Chris Wallace began this last question for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott with a self-satisfied, bemused little chuckle fit. Ha ha ha how silly is election fraud, he emoted, mugging for the camera.

Of course, it’s not silly at all. That’s why every state in the United States has multiple processes designed theoretically for the purpose of ensuring the integrity of its votes. They have security guards, they have rules about electioneering, they have hours voting is open and hours voting is not. These are all measures to make sure we have an orderly, secure, verifiable process that is free of fraud, abuse, or theft.

But that’s all a big larf to Chris Wallace. His utterly dazed by the idea that you might audit an election to make sure nothing went wrong and, if it did, correct problems for future elections. The idea that a state might have an obligation to its citizens to investigate claims of fraud or abuse is even MORE alien to him.

"The Biden administration has abandoned any pretense of securing the sovereignty of either Texas or the United States by having these open border policies," the governor said. "The people in south Texas, they are angry about the Biden administration for ignoring, for abandoning them. The Biden administration cares far more for the people who are not in this country than he does for the people, American citizens who live in this country."

Abbott and his state have been on the front lines of the migrant crisis on the southern border, which returned to the headlines in recent days thousands of Haitian migrants crossed into Texas in recent weeks.

One of the more controversial stories from the border last week was based on images that showed agents on horseback blocking Haitian migrants from entering the U.S. Initial claims that agents were using "whips" were debunked by officials and agents, who noted the agents were using long reins to control the horse, and were twirling their reins to move the horse forward.

Even the photographer of the initial images said he did not see any whipping take place.

Nevertheless, Biden vowed that the agents, who were removed from field duty pending an investigation, will "pay." Abbott was incensed by the president's treatment of the agents. 

"What the president said going after the border patrol who were risking their lives, working so hard to try to secure the border. If he takes any action against them whatsoever -- I have worked side by side with those border patrol agents -- I want them to know something," Abbott said. "If they are at risk of losing their job at a president who is abandoning his duty to secure the border, you have a job in the state of Texas."

The governor added: "I will hire you to help Texas secure the border." 

 

Chris Wallace spoke with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on Sunday and, in the interest of liberal democrat interests, pressed and pressed and pressed him on why he won’t just go ahead and RETIRE so he doesn’t end up dying during a Republican presidency.

It was slightly more carefully worded than that (very slightly) but that’s what he said. You’re old, you’re probably gonna die, shouldn’t you retire now so it doesn’t happen when there’s a Republican?

In short, and citing Scalia, Wallace said only a FOOL would stick around and ruin it for everyone else, and you’re not a FOOL are you, Breyer?

"I think, well, people understand to some degree why it’s a good idea what Hamilton thought. And he thought the court should be there because there should be somebody – somebody who says when the other two branches of the government have gone outside the confines of this document," Breyer said, referring to the Constitution.

A number of Democrats have proposed taking away the current conservative majority on the court by expanding its size and allowing President Biden to appoint several liberal justices. Breyer warned that this is what could ultimately lead to the court losing the people's trust.

"Well, if one party could do it, I guess another party could do it," he said. "On the surface, it seems to me you start changing all these things around and people will lose trust in the court."

One type of reform that Breyer is more open to is the idea of term limits instead of the current lifetime appointments.

"I think you could do that. It should be a very long-term because you don't want the judge who's holding that term the start thinking about his next job. But it would make life easier for me."

Breyer has made it clear that he does not intend to serve for the rest of his life. Two of his colleagues, Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, remained on the bench until they died.

"I don't intend to die on the court. I don't think I'll be there forever," Breyer said Sunday.

There have been calls from the left for Breyer to step down while Democrats control the White House and Senate, ensuring that a liberal justice could take his place. Breyer said there are "many consideration" that go into his decision-making about when to retire.

"There are many factors, in fact, quite a few," Breyer said. "And the role of court and so forth is one of them. And the situation, the institutional considerations are some. And I believe, I can't say I take anything perfectly into account, but in my own mind, I think about those things."

With those consideration in mind, he said, "I didn't retire because I decided on balance I wouldn't retire."

Breyer was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton. The Senate confirmed him by a vote of 87-9. When asked if he would get as many votes in the current climate, Breyer said, "the answer is, of course, no."

The Senate confirmation process has become a largely partisan affair of late. In 2016, Republicans refused to hold hearings for President Barack Obama's nominee (and current Attorney General) Merrick Garland months before a presidential election. In October 2020 the GOP-led Senate swiftly confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett in roughly a month's time right before that year's election. Democrats launched fierce campaigns against Barrett and Trump's two other selections, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

"That's the political environment," Breyer said of the present state of affairs. "Now you may disapprove of it, I may disapprove of it, and if enough people in the public want it to change or be modified one way or the other, it will be."

Despite the politics through which many people view the court and the selection of justices, Breyer said that he serves the public as a whole, not a party.

"I'm there for everybody. I'm not just there for the Democrats. I'm not just there for the Republicans. And I'm not just there because the president was a Democrat who appointed me," he said. "It's a very great privilege to be in that job. And part of it is to remember that you're there for everyone. They won't like what you say half the time – or more. But you're still there for them."

 

I mean hey why blame the guy in charge? That’s not what fakes like Tom Nichols are doing, and it’s not what fake Chris Wallace is about either. Instead he tries to get Mike Pompeo to admit it’s all his and Trump’s fault. This, while over on CNN, Fake Tapper got something in his breakfast smoothie and decided to take Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Two secretaries of state. Two interviews. Two networks. And it’s FOX that gives Biden the free pass and CNN that says ‘what the hell, man?’

Which is a great question. What in the HELL?

Wallace:

"It looks like the Biden administration has just failed in its execution of its own plan," Pompeo told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace.

The Taliban, the Islamic extremist group that the U.S. had removed from power following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, due to their harboring of mastermind Usama bin Laden, has taken over large portions of Afghanistan, and Sunday morning was poised to take the capital city of Kabul. Meanwhile, the U.S. is evacuating its embassy.

American forces are scheduled to complete their withdrawal by the end of August, but Pompeo said the administration should not just allow the Taliban to take over.

"We should put pressure on them, we should inflict costs and pain on them," Pompeo said. The former secretary said the Taliban becoming "aggressive" and "fearless" is the latest result of the Biden administration not putting effective deterrence measures in place.

"We've had Iranian rockets land in Israel, we've handed a pipeline back to the Russians, we've allowed the Chinese to castigate our senior leadership in Anchorage, now we're allowing the Taliban to run free and wild all around Afghanistan," he said.

Biden has blamed the Trump administration for making a deal with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal. In 2019, Trump criticized the ongoing U.S. presence in Afghanistan, claiming that American forces had been serving as "policemen" for 19 years and should not be doing so anymore.

"If the risks weren’t so serious, Chris, it would be pathetic," Pompeo said about Biden blaming the Trump administration. Pompeo added that the U.S. reduced their forces in Afghanistan under Trump, but the Taliban did not rise up they way they are now.

Pompeo said that while Trump had planned on pulling out of Afghanistan, he would not have allowed the Taliban to take over. He said the deal the Trump administration reached with the Taliban called for "a conditions-based withdrawal" and allowed the U.S. to take action if necessary.

"We made abundantly clear that if they did not live up to that piece of paper … we weren't going to allow them to just walk away from any deal that they struck, we were going to go crush them," Pompeo said.

Tapper:

Jake Tapper questioned Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the collapse of the Afghan government following the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the country, asking how the president—who insisted the government would not fall—could “get this so wrong.”

Blinken responded that the U.S. has accomplished its goals in the nation. “We were in Afghanistan for one overriding purpose, to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11,” Blinken said, citing the assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011 and diminished threat from al Qaeda.

But Tapper pushed back, saying that “the issue here is not just the withdrawal of U.S. forces. It’s how they were withdrawn, the rapidity, the hastiness.”

Tapper then quoted analysis from former Obama ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, who said that the withdrawal was “a handover to the Taliban” that left the Afghan people “hung… out to dry.” Crocker concluded, “I’m left with some grave questions in my mind about Biden’s ability to lead our nation as commander in chief, to have read this so wrong, or, even worse, to have understood what was likely to happen and not care.”

Tapper questioned, “Does President Biden not bear the blame for this disastrous exit from Afghanistan?”

Blinken replied, “We have said all along, including the president, that the Taliban was at its greatest position of strength at any time since 2001 when it was last in charge of [Afghanistan]. That is the Taliban that we inherited. And so we saw that they are very much capable of going on the offensive and beginning to take back the country.”

He continued, “But, at the same time, we had invested, over four administrations, billions of dollars, along with the international community, in the Afghan security and defense forces. Building a modern military with sophisticated equipment, 300,000 forces strong, with an air force that the Taliban didn’t have. And the fact of the matter is, we have seen that that force has been unable to defend the country. And that has happened more quickly than we anticipated.”

President Biden also justified the decision to withdraw in a statement issued Saturday. In it, the president said that additional years of U.S. troops in the country would not necessarily lead to a different outcome. “One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country,” the president said. “An endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”

Tapper objected to Biden and Blinken’s arguments that the only options were to leave the way we did or stay in the country interminably. And he pressed Blinken on the administration’s decision Saturday to deploy additional troops “to make sure we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of US personnel and other allied personnel and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission and those at special risk from the Taliban advance.”

“You keep changing the subject to whether we should be there forever, and I’m not talking about that,” Tapper said. “I’m talking about whether or not this exit was done properly, taking out all the service members before those Americans and those Afghan translators could get out. That is what I’m talking about. And then you have to send people back in… That’s the definition of ‘Oh, we shouldn’t have taken those troops out because now we have to send twice as many back in.’ ”

Blinked responded that the decision to send thousands of troops back “shows… the president was prepared for every contingency as this moved forward.”

“We had those forces on hand,” he said. “And they were able to deploy very quickly, again, to make sure that we could move out safely and securely as the situation the ground changed.”

Those troops are now helping to evacuate all personnel from the U.S. embassy in Kabul within the next 72 hours, representing an acceleration of the original plans. And they will also help evacuate Afghan translators who have assisted American troops during the war.

Tapper then told Blinken that his show has been discussing “for months” the need to evacuate interpreters, many of whom could suffer extreme consequences if the Taliban captured them.

“Thousands of these folks are now trapped in their homes,” Tapper said. “They cannot even try to get to Kabul. It’s not safe. I know two lieutenants, veterans who are like setting up a GoFundMe to save their translators from COP Keating.”

Blinken replied that the interagency task force charged with assisting translators “has been going for many, many weeks now.”

Tapper next asked Blinken whether this evacuation resembles the “hasty” U.S. evacuation from Vietnam.

“Biden is intent on avoiding a Saigon moment,” Tapper said. “But with this troop surge to airlift Americans out of Afghanistan, aren’t we already in the midst of a Saigon moment?”

But Blinken pivoted back to his earlier answer, saying that the U.S. reached its goals in the country. “Remember, this is not Saigon,” Blinken said. “We went to Afghanistan 20 years ago with one mission. And that mission was to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11. And we have succeeded in that mission. The objective that we set, bringing those who attacked us to justice, making sure that they couldn’t attack us again from Afghanistan, we have succeeded in that mission.”

But as of Sunday morning, the country was on the brink of falling to the Taliban. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani left the country as Taliban insurgents invaded the nation’s capital. And many other major cities are now under Taliban control. The Taliban is reportedly expecting a complete transfer of power.

Stephen Miller defends President Trump's decision to declare a national emergency on the southern border, , saying the commander-in-chief is on solid constitutional ground because Congress gave presidents the authority to use executive power decades ago.

“They passed a law specifically saying the president could have this authority. It’s in the plain statute,” Miller told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “That’s the decision that Congress made and if people don’t like that they can address it.”




Stephen Miller tried to yell over Chris Wallace hitting him with some pretty tough questions about the national emergency declaration, and it didn’t quite go over well.



The question comes down to whether Trump is using the national emergency powers of the executive properly or if he’s abusing them. Wallace challenges Miller to name one other national emergency that arose from Congress denying one of the president’s policies. Miller dodges the question and yells a lot, but doesn’t really answer it.

The other issue is whether the effects from illegal immigration are actually a national emergency or not. Miller argues that more people are dying from illegal drugs being imported than any other threat. Wallace argues back that most of those do not come through the border but through ports of entry. But I think the essential detail missing here is that cutting off the supply doesn’t lessen the demand. It’s not as if people will leave happy blessed lives if opioids aren’t available from down south. The free market has a way of supplying horrible drugs to anyone who wants it.

All in all, Miller makes some good points. I think Wallace out-argues him though, even if Miller yells much louder. Which is how we measure rhetorical victory of course.