no, you can look in the overseas contingency funding bill of the pentagon, they are spending 49 plus 17 in base support for their efforts in afghanistan and it s wrong and it s much cheaper way to do that for all the talk about pakistan abusing the united states. it s true. but because of the pentagon s very thirsty, very hungry footprint we can never actually choke off pakistan because they can choke off our supply line. the president should appoint a special presidential envoy effectively a bankruptcy trustee. the president understands how to restructure basically bankrupt failing situations. he needs to do that in this situation, give that envoy the title 50 authorities just like the cia had when they went into afghanistan after 9/11 and work this thing out. now, there is a new commander going in who is a guy with a special operations background. that is a very good step. but the president can bolster that and have someone, one person that reports to him to unify the
coddled or spoken politely to. this is quite a shock and working, i think. tucker: do they agree with the assessment. when you speak to them candidly do they acknowledge there is truth in the president s behavior. no. they are quite firm that this is all lies, defamation. the american companies who have testified a to our trade representative s office are making up stories. adamant denying everything. this, tucker, makes it awfully hard to negotiate. they haven t met us halfway. they haven t met us one quarter of the way yet. i m pessimistic in the short-term. obviously if president xi and president trump get together again and terms are right some kind of a deal oob struck but i think we are a long way from that. tucker: do you think this change in attitude has helped the united states? have we gotten something out
of this? it s a strange reaction. we have certainly gotten the attention of the european union. the european union commissioner came here less than a month ago and wants to work towards zero subsidies and zero tariffs with the united states. this, too tucker is paranoia in china. they now are beginning to think that president trump is so smart as you say playing three dimensional chess that he has the europeans on his side and issued a set of warnings in the past week to the europeans not to fall for president trump s trap. tucker: is there something kind of wonderfully amusing about this story? or is it just me? [laughter] it s partly just you but don t forget [laughter] you want to see some change and aggressive steps, the president has certainly done that. i think the next step is going to be to see what the
multi-headed hydra of u.s. government policy and fix this. i know the president s frustrated. he asks about it all the time, i m told. it s time for the president to take a different path and solve and end this longest war in america. there are americans dying there now who are toddlers are not even born when the twin towers fell 17 years ago. tucker: very quickly, is it true that other countries have secured mineral rights in afghanistan as we. sure. a lot of countries have secured mineral rights. there is actually very legal mining going on. the taliban and isis are doing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of illegal mining because, again, as a country we haven t advanced the rule of law into these areas to prevent actual legitimate investment. but, if we go it with a small unconventional footprint we can put this thing back on track. tucker: of course we are getting nothing out of it as usual. we are standing by, mr. president. tucker: thank you for
and in the end they rolled him and after a year more, another $62 billion of spending, more dead americans and lots of dead afghans we are losing the taliban showed that very strongly again this week. they kill another 350 afghan soldiers, four districts taken. they effective li cut the country in half by cutting a major city and also this week killed 50 kids in kabul studying or taking a college entrance exam. so the country continues to melt down. the conventional approach is not working. for the last 17 years we have basically repeated the soviet battle plan and it s not working. time for the president to make some choices. tucker: so what s the thinking here? so as you said, it s been next month it will be 17 years. next tuesday. tucker: we do not control right, a large part of the country and it s not working. is the thinking that something is going to change or why are we continuing to do the same things over and over? well that is the