What did you learn about this withdrawal that maybe you didn't know going into it after concluding the project?

Well, so the film is an hour-long film.

It tells the story, as even that teaser reveals, right from President Biden's decision to go to zero, zero troops behind at a date certain, hence the path to zero, and the cascading series of mistakes that we made starting in that time in April 2021 and then on to the end of August.

And that, you know, leaving Bagram, not supporting the Afghans, delaying the announcement of an evacuation, et cetera, et cetera, that in the end left that chaos that you see even in the teaser at the gates at Kabul airport, HK airport.

And the horrors that went on there, I sort of knew them in general as maybe the teaser reveals, but certain aspects of them were not obvious to me that I learned in making the film.

For example, the moment when the C-17 takes off is because the airport has been overrun and the Marines couldn't clear it because the people who had overrun the airport were afraid if they left the airport, the Taliban would kill them.

And the CIA had to bring in these zero units that were able to clear the airport.

Why did we give that up? The

I guess the real question that is answered here that I think everybody – the one thing that I would highly recommend everyone watch it for is those first-hand accounts of what actually happened at the gates of the Kabul airport.

Absolutely.

I think that's the strongest thing in the film.

But and this is, as you said, I think in your intro, this is a really appropriate time to think about it.

It's been five years.

Originally, President Biden.

So the film tells the story, as you know, from President Biden's decision to go to zero, which was in April of 2021, a few months into his administration.

Sponsored by Chumba Casino.

That's really a magnificent, sir.

Well, it is an industrial process.

And as such, I have to credit the other people in the process.

You know, you know, some of them, Steve, you know, my wife, Gina, my business partner, my son, Thomas, story editor on this film.

And we had a great archive team.

I think it was very important to get realistic footage to bring people into feeling what people felt like.

especially at Kabul airport at the end of the film.

You're

millions, billions, yeah.

And so it's really, yeah, it was a sad loss.

And then it would also have been, I think, a better place to do the evacuation, the noncombatant evacuation operation, the NEO.

But the State Department, as we explained in the film, had this idea that the embassy was going to survive our withdrawal, that we would withdraw all forces, the embassy would still be there, that either first they thought, well, maybe that the Afghan forces would defeat the Taliban.

Then they thought... well, there'd be a coalition government between the Taliban and the current Afghan government, current at the time.

And then they thought, well, the Taliban, it's Taliban 2.0. They're a different Taliban.

They'll let us stay.

phrase you

So first off, can you give us your thoughts on the current Fauci diary debacle, his testimony before the Senate and the recent contempt charges?

Well, I'm pleased to see Anthony Fauci finally being held to account.

I think that all these recent revelations probably are not surprising to your viewers and listeners, and they're not surprising to people who've seen the documentary.

I think the fact that he had misled the public has been on the surface for a long time.

So Jay Bhattacharya, now the head of the NIH and then a Stanford professor, as early as March of 2020, had conducted a study in Santa Clara County, California, which was replicated all over the country, that found what we now know to be true, that the virus disproportionately affects older people, that there had been a lot of asymptomatic transmission, so it was too late to lock down anyway, and that it hardly affected young people.

So it made no sense to close the schools, And he recommended focused protection that we focus on the people at risk and let everybody else go about their daily life, which was the normal way to treat pandemics for hundreds of years.

But once that came out, Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx and others acted to suppress that information.

Well, he said he was, but who knows? I think it was ego.

So first off, can you give us your thoughts on the current Fauci diary debacle, his testimony before the Senate and the recent contempt charges?

Well, I'm pleased to see Anthony Fauci finally being held to account.

I think that all these recent revelations probably are not surprising to your viewers and listeners, and they're not surprising to people who've seen the documentary.

I think the fact that he had misled the public has been on the surface for a long time.

So Jay Bhattacharya, now the head of the NIH and then a Stanford professor, as early as March of 2020, had conducted a study in Santa Clara County, California, where which was replicated all over the country, that found what we now know to be true, that the virus disproportionately affects older people, that there had been a lot of asymptomatic transmission, so it was too late to lock down anyway, and that it hardly affected young people.

So it made no sense to close the schools, And he recommended focused protection that we focus on the people at risk and let everybody else go about their daily life, which was the normal way to treat pandemics for hundreds of years.

But once that came out, Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx and others acted to suppress that information.

What inspired you to really make Lockdown Dissidence?

That is really

true, John.

I mean, even the things we know are bad enough.

It was totally preventable.

As the trailer makes clear, that first decision of Joe Biden's to go to zero in April led to a series of consequences.

We made one error after another, leaving Bagram, not supporting the Afghan army.

And in the end, you know, the Taliban closed in on Kabul.

was a series of bad decisions.

Why was that so significant? We left almost overnight.

Left over right away.

You know, walked away, left everything behind.

Well, I mean, all these decisions sort of just cascade downward.

I mean, the...

One of the ide- one of the issues was the State Department really felt that it was gonna ha- continue to have an embassy after the withdrawal.

I mean, they had this idea that the Taliban would maybe do a, a, a government in collaboration with the Afghan mil-- the, the current Afghan government supported by us, and that they would permit an embassy to be there.

... is what they were.

That is really

true, John.

I mean, even the things we know are bad enough.

It was totally preventable, as we said, trailer makes clear that first decision of Joe Biden's to go to zero in April led to a series of consequences.

We made one error after another, leaving Bagram, not supporting the Afghan army.

And in the end, you know, the Taliban closed in on Kabul.

And as soon as Kabul fell, everyone flooded the airport.

life and death decisions, right?

Talk to us about it.

Well, it's an amazing topic, really.

I mean, it is true that this is the fifth anniversary of the massacre at Abbey Gate.

And we tell the story, as even that little teaser reveals, from the decision to go to zero by Joe Biden in April of 2021, early in his administration, all the way forward until the last planes leave at the end of August.

And I think a key thing about it that is often lost is how preventable it all was.

In the first part of the film, we look at the bad decisions, Biden's decision, the decision to leave Bagram, the decision not to support the Afghan allies, the decision to leave hardware behind again and again.

But in the end, the net of it all was the Taliban surround Kabul, they take over Kabul.

We want to make sure everybody sees it.

Talk to us about it.

Well, it's an amazing topic, really.

I mean, it is true that this is the fifth anniversary of the massacre at Abbey Gate.

And we tell the story as even that little teaser reveals from the decision to go to zero by Joe Biden in April of 2021, early in his administration, all the way forward until the last planes leave at the end of August.

And I think a key thing about it that is often lost is how preventable it all was.

In the first part of the film, we look at the bad decisions, Biden's decision, the decision to leave Bagram, the decision not to support the Afghan allies, the decision to leave hardware behind again and again.

But in the end, the net of it all was the Taliban surround Kabul.

We

Michael, good evening.

G'day, John.

I think you're right.

I think that a lot of people thought that the start of this parliament after a five-week break, and parliament's only sat for three days, that it would be a lot more substantive compared to what has been discussed.

But you're right in terms of the immigration debate.

There was talk that Tony Burke, the Home Affairs Minister, the Immigration Minister, would hold a speech this week to outline what Labor's immigration policy and target would be.

That hasn't happened.

Is there any progress there?

And, and that to me, this is, you know, one of the key issues in that this was, this was, This was how they were trying to do it, which I know you talk about in the film.

Another thing, another aspect of that same thing that relates to the founding is Scott Atlas makes the point in the film that, you know, we as a country allow we've got we have this, as you say, this is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration announcing our unalienable rights from God, not from the government.

And, you know, it was the principles announced in the declaration.

They're enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

But we gave a lot of those rights up.

The government asked us to give them up.

We gave them up.

Um, we've got a final minute, uh, uh, Michael, michael pack

What did you learn about that process?

To me, I, I mean, it, it ...

So I, it, it ...

There are things that I knew.

I mean, we've talked about this before, you know.

I knew about the administrative state, the swamp, and I had been in government briefly in the George H.W. Bush administration.

But the, the n- nature of the attacks, you know, it- it's maybe obvious, but you feel it differently when there are attacks on you and your organization.

What, what are the films you're making over there, and why'd you choose this subject?

Why did they pick, why did they say Michael Pact is a guy that we have to burn it down before we let him take over? Why was that?

Well, before I came there, this was like a really sleepy agency.

I mean, it spun off from the USIA and the Clinton administration.

And it had really been run essentially by Democrats through the intervening, you know, 20 plus years.

And, you know, I assured my wife and family that my own nomination and service would be uncontroversial.

And like many of my opinions, that turned out to be wrong.

I think what it comes down to, Steve, is not me personally, but I think that they recognize that this is a huge media enterprise.

What are the films you're making over there and why did you choose this subject?

You told a hell of a story with this.

That's right.

A lot of people want to forget it.

I mean, it's amazing.

It's the biggest thing that happened in the last five or 10 years.

But people, you know, people want to put it behind them.

I sort of understand that.

have the French laundry to socialize.

Wow.

So they are disproportionately hurt.

And, and then these things are hard to measure.

Even beyond that, you know, they're, you know, the people postpone medical procedures- Mm-hmm ... and then hurt later.

People who didn't see their dying or ill parents or grandparents.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, that's not, it doesn't come up in economic data.

We do.

Is that what your documentary focuses on?

It does.

I mean, this is part of a partnership that we've launched with the Wall Street Journal opinion section to do short documentaries, about 30 minutes on important issues and events that have been misreported or memory holds.

This is our third.

Your listeners can find them while they're free.

They're not behind the Wall Street Journal paywall at WSJ dot com slash opinion docs or go to our Web site, Palladium Pictures dot com.

And this one tries to tell the story of the lockdowns in a brief time.

Is this something that you include in the dissidence film, the areas that push back?

But the ridiculousness here is how much stuff actually occurred and how we're still finding out new bits of information thanks to efforts like this project.

Absolutely.

I mean, more evidence is coming out.

But really, the truth is now clear enough.

I mean, the basic narrative is clear enough.

And these people, I mean, look, I am a big free speech advocate.

I believe you and I have free speech rights.

I greatly appreciate it personally.

[laughs]

Well, I think a couple of things about that.

Scott Atlas says in our film, echoing what you just said, that, um, the government took away our unalienable rights, so they're not unalienable anymore.

This is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, where those rights were, the, the theory of those rights were laid out, and the, and w- shortly later, they were enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

And we, on the behest of the government, gave up our freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, churches were closed, and Americans didn't protest.

You know, we didn't, we weren't, the, the only...

It was j- turn- according to, uh, government and scientists, okay to protest BLM, but it was not okay to protest COVID.

Did you come across him in the course of the, uh, the Lockdown Dissidents?

So, Michael, thanks for coming on and thanks for making the documentary.

Well, thank you for having me on.

It's a pleasure.

Yes, it's true.

My company, my wife and I have been making documentaries for many years.

We've done over 15.

We worked on one that sort of involved you, Tony, the one created equal, Clarence Thomas and His Own Words.

But you want to

How did that work?

Exactly as you say.

They would send messages.

They would particularly label things misinformation and disinformation.

You may remember the Biden administration had a department of misinformation, disinformation that was controversial at the time.

And they would threaten them in a sort of vague terms, but as David Zweig says, you know, a threat from the federal government is taken pretty seriously when you're a social media company.

The idea was, as James says, that if you don't take them down, people will die and there'll be consequences for you.

Michael, what can we say about the lockdowns? Were they effective? What costs did they impose on society, on childhood learning, on public health?

What do you have?

That's right.

We're doing it.

We- we're now doing a series of short documentaries with The Wall Street Journal, um, with our new company, Palladium Pictures.

We've done two, we have three in the hopper, and one of them is about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, from the time that Joe Biden announced we're going to zero in April, um, to the final withdrawal at the end of August.

Um, so unlike The Last 600 Meters, we do look at how it happened and why and who made those decisions.

But it e- it begins and ends with the bombing at Abbey Gate, and I think we should remember those Marines, the ones that died there, surely, but also, the...

18-year-old kids making the decision of life and death.

Can you start by telling us what this film is about and why you chose to focus on these two battles from the Iraq War, Najaf and Fallujah?

Absolutely.

It's not only the day before Veterans Day, it's the 250th birthday of the Marine Corps.

And these are mainly, but not exclusively marine battles.

It's called The Last 600 Meters because a sniper in the film says, "I don't make foreign policy.

I deliver the last 600 meters of it," meaning what he could see through a sniper scope.

And that's the purpose of the film, to tell these battle stories from the point of view of those on the ground, not to go into the politics and policy, or should we not have been in the war.

What led you to pick those two battles?

Tell me about it.

Indeed.

I, I'm moved even to see the trailer.

I mean, whatever you think of the Iraq War, we need to celebrate the young men and women that we asked to be on the front lines for us and risk their lives.

I think their s- their honor has been clouded by mixed feelings about the war.

But now, as you know, we finished this film 17 years ago, but now maybe it's its right time.

I think people can look back and not be clouded by ideology.

Um, talk to me about what's gonna happen on the 30th.