Best of The Program | Nikki Haley & Scott Mann | 9/1/21

Hey, great podcast today.

We have Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann on.

He is, he was the retired Green Beret commander that led Task Force Pineapple.

That they went in in the cover of darkness, these veterans, and rescued Afghans, brought them out of their hiding places and brought them to safety.

It's an amazing story.

Also, Nikki Haley joins us today, and you can lay your bets down on whose head explodes first mine stew's or yours as we go after the president's speech and don't forget to check out the brand new episode of Glenn TV tonight blazetv.com slash Glenn the promo code is Glenn tonight we go over everything that we can tell you about Afghanistan and it's it's quite an expose you don't want to miss right after a brand new stew does america a very special episode and don't miss it and don't forget to subscribe subscribe to the podcast as well.

And finds out live on the air.

It's

wait, what?

That's, I don't.

Okay, well, just subscribe and rate and review.

Thanks.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

Okay.

All righty.

Okay.

I don't know about you, but I'm excited.

Oh,

did you see the president's speech last night or yesterday?

Yeah, yeah.

It was, Pat, did you enjoy it?

Oh,

yeah.

Like I've enjoyed a few things.

Yeah.

And Stu, I saw your show last night.

I thought you were going to have a brain hemorrhage.

I did in the middle of the show.

I'm surprised you could talk.

If you can detect, I am still a little raspy.

I lost it, and I basically blew a gasket for 20 straight minutes on this thing last night.

It drove me insane.

I know we try to avoid the word now, but I think it applies.

He's just evil.

He's just evil incarnate.

He's not a good guy.

He's not.

I mean, I watched that last night.

He does not care.

He doesn't care at all about what's going to happen to these people, about the interpreter that actually helped him specifically in 2008, who is still stuck in the country.

He does not care.

Doesn't care.

I don't think any of these people do, quite honestly.

I really don't.

I don't think any of many of the people who are in Washington, and especially those who are the ones who are claiming all this woke crap,

they don't have any empathy.

They don't have empathy.

And I don't think President Biden has it.

And, you know, I don't know if I'm going to go down the evil road with you.

Join me.

Join me.

There's 20 rooms.

Join me.

Join me.

Now in the end.

All right.

Here's cut one from Joe Biden.

Last night in Kabul,

the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan.

The longest war in American history.

Okay, it's not.

It completed one of the biggest airlifts in history.

Oh, my God.

More than 120,000 people evacuated to safeguard the US.

I want to see the name.

That number is more than double what most experts felt were possible.

Oh, yeah, you know, no nation

has ever done anything like it in all of history.

They didn't have to.

Other countries don't have to do that.

The capacity and the will and the ability to do it, and we did it today.

The extraordinary success of this mission

is due to the incredible skill,

bravely, and selfless courage of the United States military with diplomats and intelligence professionals.

This success argument is the most incoherent thing I've ever heard in my life.

It's like saying, hey, we were playing with matches and gasoline in the house, and then we successfully evacuated out of the third-story window by jumping to safety.

Well, like, wow, what a congratulations, I guess, is what I would say to that.

Imagine Ronald Reagan making this speech.

Today, we all watched as the Space Shuttle Challenger reached its greatest moment

this is a great day for NASA now many people will focus on the explosion but that teacher that went up

she went higher than anyone else in this and that's what we promised that she would be the first in space

and We are just going to keep on going because nothing went wrong.

And no nation has ever picked up up so many individual pieces of a space shuttle in such a short period of time.

You don't dare question

me about the solid rocket, the solid fuel boosters.

How dare you say there might be something wrong with the O-rings?

Yeah.

Do you know how many fish we saved from falling space shuttle debris?

Jeez.

More than have ever been saved.

More than have ever been saved.

In American history.

That is what he's doing.

Uh-huh.

And if this is an extraordinary success, what does failure look like to this guy?

I'd hate to see it.

I would hate to see what.

Let me, let me

tell you something.

I want you, I wish,

and I may show this picture on tonight's broadcast.

When you have seen

the concertino wire, the razor wire that was all over the gates of the airport and all around

the

border fence.

When you see that,

and we've seen pictures of people throwing their babies over that fence, right?

Yeah.

And Marines catching them.

What you haven't seen are the pictures that I have seen.

of the babies that fell into the wire and then fought their way out and didn't make it.

I've seen those photos.

You need to understand how bad this situation was.

Okay?

Anytime he says this was a success, I want you to remember the image that you now have in your head.

This was not a success.

By any stretch of the imagination, and people need to be held accountable because if this is allowed to stand and these people are allowed to just continue on with no ramifications

you do not want to see what our military will turn into

I am telling you now we will become the darkest force ever

ever to walk the earth with our technology and our resources

with our fighting machine that it soon can be run robotically,

we will make the Nazis look like rookies.

If you are listening to me and you are in the military, you need to stand up today.

You need to demand accountability.

Do you know the only one that

has paid and

had to pay for accountability is the Marine colonel that stood up.

He's the only one that's been held accountable for anything.

This must not continue.

Listen, by the way, in hour number two, because I'm going to give you some real stats.

All right, cut to the Taliban has made public commitments

broadcast on television

and radio across Afghanistan.

Why don't you say so?

On safe passage for anyone wanting to leave,

including those who worked alongside America.

Stop.

Stop.

If they made TV announcements, then and radio.

And radio.

Don't forget radio.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the Taliban, you know, talk radio can't be trusted, but the Taliban can be trusted on radio.

Now, I don't know if they've tweeted it.

I know they still have access to their Twitter accounts, but I don't know if they tweeted it.

Last night, I was getting a report from what's going on, and I can't give you any details, but I will tell you this, the Taliban cares less

about the people who were helping 20 years ago and translating.

They still will kill them, but they are actively hunting for those people who have translated for us in the last five years.

And anyone who says, oh, they're going to let them through their checkbook, doesn't know their ass from their elbow.

They have no idea what's going on, or they are lying.

So, Mr.

President, which one is it?

Do you not really know what's going on?

If so, the 25th Amendment should be invoked.

If you do know what's going on, then you should be impeached for lying to the American people on such a grand scale.

It is staggering.

Finish the clip.

Next clip.

Let me be clear.

Leaving August the 31st

is not due to an arbitrary deadline.

Oh, it's not?

It was designed to save American lives.

Oh, my.

Oh, my God.

It's not hard to take.

Oh, my.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my.

Oh, my.

What are you talking about?

It wasn't an arbitrary deadline.

It was based on the Taliban deadline that they told us were there's going to be consequences.

out by then.

They gave us a route.

It was a red line.

Yeah, it was the Taliban's deadline.

It was not our deadline.

And I wonder if he used that.

It was designed to save American lives on the Gold Star families that just had 13 of their family members slaughtered.

So this was designed to save lives.

And in addition to the 13

Marines and Navy personnel, there's 170 others that were killed.

You're not doing a very good job of saving lives.

If that's what this was about.

It couldn't have gone any better, though.

Do we have a

Biden retreat speech earlier evacuations available?

Can we do that one?

Because this one.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Here we go.

I may not be able to be

able to be on the air today because I have so much to say.

And I will get people killed if I say information that I shouldn't.

And I also may just kill my entire business if I say what I feel.

Oh, I was so close.

You want to talk about coming close to saying naughty words on television?

Yeah, I could do

so

many times, got halfway down a word and stopped mid-syllable.

Can I say something to you when you said that?

I almost said naughty words.

You mean like this?

I almost said it just now.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

It is an honor to have you on, Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann.

How are you, sir?

Hey, Glenn, how are you?

I have been a fan of yours for since I was Captain Scott Mann.

So it is a real honor to talk to you.

Well, I feel the same way.

But let's talk about what you've just recently done.

Can you tell us about Task Force Pineapple?

Yeah, Task Force Pineapple, it was a nickname that we got

that was the rescue of one Afghan commando

where

he was into rest.

He was retired, into rest, and was trying to make his way out, but he couldn't.

So a handful of Green Berets, we got on the phone with him, and we became his eyes and his ears.

And another ABC reporter, James Meek, and a congressional staffer, which formed our little and we did it all remote.

I know some of the reporting is that we went into country, we actually used our trust, our relationships, which is kind of the Green Beret way, working by with and through Indigenous people.

And then we just became his eyes and ears.

And we helped him navigate and move through the city.

Ultimately, we got him through the wire and onto an airplane with his family.

And we did that with about 700 families or 700 Afghans in three days.

That's unbelievable.

Absolutely unbelievable.

Yeah.

It's a testament to Glenn, too.

You know, our combat veterans, what I was so proud of for these retired Navy SEALs, these Green Berets, Marines, is that when everybody else got angry, they got to work.

You know, they just said, you know what, we're not going to leave anybody behind.

We're going to honor the promise to

the families and the Afghans who stood up for us.

And we don't leave people behind.

And that's just what we did.

And these are volunteers.

These are business owners.

These are employees.

They've called in sick from Amazon.

The one guy that led the Underground Railroad through a sewage canal that coordinated it

is an elementary school teacher inspired by Harriet Tubman, who retired from SF.

I mean, it's just amazing how our veterans showed us what leadership looked like.

So

are you?

I'm not going to even ask you that.

I'm not even going to ask that question.

When you hear the president say that there's only a couple hundred people left,

do you have a comment on that?

There's still a lot of work to be done.

And, you know, we don't want to work at cross-purposes with the Biden administration or any administration.

We intend to honor a promise and fill the gap that the government's not filling.

And

what we're doing right now is we are pivoting into, you know, the airfield was what we think of as rescue.

We're now a citizen liaison network that is moving to recovery.

We have already been working to move Afghans in this new situation, and we have.

We've moved them to safety, and we've moved them to freedom.

Whether that's a federal judge, prosecutor, or a group of Christian children, that's what we're doing.

High-risk, high-profile Afghans.

We're not leaving anybody behind.

OperationRecovery.org and we are moving people and we're going to keep moving them.

And we're hoping that the Biden administration will work even closer with us the way, you know, FEMA works with Team Rubicon.

These are SF dudes and SEALs that have been doing this for 20 years.

We know what we're doing, and we're viable, and we can help.

Have we been involved in any of these things with you, the Nazarene Fund?

And if not, please know that we are there to help you any way we can.

We'd be honored to work with you.

I appreciate that, Glenn.

And Sane here, I think any of the, you know, this is a time for, I believe, that I'm so encouraged that Americans, regardless of our political affiliation, take those negative feelings and put them into resolve.

It's the first time that I've seen Americans getting behind our myths.

And

our veterans, man, they have been through some crap.

And they're showing us how we come together and how we lead with resolve.

And so we're right there at your shoulder.

I would love to do that.

And we're going to honor this promise.

So anybody who's inspired by honoring the promise to these heroic Afghans, you know, let's do it together.

OperationRecovery.org and the others, let's get them home.

Yes.

Operationrecovery.org/slash donate.

Go there now.

This is an incredible, incredible mission.

Let me ask you, is it, I suppose because you're doing something about it,

it's not as hard, but I worry that anyone's going to work with any American anymore around the world because we just left so many high and dry.

Are you getting, have you felt any pushback from these people that were asking, hey, can you give us some intelligence on this?

Can you help us?

We haven't because we use this concept called the Shepherd concept.

So the volunteers, the Green Berets, the SEALs, the Rangers that are doing this, we have pre-existing relationships that go 20 years deep.

And what we're trying to communicate to the government is that, you know, when you say Afghanistan was for nothing, you don't understand.

You have 20 years of relationships, of tangible linkages with some of the most amazing humans on the planet.

We didn't have that pre-9-11, and that's why we got hit.

And right now we do have that.

But if we're not careful, the rest of the world is watching us.

And when Green Berets go into other countries to work by, with, and through Indigenous people, they're going to say, you know what, I'll take your money, but I'm not working with you.

I'm not sticking my neck out because you don't get a mulligan when it comes to working with other humans.

You've got to honor the promise.

And that's what I worry about.

And I'm very open about that.

I say that to the Trump administration.

I say that to the, you know, to the, to the Biden administration.

If you want green berets and operators like us to do our job, you have to honor promises you make on the back end and the front end.

Can you tell me what you feel about or

how do we repair our relationships, for instance, with England?

You know, I know that things between

commanders of the 82nd and the SAS, I know it got ugly at the airport.

And I also know what people in England in power have told me, they don't want to work with us anymore because we abandoned them.

How difficult is it going to be to repair this?

Well, it's going to take deliberate restoration.

You know, whether it's a marriage, whether it's, you know, a friendship or whether it's an ally, if you

damage a relationship, it's up to you to atone and restore that relationship.

I teach that, you know, as part of the, you know, when I teach at the Green Beret to Green Berets, is, you know, restoration of relationships is one of the hardest things you ever do, restoring trust.

That's going to have to happen.

But I will tell you this that I'm encouraged by is that when we, I did an interview with the BBC about Operation Pineapple when it was underway, and I can't tell you how many Afghans were pulled out of the sewage canals because they were holding pineapples on their cell phones to those British troops, man.

And, you know, they're lawyers, just like us.

They know what authorities we had and we didn't have.

It was a very tense situation.

We've stood at each other's shoulders for centuries, and I have a feeling that we'll do that.

I just wish our political leaders would stop targeting each other and look at your combat veterans.

Look at how they're conducting themselves, right?

Look at how they're showing up and demonstrating what leadership looks like.

Let's give them some leadership that's worthy of their sacrifice and just follow their lead.

And that's all politicians have to do right now.

I have to tell you,

and

I think this is important for Americans to understand.

We have to have a military that is led by civilians.

That's really, really important.

But that is something very difficult, especially when the civilian people at the top are making all the wrong decisions.

But

I want you to put yourself into the shoes of somebody that was at that gate as a Marine.

They knew what the right thing was to do, but but they followed the orders.

And these were legal orders.

I mean, it's one thing, you don't have to follow them when they're not legal, but these were legal orders that these guys, to the core of their being, I know vehemently disagreed with.

And yet they didn't break ranks.

They didn't

go around and do something unconstitutional.

That must have been extraordinarily difficult for a lot of them.

And we should be very, very proud of our military that they didn't do that.

And what we should also understand, and this is where politicians have to get, you know, we have had a nation at war, Glenn, for 20 years, and it's been less than 1% of the population that keeps going back and fighting.

And what you just described, when you put young men and women in that position, that's a moral injury.

It's a moral injury.

And moral injuries cut you down into the stomach.

They cut you down into the pelvic floor and they never leave you.

I know because I carry plenty.

And so what I would ask our politicians and our bureaucrats to do, you know, is if you're going to manage the perimeter security of a half mile wide airfield and then send like a three-star general in the process, let them do their job.

Give them the authority to do a non-combatant evacuation operation.

It's called a NEO.

We've done them for years.

We know how to do it.

And if you start applying politics to the world of soldiering and the world of fighting, you put your young Marines and your young paratroopers into these moral injuries and they never get over it.

And we're losing 22 a day.

Not solely to that, but it's a big part of it.

And politicians and bureaucrats bear that responsibility.

And to our citizenry, you know, if we're not going to put a commanders-in-chief in place that really get that, we need to think about that when we pull the levers.

And this isn't partisan.

know, we have an inherent responsibility to take care of our force.

And that includes not putting them in positions of moral injury.

That's our job.

Let me ⁇ I don't want you to get into politics and I don't want you to, I don't want to cause you any problems, so feel free not to answer this.

But I think

there must be people held accountable for this.

This was, and it wasn't necessarily a military thing.

I think it really falls to the State Department and the White White House.

But there also were some top people at the very, very top that made mistakes in the Pentagon.

Should people be held responsible for this?

And if so, who?

Yeah, I'm always in favor of accountability.

You know, one of the things that I wrote in my book, Game Changers years ago about the Afghan war, was that, you know, for the first 10 years of my life or in Afghanistan, you know, I was in a trance of just retribution because my Ranger buddy Cliff was killed in the Pentagon.

And I kind of abandoned the way that I should have been doing things as a Green Beret.

I was focused on just walking the enemy down instead of

working with locals.

I own that.

I still own that.

I just, I wish that our politicians, our generals, our flag officers would, you know, like that lieutenant colonel that,

you know, that resigned in protest.

Like, where's that?

I would just like to see more of that on the military side.

Like, throw your rank on the table and say, no, like, if you do that, you can have my rank.

I mean, I haven't seen that lately at a senior level, and I'd love to see it.

I'd love to see, you know, that happen.

But then, yeah, I do think there should be accountability on this.

But, you know, for me right now and the combat veterans that are in it, we're focused on playing our position in support of the government as a citizen liaison network, whatever that looks like.

But what we're not going to do is break the promise.

That's not going to happen.

And we've all committed to that.

And we're volunteers.

And we're, you know, we're doing this because it's right.

And so I hope there is accountability.

We all do.

But in the meantime, there's a lot of work to be done.

Scott,

I so appreciate you.

And I'm going to put you on hold.

And one of my producers will give you my private

email and text

because I mean what I say.

Anything you need day or night, you contact and we will be there for you.

I appreciate that, sir.

And the same goes with me.

Thank you.

Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, a president of rooftop leadership, retired Green Beret Commander, and leader of Task Force Pineapple.

I highly urge you to donate and support operationrecovery.org slash donate.

This is the best of the Glenbeck program.

We are thrilled to have the former U.S.

Ambassador to the United Nations, former South Carolina governor, and good friend Nikki Haley joining us now.

She's just written a Washington Post opinion piece, America Must Not Recognize the Taliban.

Welcome.

Thanks so much, Glenn.

It's great to be with you again.

Yeah, it's great to talk to you.

So

help me out here.

The Taliban, according to the president in the White House, you know, we've got a lot of leverage on them.

I don't know what it is.

And they've promised to be good.

Why shouldn't we recognize the Taliban?

Because they are a jihadist terrorist group.

I mean, the Taliban is no different than ISIS or al-Qaeda.

They're all bad.

They all have a warped view of human rights, if any at all.

They are all sharing a moral victory.

And we'll start to see heavy recruitment.

We'll start to see lone wolf scenarios.

And the part part that I really don't get is Biden and company need to remember it was the Taliban that harbored those that did the harm to us on 9-11.

That's who this is.

And it is the Taliban who has, you know, helped harbor Osama bin Laden.

They've helped harbor al-Qaeda.

Like all of this is not a group that needs to be trusted.

It's why that group never needed to be trusted to secure the airport and the reason we lost 13 of our finest.

I mean, they've got to stop giving credibility to the Taliban.

And what we're trying to do is tell everyone to go to standforamerica.com and sign the petition that we're sending to all of Congress not to recognize the Taliban.

Because if you recognize the Taliban as the head of Afghanistan, you're basically saying send them money.

We know what they'll do with the money.

We've seen what they've done with money before.

It's going to go to killing people.

It's going to go to harboring weapons.

It's going to be harboring terrorists.

And it's going going to go towards continuing to allow for threats on the U.S.

soil.

So it would be a horrible mistake.

And why Blinken and those are continuing to talk to the Taliban just is beyond me.

I don't know if you know or have a better guess on how many Americans are still left there and how many people are trapped that are trying to get out.

I can tell you that number is in the thousands.

If you look at all of them, maybe even into the tens of thousands.

but our State Department is blocking our every move.

Our every move.

You know, I think you can see a lot in the fact that I was listening to Blinken's speech the other day, and he said, you know, we have 200, maybe even 100.

Okay, first of all, one is too many.

Because when you're talking about rescuing Americans, you're basically saying we have a hostage situation.

The second thing is all of these Americans couldn't even get to Kabul.

They're much further out in Afghanistan in those areas.

They can't get there.

And when they do go to a checkpoint, their passports and their green cards are being taken away.

So they're not being realistic and honest with the American public.

They know that there's more than just the 200 they say that they have.

And I think that, you know, if you listen now on the news,

the conversation between Biden and President Ghani got out.

And basically what Biden's saying to Ghani is, this doesn't look good.

You need to fix the perception problem.

Well, you know, instead of trying to hide how bad it really was that the Taliban was taking over, why didn't Biden say, okay, we've got to change course.

We've got to do something different.

This isn't going well.

Like that was all the warning signs to say we need to do something different, not telling Ghani, smile and act like it's going better than it is.

And I think that's what Blinken's doing and trying to, you know, say that there's less Americans there than they are.

This is a terrible situation, I mean, that we've been put in, and a terrible situation for our military who knows in their blood that they're never supposed to leave an American behind.

Yeah, and Americans all know that.

Thank God so many Americans are stepping to the plate and just being honorable.

I mean, it's remarkable what's happening outside of Washington.

Let me ask you, I just had a Green Beret commander on with me, and I said, you know, what

is it going to be like to be a Green Beret in a foreign country when you're trying to get people to help you.

And how are our foreign relations going to be with the military?

I'd like to ask you kind of the same question.

What authority do we have anywhere in the world or in the UN

now?

Well, first of all, I think that, you know, at the end of Biden's speech was pretty much the beginning of his lame duck presidency because he has lost all the trust and confidence of our military men and women and their families.

He's lost the trust and confidence of our allies from Taiwan to Ukraine to Israel to India, you name it.

He's lost the trust and confidence of the American people.

And the way countries are looking at him is, you know, never was there a time that I thought NATO would be having conversations without the U.S.

And that is happening now.

You've got the Europeans where, you know, the British and the French went out of their way to get their citizens out and the American government basically told them, don't come to the airport.

I mean

everyone is looking at America now realizing they're weaker.

Russia and China are emboldened.

China is now trying to make moves on Bagram Air Force Base.

They have recognized the Taliban.

They're trying to get the minerals.

Russia now realizes Ukraine is more susceptible.

Biden already gave Nord Stream II pipeline to allow them to do that.

And you're going to start to see more hackings because Russia knows they're not going to do anything about it.

Iran is going to continue to start more nuclear production because they're no longer worried about the threat of Iran.

And you're seeing Kim in North Korea starting his production back because Biden, in this one scenario, showed that he's a very weak president and that the U.S.

is not going to do anything about it.

And so it's put us in a terrible situation if we have to deal with now.

If I were in Taiwan today, I would be freaking out because

I would think that

China's going to move on Taiwan Taiwan

probably in the next two years.

Got to have Von Biden in office.

We know Taiwan's already freaking out, and Biden's going to meet with Zelensky, the head of Ukraine today.

And I can assure you, Zelensky is going to tell him, we don't feel comfortable.

Right now, they're trying to become a member of NATO.

The U.S.

was going to help them do that.

Well, they don't believe the U.S.

can help them do that now.

Secondly, you went and you agreed to Nord Stream 2, which automatically gave Russia the upper hand.

And now, oh, by the way, you couldn't protect Afghanistan where you had been 20 years.

What makes you think that you're going to be able to protect us?

It's a very unsettling time for our friends around the world.

Nikki Haley, always good to talk to you.

It's never good to talk to you because we always find out the truth and it'sn't been good for a while.

You know, I do want to say this to you, Glenn.

Thank you for helping to get the Christians out of Afghanistan.

That was God's work.

And I'm telling you, if ever there was a threat, it was on them.

And I know you had a big hand in that.

And I just thank you and God bless you for it.

Thank you very much, Nikki.

I appreciate it.

We'll talk again.