so joining me now is fareed zakaria. the host of cnn's fareed zakaria gps. fareed, good evening.t's good to see you. let's talk about what's happening now because we are in the middle of a devastating-fourth covid surge, in some places it is worse than it has been throughout the entire pandemic and people are dying. when this could have really been prevented. we have lifesaving medicine. why can't this country hold it together? >> yeah. the -- the most important thing to remember here is that we are uniquely blessed. i mean, there's a small group of countries in the world that have more than enough vaccines. we're at the top of that list. we were ahead of everybody else, in vaccinations. now, we're not, by the way. most european countries have many more, a much larger percentage of the country vaccinated. and in that circumstance, what you are dealing with is something very deadly. you know, it's very important to understand why this is so deadly because we have a large pool of unvaccinated people in this country. when you have a large pool of unvaccinated people, it means that t

joining me is fareed zakaria, the host of "fareed zakaria gps." good evening. good to see you. is happens because we're among a fourth surge. it's worst than it's been and people are dying when this could have really been prevented. we have life saving medicine. why can't this country hold it together? >> yeah, the hosmost important thing to remember is we're uniquely blessed. there is a small group of countries in the world that have more than enough vaccines. we're at the top of that list. we were ahead of everybody else in vaccinations. now we're not. most european countries have many more, much larger percentage of the country vaccinated and in that circumstance, what you're dealing with is something very deadly. it's very important to understand why this is so deadly. we have a large pool of unvaccinated people in this country. when you have a large pool of unvaccinated people, it means the delta variant twice as infectious as the first variant has a place to go, a place to replicate when it has a place to replicate and spread, that means it has a chance to mutate that is

joining me now, fareed zakaria, host of cnn's "fareed zakaria gps." fareed, you just saw this powerful story about what's unfolding on the ground there. the president is saying it's not a failure. what do you think? >> i think you put it very well, don. the way the president described it in the last three months was completely different from what unfolded. obviously it's a screw-up. i think rather than trying to justify the unjustifiable, what the administration should do is try to get phase 2 of this withdrawal right. they botched phase 1. there is simply no other way to describe it. there was no contingency planning. there did not seem to be a process -- they should have preplanned so that the roads were secure, access to the airport was secure, lists of applicants were prepared. if they knew these people were going to be evacuated, they now say we knew we wanted to evacuate but we didn't want to start evacuating for the last few months because we didn't have a panic. you could have had visas, you could have had a plan, that all could have been in p

we wonder if fareed zakaria, the blowhard that he is, would approve. we will see.t the covid shot in new york, you are now banned from eating. you can't go to restaurants or or bars. meanwhile, in the state of washington, one hospital has refused to treat six people who refuse to the shot. that hospital is refusing to allow unvaccinated patients to get organ transplants, let them die. one of his patients is derek kovic, who joins us. thank you for coming on here i cannot be sorrier to hear the situation that you are in. it is beyond belief. tell us what the hospital said to you. >> well, thanks, tucker. yeah, i have been on the transplant list for my third liver transplant since last fall, and i have had some issues, so this past week, i needed to go to the university of washington in seattle to have a procedure done, and before i came up, a nurse called me and said the infectious disease has meant as a team and have decided that all of the transplant pays patients now have to have a vaccine, otherwise you will be placed status seven, which meanu will not be on the

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joining us is fareed zakaria, the host of fareed zakaria gps. what's the reaction to what you're seeing, fareed? >> there's no question the collapse of the afghan forces is having much faster than people predicted. but it's worth pointing out that there was a kind of an unreal calm for the prior two years, which is we thought with just a few thousand american troops, we are somehow holding this country together. that wasn't ream really the case. the taliban had decided not to fight, because when trump agreed to withdraw troops down to about 3,000, the taliban agreed to negotiate. so, there was a period there where it looked like the place was calm, but the real story is that for ten years the taliban had been making inroads, and for ten years the taliban had been taking towns. american forces were able to go back when they were 50, 60, 70,000, and retake them. but i think what you're seeing is the reality that after 20 years of training, after god knows a trillion dollars, there is no real afghan army that is able to defend its country. >> faree

of "fareed zakaria gps," author of "10 lessons for a post-pandemic world." fareed, what do you make of this? for all what we have witnessed over the last week or more it was still startling to see the news today that the last plane left. >> it was startling. it was historic, anderson. and i think all the feelings of frustration and anger all come down to one very simple thing, which is that the united states was not able to achieve its mission in afghanistan. the mission in afghanistan was to defeat the taliban and to establish a democratic government that could command the legitimacy of the afghan people and control the country and i think it would be very hard to make the case on either front. the taliban over the last ten years has kept gaining ground. even after the surge. you remember there were at one point 130,000, 140,000 coalition troops in afghanistan. by 2015 the taliban had made gains, they were controlling almost 30%, 40% of the country. if you look at the government, there were some good things without any question but at the end of the day in

we wonder if fareed zakaria, the blowhard that he is, would approve. we will see.e to get the covid shot in new york you are now banned from eden. you can't go to restaurants or grocery stores, and one hospital decided to stop treating sick people who refuse the shot. they are refusing to allow unvaccinated patients to get organ transplants. just let them die. one of those patients, is honored derek kovic. first of all i could be sorrier to hear of the situation that you're in. it's beyond belief. tell us what the hospital said to you. >> thanks, tucker. i've been on the transplant list for my third liver transplant since last fall and i got some bile duct issues so this past week i needed to go to the university of washington in seattle to have a procedure done. before i came up, a nurse called me and said that the infectious disease team had met and decided that all of his transplant patients now have to have a vaccine, otherwise we will be placed on the status seven which means you aren't going to be on the transplant list. you basically have to adhere to the ru

joining me now fareed zakaria. as we look at those pictures, doesn't appear to be much going on. almost -- well, it will be in 1 hours or so, 24 hours since this happened. but the events are still unfolding. the airport the quiet for now. 13 u.s. service members dead. first american deaths in afghanistan in a year and a half. it is really so damn sad and also a reminder that attacks like this have killed more than 2,000 americans throughout this war, two decades on. what does today tell you about our involvement in afghanistan? >> yeah. it is almost 2,500 american troops and then 4,000 american contractors and then the coalition troops. i mean, this has been a tough 20 years. but what it tells me, you know, what is striking about these deaths is that for the most -- best we can tell, these were not inflicted by the taliban. these were inflicted by isis-k, another militant, radical terrorist group. and what it reminds us is that afghanistan is a place where there is a sort of sense of national identity and cohesiveness over in response to a foreign intervention or occupation. once

. >>> joining me now, fareed zakaria. we have these things, that's where we are. because the former president was laying groundwork for the big lie even before the election. it's clear from everything we know that he was attempting a coup. do you have faith that our democracy will hold up if this happens again? >> i think you're touching on the most worrying part about the trump legacy. which is the post-truth society that he's built. >> yes. >> trump recognized that he needed to be able to manipulate the truth and the message. he went at it by saying, there is no such thing as truth, there are no such things as facts. the facts i don't like are fake facts. that's attacking the core of the western enlightenment project, the values that america was built on, when you start to go into that world of a kind of never-never land where there are no actual facts. january 6th didn't happen or it happened in a completely different form. yeah, i worry a great deal. because what is the bulwark, if you can't establish what actually happened there was a violation of our constit

fareed zakaria, great to have you with us. you heard what the pentagon press secretary told me, that money can't buy the will to fight and that they did not anticipate this collapse on the part of the afghan security forces. why do you think the biden administration was caught by surprise in all of this? they won't admit it, but they were. >> yeah. i think everyone was caught by surprise at the extent to which this has collapsed. the most important thing to look at in all of this, jim, is when the taliban has been taking these cities, there have been very few casualties. what does that mean? the afghan army is not actually fighting. it is melting away. that is a 300,000 person army, trained for 20 years with, as you say, tens of billions of dollars of american money with an air force. and it just doesn't fight. it melts away. now, that tells you that, you know, that we have handled this at a broad macro level wrong, which is we decided that we were going to stabilize afghanistan by destroying and defeating the taliban rather t

let's bring in fareed zakaria to help us see the whole picture.toring me on this for years. it's no coincidence that administration after administration echoes the same rhetoric. now, you could say, hey, there hasn't been another 9/11, thank god. that's a win. how do you see it? >> well, i think that's an important win. that was the original purpose for going in. and the taliban has not sponsored or participated in any international terrorist activity. they've done a lot of terrorism in afghanistan. over the last 20 years, all the stuff you've seen in paris and london and new york, that has not been the taliban. but you put your finger on it, chris. we kept saying to ourselves that this was a peaceful and democratic country. here's the reality. 2017, this is when trump comes into office. half of the population of afghanistan lived in an area that was either controlled by the taliban or was contested between the government and taliban forces. that's the peaceful part. democratic. the last election that ashraf ghani sort of won, 1.8 million afghans

it's always a pleasure to watch you on fareed zakaria gps. thanks again. >>> i want to turn to new york governor andrew cuomo's legal team fighting back against sexual harassment allegations against him. joining me now, cnn political commentator errol louis. thank you. here we go. we've been having these conversations since i said anything is possible in new york politics. have i not said that? >> you have said that. >> i have said that. what was your reaction to the approach of his attorneys that they took today, attacking the accusers and the investigation? what did you think? >> it was a little bit surreal. it was very tone deaf. it involved victim blaming and some really strange departures into trivia frankly, minutia. they're trying to impeach the credibility of one of the accusers by showing some strange timeline, proving that she was, in fact, in the executive mansion where the governor was on a day when he was there. i'm not sure what they were trying to do, but it seemed to backfire. really what they were doing, don, is acting as if

cnn fareed zakaria is joining us. he's the host of "fareed zakaria gps." if president biden wants to meet his august 31st withdrawal deadline, the u.s. military needs to know by tomorrow to get that process in motion. how does the president approach this decision when the taliban says that the deadline is a red line that all u.s. troops must be out, they say, by august 31st? >> there is no way for president biden to achieve the goals he has stated, which is to get all the americans out who want to get out, to get out the afghans who helped the united states over 20 years and keep to that deadline. so he has got to find a way to negotiate with the taliban. look, we have been negotiating with the taliban for two years. the taliban needs a lot that the united states has. the country is going to need enormous amounts of money, training, no how. the u.s. has a lot of diplomatic cards it can play. it can play them with pakistan, with qatar, even with russia and china. this is, by the way, a good reason to have good negotiating relations with all these countries.

let's dig deeper with fareed zakaria. taliban victory in afghanistan saying in part, we congratulate you on this great victory against the crusader alliance, adding the afghan debacle marks the beginning of the end of western hegemony and military occupation of islamic lands. fareed, what do you make of it? >> well, it doesn't surprise me at all that they would delight in this. but the important thing to ask oneself is what is al-qaeda today? it really is a shadow of the organization that it was in 2001. not just militarily because it's been on the run. it's been destroyed. the much larger issue is that al-qaeda sought to represent the hopes and aspirations of millions of muslims, particularly in the greater middle east. that's no longer -- that's no longer true, if it ever was because the big revolution of the last 20 years, wolf, is not the war between the west and islam, but the war within islam between the moderates and the fundamentalists, the militants. i think it's pretty clear the moderates have won. saudi arabia

to people in the united states and around the world, i'm fareed zakaria. we'll begin today's show with dr. anthony fauci, the u.s. point man on the pandemic. as the world passes 200 million confirmed cases of covid, america struggles under a new surge. what is next? >>> will delta require masks and even lockdowns again? and will america ever reach herd immunity? >>> then american conservatives say they love the flag, limited government and hungary. we'll explore why autocratically inclined viktor hugo is on the rise. we'll tackle that with a great panel. >>> finally the world's nations come together every few years for the olympics. why do they seem to be unable to come together to vaccinate the world's people? but first here's my take. tensions between the united states and china have risen substa substantially. the trump tariffs remain firmly in place, washington searching for new ways to limit the spread of chinese technology companies while giving funds to american firms. china, for its part, is trying to curtail its vulnerability to america's long rea

i'm fareed zakaria. we'll begin today's show with two nobel laureates in economics. first up, krugman of the "new york times" on just how much damage the delta variant will do to the u.s. economy as it throws back-to-work plans up in the air. what will it do to the rest of the world? then richard thaler on how to nudge the vaccine hesitant, to go ahead and get the shots. he literally wrote the book on it. he's the co-author of the mega best-seller, "nudge." >> people will die who don't have to die. >> also, tunisia was the poster child for arab's spring success. it took out autocracy and replaced it with democracy. but now the president has ousted the prime minister and frozen the parliament. is this a coup? will the other government go the autocrat route? we'll explore. >>> and does the government need a recruitment and reconciliation process after the attack on the capitol? they held a hearing on tuesday, but most of america didn't want to hear the truth and there is no reconciliation in the works. we will hear how it could work here in america. >>> but first, here

turning now to the host of "gps," fareed zakaria. d, we did not expect to be covering the fall of kabul. now that fighters are in the city, what do you think american viewers and viewers around the world should know about what happens next? >> well, first it's important to recognize this is one of the greatest military collapses that i think exists in history. the fall of the afghan army, the fall of afghanistan, the fall of kabul has happened at a speed that is really stunning. and for the most part, the afghan army and police, supposedly 300 to 350,000 strong with extraordinarily sophisticated weaponry provided by the united states, $83 billion spent over 20 years, just all melted away. by contrast, one has to say the south vietnamese army fought pretty hard in 1973, '74, '75, took two or three years for that military to get defeated. this is extraordinary. and it begs the question, what was the scale of intelligence failure in the united states, the u.s. military? how much were we diluting ourselves about the capacity of afghan for

. >>> i want to go now to fareed zakaria, of course, the host of "fareed sazakaria gps." you heard the horror of the dead bodies piled up and administration used acute in terms of the threat now as these next few days are the most dangerous. they're saying that with the context of a bomb attack that just killed, you know, more american forces than anything in at least a decade in afghanistan but say the next few days are the most dangerous. how dangerous and crucial are these days? >> i think you can't exaggerate the degree to which there is no real danger for everyone around that airport and the reason is this. what we have now discovered is that there is a very bitter rivalry between the taliban and isis-k, the other terrorist organization. one fact to notice last week when the taliban took kabul, they did not execute anyone. in fact, they went into prisons and let most of the prisoners out, the taliban and non-taliban prisoners. there was only one group of people they executed, nine people and that was the leader of the isis-k who was sitting in a kabul jail and his ai

i'm fareed zakaria. i will be back later on my take in the rest of the show, but first let me bring you jim sciutto who is ready to tackle the latest news. >> reporter: here's what's happening inside afghanistan. the taliban takeover has reached the one-week mark and multitudes of people are trying to flee their country. more than 20,000 are now at the airport in kabul waiting in the brutal sun, hoping they get that golden ticket out. secretary blinken says 8,000 people were evacuated yesterday alone. all countries combined have now evacuated some 26,500 people. the pentagon announced this morning it had invoked something called the civil reserve air fleet which compels u.s. commercial airlines to assist with the evacuation. meanwhile president biden is expected to talk to the american public again this afternoon about those efforts in afghanistan. tune in to cnn at 4:00 p.m. eastern time to see exactly what he has to say. let's begin with my first two guests, sami mahdi just got out of kabul, and rina a

i'm fareed zakaria.bring you jim sciutto who is ready to tackle the latest news. >> reporter: here'

i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york. today on this show, the taliban are bearing down on kabul after a lightning-fast march across afghanistan. we will get the latest live from the capital this. my guests include former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. >>> and a fierce advocate for women's rights in that country. we will also look at climate change after a u.n. body released a stunning report this week. climate envoy john kerry will help us understand the prognosis of it. >>> but first here's my take. as we watch the tragedy that is unfolding in afghanistan, let's first dispense with the fantasy that the united states was maintaining the peace there with just a few thousand troops and that the situation could've been managed with this small commitment. for the last couple of years, it sure looked that way to americans because washington had made a deal with the taliban, and as a result the taliban was deliberately not attacking u.s. and coalition forces. for the afghans, the war had been intensifying. in the summer

to people in the united states and around the world, i'm fareed zakaria. pandemic. as the world passe

i'm fareed zakaria. we'll begin today's show with two nobel laureates in economics. damage the delta variant will do to the u.s. economy as it throws back-to-work plans up in the air. what will it do to the rest of the world? then richard thaler on how to nudge the vaccine hesitant, to go ahead and get the shots. he literally wrote the book on it. he's theo-

i want to go to fareed zakaria. he says the white house was his words clear eyed when they made the decision to get out of afghanistan. that the taliban could take over but of ybviously, if that was cr eyed, we don't want to know what foggy eyed is. >> that's right. there is no question they must have recognized that the taliban were going to at some point probably take over or at least share power. otherwise we wouldn't -- look, the reason the united states gave up on afghanistan was it was not able to defeat the taliban. it was an implicit recognition of the enduring strength the taliban has but it's one thing to decide you're going to withdrawal. what is stunning is the lack of preparation that comes from that. first, did you inform all the nato allies who have been fighting with the united states for 20 years? did you adequately give them time to think this through and make provisions? we've been negotiating with the tall iban for two years. during that negotiation, did we talk about the need to get americans an

i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york.afghanistan. we will get the latest live from the capital this. my guests include former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. >>> and a fierce advocate for women's rights in that country. we will also look at climate change after a u.n. body released atu

. >> fareed zakaria, we had this experience on my show yesterday with secretary of state blinken. they want to talk about whether or not the u.s. should stay in afghanistan for another 20 years. that's obviously more comfortable terrain for the biden administration than the manner of this exit and the idea of why it has been so ineptly and incompetently done why president biden didn't listen to military leaders who talked about how quickly and intelligence officials who talked about how quickly the taliban might take over the country, how quickly everything could collapse. the only time i really heard him addressing this, fareed, was when he explained why they didn't take out so many afghan translators, et cetera, earlier, and also when he said there is never -- there was never ever going to be a good time to leave afghanistan. >> jake, i think you put it well. look, president biden made some important points that to an american audience will ring true. the point that ultimately we failed in trying to nationbuild in afghanistan, but more importantly and simply, defeating the talib