Biden's Camp David photo leaves Americans puzzled
Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo joins 'The Ingraham Angle' for the latest edition of 'Seen and Unseen'
This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle" August 16, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
INGRAHAM: I am Laura Ingraham. This is
"Ingraham Angle" from Washington tonight. The establishment has no clothes.
That's the focus of tonight's "Angle".
The collapse of Afghan. Afghanistan represents another catastrophic failure
of our political establishment. Now, other obvious examples include the
collapse of our southern border, and long before that the collapse of our
once unrivaled manufacturing base.
Well, they keep doubling down, though, on failure, don't they, insisting
that if they have just a few more years, they can make Americans understand
why their actions, why their policies are smart and proper. And of course,
to distract the public from their own abject failures, these old hacks do
their best to stir up phony crises.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES CLAPPER, FORMER OBAMA NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR: --is they're
influenced by the Russians over President Trump. His behavior hasn't done
much at least in my mind to allay that concern.
JOHN BRENNAN, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Maybe it's my warning training as an
Intelligence professional. I have seen the lights blinking red in terms of
what Mr. Trump has done and is doing and is bringing this country down on
the global stage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Oh, my God. I can't even watch those two. Then if the Russians
weren't going to destabilize America, they wanted you to believe the fur
and face paint contingent would.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: I want to understand
white rage? And I'm white, and I want to understand it. So what is it that
caused thousands of people to assault this building, and try to overturn
the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want
to find that out.
LLOYD AUSTIN, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Also tackling the problem of violent
extremists in our work - in our ranks and our workforce.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Maybe they should focus on the extremists for the thousands of
people at the airport. I mean that would be - how embarrassing! Can you
imagine what China must be thinking? Taking Taiwan is going to be like
taking candy from a baby at this point.
Of course, it's far easier, isn't it, to demonize your fellow Americans,
though, then finally own up to the fact that you and your fellow generals
spectacularly failed in Afghanistan. That you didn't own up to the obvious
inadequacies of the Afghan army, that you literally got almost nothing
right in this mission right up until the end.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MILLEY: The Afghan security forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight
and defend their country, a negative outcome, a Taliban automatic Military
takeover is not a foregone conclusion.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Golly. You're so smart. And for more than 10 years before that,
they sold Americans false hope.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL, COMMANDER OF U.S. AND ISAF FORCES IN
AFGHANISTAN: The Afghans are resolved to win this fight. We see success.
And that convinces me that we can apply that success across the country.
GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS, COMMANDER OF U.S. AND ISAF FORCES IN AFGHANISTAN:
Afghan security forces are now on track to meet their targeted end strength
objectives by the end of the year. We are seeing early progress as we get
the inputs right in that country.
GEN. WILLIAM CALDWELL, FORMER HEAD OF THE U.S. AND NATO TRAINING COMMAND
IN
AFGHANISTAN: They're probably the best trained, the best equipped and the
best lead of any forces we've developed yet inside of Afghanistan. They
only continue to get better with time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Oh, does that not want - takes your breath away? Now, the Taliban
is the best equipped, right? Well, it was all garbage. And a new book by
the Washington Post Craig Whitlock reveals that everyone on the ground
seemed to know it was garbage.
In oral histories of the war provided to the author, their brutally frank
assessments of the effort to train Afghan forces. "The Afghans suffered
from a lack of motivation and a corrupt chain of command that preyed upon
its own soldiers and police. One Afghan battalion commander whom the U.S.
Army infantry officer mentored lost his job after he was charged with
raping one of his male soldiers. The commander's replacement in turn was
killed by his own man. A major problem was literacy, Whitlock reports. Our
Military had to teach virtually every Afghan recruit how to read. One
officer said, they couldn't even count, and some even needed to learn their
colors."
Yet the generals never wanted to leave, effectively treating our troops and
our tax dollars as expendable in order to paper over their own monumental
failure. Of course, Trump, a pragmatic economic nationalist at heart, he
saw through all of this and wanted us out of Afghanistan.
But Generals Milley, Mattis, McMaster and others wanted us to stay in
Afghanistan as long as it took, meaning, basically forever. Now, to this
day, they refuse to listen to the American people who've been saying no to
these wars since about 2006.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
H.R. MCMASTER, FORMER TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: It was always a pipe
dream. It was always giving you a stage to some of the most odious people
on earth. The Trump administration doubled down on the mistakes of the
Obama administration after the president abandoned what had been, I think,
really the first reasoned and sustainable approach toward Afghanistan in
2017. The self delusion, really. We're seeing an end of that delusion now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Delusion? Who's delusional? People still think they can win. They
dragged their feet until Trump's last day in office and hated Trump for
actually pushing what the American people have been asking for since the
election of at least Barack Obama, an end to these wars.
Now, as we saw over the past week, our Military, our political, our
diplomatic, our national security hierarchy is, I'm sorry, it's just filled
with a bunch of people who shouldn't call themselves experts. They can't do
logistics, they can't game out the obvious collapse of order once our
troops pulled out, leaving all these people in harm's way. It's
heartbreaking.
If the same humiliating Bagram Air Base scenes had played out under Trump,
the Democrats and the media would have crucified him. Instead, they kind of
nod as Biden and his cabinet drone on mouthing meaningless diplomatic
gibberish.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I'm not going to do it the
way Trump did. We're going to focus on international rules of the road.
ANTHONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: Our purpose is not to contain China,
to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order
that China is posing a challenge to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: But what we saw over the weekend in Afghanistan proved once again
that there never has been and never will be such a thing as rules-based
international order. No one fights for a rules-based international order,
no one dies for a rules-based international order. We've all seen this
before.
In 1928, Germany, France and the United States and many other countries
signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Now in that agreement, they pledged to
renounce war as an instrument of national policy and their relations with
one another. It was basically a pinky promise among girlfriends. There was
no way to enforce it. Then, of course, 11 years later, Nazi Germany invaded
Poland, and the largest war in human history began.
So the pieces not kept by diplomats meeting behind closed doors, the pieces
not kept by solemn promises or beautiful dreams. It never has been, it
never will be. There's only one way to have peace. You must be certain that
the good guys with guns are strong enough to defeat the bad guys with guns.
That is it.
Now, the Biden team along with the rest of our establishment, is simply
hapless when it comes to dealing with the Taliban. President Trump was
right to insist that we withdraw from Afghanistan for the simple reason
that our national security establishment was utterly incapable of doing
anything in that country beyond wasting money and American lives.
Our Secretary of Defense should resign immediately. Ditto for General
Milley. Austin has been in over his head from day one at the Pentagon, and
General Milley has gotten almost nothing right. They should both go on to
tangle with some more worthy adversaries, maybe Gobi professors on a U.S.
college campus or something.
The next Secretary of Defense should be a civilian, who will bring a new
approach to the Pentagon. He or she should clean house and rid us of the
incompetent adults who've made our Military sadly, they deserve better,
made them a laughingstock because of the leadership that has poorly served
them.
The next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs should be someone who will tell our
political leaders the truth about the Military situation, and who will
never ever argue with members of Congress about whether America is a racist
nation. We need a top down reform at the Pentagon.
When Biden finally emerged late today to address the situation in
Afghanistan, well, he correctly noted that it was long since time for us to
get out. But he failed to explain how the withdraw of the forces was so
badly bungled.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I've learned
the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.
That's why we're still there. We were clear eyed about the risks. We
planned for every contingency.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: I mean, every contingency, really is that what we saw over the
weekend? Zero credibility. The next three years will be very difficult for
the United States. The ship of state is rudderless. Our president is old
and incompetent. And his advisors lack the political skills necessary to
manage the country in his absence. Inflation's going to soar, crime rates
are going to continue to rise. We will suffer further humiliations around
the world. Our enemies, they're already celebrating.
We warned you about all of this last year and now it's going to happen. But
I'm telling you, we have been here before. The Carter years were one long
series of disasters, and they encouraged many people here and abroad, to
just give up on the United States. Well, those people then we're wrong. And
next year, the Democrats will likely lose at least one Chamber of Congress.
And that's going to make things better.
And then in 2024, we'll have a chance to elect a real president who can
actually do the job, who can defend American interests, and perhaps bring
about her Renaissance. And that's the "Angle".
All right. Joining me now is Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State and Fox
News contributor. Mr. Secretary, how could the intelligence on the Taliban
strength be off by so much?
MIKE POMPEO, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Laura, this was a terrible
execution of an incredibly important mission. And President Trump
campaigned on and then for four years demanded that we find a path forward
in Afghanistan where we got our young men and women home. It was the right
path that we were headed down.
We tried to work to try and find peace and reconciliation, but make no
mistake about it. The Taliban knew. They knew that if they didn't do the
things that we asked them to do, if they didn't honor their agreements that
they threatened an American if they even so much as scared an American that
we would bring real cost. And we did that. We did it time and time again.
We had drawn down from a bit over 15,000 to just over 2500 by the time we
departed. And we had managed to keep a stable place, we had managed to make
sure we protected Americans, we had the embassy secured with all of the
things that you've seen fall apart over the last 96 hours in a way that
just reflects so poorly on the - all the blood and treasure and work that
we have done for those 20 years. It didn't have to be this way. It is not
about whether we got our folks out.
President Biden spent a lot of time talking about that today. It was about
the how we execute that, and the failures that we'd had for all of these
years, we had come to an understanding with our adversaries, the Taliban,
we weren't about to recognize them. We weren't about to beg them to protect
our embassy. We made clear. These are the expectations. These are
conditions that you have to meet. They hadn't met them. And so we were
continuing to our work to get our boys and girls home. But we weren't about
to allow what we've seen happen these last 96 hours happen on our watch.
INGRAHAM: What are the chances, Mr. Secretary, that President Biden and
Blinken have already struck a deal with the Taliban to be able to remove
thousands of people from that airport over the next week or so? What are
the chances of that deal having been struck already? And we'll never know
what if it had been, what price had been paid?
POMPEO: Yes. I hope the probability is low. I pray that it is. Maybe
they've got that. But that would actually suggest that they actually had a
plan. You talked about all the planning and contingencies. You don't put
four, five, 6000 people back in for something you've planned for after you
just took them out. This is clearly unplanned activity. I'd be surprised if
they have that kind of agreement. And if they do, I want to know what it
is. This is going to cost the United States of America in terms of our
morality, in terms of the risk from the rest of the world.
Laura, I've said this time and time again. We had a deterrence model. We
knew that strength created peace and we know that weakness begets war. You
are seeing the - you're seeing the [ph] some result of the weakness of the
administration, whether it's our southern border, whether it's handing the
Russians a pipeline completion that can threaten Europe. All of these
things, the whole world watches. Chairman Kim, Xi Jingping, they're all
watching what's happening today. And I hope this administration comes to
understand that apologizing, placating, appeasing, being weak, only
presents risks to American security.
INGRAHAM: Yesterday, in an interview, Liz Cheney has something to say about
you, sir. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): President Biden bears responsibility for making
this decision. But there is no question that President Trump, his
administration, Secretary Pompeo, they also bear very significant
responsibility for this. They walked down this path of legitimizing the
Taliban, the notion of we're going to end endless wars is that campaign
slogan. What we're watching right now in Afghanistan is what happens when
America withdraws from the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Mr. Secretary, your response?
POMPEO: Yes. Look, I think she's lost the bubble just a bit. In the end, we
demonstrated that we could, in fact, conduct the American Security mission
in Afghanistan. We had a plan both to get our folks home, and a plan to
make sure that we reduce the risk that we'd ever be attacked from that
place again. We had a plan to do it. We were well on our way to executing
that.
January 20, Biden administration took over and they pulled the last pin out
of the Jenga pile without having thought about the ramifications that would
result. So I think Congresswoman Cheney just thinks that we should have
been there forever, another $30 billion a year. I went to some of those
transfers of the dignified - the dignified transfers of remains at Dover.
Our young men and women did amazing work there. The young soldiers, our
young airmen did remarkable work. It was time to get our team home. We
could have done it in a way that would have reflected well on America and
would have protected the interest we had. I think representative Cheney
just simply has a different view. She thinks we ought to be there putting
our kids at risk and to think that America simply has no vital interest in.
INGRAHAM: Secretary Pompeo, this is a catastrophic failure. You've said it,
so many people today with enormous experience, have said the same thing.
Where should the accountability lie for this? We have a president of the
United States who's currently at Camp David. He's gone back there.
We have people who went before Congress time and again and said, things
were pretty much on track. We had some challenges, but things were going
well. This went on for 10, 12 years, we were getting those updates. Should
Secretary Austin remain in his position? Should Mark Milley remain in his?
POMPEO: Well, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to hold the
leadership accountable. Maybe not even just this sets, there may well be
history that began 10, 11, 12 years ago that we need to go back and look
at.
But, Laura, as I think about these things, our Constitution demands that
the senior leader, our commander in chief be held accountable. We've got
handed lots of challenges when we walked into office. North Korea was
building up its program. The previous administration give it back a fifth
of Ukraine. We had lots of challenges. We didn't pass the buck, we didn't
blame them. We just dealt with them. We confronted them. We took them on.
President Biden is the one that needs to be held accountable for what's
taking place in Afghanistan today and anything that befalls the United
States. As a result of the decisions he made, on the way he executed this
withdrawal in such a hasty, unplanned way that upended so much of the good
work that had already been done. He needs to be held accountable. And he
needs to make accountable those members of his team. But in the end - but
the end just falls to President, Laura.
INGRAHAM: Yes. And finally, sir, China has made no qualms. This has no
qualms about expressing its desire to take advantage of the situation.
Mineral rights, the Belt and Road Initiative, trade through the region, and
obviously looking at Taiwan, with hungry eyes. What's happening there
tonight? And what is your final comment on China?
POMPEO: So, Laura, with respect to the things that will happen in
Afghanistan and western China, good luck to the Chinese Communist Party.
They're going to face some of the same challenges that everybody who's
taken on this task of trying to build Afghanistan. It is a mess. There were
completely corrupt set of leaders there. So I think they'll face real
challenges.
I'm much more worried about what they'll do in the East with respect to
Taiwan. They have seen that America is not prepared to defend the basic
promises that it made under this leadership team. I hope this
administration will do something, something to demonstrate, not just words,
but something to demonstrate that we are prepared to do the right thing by
the people of Taiwan. It will be really important to establish that
deterrence model, especially after these enormous failures in Afghanistan.
INGRAHAM: Thank you, Secretary Pompeo. It's great to see you tonight as
always.
POMPEO: Thank you.
INGRAHAM: And is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of
potentially unvetted refugees from Afghanistan? All day, we've heard
phrases like we promised them. Well, who did? Did you?
Well, Victor Davis Hanson, Mollie Hemingway, have some thoughts on that.
They're here next to suggest what could end up being a disastrous
situation, if we don't play our cards right. Stay there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I made a commitment that when I made a mistake I tell you, and I've
made mistakes. And when I think I got it right, I'll say it. But I'll take
responsibility for what I do and say.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Except when it comes to the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: When I came in office, I inherited a deal the President Trump
negotiated with the Taliban. Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled
the country. The Afghan Military collapsed sometime without trying to
fight. I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating
Afghan civilians sooner. Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not
want to leave earlier.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Looked like a lot of people didn't want to leave in the airport
over the weekend. They were just begging to stay in Afghanistan. And then
after blaming everyone except his own generals and our failed intelligence,
Biden jetted back to Camp David, or helicoptered.
Joining me now, Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover Institution, senior fellow;
Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at the Federalist and Fox News contributor.
Victor, CNN says that Biden is suffering from a crisis of competence, but I
don't think - I mean, that kind of presumes there was competence to begin
with. But as you pointed out over the last six months, they've been
focusing on January 6, now, safely withdrawing our forces from Afghanistan.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTE: Yes, Laura. This
entire end of days, scenes of people falling out of airplanes reminds me of
the 9/11, people jumping off the Twin Towers, or French people packing the
train stations when the Nazi army arrived in 1940 to Paris. It's tragic.
But it's an indictment of the entire Military intelligence and political
leadership, basically, of the last 20 years, but especially in the last six
months.
Joe Biden always has this tick. He says, I'm going to take responsibility,
the buck stops with me. And then he goes off and blames everybody but
himself. He's blamed Barack Obama. He said, Barack Obama did a surge in
Afghanistan and only Joe Biden opposed it. And then he went on to Trump and
said he inherited this policy as if he's shackled by it from Trump. There
hasn't been one policy that he inherited from Trump that he hasn't
destroyed. And they were good policies.
And then he blamed the Afghan Military who has been doing a lot of the
frontline fighting since 2015. Never himself that he had no idea how to
withdraw in a humane and safe and secure fashion. And so we had all - we
had a whole army, we never seen that really in the last 30 years and 40
years. A whole army dissipated, because people in their minds said, I would
rather go cut a deal with the dark-aged Taliban pre-civilizational than put
my trust in the Biden administration to have an orderly withdrawal to
provide temporary air support or help. And so, it's an indictment.
And all of these people - and you're absolutely right about the Joint
Chiefs, and the Secretary of Defense, if they had taken one iota of the
time they spent on wokeness and critical race theory, and what are you
reading, and what proportion of this group is racially balanced and that
group and just told us this is what's happening in Afghanistan. We have 50
intelligence officers, Laura, that came out right before the election said,
Hunter Biden's laptop is Russian disinformation. Why didn't they just spend
one fraction of that time to assess the situation in Afghanistan?
INGRAHAM: Mollie, Yes - let's get Mollie in here. Mollie, this is really
quite staggering and infuriating. We were lied to for about now 18 years or
so, at least. And no one's going to get fired here. No one's going to
resign after these scenes over the weekend. I mean, this is trillions of
dollars, ultimately, the whole war on terror, trillions of dollars. Not 1
trillion, trillions, and lives lost.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, THE FEDERALIST: President Biden said today
that the buck stopped with him. But then he gave a speech arguing that it's
a good thing to depart Afghanistan after 20 years. Nobody is criticizing
that - are very few people, I should say, are criticizing the departure.
That is something that the American people have wanted for a very long
time. And it's good that President Biden followed President Trump's
decision to exit Afghanistan.
The entire frustration, the entire outrage and horror that people have
right now is over the manner of the departure, the incompetence of the
departure. But just as this departure has been in competently run, much of
the war was in competently run. And yet nobody is held accountable, not the
Pentagon brass who lied about the success, the realistic nature of whether
it would be successful or not, not the pundits who talked up this
interventionism, not the political leaders who kept us there for long after
it ever made sense to be there, not the political leaders who turned it
into a nation-building exercise.
We really need accountability for this. People need to be fired. People
need to be court- martialled, people might need to be imprisoned. The level
of corruption that led to 20 years of a nation-building exercise, that was
never what the American people wanted is just staggering.
INGRAHAM: Now, Victor, at the same time, with lots of prisoners freed in
Afghanistan, the left now wants the United States specifically to give
refuge to those fleeing Afghanistan. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRENNAN: There was quite frankly little discussion about the fate of the
Afghans that are left behind after a 20-year investment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many Afghans can they get out in the coming day?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's 86,000 people who are currently left behind in
Afghanistan alone.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: We've been covering on the show for months, this
idea of these Afghan allies, interpreters and others trying to get out of
the country.
SEN. BEN SASSE (R-NE): These are moms and dads with little kids at their
knees, some of them at the wire at the airport and every one of them should
be gotten out by us.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
INGRAHAM: Victor, do you think the American people want 80,000 folks from
Afghanistan vetted by the same people who screwed up the war for the past
20 years coming into the United States, all 80,000?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, HOOVER INSTITUTE SENIOR FELLOW: How about the same
people who absolutely destroyed federal immigration law and blew up the
southern border and let an expected 2 million people cross that southern
border this fiscal year. So they have no credibility that that they can,
what, authenticate who is coming in, adjudicate whether somebody is loyal
to America in the lot of service or is an Al-Qaeda member or if somebody
who has COVID, somebody who if vaccinated. They have no record of
competency on any issue dealing with immigration.
Yes, there are people that have been loyal and are brave and we should
welcome them. But they don't have the ability to find them and separate
them from the people who would do us harm. This administration has zero
credibility on immigration.
INGRAHAM: I just don't trust them. Mollie, yes or no, will anyone be fired
after what happened this weekend, anyone at a high rank?
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": No. And they will just
move up and get great lobbying jobs.
INGRAHAM: Unbelievable. Lockheed Martin. Mollie and Victor, thank you.
And the optics of Biden's Afghanistan reaction, plus the media coverage
doesn't quite square with reality. Raymond Arroyo has it, "Seen and Unseen"
next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: It's time for our "Seen and Unseen" segment where we expose the
big cultural stories of the day, with a hint of politics. For that we turn
to FOX News contributor Raymond Arroyo. Ray, you closely watched the
president's Afghanistan response.
RAYMOND ARROYO, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: It didn't take long, Laura. The
president's stilted, halting address about the situation he helped create
was clearly written by somebody else. It was not only inaccurate at times,
but the delivery, like the policy, was incoherent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The American troops are
performing this mission, our current military mission, we shortened the
time, limited in its scope. Our mission in Afghanistan has taken many
missteps, made many missteps over the past two decades.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ARROYO: "Missteps" is definitely the operable word of the day, Laura. So
much for foreign policy being the White House strength. It took Biden days
to respond to the fall of Afghanistan in person. Jen Psaki, his press
secretary, never even returned emails. Everybody is on vacay. The only
thing the White House offered initially was this, a picture of Biden at
Camp David allegedly Zooming with national security and intelligence
officials.
Former CIA members pointed out, this could be a huge mistake because they
may have outed CIA operatives and individuals at the Doha station who were
photographed there on the wall. Others gripe that this might be a stock
photo since the times on the clocks aren't correct, and some speculate that
this is a staged photo and Biden was watching something entirely different.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, it's "The Lawrence Welk Show."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hello, I'm Julia Child. Welcome to this volume of our
video book, the way to cook.
(MUSIC)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ARROYO: It's a pity he wasn't watching "Jeopardy!" Laura. He could have
taken foreign policy disasters for $400. The biggest problem here is to go
back to Camp David, to go on vacation after this little address, as if
nothing is going on, to continue your recreating. Joe Biden is literally
not at home when it comes to this foreign policy crisis.
INGRAHAM: That picture was, it was a troubling photo, Raymond. The blue,
tight polo shirt look. We have people losing their lives, clinging to a
U.S. Air Force transports planes. I keep saying, if Trump had done the
exact same thing with the same scenes playing out at the Bagram Air Force
base, they would have slaughtered him. They wouldn't have given one inch.
ARROYO: There would have been hell to pay.
INGRAHAM: Forget it.
ARROYO: One of the most amazing things today, Laura, was beyond the
dramatic pictures of chaos in Afghanistan is the media coverage of this.
This is what parallel realities look like. You've heard of the Marvel
multiverse. This is the media multiverse. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's been a relatively peaceful, if you like, process.
They haven't had to fire a lot of shots. There hasn't been a lot of
bloodshed in Kabul. It was a pretty straightforward takeover.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have maintained today, as far as we can see, calm
and order inside the capital.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're just chanting "Death to America," but they
seem friendly at the same time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ARROYO: Very friendly, Laura. Look, I've been in Egypt with the Muslim
Brotherhood nearby. I know what it's like for a reporter in that situation.
But you can't distort your reporting because of your personal safety. Go to
a secure spot, file your report there. I'm sorry, the Taliban are not
friendly. They are threatening families. They're beating women in the
streets. They're raping girls right now at this hour. They're murderous
thugs driven by a twisted religious ideology. You heard none of that today.
You would have sworn these people were interviewing Lech Walesa after the
fall of Communism.
INGRAHAM: Some of the interviews that I saw of the Taliban spokesman
today. They have been more aggressive with Republican senators then they
were with the Taliban spokesman in a split screen. Well, it can be a little
rough around the edges. I'm slightly exaggerating, but I don't know. They
look, there's all these Taliban people look like --
ARROYO: One of the questions MSNBC asked that Taliban spokesman was are
you going to let women vote? Yes, they're going to let them lead the party
and wear halter tops. Taliban lives under Sharia law. They impose that
everywhere they go. Welcome to reality, and that should be reported, Laura.
And it isn't.
INGRAHAM: No, Raymond, the rules-based international order, I'm sure the
Taliban, the Taliban. All right, Raymond, thank you.
Up next, the docs are back. Are you worried about Lambda?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: There's always another variant lurking in the shadows. You'll
have a whole alphabet of variants. And they will prevent us from ever going
back to normal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: It seems just like yesterday. Apparently, I do have the ability
to predict the future, well, sometimes, when it comes to the left's
fearmongering about the pandemic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are talking about the Delta today. Tomorrow it's
going to be the Lambda.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are battling against multiple variants, Delta plus
as well as Lambda that is rampant right now in South America and we're
seeing in Peru.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is something that we certainly need to continue to
keep an eye on. It's a variant of interest, meaning that it has potential
impact to more transmissibility, severity of illness.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: I forgot my scuba suit again, I'm so upset. Joining me now, Dr.
Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford, and Dr. Harvey Risch,
Yale epidemiology professor. Dr. Bhattacharya, I will start with you. Now,
the Lambda variant it sounds like an old 80s kind of punk rock band, but we
are all supposed to panic, hide, and never come out of our homes again.
What do we really need to know about this?
DR. JAY BHATTACHARYA, STANFORD UNIVERSITY EPIDEMIOLOGIST: For one, there
is no evidence that it's more deadly than any other version of this virus.
This virus has been mutating since it started coming out. It first come out
of China last year. That's what these kinds of viruses do. The only
question is, is it more severe in terms of illness? The answer is there is
no evidence of that. There is about 1,000 cases in the U.S. so far. And the
other thing to note about this, Laura, is that this variant came out of
Peru, which had one of the harshest lockdowns, last year, during one of the
harshest lockdowns in the world. The lockdown, if anything, is correlated
with the productions of these variants.
So I don't really understand the panic over this variant. It makes no sense
given the data. It also doesn't evade -- if you've had the disease before
and you have natural immunity, you are still protected against this a
variant, against a severe disease caused by this variant. It may evade --
you might still be infected with a variant, but if it doesn't produce
severe disease, there's no reason to panic. And I think it is irresponsible
of public health official to go on the air and try to stoke fear about this
variant.
INGRAHAM: I had to bring you guys on for this, but I think I had five or
six emails in the course of an hour, one hour, I don't know what was going
on this weekend, about the Lambda variant. So I had to get your take on it.
I want, Dr. Risch, you to respond to what we heard from Biden surgeon
general today on my favorite topic, natural immunity.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. VIVEK MURTHY, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: We are seeing more and more data
that tells us that while you get some protection from natural infection,
it's not nearly as strong as what you get from the vaccine, especially with
that Delta Variant, which is the hardiest and most contagious variant we've
seen to date. We need all the protection we can get. That's why the
vaccines are so effective.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Dr. Risch, really?
DR. HARVEY RISCH, YALE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: We are really not. This is
contrary to 50 years of virology and vaccinology. The vaccine -- of course,
if you give a strong enough vaccine, you can make antibodies at almost any
level you want. But that is not immunity. Immunity is how the person
responds to an infection. And natural immunity is much stronger and much
broader and much deeper and much longer lasting than vaccine immunity. And
we have over and over now data showing how long natural immunity, have had
COVID immunity survives and lasts compared to the three to five or six
months of vaccine immunity before you need booster after booster after
booster.
INGRAHAM: Dr. Bhattacharya, this is a good time to ask you this, Pfizer
announced today that it is submitting its initial trial data to the FDA to
support the third booster shot. I guess the antibodies do start to flag
after some period of time, which of course, Dr. Fauci is thrilled about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISER: We are assuming that
sooner or later we are going to have to give boosters. It is not imminent,
but we're preparing as if it will be imminent. So we're going to be ready
to do it whenever the data shows that the protection is gone below a
certain level because of a combination of the durability of protection and
the special-effect you're seeing with the Delta variant.
INGRAHAM: I don't know, Dr. Bhattacharya. It seems like they're just
making it up at this point. Not I'm hearing about the special effect, but
it was supposed to be better than natural immunity, now you need the third,
and then there will be the fourth, fifth, sixth seasonal boosters. Aren't
we just going to have to get used to living with this virus? It's with us
to stay?
BHATTACHARYA: I think that is the thing, Laura. If you look at what the
data around the world show, the countries that are very, very highly
immunized have had case surges still happen. The vaccine does provide some
protection against severe disease. That is a very good thing. If you are
older, it is worth getting the vaccine, especially for that reason, because
COVID is so bad relative to the side effects of the vaccine.
But on the other hand, the government and Dr. Fauci oversold the vaccine,
arguing that it can stop the disease from spreading and it very clearly
cannot. Do we need another booster? Let's see what that trial data say, but
at this point I just don't see any good argument for it. The natural
immunity that many, many people have, I would guess over 100 million people
in the United States have had from recovering from the disease provides the
same level of protection against severe disease as the vaccine seems to,
and the natural immunity seems to be fairly long-lasting, as Dr. Risch
said. I just don't understand why you would jump ahead and say you need a
booster long before the data are in place to say anything like that.
INGRAHAM: What I don't understand, Dr. Risch, and you read all these
studies all day long, why hasn't there been a completely comprehensive
study done on the T and B-cell memory immunity against all the variants
that we know about? There was the Cleveland Clinic study, correct? But then
they sort of tried to qualify it a little bit, saying we still like
vaccines, don't criticize us. But doesn't it seem curious, as Dr.
Bhattacharya said, so many people have had the virus and a lot of them
don't know it, but they haven't gotten their t cells checked, so they are
wandering around without knowing if they have any natural immunity?
RISCH: Well, that is part of life. In fact, the T-cells will wane over
time also, and people are still immune because they had B-cells that have
migrated to their bone marrow that when stimulated when they encounter the
virus again or a new virus similar to it will make antibodies again, and
the T-cells will start up again. So you can't exactly test the immune
system unless it's in the hot phase.
INGRAHAM: OK, so do we need a B-cell test too, then, is that what we need,
or we don't need that?
RISCH: Maybe, but people who have COVID, they know they've had it.
INGRAHAM: Not all of them. But all right, well, I've gotten my fix then
with you too. Good to see you both. We've missed you. Dr. Bhattacharya and
Dr. Risch, great to see you.
And what septuagenarian Democrat just tried his hand, I gave it away, his
hand at rapping? One of the more embarrassing Last Bites in a while next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Chuck Schumer took the stage in the Bronx tonight, did you see
it? He wasn't delivering a political speech. It was rather to thoroughly
embarrass himself in a different way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, (D-NY) SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: I got the bar, I got
the jab. We got the music. We got it all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Oh, my gosh, was that a dance, the old man khaki pants dance?
Oh, my goodness. Politicians just can't dance, OK. They just shouldn't
dance, can't dance. Reagan danced at his inaugural. That was beautiful.
All right, that's all the time we have tonight. Greg Gutfeld takes it all
from here. We'll see you tomorrow night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They are just chanting "Death to America," but they
seem friendly at the same time. It's utterly bizarre.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Content and Programming Copyright 2021 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2021 VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. All
materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not
be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast
without the prior written permission of VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. You
may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from
copies of the content.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox