‘Trump Was Right… Biden Was Right’: Fox News Guest Praises U.S. Ability to Conduct Counter-Terrorism Operations Despite Afghanistan Pull Out

Retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg joined Jesse Watters Prime Time on Monday night to react to President Joe Biden’s remarks on the CIA killing of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri over the weekend. Kellogg praised the CIA’s ability to conduct long-distance operations in Afghanistan and argued that both former President Donald Trump and Biden were right to argue you “don’t need troops on the ground” to conduct effective counter-terrorism operations in the country.

“I’m sure there is going to be some people that are alarmed at the fact that a guy like this, the brains and the philosophy behind al Qaeda, the number two now the number one is just living openly in the capital of Afghanistan” began Watters after introducing Kellogg.

“There must be more al Qaeda terrorists consolidating power there after we’ve left. Or you have people saying, you know, this is exactly what we wanted to do, conduct these counterterror strikes from the air without boots on the ground, using intelligence and using technology in order to keep our people safe. How do you see it?” Watters asked.

“I’m not going to lose any sleep tonight,” began Kellogg, praising Biden and U.S. intelligence for the killing of Zawahiri.

“He was a thug. He was actually the mastermind behind bin Laden. He was the brains behind the outfits for, like, the chief operating officer,” Kellogg added.

“And we were able to find him and kill him and the president, President Biden is right. We’re going to find you and we’re going to kill you regardless of what it takes,” Kellogg continued.

Kellogg raised some concerns about verifying that it was indeed Zawahiri who was killed in the strike, but also suggested he believed the CIA got the right man.

“So we were able to assure the American people that it was a good strike,” Kellogg said, noting why he thought additional verification would be useful.

“Here was an interesting thing the president said, and he’s absolutely right. President Trump was right. President Biden was right. We had said all along that you can attack these guys from a distance when you’ve got things like the Predator and Global Hawk with great loiter time, great ability to strike from a distance,” Kellogg argued.

“We said, you don’t need troops on the ground. President Trump said that President Biden said that. He got out of Afghanistan in a very messy way. But, but I think the fact is true and I want to look to the military and say, look, we’ve been telling you this. We told you for the last four or five years, why didn’t you listen?” Kellogg added.

“CIA has got a great ability to find these guys. We’ve got a great ability to strike and kill these guys. It was not a DOD operation. It was a CIA operation,” Kellogg concluded.

After Kellogg, Watters spoke with Fox News anchor Bret Baier and asked him about the political impact of the news.

“Tell me how you think that the White House is going to use this successful strike to propel the president in a more positive direction politically?” Watters asked Baier.

“I think that this helps his case for over-the-horizon ability to strike at terrorists. There was a lot of criticism after we pulled out of Afghanistan that our eyes and ears on the ground would hinder our ability to go after these big targets,” responded Baier, echoing Kellogg.

“This goes the other way,” Baier argued, adding:

Now, you were just talking about the confirmation. He mentioned in the speech U.S. intelligence as well as regional partners. The intel officials I’ve talked to are confident that they confirmed Zawahiri’s death.

This is a UAV strike, drone strike by the CIA. Two Hellfire missiles fired and he was killed, we’re told, on a balcony at a residence. And his family was in a different part of the house. They were not hurt and there were no other casualties. Now, we’ve heard that before from this administration, and it didn’t turn out to be true. But the sources that we’re talking about say that this is very specific and they believe that this is Zawahiri.

“So to your point, I think they’re going to use the ability to strike like this without U.S. troops on the ground, despite how chaotic and horrible the pullout from Afghanistan was. So that helps them politically, obviously, in telling that story,” Baier concluded.

Watch the full clip above via Fox News