Best of The Program | Guests: Hollie McKay & Allyson Reneau | 8/24/21

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Coming up on the podcast, today we talk about what's going on in Afghanistan, the latest.

We have reporters on the ground who are helping to get people out of Afghanistan, people who have seen and been at the airport.

We go into all of that today.

We also are going to celebrate a little bit.

Andrew Cuomo is out of office.

We get into that today.

And I want to remind you one more time, if you can, the Nazarenefund.org is the place to go to help the effort to get Christians who are vetted, going to third-party nations out of Afghanistan.

We've donated over $28 million, which is an incredible amount of money in such a short time.

We really, really appreciate that.

The Nazarenefund.org is the place to go to get involved in that effort.

Here's the podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

Some of the other stuff that is going on today

is

really important,

but

we are trying to stay focused on

what's right in front of us, and that is this debacle

of the Biden administration in Afghanistan.

I wish I could get on the ground at the airport of Kabul.

I'd like to just see the faces of our troops

because I'm just I'm imagining that they are not

happy at all

and would just love to see them.

You know, if somebody would just bring a camera and just

pan, see what they are feeling.

I imagine they want to do a lot more than they're being allowed to do.

Oh,

you've got to believe it.

We have heard some reports over the past few hours that there have been some

excursions into the city to pick up some people.

Again, it seems like what we're doing is begging the Taliban to allow us to do these things.

Reportedly today, the CIA director met with the Taliban to try to, I guess, negotiate.

Excuse me?

Say that again.

I think what I thought I heard you say was our CIA director met with the Taliban.

So what did you really really say?

Like, what did I actually

say?

I heard, misheard.

Here, I'll just read this for you.

CIA director secretly visited Taliban in Kabul.

Okay, a couple of problems with that.

One, it's not a secret if we're reading about it.

The meeting's over.

Yeah.

Again,

not something you should broadcast,

but I'm glad they did because the other problem I have with that is what is the CIA director doing meeting with the Taliban?

Jose?

Jose?

He's a former diplomat.

Met on Monday with Abdul Ghani Baradar.

I love that.

I got to say, the president's name was Ghani.

Now we've got Ghani on the Taliban.

I'm never going to be able to keep these people separate.

I'm never going to know what anyone's talking about.

Change your names.

I got news for you.

I don't know who anybody is anyway.

I know.

Yeah.

I mean, this is, just, I want you to take a moment, Glenn,

to bring yourself back in time a little bit.

Okay, yeah.

We started this show

before, I mean, we started doing the talk show in 98 or 99, but the syndication deal we signed to go national, we signed in August of 2001.

So just weeks before the September 11th attacks.

And then we were supposed to start the show in January 2002, but they moved it up because of the attacks.

So we've been basically on the air since September 11th, the arc of the show, a 20-year arc of the show.

Can you imagine, let's say,

November 2001?

I bring you back

a time to that period.

And I say, you know what's going to wind up happening is we're going to negotiate with the Taliban to basically give them the country.

And then we're going to strand, and yes, Gensaki, I said strand thousands of Americans and the Afghans who helped us in the 20-year war.

All right.

Yeah.

Wait, wait, wait.

I got to get it.

And And then, hold on.

And then

we're going to have the CIA

director go negotiate with the Taliban to hopefully move the Taliban's red line to the United States.

If I were to give you that scenario, let's say November 2001, how do you feel about that?

Let me give you the scenario and my response.

Let me give you the response I would have made in November.

Stu,

Stu,

I know every empire has died in Afghanistan.

I know that

the British, the Soviet Union, there has never been anyone that has won a war

in Afghanistan.

But I believe in our troops and I believe our troops will win the war.

Okay?

Mm-hmm.

If you would have said to me,

Well, Glenn,

yes, we're going to win the war, but then we're going to elect a president who's just going to abandon

everything on the ground, including our billion-dollar embassy that we built because we won the war.

And for 20 years, 20 years,

any girl under 20 knows the power that she has, the inherent rights that she has, but our president is just going to hand it back over to the thugs and killers that we killed and ran out 19 years ago.

Then I would say that's a fantasy.

That's a fantasy list.

There's no way that could happen in America.

I have terrible news.

Wait, I thought we were talking about just hypothetically.

Yeah, no, this is, it really is incredible.

I mean, I remember when the Obama administration first sort of pitched negotiating with the Taliban, and it's been a bad idea from president to president since day one.

It's never been a good idea to negotiate with the Taliban ever.

No.

And, you know, sure.

I was crazy angry with Donald Trump when he did it.

I thought it was an embarrassment when he did it.

But that's nothing compared to this.

And anybody who thinks that Donald Trump would have allowed this to happen, no way.

No way.

Just let me just say this.

Let's just say, and I don't believe this for a second, let's just say he doesn't care about America at all.

Now, obviously, that's not true.

Yeah, that's not true.

But Donald Trump is not going to allow Donald Trump to be humiliated, embarrassed that way.

No way.

No way.

No way.

This is a special skill of Joe Biden.

Taliban Joe.

To be able to go down this road.

It really is.

Because I don't,

he does not even seem to have

the

interest

in protecting his own presidency.

No.

Let alone caring about the American troops, or let alone caring about the Afghans that helped us, or let alone caring about religious minorities there that are being murdered.

Let alone, forget all of that.

Forget all the women

and girls that you say.

I mean, guys, the left has absolutely no room to talk about the treatment of women and the treatment of girls and how we have to protect.

They have no credibility.

They have exposed themselves as not caring at all,

at all.

The people who should be screaming the loudest are the woke community.

Yeah, where's the Me Too and this?

And not to mention, we've taken the Taliban from a bunch of people who

basically were

fighting in caves against us during the war to one of the best, most well-armed militaries in the world.

Well, they're well-armed because we left everything behind.

75,898 vehicles, 599,690 weapons, 208 aircraft,

reconnaissance equipment, 16,191.

This is from openthebooks.com, by the way.

Communications equipment, 162,643 items.

Think about this, Glenn.

We used to go back again to 2001 for a moment.

What is one of the greatest advantages?

This doesn't work out.

This doesn't work out for us.

What's one of the reasons why we do so well in warfare?

When our military...

Because we have communications, we have night vision.

Night vision, right?

Just take night vision for a a moment.

Tens of thousands of night vision goggles and associated equipment.

That, by the way, you paid for.

And you cannot buy in stores.

You can't buy it.

You can't buy it.

You just can't use it.

Yeah.

Americans can't buy it for your use.

And so we gave that to the Afghan military, who then promptly turned it over to the Taliban here as this has developed.

And now, if we, God forbid, if it gets out of control again and we have to go back in, which is totally possible, by the way, totally possible, if they again build an area that is a free passage for terrorists and they start blowing up our buildings, we're going to be back in there again.

Don't dismiss this as if it's over because that's the whole problem with leaving.

Don't count on Joe Biden to actually go back.

It might not be Joe Biden.

Well, it might be, yeah, no, I'm not saying Joe Biden.

It might be 10 years from now.

But eventually we're going to go back in there and we're going to have to deal with a Taliban that has all this equipment.

well they'll have all that equipment anyway because uh joe biden's son is allowing chinese to come in and spy on our military and buy things uh you know uh through bribery etc etc that's another huge part of this uh and china is going to give them all of that i mean did you see that china

i think saudi arabia and russia and Iran have just made a deal.

And China and Iran, I'm sorry, China and Russia have also made a deal with the Taliban.

I think there's an axis of evil

that is being formed.

And we strangely are trying to form our own apparent axis of evil.

Where's the allied power here?

Don't copy their organizational structures.

Can I also say too, Glenn, we have this idea of arming other countries, and it doesn't always seem to work out the best possible way.

Let me rephrase that a little bit.

It never works out.

But can I at least, this is just an idea.

And you know, can we float, because this is safety trick?

Hey, safety trick.

Safety training.

You can do it.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to camp it.

Safe space.

Yeah.

Can we at least put self-destruct buttons in these things?

I want a self-destruct.

The Taliban takes over.

We blow up all the weapons from one remote button.

I want, why?

I want a drone that when they take off with a drone and they go to bomb somebody, it just flies back to the United States and lands safely.

Why?

I want a button that makes, I want it to just, you know how they have those like ink

packets that when you steal money from a bank, they explode?

I want basically some version of that in every weapon we give to anybody else.

So at some point when we decide they've gotten into the wrong hands, we just press the button and they all just go away.

I don't think that you've gone far enough.

No.

I would like the night vision goggles that if you steal it or, you know, we just leave it behind, you push a button and knives go through your eyes.

That's what I would like, but maybe it's just me.

This is the best of the Glenbeck program.

Let's go to Holly McKay.

She is a journalist and war crimes investigator.

She's also the author of the book Only Cry for the Living.

She has just returned out of Afghanistan, and we welcome her to the program.

Hi, Holly.

How are you?

Hi, I'm doing well.

Thank you for having me.

Good.

Can you say where you are now?

You're safe.

Sure.

I'm in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and I am probably going to be in the region for a little while covering the situation from neighboring countries and some of the fallout and just kind of hammering in these twilight days of the U.S.

presence in Afghanistan.

So, first of all, tell us what you think is going on.

I mean, what is America doing?

I wish I could tell you, Glenn.

It's an absolute, I haven't seen anything that could be more of a mess than what we're seeing right now in the situation in Kabul Airport.

Just people have been trying for days and they physically cannot get there.

And people are terrified and being injured.

they're just at their wit's end.

I'm receiving calls and emails really just every 20 minutes from somebody new just in desperation of how do they get there.

But you know what I'm seeing from other countries though, I received some notifications today from the Australian government who are actually mobilizing the Australian citizens and visa holders there to a particular place, a hotel near the airport and actually physically taking them in a helicopter.

So we're seeing that being done also by the Brits and it's frustrating to see that the US, the mighty US is not able to do that and we're not allowing our great men and women who serve this country to leave the wire to do their job that they're there to do and that most of them want to do.

So we're talking to Holly McKay.

Holly,

it's not that we can't do it, it's that we're not.

I mean,

when I read that, you know, Joe Biden is saying that, oh, you can get through the gates, Americans getting through the gates, well, then why did you take two helicopters and fly them 200 meters outside of the gates to pick up 170 Americans.

Why didn't they just go through the gates?

Yeah, exactly.

There's this sort of a collective denial that's happening from the administration and it's extremely frustrating because, you know, I'm one of the people that have to look at these Afghans and speak to these Afghans every day and try to explain to them why my government is not able to help them, even though they are citizens or they're people that have supported the U.S.

or they have the correct paperwork and visas.

And it's just like banging your head up against a brick wall.

I'm just not sure why the president is digging his heels in like this and refusing to acknowledge the brevity of the situation.

So

they said, the White House says we're going to be able to get all Americans and everybody who holds a proper visa out by the 31st.

I don't think there's a prayer of that happening unless something changes today dramatically.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Really, in my opinion, what that is going to take at this point is Khalil Azad's office in Doha to have some very serious and stern discussions with the Taliban leadership that they have been talking to now for several years.

The only way I see that becoming is if the Doha leadership is able to somehow rein in its many, many rogue elements, which we could spend all day talking about that too, and allowing people to get through.

And

what I sort of foresee happening is possibly American citizens being allowed through, but Afghan Americans or Afghans with

American visas, they're going to be the ones that the Taliban is basically not wanting to leave.

And the Taliban have been very open about that and saying, we do not want Afghans leaving.

We need as much quote-unquote talent here in our country.

And they've been very adamant about that.

So unless Khalil Lazad's office can can do some serious diplomacy, I don't see that happening by the end of this month.

So my audience, last week, we raised, we're at, I think, $28 million now, and we have 20

Airbuses and Boeings

at an airport, very close,

and we can't get the State Department to clear them.

And

we also,

you know,

can't seem to get outside of the gates and get any permission from anybody to help bring these people in and I sat there last week when all this money was coming in and I I thought to myself and it must have been the way people were that were saving Jews back in Germany these people mean nothing to you you're just going to kill them Why won't you just let them go?

They mean something to us.

Let them go.

It's clearly not that they're trying to keep all the talent in Afghanistan.

These are just people they're gonna kill.

Am I wrong?

Exactly.

No, not wrong at all.

Or people that they can exert

a terrible control and a terrible life over.

You know, if they want to keep them alive, it would be in a power trip basis and to really put them in jail, talk to them, make their lives incredibly miserable.

So I guess the more people that you can control, the more power these the Taliban seems to think it has.

But yeah, they just, they won't let them go.

And I think that is, it just is sort of terrifying.

And I think, you know, part of the problem too is that the leadership has been in Doha.

And so they don't really have any control over the many rogue elements.

And mind you, 7,000 of the most hardened Taliban fighters who have been sitting in Bagram prison for the past 10, you know, upwards to 20 years have just been released last week by the Taliban when they took over the airbase.

I mean, you know, we're seeing the release of Bagram, not, we're seeing the release of Taliban prisons all over the country, but the release of the Bagram ones, that's the bad of the bad.

So, mind you, they're in their first week of freedom.

So, you know, it just gives me chills to think what's happening there.

The

women and children, I mean,

I actually heard somebody say, oh, these people know what it's like over there.

That's the way they've lived.

No, not for the last 20 years they haven't.

A 20-year-old girl right now has not been raised to think that that's the way it is.

She thinks that, you know, she's a powerful woman and can do things that guys can do, everything that we know in the West to be true.

And now

she's being faced with a life of absolute hell.

Where are the people that are shouting about women's rights and the rights of children?

Where is

the outrage from Americans that are constantly saying that that is their goal to help.

It seems to be awfully quiet.

Yeah, it's sickening.

It's sickening.

I know so many women who have gone to become doctors and lawyers and teachers and just doing really incredible things.

And now to think that their lives are going to be

relegated to a dank basement.

And every time they step out of the house, they're going to have to be completely covered and accompanied by a male relative.

They're not going to be able to work or go to school or to really have any sense of

be be seen or heard

it just is it's just an unfathomable thought it's just

yeah especially in urban areas like Kabul where women have just yeah they have grown up to have these these rights or just to think that that has been stripped away from them like that I just I can't even wrap my head around it right now

tell me about your

your escort of the Taliban out.

Tell me about that.

Yeah.

so what happened was my photographer, Jake, and I, we had a base in Kabul and we're actually planning to be,

both of us have spent considerable time in Afghanistan before and we were planning to be here through to November.

So about three months, really capturing the end of the era in terms of the U.S.

and then, you know, how Afghanistan was going to survive in that first little chapter.

We weren't quite envisioning things to fold the way that they did.

So we were there working in Kabul for a little while and decided to go up to to Mazar Sharif, which is the northern province.

And it was actually the province where the US first came in after 9-11 and it was the first one taken back from the Taliban.

And if anyone's seen the movie 12 Strong, I think it's called, you'll see that there is a Marshal Dostoum who was sort of heralding that first group.

And he's someone I spent a little bit of time with a couple of years ago interviewing in Turkey.

And so Coming back, we thought

I would go and visit him again and do another interview.

And there was sort of this lot of hope that his forces combined with some other Northern Alliance leaders in the north were joining with some of the Afghan SF commandos and looked to be a viable fighting force against the Taliban who were quickly taking a lot of the northern provinces.

But Mazar is an extremely anti-Taliban place and so it wasn't like that they had any community support that they may have had in other provinces that are in the south or along the Pakistan border which tend to be a little bit more sympathetic to the Taliban.

Mazar wasn't like that at all.

So we went north, I believe it was Thursday of the week before last.

And, you know, we got there and it was just, it was this vibrant city that I'd grown to know and love.

And the markets were full and people were out.

And we were,

I was going around interviewing the shopkeepers and I was outside their sort of very, have a very famous blue mosque.

And I was outside there in the park, you know, sitting with the women, talking to the men, talking to people that have fled other northern provinces who were escaping the Taliban and and things just felt very full of life and I'm I was sitting there just trying to think how is this place on the verge of being attacked by the Taliban I just you know nobody sort of seemed too concerned and I thought well you know maybe everything's fine and I I kept in very close contact with a lot of my Afghan security officials who said no there's no way Mazar is ever going to fall and if it does it's going to be a long way away so I felt very confident being there and then the following day Friday you noticed a shift and it was quite bizarre.

And we still went out, we're still in the streets, I'm still doing interviews and things.

But less people were around and you just sort of started to see that there was something.

And people kept telling me, shopkeepers are like, they're coming.

And I thought, you know, they're still a fair way away.

And I thought, no, they're really going to push them back.

You've got this incredible fighting force.

And then by Saturday, it was just bizarre.

And I woke up and we went out and there were just people lined up around the bank trying to get their money out so that they could flee.

And I was trying to get hold of so many of my interpreters and fixes and things to help me out with some stories.

And everybody just kept saying, everybody's left, everybody's gone to Kabul, everybody's ran away kind of thing.

And it's a 10-hour drive between Nazar and Kabul.

So I was a bit stuck.

And then I ended up finding someone who was able to come out and

do some translations for me.

And I got into a cab and I started to see all these people fleeing from the outside villages and they were coming into the city and we were trying to interview them and we're driving along this very abandoned road outside the city.

And this cab driver just turned and looked at me and he said, I'm scared.

I don't want to go any further.

And I said, oh, okay.

We'll go back.

No problem.

And the interpreter was sort of on the phone and he turned around and he had this very bizarre big smile on his face.

And he said to me, oh, they've broken through the front line.

They're coming to Mazar.

And I thought, there's no way this is happening.

You know, this place was just alive yesterday.

And the afternoon kind of continued and my photographer and I went out to this kebab cafe and there was just not a soul on the street.

It was it was very eerie.

And we sat down and then we just looked at each other and went, something is really wrong.

Something we don't know is really, really wrong.

Let's go.

And so we hurried back to the hotel we were staying.

And just as I'm hurrying back through these streets, I see this swarm of motorcycles coming into the city.

And that was the Taliban.

And they basically were able to come in and take over that city without a shot.

So we kind of made it in just in time and sort of holed up on the roof of where we were staying.

And we were able to kind of look down and see basically the way that they were just able to come through and take over a complete city.

And so from there, it was kind of, we were completely surrounded.

And it was just a very unnerving feeling because I thought, oh, my goodness,

what am I going to do next?

So why didn't they fight?

We're back with

Holly McKay.

Why didn't they fight?

So the night before, I actually spent the night before with the Afghan special forces commanders.

And what I'd been gathering and what they were able to affirm to me and also affirmed to me after the fact when I went back to them and they're all in hiding now, of course, running for their lives, when they explained to me what happened was that they were basically sold out, Glenn.

So this is how corrupt the Afghan, you know, within the ranks of both the government and the military.

And I really feel that the U.S.

throughout this entire occupation turned a blind eye to the level of corruption.

And that was a big factor.

Yep.

Yep, we did.

And so what happened was there was a deal struck between one of the top ANA, Afghan National Army, leaders in the area, who was just appointed by Ghani, mind you, a week before it happened.

He was appointed and he and a bunch of other kind of leaders all struck a deal with

the Taliban in advance to basically hand over the city.

They got their money or whatever it is they got.

They got to flee.

They were all gone.

They were all off into Uzbekistan or whatever, doctor Adam.

They'd all left the country.

These poor men, and this is what upset me most when President Biden was blaming the Afghans for running away.

These poor men,

some of them very young kids, some boys,

young men, I should say, some of them very experienced fighters, were basically left to the slaughter.

They didn't know a deal had already been struck for them to...

to surrender.

They didn't know that.

So they're fighting.

My contact in the commando said to me, you know, he got to four o'clock that afternoon and they were just being overwhelmed and overrun.

And he said, then somebody came in and told him that basically everybody had left.

And he just said the morale, he just said, you know, basically they were just told, you guys just need to run because the city's already been handed over.

So if you keep fighting, they'll just kill you.

So these poor young men and women are fleeing toward the Uzbek border.

And then they sort of get there and they're dumping.

you know, whatever, you know, and this is a sad bit too, is, you know, they're having to dump their weapons and dump their vehicles and things, and they're trying to get into Uzbekistan, which I think had to end up shutting the border because it was so overwhelmed.

So they were really lashed to the slaughter.

And I can't blame them at that point for wanting to run away when they know that their own leaders on their side had already sold them out.

Yeah.

And I mean,

what are you going to do at that point?

You're going to run for your life.

Who are you fighting for at that point?

You're not fighting for your country anymore.

So the Taliban...

That's something.

The Taliban says to you that, you know, hey, we're not the Taliban of 20 years ago.

We've got about three minutes to finish this story.

I'm so sorry.

Yeah, love to have you on.

Of course.

So, yeah, so basically, long story short, the only way we realized that we were actually going to get out of the city was to have the Taliban take us out.

There was too many checkpoints.

There's no way we could have passed those ourselves safely.

So the Taliban, through some very careful diplomacy, thankfully some really great State Department people, plus the Uzbek consul in the Dhar was extremely helpful.

We were able to get an escort.

Yeah, and immediately the first thing that the Taliban driver says to me is he just got out of bag room too.

That was very nonchalant.

And basically he wanted to tell me, he wanted to welcome me.

He said

the governor wished he could have been there to talk to me, but he was busy and then sort of said, we're not the same.

There's a lot of propaganda about us.

But then I started to obviously read through the lines and I probed and I wanted to know, well,

what is your future for Afghanistan?

And it was very clear.

And they made

no effort to hide the fact they wanted a very stringent interpretation of Sharia and that, you know, women were going to be covered and

stuck into their basements.

And, you know, anyone who steals was going to get their hand cut off.

So they were pretty blunt about that.

Having said that, they were very polite to me because I was a foreigner and I recognize that.

I know that my Afghan friends and colleagues are not going to be given the sort of the nice treatment that I received, you know, and that's what sort of scares me.

So

I was lucky, but that luck won't be extended.

I would love to have you back on, maybe even perhaps later this week, just to talk about some of your other experiences and to be able to, because you've been everywhere.

You have seen the worst of the worst.

And I'd love to hear how this compares to what has already happened elsewhere,

what is coming for Afghanistan.

Holly McKay, the name of her book is Only Cry for the Living.

She's a journalist and war crimes investigator and an amazing storyteller.

Holly McKay, thank you.

The best of the Glenn Bank program.

10 years ago, I started Mercury One, which is a charity, because I saw a need,

a need

of really teaching people to stand for themselves again, not waiting for the government to help.

So we started Mercury One

to be the first one to help, the last one out.

First one in, last one out.

We're continuing that now with the Nazarene Fund.

We are the first in.

Yesterday,

we had two two planes take off with 700, about 700 Afghani women, children, and families.

And it's all because of you.

Last year,

the ninth anniversary of Mercury One, we introduced an initiative, the American Journey Experience, which is all about history.

We have our 10th anniversary that is happening this year.

We've decided to make it kind of a real cool event.

It's happening on Saturday, October 9th.

It's the Power of One, Renewing

Kindness.

And there's going to be a lot of things that are happening.

It's at the Toyota Music Center or Factory here in Dallas.

And you can go to mercury1.org or m1nextchapter.com.

I am going to be announcing a new initiative, and this is a big one.

And you're already seeing it in play

because we need it.

it.

The power of one.

And

that's what we're doing.

And I want to lay out a vision for America and the next chapter of Mercury 1.

You will see artifacts that have never before been seen in public.

Artifacts from the Pilgrims and from Jamestown.

1619.

You don't have to reimagine.

We have all of it.

Also, heroes of history will be there, some amazing people.

It's an incredible event.

I'd love for you to come.

Tickets start at $25,

so bring your family, bring your friends.

This is the event that pays for the light bills and everybody's salary and everything else.

So when I go on the air and say 100% of the money goes to, I can say that with assurance because I've put on a show or something

that people will buy tickets to to come and help us.

Mercury1.org or m1nextchapter.com.

Make sure you join us.

It's, I think, the first Saturday in October, maybe second Saturday in October.

Make sure you join us.

It's going to be an incredible thing.

Now, speaking of the power of one, this is a great example of the power of one.

Allison Renault,

she's an Oklahoma mom that

saw the

Afghani

robotics team, the girls on the Afghani robotics team, and she thought these kids are in trouble.

She wanted to help get them out, and she did.

So how did this mom do it?

We have her on the phone with us now.

Allison, hi, how are you?

Hi, Glenn.

It's a pleasure to be with you today.

Actually, it's an honor.

I appreciate this opportunity.

Thank you.

So, Allison, I mean, so many people feel like I'm just a mom, or I, you know, what do I, what can I possibly do?

You didn't think that.

You just did it.

Well, I'm the mother of 11 biological children, and nine of those children are girls, are girls, and all with one man, by the way.

Good for you.

And,

you know, I met these, I worked in the space industry in Washington, D.C.

after obtaining my master's at Harvard at 55 years old in 2016.

Wow.

And the doors swung open for me to

walk into this field.

It's been an honor to work with our best and brightest and humble and genius people.

And one thing they taught me was failure was not an option.

They make science fiction fact, and

they are really unstoppable.

I was invited to be on a very prestigious board of directors that I actually don't even deserve to be on called Explore Mars.

They advocate in Washington, D.C.

for human space exploration.

And each year we have a conference at NDC where we bring in a lot of leaders to promote and to talk about exploration.

We decided we would bring over these five girls on the Afghan robotic team.

And Elon Musk actually paved their way.

These girls came and our goal was to allow them to immerse themselves in the space industry, to

to brush shoulders with astronauts and to dream big.

I immediately had a connection connection with these girls having so many daughters and I think it was vice versa.

And one of the things they requested after going to the Fife House and museums was, Allison, we just want to go to an amusement park.

And I thought,

and so I quickly raised the money in about 15 minutes for all these girls to go and had video of them there and they just had an amazing time.

You know, sometimes kids just need to be kids.

Yeah.

But I kept in touch with them for a couple of years through text.

And in December of 2020, they began to request, hey, we're going to graduate high school we'd like to come to the United States to get our degrees in engineering could you help us with scholarships and we've been doing a lot of groundwork in that area but I woke up on Tuesday August 3rd with an overwhelming dreadful feeling that they were in great danger at this time nothing had quite collapsed yet or anything like that and I thought to myself

I've got I've got this must be a divine warning I couldn't shake it.

I tried to.

And I immediately began to reach out people to people way above my pay grade.

I knew I would have to find some power and some influence and I didn't know where to start.

I just was armed with courage and a cause and a cell phone and just began to

for two weeks night and day

try to find something.

I kept running into brick wall after brick wall after brick wall.

A lead would go hot like if something was going to happen and then he'd go cold.

I was working in conjunction with their leader and mentor.

who is from Afghanistan, who lives in the United States.

So she was working hard on her paths of influence and I was going hard in my U.S.

area.

There's sometimes when you have a dream and it's nothing is working, you need to take drastic action.

You need to do something wild.

And I decided I would fly to Qatar.

It was a good chance they might be flying there,

evacuated by the Qatari government.

We tried India, we tried Canada, we tried a lot of different places, and we just weren't getting anywhere.

So on Tuesday, a couple of weeks ago or a week ago,

I had a one-way ticket.

And I thought, wow, when I get there, I don't know anybody.

I'm traveling alone.

And so I called, I remembered I had a former roommate in Washington, D.C.

a couple of years ago that had been transferred there with the military.

And I thought, I need to ask her, you know, where do I eat?

Where do I stay?

Can I go jogging in the mornings?

What do I wear in public?

Headscarves, what's proper?

And she said, what's going on?

And I told her.

And she said,

do you know I work in the U.S.

Embassy in Qatar?

I go, I had no idea.

And she said, yeah, I have the ear of the high officials there.

I can help you.

Send me their passports, send me their information, and

I'll prepare it all and present it.

She stayed up all night.

She went back to the embassy, stayed up all night from midnight to 6, and presented this, and our U.S.

officials really jumped on it.

It began to alert people on the ground in Kabul.

And

the Qatari government got the girls to the airport.

Our officials were right on top of it the whole way, flanking the operation.

We're at the airport in case something went wrong.

And somehow, in a sea of chaos of the the pictures you saw of 8 million people plus all the refugees, miraculous, these girls were evacuated.

And I didn't have to make the trip to Qatar, by the way.

My friend said, no need to come.

You need to stay on the phone.

You need to stay on the ground.

You don't need to be flying 20 hours and being silent with these girls.

So it was reported that I did fly there, but I think it was just assumed.

So

anyhow, the girls are safe.

They're in Qatar.

And

hats off to that government for stepping up.

I will tell you, there are a lot of very brave Muslim countries that are stepping up, and they are terrified because they know the

weakness of the West right now.

And they also know if they're outed,

they will have all kinds of problems from Hezbollah and ISIS and

the new al-Qaeda, et cetera, et cetera.

And they're doing remarkable things, just truly remarkable things.

You're right.

I have to tell you, Allison,

it's amazing to see.

And

I can relate entirely.

Yesterday was not a good day for me.

And at one point, I said, you know what?

It's just not supposed to happen.

I mean, maybe

because every single door is closing.

And maybe it's just not supposed to happen.

Let's go another direction.

And I stopped myself and I thought, that is so defeatist.

No, keep

moving forward.

And it's hard, especially like you, when you were completely alone.

I commend you.

Thank you.

But Glenn, there's nothing that happens unless there's a team.

And it wasn't just me.

Okay.

So I just want to commend all the people that were involved.

What a tremendous job they did and how fast they leapt into action.

You know, sometimes you think it's someone that's full of power and influence that you're going to get a hold of that's going to do the job for you.

But here was this little roommate of mine

that God connected me with and suddenly it exploded

and it began to work.

And I'm just shocked

how one willing person who cares, God can use them.

Yep.

It's really remarkable.

Allison, thank you so much.

God bless.

I hope to meet you someday.

We're not that far, just down the street.

We are.

And I just want to mention real quickly, if you have one more minute, is that okay?

Yeah.

Because of the media coverage I've had over the last few days, the cries for help from within Afghanistan from women who are in hiding, professional women who've been fired, who are being hunted, who are being tortured, reports last night of two killed and shot.

And these are professional, educated women, one beat to death, one blinded.

I was back, I was back on ground, at ground zero again.

What worked for the girls that I helped was not going to work to evacuate

these people that are in hiding.

And I said, send me the list.

I'm not going to leave one behind.

How can we help you?

And I thought it would be, I thought there would be 20 people.

And it was 212 women, Afghan judges in hiding, Supreme Court, that are, and I asked my commando friends on the ground that are helping me, and they said, yes, they will be the first to die.

They'll be the first to die because they have imprisoned men.

They have imprisoned people who are beating their wives.

And all those prisoners have been released.

And these women are being hunted.

And it was 212 women.

How can we help you?

How can we help you?

You know,

we've got a NASA, former NASA general counsel friend of mine working on this along with the Yale Law School who are assembling all the data of these women, submitting all their information to the State Department.

It's turning fast.

I've got an extraction team on the ground.

And I think, and I've got an ambassador that reached out to me over the European Union that says, I'm going to find asylum.

He's already called so many countries, and they're working on it as well.

So the one thing I'm missing is planes.

A plane?

Planes.

You're talking to a guy who has 20 of them.

Yes.

You get them to the airport.

I'll need to have my team get in touch with you.

You need to work it out because of the State Department and everything else.

But you get them to the tarmac.

I'll get them on a plane.

Good.

Well, we're Americans and we figure it out, don't we, Glenn?

Yeah, we do.

Yes, we do.

You get them to the tarmac.

I'll get them to I'll get them to another country where they'll be safe.

And I just want to say, Mr.

President, if you hear this message, we need more time.

We need more time.

Please give us more time.

Thank you, Glenn.

Allison, thank you.

God bless.