This is a rush transcript of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on September 3, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening and welcome to a Special Edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

In July of 2017, every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with newly elected President Donald Trump for the first time. It didn't go well.

"You're all losers," the President has told them according to a "Foreign Policy" magazine account. "You don't know how to win anymore."

Now, that's a harsh assessment, obviously, though arguably true, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff are, keep in mind the country's highest-ranking military officers. Their job is to follow the orders of elected officials and protect the country no matter how much their feelings may be hurt.

But in this case, that's not what happened, because the rules are different now. According to U.S. Army Major General Paul Eaton, the President's insults that day and similar comments he made in public were a bitter humiliation for the country's military leaders and they made it their mission to undermine civilian control of The Pentagon ever after, quote: "I was really shocked by how many of my former colleagues voted for the former President and openly supported him," Eaton said, "But when Trump turned on the military, well the military turned on him." End quote.

Now keep in mind, that's not how democracy is supposed to work. Military leaders report to the people you elect, but again that's not what happened.

Stories began leaking about how the President -- President Trump was ignoring classified Intelligence about Russian bounties in Afghanistan.

Where do you think those stories came from? They came from The Pentagon.

That was payback. Then the military simply refused to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan even though they were ordered to do so by the elected President of the United States. Again, no more civilian control of the military.

When Joe Biden finally became President on Inauguration Day, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was so excited, he couldn't control himself, quote: "No one has a bigger smile today than I do," Milley told Michelle Obama, sucking up like a child. "You can't see it under my mask, but I do."

The media people who supported Biden from the very beginning, including a former C.I.A. Director -- there are many of those on television these days

-- also celebrated. They told us that the adults were back in charge.

The orange man is gone. Everything is going to be better now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Anybody who has any connection to reality about what is going on around them should have watched that and said the adults are back in the room.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It seems as though we have a professional adult once again in the White House who is just simply doing the work.

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": Really the theme I would say is the adults are back.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Still, it is a relief to have adults in charge.

JOHN O. BRENNAN, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: Now we have adults in the White House.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Okay, the adults are back in the room.

NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC HOST: There is a sense, I think the world over, that the adults have returned.

JONATHAN CAPEHART, MSNBC HOST: We have an adult in the White House now and it's glorious.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Those clips are amazing to watch now simply because they consist of the most childish people in the country celebrating adulthood, but they look especially absurd in light of what we've just seen in Afghanistan.

These days, Joe Biden's friends in The Pentagon and the Foreign Affairs desk at NBC News no longer think he is an adult. He abandoned American citizens. He got 13 Americans killed and suddenly, they seem a little ashamed. Plus, he has turned his back on the neocon project and that's the greatest offense of all.

But the bigger question is why our media and the military were talking like this in the first place. The adults are back in charge? What does that mean exactly?

Well if you follow the generals who have been telling us for the past 20 years about Afghanistan, you realize very quickly, adults means people who are willing to pretend that everything is fine when it's very much not fine.

Consider that no matter how badly our mission in Afghanistan was deteriorating, by the way, we were never clear what that mission was, but clearly our strategy of pacifying the country was falling apart. No matter how badly it got in Afghanistan, The Pentagon and its many spokesmen repeatedly told us we were making incredible progress, and progress is the word they used again, again, and again, almost as if they coordinated it.

In 2005 for example, the head of U.S. Central Command, General John Abizaid told reporters, quote: "Over the three years we've been operating here, Afghanistan has shown interesting progress." Two years later the website "Task and Purpose" reported that another senior, General Dan McNeill had a similar message. He said quote: "I'd like to point out there are significant progress in the forward move of the Afghan National Army."

In 2008, the commander of the 101st Airborne, apparently another adult concurred that progress was ongoing, quote: "We're making some steady progress here." Then in 2010, even as coalition casualties were increasing, the progress somehow continued unabated. It was progress no matter what.

Another Lieutenant General called David Rodriguez informed reporters at a news conference in Kabul, quote: "We are steadily making deliberate (can you guess) progress."

That same year, Stanley McChrystal, then the Commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan also wanted us to know progress was being made quote: "I think we have made significant progress in setting the conditions in 2009 and beginning some progress and we'll make real progress in 2010," which we remind you was 11 years ago.

Then Stanley McChrystal was fired for criticizing the Obama administration, in particular, the total incompetence of the current President Joe Biden and David Petraeus took over, and sure enough, General Petraeus quickly declared that quote, "Progress has been achieved in some critical areas and we are poised to realize more progress."

Just a year later, in 2011, Petraeus doubled down. He told lawmakers that year that quote, "The past eight months have seen important, but hard- fought progress."

Speaking that summer to troops in Kandahar, the Defense Secretary at the time, Robert Gates echoed that theme.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT GATES, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: And what you've accomplished is extraordinary because over the last year, essentially you have ejected the Taliban from their -- from their home territory, and if we can hold this territory and expand the bubble, then I think -- I think by the end of the year, we can turn the corner in this conflict.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Gates didn't actually use the word "progress." He had more original language than that, but the message was the same. And just to make sure that message was crystal clear, senior military leaders kept using that word. A few years later, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford confirmed that progress was indeed continuing, quote: "At this point, we've made significant progress." He said that in 2013.

And then three years later, in 2016, the new commander in Afghanistan John W. Nicholson said the same thing, "We are seeing some progress."

As recently as last year, a spokesman for Mark Milley said he was hard at work making sure to accelerate progress in Afghanistan.

So if you're wondering why Americans were so confused by the fact that Kabul fell in an afternoon and the Taliban controlled the country that we occupied for 20 years, maybe it's because they thought we were making progress.

So consider that whole chronology you just heard. Consider the news that Reuters broke this week about Joe Biden's recent conversation with the guy that we installed as the President of Afghanistan, some college professor called Ashraf Ghani.

Joe Biden told Ghani that even as the Taliban were taking over the country this summer, the most important thing to do is to keep up the appearance of you guessed it -- progress. Quote: "I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban." President Biden said, "And there is a need whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture," end quote.

Now, two things to say about this. First we know that conversation took place because The Pentagon and/or the State Department leaked it to Reuters. Now, why would they do that? Because whatever Biden's faults, he did pull American troops out of Afghanistan and they hate that. So, they leaked an audio tape of the President speaking to another head of state.

That's illegal.

You can't conduct statecraft if people are leaking the contents of your conversations, and yet, they are doing that to get back at him because he broke the rules. He stopped permanent war. He did it ineptly, but he did it.

So lying to the rest of us about what is actually happening with our troops and our money in our name in foreign countries, that has been the philosophy of this country's military established for 20 years. It's also the philosophy of every high-ranking official in the Biden administration.

Project the illusion of progress, even when it's clear we're failing.

Tony Blinken who runs the State Department ineptly just announced the news that more than a hundred American citizens remain trapped in Afghanistan is really kind of progress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Now, U.S. military flights have ended and our troops have departed Afghanistan, a new chapter of America's engagement with Afghanistan has begun.

We believe there are still a small number of Americans, under 200, and likely closer to 100 who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave. We're trying to determine exactly how many.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: We had 20 years to figure it out, but we have no idea how many Americans including school children remain in Afghanistan because we are the adults in the room, and that's why we're going to lead with our diplomacy.

Now what does that look like exactly? How do you lead with diplomacy? Well, here is one example.

Back in April of this year, Tony Blinken's State Department announced that it was spending hundreds of millions of dollars on social programs in Afghanistan to destroy the patriarchy, because that's really our goal.

Impose our modernist social values on prehistoric countries. We're going to pay for programs that support quote, "women's empowerment."

Where did that money go? Well, to people like Dr. Bahar Jalali who just posted this dirge for equity in Afghanistan on social media, quote: "For

8.5 years, I taught at the American university of Afghanistan as a faculty member and academic administrator," she wrote. "I founded the first Gender Studies program in Afghanistan's history there. All our work, hopes, dreams, progress only to have it snatched away so needlessly."

So you've got to think, it takes a special kind of arrogance -- we used to call this cultural imperialism -- to imagine that other cultures want to ape your family structure, for example. Isn't it up to the Afghans what kind of families they want? No. We tried to impose our customs on them and they hated it. I mean, that's one of the reasons the Taliban took over in a weekend.

We hired people like Bahar Jalali and Ashraf Ghani to lead with our diplomacy. That's what Afghanistan looked like for the past 20 years.

Meanwhile, we've been leading with our diplomacy, we've given billions of American military dollars with equipment to the Taliban.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Row upon row of sophisticated assault rifles, boxes of pistols, ammunition, vision equipment. Videos posted by the Taliban online in recent days boast of what they say are their seizures of the assault rifles in the Afghan City of Herat, and at Kunduz Airport, armored Humvees by the dozen.

Some mine resistant ambush protected vehicles called MRAPs costing half a million dollars apiece, even a small drone. These are the potentially lethal spoils the Taliban are believed to have captured in recent days from defeated Afghan Forces, weapons made in America supplied by the u s to their fallen Afghan allies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So now, we're arming the Taliban and marooning our own citizens in Afghanistan. Who could possibly have seen that coming?

Glenn Greenwald is one of the few journalists who did see it coming, he writes for "Substack" where all of us read him, you should, too. He joins us tonight.

Glenn, thanks so much for coming on. So, it's a little weird for the news organizations that repeated uncritically and not just on the left, I hate to say it, but almost all of them just repeated this kind of happy talk about how Afghanistan was progressing for 20 years and then they whip around and are shocked that actually, it's a mess and always have been.

There's some dishonesty there, isn't there?

GLENN GREENWALD, JOURNALIST: The whole thing was a fraud and you know, you can go back to things like in 2019, "The Washington Post" publishing what it called "The Afghanistan Papers." There is now a book out by the reporter who broke that really important story, they did a good job on it, where they obtained secret documents going up through 2016 under the Obama years where internally, they were saying the exact opposite of what they were saying publicly about the war in Afghanistan just like they did in Vietnam as revealed by The Pentagon Papers.

They were saying to the public as you just showed, we're making great progress, we have faith in the Afghan National Security Forces. Internally, they knew the Afghan National Security Forces were a joke. They were filled with illiterate people who couldn't do anything, with drug addicts or people who had no interest in fighting. They would disappear as soon as they got their paycheck.

The whole war for years and years and years was a lie and so while, I do agree of course, that there are ineptitudes in how we withdrew, the fact that we withdrew because two Presidents -- first President Trump and then President Biden -- ensured that it happened is something to celebrate in large part because it's the first time in as long as I can remember as these people what I do know is the Deep State that manipulate us all the time, that lie to us all the time for their own benefit have finally lost.

And the media is turning against Biden not because they suddenly became fair, but because they've been in bed with the Deep State that's who fed them Russiagate, that's who fed them all the leaks during the Trump years, and they're angry on behalf of the faction that they genuinely serve.

CARLSON: Well, I hate to say I agree with you. I mean, I think Biden is an awful President, the worst I can remember, and totally out of it, senile.

On the other hand, he is the President of the United States. You're not supposed to leak an audio tape of his recorded conversation with another head of state. I mean, that's a felony for one thing.

And for another, like how can any President do real diplomacy if he is being undermined by permanent Washington? Like why shouldn't we be worried about that?

GREENWALD: You know, I think this is the key point for me at least, when I look at the Trump years. A lot of people obviously ask me, why weren't you as worried as other people on, you know, the left about the Trump presidency?

CARLSON: Right.

GREENWALD: And my reason was, it was because what I saw in opposition to the Trump presidency was something far more dangerous than anything that I thought he would be capable of doing, which is that they took their masks off. They made clear, the C.I.A., The Pentagon, the permanent military and security state inside the United States that they were willing to intervene in U.S. politics to undermine the elected President.

The very first article I wrote before Trump was even inaugurated in January 17, 2017 was headlined "The deep state goes to war with the elected President." The fact that we have a Deep State that the U.S. media was cheering, they were thrilled that these generals they were heralding as heroes for ignoring Trump's orders, for keeping classified information away from him, from manipulating him for subverting his decisions.

They were cheering, these Generals, as saving us from our elected leader, which is the definition of a Deep State at the same time as they were calling anyone who was pointing out that we have a Deep State, unhinged, crazy, conspiracy theorists. That to me is the most dangerous development of the last five years, is that unelected generals, Intelligence operatives irrigated into themselves while the media cheered. The power to override our democracy whenever they thought that it was in our best interest to do so.

CARLSON: And that leaves the entire population powerless. You know, your vote doesn't matter and that makes the society super volatile and dangerous, and I agree with you 100 percent. I used to laugh at the term, the "Deep State," but it's totally real, unfortunately.

Glenn Greenwald, I appreciate your coming on today. Thank you.

GREENWALD: Good to be with you, Tucker. Thanks.

CARLSON: Thanks. So, we maybe haven't spent enough time thinking about what the chaos in Afghanistan will mean for the future of the West, but Douglas Murray has thought a lot about it. He says that what we're seeing now in Afghanistan will have massive consequences through the generations.

Now, if there's one person who can see clearly into the generations, it's our friend Douglas Murray and we're honored to have him join us now.

Douglas Murray, thanks so much for coming on.

So, it's a very simple question. What does this mean going forward for the United States?

DOUGLAS MURRAY, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think it's an extremely sad corner for everybody who admires the United States and who believes that the United States has been a force for good in the world.

America's competitors and enemies are inevitably smacking their lips at the moment about the humiliation of America in Afghanistan, but I think, it's America's friends and allies who will be even more concerned.

You know this President came in pretending that his predecessor had been totally uninterested in diplomacy and that Biden was going to miraculously knit together all of the world's democracies. He's done exactly the opposite. He didn't consult his allies, he didn't consult his friends.

He ignored his friends when they then asked some things, he ignored his allies. He left Americans behind. He betrayed his allies. And this is the sort of experience that people remember.

America's enemies will remember it. Its competitors will remember it, and its friends will remember it, because the upshot of all of this, the upshot of 20 years in Afghanistan and this humiliating, humiliating defeat which only the White House is still pretending can be portrayed as a success, you know the biggest retreat -- the fastest retreat in history is what they're trying to portray it as.

The only people who believe that are at the White House. Everybody else can see that after 20 years in Afghanistan, America has shown that it's not a particularly dangerous enemy to have, and it's not a particularly good friend to have either.

CARLSON: So what are -- what are the consequences of that? I mean, weakness invites aggression, correct?

MURRAY: Yes. Always, always. If America isn't interested in the world or isn't interested in doing things well in the world, then other people certainly are. You know, there is a fundamental frivolity about all of this.

As Kabul fell, Secretary of State Blinken was vacationing in the Hamptons.

The British Foreign Secretary was vacationing in Crete. You know who doesn't take summer holidays? The Taliban. It turns out, they don't take a summer break. They don't go elsewhere for sunnier climes and that's because we didn't treat this as seriously as they did.

Everybody has been rolling out the quote in recent days, yet again, that you know, the Taliban's famous quote, you know, "You have the watches, but we have the time." But it's not just about watches or time, it's about seriousness. It's about whether you actually intended to do what you claimed your mission was.

If America was serious about Afghanistan, it would not have left the country with hundreds of thousands of machine guns, mortars, pistols and much more.

What we've heard in recent days even about that which I know you're coming on to later in the show, what we've heard about that is this sort of lackluster claim by some of the remaining defenders of Biden saying, oh no, most of that won't be able to be operated by the Taliban. Lo and behold, the Taliban have got a Blackhawk over Kandahar and one over Kabul within a day.

General McKenzie says that the retreat from the airport in Kabul, they destroyed 150 vehicles. He also said, they destroyed the surface-to-air missile system just as they left.

So the one -- the one real boast of the U.S. as they left Kabul Airport was that at least they didn't leave an operating system behind that meant that the Taliban could immediately shoot the last American plane leaving Kabul Airport.

This is nothing to boast about. There is nothing to boast about, about 20 years of presence in Afghanistan, which I might remind you, America invited her NATO allies to come into.

CARLSON: That's right.

MURRAY: It was NATO that came in on the one for all, all for one principle, and at the end of the day, America left on our own without allies, without friends, with nothing to show.

CARLSON: In the worst possible way. It's a dangerous moment, it feels that way. Douglas Murray, I appreciate your insight. Thank you.

MURRAY: It's a great pleasure.

CARLSON: Well, as if the humiliation couldn't become more profound, we told you recently, the Biden administration may give financial aid to the Taliban. We've learned one reason why this may be happening. The Taliban has promised to fight climate change. I am not making that up.

It's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Welcome back to a Special Edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

One of the many promises the Taliban has made since taking control of Afghanistan is to form a more inclusive government. "Inclusive" -- not a term the Taliban are famous for using. What does that mean exactly? We just got some insight in this recent newscast from Afghanistan where the Taliban held the TV anchor at gunpoint.

But they've also promised to fight terrorism and most important, to fight climate change. They are accepted by the international community.

The Biden administration seems prepared to accept them with open arms particularly if they become warriors against climate change. A few days ago on ABC, National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan who unlike you is a Rhodes scholar, indicated the U.S. government would be willing to give economic aid to the Taliban.

Dan Hollaway is a veteran, also the host of "The Drinkin' Bros" podcast. He joins us tonight. Dan, thanks so much for coming on. So, it seems like we could have -- we could have short circuited a lot of these 20 years in Afghanistan if only we'd gotten them say, in October of 2001, to agree to fight climate change. Why didn't we do that?

DAN HOLLAWAY, HOST, "THE DRINKIN' BROS" PODCAST: Oh, it's a good question I really don't know the answer to it. This is all baffling to me, the idea that we're going to think these folks have turned around and all of a sudden they're a paragon of moral virtue. That's pretty wild, isn't it?

CARLSON: Well, and not just a paragon of moral virtue, but that they're like European style western liberals that they're going to restart the Gender Studies classes and ban SUVs.

HOLLAWAY: It's absolutely insane. I mean, Reporters without Borders have already reported that I think seven journalists have been attacked, a journalist's family member was killed recently, a part of a German journalism organization, I believe. This is all wild.

These people that believe that the Taliban has flipped over a new leaf, there's one really good way to tell that that's not true. These videos of Amin Ul Haq, who was Osama bin Laden's bodyguard for years, right, was there during the planning stages of 9/11, who spent time in a Pakistani prison until he was magically released a few months after bin Laden was killed. This guy is now riding around Afghanistan with a Taliban escort.

So, this idea that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are not intrinsically leaked is absolutely and demonstrably untrue and we're going to suffer the consequence of this stuff now. For our own naivety and our own arrogance, it's going to happen.

CARLSON: I think that's right. I wonder though now that the Biden administration has become a military and diplomatic partner with the Taliban, we've armed them more than any country of its size in the world, how long until the left start defending the Taliban and calling you racist for criticizing them?

HOLLAWAY: Oh boy. Well, Milley loves the critical race theory, right? I mean -- and we spent that $15 million I think in Pakistan on the Gender Studies, so, hey we should be fine, I think.

I mean, look, I'm a hopeful guy.

CARLSON: Yes. Are you depressed? I mean, you know you live in a world of people who fought in Afghanistan. I mean -- what -- how sad is it to see this, honestly?

HOLLAWAY: Well, I'll tell you, Tucker, the most important thing that any human being can be is there for the people that need them, right?

CARLSON: Right.

HOLLAWAY: And this administration has failed at that most basic moral principle of human existence and now, they've robbed the U.S. service member their ability to do that same thing and there's going to be a moral injury that persists throughout our generation in the same way it did in Vietnam.

CARLSON: I think that's it. I think that's exactly right. If you can't protect your own people, you're worthless and dishonorable. I mean, I think it's that's simple.

HOLLAWAY: That's right.

CARLSON: Dan Hollaway, I appreciate coming on tonight. Thank you very much.

HOLLAWAY: Yes, sir.

CARLSON: So, as we left Afghanistan, the Biden administration decided to leave the Taliban with a parting gift, about $90 million in state-of-the- art military equipment.

We are learning much more about exactly what the Biden administration handed to the Taliban.

And right now on tuckercarlson.com, you can still order a signed copy of the new book. "The Long Slide."

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATT FINN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to "FOX News Live." I'm Matt Finn.

Police are going door to door searching for potential flash flooding victims in the northeast. At least 49 people are confirmed dead following the catastrophic flooding spawned by the remnants of Hurricane Ida. The heavy rain late Wednesday swamped homes and vehicles and overwhelmed urban drainage systems.

And President Biden touring some Louisiana neighborhoods hit hard when Hurricane Ida made landfall Sunday. The Category 4 storm left more than a million people without power in sweltering heat.

And President Biden also signing an Executive Order directing the F.B.I. to declassify documents related to 9/11. Victims' families have long sought the records in hopes of implicating the Saudi government. Past investigations have not been able to establish the Saudi government was directly involved.

I'm Matt Finn, now back to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

For all your headlines, log onto http://foxnews.com.

CARLSON: Welcome back to a Special Edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

Over the past two decades, American taxpayers shelled out nearly $90 billion for military equipment for the Afghan Army. That included everything from an entire Air Force, Blackhawk helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, hundreds of thousands of battle rifles, trucks, and armored vehicles.

Now, the Taliban has a lot of that equipment. It's one of the best armed militaries of its size in the world -- the Taliban.

Victor Davis Hanson is a fellow at the Hoover Institution. We're honored to have him with us tonight. Professor, thank you very much for coming.

So, the Taliban, after 20 years is more legitimate in the eyes of the so- called international community and very heavily armed, much better than it was in 2001. How do you assess this development?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: I think we're underestimating it, Tucker. If you look at all the military aid that we've given Israel since the founding of the Jewish State, this is about 85 percent of that over a 70-year period.

We're all worried about the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford, $12 billion, the most expensive aircraft carrier in history. We could have had seven of them for the price of weapons that we've left in Afghanistan. We talk about Abrams Tanks.

The weapon depot that we left in Afghanistan has an equivalent worth of three times of all the Abrams Tanks that we've ever deployed, we've ever had in the Army, and then finally we're all upset about the F-35 fighter, the $90 million boondoggle some people think it is. We could have had a thousand of those for the amount of equipment we left in Afghanistan.

So this is the greatest loss of military equipment in the history of warfare, by one power. It's absolutely staggering and yet we take it so nonchalantly.

The people responsible for this should be either fired or resign. They've done so much damage to the United States and they've empowered a pre- civilizational terrorist band and to making them into a considerable, you know, militia that will cause havoc for the next 20 years.

And I think it's just atrocious and nobody is taking any blame for it. This is well aside from the 7,000 scanners they left that they are now using to find out who helped us. This is beyond the list of names of people who wanted to get out that the Taliban have.

And the final thing, Tucker is, we were told by a top ranking General again and again that the Taliban and we had the same agenda. We wanted out quickly by the 31st, they did, so we could trust them. We were working together.

But we didn't have agenda that was anywhere near theirs because their agenda was, we want you out on the 31st, but we want to cause as much humiliation, death, and destruction as we can get away with so you don't come back and we wanted none of that.

So there is something terribly wrong with our military. I don't know whether it's their distraction because of wokeness as they go through the ranks and the rosters trying to weed out potential -- I don't know, supremacists -- or they're just incompetent or they're too worried about the revolving door going in and out from defense contractor boards.

But we need a bipartisan investigation of our top brass and the system, it's a systemic failure, and it's costing us dearly.

CARLSON: Possible, the Anglosphere is committing mass suicide. That's another explanation, because you're seeing it all over the world from English-speaking countries and that's really hard to believe.

HANSON: It is.

CARLSON: Victor Davis Hanson, thank you so much for coming on.

HANSON: Thank you.

CARLSON: We're learning much more about how many Afghans the Biden administration has accepted into this country and where they're going. Here is a hint. They are not all translators. Most of them need translators.

We've got details when we return to the Special Edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Welcome back to a Special Edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

In the final months of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, about 30,000 Afghan nationals were fleeing the country each week. Some 300,000 have already made it to Turkey where they will likely attempt to reach Western Europe.

Now these numbers do not include the tens of thousands of Afghan nationals who were evacuated by the U.S. military in the final days, the same days in which we left American school children behind.

So exactly how many Afghan citizens are coming to the United States? The State Department won't tell us despite the fact that we live here and it is technically speaking, our country. They are, however telling non-profits so-called NGOs that up to 50,000 Afghan citizens could arrive without visas and that's a good thing.

Sohrab Ahmari is a contributing editor at the "American Conservative." He joins us now.

I appreciate, Sohrab you're coming on. So, it does seem to the layman that the effort to evacuate Afghan nationals, refugees from Afghanistan and bringing them to the United States was much better thought through and far better coordinated than the evacuation of American citizens. Am I imagining that?

SOHRAB AHMARI, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE": No, it really does seem that way and it's not just the effort it's also, frankly, propaganda or the public relations aspect of this where it's again just like the progress that you mentioned with the Afghan National Army making progress.

It's this talking point of Afghan allies, Afghan allies, and again people who've helped us, we do have some debt of obligation to them.

CARLSON: Right.

AHMARI: But I just think, we have to be very careful about the vetting process behind all of this. I'm just thinking about the European experience in 2015-2016 and I'm seeing a lot of similar media pressure, not just on the United States, but on countries like Turkey and the Balkan States, essentially the countries that are on the land route from Afghanistan over to Europe and kind of pushing them you know, you have to have porous borders because these people are in dire straits.

And you know, in 2015-2016, I went and reported on that. You know, I speak Persian, so I could embed with a lot of the migrants who were on the trail.

I stayed with smugglers in Istanbul. I walked with the Afghans through the Greek Isles and then in to the Balkan States.

And initially I was inclined to say these are all refugees because they tell you they're refugees and it's Syria, right? Who can forget the Syrian Civil War?

CARLSON: Yes.

AHMARI: But as I found out, a lot of them weren't in fact Syrians, only about like a third to a half you'd encounter were Syrians. There were Iraqis, Iranians, and lots and lots of Afghans.

Now why is that important? Because tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Afghans were fleeing Afghanistan as refugees during the reign of the U.S. backed Kabul government.

So the question that that raises is how many of the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands that are going to be on the move now heading for Europe -- how many of those -- what kind of pressure do they face if they were fleeing under the U.S. backed government? Are they all really refugees? How many of them are actually economic migrants?

How many are Iranians who are passing themselves off because Dari, that the Afghan dialect of Persian is identical to Iranian Persian? And again, how are you vetting the difference between them?

But the media calls all of them refugees, refugees, refugees, and they're forcing countries like Turkey, brow beating Turkey, which is now doing the right thing mainly for its own self-interest because its people are fed up with frankly migrants from points further east.

None of these details makes it to the reporting you see in places like "The New York Times."

CARLSON: Right. No, that's exactly right. I mean, I don't think most Americans understand what a disaster that migration wave in 2015 and 2016 turned out to be. It does -- if you take three steps back, it looks like people are intentionally trying to end the idea of the nation state, you know, the distinct country with its culture, borders, language -- like that's over in some places.

AHMARI: Yes, I think that's the real agenda here. In 2015-2016, it found an expression or an excuse in the Syrian crisis. In 2021, well, there is a crisis in Afghanistan, but again that distinction between migrant and refugee.

A refugee has to have a well-founded fear of persecution and there's a kind of process they have to go through. If every Afghan who faces a tragedy including Afghans who were born in Iran, meaning they've never actually set foot in quote-unquote "war-ravaged Afghanistan." If every single one of those is a refugee, then the entire population of vast swaths of the Earth should be granted asylum in western and northern Europe.

CARLSON: Right. That's exactly right.

AHMARI: That's a crazy idea.

CARLSON: Right. So, we trust the Taliban to assure the safe passage of Americans out of Afghanistan, but we also think they're so repressive that everyone who lives in Afghanistan has a right to come here.

It doesn't actually make sense, as you point out. Sohrab Ahmari, a reporter and a thinker in one. Great to see you tonight. Appreciate it.

AHMARI: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well as Kabul fell, we decided to talk to our old friend, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater who out of nowhere told us an amazing story about how his life and the life of Joe Biden intersected in Afghanistan.

There's a memorable story, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Welcome back to the Special Edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

Kabul fell, we decided to sit down and talk to our old friend, Erik Prince, who founded Blackwater years ago, one of the largest private military contractors in the world and spent an awful lot of time in Afghanistan.

During that conversation, he revealed something we didn't know, which is that Blackwater once saved Joe Biden's life. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Thirty years from now, last question for you, since you're good at imagining what the future will look like, what does America look like?

ERIK PRINCE, FOUNDER, BLACKWATER: Well, we're coming to an inflection point and I think we're -- we are in the 1977, you know, the Carter administration, if you think about the 70s was a major setback for the West. We had all kinds of crises. Foreign policy setbacks, you had inflation and stagflation and high unemployment and the oil crises and all the rest.

And we just had, like what did Carter say? We hit a malaise.

CARLSON: Yes.

PRINCE: And the leadership can turn it around, just like leadership can turn a failed business around; surprisingly quickly, good leadership can turn a country around.

Yes, our Congress is useless and in the wrong direction, but there's a reason the Founding Fathers set it up so that every two years, you can throw the bums out.

CARLSON: Yes.

PRINCE: Do so. The same with Senate. You can turn over a third of those senators every two years. The country requires leadership and whether that's election integrity, if you do that on your local basis and if, you know -- I think the biggest problems in America stem from the fact that the Federal government has gotten way too large and I think we need to maximize the 10th Amendment.

States' rights limiting the powers of the Federal government to stuff that has only been directly entitled to the Federal government to do, otherwise it's left to the states, and so states have to be much stronger at flexing those muscles and say no, we're not going to pay for your stupidity anymore, Washington.

CARLSON: That's exactly right.

PRINCE: We're doing our thing.

CARLSON: I said that was my last question, but I have to get to this. So, this is your book, which is excellent, "Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater." Page 180, you have this picture and I don't know if you can come in on this, it's right -- it's right here, and it says "Three then Senators, Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel and John Kerry, the future Vice President and Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State, respectively pose while waiting for Blackwater rescue." What is that?

PRINCE: Yes, so they were on a congressional visit to Afghanistan in the winter and their U.S. Army helicopter got lost in a blinding snow storm and set down in Taliban territory on the side of a mountain and the U.S.

military launched a ground convoy to get them and they got lost and the Blackwater guys launched and they did not get lost and we recovered them.

We rescued them from Taliban territory, I think that was the winter of 2008.

CARLSON: You rescued Joe Biden and John Kerry and Chuck Hagel?

PRINCE: Afraid so.

CARLSON: Are they grateful?

PRINCE: You wouldn't think so, no.

CARLSON: Did Joe Biden write you a thank you note?

PRINCE: I didn't get a Christmas card; I have yet to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Erik Prince, a man our policymakers should have listened to. You can watch that full episode on FOX Nation.

That is it for us tonight, our Special Edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

Have the best weekend with the ones you love. We'll see you soon.

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