Senator Ted Cruz on Navigating Political Attacks and Corporate Wokeness 57:55

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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Horn, with my co-host, Sam Stone. We have a fantastic show this week, and I don't want to underestimate that. It's a great show this week. Great guests. It's a phenomenal show this week. So we're going to start off with a short 10-minute interview. I was able to have Senator Cruz. He was in Phoenix recently for a fundraiser and was kind enough on the spot just to yank me in a room, and we did a quick talk.

about the Supreme Court and the attack on it by liberals and his re-election and just a lot of good stuff. It's a quick interview, and he's going to be back on the show this summer. So we're looking forward to that. But one thing to pay attention before we start the show is that Senator Cruz has an opponent, U.S. Representative Colin Allred. He was elected in 2018. And unlike his opponent last time, he votes with Pelosi 100% of the time.

He's voted for things like Against Protection of Women and Girls Sports Act. So folks, pay attention. Senator Cruz needs your support if you like him, and we recommend it. Here's the interview. Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. Today, Michelle and I are honored to have Senator Ted Cruz with us. Welcome to Phoenix. Well, thank you. It's great to be with you. With our limited time, so what are your thoughts right now on the attack on the Supreme Court? This seems to be a very new tactic, and it's disgusting. Yeah.

It is absolutely disgusting. We are seeing a coordinated political smear job directed at the Supreme Court. And the left is trying to do two things. Number one, they want to delegitimize the court across the board. It is the one institution in government they do not control. And they are angry that there is a majority of justices who are constitutionalists who are willing to vigorously enforce the Bill of Rights.

And so the left, the Democrats have decided they're going to attack the court, delegitimize the court, call it corrupt. And look, doing that really demonstrates a contempt for the rule of law, a contempt for the Constitution, a contempt for the institutions that protect democracy in this country. The irony that the left loves to talk about democracy, they don't care about democracy. They're tearing it down by doing this. But secondly...

This is very directly a political smear directed at Clarence Thomas. They despise Clarence Thomas. They have a particular level of hate for Clarence Thomas, not just because he is a deeply principled constitutionalist, but because he's an African-American conservative. And the attacks they're leveling on him are a total double standard. Everything they're attacking him of

Every other justice has done the same. They're attacking him for staying at the vacation home of a wealthy friend of his. Well, one of the things I talked about this week in the Senate Judiciary Committee is just how many of the left-wing justices have taken more trips, more international trips. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor. This has nothing to do with quote-unquote ethics. This has everything to do with a coordinated political smear because they hate and want to destroy Justice Thomas.

What do you do? How do you combat that? You fight back and you fight back politically. It's one of the things I've been urging my colleagues in the Senate. I've said, listen, this is organized. This has money behind it. Each day they're releasing a new attack. ProPublica is the

fake public interest journalist that puts out the initial attack. Then the Democrats escalate it, they use it to attack further. Then their lapdogs in the corporate media escalated more. And I've told Republican senators, I've said, "Listen, Supreme Court justices are not equipped to defend themselves from a political attack. They don't have a staff, they don't have experience. They are completely ill-suited to defend themselves, so we've got to defend themselves.

That's what I'm trying to do. And one of the things, for example, so I do a podcast every week. I do it three days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It's called Verdict with Ted Cruz. Our podcast this week, the one I did this week, we devoted an entire podcast to the substance of the attacks directed at Clarence Thomas.

I had as a guest on the podcast, Mark Paoletta, who's a lawyer who has been leading the defense for Clarence Thomas. And the reason I did that was to get the facts so people knew and they could use them to defend it. Could you combat it legislatively? Is there anything that could be done in that arena? So, no, because the Schumer Senate is not going to pass anything. Now,

What we did see is really quite remarkable. We saw 15 Senate Democrats write a letter to the Appropriations Committee threatening to cut off all of the funding for security at the Supreme Court, to pull the police for the Supreme Court, literally threatening their lives. Angry leftists.

fueled by the rhetoric from Democrat politicians. We know one lunatic who went from California all the way across the country to Bethesda, Maryland with a gun, a knife, rope, and duct tape. He went to the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh with the intention of murdering Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

And these unhinged Democrats are saying, we'll pull your security. They are literally inviting violence. And Justice Samuel Alito told the Wall Street Journal this last weekend, they are making us targets for assassination. This is, it is so twisted. It is so cynical. And it is a coordinated effort right now.

What do you feel conservatives can do to fight back on this? For example, you mentioned all these liberal justices taking these trips. Have not heard of Pete. And you're never going to see that in New York Times, Washington Post. What can they do? Well, do what you're doing right now. This podcast is an important step. Stand up and speak out. Speak out to your friends. Speak out to your neighbors. The reason I did the Verdict podcast...

40 minutes of substance going through each of the claims one at a time is because it's a podcast that can be shared. It can be shared with others. So share it with your friends. Share it with your neighbors. Put it out on social media so they know the facts. Push back. Push back with your friends, with your colleagues, with your families, with your coworkers. And then we need to see people in leadership actually lead and defend justice. Correct. Correct. Michelle?

Yes. Well, I wanted to ask you about what's happening along the lines of activist corporations, if we could. Just because that is a hot topic right now. What can the public do? I mean, we see boycotts as something that is taking off when we look at Bud Light. But what are some of the options out there? And what do you think about that as a tactic?

Well, listen, I will say with Bud Light, it has been incredible how a woke corporation, you know, the phrase go woke, go broke. Right. Is really playing out. And you got to think the idiots in the marketing team.

and Anheuser-Busch apparently have never met their customers. They don't actually know who drinks Bud Light. They've never been to a bar. Why do you think this is working? Because we've had other corporations come out with an agenda. You saw that in Georgia when you saw the baseball league go out, take their league out of there. But this is resonating. This is actually doing something. So it is. And I think there are a couple of things. You're right. Historically, conservatives have

been lousy. That's right. We're terrible at it. We talk a big game, but then when it comes to it, we don't. So a couple of things played out. One, I think a lot of Bud Light's customers were genuinely pissed because it felt like the company didn't give a damn about its customers and looked down on them. You guys are a bunch of idiots and we look down on you. And part of it is also, and this is an interesting thing about beer,

There are different goods for which the cost of substitution is higher or lower. That's right. So look, Major League Baseball had the idiocy of yanking it out of Atlanta and taking $100 million of business away from primarily African-American owned businesses to move it to Denver City that's 91% white. It's one of the whitest cities in all of America because these woke liberals are going to show how much they care about black people by giving a bunch of money to white businesses. Right.

Now, that pissed a lot of us off. It was ridiculous virtue signaling. But I got to say, look, I'm a sports fan. I'm mad about it. But at the same time, not watching sports hurts. I get so much joy. It was too expensive. That's right. But you can, there's lots of bad beer options. So Bud Light was particularly vulnerable here because it's so easy to substitute. Look, number one,

I used to drink Bud Light when I was younger. I will say one of the advantages of getting older, I now drink better beer. So I don't drink a lot of Bud Light to begin with. But, you know, the thing about it is if you're a regular Bud Light drinker, it's easy to shift to Coors Light. It's easy to shift to Coors Light. Like there's no, it's almost effortless. They're interchangeable. Yeah.

And so there's not a lot of cost to switching. And so they've seen 20, 25% drop in revenue. I mean, it's been... Which is why this recovery will not be quick for them. Yeah. I feel like Chris Rock really was the catalyst, his video that he made, to promoting this. And I just... I love that we're fighting back. And I love that people are standing up. I will say shooting cases of Bud Light with an AR-15 was quite a sight. Quickly, you're running for re-election? Yes. How this...

You've run various elections. What have you learned in each election that's made you better prepared for the onslaught you're going to face this time again? Another $100 million against you because you're the worst person in the world and liberals. So look, there's an old phrase, you either run scared or unopposed. And I only know how to run scared. Now, I can tell you this election, I'm running for re-election for Senate in Texas in 2024. We're going to win.

But we are facing one hell of a fight. The last re-elect I had in 2018 was the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history. We were outspent 3-1, the Democrats more than doubled Democrat turnout in Texas, and we ended up winning by just 2%. This year I've got an opponent, a Democrat congressman, Colin Allred, who's a former NFL player.

Very, very liberal voting record. In fact, his first four years in Congress, he voted with Nancy Pelosi. How frequently do you think he voted with Nancy Pelosi? 100%. 100%. Literally not 99%, not 98%. Not a single vote did he differ from Nancy. So his views are wildly out of step with people in Texas. But at the same time, in the first 36 hours he was in this race, he raised over $2 million. Because at the end of the day, it's not rocket science.

If you're a Democrat, other than Donald Trump, there's no Republican in the country you want to beat more than me. And so every left-wing anarchist, every Antifa member, every Marxist in Manhattan, in Chicago, in San Francisco is giving money. And so I would say to your listeners...

Come to TedCruz.org, TedCruz.org, TedCruz.org. Come contribute because we need the resources to fight back. We're going to win, but we're going to win because you stand up just like the customers of Bud Light and you say enough is enough. We're not going to lose our country because what I'm doing each and every day.

is leading the fight in Washington against Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer and the Marxists, the cultural Marxists who are trying to destroy this country. We've got to stand up and save it. Senator Cruz, thank you for joining us and thanks for coming to Phoenix. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

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have a conversation with. We're touching on subjects sometimes like this one where there is just a dearth of news. And that has been the case out of Afghanistan really since the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces and support. And that left a lot of people that we were working with there in very good faith in

in a very difficult position. One of those is on the line with us right now, General Sami Sadat, former commander of Afghan special forces. He was educated at the Royal Air Force Academy in King's College.

There's a fantastic PBS documentary about him called Retrograde that you can check out. I'm pretty sure it's on YouTube. I pulled it up there on Rumble last night. Not just a military commander, but he is obviously one of the leaders and hopefully one of the future leaders of Afghanistan. General Sadat, welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds.

Thank you very much. It's great to be here with you today. So after the I think we all know here the story of the U.S. pullout. But after that, what are the conditions like there now? What what is going on? Because I I'm not aware of almost any coverage at all in Western media of Afghanistan at this point.

Thank you for asking this question. Unfortunately, after the withdrawal of the U.S. forces and the collapse of our government, there are three main fallouts that came out from this. One is the humanitarian crisis, which really is breaking the Afghans on the ground. It caused migration of almost 2 million people outside Afghanistan. And that's out of how much population to begin with?

So Afghanistan is about 40 million people currently. We estimate that there might be 36 million Afghans inside Afghanistan. So it's a growing population. And after the collapse of our government,

some 2 million Afghans immediately became refugees around the world, and most of them are in our region running into Iran and Pakistan, which traditionally has not been our friend, but a face of the Taliban people, you know, are looking for a better alternative, and at least in Iran and Pakistan, they're not getting killed or their nails are not getting pulled out in the prison cells as the Taliban do.

A couple of things that have changed dramatically upside down. First is the women's rights. The Taliban, Amir, has banned women from working. They banned women from going to schools and universities. They also banned women traveling outside the country or inside the country without a male chaperone, which is completely the opposite of what we had during our time

as a government in Afghanistan. The second big thing is really hunting the Afghan special forces and the Afghan soldiers, basically, and government officials, and killing them and torturing them systematically, and also going after everybody who actually posts anything or says anything against the Taliban. So this is an absolute...

dictatorship oppressing the people of Afghanistan in order to advance their political agendas. And they are relying mostly on the extreme interpretation of the religion of Islam, and their idea is to take the people of Afghanistan back to the basics of Islam, say, 1,500 years ago when Prophet Muhammad

and came first and the way he exercised and that and even that is not true that they can use that as an excuse to uh... oppressed people into this extreme uh... situation where the afghan people are unfortunately

The prospects in our country look very, very bad and dark. There is no work for Afghans. There is no opportunities to study. There is no opportunities to travel outside. You are not free to talk or exercise some of the civil rights that, as a human being, people have elsewhere in the country.

The second fallout really is about the comeback of terrorism. We all know al-Zawahiri came back to Afghanistan, but al-Zawahiri was only one of the 16,000 al-Qaeda members who immediately pushed into Afghanistan. Today, as I speak to you, there is al-Qaeda's operation center.

intelligence center recruitment and al-Qaeda's main headquarter for Middle East, North Africa, and also Indian subcontinent is based in Afghanistan. They have some 800 of their most celebrated and battle-hardened commanders moved into Afghanistan with their families, and they have control of their manned training for overseas operations.

As I speak to you today, there is an estimated of 40,000 foreign fighters in Afghanistan. Most of them are loyal to al-Qaeda, but some are also loyal to ISIS. The Afghan version of ISIS is called ISKP, Islamic State in Khorasan province. So let me ask you this question. President Biden...

really spoke in a derogatory manner regarding the Afghan troops, basically calling them cowards. Will you tell your audience how this makes you feel and how this makes those soldiers who risk their lives, their families, when you have a president of the United States make comments like that? I

I think we all know who's the coward here. I think the people who turned their tail and left us on the battleground with a lot of enemies, with a lot of terrorism are the cowards. I think President Biden is the real coward here. We fought hard. We lost over 200,000 Afghan soldiers. We have...

We have on our hands today half a million Afghan disabled veterans, and we fought as hard as possible. We fought al-Qaeda. We fought ISKP. We fought all the rivals of the United States.

In that region. Remember when 9-11 happened in the U.S., Americans came to Afghans for help. And my father back then was a resistance commander in northern Afghanistan. He and his troops, like many other Afghan commanders, joined the U.S.

and started the quest going after al-Qaeda and also going after every single enemy of the United States. For 20 years, not only we fought for our own country, but we fought alongside the brave United States military for both of our enemies, and we put al-Qaeda and other terror groups on their knees. Basically, we denied them time, space, power.

and resources that they have today. So the Afghan soldiers fought as much as they could, but it was the Doha agreement signed between the United States and Taliban that actually broke our back and going behind our back and making a deal with our enemy.

And then cutting off all the supplies to the Afghans and then immediately pulling out U.S. military troops. What do you think would happen? And I, you know...

But that's exactly what happened to you. That support network that was essential for the ability for your forces to to compete on the battlefield disappeared overnight. And Afghans are suffering for it. I want to touch on that a little bit when we come back and continue this conversation here in just a moment. Folks, make sure you're downloading and tuning in to all of our content on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Horne of Sam Stone. We have with us former commander of the Afghan Special Forces, General Sadat. He's talking about the fall of Afghanistan, President Biden's cowardly

leadership on this issue. General, thank you for being with us. Let me ask you a question here. I want you to explain this to people, because people don't understand what the U.S. was really doing is providing logistic and air support to help your soldiers on the ground. And your soldiers on the ground were trained on this way how Americans fight, right? I mean, that's how they were trained. And so explain to people what happened

When Americans decided, because they're being ready to pull out, that they're not going to provide this air support anymore and what this meant for your troops on the ground.

So to give you a bastardized version, by 2014, American soldiers have largely withdrawn from combat operations. It was the Afghan forces leading combat operation, conducting counterterrorism operation. Essentially, it was the U.S. Navy SEALs and ODAs doing some nitrate going after what we call it the high-value targets, so the al-Qaeda members like the son of bin Laden,

al-Qaeda leader for Indian subcontinent. These are like joint operations we conducted. Largely, the rest of operation was upon the Afghan forces until 2020 when the U.S. decided to deal with the Taliban without, you know, informing or consulting with us. So effectively, the U.S. went behind our back and had a deal with the Taliban.

It rooted our legitimacy at home and also abroad internationally by, you know, you see Secretary Pompeo and Ambassador Khalilzad standing beside Mullah Baradar, the Taliban's second in command internationally. So it was a kind of recognizing the Taliban.

That was the first and most significant blow to the Afghan government. The second was when at least President Trump put a conditional base withdrawal. So he told the Taliban that, hey, if you fuck up,

I'm going to keep the U.S. forces and we're going to rejoin the Afghan forces and come after you. But once President Trump left, as President Biden came, he absolutely said, I want to pull the plug. I don't care what the conditions are. I don't care what happens in that region. That was when actually things really, really started going wrong.

The first thing President Biden did is to order all the contractors to leave. So in today's warfare, we are using a lot of technology, and most of the technology is sustained and maintained by the contractors outside the military, because no military

And the world has everything in-house, like maintenance of Black Hawk helicopters, laser-guided missiles, small attack aircraft, like sophisticated software systems and maintenance of air transport and capabilities. All of them have left without even informing us. So we were kind of left behind.

General, they left and did not tell you? They just like one day, you're out in the field? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, no, we were shocked. We woke up the next day and they said, oh, sir, we don't have the helicopter maintenance anymore. I'm like, what are you saying? Are you kidding? He's like, no, sir. So I make phone calls to the U.S. side. They're like, yeah, they left, unfortunately.

and you know we're looking for any way to maintain helicopters one of the way they proposed is like i've been helicopter flight to you a_t_ for maintenance this is like four countries away and stupid uh... proposal came our way

And, you know, Afghanistan is a mountainous country. You need air force to maintain fighting because there is no way you can resupply or medevac or kazevac your troops by the ground forces. So that, you know, put us in a disadvantaged position on the battleground. The

The third thing was after the Doha agreement, the U.S. Air Force stopped supporting the Afghan forces with airstrikes. We had an air force. We had quite a capable air force, but it was very small, and we didn't have some of the advanced fighter jets and strike capabilities. We had these small aircraft that were conducting strikes as a close air support. That was not enough.

The last blow really was when our weapons shipments were held back and they never arrived after, you know, President Biden took over into our side. So our soldiers lost to the last bullet. Give you an example is when Afghanistan fall into the hands of Taliban, the entire Afghan Air Force had one laser guided missile.

So that is the level of our ammunition, effectively. And nobody should tell me that soldiers can fight without weapons, soldiers can fight without ammunition. You know, you can have very capable soldiers, but if you can't, you know, give them the ammunition and the supplies, they cannot fight. The trouble was, you know... General, I apologize. I have to cut you off. We have just about 20 seconds before we go to break here. Folks...

Make sure you download the podcast only version of this one, because we're going to continue on with General Sadat on the podcast. We want to be able to explore this further. Obviously, this is this is important stuff, and I don't think most Americans are aware of it. Breaking Battlegrounds coming back in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Folks, are you concerned with stock market volatility, especially with Joe Biden in office? What if you can invest in a portfolio with a high fixed rate of return that's not correlated to the stock market? A portfolio where you know what each monthly statement will look like with no surprises. You turn your monthly income on or off, compound it, whatever you choose. There's no loss of principle if you need your money back at any time. Your interest is compounded daily, you're paid monthly, and there are no fees.

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We're honored today to have with us the final segment, the Honorable Chris Campbell. He is a chief policy strategist for Kroll based in New York. He is the former assistant secretary of treasury for financial institutions under the Trump administration. And he was majority staff director to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. He is a gentleman we've had on before. He has actually been in negotiations on the debt ceiling. Chris, welcome to the show. And things haven't got better since we talked to you about six weeks ago.

Yeah, unfortunately not. I can tell you this, Chuck. I'm actually very happy I'm not on Washington anymore. We're in for a bumpy ride this next couple of weeks. Yeah, you know, it's – what do you – if you had a crystal ball, what – I mean, the one thing I like about what Republicans have proposed, which I think – I mean, this – I would just go one simple thing. Everything – they always want to make things confusing, which I don't understand why Congress does that. So for this, I would just simply say –

Look, we're going to cap spending increases at 1% a year for the next 10 years. Right? I think the markets would love that. Well, and come back to last year's spending levels. Right, right. Those are easy arguments to make. But what's funny about that, I heard a Democrat congressperson this morning from Texas say, well, we really don't control much of that budget. So we're talking about entitlement as a mandatory spending, which they don't want to talk about.

So what happens? I mean, they talk about, well, we really don't have that much discretionary we're responsible for, but we have all this mandatory, but they don't want touch mandatory.

Yeah, look, there's no question that the president has absolutely taken off entitlement, and many Republicans have as well, and in fact, the former president did as well during his administration. I think that the real challenge is struck, as you said, as I said when I interviewed with you last time, Washington really doesn't have a taxing problem, a revenue problem. They really have a significant spending problem, and they can just continue spending money with the drunken sailors.

uh... but you know that that the challenges that i and i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i

they have a challenge in kind of over-complicating things. So, but, you know, again, all that being said, level setting, the challenge we have now ahead of us is what can the Republican and Democrat get to get together on and agree on in a very precious little bit of time, not to scare your viewers or scare the markets, but, you know, having been a part of these negotiations now for a long time,

IT JUST COMES DOWN TO A PROCESS OF MATH. IT'S KIND OF THE NUMBER OF DAYS AND THAT THERE ARE JUST PROCESSES IN PLACE IN THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE AS

as well as the scorekeepers, the CBO and JCT, and others that have to put a price tag on bills. All of that takes time. When you add all of that up and assuming that everyone wants to get this done, which is just not going to be the case, we're talking almost two weeks procedurally to get everything done. That's assuming a bill is already drafted. We don't even have a framework of an agreement yet.

So we're very close to a deadline where we actually may be just physically impossible to pass something before that. Explain to our audience. Okay, so folks, Chris Campbell is a fiscal hawk. He believes our spending is out of control. So I don't hear whining people on here saying, well, he just wants to spend more money, right? But you can be a fiscal hawk and also realize that

Not getting this done has drastic consequences, not only for the U.S., for the world. Would you explain to Chris what happens to a household if this does not get passed, a U.S. household?

Yeah, again, not to rejuvenate myself from what I said last time, I really try to talk about this in terms of where your listeners are going to understand, which is their household. So everyone has a credit card. And if you choose not to pay your credit card, so a credit card is things you've already bought, and at the end of the month, you've got to go pay it back.

Really, the debt, the nation's debt is exactly the same way. These are promises or money that's already been spent that we're going to have to go back and pay off our credit card. If we choose not to do that, if your viewers choose not to do that at home, the bank...

takes away their credit card and they're faced with a lot of challenges. If they need more credit, they're going to have to pay more interest and higher interest rates because they're less credit worthy, as what the banks would say. Really exactly the same way in the U.S. government. So when the government goes out and actually has to borrow more money, they buy it at a significant premium.

Well, that premium drives up home insurance. I'm sorry, mortgage rates, car rates. And everything that we do and all of the interest that we pay and the interest rates we pay as average Americans working our low lives, all of that becomes extremely more expensive because Washington will have been unable to

to get together and pass a debt ceiling increase. So there's an enormous trickle-down effect that makes everything much more expensive. Or you think of inflation as bad now. If we breach the debt limit, I mean, we've never seen this. The cascade of evilness and then the challenges has become a greatly much more. Think about it this way. We're able to, as a nation, borrow money.

And remind your viewers that the government spends about $1.3 for every dollar it takes in. So we have a real spending problem, and it's a real challenge, and we need to get that under control. But with that being said, there must be a way to channel and make that spending come down significantly. Otherwise, we're in real, real, real challenges today.

for many, many generations. Chris, on that front, I mean, normally I feel like in these type of situations, Republicans and Democrats tend to be equally intransigent. It seems like there is a very serious concerted effort on the Republican side to put forward reasonable proposals that address the core issues here and get us over this hump. And I think the Biden administration just appears frenetic about

They don't appear to have anything other than just unlimited spending. Just open the cap and let us roll. Is that – is my impression wrong?

No, you're absolutely right. I think, you know, I, at least I have not, I have yet to hear, uh, the Democrat Democrats, including the president outlined anything, any spending reductions that they're willing to, they're willing to do. Uh, the only part of this put forth a, a reasonable, um, uh, set of, of, of examples of where we could throttle back and spend less, um, you know, perhaps try to find, do more with less than get with government. Uh,

is a Republican. And, you know, Speaker McCarthy, you know, did effectively a heroic thing, getting the majority of his caucus together in a very difficult environment as everyone saw his election.

as the Speaker, and got his party together and did that. What many people forget on this process is the President actually asked the Republicans to do exactly what they did, and then he then chastised them for doing what they asked them to do. He asked the Republicans to come up with a proposal, and they did. He still refused to negotiate after Republicans passed their proposal,

And now we're negotiating at a time, in a time constraint that is so compressed that it's almost physically impossible to get done. It seems to me, and obviously I have zero insight into this White House, but it seems to me like what they're counting on is that they're going to win the PR battle when stuff starts getting shut down. Yeah, look, it's a very, very interesting and very, very scary calculus because

Because there is no PR battle to be won in this process. And if the U.S. loses the reserve currency of the world, right now the U.S. dollar is a reserve currency of the world and it allows us to be able to borrow the money we borrow at the rates that we borrow from. If the world loses confidence in the U.S. dollar and our debt, that changes everything.

generations of Americans and the economic future of kind of the entire world, but certainly our country. I mean, it would be it would put us in a on a path to decline that would be almost unavoidable. Is it avoidable now? I mean, it really seems like we're heading there as fast as this administration can get us there right now. Look,

Look, I mean, they're certainly spending a lot and they certainly would like to tax more. But, yeah, I think that there is, you know, like I think the voters and your listeners can can make it can make you can look back from what the last administration did to this minister, what this administration has done on the economy. I think if you put it apples to apples, I think that, you know, I could bet the policies, I think, speak for themselves.

but the reality is that, you know, I...

I think we're still miles apart from an agreement. And it's going to be, so we actually may be seeing now the possibility of a very short-term extension so we don't breach that deadline because, again, no one really knows what happens after that deadline. All I can tell you is I can promise you nothing good happens after that deadline. So do you think a short-term extension is probably what reality is going to be as they talk through the summer?

I don't I can't see Chuck. I can't see another path forward. I just don't I just really don't know, because, you know, when you put together a comprehensive and complex piece of legislation, that's going to be it's going to reduce spending and there's going to be different, you know, knock on effects of different, you know, if you.

reduce spending here, maybe increase spending there, all that kind of stuff. So when the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan scorekeeper for money in the Congress is going to have to leave their imprint on this, and so is the Joint Committee on Taxation that does

scores on tax. And so that's going to take some time, and then the procedures in both House and Senate. So the reality is it's just really going to come down to likely a short-term extension. So let me ask you this. So let's go and say we get a short-term debt extension, which I think hopefully cooler heads at least get together and do, right? Right.

Let's say we just do a simple agreement. Say Republicans come and say, we want to cap discretionary spending, 1% growth for the next three years. Not 10, we'll do three. We'll negotiate on this. And they say, great, we'll do this debt ceiling increase. Once you reach an agreement, what are the steps? How long does it take to get this done and signed into law? It's about two weeks. But that assumes that everyone agrees. So,

And what your listeners are – your listeners are probably already hate Congress. They're going to hate it more after I tell you this. But there's just crazy procedures in the Senate and the House that, in a good way, they actually maintain minority rights. So Republicans right now are the minority in the House.

Senate, and Democrats in the minority in the House. But there are just a lot of procedures that give minority a lot of rights in the Senate, and they can really drag out a debate as long as they want to. And so, you know, they can't frustrate a debate forever, but they can certainly draw it out for days and days and days as the Senate debates. And so as those

Things happen for the geeks out there. It's called cloture and try to find ways of ending debate. There are 30 hours of guaranteed debates on each cloture vote. There can be multiple votes to get to a bill passage and bore everybody. So the reality is that you have to make in time to get these things done. And so it's about a two-week process. And again, assuming that you're going to go with breakneck speed.

Chris, how do folks find you? And folks, get on LinkedIn if you're not there. That's where Chris is at a lot. You can see a lot of his clips. He has interesting things daily. Highly recommend you follow him. He has a good grasp of what's going on. But Chris, besides LinkedIn, where else can people find you?

Twitter as well, Chuck. And anyway, and I so much appreciate your invitation to come back. I'm so proud of what you're doing and look forward to joining you again. Thanks, my friend. Have a great weekend. Folks, this is Breaking Battlegrounds. Join us for our podcast portion where we continue our conversation with General

and talked about Afghanistan and our cowardly withdrawal from it. The guy we're going to have on again in the future. And visit us at BreakingBattleground.vote. Download our podcast, share it, rate it, folks. We're continuing to grow and we need your help for more.

Welcome to the podcast-only segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, we're switching up the program a little bit today. We obviously had Senator Cruz on for the first segment. And then our second and third segments were with General Sami Sadat, a former commander of the Afghan Special Forces.

We had other stuff planned for this segment, but we've asked General Sadat to continue with us. He's graciously allowed us the extra time here because this is stuff, General Sadat, that you're saying that most Americans, the vast majority of Americans have no idea. Chuck and I are pretty well-informed people. Neither of us understood that.

the depth of what essentially is a betrayal by the U.S. government and U.S. people against the people of Afghanistan that we were working with there, like yourself and the many members of the Afghan government. And I really feel, Chuck, that all of us are to blame for letting this happen. It's not just one president or two or the leadership of this country, but we had an obligation when we went in there to stay more informed, stay on top of this and

bear faith with our allies. Correct. General, you were talking, continue what you were talking about, logistics and so forth.

Yeah, so I think I almost was done with the piece that when our logistics didn't arrive. I do want to make one point that we are grateful for the American service members who fought alongside us. They brought us freedom. They trained us. They helped us rise above our rivals in the region.

Afghanistan became a vibrant democracy. The society has completely transformed. Like, we have about 70% of the Afghan population is under the age of 30 years old, and these are all boys and girls trained

abroad, they went to schools inside Afghanistan, they had jobs, they traveled the world. So these are two very different societies. We are grateful to the American people, especially the U.S. military. But we also have to acknowledge the fact that things went wrong as well. And it began from Washington. We

did whatever we could. And remember, we were not just up against al-Qaeda and Taliban. Countries like Pakistan, Iran, Russia, China, they all supported the different factions of Taliban and Haqqani network against the Afghan government. And these countries traditionally do not have a big problem with the Afghan government. They supported our enemies in an attempt

to increase violence because of the Americans. So we were in this together and we didn't let go. We fought as much as we could for our partnership. And I think that was important. I want to touch base quickly, if that's okay, on the third fallout from Afghanistan. Please.

Speaking to you today, the third fallout is once the U.S. left Afghanistan and Taliban took over, China became the strategic partner with Taliban. China has recently signed a $10 billion contract for Afghan lithium. They signed another $4 billion contract.

for Afghan copper, another $1 billion contract for Afghan oil, and they're negotiating to take the Bagram Air Base, which was the biggest air base in the region for the U.S. forces. They want to take it for their commercial Chinese base

business center. But I suspect that they want to take it for the military purpose as well, because this is a military base, effectively. And Bagram is one hour away from China. So if things go wrong, China could rapidly deploy

a large force of their cruise missiles, fighter aircraft, and all those things into the background airways. And I mean, there is a strategic sense to this. And Afghanistan is one of the richest countries in terms of minerals and oil and gas. And so if China continues the competition with the U.S., they will be exploiting Afghan resources.

China also offered to build a road through Afghanistan to Iran. And this is not for Afghanistan. They have a contract for 25 years old, for 25 years of oil contract with Iran. So the way they can get it is from Afghanistan. To give you a larger perspective, the

the U.S. has strategically been planning to keep China encircled from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean to Japan, Singapore. If China continues this path with working with Afghanistan and Iran, then this strategic encirclement would mean nothing because they will have enough resources from Iran and Afghanistan to compete with

with the U.S. And you can stop Chinese trade vessels from Africa and elsewhere coming back to mainland China. As long as they have access to Afghanistan, they could potentially continue the strategic competition. And in a large, large run, they will put the U.S. on a disadvantaged position in that region of the world. I'm going to go back here for a minute about your soldiers.

I know when America withdrew, I had friends who had served in Afghanistan, and they were hustling, trying to get translators and their families out without the U.S. government help. Sam and I have a dear friend that spent weeks on this, raising money, getting people out. And they got some, but not all. Will you explain to our audience, first of all, what was the relationship with your soldiers and U.S. soldiers? Did they become close? And two, when the withdrawal happened...

did they view it as a conspiracy? Did they blame the U.S. soldiers and feel like they betrayed them, or did they clearly know that this was an administration decision? So, good question. The first thing is, you mentioned you have watched retrograde this documentary developed by National Geographic. When I was in the battlefield in southwestern Afghanistan commanding a corps, it was a

team of USODAs, and then I had Navy SEALs in another corner of my area of operations. So National Geographic really followed myself and the USODAs, Special Forces, in that region. And you could see and feel the tender relationship between the Afghan soldiers and US soldiers. We were really close. I could tell you that the closest

military and relationships and trust between the U.S. military and any foreign military would have been between the U.S. and Afghan militaries. I think that was something that was built over the course of 20 years. This was built in the heart, you know, battlefield. This was built in the training centers and all that. We respected each other. We loved each other. Some of my best friends are

in the U.S. military. And when the U.S. soldiers left, for me, it was also personal. Not only, you know, I'm a soldier. I said, okay, you know, if the U.S. is leaving, I'll continue fighting, and this is what I did. But personally, I miss them, you know. Every night, we'll get around the pitch of fire, share a cigar,

and then start talking about operation. And the next morning, everyone would embark on their own operation. So when they left, I kind of felt...

You know, I miss them. But generally, the impact on the battlefield was really, you can't underestimate that. For normal Afghan soldiers, they thought this is some kind of conspiracy. The U.S. is now dealing with Taliban. They're empowering Taliban, and the U.S. Air Force is not shooting Taliban as aircraft is circling above us, and we continue to fight with them. So that was really a struggle for us.

people like me and the general officers try to explain to the soldiers that this is a political decision. The U.S. military has no role in that. That's correct. You know,

all of those things. But it was difficult and it was really excruciating to see that happen. And we tried for 20 years to build trust and brotherhood, and all of a sudden, you know, the plug was pulled and everything, you know, started crumbling around us. As soldiers, on my part and the U.S. part, we just watched everything with dismay and struggled in every corner.

to maintain what is remaining of Afghanistan. But unfortunately, we couldn't.

Well, General, our time is running out. Are you based in the United States? Are you based outside the United States right now? No, I'm based outside the United States. I'm traveling around the U.S. I did a tour of, you know, trying to get some of my friends together. I want to go back, fight the Taliban and free our country. And this is why I'm here in the U.S. to ask the United States.

Because we were allies and, like, help us free our country. I'm not asking for soldiers. I'm not asking for air force. I'm asking for some legitimacy and whatever material support we can get. We would love to have you. Absolutely. We will have our producer, Kylie, coordinate with you. We'd love to have you host a dinner and a presentation with you of people. The work you're doing is extremely important, not only for the world, but more importantly for the Afghan families. Absolutely.

And brave soldiers who bled for this. And we want to stay in touch, get you over here. But we'll, Kylo, reach out. We want to know when you're back. We want to get you out here to Phoenix, where we're based out of. And as development happens, General, we would love it if you reached out to us. We will make time to always get you on the air with us here. I think these are stories and stories.

information that you're giving us that we're not going to get anywhere else, but nobody is getting anywhere else. And so thank you for taking the time for us today.

It's a pleasure talking to you. All the best, guys. I was in Phoenix a month ago, a month and a half ago. So, you know, we can definitely talk about getting back together. Let's get you back. Folks, this is the end of our podcast portion of Breaking Battlegrounds. We want to thank you, General Sadat, for joining us and extending your time. As we close here, we have a little fun video of a Kamala Harris word salad. We'll help you enjoy. General, thank you, and we'll have you on soon. I hope to see you soon.

All the best. Godspeed. That was a fantastic interview. That's the kind of thing I really like that makes doing this show worthwhile, Chuck. I agree. And I hope everybody will download and share with your friends what's happened over there. Yes. It's extremely important. America...

America embarrassed itself. We failed. We failed our friends. Yeah. And I understand the comment, we don't want an endless war. No. But even the U.S. military chief of staff saying we need to leave 2,500, 3,000 troops in there and why we didn't do that and let this completely fall apart with such a minimal presence. And understanding you had gone six years without essentially any U.S. casualties. Look, 2010, Obama pulls out of Iraq. ISIS comes.

Trump comes back and decides just to blow him to smithereens. So Iraq has control again, right?

We don't seem to learn. So now we pulled out. Now they've got 800 battled Taliban al-Qaeda commanders in there who have so much more skill than when we were attacked on 9-11. Right. That's what people are saying. Now, I don't know if they have 20 years of war they've learned from. I don't know. I don't know if people understand this. That doesn't necessarily mean we get a terrorist attack on our homeland. We're probably a little bit. But remember, we are a world superpower. We have U.S.

installations and interest throughout the world. They're easy targets. The rest of the world, too, needs to start stepping up. The rest of the Western world. I mean, I was seeing a map yesterday of terrorist attacks in Europe in the last five years. And

I don't think it gets coverage even much in European press. It certainly doesn't get covered in American press, but they're facing just a constant rash of attacks over the last five years there. Right. You know, look, this stuff has real consequences. And then he brought up the issues with China. Why we do not look, you know, frankly, a little bit more aggressively at the economics and bringing these areas into our sphere. If we're going to be there spending money fighting China,

We need to play the international game that China's playing. It just seems like we did everything wrong. Anyway, folks, we hope you have a great weekend. Enjoy the Kamala Harris World Salad. Have a glass or two on Kamala because I think she had a few. Have a great weekend. Everything is in context. My mother used to, she would give us a hard time sometimes and she would say to us, I don't know what's wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context.

of all in which you live and what came before you. The political field is all about reputation, so don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a yourname.vote web address from godaddy.com. Your political career depends on it.