‘Cut Him Off NOW!!’ Screams Newsmax Host As Founder Of Afghan ‘Underground Railroad’ Criticizes Trump

As I’ve said in the past, MAGAs respond to truth like vampires to holy water. You toss a little their way and they scream and start smoking and running for their coffins. This next video shows a Newsmax host interviewing an Afghanistan vet. The host sets the vet up and frames what he wants to hear and the vet doesn’t go for it. No, sir. He starts out saying, “With all due respect Grant, veterans and our friends, we’re over there, we’ve followed this closely through multiple administrations” and then goes on to do the unforgivable, which is to criticize Cantaloupe Caligula on how he handled Afghanistan. Watch. This is classic.

Watch Newsmax host cut the feed and scream at a veteran guest for offering a mild critique of Trump pic.twitter.com/xozk1f5kzH

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) September 16, 2021

If your jaw dropped, wait. As the chyron says, Joe Saboe is the founder of Team America, which is “an impromptu network of veterans and citizen volunteers who came together to execute an ad hoc mission to get American citizens and Afghan allies safely out of Kabul before the American airlift ends,” which he became the informal commander of, according to the New York Times:

His group of about 200 volunteers, which calls itself Team America, is one of several grass-roots efforts that sprang out of the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal. The swift collapse of Afghanistan was deeply troubling to many in the United States, but military veterans felt a whole different level of anguish as they started getting pleas for help from Afghan interpreters and others they worked with.

They organized what many call a “digital Dunkirk.” Using software often designed for mundane office work, along with satellite maps and encrypted messaging apps, the groups act like guide services for escaping Afghans. They channel information to hundreds on the ground trying to get on a flight, providing real-time intelligence on the best routes to avoid Taliban checkpoints, sending them through overlooked alleys and sometimes through sewage canals.

“It’s really an underground railroad,” Scott Mann, a retired Army Special Forces officer leading a different group, which calls itself Task Force Pineapple, said in a video message to supporters on Thursday. […]

“This was born out of desperation,” Mr. Saboe said as he scrolled through his latest list of Afghans trying to get out. “A lot of us knew people who needed to get out, and there was no one in the American government who seemed to be giving any guidance. There has been almost no coordination.”

Most probably Saboe was booked by Newsmax because of this latter comment about lack of coordination. This article is compelling and it’s on that rare list which I tell you about from time to time, if you can read only one piece in its entirety today, read this one.

Here’s one amazing story.

One of the people trying to get out of Kabul this past week was Nemat, who worked for years as an interpreter for the Marine Corps. He got a green card in 2015 and is now attending college in Texas, but he was visiting family in Kabul when the Taliban took over. […]

“I was scared to death,” he said. “If any of the Taliban recognized me, it would be the end of my life.”

Civilian flights out of the country were canceled. Nemat, who did not want to use his last name because he feared retaliation by the Taliban, stripped off his American clothes and put on a traditional Afghan long shirt and turban. He hid the paperwork showing he worked with the United States in a well. He tried to contact the State Department but got no response, so he texted the Marines he used to work with.

His message reached Rich Porter, a project manager in North Carolina who had served with him as a Marine officer.

“The terps we worked with are heroes; we could not have done our mission without them,” Mr. Porter said, using a military shorthand for interpreter. “We knew we had to help in any way we could.”

Mr. Porter found Team America, and together sources were able to guide Nemat on the safest route to the airport. He passed through Taliban checkpoints with his American passport hidden in his mother’s clothes and arrived at an airport gate.

“My brother pushed me through the crowd, I was holding up my passport and the Marines pulled me over the wire,” Nemat said on Thursday. “I looked back and saw my mother crying, my brother, too. I am happy to be safe but I am very worried for them.”

As bleak as things are in Afghanistan, there are uplifting stories of pure courage like this. Joe Saboe got cut off the Newsmax air because he was telling the truth. What a chasm of difference between a man like Saboe, working tirelessly to do the right thing and save lives and the toxic propagandist, Grant Stitchfeld. One makes me proud to be an American, and a human being for that matter, and the other makes me want to hang my head in shame.

I wonder if Stitchfeld and the other talking heads at Newsmax ever consider what they’re really doing and ever feel shame? Or is the economic payback the one and only metric of success?

As a former broadcaster, I can tell you this is not the way the pros do it. If you’re interviewing somebody on air and things go south, you guide the guest and if things get out of control you cut the mic and the engineer plays a promo or a commercial. I can’t believe Newsmax is so primitive as to not have some kind of a kill switch set up. But then Newsmax is atypical of legitimate broadcast and journalism outfits anyhow, so it actually comes as no surprise.