 We just heard what a military spouse had to say about her concerns for her husband, her friends, her family, and this people that remain in Afghanistan, specifically Americans. I now want to bring in CEO and founder of Stock Swoosh, Melissa Armo, and radio host and Democratic strategist Robert Petillo. That was pretty gut wrenching to hear that from Samantha Weaver about writing the letters. But this is typical of what they do in case they don't come home. Robert, I know you have said and a number of people have said they wanted this war to end, but people from both parties have been pretty critical of President Biden and this administration when it comes to the exit strategy there. I have to ask you, as someone who comes, whose family has served in the military, how would you feel if your sister remained over there or maybe called back to duty? Well, I don't think anybody will want to be in these situations. I do think that the withdrawal has been a massive failure for something we've had 20 years to plan for, for a war we never should have been in in the first place. And after the deal was made in 2020 between Pompeii and the Taliban, we should have had a strategy in place to exit the country in a more reasonable manner than this. But we did see the civilian government of Afghanistan abdicate, not just abdicate, literally get on a plane and leave the country. We saw the military of Afghanistan, 300,000 strong, which billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment, 20 years of U.S. training, literally lay down their weapons and chain sides in the middle of the war. So I think that this has been a disaster on all hands. We can talk about that, and we will for decades, arguably, whether or not we could have ended this war sooner or not. But the big thing that has everyone scratching their heads is why would you withdraw all those U.S. troops? You know how more U.S. troops in Afghanistan than you had prior to the withdrawal? Before you got all those Americans and refugees and foreign language interpreters out, if your sister was over there, would you not be upset? Absolutely, and frankly, I'm trying to figure out realistically why did they release those 5,000 Taliban prisoners last year before getting the people out of the country? That makes literally zero sense. If you're going to be releasing the head of the Taliban in 2018, you're going to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, some of the most hardened fighters they have in 2020. Why the hell would you not make the military exit strategy then, get those people out first? And then this is criticism for both administrations. Knowing that you had a deadline in May of 2021, they should have started the, as soon as that deal was signed in February 2020, we should have put in place the apparatus to remove those people, those interpreters, those military personnel before you take the troops out. Because just in case you can't trust the Taliban, who knew you can't trust the Taliban? We should have the apparatus in place where we would take our civilians out first and then you take the military out afterwards. You had our very own president saying he does not trust the Taliban. So if you don't trust them, why didn't you make plans to get those Americans out before you withdrew U.S. troops? Melissa. I don't remember him saying that, to be honest with you. What I heard in the last few days, whenever he said it, what I've also heard from the administration currently is that they're giving them every opportunity to become a member of the community, of the international community. They're giving them every opportunity to, and then meanwhile they're doing nothing and those people are trapped there. Why are they giving them the opportunity to act like they're a legitimate government? They are terrorists. They've been terrorists. Our mission was over once we killed Osama bin Laden. That was a very, very, very, very, very long time ago. And as far as blame, we can go all the way back to Obama. We can go all the way back to the Bush administration. We can go back a long, long time if you want to put the blame game on. But right now, today, we have a situation. We have thousands and thousands of people. They don't even know how many people or they're not telling us how many people. We don't know what the case may be. But either way, we seem to have no plan right now to get them out. The longer this goes on, it is a very, very dangerous situation because that date of August 31st is looming out there. What's going to happen if we go past that date? I don't understand why they basically made a kill zone right around the airport so that people can't even get there. People are afraid to go there. The administration said we can't protect you to get there. We'll try to get you out of there once you're on the plane, but they don't even know how they're going to get there safely. So, of course, it's like a no one situation for people that are stuck there. Yeah, all valid points have been again. The Pentagon just held a press briefing not that long ago. Heather Mullins gave us a live update. We're still not getting a concise answer as to how many Americans are over there, why that is. I don't know and how you can ensure that they're going to safely get over here when you don't even know how many are there. And you can't even safely get them to the airport is kind of beyond me and some of the viewers that are watching right now. But Robert, you have Donald Trump Jr. now coming out saying that President Biden just wanted credit for ending the war. But again, what about the Americans there? What is going to be his legacy if he's unable to get them out safely? Okay, one Donald Trump, President Donald Trump on June 26th just gave a speech to a rally, taking credit for the deal that is currently in place, taking credit for boxing Joe Biden in saying that he could not get out of this deal. So I don't know what Donald Trump Jr. is talking about. These are the terms of the deal that Mike Pompeo struck with the Taliban last year. Donald Trump on June 26th said that he basically handcuffed Joe Biden into the situation. So I think Donald Trump Jr. might want to take a look at his history books. But quite frankly, I think what we're going to see is that this is going to be a referendum not on Joe Biden, but of the people who got us into this war. Nobody blames Gerald Ford for the fall of Saigon. What about the buck? But hold on, hold on, hold on, Robert. The President of the United States has said the buck stops here. He has been in office now since January 20th. Now, we know probably you want to go into deals. I mean, we could sit there and argue this. But let's be honest, when Trump took office, he got rid of that Iran deal, regardless of the deal that the Obama administration set up. I mean, when does he take responsibility? He himself is saying he takes responsibility. You're saying he doesn't? No, no. What I'm saying is that Joe Biden will be responsible for getting our people out of there. But as far as the entire situation, the entire bumble deal that was put in place last year, getting us into this war, and people make the analogy to the fall of Saigon, Saigon fell in 1975 into Gerald Ford. People don't think of Gerald Ford with the failures of the Vietnam War. They think of LBJ. They think of the principles who executed it. So I think Joe Biden's responsibility will be executing this withdrawal, executing getting our people out of there in a peaceful manner. And if he does that successful, I think he'll be remembered for that. And then I think the historians in the history books will go back and start analyzing the people who got us into this war. Why the hell is it when the Taliban surrendered the U.S. forces in December of 2001, we stayed there for 20 years after that? That is what we're going to have to determine long term. But right now, the goal and the priority has to be getting our people out of there safely and effectively. Well, again, the president went on ABC News speaking with George Stephanopoulos, Melissa, and saying that there was basically conflicting information pointing the blame towards intel when it came to underestimating when the Taliban would take over. But again, he is the commander in chief. Why do you think the intel got it so wrong? And how confident are you that they're actually going to get it right based on what we've seen in the days and weeks following? I don't think the intel was wrong. You have to think about the might and the power of the United States military and the NSA and all of the organizations that are working on our behalf. You can call them spino people. You can call them whatever. They have airstrikes ready to go right now. Why aren't they getting the people out? Do I believe that they didn't have the information? No, I think they had the information. They were not focused on this. They have been focused on nothing since January since fighting to office, but undoing everything that President Trump did, which is raising taxes, lower taxes, which is passing this ridiculous 3.5 trillion dollar stimulus plan that has really literally like less than 20% of it has to do with trying to help some people get more jobs with infrastructure. The bottom line is they haven't been focused on it. The deadline was there and all of a sudden it was like the execution just was not even put into place. They had no plan of action for the execution. That's why you're taking refugees over instead of American citizens first. I mean, it's mind boggling. I have no, I don't see any way that this does not end in some type of military escalation where people are killed. I just don't see any way that this doesn't end with people being killed. And whatever you can blame Trump, Obama, Bush, the people are killed. Biden's going to get the blame for it. And these military people, I've been watching them on. It's almost like they don't even have a plan of action when they're talking to the press conferences. It's at their fault. I don't know. We are going to have to leave it there. But I'm sure we will not. This will not be the last time we talk about this issue. It's going to be ongoing. We'll continue to monitor the situation. Melissa and Robert, thank you so much. We have other news to get to coming up right after the break.