Hogan Gidley, Director for the Center of Election Integrity at America First Policy Institute and former White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary, told the Todd Starnes Show President Biden should be fired for his handling of Afghanistan.
LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW WITH HOGAN GIDLEY ON THE TODDCAST BELOW:
Below is a rushed transcript from Hogan Gidley’s interview on the Todd Starnes Show Wednesday:
STARNES: I want to go to the Patriot mobile newsmaker line. Always a great day when Hogan Gidley hangs out with us. He is the director of the Center for Election Integrity and he’s also a fellow Newsmax contributor. Hogan, good to have you with us today.
GIDLEY: Great to be with you. Thanks so much Todd for having me on.
STARNES: By the way, the big fame, you know, we live in a family divided during football season. And so about half the family was down at Ole Miss the other day for the big game in the Grove.
GIDLEY: Well, I don’t know why you’re divided. You should all be Ole Miss fans. There should be no division there. You should default to Ole Miss. I don’t know what the division’s for.
STARNES: Well, I’m the black sheep, technically, the orange sheep. You know, big Tennessee volunteer fan here. Hogan, I’ve got issues.
GIDLEY: It is what it is.
GIDLEY: Oh, you got that game coming up, too.
STARNES: Yes. Yes, it is. God help us. Wow. Hogan, This, these hearings up on Capitol Hill, pretty unbelievable. And the question on everybody’s minds, why hasn’t anybody been fired as a result of what happened over in Afghanistan?
GIDLEY: Yeah, look, I’m going to take a different tack here. I heard you make the comment regarding what Matt Gates has said in the hearing. I would argue there isn’t but one person who should be fired, the person making the decision and we know who that person is. That’s Joe Biden. Everyone’s looking around, going to wait a minute. Why Milley fired? Why Mackenzie fired? Well, I mean, Joe Biden is the one who said he made the decision. He’s the one who didn’t listen to his generals and lied to the American people and said, no, I never heard anything about another plan. We were all unified. Now everyone’s coming out and saying, no, that’s not the case. We actually presented multiple plans. It was funny to watch him yesterday to to say, hey, look, no, we can’t get into private conversations with the president. But, yes, we did tell him to leave 2500 troops on the ground. So my argument is it’s Joe Biden’s fault and the administration’s not going to fire anybody because then it would be a tacit acknowledgment that they failed. That this has been horrible. But a couple of things I think are important to kind of note here. I mean, the Afghanistan thing we know is a debacle, but also 10 civilians are dead because someone made the decision to drone them and destroy snuff out their lives. And and that seems to be a secondary issue for many members up on Capitol Hill on the left who refuse to acknowledge that this over the horizon nonsense is obviously not working. It is obviously not as good as having intel on the ground there so we can debate whether or not we should have stayed there. We can’t debate the the the horrific nature of which we withdrew because it’s pretty obvious and everyone’s seen it, but also the the mistakes that followed. Who’s to blame for that? Did Joe Biden make the call to strike out and then find out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. They weren’t ISIS leaders. We were trying to be all cool and say we we really avenge the death, the tragic, preventable death of those servicemen and women. But instead, they changed the story a couple of days later, said it was classified. We couldn’t say who we killed. And now they’re saying, well, guess what, it was civilians. And seven of them were children. This is just a bad deal all the way around. And while I do say Joe Biden to be fired, I will agree. The rest of them should all be gone, too. This is the only place where you can fail that many times, destroy that many lives. For whatever reason, you don’t face any accountability.
STARNES: You know what was really fascinating about this Hogan, when you look at this and then compare what happened in the Obama administration with Benghazi, where, again, Americans left behind Americans who were killed, and then you had this horrible situation in Afghanistan where Americans left behind and you had Americans killed. And it does, again, make you wonder who really is calling the strings, because there are the similarities between Obama foreign policy and Biden’s very, very similar.
GIDLEY: Very similar, and we know the disaster that was Barack Obama’s foreign policy. We know the disaster that is Joe Biden’s. I mean, look, when you’re giving pallets of cash to Iran, that’s a significant issue. when your vice president is nodding along as students in a classroom point out the fact that Israel is committing genocide. And instead of saying, no, no, ma’am, that’s not true, just nodding along and saying, yeah, you’re not going to be stifled in this country. You keep going. Great. Great comment. That’s a problem. And we’ve known Joe Biden’s ability to mess things up. You know, Barack Obama famously said never underestimate that ability of Joe’s to mess everything up. And we know Secretary Gates under Obama said all of Joe Biden’s decisions in the last 40 years were all terrible. That’s all true. But you’re really starting to see a good juxtaposition, a jarring difference between us being feared, loved and respected all over the world with Donald Trump in the White House versus Joe Biden and all of our strongest allies, Israel, chief among them, Great Britain, France. Everyone’s upset with the way Joe Biden is doing things. And we knew this in the campaign. I said on your show many times, this guy’s made failure the norm in his career for the last 50 years in elected office. So I don’t know why anyone would be surprised at this.
STARNES: Well, well said. Hogan, real quick. How do you like the new gig over at Newsmax?
GIDLEY: Love it. People are great, they really care about presenting facts and information that a lot of members of the mainstream media won’t touch, you know, and everyone over there just does a great job, whether they’re, you know, turning on the microphones for you, whether in your ear saying you got five seconds or whether they’re an anchor or reporter and everyone over there- doing it for the right reasons. That’s always important to me. And they’ve been great to work with since I’ve since I’ve joined the team. And, you know, they put they put out a good product. And I think the American people deserve to hear some news out there. Your show is one of those places they can tune in and hear some some different opinions and some good information. Newsmax does the same thing, and I think that’s what it should be about.
STARNES: Well said. Well said. Alright Hogan, look forward to see you on the TV and always appreciate you coming on the show anytime.
GIDLEY: Anytime Todd. Thanks so much. All right.