'Special Report' All-Star Panel on Biden's troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

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Mollie Hemingway calls for 'accountability' after the Afghanistan exit

'Special Report' All-Star panel discusses the accusations surrounding President Biden’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report" September 28, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. 

BRET BAIER, HOST: And he made this decision, President Biden did. The testimony today indicates that the generals were advising something different as that withdrawal came to be in Afghanistan. 

Let's bring in our panel, Amy Walter, publisher and editor in chief of the "Cook Political Report," Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," and Steve Hayes, editor of "The Dispatch." Steve, what about that testimony today and what President Biden said before about that? 

STEVE HAYES, EDITOR, "THE DISPATCH": Yes, pretty extraordinary on several different levels. Look, if the White House wants to defend the decision by President Obama to withdrawal troops and effectively surrender Afghanistan, that's well within their rights. What they shouldn't do, what they can't do, is lie about the advice he was given. And it's very clear that -- 

BAIER: You mean Biden. 

HAYES: Yes -- very clear that President Biden didn't tell the truth about this, as we heard from the generals today. He received advice from the generals that he should keep at least 2,500 troops. You heard General McKenzie defend the decision to withdrawal troops or to shut down Bagram Air Base. There were other generals, I'm told, that advised against this. He had conflicting advice, but what was very clear was that the generals in effect, as a consensus, told him that there would be problems if the U.S. withdrew in the manner that we eventually withdrew. I think you saw that, and that was one of the clear takeaways. 

The other takeaway that I think was deceptive on the part of the generals is this claim by General Milley and others that really Afghanistan fell to the Taliban within 11 days. That's not what happened. You had a Taliban offensive starting in May. 

BAIER: Yes. 

HAYES: And increasing and growing and threatening the country. And outside advisers, including Bill Roggio and Tom Joscelyn at "Long War Journal" raising alarms all along that this was going to lead to the Taliban taking over the country, and the military advisers sort of shrugging that off. So it's disingenuous when General Milley says this was 11 days. It wasn't 11 days. It was months and months and months. They had the time to prepare to avoid the kind of eventuality that we saw. 

BAIER: Yes, it was a major intel screw up if you're to believe everything that's being said about it, because you could see it come. A lot of people talked about it, even up on Capitol Hill. 

Mollie, the other thing that struck me in the Q and A was the revelation about the chairman of the Joint Chiefs talking to these various authors. Take a listen. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

SEN. MARSHA BLACKBURN, (R-TN) SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: Did you talk to Bob Woodward or Robert Costa for their book "Peril." 

GEN. MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS: Woodward yes, Costa no. 

BLACKBURN: Did you talk to Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker for their book "Alone Can I Fix It"? 

MILLEY: Yes. 

BLACKBURN: Did you talk to Michael Bender for his book is "Frankly, We Did Win this Election, The Inside Story of How Trump Lost," yes or no? 

MILLEY: Yes. 

BLACKBURN: And were you accurately represented in these books? 

MILLEY: I haven't read any of the books, so I don't know. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

BAIER: What about that, Mollie? 

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": Well, I think people had already realized that the person who gave the story to Bob Woodward about how General Milley had undermined President Trump and given advance warning to our adversary in China and conveyed a very destabilizing message to China, people knew that story came from woke General Mark Milley. He likes to talk to reporters. A lot of reporters get a lot of information from him. So it's good that he was honest about it. 

But as Senator Blackburn went on to talk about, he and his colleagues were sitting there really showed what a military bereft of actual accountability for leadership failure looks like. They talked about how one of them said something about how it was logistical success but a strategic failure, the departure from Afghanistan. It was not a logistical success. It was a logistical failure. It is true that it was also a strategic failure, and strategic failure is a way to describe what that war, which really wasn't a war but a nation-building exercise, had become for a very long period of time. 

So not only should there be accountability for the disastrous departure, there should also be accountability for the people who mismanaged what that very noble effort to hold -- to make Afghanistan pay for harboring the terrorists that caused so much damage and making sure that was no foothold. That was not managed well, and there has been no accountability. 

BAIER: General Milley did push back on the specifics in the Woodward-Costa book about the Chinese phone call and the specifics about him allegedly inserting himself into the nuclear launch code process, saying he wasn't going rogue, and addressed that head on in the opening statements. 

Amy, what do you think comes from this? We're going to have another round on the House side tomorrow that obviously could get more fiery on various specifics. 

AMY WALTER, NATIONAL EDITOR, "COOK POLITICAL REPORT": That's right. I think that at the end of the day, partisans are pretty dug in and have been pretty dug in about this, although the challenge really comes at Joe Biden and at a very perilous time for the president that he is already looking at approval ratings now that have been under water since the beginning of September. He's trying to get this legislation through Congress this week, trying to make sure that the debt ceiling doesn't reach -- we don't hit the debt ceiling, we don't default on our debt, that the government doesn't shut down. 

All the while, a picture laid out of a president who made a decision to do this despite the advice that he was getting. Polling has showed that not only have Americans soured on the president and his handling of some of these bigger main issues, like COVID, the economy, but on foreign policy his support, even among Democrats, has dropped according to Pew Research. 

So this is really taking a toll on the way that people view the president, and that does not help Democrats as they start thinking about what life is going to look like for them come the midterm elections. 

BAIER: Right, or Terry McAuliffe in Virginia coming up sooner than that. 

Pelosi steering Democrats to this infrastructure vote, quickly, Steve, without the spending bill in tow. This is "Politico," "Sources close to Pelosi say the speaker was left without a choice given the looming expiration date for highway and transit programs and the resistance from Senate moderates to publicly commit to overall funding or program guarantees within broader spending package. Some moderates who had demanding the infrastructure vote this week privately emerged from the meeting feeling like they had secured a win over the left faction of the caucus." 

Meantime, you have Bernie Sanders, Steve, saying don't vote for this. Very quickly, we just heard that President Biden canceled his trip to Chicago. They are saying there is progress. But this could be going south. 

HAYES: Yes. I think you are likely hear from Democrats that they wish President Biden would have been more deeply involved long before this moment. Look, I think Nancy Pelosi would like ideologically to end up where the progressives are. She may have to make compromises to end up where the moderate are in order to get something passed. If it doesn't happen, this will be a huge black mark on the Biden presidency. This is his domestic policy in front of Congress right now. They control both houses. It will be a problem if it fails.

BAIER: Could be some hand holding over the next couple days before that vote. 

All right, panel, stand by. When we come back, tomorrow's headlines. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

BAIER: Finally tonight, a look at tomorrow's headlines with the panel. Amy, first to you. 

WALTER: The economy, the economy, the economy. Jerome Powell, Fed chairman, was up on the Hill saying that inflation may not be as transitory as they had hoped. It's here for a little while longer. 

BAIER: Yes. All right, Steve? 

HAYES: Psaki walks back ridiculous comments on basic economics. Jen Psaki today said that basically businesses shouldn't expect to pass along costs to consumers of increased taxes. That might be what she wishes, but businesses have to operate in reality, and that's the reality they work in. 

BAIER: Mollie? 

HEMINGWAY: My headline is just for my husband, and it's that my wild and frankly irresponsible spending spree I'm going to go on tomorrow is going to cost us nothing thanks to Biden math. 

BAIER: There you go, zero. Just tell them that. Thank you, all. 

Thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. That's it for the SPECIAL REPORT, fair, balanced, and still unafraid. "FOX NEWS PRIMETIME" hosted by Brian Kilmeade, who may have his own headline, starts right now. 

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