Fox News "Hannity" - Transcript: Interview with Michael Waltz & Michael McCaul
Interview
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Here with reaction, Republican Congressman Michael McCaul and Michael
Waltz, who himself served in Afghanistan.
Okay, Michael Waltz, the only problem is nobody -- nobody wants these
never-ending wars. There's a right way and a wrong way to get out. One
right way is not to leave your munitions, not to leave, you know,
multimillion dollar Humvees all over the place and other military caches,
et cetera. And it would have been smart to listen to our own intel
committees that told them it would happen if they did it this way.
REP. MICHAEL WALTZ (R-FL): Yeah, that's right, Sean. This is one of the
greatest disasters in modern American history. This is a disaster on
humanitarian grounds for women and minorities. It's a disaster for our
credibility.
Can you imagine what people in Taiwan or Ukraine are thinking right now
watching this unfold?
And the biggest thing, Sean, it's a disaster for our counterterrorism.
America is less safe. Al Qaeda 3.0 will come roaring back. Al Qaeda and the
Taliban are absolutely married at the hip.
But this time when we go back in, the Taliban are going to be better armed
with taxpayer-funded equipment. We have no bases in the region and we have
no local allies because they've all been hunted down.
I want to see resignations. Blinken and Austin and Biden all presided over
the reckless withdrawal from Iraq that led to the rise of the ISIS
caliphate and attacks all over the United States.
But here's the thing, Sean, I'm not going to wait for another 9/11 or Pulse
nightclub. We all remember Charlie Wilson's war. We need to take a page out
of his playbook. Congress had to force Biden to take care of our
interpreters.
We need to force him to support pockets of resistance. Lara is right. They
exist. I've been in touch with them -- that are willing to continue the
fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda.
We can't wait for another 9/11 as we roll into the 20th anniversary of
9/11/2001.
And, Congressman McCaul, I -- we have 10,000 Americans there, never mind
the interpreters which we actually did as Sara Carter reported promised
that we would get them out if it ever came to this. Well, their lives are
now in peril tonight.
REP. MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-TX): Right, this is a stain on the presidency. I
believe he has blood on his hands. When we got to word of this decision, we
kept repeatedly warning the administration, you have to get these
interpreters or Afghan partners out of there. They waited until the very
last minute and now this rushed to the airport to get them out and now we
don't even have planes leaving the airport.
Now, they're going to be left behind, Sean, and as Michael Waltz notes,
they're going to be slaughtered by the Taliban.
This president didn't listen to his generals. He didn't listen to the
intelligence community.
The IC assessment was very grim, Sean, going back to May, that, you know,
within months, the Taliban was going to take it over, the conditions would
deteriorate and that's exactly what happened. But yet he disregarded that,
listen to the State Department, his politicos in the White House, who told
him that, oh, we can get this deal with the Taliban struck in Doha.
Guess what? It didn't work. He can't strike a deal with the Taliban.
What I what I really despise most, Sean, is in the speech this afternoon
about blaming everybody but himself, including former President Trump.
I can tell you this: Trump would never have sat back and watched an
unconditional surrender of the Taliban to Afghanistan. He is the one who
crushed ISIS when the Obama Biden administration created this.
And I talked to national security adviser O'Brien, he told me in his
conversation, the president said he would never allow another Saigon again,
and then that's what exactly happened.
HANNITY: And he was warned exactly what would happen and it happened. And
I don't know if we're going to be able to get these people out of there.
They're Americans there, and other people's lives are at risk.
All right. Thank you both.
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