Morning Wire XX
[0] Alarming reports from Afghanistan as the Taliban tighten their grip on the country and target citizens.
[1] We'll take a closer look at the militant group that has taken over the country, and what we should expect from a Taliban -controlled Afghanistan.
[2] I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howell.
[3] It's Friday, August 20th, and this is Morning Wire.
[4] President Biden continues to defend his handling of the crisis in Afghanistan.
[5] But you don't think this could have been handled?
[6] This actually could have been handled better.
[7] in any way.
[8] No, I don't think it could have been handled in a way.
[9] How is the administration handling increasing backlash over Afghanistan's collapse?
[10] And what is it doing about the U .S. citizens and allies remaining in the country?
[11] And a new pro -life law in Arizona is facing a legal challenge from abortion advocates.
[12] The law criminalizes abortion based on genetic factors like Down syndrome or race and for sex selection.
[13] Who's trying to overturn the law and will it hold up in court?
[14] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[15] Stay tuned.
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[21] The Taliban have taken over Afghanistan and reports on the ground.
[22] are alarming.
[23] Video has emerged of the Taliban shooting and torturing civilians, while footage shows young women pleading with U .S. troops to save them from being brutalized by members of the militant group.
[24] Here to discuss the fall of Afghanistan and tell us more about the group that has taken over the country, is journalist and author Lynn O'Donnell, the former bureau chief in Kabul for the Associated Press and AFP.
[25] Thanks for joining us, Lynn.
[26] Oh, thank you for having me. So first, tell us about the Taliban.
[27] Can you give us some history and background about the group?
[28] Well, the Taliban kind of emerged during the civil war in Afghanistan that followed the departure of the Soviet troops in the late 80s.
[29] There was an awful civil war where warlords fought each other.
[30] And in Kabul alone, the estimates are that 80 ,000 people were killed.
[31] The Taliban emerged, a movement that was also involved in the civil war, and they said, we can give you peace.
[32] And people said, yes, please.
[33] And so the Taliban basically took over and with their own brand of rough justice.
[34] And it's like a medieval style of an interpretation of Islam that was incredibly strict.
[35] So there was no music, women weren't allowed out in public, kitties couldn't fly kites, girls couldn't go to school, and boys who were in school were taught almost exclusively to recite the Quran by rote.
[36] And with no expertise that running a country were pretty dire.
[37] And it was very close to falling apart when the 9 -11 attacks happened and the US -led invasion drove them from power.
[38] But in the meantime, they had embraced Osama bin Laden and al -Qaeda.
[39] and they were the hosts of that terrorist organization as the attacks on America in 2001 were being planned.
[40] And so the invasion was pretty much to punish them and drive them out of power.
[41] And that's what happened.
[42] So the Taliban have been changing some of their rhetoric about women in recent days, saying they will allow women to be involved in government and other parts of society.
[43] How have they treated women in the past and do we have any reason to believe?
[44] that things are going to change in the future?
[45] No, we don't at all.
[46] I've just spent the last three months on the ground reporting on what's been going on as this war has marched across Afghanistan.
[47] And I went to a place in the Central Highlands called Saigon, a district in a remote valley in Bahmian province, which had a couple of days earlier, had the Taliban in control.
[48] They stuck around for four days, and they were pushed out.
[49] by citizen militias, and I interviewed people about this phenomenon and what had happened to them when the Taliban came in.
[50] Taliban came in and they took control of the district politically and economically and militarily, and they announced from the pulpits of the mosques that they wanted lists of names of all the women and girls in the district because they were going to marry them off to their young fighters and women were terrified as many families as could got their women and their girls out of there they were hiring cars for enormous amounts of money or they were walking or you know and going as far away as from Saigon as they possibly could to escape this faith which let's face it is sex slavery and it's also a form of ethnic cleansing and when I got there some women had come back, many women had not.
[51] And this was verified in their own words and the words of their husbands, the district governor, the provincial governor.
[52] A lot of people talk to me about this and told me of their own experiences.
[53] Right.
[54] Well, Lynn, thanks so much for talking with us this morning.
[55] Oh, it's been my pleasure.
[56] I think this is a really important message that has to be understood who we're dealing with and what they do to people.
[57] They're murderers, they're liars, they're drug dealers, they're misogynists, and they cannot be trusted.
[58] That's journalist and author Lynn O'Donnell.
[59] Coming up, President Biden defends his handling of the crisis in Afghanistan.
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[66] Images of chaos and panic after the U .S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has put the Biden administration on the defensive with the media.
[67] Here to analyze the president's public response is Daily Wire media reporter Ben Johnson.
[68] Thanks for joining us, Ben.
[69] Good morning.
[70] So after some pretty significant public backlash, on Wednesday, President Biden sat down with Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos.
[71] How did that go?
[72] It's been rated poorly.
[73] The top line is the president said his administration plan for every contingency and that he doesn't think it could have gone any better.
[74] But you don't think this could have been handled?
[75] This actually could have been handled better in any way.
[76] No mistakes?
[77] No, I don't think it could have been handled in a way that we're going to go back in hindsight and look, but the idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing.
[78] I don't know how that happens.
[79] I don't know how that happened.
[80] Stephanopoulos later said the president sounded defiant and unapologetic, but substantively the administration conflated the removal of troops from Kabul, which has been disastrous, with a decision to end the 20 -year war, which is politically popular.
[81] The president's messaging seems to downplay any military setbacks and present the humanitarian crisis as the inevitable result of ending an unpopular war.
[82] And the president seemed to tell Stephanopoulos, those viral videos we saw of Afghanis clinging to U .S. airplanes and falling to their deaths while they were trying to leave the country were old news.
[83] But we've all seen the pictures.
[84] We've seen those hundreds of people packed into a C -17.
[85] We've seen Afghans falling.
[86] That was four days ago, five days ago.
[87] What did you think when you first saw those pictures?
[88] Well, I thought was we have to gain control of this.
[89] At that point, it had been two days, but the timing wasn't the issue.
[90] The president's taken hits for not acknowledging the human toll of his policies.
[91] Right.
[92] The general reaction is that the answer made him seem both callous and confused about key details.
[93] Well, one of the obvious details in dispute is whether the president decided to overrule his military advisors in the execution of this withdrawal.
[94] What do we know about that?
[95] George Stephanopoulos asked him about reports that the generals had advised him to keep 2 ,500 troops in Afghanistan during the transition period.
[96] But the president said he couldn't remember receiving that advice.
[97] But your top military advisors weren't against withdrawing on this timeline.
[98] They wanted you to keep about 2 ,500 troops.
[99] No, they didn't.
[100] It was split.
[101] That wasn't true.
[102] That wasn't true.
[103] So no one told your military advisors to not tell you, no, we should just keep 2 ,500 troops.
[104] It's been a stable situation for the last several years.
[105] We can do that.
[106] We can continue to do that.
[107] No, no one said that to me that I can recall.
[108] The problem is the Wall Street Journal reported the names of the senior military brass who disagreed with him in April.
[109] They were General Mark Millie, who's chairman of the chairman of the president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Scott Miller, who leads NATO forces in Afghanistan, and General Frank McKenzie, the commander of U .S. forces in the Middle East.
[110] And the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, seemed to confirm those concerns in a press conference on April 14th.
[111] The Taliban apparently seized billions of dollars of U .S. military equipment that was left behind.
[112] What's being done about that?
[113] Well, on Tuesday, the President's National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, confirmed those reports.
[114] We don't have a complete picture.
[115] obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
[116] And obviously, we don't have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.
[117] Critics say that sounds like an overly flippant answer about billions of dollars of U .S. military equipment falling into the hands of the same regime that gave safe haven to Osama bin Laden.
[118] Yeah, this whole situation is really concerning.
[119] Thanks, Ben.
[120] Sure, Georgia.
[121] That's Ben Johnson, media reporter for The Daily Wire.
[122] A pro -life bill signed into law in Arizona this year is facing a legal challenge from abortion advocates.
[123] The bill, which would criminalize providing abortions based on genetic factors like Down syndrome, race, or sex will take effect on September 29th, unless it fails to hold up in court.
[124] Here to discuss this Daily Wire's Charlotte Pince Bond.
[125] Welcome, Charlotte.
[126] Hey, John, thanks for having me. so first what can you tell us about the law itself well a couple of things it has several components first the law makes it illegal for a doctor to provide an abortion if the doctor is aware that the abortion is being sought explicitly because of a genetic abnormality the baby's race or the baby's sex okay it also criminalizes the coercion of mothers to obtain an abortion on the same basis using force or threat of force as well as the solicitation to finance such an abortion So, for example, if a boyfriend or husband makes physical threats against a mother in order to coerce her to get an abortion based on something like Down syndrome or the sex of the baby, that person is guilty of a class three felony.
[127] On the flip side, the law also allows the husband of the mother or her parents, if she's under 18, to sue for damages on behalf of the aborted baby if the doctor violated the clause I just discussed.
[128] So they can take action against those who perform the abortion?
[129] Right, they can.
[130] The law also prohibits public schools and colleges from facilitating abortions on campus except to save the life of the mother.
[131] And it prohibits government funds from being used for abortions unless the mother's life is in danger.
[132] So the law puts some limits on funding, but it primarily blocks abortions based on genetic traits.
[133] Yeah, that's right.
[134] So some people are pushing back against the law.
[135] Tell us about the lawsuit.
[136] Yeah, well, it's a federal lawsuit.
[137] intended to overturn the law, including the personhood provision in the law that would grant full legal personhood to, quote, an unborn child at every stage of development.
[138] That provision is seen as a significant threat to abortion in the state.
[139] Right.
[140] That makes sense.
[141] Who's involved in the suit?
[142] The plaintiffs are two Arizona doctors, the Arizona Medical Association, and two national women's organizations.
[143] They're being represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Arizona chapter of the ACLU.
[144] They're suing the Attorney General of Arizona, all the Arizona County attorneys, the Arizona Medical Board, and the Arizona Department of Health Services along with its director.
[145] What are the odds the courts keep the law in place?
[146] It's kind of up in the air.
[147] The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an abortion law in Missouri in June that would have banned abortion at or after eight weeks.
[148] That law also included a provision that would be.
[149] a woman from getting an abortion because the baby has Down syndrome.
[150] But on the other hand, the Sixth Circuit Court ruled that Ohio could implement its anti -down syndrome abortion law.
[151] And a similar law in South Dakota took effect last month that bans abortions when based on a Down syndrome diagnosis.
[152] So we don't actually have a clear answer from the courts?
[153] No, we don't.
[154] But those laws and decisions from the lower courts could mean that this type of legislation might make its way to the Supreme Court at some point.
[155] Charlotte, thanks for the reporting.
[156] No problem.
[157] Daily Wire reporter, Charlotte Pence Bond.
[158] Another story we're tracking this week.
[159] Several buildings in the Capitol Complex were evacuated Thursday after a man threatened to ignite bombs in his truck unless President Biden stepped down.
[160] In videos he posted on social media, the man ranted about a, quote, revolution against the government.
[161] He surrendered to police without incident hours after parking the vehicle outside the Library of Congress.
[162] If you liked this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to MorningWire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five -star review.
[163] That's all the time we've got this morning.
[164] Thanks for waking up with us.
[165] We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
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