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Check it out at plored.ai slash dailybeast and use beast for 10% off. That's plaud.ai slash daily beast and use code beast for 10% off. Hi, I'm Molly John Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong Un. I'm a left-wing pundit and a writer at the Atlantic Envow.
And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN Guy and current cable news conscientious object. And I'm producer Jessica and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest people in science and media and politics and help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down and on the new abnormal we'll talk about the people who got us into this nest and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it.
Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new abnormal and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Elliot Ackerman, who's a former Marine Corps Special Operations Team Leader and the author of the Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan. And he's gonna talk to us all about his new book. But first let's have some fun.
Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Hell yeah. Especially. I'll listen to this clip.
Okay good. So the bad news is we're gonna talk a lot about Mr. Trump today. The fallout still continues a week or more later from his home being.
But outside of that there's some people like Carrie Lake who've worn her local Fox personality who now running for office. Well she's as a kid say, simping for Mr. Trump. He is gutsy.
The guy has bigger. Okay. Wait, let me think about how I want to wear this. My staff always says whatever you do, not say balls.
So I'm not gonna say it. That guy has a backbone made of steel. I'll tell you what he's got. I don't know if you're here to this but he's got BDE.
Anybody know what that means? Ask your kids about it later. I call it big DeSantis energy. Right?
He's got the same kind of BDE that President Trump has. And frankly, he has the same kind of BDE that we want all of our elected leaders to have. Oh, you know what's mad about that clip? Everything.
She's actually pretty charismatic. It's true. I mean, so like even though whatever she's I mean she has terrible, terrible case of brain worms but one of the worst I've ever seen but you can tell she's actually really charismatic. No, absolutely.
But I mean to be talking about Trump having big dick energy. Like I don't know if these people are all there's a pathology that I can't wrap my head around and they all need to be under somebody's care. That's the brand. I know you want my heart take?
Please. Carrie Lake actually has BGE. Would I be by that's bed garrisoned energy where she's projecting something absolutely insane to Donald Trump that doesn't exist. For those who don't remember but if there's the idiot who draws Mr.
Trump with your buggus muscles with machine guns is just really worthy for him. You're absolutely right. It's the same thing. It's the people who draw the cartoons of Trump as the big muscly guy when he's well look at him.
But it's just unbelievable. And like that's what they want in a leader big dick energy. It's like, okay. Also just a basic that like as we always say it takes so long for these people to get a term that everybody was using two years ago.
More. Yeah. And look as a lot of people pointed out after she said this like this is the same party that doesn't want kids to be told that gay people even exist because they shouldn't be talking about sexuality with kids. And she's sitting there and going to ask your kids what BGE means.
Amazing point. Okay. Well, the Sipping continues. The former President Trump's eldest sons fiancee Ms.
Kimberly Gelfoil. She feels like they all do feels like she's been wronged and the family's been wronged. They love President Trump and they want him back in the White House. That's what this is about.
Time and time again. President Trump has been exonerated. They have been pulling this stuff on him for six years starting with a legally wiretapping him at Trump Tower which everyone says, oh, you guys are making this up. That's what happened.
It happened. President just sued them for that. By the way, because it's a legal wiretap. He's entitled to penalties and fees because of that.
That's a whole other story that he is the single most persecuted person in American political history. But people who are Democrats, independents, libertarians, whatever you want to say, they're all coming out in droves to say they support the President. So all they have done is just magnify his excellence 10x more to the point where the American people are begging. Literally, I see people every day begging him to run again in 2024.
And we would be only so lucky as a country because he's the only thing standing between them and us. Literally, he's standing up here. Let me kind of real quick. First of all, I think a couple that shares their stash is good for them.
I think they're going to make it. That's what happens with couples. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm not going to name names here.
But let me pose a question to you. Do you know what it takes to be the worst person at Fox News? You're the expert on this, Eddie. Well, you really want to go down this?
No, it's given me a real foil. It always works. She did get fired, right? Yeah.
Remember, this is the woman who, after the whole Roger Elsting, was calling other women at Fox and saying, you better get out there and defend him. And I mean, look, my general thing is when you want to know how a person is asked like the hair and makeup people at the network. Right. They're still in a coma.
That's all I'll say. Ask the hair and makeup people at Fox about what working with Kimberly Gofle was like. I don't want to, because I'm scared. I know what they'll say.
I've read. I mean, the thing that I love about Kimberly Gofle is that she has the goods on Donald Trump Jr. And I think the big question is now, what happens? The only thing that would be good about this is if Biden decides not to run and Gavin Newsom chumson and it's Newsom versus Trump.
And for those who don't know, Newsom used to be married to Kimberly Gofle. But she did have a different face then. That's true. That's truly true.
I mean, like you could look at that but turn thing that was a different person. A hundred percent. Absolutely. That would really make for an interesting race.
Truly the best race we can ask. I mean, it would be horrendous. But yes, but from a podcasting perspective. Oh, yes.
That's what matters. Yes. Yes. Speaking of Fox News, there's a personality, former representative Sean Duffy, who people may know as having a similar sense of power as Mr.
Trump came from reality TV on the real world. Then rose to power and now is retired in the graveyard of Fox News. He has some thoughts as well that we're going to listen to. I think former President Trump is a flight risk.
Where's he gonna flee to his plane has his name written on the side in giant gold letters? Yeah, that's a good point. And it's out of that. If only we had thought of that.
Your honor, my client has a driver's license. He will not be fleeing to Mexico. He has a license plate. You can see his name in giant gold letters.
I mean, we know that. I that's amazing. I hadn't heard that clip. Look, spotlight.
He's not wrong. But I was watching the real world set for Cisco back as we lied. I did not feel like they felt the best contestant in the deal. But I did not know the way I'd be vindicated in the future.
So we last week we were making fun of the simple son Eric, a good deal and just saying how sorry we felt from. But I have to say, I think he said something prescient this week that I'd like to hear your thoughts on. Not even Republican Party. I'd say it's actually the Trump Party.
If you look at all the people who've been. You know what I like in that is where he talks about how his father has killed others. Yes. Killed other Republican dynasty is kill being an interesting.
Like I would think that kill would be an phrase I might not be. Yeah, kill is more for when you go on those set up hunting safaris where they do everything for you except fire the actual shot and then you pose over the animal like you're a big shot. That's Eric's version. But he's not wrong.
He is absolutely not wrong. It is Trump's party. And by the way, that's true whether or not Trump is the nominee in 2024. The party has been completely remade in his image.
And even if it moves past him and even if someone like this answers gets the nomination, it's still Trump's Republican Party. I just like that he got his father's genetics of saying the quiet part loud. Yeah, exactly. But none of his father's charm or charisma.
No, no. One last thought. One Charlie Kirk. He has a new culture war to pick with those liberals.
It's actually not new. I think we may have even covered him doing this before but he's got a culture war that he'd like to start. It's about diving the college industry. I didn't go to college.
Yeah, we know. A lot of young people need to consider that path. College cartel has an unsuch damage to our country. I believe the college cartel is no better than Mexican drug cartel.
And what they've done to our nation's youth, the bad ideas they've been spreading, the idea pathogens that I'm infecting the inner core of our society. I love the college cartel. I would like to get in this cartel. But you know how proud he was when he came up with that?
Can you answer it? Do you believe he came up with that? Fair point. It's pretty dumb though.
So he might have no. No, that's like, but you're probably right. You're probably right. That is probably the smartest thing anyone he's paid has in a long time.
I got a different wager. He either came up with a dumb pathogens idea or the cartel idea that makes the two. Yeah, because yeah, that's how you make it good is to mix the metaphors. Yes.
That's what they teach you in college, Andy G. If you had just been in the cartel, you would know that there was an episode of the great comedy show community that was called Griting 101. And Matt Berry played a con man who taught a class on drifting. And I feel like if that were a real thing, Charlie Kirk would have gone to college.
He's absolutely right because classes like that don't exist in college. There was really there was no reason for him to go to school. He didn't need to go to school to learn how to be a grifter. It's just you learn by doing like any trade.
So not a surprise that he didn't go to college. Elliot Ackerman is a former Marine Corps Special Operations Team Leader and the author of the Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan. Welcome to new abnormal Elliot Ackerman. Thanks for having me.
You are younger than Jesse and I, but that's okay. Not really though. Right. Jesse, not only can we're our guests are younger than we are and have done more, but okay.
So what we were talking about before we started taping was that you have written a lot of books really in rapid succession, which I'm a little bit also jealous about besides being younger than me. But you started talking about how you started working on this book, the Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan. Well, it actually wasn't a book that I was planning on writing a year ago in August as Afghanistan was collapsing in the fall of Kabul, seeing eminent. I had an exchange with my editor and he basically said, listen, not a lot of people have been paying attention to Afghanistan.
Maybe there's an opportunity here to publish sort of a short 30,000 word paperback original, some of your writing on the subject. And we read that we would do that. And then he went off sort of on his end of summer holiday and I did the same. And that coincided with the last two weeks of August when Kabul collapsed and there was this very traumatic evacuation at the airport.
And I wound up being sucked into some of those efforts to get our Afghan allies out of the country. And sort of coming out of that very intense two weeks, it just was very, it became obvious to me that this was a story that needed to be told. And that this book we had quickly agreed to do would become the story of those last two weeks of the summer, kind of in addition to a larger story about what happened over these 20 years in Afghanistan. Well, you just explained to our listeners for those who don't know you a little bit about your relationship with Afghanistan.
Before I became a writer, I served as a both a Marine Corps infantry officer, special operations officer, and then later as a CIA special operations officer. And that was all about eight years and I served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. So I'm a veteran of the war. How did your relationship with Afghanistan change over the course of all these years?
You know, it's a 20 year war. So it has had this very consistent and enduring presence in my life. So, you know, I've had a relationship with the war or had a relationship with the war longer than I had a relationship with my own children or even with my wife. So when the war is suddenly is ending, it's, I mean, it's actually, it's a little bit disorienting because this thing has been sometimes at the forefront, but at least always in the background of my life.
And so the book is also, you know, it's part memoir and part of how a part deals with the subject of how war can feature in someone's life for so long. Did you have people in Afghanistan who you had relationships with and when this was happening last year, what was your involvement there? So the short answer is yes, many people that I've had in during relationships with who are still in Afghanistan or, you know, Afghan comrades of mine who were, you know, worked with me, you know, one was my interpreter, for instance, and he has since migrated to the United States, but his father, his mother, and his sisters were still in Afghanistan, as well as his younger brother, who was still fighting in an American back unit, and they all needed to get out. And so I was involved very much, you know, with getting, helping get them out of the country.
Most of the people whose cases I was involved in actually just were not people I knew. These were strangers who were, who were put in touch with me. So you were involved in doing one of the, like, I knew other people who were involved in that kind of trying, like Evan McMowan, who were trying to kind of get people out. Did you feel, I mean, what was that experience like?
It was really a crowd source effort. So with, you know, people just sort of figuring it out as they were going along and everyone knowing what they could kind of bring to the table to help the effort from people, for instance, who were good at fundraising and new high net worth individuals who wanted to help, who for instance would be willing to contribute a lot of money for a private jet to fly into Afghanistan. You know, one point I was involved with an effort to get out the Afghan girls robotics team, because a number of people in Silicon Valley were very keen to get them out. And that plane was paid for, but there were more seats on the plane than members of the girls Afghan robotics team.
So we're trying to fill up that plane with people. But you know, in and of itself is surreal. So people being involved with those efforts, you know, other people who were journalists on the ground who were willing to step away from their roles as journalists and work as activists to help Afghans navigate through the Taliban checkpoints into Kabul and get to the airport. The value I think I was able to add to some of these efforts was, you know, I have a pretty good network still in the military and in the intelligence world.
And so was fortunate that, you know, a couple of good friends of mine were at the airport. And I was able to through them sort of help navigate groups of Afghans into Kabul International Airport through the American checkpoints. So I say this was crowdsource. It was really, you know, a team kind of coming together online, figuring out what each person could add to the effort and then trying to, you know, get these people on the flights.
A lot like the fall of Saigon, right? Right. If the fall of Saigon, if we'd had, you know, single and what's app and been connected in the way that we're connected today. Did people not get out to?
Yes. Plenty of people did not get out, unfortunately, and are still there. And, you know, some of them, you know, we're still trying to get out. Biden talked about the withdrawal from Afghanistan for the first time in 20 years, United States is not at war.
Is that right? Well, it certainly begs the question, right? Molly, like, what does it mean to be a war? So if his definition of the United States is not at war for the first time in 20 years, because there are zero troops in Afghanistan, that doesn't seem to hold up under scrutiny, because we still have troops in Iraq and in Syria and in Somalia and in places like Nigeria.
So does that mean we're a war in those countries? Sort of what is the criteria for the United States being a war? You know, I don't bring up just sort of like a linguistic parlor game, but the stories we tell ourselves about war and how war, what it means to start a war, what it means to end a war, you know, it's very important for how we think about war and the strategies, strategies we apply to our wars. You know, and I would argue that the idea that the only way to have a successful outcome in Afghanistan was to have complete and total peace in Afghanistan with the true presence, the US true presence of zero is probably not a strategically sound position from which to embark upon any effort in Afghanistan.
And it doesn't hold up to historic efforts. I mean, listen, like, look at the second world war, we still have troops in Europe or the Korean war, we still have troops in the Korean Peninsula. We need to have a little bit more nuanced understanding about what war means and how we advance our interests as a country. So I don't think President Biden's statement that, you know, for the first time, United States is not a war in Afghanistan is accurate.
And I would also just add, it certainly is inaccurate because, you know, we just what 10 days ago killed the head of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. So clearly we're still shooting into Afghanistan. Well, and also, aren't we in war in Ukraine? I mean, even if we don't have troops there, I mean, that is clearly a war.
Right. And so I think overly simplistic narratives about war are not helpful. Do you like, I mean, when you look back on your experience serving, I mean, what are the things you sort of learned from being in the field that you feel could be useful to the rest of us to sort of understanding foreign relations and war and what's happening right now? If you were to say, like, if there's one, I feel like lesson that should be lit up in lights at the end of the war in Afghanistan and the forever war.
I think that that lesson is we as Americans should really pay attention and be cognizant to the ways that our wars are structured. You know, every war that we have fought since the revolution has had a structure around it. And a structure is kind of, you know, what sustains the war in terms of blood and treasure. So, you know, the Civil War, the first ever draft America has it has in the Civil War, same thing with the first ever income tax.
So that's the blood and treasure for the Civil War. Second World War, we have a war war bond drives and a national mobilization and a draft. Vietnam, a very unpopular draft that leads to anti-war movement that ends the war. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the way those wars are constructed is the blood comes from our all-volunteer military.
That's who has fought these wars. And the treasure comes from our deficit. You know, the last year America passed a balanced budget was in 2001. And there's never been a war tax.
The result of that construct is that the American people have been anesthetized at the cost of war. We don't feel the war. It's not a critical issue in American political life. And our politicians, thus, have been given this very long leash to go out and wage war.
And I think we as citizens should be extremely skeptical of any American leadership that would want to go to war with a construct by which we, the American people, don't really feel it. Because that is sort of a construct in which they as politicians won't be held accountable. And that lack of accountability is what leads to 20-year wars. You wrote about bringing back the draft a very controversial idea.
Do you think that could really solve the capriciousness with which leaders go to war? Well, I think it would certainly solve the capriciousness with which leaders go to war. I mean, the question is, is it politically viable that we are going to necessarily bring back a draft in peacetime when there isn't a truly existential threat to America's survival? And I think no.
I haven't put my pole in the field, Molly, but I have a feeling that that's not a rule. I'm probably not going to win my congressional seat by making that my issue I'm going to run on. But listen, I bring up my writing because I think it's something we should talk about because when we do talk about it, it makes us seem more clearly and understand more clearly the ways that we do wage war when there is no draft. And we don't have the skin in the game.
So the draft has always been a moving target in American life. There's sometimes an assumption that in Vietnam, every single person in the world uniform was drafted. It's not true. It was about 25%.
Actually, there were more drafities in the second world war military than in the Vietnam era military. So do I think that if we had a US military today where maybe 5% or 10% of the ranks were drafities, would every American be paying much closer attention to the issues of war and peace if they knew that when their son or daughter turned 18 years old that that person, that young person would have a one in 10 chance of having a serving uniform? Yeah, I think we'll be paying very close attention to these issues. And it might change the conversation or at least move the conversation of war and peace more to center stage in American life than that could be a good thing.
I'm obsessed with the idea of a year of national service. It's funny because it's like, it's so unpopular. But it's beloved by both the left and the right. And I think the idea of national public service also gets to the, I mean, listen, the US military and national public service has done, it's done a couple of great things in our society historically.
It has been both a tool of incredible social mobility, the GI Bill after the second world war, the post-9-11 GI Bill. I mean, if you serve a four-year enlistment in our honorably discharged, you'll get your college paid for at any public or private university across the country. But it's also been a tool of societal mobility, but it's also been this incredible societal leveler in our atomized American society where we keep, we are just more and more self-segregating the military and public service forces people of different backgrounds to do something together for a year or two years. And again, I think that would be healthy in American society at this point.
Yeah, me too. I really am quite fixed on it. This was super interesting. I'm so excited to read this book, The Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan.
Thank you, Elliot Ackerman. Thanks so much for having me. On that note, we'll wrap this episode with a new abnormal from the Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from the media, culture, politics and science will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.
We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again in the next episode.