dangerous cult as evidenced by his creepy rally for jd vance this weekend. as the new special master gets to work, why does trump seem so confident that his preposterous claims of executive privilege will hold up? plus, why ron desantis may have gravely miscalculated the politics of using migrant men, women, and children as political pawns. we begin tonight with qanon. the conspiracy driven cult born in 2016 on the idea that there is a kabul of pedophiles including prominent democrats and media elites running the world, drinking the blood of babies. and only donald trump can stop them. they also believe that jfk jr. is leading their resistance movement against the baby eating hordes. despite the fact he s been dead for more than 20 years. that bonker idea, which used to be relegated to the darkest corners of the internet, has now become mainstream in today s republican party. they even got some congress members in the faith. that was evidence this weekend at a rally in yo
characterization? yeah, i think so. after ten years of war we ve seen the state as a central entity completely disintegrate and even though the government as we know it now controls the territory, inside of the territory it s a shattered place with a destroyed economy and war lordism and all sorts of other problems that have come up from the war. and from that war lordism and sort of those militias and what you describe as a kind of drug cartel that are tied in some way to elements of the government, right? yeah, i mean, so in all of that destruction, we ve seen the formal economy of the country destroyed. we ve seen many people close to them and other people in the country facing sanctions from the united states and elsewhere and what we realize a lot of these people in order to keep their operations going and earning money have gone into elicit trade, primarily in drug,
and we re prepared to continue this heightened level of support in the coming weeks if the taliban continue their attacks. reporter: airstrikes have hit taliban targets in a key stronghold where fighting has raged. several strikes have been aimed at military equipment the taliban captured from afghan forces. but can those afghan units hang on against the taliban who now control half of all district centers? a grim assessment from the director of the cia. the taliban are making significant military advances. they are probably in the strongest military position that they ve been in since 2001. reporter: the chairman of the joint chiefs says afghan forces are trying to regroup and defend major cities. strategic momentum appears to be sort of with the taliban. there s a possibility of a complete taliban takeover or breakdowns, war lordism.
security forces? unfortunately no. i think it was probably one of the most disingenuous parts of his speech. what we re seeing right now is the full on unraveling and collapse of the afghan security forces, dana. unless there is a general patton or general eisenhower to stem the collapse and inject energy and some degree of remoralization of the afghan force, i think we re headed to the hell scape of the 1990s and war lordism and militias as our best bet to actually stop the taliban from taking kabul and a lot of these provisional capitols and consolidating their control over the entire
geographically large country, there s a rise of war lordism and the taliban is coming back in areas we ve come back from. over time the government and his shared power arrangement with the other competitor will have to show that country they have got a better vector for the people in afghanistan that the taliban do. and that they can run that with less corruption and sort of less feeiascos that happened under karzai. that gives them a chance. thinking the pentagon can deliver on the things is a huge mistake. we ll use other elements of state craft to help him achieve the goals. it won t be with dodd forces. ic that s an error of our own that s really just part of the picture not all of the picture.