Fox News host Pete Hegseth said Monday that the only way to ensure the ability to get Americans out of Afghanistan was to threaten the Taliban.
Brian Kilmeade argued on Tuesday morning’s “Fox & Friends” that the Taliban only understood strength — and to bolster his point he aired a clip of Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer, saying that United States officials should just tell them that the government was going to rescue Americans on the ground with or without their cooperation or permission. (RELATED: ‘We Are Stranded’: Government Worker Says Family Is ‘Trapped,’ Can’t Get To Kabul Airport Without Being Beaten And Whipped)
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“We are at the whim of our enemy. The people who facilitated the 9/11 attacks now control which Americans are allowed to flee the country,” Hegseth began, saying that the Americans and Afghan translators still on the ground had effectively been rendered “hostages” of the Taliban.
“We are calling the Taliban and asking permission and not pushing out to secure perimeter and making it very clear if you harm a hair on the head of an American, we’re going to stack Taliban bodies,” Hegseth continued. “Give us 24 hours, wide open, every American in, if you touch one, you die. It’s not hard. But we won’t do it.”
“We won’t do it,” Kilmeade agreed. “And we are capable of doing it. At some point the president has got realize if you leave thousands of people in country, we are going to have to put thousands more into Afghanistan to secure their safe passage. The Taliban only understand strength. All they are getting is weakness.”
Kilmeade also noted that former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson had predicted things would get worse before they got better.
Part of what was complicating evacuation efforts, Kilmeade added, was the fact that some Americans who traveled to Afghanistan had not notified the United States Embassy when they arrived — and he argued that President Joe Biden’s administration was using that complication to set up an excuse for not getting everyone out.
“Do you understand what the administration is doing? They keep saying, ‘Well, when Americans come to Afghanistan, they’re supposed to register with the Embassy, some didn’t. That’s their right so we don’t even know where they are,'” Kilmeade concluded. “They are setting you up to say, ‘They’re stuck, not our fault.’ Not acceptable.”