and i think it s important for others to know that we re going to have a very significant debate in the united states about how to deal with the belligerent attitude china is demonstrating, notjust in the military field, but in politics and economic matters, as well. i said in my book, published injune of 2020, not knowing what would happen that if in fact there was a deal with the taliban, whatever administration carried it out, it would still be trump s fault. but the idea that biden was hamstrung by what trump had done is laughable, too. trump quite correctly withdrew from the 2015 iran nuclear deal that hasn t stopped biden trying to get back into it. it hasn t stopped biden from acquiescing to the nord stream ii pipeline i could go on at some length here. they re both wrong they were both wrong to think that american military forces should have been withdrawn from afghanistan, and sadly, i m afraid we will all pay for it for quite some time to come.
follow through on a campaign promise and get the american military out of afghanistan and end this 20 year war. they believe that history will look kindly upon this decision even though in this early going to has been a very difficult process. ryan nobles, cnn, on capitol hill. house republicans had plenty more to say about the biden administration s afghanistan policy after the hearing. and a lot of it centered on the prospect of u.s. relations with the taliban. i asked the secretary specifically, there is discussion about recognizing the taliban now and i said tell me at what point did the taliban in essence become the governing group of afghanistan or was this an armed coup. and he said by default they are now in charge. well, that is us acquiescing to a coup d etat. this intelligence capability that went down has left us stark in the region. we can t have eyes and ears in
know which way the pandemic would go, we had black lives matter protests happening all around the country, and we had premiers in place they were acquiescing to these people and you know, the media then said afterwards, there was no spread of covid-19 from these protests because you know it, it does not spread outside, but when people go to protest against the restrictions themselves, suddenly they are evil people who must be fined and locked up. and so, you know what, i think that the police need to think again. they are delving far too far into a political argument here. laura: they are turning george against their own people. and that s why i m saying is it really just a virus here that we are dealing with? look, i am pro-police normally, but i have to tell you a lot of people have become very skeptical about police. not beyond the overreach, they are now policing the use in
reconciliation budget situation, and have the nonmoderates and the progressives not excited about this, and the quickest way to get there is to start moving on with the other bill, because they have said that if they don t have the $55 trillion or whatever it is soon, they will have issues signing off with the bipartisan bill. and it is a great point. and sawhill, you mentioned the mitch mcconnell dynamic, and i wanted to draw you out on something that you wrote on the website. you wrote this, mcconnell s incentives are more complicate and that the dr. no imagine he has cultivated over the last century and a half. by acquiescing to a deal, he can reward the republican allies and head off the democratic efforts to end the filibuster, and secure some goodies for his state. and this is going to give the republicans cover to distance
i asked him who he thought was behind this most recent ransomware attack. it seems fairly clear that the attack methodology is consistent with the so called revil software attack group, which is based in russia and eastern europe. i think what president biden was doing was being appropriately cautious, because at the beginning of any of these events you don t know for sure. but it s very difficult for me to believe that an attack of this magnitude could be launched by a russia or eastern europe based criminal group without the russian government at least knowing about it and acquiescing, if not being actually behind it. ok, well, let s take that as a working hypothesis. obviously we don t know for certain, but if that is true, what do you think the response of the biden administration should be? well, i think the president has appropriately warned