George Packer

speaker

697 appearances 3 recordings 2 series first heard May 2025 last heard 6 May

George Packer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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Fresh Air · How Silicon Valley has profited by aligning with MAGA · 6 May 2026 podcast

They ended up in Pakistan where they became refugees.

But that was not the answer to their prayers because they were in line for resettlement in this country as former allies, people who had fought alongside Americans and whose connection to America was what put them at risk in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

And instead of making good on our promise to them,

When Trump came back, he closed the doors and locked them.

So no Afghans can get into this country.

And this family was about to be resettled with two very small children.

And instead, they're trapped in Pakistan, which is turning against its Afghan refugee population.

There's now a kind of low-grade war between Pakistan and Afghanistan between

Afghan refugees are being deported back to the danger of Afghanistan in the hundreds of thousands.

And this family was in hiding for many months from the Pakistani police so that they wouldn't get deported.

And I sort of in writing about them also just got pulled into their story and began to try to help them get out of Pakistan.

I will be telling readers of The Atlantic what the final outcome of my efforts and of their efforts to get out of Pakistan have been.

I'll just say it's about the only story I've been a part of or written about in the last years that has made me feel pretty good about the future.

Thanks for having me, Terry.

Offline with Jon Favreau · What Comes After Trump? · 20 Dec 2025 podcast

We're just this big, distracted, divided, commercially-minded, busy, noisy country.

And it takes a lot to break through the noise of our lives so that we can actually see clearly.

I think there's a human temptation just to say, well, how bad can it be?

It's never happened before.

I just went through all the sort of boxes of things that could check the power of the leader.

So it's not authoritarian in the sense that we have jackbooted troops marching through the streets.

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