August 19, 2021

I'm surprised to see this long interview with Trump from Tuesday night.

 Blogging all day yesterday, I never saw any references to it. Here's the transcript. Here's the video.

 

It's amazing that this got so little attention. It's devastatingly critical of Biden. Biden is able to maintain support even as he's stranded 40,000 American citizens behind enemy lines. I understand that the press protects him, but what was his plan?

From Trump:
This is the greatest embarrassment in the history of our country. There’s never been… And let me tell you, we haven’t stopped. This is not ending again. We have all of those thousands of Americans over there and others, and you’re saying, "How are they going to get…" They have a Taliban ring around the airport and they said, “Nobody else now.” They’re saying we’ll negotiate. But I really… Do you really think… I mean, their history is that they’re very brutal and they don’t like to negotiate. That’s their history and Biden put us in this position. He should have gotten the civilians out first. Then he should have taken the military equipment. We have billions of dollars of brand new, beautiful equipment. Take the equipment out and then take the soldiers out. And frankly, I said, take the soldiers out. But before you leave, blow up all the forts because we built these forts that are being now used by the enemy. It’s not even believable.

71 comments:

Dave Begley said...

The Fake News has put a Cone of Silence over Trump.

If the NYT and WaPo don't cover Trump, then he doesn't exist.

Yesterday AM on Fox Business, Trump said that he is basically running for POTUS but can't announce because of stupid FEC regs.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

And see how refreshing direct clear speech is! Trump wasn’t mumbling, fumbling through meandering sentences. He was lucid and pretty damned on point.

RMc said...

It's amazing that this got so little attention.

Oh, you sweet summer child, you.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Pretty amazing that Trump sounds so presidential compared to slow Joe!

MikeR said...

His plan was simple. Tell the military when we're leaving and let them arrange it.
Their plan was simple. Slow-walk it, tell him we're working on it, but we need more time. Same as they always say. Another month of sending money over there, another six months. Pretend to be doing something and say we just need a little more time...
Then they suddenly realize that Biden has made a political decision to leave on a certain date and their increasingly frantic warnings aren't making a dent any more. And then the time was up.
Then his people made a second political decision: Blame the Afghan army instead of the ones who did this. Because they have more backing than he does and he's stuck. And because tarring and feathering them would mean admitting that Donald Trump was right about them.

MadisonMan said...

Hannity is not a good interviewer of Trump. But I don't know if anyone could be, because Trump is such a stream-of-consciousness orator. That's a problem with this interview: Trump is all over the place.

Critter said...

This Hannity show was 2nd highest watched on Tuesday night TV, second only to a talent show on a major network. So word got out.

Dude1394 said...

Are you really surprised that there was a democrat media blackout on this interview?

Joe Smith said...

It's weird how transcripts of Trump read so odd, but when he speaks it all makes sense, his jumping around...

"The Fake News has put a Cone of Silence over Trump."

Well, at least the Taliban spokesman has a Twitter account.

mccullough said...

“All this beautiful equipment”

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I wish Trump was a better speaker. What does get thru is exactly right.
No matter how hard the left try to Blame Trump - Trump did not do this.

Biden trashed any and all prior plans and forged ahead with NO plan other than failure.

Drago said...

MadisonMan: "Hannity is not a good interviewer of Trump."

Hannity really isn't a good interviewer of anyone. More often than not he simply won't let the interviewee get to their most salient points.

As an example, there was a time when the former Turkish hostage and American Pastor Andrew Brunson was interviewed by Hannity and Brunson kept trying to get to a deeper point about what his captivity meant for him and his faith and Hannity kept driving the interview back into talking points territory and near the end of the interview Brunson was just getting to something he had said to Trump at a very poignant moment in the Oval Office and Hannity cut in to repeat something that he (Hannity) had already said several times and then the interview time ran out. Very frustrating.

Hannity's poor interview style on TV may be due to the fact that he does 3 or 4 hours of radio every day and by the end of the day when he does his TV show he has the points he wants to make so ingrained he just goes on auto-repeat.

Amadeus 48 said...

Trump's been blacked out, hasn't he?

Here's one problem, characterized by Holman Jenkins in WSJ yesterday: "Of course Mr. Biden would have to rethink everything if Donald Trump weren’t reliably spraying a blanket of herbicide over any worthwhile Republican field."

Donald Trump wants a comeback; many Republicans (obviously not Liz Cheney and Adam Whateverhisnameis) want to move on. Tickets to the Trump show cost too much.

We'll know some evil genius has taken over NBC when they start taking Trump's calls again and putting him on the air.

GRW3 said...

Everyday more people are starting to understand how the media lied to them over the last four years and ramped it up last year. Realistically, the media is responsible for this failure.

Andrew said...

I watched the network news last night, out of curiosity. Flipped through the main channels. You know what they all led with - as if they had gotten the same memo? The delta variant, and Biden's plan to address it. They clipped excerpts of his speech, to make him sound coherent. Then, they switched to Afghanistan. The common theme: things are much more orderly now.

Needless to say, there was zero coverage of Trump.

The evacuation of Kabul, and the suffering that will follow for the people trapped in Afghanistan (including American citizens), and the global ramifications, are 1000 times worse than January 6th. But the media is attempting to make it a brief blip on the radar. I'm not sure they can be successful this time, but they will certainly try.

And Trump never ceases to amaze me. His thoughts and opinions are all over the place, spoken in a stream of consciousness style, and yet he has more clarity and force of will than all the leaders, politicians and military commanders, with their platitudes and bromides.

Yancey Ward said...

Who is the Trump guy?

Yancey Ward said...

Ok, now on for a serious note. Trump made the main point, and the point no one in the media or the Administration (I know, I repeat myself) can really answer- why weren't the civilians evacuated earlier this year? This plan is really simple- you announce loudly that you can longer guarantee their saftey if they don't leave, and you do this while you can still guarantee their safety- you do this months before you actually start retreating in the field. You give them every opportunity and means to get out, and if they still haven't left when it all goes down, you at least can blame them without rancor.

You really should watch the Austin City Lights/MilliVanilli concerts being put on to get the full flavor of how utterly inept this Biden team really is.

Tim said...

If by "so little attention" you mean on Twitter, Facebook, the NYT, CNN, and the "so called Big 3", then you are right. But I totally ignore all of those. If you mean on Fox and in living rooms around the country, you would be wrong. The media has to ignore Trump because they know how bad he makes Biden look....and they are all in for Biden.

Douglas B. Levene said...

40,000 Americans trapped in Afghanistan? Wow, I follow the news closely but had no idea the number anything like that. When this information eventually penetrates into the American publics’s conscious awareness, the public will not be amused. Of course, it’s possible that President Biden will purchase the freedom of the trapped Americans before that happens. He could, say, unfreeze the billions of Afghanistan government cash currently frozen in exchange for transit, and the public would never notice.

john mosby said...

MikeR, good summary of the differences between Trump/R and Biden/D approaches.

I would add that Trump seems to be the kind of boss who pushes until you push back, and then he takes you seriously. This works wellmin business, where you can presume your subordinates actually want the business to succeed, and you can structure their incentives to make sure of it. So he’s probably used to having a trusted advisor, every once in a while, say “shut up and listen, Don. i’m trying to make you money here.” This made him receptive to the Milleys of the world making similar stands. Or for that matter the Faucis of the world. But it doesn’t work as well in government, where people may honestly think they’re there to serve the people, continue their institution, defend the country - things other than just doing what you say.

The Dems seem to be the kind of boss who push until you push back - then identify you as a problem and either force you to comply or force you out. This works very well in government, where there are few objective metrics other than votes (and they’ve made a lot of progress eliminating that one). Hence their immediate jumping on the health authorities to reverse some rulings. And their immediate communication to the military that the time for tapdancing on Afghanistan was over. Unfortunately when an objective metric does raise its ugly head - such as the number of friendlies stuck in Afghanistan- they are unable to sort good advice from disrespect.

JSM

Sebastian said...

Hey, Donald. You had 4 years. So what did you do about Afghanistan?

Sure, Joe blew it. We know. But it's a little late now for you to bitch from the sideline.

You lost to loser Joe. Face it. Step aside.

wildswan said...

The Dems are hoping that they can get TDS going again and keep Trump out. They control the media but 7 months of Biden has affected people's lives in different ways - gas and grocery, Delta, CRT in the schools, schools maybe not opening. Biden /Whoever has consistently been unable to handle a situation that changes in an unexpected way. Kabul is just the worst. But in Kabul the danger is so immediate. There are Americans with relatives back home - and these relatives include Dems and progressives. sitting there thinking of their children or friends falling from a plane or being shot in the street. Will Biden really help their daughter? Do they really think he will? Kamala? Pelosi? Who would really be effective?

Yinzer said...

'Hey, Donald. You had 4 years. So what did you do about Afghanistan?'

Typical loser comment. Trump was a little busy protecting the border, making us energy independent, creating a great economy, seating good judges, reinvigorating the military, all with one arm tied behind his back by Nancy and her friends. And Joe has undone all of this in record time. I can't wait to see what he does next!

Yukon Cornelius said...

When Trump speaks, he sounds like people I worked with in factories and on construction sites. They don’t speak in a linear fashion like a mathematical syllogism. One doesn’t parse every word, but rather just let it sink in as a gestalt. The meaning is clear.

If you would prefer a straightforward, heartfelt declaration about the Afghanistan tragedy, consider what Tulsi Gabbard says in this video. This too should be widely viewed and discussed, but of course it will be suppressed like Trump’s interview.

https://rumble.com/vlbgwy-afghanistan.html

Left Bank of the Charles said...

40,000 Americans behind enemy lines, that’s Trump’s number, and like many Trump statements needs to be divided by 3 or 4 to get to the truth. And are they stranded? We’ll see.

Drago said...

Sebastian: "Hey, Donald. You had 4 years. So what did you do about Afghanistan?

Sure, Joe blew it. We know. But it's a little late now for you to bitch from the sideline.

You lost to loser Joe. Face it. Step aside."

Are you kidding me?

The media/dems/LLR's are in the midst of trying to hang the worst foreign policy decisions of their own making around DJT's head as we speak and you think he should sit there and meekly accept that?

What's wrong with you?

Anon said...

What makes me sick about Biden's interview and his claim that this chaos was expected and he handled it as best as it could be handled, is that he expected this to happen, knew there were tens of thousands of Americans in Afghanistan that would be stranded (because this was expected). And he went on vacation.

He is a coward and a fool.

Steve from Wyo said...

I'm old enough to remember when De Gaulle kicked US and other NATO forces out of France in 1966. While not directly comparable to the current situation, it is my understanding that the US took every bit of their equipment with them. Including the light bulbs. Now we haul billions worth of state-of-the-art equipment to the other side of the world and just walk away from it. WTF???

rehajm said...

“All this beautiful equipment”

Yes. Normally when we equip a foreign army we give them our hand me downs. Not in Afghanistan. The state of the art stuff- stealth, avionics, the whole shooting match. That beautiful equipment is worth big money- to the Chinese. They can reverse engineer what they didn't develop, sure. We've always done R&D for the Chinese. What's new is they can scan the proportions of our stealth trucks and helios, then use that data for their weapons guidance systems.

Now our armies are easier to target. Beautiful...

John Althouse Cohen said...

It’s not clear to me that there are anywhere near 40,000 US citizens in Afghanistan. And if the media is trying to “protect” Biden on this issue, they don’t seem to be doing a very good job! For instance, this AP article says there could be up to 15,000 US citizens in Afghanistan. This has been a massive humanitarian disaster (and possibly a national-security disaster) created by the Biden administration, but I don’t see the media trying to keep that a secret. He’s been rightly facing an onslaught of embarrassing press for days, and I could see it preventing him from getting reelected (or Vice President Harris from getting elected, if Biden doesn’t run).

Andrew said...

Ann, since you're doing posts about interviews - Trump and Biden - I recommend you do one on the press conference with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley. I've never seen two bigger "deer in the headlights" mediocrities in my life. Their answers are a demonstration of how to mishandle a crisis and make it worse. Any commenter here could do a better job.

cubanbob said...

Biden is so far the worst president since Wilson. And ALL of his fuckups were entirely preventable. Biden hasn't been right about anything so far. The sad fact is that this was entirely foreseeable, indeed who thought before the election that Biden could be as bad as he has been so far. In a way Biden's complete failure is awe inspiring. Yet you have the diehards ignoring Biden's incredible stupidity while focusing on how Trump speaks. Even Boris Johnson's own party condemned him and Biden regarding Afghanistan. Everyone who voted for Biden is just as much to blame as Biden since Biden was a well known asshole for fifty years.

Chuck said...

It is total nonsense that Trump was somehow silenced or ignored. The Hannity show on Tuesday was the highest rated thing on cable news on Tuesday, full stop. 4.82 million viewers.

I do understand how Althouse might have missed it, if she watches no cable news and avoids all remotely anti-Trump outlets. However, I know that I was well aware of the interview, since so many Trump critics watched it and then eviscerated all of the insane ramblings.

Aaron Rupar tweeted a thread, replete with video. In fact, Rupar has been dragging parts of the Trump interview for days now, and while I understand that Althouse might not like Aaron Rupar’s scathing and relentless factchecking of Trump, a fair-minded commentator ought to consider the details.

Salon.com dissected Trump’s false and dumb claim that he was “not allowed” to answer whether he was running for president in 2024.

Vanity Fair did a story on Trump’s weird praises for the Taliban as “good fighters” who are “really smart” and “great negotiators.”

The Washington Examiner’s Jamie McIntyre included mention of the interview in his column for the Trump-adoring publication.

Now; there was little mention in larger outlets, probably because it was such a nothing interview. Sean Hannity won’t ever ask Trump a hard question except by mistake. Trump offered almost no news, apart from the ever-increasing evidence of his mental derangement. For me, that was the news: “WTF, did you see this video of Trump? He’s out of his mind!” But that’s old news to the Trump haters and not heard by the Trump lovers. It might have been a newsworthy interview, if it had been Brett Baier or Chris Wallace, and not “My Pillow” spokesman Sean Hannity.

Original Mike said...

I withhold judgement until I hear from The Bulwark.

thebigO said...

When I served in the USArmy some 30 years ago, there were huge penalties, we were told, if we didn't keep our weapons secured at all times. If you, for instance, lost or misplaced your M-16, you could face a court-martial.

What sort of punishment will the generals who orchestrated this debacle face?

cremes said...

> 40,000 Americans behind enemy lines, that’s Trump’s number, and like many Trump statements needs to be divided by 3 or 4 to get to the truth. And are they stranded? We’ll see.

I've seen Trump pull this trick before. He's loose with his language and says something easy to challenge. Then his critics come back and say, "Stupid Trump! There aren't 40,000 American citizens stranded in Afghanistan. There are only 10,000 stranded there!"

Yeah, 10,000 is so much better than 40,000.

thebigO said...

When I served in the USArmy some 30 years ago, there were huge penalties, we were told, if we didn't keep our weapons secured at all times. If you, for instance, lost or misplaced your M-16, you could face a court-martial.

What sort of punishment will the generals who orchestrated this debacle face?

Nichevo said...


Left Bank of the Charles said...
40,000 Americans behind enemy lines, that’s Trump’s number, and like many Trump statements needs to be divided by 3 or 4 to get to the truth. And are they stranded? We’ll see.

8/19/21, 10:44 AM


Let's stick you and yours in there, and then see. You really want to be the last one to die on the hill of Pudd'n Pop Biden's approval rating? Even dividing by three or four, and I trust him more than you, this would greatly exceed the casualty count at Antietam, America's bloodiest battle.

Bruce Hayden said...

“His plan was simple. Tell the military when we're leaving and let them arrange it.
Their plan was simple. Slow-walk it, tell him we're working on it, but we need more time. Same as they always say. Another month of sending money over there, another six months. Pretend to be doing something and say we just need a little more time...
Then they suddenly realize that Biden has made a political decision to leave on a certain date and their increasingly frantic warnings aren't making a dent any more. And then the time was up.”

Makes some sense. The thing that they probably weren’t fully taking into account was that Biden, while still POTUS, was rarely (mentally) reporting for duty. Trump could say “do it”, and then listen when they explained, in excruciating detail, why it would take a bit longer. Biden could tell them to pull out, they could explain why it would take a bit longer, and that would fly right by him, with his thoughts having turned to ice cream cones by then. POTUS has given an order, one that he has probably wanted to give for years, so, why wasn’t it carried out? Their technical excuses are likely all to have gone in one ear and out the other, the complex arguments being made too complex for his limited attention span. All that he can probably remember is that he has long wanted us out of Afghanistan, and that was one of his goals running for President. He gave the orders as POTUS and CINC, so why weren’t they carried out? I keep hearing the teacher’s voice to Charlie Brown squawking “blaw, blaw, blaw” every time SECDEF, etc tried to explain to Biden the complexities of what he wanted to do.

For those who question this, I have seen no evidence since Biden was installed as President that he can understand anything close to a complex argument any more. He routinely fizzes out whenever he is put under too much stress, or for too long. We’ve all seen it, time after time. Even getting him rested and cranking him full of drugs only works for short periods of time, and rarely after lunch. Imagine trying to explain to him all of the complications that the bureaucrats have discovered in carrying out his orders to pull us out of Afghanistan.

I agree with MikeR. The bureaucrats are used to getting their way by inventing or discovering complexities whenever tasked to do what they don’t want to. This works great with any halfway intelligent and functioning boss. This is part of why they are so dangerous. And yes, the Democrats are the party of the technocrats, which here means the bureaucrats. But their whole edifice is built on being able to BS their bosses with those complexities. This appears to have crashed headlong into their installation of a senile place filler as POTUS, who very likely couldn’t understand their arguments, if his life depended on it. The Biden Administration has been running like a rudderless ship since installed, with each Dem constituency operating the department or agency they were awarded like a private fiefdom, with little oversight from the WH. This is what they wanted, and knew that they would get with the “election” of Biden. And now we are seeing why that was a very bad idea.

Chuck said...

cubanbob said...
...
... Even Boris Johnson's own party condemned him and Biden regarding Afghanistan. Everyone who voted for Biden is just as much to blame as Biden since Biden was a well known asshole for fifty years...


To me, like cubanbob, this is a remarkable thing. And of course, cubanbob is at least partly right.

The British Conservative Party is filled with rage over this move. MP Tom Tugendhut -- British Army Intelligence officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, decorated for Afghan service by the US 82nd Airborne Division -- made a moving House of Commons speech that should be seen in full.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbMp7GHhdqs

In the same session of House debate, former PM Theresa May sternly reminded her colleagues that Biden, who was getting some relatively vicious criticism, was following a (dreadful) UNILATERAL decision made by Trump. And some of the UK House criticism of their own government's failure to preserve a functioning alliance in Afghanistan was thereby misplaced.

https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1427941206646984708?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1427941206646984708%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-1175123762593219636.ampproject.net%2F2108052321001%2Fframe.html

There is, unquestionably, damage to the US-UK alliance done by the Trump/Biden pullout.

Bruce Hayden said...

“It’s not clear to me that there are anywhere near 40,000 US citizens in Afghanistan. And if the media is trying to “protect” Biden on this issue, they don’t seem to be doing a very good job! For instance, this AP article says there could be up to 15,000 US citizens in Afghanistan. This has been a massive humanitarian disaster (and possibly a national-security disaster) created by the Biden administration, but I don’t see the media trying to keep that a secret. He’s been rightly facing an onslaught of embarrassing press for days, and I could see it preventing him from getting reelected (or Vice President Harris from getting elected, if Biden doesn’t run).”

You are presupposing that Biden serves for four years. I find that assumption highly improbable, because even with the best medical care, he still is facing the ravages of a degenerative disease. He isn’t getting less senile as time goes on - he is getting, demonstrably, more senile as time goes on. If he were your parent, you would probably have already removed all the guns from the house, and taken his car keys away from him. You take them away because if you don’t, you will find them driving around aimlessly miles from where you expect them.

But the MSM have a problem right now. They need to protect their party’s POTUS, and thus the legitimacy of his Administration, while still protecting the permanent federal bureaucracy. Your comment suggests that in the end, protecting the bureaucracy will triumph protecting Biden. He is replaceable. The top bureaucrats are not.

Skippy Tisdale said...

I have found that in order to get a good perspective on world events is to watch NTD (New Tang Dynasty Television) News:

"New Tang Dynasty Television (NTD, Chinese: 新唐人電視台, Xīntángrén diànshìtái) is a multilingual American television broadcaster, founded by adherents of the Falun Gong new religious movement and based in New York City. The station was founded in 2001 as a Chinese-language broadcaster,[1] but has since expanded its language offerings. The company retains a focus on mainland China in its news broadcasts. It is a major part of a group of media outlets representing Falun Gong.[2][3]"

- Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Tang_Dynasty_Television

They are fairly objective and clearly not in bed with China. I get the station in Minneapolis via a TV antenna for free (33.7).

Here is a link to their website:

https://www.ntd.com/

Skippy Tisdale said...

"It is total nonsense that Trump was somehow silenced or ignored. The Hannity show on Tuesday was the highest rated thing on cable news on Tuesday, full stop"

And yet you continued.

Bruce Hayden said...

“What makes me sick about Biden's interview and his claim that this chaos was expected and he handled it as best as it could be handled, is that he expected this to happen, knew there were tens of thousands of Americans in Afghanistan that would be stranded (because this was expected). And he went on vacation.”

The only thing Biden expected was his afternoon ice cream cone.

wendybar said...

The propagandists DON'T want you to see it. Then everybody in AMERICA would see what a real President looks and sounds like. Not a mumbling bumbling old white man who doesn't even know where he is. He is leaving tonight for another weekend in Delaware. WHY?? Is he being medicated? Are they keeping it secret, so they don't want it to show on the visitors logs at the WH?? WTF is going on, and WHY aren't the Republicans more vocal about it??? They all HATE that TRUMP was better at politics than any of the lifers there.

Ann Althouse said...

“ Ann, since you're doing posts about interviews - Trump and Biden - I recommend you do one on the press conference with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley.”

Yeah, that was painful. Heard it in real time on my car radio. Found it too painful to talk about.

Ann Althouse said...

“ I do understand how Althouse might have missed it, if she watches no cable news and avoids all remotely anti-Trump outlets.”

I don’t watch news on tv. I read about things and that may lead me to look for a video and watch as I did 2 days late with that Trump interview.

My point is that it wasn’t written about in the mainstream press.

I avoid right wing news sites too.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Sebastian said...
Hey, Donald. You had 4 years. So what did you do about Afghanistan?

Well, let's see, he negotiated an exit, had a real plan, got slow walked by members of the military who don't value their oaths, and left office with a plan that could have been followed, and probably would have worked.

Biden and team came in, and f'ed everything up in less than 7 months.

News flash: You don't get to blame Trump for the fact that Biden screwed everything up.

And Obama / Biden "surged" into Afghanistan for 8 years. Do remind us: what did they actually accomplish with that?

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Bruce Hayden said...
You are presupposing that Biden serves for four years. I find that assumption highly improbable

So did I. then I read an article on RedState that pointed out that if Harris replaces Biden, she stops being VP, and thus loses her tie breaking vote in the Senate.

So until one side gets at least 51 members in the Senate, Harris is stuck

Quaestor said...

The 2021 Existential Call and Response

Whadda we want?

TRUMP BACK!

When do we want it?

NOW!!

Skippy Tisdale said...

"the Trump/Biden pullout"

words fail

Skippy Tisdale said...

Is there anything Star Trek (TOS) didn't predict?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Force_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)

Chuck said...

So let's go straight the the quote(s) that Althouse chose from the transcript.

Trump: "They’re saying we’ll negotiate. But I really… Do you really think… I mean, their history is that they’re very brutal and they don’t like to negotiate."

Nikki Haley -- that's former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley -- went off on the supposed Biden Administration naiveté (no, she didn't use that word; it's outside of the Trump vocabulary) in "negotiating with the Taliban." Nikki Haley thinks that "Negotiating with the Taliban is like dealing with the devil."

Yup.

This is the Twitter gut-punch of the day.

Yancey Ward said...

Sorry, but "mainstream press" is a dodge, and I suspect you know it. Honesty requires one to describe it as left wing news sites. It is ok to just label them individually by name- all your readers know which they are- but if you are going to use a group term, you need one with the right connotation, not a misleading one- cruel neutrality and all.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Question for Yancey, Bruce, or anyone else who might know:

Who are the Americans trapped in Afghanistan?

Military spouses / family? In which case, we need to get them out no matter the cost.

Military contractors? I expect them to be able to fight their way out. If not, they were overpaid

Kids with gender studies / poly sci degrees and an NGO job courtesy of mummy or daddy's connections?

F'em.

What types have I missed?

Drago said...

Pro-marxist LLR Chuck: "There is, unquestionably, damage to the US-UK alliance done by the Trump/Biden pullout."

"Trump/Biden pullout"

LOLOLOLOL

Alex, I'll take "Phrases That Literally No One In The World Is Using...At All" for $500 please!

LLR Chuck positions himself on the far far left of EVERYONE in the democratical party....AGAIN!

Shocker I tell you.

Yancey Ward said...

Greg, I have no idea- I imagine a lot of them are NGO types- lots of those in Kabul. I suspect the 40,000 number is too high for American citizens, but is probably far too low to describe the numbers of citizens of North America and Europe. There was so much American money flowing through Kabul, it draws people from all over the world.

Drago said...

Isn't it astonishing how perfectly Biden's Cowardly Retreat aligns with the ChiComs threats against Taiwan at the very same time the Russkis are rattling their sabre's over Ukraine?

Its almost as if both the Russians/Russian-aligned Ukrainians and the ChiComs have lots and lots and lots and lots of Kompromat on the entire Biden Crime Family.

Since it is now without question that Biden purposefully, and maliciously, tossed American citizens and allied nation citizens to the wolves (leading to the unprecedented condemnation of the British Parliament), it would appear that the Kompromat on the Biden Crime Family is now being used in earnest by both the russkis and the ChiComs because they know that Biden is not likely to remain as President for very much longer and it was time to cash in on their "investments" in the Biden Crime Family.

Looks like a most appropriate name for the Biden Cowardly Retreat really should be the Xi/Putin/Biden Plan.

Now all those payoffs on pipelines and sanctions lifted on the russkis and ChiComs and shutting down America's energy independence are making a whole lot more sense in context.

Of course, all of these actions over the last 7 months where everything the ChiCom's and russkis and Mad Mullah's of Iran wanted, they got, might just be a "coincidence".

A "coincidence" with the probability of 1 in 10exp56932059432 power.

I expect to see quite a few more "bomb laden domestic terrorist" incidents, run by our own FBI, in the very near future.

Chuck said...

Drago said...
Pro-marxist LLR Chuck: "There is, unquestionably, damage to the US-UK alliance done by the Trump/Biden pullout."

"Trump/Biden pullout"

LOLOLOLOL

Alex, I'll take "Phrases That Literally No One In The World Is Using...At All" for $500 please!

LLR Chuck positions himself on the far far left of EVERYONE in the democratical party....AGAIN!

Shocker I tell you.



So this is the new, moderated, blogowner-approved approach to comments that will actually be published.

Drago said...

Pro-marxist LLR Chuck: "So this is the new, moderated, blogowner-approved approach to comments that will actually be published"

Banned commenter, who was banned, has thoughts about blog moderation.

Discuss.

Big Mike said...

Reading the transcript, the thought crosses my mind that last year’s drone assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, was a message understood by the Taliban as much as by the Iranians. When Trump tells the purported leader of the Taliban that “the first bombs will fall” on that leader’s village if they should renege on their part of of the negotiated agreement, it had the ring of truth. Whereas the UN’s “strongly worded” message to the Taliban has no such verisimilitude.

Big Mike said...

Also reading the transcript I see that Trump indicates that there are somewhere between 11,000 (“minimum”) and perhaps as many as 40,000 Americans still stuck in Afghanistan. Clearly, he doesn’t know the exact figure, and, unfortunately, I don’t believe anyone in the Biden Administration does, either.

Big Mike said...

So this is the new, moderated, blogowner-approved approach to comments that will actually be published.

Well, over on another thread the blog owners let you get away with calling every Trump voter a moron, so there’s that. I think the proper takeaway is that people in general, and you, in particular, should not display such a thin skin after dishing out spittle-flecked mass insults,

Quaestor said...

Yep, we must admit Biden nailed it. America is back!

Back to the Stone Age.

Yancey Ward said...

Chuck,

You appear in these threads and tell basic lies and expect no mockery or pushback? You are a fool.

wildswan said...

I love the theory that things are happening the way they are because Biden is too senile to be put off with "explanations." He gives an order; they explain; he gives the order again having understood nothing.

My own opinion is that a group which is used to covering for corruption is now trying to use the same techniques to cover for incompetence. For example, you give the garbage collection contract to the Godfathers, not the Goodfellas, and it costs more. You cover-up and spin the cost and the garbage is collected. That's corruption. But now you defund the police and free criminals on bond and the competent leave or stop arresting. Now you have incompetence and children being shot down in the streets and you can't cover-up and spin that the way you spin corruption. But they're trying. And the same in Afghanistan with the Army. The Army just had a purge and now the competent are needed but they aren't there. So now the media are trying to cover-up and spin incompetence, rather than corruption. But the result of incompetence in foreign affairs is that thousands of Americans are left behind in Kabul, our allies' citizens are left behind, people are falling from planes, women are being pushed into sexual slavery. Nothing will spin that. But they're still trying. It's all they know

Bruce Hayden said...

I said:

“ You are presupposing that Biden serves for four years. I find that assumption highly improbable, because even with the best medical care, he still is facing the ravages of a degenerative disease. He isn’t getting less senile as time goes on - he is getting, demonstrably, more senile as time goes on. If he were your parent, you would probably have already removed all the guns from the house, and taken his car keys away from him. You take them away because if you don’t, you will find them driving around aimlessly miles from where you expect them.”

Articles out now suggesting that the Dems are waking up to a monumental problem. They have depended on Harris’ tie breaking vote in the Senate to got any of their radical agenda enacted, or get their radical nominees confirmed. She becomes President, and this ends, until her replacement is confirmed, and that requires a Senate vote, where she would no longer provide the tie breaking vote. Several of their most radical nominees are still awaiting confirmation. But maybe more importantly, they are trying to slip another $3 Trillion in graft into their “Infrastructure” bill, through Reconciliation, trying to override state election integrity measures, such as photo ID, in order to institutionalize the voter fraud that brought them the Presidency and Senate this last election, etc. this likely ends, when Biden dies, or is replaced through the 25th Amdt. That means that they can’t afford for that to happen.

But Biden very much appears to have been sliding. He is showing more and more symptoms of progressive dementia. His tempering is shortening, and his ability to empathize has essentially gone to zero. This may be accelerating with his being forced to fake competence and normality in the face of catastrophe. He probably should be replaced as soon as possible - but politically the Democrats probably cannot afford to do so. He has 3 1/2 years until the end of his term. I doubt he makes it, even with a private physician, and Walter Reed as backup. He probably only needs to last until November of 2022, since, right now, the Dems are likely (even with enactment of HR/SB-1) maintain control of at least the House, and everyone in Congress knows that. Can he be made to continue breathing until then? The suggestion is that even that might not be sufficient to activate the 25th Amdt, installing Harris as POTUS. Would the Democrats running the WH actually pretend that he is alive, when he isn’t? They pretend that he is running the country, so why not?

Bruce Hayden said...

“My own opinion is that a group which is used to covering for corruption is now trying to use the same techniques to cover for incompetence.”

I think that they have gone beyond covering for incompetence, to covering for dementia, and maybe will try covering for the death of POTUS. Scary times.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Yancey Ward said...
Greg, I have no idea- I imagine a lot of them are NGO types- lots of those in Kabul. I suspect the 40,000 number is too high for American citizens, but is probably far too low to describe the numbers of citizens of North America and Europe. There was so much American money flowing through Kabul, it draws people from all over the world.

So, here's the thing: I've got 0 sympathy for Western NGO feeders in Afghanistan.

Watching a group of people, 80%+ of whom voted for Biden, get utterly screwed because the Biden* Administration is in charge?

That calls for popcorn, not empathy.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Bruce Hayden said...
He probably only needs to last until November of 2022, since, right now, the Dems are likely (even with enactment of HR/SB-1) maintain control of at least the House

I think what you meant to say here is something about them losing the House / Senate. But that's only a guess

Bruce Hayden said...

“I think what you meant to say here is something about them losing the House / Senate. But that's only a guess”

Good guess though. I think that it is very unlikely that the Democrats maintain control of the House after the next election, despite ballot irregularities, ballot harvesting, and even the Census Bureau apparently fudging their counts in their favor. I think that may be a big reason behind Pelosi’s decision to stand down from her leadership post after the next election, and why she allowed her husband to so openly and blatantly repeatedly engage in insider trading on classified information that she had access to as Speaker. Keeping the Senate is going to be hard too, esp if their 50 incumbents all are forced to vote for the additional $3 Trillion in fake infrastructure graft, gun grabbing AWB, HR/SB-1 override of stat election integrity laws, etc.