Welcome to roll. Welcome. Welcome to Redacted tonight. This is the show where Americans in America covering American news are called foreign agents. So I heard this latest scandal about Russia paying Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers and something didn't quite sit right with me. It felt like when you have like undercooked fish on a transatlantic flight,

you're not exactly sure what's going on, but you're pretty sure it's going to end with someone

picking vomit out of their hair.

This is quite a scandal.

I mean, this is quite a scandal.

And the reigning queen of McCarthyism was ready to jump on it.

I mean, if this Times report is correct, this means that U.S. intelligence has concluded

that Vladimir Putin is offering bounties for the scalps of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

My God! If true, it would mean the Taliban were trying to kill American soldiers.

Oh, wait, that's been their hobby for the past 20 years.

Why would Russia need to pay them to do something they always just do?

It's like paying Barry Bonds in the early 2000s to inject steroids into his scrotum. You probably couldn't even find a moment when he wasn't injecting into his scrotum

in which to offer him the money.

Hold on, whoa, whoa, there's the money.

But I want to give, I want to give the New York Times and Rachel Mad Cow the benefit of the money. You're, hold, oh, no, no, what, here's the money. But I want to give, I want to give the New York Times and Rachel Mad Cow the benefit of

the doubt.

So I did a little research, and it is true.

The Taliban were indeed paid by another country to which war against Americans.

It's infuriating.

They were paid by America.

That's right. The U.S. has been funding the Taliban for years.

Here's from the nation in 2009, how the U.S. funds the Taliban.

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