
gunpoint. This is not like other empires. Unlike other empires, ours does
not operate for our benefit. America toppled Saddam, but took no oil.
Remember that? Instead, the entire point of our imperial project is to give
meaning to the empty lives of the neo-liberal bureaucrats who administer
it, and then enrich the contractors who work for them, who are enriched
you'll be happy to know. 

What role do the rest of us play in this? None. We just pay for it. 

Yesterday, to underscore that point, the Biden administration told us that
American citizens would not be given priority in the evacuation from Kabul.
So, our government's official position is that American lives are not more
valuable than the lives of foreigners, but you already knew that because
you've seen our southern border. 

The people who made the Afghan occupation possible would like to see a lot
more of our southern border, much more unrestrained immigration to the U.S.
"Bring in the refugees," they are screaming tonight. That's the only lesson
they're taking from this debacle, quote: "America must not stand idly by,"
Mitt Romney tweeted today. "The President must urgently rush to defend,
rescue, and give, and expand asylum. There is no time to spare." 

There is lots of time to spare as Americans die of fentanyl ODs, as
millions of foreign nationals whose identities we can't confirm move here,
but when it comes to bringing Afghans to our country, there is no time to
spare, and Liz Cheney firmly agrees with that, so does her friend, Bill
Kristol and Nancy Pelosi and Victoria Nuland at the State Department, and
so many more, so many more just like them. 

These are the architects of the disaster we are watching unfold on
television. They should be groveling for our forgiveness, but they're not.
Why? Because contrition requires decency. There is no chance. 

So, we're getting it, and if history is any guide, and it's always a guide,
we will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country in
coming months probably in your neighborhood. And over the next decade that
number may swell to the millions. 

So first, we invade and then we're invaded. It is always the same. 

We'll be spending a lot more time on that subject in coming weeks because
it matters, but first since Kabul has just fallen, it might be worth asking
the most obvious question of all. Why did the Taliban win? How did the 6th
Century triumph over the 21st Century? 

There are indications that the single most notorious and reviled government
in the world, primitive people famous for their brutality, rigidity, and
humorlessness are more popular in parts of Afghanistan than they were when
we expelled the Mullahs from Kandahar 20 years ago. They don't seem to be
less popular, so how did that happen? What's the answer? 

We ought to pause to think about that. Let's not just blow past it like it
was an Act of God, it's not. What is the answer? 

Well countries are very complicated, all of them, so there are likely many
answers, but one of those answers may be that the population of Afghanistan
has firmly rejected what our leaders were selling it over 20 years. 

It turns out that the people of Afghanistan don't actually want Gender
Studies Symposia. They didn't actually buy the idea that men can become
pregnant, they thought that was ridiculous. They don't hate their own
masculinity. They don't think it's toxic, they like the patriarchy. Some of
their women like it, too. 

So now they're getting it all back. So maybe it is possible that we failed
in Afghanistan because the entire neoliberal program is grotesque. It's a
joke. It's contrary to human nature. It answers none of our deepest human
desires. It is merely a performance staged for the performer. It's not even
supposed to improve your life. 

It's ridiculous, and ideas that ridiculous can only be imposed by force,
only with armed men at gunpoint. The moment these ideas are not mandatory,
the second the troops withdraw in fact, people tend to revert to the lives
that they prefer to live. That may be the real lesson of Afghanistan. Let's
hope our leaders notice it. 

Doug Macgregor is a retired Army colonel, former senior adviser to the
Secretary of Defense. He joins us tonight because he is the one man who can
answer the question: Who should have known better? 

Doug, thanks so much for coming on tonight. So, you have called for
withdrawal from Afghanistan for a long time. You gave the previous
administration a detailed plan for how to do that without the results that
we're seeing today. What did we -- did our government just do that we
should not have done? 

COL. DOUGLAS MACGREGOR (RET), U.S. ARMY: Well, I think there are three
things that we have to take into consideration. First of course is that
there was never an exit strategy, no glide path out of Afghanistan. 

When I was in The Pentagon, the only thing I could find out was there was
an intention to stay indefinitely, for some of the reasons that you
outlined in your opening remarks. Lots of people were benefiting, not the
American people, and certainly not our soldiers and marines. But there was
no glide path out of the place. 

Secondly, we have these toxic senior military leaders. Toxic because they
simply don't tell the truth and for 20 years they have been lying, frankly,
to the American people, to soldiers and marines who were doing the
fighting, telling them that things were getting better, that we were making
progress when the truth was we weren't. 

And the soldiers and marines can't be blamed for that. They fought very
well. Let there be no mistake about it. 

CARLSON: That's right. 

MACGREGOR: But the generals have done a terrible job, and that's obvious
from what you're seeing on the ground right now, the chaos. No planning, no
preparation, awful. I can't think of anything worse.' 

And then finally, we went in, we said we were going to fight terrorism. As
you pointed out, that was over quite quickly. There was no reason to make
war on the Taliban, they had no role in 9/11. We were there for al-Qaeda
only. Al-Qaeda escaped through the incompetence of Tommy Franks and others,
but effectively, we had pushed them out of Afghanistan, and we should have
left. We didn't do that. 

And so what have we got now? We don't have democracy. We haven't defeated
terrorism per se, we've probably created some new ones. We have the largest
narco state in the world. It is now falling into the hands of new criminals
and new terrorists. 

CARLSON: I just -- all of that is depressing to hear and I think
verifiably true, but I want to go to the very first point that you made
that after 20 years there was no specific plan to leave. There was no, as
you put it, glide path. How can that be? 

MACGREGOR: Well, when we first went into Iraq, there was an argument
between Rumsfeld and some others in his office and finally, Paul Wolfowitz
interjected and said, look, we just want to get the Army into Iraq. 

I think there were a lot of people that decided they just wanted to get the
military into these places and that somehow or another, we would muddle
through, that things would improve. You know, it could be said that a
generation ends when its illusions are exhausted. I think, it was Arthur
Miller that said that. 

What you're seeing now on the television, this mass chaos, this disillusion
is really the end of the illusions that began long ago in the aftermath of
Desert Storm with Madeleine Albright and her successors. Why aren't we
using the Army, she said to General Colin Powell. You keep talking about
how good it is, let's use it. He obviously was not excited about seeing it
employed for reasons other than fighting. 

Well, we've employed it and the Marine Corps all over the Middle East and
what have we created? Chaos. What have we established that is in the
interest of the American people? Nothing. 

CARLSON: They are reckless children and you've confirmed it again. Colonel
Douglas Macgregor, I appreciate your coming on. Thank you so much. 

MACGREGOR: Thank you. 

CARLSON: So not long ago in June, the Secretary of the State, the
aforementioned Tony Blinken assured America that Afghanistan would
definitely not fall in just a matter of days. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: 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 in the situation. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: So, of course as we've just learned that's exactly what happened.
The country collapses from Friday to Monday. How did this happen? It's
worth knowing. 

Andrew Bacevich is the President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible
Statecraft. He is the author of the "Age of Illusions: How America
Squandered its Cold War Victory. Andrew Bacevich joins us now. 

Thanks so much for coming on. You just heard Doug Macgregor accuse Pentagon
leadership of lying to the country and to the men they lead about the state
of Afghanistan. Do you think that's true? 

ANDREW BACEVICH, PRESIDENT, QUINCY INSTITUTE FOR RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT: 
Largely yes. I think the key point is that, you know the media is in a
sense understandably obsessed with what's going on today in Kabul, this
catastrophe that has unfolded, but I think that that focus then distracts
attention from the previous 20 years, and so the story of how we got here,
which I think is the story that demands attention, yes, the Biden
administration certainly has failed in mismanaging this final withdrawal,
but by God there is plenty of blame to go around. 

Doug Macgregor focused on the responsibility of failed generalship
appropriately. I think it's also, we need to focus on the responsibility of
successive administrations that have completely botched up this
undertaking. 

CARLSON: Yes. I agree with that completely and I thank you for making that
point. What do you think the lessons are? What do you think the people who
made these decisions told themselves that turned out not to be true? 

BACEVICH: Well, I think, you know we can bring Madeleine Albright into the
conversation. People like Albright, people like the neoconservatives, Bill
Kristol whose name has been mentioned, people who believe that with the end
of the Cold War that we had become the Masters of the Universe, that the
ultimate destination of human history was predetermined, that the United
States was now in a position to nudge things along. 

You know if you look at the objectives in Afghanistan defined at the Bonn
Conference at the end of 2001, it is clear that American decision makers
had lost all connection with reality, seemed to assume we were dealing
with, you know Massachusetts rather than Afghanistan. 

CARLSON: They can't even run Massachusetts. I was just there, I can
confirm, as you know. So, do you think -- I wish we had more time -- do you
think what we're seeing on TV, because it is so evocative, such powerful
images, do you think that this changes our foreign policy going forward? Is
this the end of something? 

BACEVICH: Well, who's going to take responsibility? I mean, I think that's
the question. Will the analysis of the failure of Afghanistan be willing to
confront the fact that it was a bipartisan failure, not simply something to
be hung around the necks of President Biden? 

CARLSON: Yes. Right, right. I mean even -- right, you're seeing both sides
attempt to leverage this for partisan game, but I agree with you
completely. It's all their fault. 

Andrew Bacevich, I appreciate you coming on tonight. Thank you very much. 

Bonn Conference Thank you. 

CARLSON: So just hours ago, the top flak at The Pentagon thoroughly
discredited, John Kirby, blamed the collapse of Kabul on the country's
military. He said the United States has no way of predicting the Taliban
would overrun Afghanistan's National Army. Watch. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

KIRBY: It would certainly be wrong to conclude that the United States
Military did not view as a distinct possibility that the Taliban could
overrun the country and including Kabul. 

Now, as we've talked about here many times, it happened very fast, and one
of the things that we couldn't anticipate and didn't anticipate was the
degree to which Afghan Forces capitulated sometimes without a fight. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Jack Carr is a former Navy SEAL sniper, the author of the book
"The Devil's Hand." He joins us to assess what we're seeing in Afghanistan
tonight. 

Jack, thanks so much for coming on. So, you've heard a bunch of different
military and State Department leaders and political leaders as well say
that the Afghan Army was actually pretty well trained. They are in pretty
good shape. They were saying this up until three days ago, they could hold
the Taliban at bay. 

Do you think people who were operating at your level in the country believe
that was true well? 

JACK CARR, FORMER NAVY SEAL SNIPER AND AUTHOR, "THE DEVIL'S HAND": Well,
in 2003, I talked to a Mujahideen who had fought the Soviets back in 2003
and he told me that that quote we've been hearing all day today that the
Americans have all the watches, but we have all the time, and in the clips
you just played and that have been playing all week of our senior level
officials telling us that the government is not going to fall, there's no
threat of evacuating the embassy, I can't help but think of Baghdad Bob
back in 2003 as the American forces were moving in on Baghdad saying
nothing to fear here, we have the Americans on the run. There are just too
many similarities there. 

And you asked in your opening monologue why this happened and it is because
our enemy studies their history, they know their history. They know for
centuries they've had to provoke, intimidate, protract, and then exhaust.
So they knew that. 

Our senior level military leaders didn't look back even to the Soviet
incursion into Afghanistan from '79 to '89 or they could have gone back to
the early 20th Century to look at the British Anglo-Afghan War or the 18th
Century for two other English Anglo-Afghan wars. There was plenty. 

CARLSON: That's right. 

CARR: They didn't have to go back to Genghis Khan, they didn't have to go
back to any of that, Alexander the Great. There was plenty of case studies
out there that would let us know that exactly what happened over the
weekend was going to happen. 

CARLSON: That's exactly right. I mean, it must -- I've been thinking this
all day. I mean, if you served there and you saw, you know people you knew
killed there and you gave part of your life to fighting that war, I mean
how does -- how does it feel to see this? 

CARR: Well, it's certainly tough and there are a lot of veterans out there
hurting today, a lot of parents who lost children, brothers and sisters who
lost siblings. There are spouses who lost their loved ones, children who
lost their parents, so all those feelings are hitting people really hard
this weekend and will for the next few weeks. 

So, to veterans out there, if you know somebody that's hurting, definitely
step up. Let them know you're thinking about them and if someone is -- if
you think someone is hurting, they probably are there's a lot of resources
out there that you can reach out to because regardless of how horrible
things are in Afghanistan or even in this country right now, it's a pretty
damn good day to be alive. 

And a couple of other things there -- 

CARLSON: That's true. 

CARR: We lost this because of our own imperial hubris and U.S. political
military establishment, they confused our entry and initial resolve with
victory and they were wrong. America's sons and daughters paid that price.
And our leaders were really trapped by their own intellectual inertia. 

We talked about Alexander the Great, graveyard of empires should have been
a clue, and when we first went in there with those goals of disrupting al-
Qaeda, operations destroying the al-Qaeda organization, we reached what
Clausewitz, right here, in "On War," and I brought this book because I
heard there were some additions to the reading list this year, our military
reading list, and in case this got bumped off for something else, I just
wanted to hold this up so our senior level officials could realize that
this is pretty important. 

But what Clausewitz called the culminating point of victory and we reached
that fairly soon in 2001-2002 and that means that if you go beyond that
point, you turn that success into failure and what we did was snatch defeat
from the jaws of victory, we switched gears to reconstruction and nation
building, shifted gears to focus on Iraq and attempted to counter
corruption, bribery, extortion, drug trafficking and went way past that
point culminating point of victory. 

CARLSON: Yes, if you can't clearly define what your mission is, you
probably ought to leave immediately, but they never did. 

Jack, I appreciate you coming on tonight. Thank you so much. 

CARR: Thank you for having me. 

CARLSON: So, it feels like this disaster spells the end of something, a
change in our foreign policy, a real blow to the Biden administration. What
is it exactly? Brit Hume joins us later in the hour to assess. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON: American cities continue to collapse. Nobody cares. We do though. 

In the City of Philadelphia, formerly the capital of the United States, 11
people were shot just this weekend, five of them died. People run
Philadelphia weren't bothered by it. In fact, those numbers are low by the
city standards. So they did nothing to stop the crime. They've been
encouraging it for quite some time. What are they doing there? Best to do:
punish people who haven't broken the law. 

On Wednesday, Philadelphia announced that all city employees who haven't
been vaccinated will be humiliated for their disobedience to the regime.
They'll be required to wear not one, but two masks over their faces. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: September 1st, all new employees hired by the city
will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID. Current employees
will be required to either be fully vaccinated or to double mask, whenever
they're in an indoor space with others. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Oh, people have to wear two masks, that's kind of a Taliban
thing, isn't it? Well, it's happening in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is just
following the advice from Tony Fauci on January 25th they say when he told
us that multiple layers of masks are just quote "commonsense." He didn't
mention suffocation. 

Of course, the city is not following Tony Fauci's advice from two days
later, on January 27th, that's when Fauci revised his statement and said
quote, "The C.D.C. does not recommend that you should wear two masks." Oh,
so, in case it's not crystal clear by this point, a year and a half in, we
have left the realm of science and we're just making things up to hurt
people who may disagree with us. 

The powerful are doing whatever they feel like doing in the name of science
and public health because they can, because nobody is stopping them. 

In Australia, where there are no restraints at all apparently, the country
has declared martial law and now, the peasants of Australia have to find a
way to drink alcohol through their facemasks, and they are. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There will be no removal of masks to consume alcohol
outdoors, so you will no longer be able to remove your mask to drink a
cocktail at a pop-up beer garden on a footpath as part of a pub crawl. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: This is funny because if you're going along with that, the joke
is on you, but that's not even the craziest thing going on in Australia
right now. 

The City of Melbourne just announced, quote: "If you live in a larger
household such as a share-house or with extended family, you can no longer
exercise with all members of your household," end quote. Well, that's funny
because exercise is the one thing that might help with COVID. It combats
obesity. Obesity is the most serious comorbidity of COVID. 

In other words, it is the reason you're most likely to die other than age,
of COVID. So of course, they are making it much harder to do. Let's close
the gyms. Don't let people exercise together. You can still drink though,
you just have to do it through your double masks as a kind of filter. 

So what if you're not for all this? What if you oppose rules that tell you
to wear two masks at one time? Well, according to the Biden administration,
if you raise any -- any complaints at all about their rules, you may be a
domestic terrorist. 

A new bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security identifies key
threats to the United States. One of those threats is Americans with quote,
"grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government
restrictions." Notice "perceived." They're not actual restrictions, just
perceived. 

D.H.S. also warns of terrorism caused by quote, "conspiracy theories on
perceived election fraud." In other words shut up and accept the results or
you're a terrorist. At what point does this get really scary? I think we're
at that point now. 

NBC News is thrilled though. They summarized the D.H.S. terror warning with
this graphic, which is by the way not a parody, quote: "Potential terror
threats include opposition to COVID measures." So, if you oppose these
insane transparently political-like demented actually COVID measures, for
example, the Governor of Michigan said it was dangerous to buy paint, but
not to get an abortion. If you've got questions about that, you're a
terrorist. 

Again, the question we asked of Australia applies here? How long do we put
up this exactly? How much longer? 

On Friday, CNN's top analyst welcomed this news that their political
enemies are now officially domestic terrorists. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: So when they talk about the
domestic threat this is from racially and ethnically motivated domestic
extremists, but it's also encompassing what they're calling these
grievance-based groups. These are anti-government groups who could
potentially be seizing on the emergence of the new COVID variants and they
could be railing and promoting violence because of government restrictions
and also public health safety restrictions, as well. 

So, that's on -- that's on one side here. 

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: They note that
the pandemic has worsened things and that things like mask mandates, COVID
restrictions could fuel people to carry out different kinds of attacks. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Kind of a freaky looking character on CNN, wasn't it? But notice
how it used to be when they disagree with you to say your ideas are bad.
Now, they're saying, you're a domestic terrorist. Maybe we should put you
in prison. 

Ned Ryun is President of American Majority and it still is a majority of
normal people in this country, he joins us tonight. Ned, thanks so much for
coming on. 

This -- and I don't want to be paranoid or induce paranoia in anyone
watching, but this seems genuinely alarming to me. 

NED RYUN, FOUNDER AND CEO, AMERICAN MAJORITY: Yes. No, that wasn't a
bulletin, Tucker, that was a threat. It was a read between the lines
threat. If you're a conservative with wrong beliefs, you might be
considered a terrorist. If you don't fall in line with everything the
administrative state experts tell you, you might be a terrorist, and I
think the real the real troubling thing to me is, this turning of the
internal -- the security and Intel apparatus to target Americans for wrong
think. 

I mean, it is getting to the point, Tucker, where the elite deeply resent
us questioning their narrative. It's becoming verboten that you would dare
to actually ask questions. I simply want to know, for example, what is the
real mortality rate of COVID for anybody under the age of 75 who doesn't
have a serious co-morbidity? Why is Biden's D.O.J. so antagonistic towards
the various election audits that are happening across the country? 

Honest people that won fair and square don't respond that way, but their
response is not honesty and transparency, Tucker. It is aggressive,
authoritarian threats, but at the end of the day, progressivism --
authoritarianism is the end of progressivism because if you believe in the
all-powerful administrative state filled with these so-called experts, all
apostates who do not accept the gospel of the experts and the great and
glorious state, well they will be made to submit and comply, and I think
that's where we're getting to in this country. 

CARLSON: The second the U.S. military left Afghanistan, I'm thinking
nobody in Afghanistan is going to pretend that men can get pregnant or that
feminism makes sense or any of this stuff, right? And so you have to wonder
if their ideas are so good, if their COVID policy is so good, if their
views on the election are transparently obvious and honest, why do they
have to threaten us with guns if we don't agree? 

RYUN: Because at the end of the day, authoritarianism is arbitrary. I
mean, I think we're seeing our so-called elite -- I think they're just a
credentialed idiocracy, Tucker. I think they've been really exposed over
the last 18 months, I think, the whole idea of the administrative state and
these so-called experts has rung hollow and they deeply resent it, and it
really is about you will be -- you will comply with what we say even though
it's very arbitrary, and if you don't, we will force you by all means
necessary. 

And that's a very unhealthy place to be as a country, in which you're
trying to make half the country, Tucker, be defined as domestic terrorists.
This does not end well if they would actually study history instead of
gender studies. 

CARLSON: That's true. If you let all Americans say what they really
thought for a day, you would hear very different conversations than the
ones you're hearing now. That's for sure. 

RYUN: Yes, you would. 

CARLSON: Ned Ryun, I appreciate your coming on. Yes, you would. 

RYUN: Thanks, Tucker. 

CARLSON: Thank you. 

So all of a sudden, everyone in the media is an expert in on Afghanistan.
They all speak Pashto and Dari. We have no idea what they're doing. 

Mark Steyn though actually has left the United States once or twice and
because he has, he has realized something remarkable about how our media
operate. He'll tell us straight ahead. 

Plus, a new book out. It is called "The Long Slide." You can order a copy
at tuckercarlson.com.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON: Mark Steyn is a good friend of ours. We talk to him a lot, try
for twice a week on the show, but we hadn't talked to him at length in a
long time until now. We spoke to him for a recent episode of "Tucker
Carlson Today" about why the media in this country and the government have
stopped representing the people who live here and not surprisingly he had a
very smart response. Here's part of it. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: The American national government doesn't
work because the congressional districts are now so populous that they
don't represent the people, they represent, you know the handful of players
in each district who know how to get the guys on the phone. 

So, it doesn't work. It doesn't work at the $7.8 trillion level, but it
works -- it still works -- 

CARLSON: Scale matters. Bigness is bad. 

STEYN: Yes, yes, yes, and I think -- and I think that the minute you have
large -- Big Government doesn't just mean big government, it means that
it's no longer -- at a certain point, it can no longer be representative of
the people. 

CARLSON: Right. 

STEYN: So, if you have, you know 300 and something million under the
congressional system and I say this with respect to India, which is the
world's largest democracy and where right now, I would adjudge that you
know, federalism in India works better than federalism in the United
States, but the minute you have these just these -- I mean, don't forget
like the New Hampshire House has as many representatives more or less as
the British House of Commons. 

And so for, obviously, for a sixtieth of the population more or less and
that's -- so a representative there -- if he doesn't necessarily know all
the people he represents by name, he knows a significant chunk of them. 

CARLSON: So you've lived all over the world. I think you still may -- I'm
not going to ask you, but in the five years you've been doing our show,
there's always a two or three-month period where just disappear. I've never
asked you where you go, we just get a call saying Mark Steyn is not
available for the next couple of months. Where is he at? I'm not going to
say, so I'm not going to ask you now. 

STEYN: Yes. 

CARLSON: But I suspect -- 

STEYN: Actually just around the corner from the FOX D.C. bureau face down
in the coke and hookers, but I try to make it sound as if -- 

CARLSON: You're on a bender. 

STEYN: Yes, but I try to make it sound as if it's a little bit more
exotic. 

CARLSON: I suspect you're in foreign countries. That's what I have heard,
I've never again -- because I'm indirect, too, just like you have never
asked, I'm not going to ask now, but you have a lot of perspective on
countries, I guess, that's the point I'm making. 

What are the things that America should watch out for going forward? What
are the real threats to you? 

STEYN: Well, just to say why that is, I think at a certain point you have
to go and see places for yourself. 

CARLSON: I absolutely agree with you. 

STEYN: And I think that's particularly true if you're in the media. I
mean, you know how -- you know that a lot of what the media do is phony.
So, 9/11 happens and within 10 days, every commentator is an expert in the
fierce Pashtun goat heard and all the rest, you know, they never heard the
word Pashtun 10 days earlier, but now suddenly they have to appear as
experts in it. 

And I never particularly cared for that, so I like to go and actually get a
grip on those places firsthand, which I always like to do, just you know,
just to reassure myself and at this particular time, to go to sort of
circuitously answer your question. 

My problem right now is that Western Civilization is sliding off a cliff
and most people in the western world aren't even aware of that, which is
tragic. So, how do you stop it if they're not even aware of it? 

And one thing I've noticed and you travel, too, and you travel to these
places that actually the western world right now gets more west the further
east you go. 

CARLSON: That is so true. 

STEYN: You know, at some point, American conservatism, has which is
desperately stale and tired at the official level, at the think tank level,
and at the you know, conservative magazine level if you can still find one,
has to actually confront that head on as to why they are having absolutely
no -- 

You know, it's interesting to me, all the three phenomena of the pushback.
The Tea Party in whenever it was, 2009 and then Trump in 2015, and now
these people showing up at school boards and being mad over critical race
theory, all these three phenomena had nothing to do with the conservative
establishment whether political or whether the think tanks are. 

So, that should tell you something -- that should tell those guys about the
disconnect. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: That conversation went on for an hour. You can watch the whole
thing on "Tucker Carlson Today" right now on foxnation.com It is
streaming. 

Brit Hume has followed Joe Biden's career for several hundred years now and
knows a lot about foreign policy. He is standing by to assess what we are
watching tonight in Afghanistan and what it means. That's next. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON: When he spoke today, the President did not take questions, so he
didn't get to explain why just a few weeks ago he was telling us that the
pullout from Afghanistan would look nothing like Saigon in 1975. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Taliban is not the
North Vietnamese Army, they're not -- they're not remotely comparable in
terms of capability. There is going to be no circumstance where you see
people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from
Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Brit Hume is our senior political analyst. He has analyzed a lot
of politics over many years. We're happy to have him here. Brit, thanks so
much for coming on tonight. So how do you assess the politics of this for
the administration? 

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS CHANNEL SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think this
is a stain, it is unmistakable, the viewpoints across the board of this
evacuation operation, the pullout, the last piece of the pullout have been
uniformly the same, that it is a disaster and that it was horribly planned.
It was misbegotten. 

The Intelligence is bad. The judgment was bad and the decision to do it
like this was worst of all. 

CARLSON: Yes. 

HUME: And you're hearing that from all quarters now and I think if people
look at these images, the images will stay in people's minds. I mean, the
pathetic scene on that tarmac today. 

CARLSON: Awful. 

HUME: With people chasing that airplane, grabbing on, and some falling
off. I mean, people won't forget that and it will be a stain on Joe Biden
and his record that I think will endure. Now, it will fade to some extent,
as things will. 

The best thing he has going for him right is possibly the fact that once
the Taliban really secure control of the place, the amount of reporting we
get out of there may be very limited. We may not know the extent of
atrocities that are being committed there, the subjugation of women and all
the things that we tried to prevent. 

CARLSON: It is possible they will make their people wear masks, you know,
cover their faces. 

HUME: Yes, the burqas, yes. We will be back to the burqas, that's
possible. 

CARLSON: So, you've got to think -- so I have been frustrated for a long
time that we're still there, that's my personal view. We should leave, 20
years is too long, et cetera et cetera and I still feel that way. So I am
glad we've left. 

But there has got to be some non-humiliating, non-chaotic, non-disastrous
way to leave. 

HUME: Exactly right. I mean, the real issue today -- the thing that Biden
rather cleverly talked about in political terms is he talked about the
decision with withdrawal. Well, that ship kind of sailed a long time ago. 

CARLSON: Yes, it kind of did. 

HUME: We've been gradually withdrawing from there for years and all that
was in question was when the final pullout of the final remaining soldiers
will be there. 

CARLSON: Right. 

HUME: The mission of nation building which everyone now seems to agree was
a mistake, that has been abandoned for years. We've been drawing down our
forces. They don't think what we're doing there is nation building. How are
they going to nation build with 2,500 troops for God's sake? You know, we
were there as kind of military support for the Afghan Forces, which seemed
to be motivated by, not just supported by, but very much motivated by our
presence there. 

You know, and they -- despite all the criticism that Biden leveled out to
them today, they fought long and hard and lost tens of thousands of
soldiers, killed ... 

CARLSON: Yes. 

HUME:  ... fighting the Taliban, so there is that, but this question, this
issue is all about how you execute the final pullout and this was
unmistakably hideously botched. 

CARLSON: Were you surprised by it considering -- 

HUME: I was -- well, you know, you hear these people say these, they say,
you know, we've got a handle on this. We know -- and all the rest of it,
right, and you know, I wasn't as excited about the pullout as some others
were. You and I may have a disagreement about that. 

But as for this, the execution of this piece of it -- look, that's what he
inherited. He inherited a drawn down force about to be removed from
Afghanistan. 

CARLSON: Right. 

HUME: His job was to remove it safely and effectively, right? And the
consequences of his decision making about how to do that are what we saw
today and yesterday. This is on him. This piece of it is on him. 

CARLSON: I wonder if it will be recorded that way. 

HUME: Well, I don't -- at this point, to my surprise, we are seeing it
reported that way now. You know, I am beginning to see people saying, well,
the American people really broadly support the withdrawal and he is trying
to change the subject to all we are talking about was just the decision to
withdraw and so on. 

CARLSON: Yes, I know. 

HUME: But this, I think, still leaves an indelible mark. Hard to forget
these images. 

CARLSON: Yes. And I don't see any sign of competence. I mean, look at our
cities. They are not good at it. 

Brit Hume, I appreciate your coming on. 

HUME: You bet, Tucker. Thank you. 

CARLSON: Thank you. 

That's it for us tonight. A brand new episode of "Tucker Carlson Today" as
we mentioned, with the one and only Mark Steyn for the hour, as Larry King
used to say. It's on foxnation.com.

We will be back tomorrow night 8:00 p.m., the show that is the sworn and
sincere enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink. Have a great
night.  

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