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Clay and Buck

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Deep State Turns on Biden, Leaks to NYT, WSJ

18 Aug 2021

CLAY: We are breaking down this mess that continues to grow — a mushroom cloud, unfortunately — in Afghanistan. Will people be able to get out safely who are American citizens? We hope. We don’t know. There are a lot of them in incredible danger right now. And what you’re seeing happen rapidly, Buck Sexton, is the intelligence agencies are running, running from Joe Biden.

Front page headline: “Contradicting Biden, Reports Warned of Rapid Collapse,” and I’m reading from this article. This is the New York Times, by the way. “By July, many intelligence reports grew more pessimistic, questioning whether any Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on…”

Generals and diplomats, according to a different —  Wall Street Journal front page which reads, “Biden Knew Risks of a Hasty Withdrawal”  — from the Wall Street Journal. Biden’s, quote, “decision to bring home U.S. troops, which was made against the recommendations of his top military generals and many diplomats, who warned that a hasty withdrawal would undermine security in Afghanistan, several administration and defense officials said.”

They also say, “In a series of meetings … military and intelligence officials told Mr. Biden that security was deteriorating in Afghanistan…” They said there was no safety and that they should not be pulling out. Buck, you worked in the CIA. This is getting worse and worse for Biden when the intelligence officials are going public through the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times front page and saying, “We told you not to do this, you imbecile.” They’re trying to wash their hands of it and dodge the blame.

BUCK: And remember, Biden was (impression), “I listen to the generals.”

CLAY: That’s right! Yes!

BUCK: You remember that one?

CLAY: He lied! Yes. Yes.

BUCK: “I’m gonna listen to the… (mumbling) I’m gonna listen to the science and the generals.” That’s what we were being told all the time. Now we find out, no, actually, he thinks he knows better on this one. Look, there is the decision overall to wind down this war and the way in which it is being wound down, so to speak, and there is no way around that latter part being a disaster at this point.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: As for the CIA/intelligence community —

CLAY: Does that surprise you to see all these leaks come out like this, this quickly?

BUCK: No, of course not. For the perception of the public to be… Remember, the bureaucracies think that presidents come and go; they are forever.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That’s a line about the State Department, but it applies more generally to the intelligence community overall, and there are a lot of assessments that they do. It’s easy for them to go to a favored mouthpiece in the media and say, “Oh, we warned him,” right?

CLAY: “We told ’em!”

BUCK: Because at some point whether it’s the Iraq WMD situation, now this situation, so many other intelligence failures, the rise of ISIS, although Obama was ignoring that. But, anyway, the point being, the credibility of the intelligence community is already in tatters, in my mind, because of what happened with Russia collusion and their hand in all that against Trump, before which there was never any real accountability, although there was a Durham… We didn’t get to it yesterday.

CLAY: There’s a report that there may be something coming there.

BUCK: Something may be happening with Durham who I will say, people I know from prosecutors’ offices for many, many years say that he is dogged, nonpolitical, and doesn’t care, and he is kind of the honey badger of prosecutors, if you will. He’s gonna do it the way he’s gonna do it. So we could see it, although do not hold your breath.

Don’t take out your watch on that one. We could see something about Russia collusion. But the point here being, Clay, yeah, I mean, they’re looking at this now as Joe Biden decided that this was a Joe Biden decision, and they’re not about to allow the American people to think, at least across the board, that somehow they… ‘Cause if the CIA/NSA/17 (I think it is now) intel agencies missed this, you gotta ask them, “What would you say y’do here?”

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Who Wants Masks and Mandates? Elites Working from Home

18 Aug 2021

PRESIDENT TRUMP: As far as the vaccine, I’m very proud of it. I pushed the FDA like they’ve never been pushed. They don’t like me too much. I’m not so sure I like them. Very bureaucratic. But I got them to approve a great vaccine — three of ’em — in a period of less than nine months. I was told by Fauci and everybody else it would take three to five years, and probably five, and it probably won’t even happen. And I got it done in less than nine months. So, I consider it a great achievement. I actually think that if we didn’t get it done, worldwide you would have another Spanish flu which killed a hundred million people, according to history.

BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. There you had former president Trump on Hannity show last night talking about his pride over the Operation Warp Speed-enabled vaccine. So this is always left out when they pretend like Trump is anti-vax. He actually has been taking victory laps about the vaccine for many, many months now. But the narrative cannot be bothered with facts as we know, Clay. That cannot be allowed to get in the way. The narrative about natural immunity from infection cannot be allowed to get in the way.

CLAY: Data! Just data. Actual facts aren’t allowed to be discussed until, as we were just talking about during the break, all of a sudden everybody has the exact same analysis of facts that we’ve been talking about on this show for months, which they say, “Oh, you can’t say that,” right?

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: And then they end up recognizing what we’re talking about.

BUCK: It goes from banned to inescapably and obviously true —

CLAY: It’s amazing, isn’t it?

BUCK: — and we’re not supposed to notice when it comes to everything the lockdowners say. That transition… There’s this silent transition from, “Shut up! You can’t say that, peasant. Listen to Fauci! Listen to the science! Oh, my God, we’re all gonna die,” and then it’s, “Oh, wow. You guys were right about that thing. It looks like the numbers show it,” which is why we’re gonna have Berenson on to talk about it.

Vaccinations are fading. This is fact. If you had said that a month ago, maybe even a few weeks ago, but a month ago for sure, certainly three months ago, you were a science-denying hack who wants people to die. We have the receipts, folks. We see what they say about them on CNN and on the news.

Turns out that was actually true. Another place where we see the imperviousness to facts and data — the kind of things we talk about on the show — is New York City, where, first of all, there are a lot of places… I’m going to back to New York tomorrow, tomorrow night, I’ll back in New York City.

CLAY: Got your brother’s wedding.

BUCK: Got my brother’s wedding this weekend. Very excited for it. Big family event, obviously. We’ve got New York City now returned to a form of lockdown, really, because that’s what this is, right? It’s not-a-shelter-in-place lockdown, but it’s the dystopian, “Show your papers, please,” for the vaccine lockdown, which is not just New York. It’s also what, San Fran, Philly, L.A., New Orleans.

CLAY: Spreading everywhere.

BUCK: And here’s the thing. I’ve this said so many times as a New Yorker to the rest of the country. If the libs, if the lockdown Fauci-ite lunatics get away with this in New York, it is much more likely to be replicated by the crazy libs in other places. This has been true of so many things that we have seen, including, of course, the original lockdowns and the extension of them beyond the two weeks to slow the spread.

But New York City businesses are now suing Mayor Bill de Blasio over what they say is an unfair vaccine mandate. Quote — this is from the Daily Mail — “This will destroy our business.” There’s so much going on here, Clay. We mention the racism part of this in the second —

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: — which we’ll certainly get into, but I also just want to point out, New York hasn’t recovered. A lot of these cities have not actually recovered. There are thousands of businesses closed forever. There are a lot of other particularly we’re talking about restaurants, venues, things like that that are just limping along, and do they’re gonna have to deal with this?

Because there are people who are gonna say, “I’m just not gonna go.” You know, if you have a choice… If I have a choice between Fantastic Steak Restaurant A and Steak Restaurant B and one of them is a vaccine mandate place and the other is not, out of principle — even though now I’ve been forced to get the vaccine, out of principle — I’m gonna go to places that believes in human medical freedom.

CLAY: No doubt, Buck, and there are a couple angles here that I think are important. One, anyone who has ever run a small business, the idea that you would have people want to come spend money at your business and at the front door you are going to turn them away, not because your restaurant is so packed that there’s no availability for them.

But because of this vaccine passport as you are attempting to struggle from the lockdowns, and maybe your business, maybe your restaurant, maybe your bar just barely survived by their fingertips? That’s part one is crazy. Part two associated with this, Buck — and I don’t think this is getting enough discussion — I’m a dad, right? During fall break we may take a vacation.

During Christmas break or Thanksgiving, we may take a vacation when kids are out of school. I’m not going to New York City. Why would I go to New York City where tons of people come in to spend money? This vaccine passport, it’s gonna hit hotels. It’s gonna hit restaurants, bars. Not only is it impacting people who live in New York.

There are millions of people right now listening to us who might take a vacation to New York, and they’re gonna say, “You know what? I don’t want to go somewhere where I’m gonna not be able to go into a restaurant; I’m not gonna be able to go into a bar.” This is a debilitating blow to small businesses across New York City, and I think so many people who have never had to make a payroll, who’ve never had to sit down and understand how a businesses works —

BUCK: Also known as politicians, for the most part.

CLAY: Well, for the most part, unfortunately. Those guys have no idea what situation they are creating for small businesses that are already struggling all over New York.

BUCK: We never got to normal, and that’s what I think has been lost in so much of this. There’s never been normal, really, in New York City. It’s not normal even here in Nashville where you get into an Uber or you go to the airport —

CLAY: Did you have to wear one back from dinner last night or just on the way out?

BUCK: Only on the way out.

CLAY: That’s funny, right?

BUCK: So the Nashville-based Uber driver made us mask up, but the Franklin, Tennessee-based Uber driver did not. I didn’t wear a mask. I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about it.

CLAY: Yeah. He didn’t request it. It’s funny where you get in an Uber with impact things. I was saying when I went to dinner last night, my fifth grader had his school meeting, get to go meet the teacher and everything else. No parents were wearing masks, virtually, for that meeting inside of Williamson County. If you were in other cities, maybe even Nashville, everybody would have been masked up and cosmetic theater buying in.

BUCK: I can’t… It’s a private communication, but I will say I just had a friend who’s a journalist based in D.C. — kind of centrist journalist — text me, and she was like, “You were right about Fauci and masks all along. I’m part of the revolution now.” I was so excited. I was like, “Thank you. This is happening.”

CLAY: I think this is important.

BUCK: People are finally seeing, it’s too nuts. They’re wrong too often.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: Stop believing in this crap.

CLAY: We need to get 60% of people, right? We need to get 60% of people to buy in, look at the data you, right? And some of those people are gonna have to be Democrats in order to for that to happen. And then Biden’s gonna have a tough political reality. He’s gonna have to say, “Wait a minute. We keep beating this covid drum, and it’s so discordant now that people are abandoning it.”

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: That’s what we need to have happen.

BUCK: We’re never going to be able to… With reasoned facts, logic, and a respectful approach, we’re never going to be able to convince people who double mask —

CLAY: There’s 40% who are lost. They’re lost, unfortunately.

BUCK: — in the shower or go for bike rides by themselves with goggles and a mask and hand sanitizer. By the way, hand sanitizer is not stopping you from getting covid, by the way. Remember when washing your hands 15 times a day, Lysoling your groceries, all this stuff. They’ve been wrong about so much of this garbage all along. But if we can at least get the solid majority —

CLAY: 60%. That’s all I want.

BUCK: — American people to understand this is crazy, it becomes politically untenable and the edifice of covid lockdown madness starts to end. But it’s gonna require active, active measures. You can’t just sort of sit around, ’cause, Clay, here’s the thing there are a lot of people, they don’t get tired of this. They accept this. In fact, we had —

CLAY: That data, yeah.

BUCK: — we had the data that I want to dive into. I even forgot, we got so much more to talk about on the show.

CLAY: Let’s hit it when we come back.

BUCK: Ooooo.

CLAY: We’ll hit it this data to close it out.

BUCK: I like it.

CLAY: It’s a good one.

BUCK: That’s what we call a tease in the business.

CLAY: It’s a great tease in the business.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Buck, it’s really fascinating to look at who the people are that are most in favor of vaccine mandates and then to consider what jobs they may have and how divergent those perspectives can be based on what you do for a living.

BUCK: Ooh, the data, Clay.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: We love it here on this show, and a hat tip to our friend Alex Berenson for sharing this with us from his Twitter account. Gallup Polling, though, Gallup Polling. And you have here opinions about employee vaccination requirements by worker location. We’ve got fully on site, hybrid model, fully remote. And here’s the basics of what this data tells you. Those who strongly favor people getting vaccine mandates by the employer are predominantly — the most common — is those who are fully remote.

CLAY: Of course.

BUCK: The people who strongly oppose in the highest numbers… By the way, strongly favor, 44% of those who are fully remote strongly favor vaccine mandates for all employers. Okay? Fully on site, 33% strongly oppose. So when you actually break down the numbers, the basic way to look at this is that the fully on-site folks are much more likely to strongly oppose vaccine mandates.

The fully remote peer who are at the least risk are the biggest wimps when it comes to covid and want the most mandates and Fauci-ism and madness. This breaks down along the class lines we’ve talked about a lot here. The basic paradigm of the covid lockdown was the CNN and MSNBC-watching, you know, middle to upper-middle class libs sitting at home in an urban or suburban area.

CLAY: That had virtually no economic impact from a lockdown ’cause they could do their job just as easily at home —

BUCK: And order their Uber Eats.

CLAY: They could watch Netflix.

BUCK: — and watch Netflix, they’re fine. The people who had to show up and operate the grocery stores, the truck drivers who had to make sure we actually had food on the shelves for our bellies —

CLAY: Police, military.

BUCK: — police, military, they had to keep going. And they’re the ones who are most likely to say, “Let’s not be crazy with these employer mandates.” The military is facing a vaccine mandate right now, which is madness. I’m having a lot of people reach out to me who say, “I’m gonna leave.” They’re facing, I believe, a dishonorable discharge if they won’t get the vaccine, if they refuse to get the vaccine, which is insane to me.

CLAY: Yeah, and again, we’re gonna need to continue to talk about this because the story is gonna move so quickly. But I just want all of you to think about this as we discussed earlier. As an adult or as a person who is old enough to remember getting vaccines or shots, it’s not even fair to call something a vaccine if you have to get it every year.

That’s the flu shot. Right? And right now the covid vaccine, you are going to have to get a booster eight months after you get the covid vaccine. And the challenge here going forward, Buck, is I think what you’re demonstrating there with those Gallup poll numbers, people have to be able to assess risk, right?

And people who have to go out on a day-to-day basis and work facing the general public, interacting, they understand how impossible it is to hide from a virus. People who get to stay in their home and they write on a computer for a living and they are involved in technology and they don’t actually have to see anybody face-to-face, they mistakenly think that that is a world that everybody can embrace. The guy who workers at a gas station or the girl who’s working out at the grocery store, they don’t have that luxury.

BUCK: Yeah, but the remote elites, if you will, because being able to work remote is a huge privilege. The remote elites who are big believers in the CNN, Fauci-ite obsession, they also like it because they feel like they’re doing their part —

CLAY: They’re virtue signaling.

BUCK: — which is a pseudohumble way of telling everybody they’re in the fight to defeat covid. That’s right! They’re so smug sitting at home on their couch watching CNN, having their Pad Thai (which I love, too, by the way) delivered —

CLAY: (laughing) You’re from New York. You overlap with a lot of these people.

BUCK: I’m just saying, I just don’t watch the CNN and do the smug virtue signaling. I do love the delivery food. But, nonetheless, this is the reality of the people that were not affected by it and felt like they were able to continue on with many aspects of their lives, they’re the ones the most that demand masks the most. They’re the ones that insist — and, by the way, they will defend teachers unions for all the nonsense they put the kids through.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: We haven’t even talked about developmental delays and, honestly, the now developmental catastrophes for kids in a lot of schools.

CLAY: There are a lot of people that may be in danger of missing another year because we are sliding down the slippery slope of another lockdown in many parts of America.

BUCK: But if you’re an NPR podcast-listening, Maddow-watching, New Yorker-subscribing lib, you think, “Well, I have to defend the teachers unions for their hypocrisy and their demands. But, I mean, I still expect the people who run my corner store and who run the grocery store to show up.” They have no choice.

CLAY: You also, if you have kids, can afford to have a tutor.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: Can afford to put your kids in private school. You can ensure that your children are not actually falling behind. And what does all this mean, Buck? When we come tomorrow — this is what you call a day tease in advance — the impact of Joe Biden’s disastrous leadership is becoming very real. The numbers reflect it, and we’re gonna share it tomorrow. And it ain’t pretty.

BUCK: People are realizing not only did they push out confused old grandpa Biden here and pretend like we couldn’t all see the “declinin’ Biden,” but also the whole bill of goods, the whole what we were promised we’d get if he were president, not only is it not coming to fruition, it’s going in the opposite direction.

CLAY: It’s going up in smoke.

BUCK: Forget normalcy.

CLAY: It’s all failing.

BUCK: We have catastrophe, and that’s starting to bite. That’s starting to have problems for Biden’s numbers.

CLAY: No doubt, and this is what we need to see. Look, the people who knew Biden was gonna be a disaster — you, me, a lot of our listeners — that’s great. But we need more allies — independents, Democrats who have functional brains. Yes, they do exist. They’re all starting to line up with this.

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Trump Sounds Like He’s Running and It’s Going to Be Amazing

18 Aug 2021

CLAY: Trump was on, I believe, with Sean Hannity, right? I believe this is where this cut is from.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: And we had him on, what, back in June, I guess, and he wouldn’t really answer the 2024 question. I’m sure they shared that Rasmussen poll results with him. But Trump was asked whether he was willing to say whether he would run for president, and he gave a very Trumpian answer. Play cut 16.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So, because the campaign finance laws are extremely complicated and unbelievably stupid, I’m actually not allowed to answer that question. Can you believe it?

HANNITY: (chuckling)

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I’d love to answer it. But let me put it this way. I think you’ll be happy, and I think a lot of our friends will be very happy, but I’m not actually allowed to answer it. It makes it very difficult if I do. So people, you’re gonna be happy, ’cause I love this country and I hate to see what’s happening.

BUCK: I gotta say, he is, first of all, as we all know, one of the greatest showmen on earth.

CLAY: No doubt.

BUCK: He just understands how to get the focus of the people. And beyond that, he’s gotta see what’s going on with Joe Biden and the very real buyer’s remorse — or voters’ remorse, I guess you could say, that’s out there right now. If Trump feels like he’s running against a Biden that the American people have seen enough of to know what’s really going on — essentially if he believes that enough in the center — we know there are crazy libs that hate Trump more than any person in history, right?

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: But if he believes there are enough people in the center who are coming back to reality on here — and we’re not in a covid year, which you and I talked about so many times and the margins of victory being very small; we’ve discussed this a million times. But Trump’s in, I think. And that’s just gonna be amazing in so many ways. It’s gonna be fantastic.

CLAY: Well, I think what’s also interesting about this is, are they gonna Weekend at Bernie’s 2 Joe Biden? Are they gonna try to run him again at 82 years old?

BUCK: They can’t do Kamala, but they can’t put Kamala aside.

CLAY: That’s where I’m going to. If Kamala’s not the nominee and Biden can’t run — ’cause, look, there’s no way they can drag Biden across the finish line again.

BUCK: I dunno, Clay. Come on. They did it the first time.

CLAY: Yeah, but they had covid then I don’t think they’re gonna be able to use innovated ’24 although who knows maybe the Chinese will leak another thing out of the lab.

BUCK: I don’t think they can do it and win but I think they’ll try.

CLAY: But if they don’t… Kamala Harris, it’s racist and sexist if she’s not the choice. The point here is the Democrats don’t have a very good bench, whereas you can look right now at Republicans and you can say DeSantis; Tim Scott; Mike Pompeo; Trump himself, obviously; Kristi Noem; there’s some people Nikki Haley. Like, there’s a whole roster, I think, of Republican candidates that is far better than anybody out there for the Democrats.

BUCK: I’m just still trying to process. It’s a little…. The idea that you would even suggest that Kamala Harris wouldn’t be the nominee. That just feels racist and sexist to me, Clay.

CLAY: It’s racist and sexist.

BUCK: Just even bringing this up.

CLAY: I know, that’s the world we live in.

BUCK: Media Matters is gonna be all over you just for bringing this one up.

CLAY: Racist.

BUCK: Travis!

CLAY: It’s in the headline whenever I say it: Racist, sexist, Clay Travis.

BUCK: It goes in there racist-sexist pile.

CLAY: I’ll argue they have to put Kamala Harris — who, by the way, nobody’s heard of in over almost a week with this Afghanistan mess.

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C&B Welcome Amber Smith, Former Trump DOD Official and Combat Pilot

18 Aug 2021

BUCK: We’ve actually got our friend Amber Smith joining us now as promised. Amber is somebody who understands the beyond-the-horizon counterterrorism mission very well, though she was in country in Afghanistan as part of our efforts there, as part of the fight against the Taliban. She was a Kiowa helicopter combat pilot. She was also a Department of Defense official under the Trump administration. Amber, thanks so much for making time for us.

AMBER: Of course. Great to be with you.

BUCK: So, we’re hearing a lot about over-the-horizon or beyond-the-horizon counterterrorism capability here from the Biden administration. As somebody who was flying a Kiowa, understands how the aerial assets will play into this, what should people know about how that will actually work and what are some of the capabilities we will have going forward, given that we’ve got this military withdrawal in country underway?

AMBER: Yeah. So when you hear over-the-horizon capabilities, it really means what aerial assets we have available to strike in country that isn’t currently there. So we have, you know, all of the best capabilities in the world to be able to continue these counterterrorism operations. We’ve got strike groups in the region, in the Middle East. We have B-52 bombers at Al Udeid and Qatar.

They’re able to do long-distance strike operations in Afghanistan. Then we have multiple other air bases — UAE, Kuwait, multiple in Kuwait. So the Air Force is able to do sustained, you know, fighter-bombing, tanker surveillance operations. But I will say, just a few months ago in June when they still thought that they were going to have this absolutely perfect, orderly transition of power when the military left and handed over to the Afghanistan government, they were still trying to look and figure out about the extent of those over-horizon capabilities.

Because the thing is, they work fine when you still have contractors on the ground or you still have friendlies on the ground and a stable Afghan military that is able to talk people on to targets, give accurate grids for precision-guided weapons and all of that. We no longer have that. So the risk has dramatically increased when it comes to CIVCAS, civilian casualties. It really just increases the room for error when you’re operating through the lens of essentially a soda straw.

CLAY: Amber, I know we’re still trying to figure out… Thanks for coming on. This is Clay. I know we’re still trying to figure out how we’re gonna get all these American citizens out of Afghanistan and it’s a total mess. But you had experience over there. You’ve seen this happen. We’ve been talking a lot on the show about top military advisers and top intelligence advisers saying, “We told Joe Biden not to do it in this manner.”

Are you surprised that speaking out is already occurring? And when and/or how do we determine who should be blamed? I know that Joe Biden ultimately bears all the blame because he’s the commander-in-chief, but how does this process play out in what is likely to be a long-running, pointing-a-finger situation between intelligence agencies, the military, and the White House?

AMBER: Yeah, well, I think you really need to break it down into two different categories. One, Afghanistan war as a whole and the failures that have come along with it through multiple administrations. And then the other one is the botched withdrawal — that is solely on President Joe Biden. He’s the commander-in-chief, and he made that decision.

When it comes to military leaders specifically focusing on this withdrawal, they are not completely not to blame. I am extremely baffled that the Centcom commander, General McKenzie, agreed to the plan. And this brings up another point. I want to know, was it the Joint Chiefs of Staff that drew up the plans to close down Bagram air base and have that as a course of action for a decision-maker to go with that plan where they closed down Bagram air base and really thought that they were going to be able to use Kabul airport as a single exit point in the country in case things went bad?

So while military leaders may have known some intelligence about, the capabilities of the table and may have voiced them to the Biden administration, why did they move forward and agree to a plan that really, really put a lot of American lives at risk, as we’re seeing today, in terms of the security situation in Kabul?

BUCK: We’re speaking to Amber Smith. She’s the author of the Danger Close. She’s a veteran of the Afghanistan war, a Kiowa helicopter pilot who deployed to Afghanistan, also former deputy assistant to the secretary of defense under the Trump administration.

And, Amber, what should we be looking for now? I mean, it’s all dependent… Getting these Americans out is dependent on… Really it’s like a two-step process, right, getting around the risk of Taliban security to the airport and then the airlift to get them out and get Americans to, you know, safe haven, safe harbor.

Back on U.S. soil, preferably, but obviously get them out just to a place where they’re no longer at high risk. What do you expect that to look like in the days ahead, and do you have any confidence that the Biden administration has the planning for that lined up properly?

AMBER: Well, I think in terms of getting American citizens as well as Afghans who helped the American military, getting them to Kabul airport should be the absolute, number-one focus right now. And, unfortunately, we’ve seen them set up a perimeter at Kabul International Airport. But the problem is that the Taliban has set up checkpoints all throughout the city all on the outside of that permiter.

So people who are trying to, you know, go in through the funnels that take them into Kabul airport, they’re getting stopped by the Taliban on the way. And we’re already seeing, you know, common Taliban tactics in terms of beatings and things. It’s just absolutely brutal which is what the Taliban does. And so at some point the military is likely going to have to expand outside of that perimeter in order to get these Americans and the people that worked with us out.

Because they’re not going to be able to get through some of the Taliban checkpoints on their own and that’s where, like, the our eyes the State Department, let’s see the president need to step it up in terms of direct communication to the Taliban more like what we saw with Trump administration about, “Look, do not touch our people. There’s gonna be absolute consequences directly to the Taliban if you do not open up these channels to get our people into the Kabul airport.”

BUCK: Combat pilot and veteran Amber Smith. Amber, thanks so much for being with us, sharing your expertise. We appreciate it.

AMBER: Thanks, Buck. Thanks.

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18 Aug 2021

CLAY: A guy who has spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, and the most successful aspect of the entire war in Afghanistan actually took place in Pakistan when Rob O’Neill and his Navy SEAL brethren went in and took out Osama Bin Laden. Rob, I appreciate you coming on with us. What’s your reaction at a sort of baseline level as you watch everything take place in Afghanistan right now?

ROB: Hey, guys, great to talk to both of you. Thanks, Clay. Thanks, Buck. You know, it’s just very, very frustrating because this was so predictable that it’s sad how many people are gonna be killed right now, not in a good way. In a very, very bad way, tortured and killed and just amount of slavery that’s gonna happen with the young girls in that country.

They took the military out before they took the civilians out, and they can’t even decide if it’s between 5,000, 10,000, 11,000 15,000 Americans that are there, that really, really need the help. And it didn’t need to happen this way. There were… You know, it’s not black or white. There were definitely ways to withdraw, which we knew we needed to do eventually.

But it’s gonna get really, really bad right now because we just… We are the laughingstock of the planet and just we are a face of complete weakness, no leadership, even to the point where the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior officer in the military… I hope he told President Biden, who’s the commander-in-chief, “We shouldn’t do this.”

I hope he didn’t tell him, “We should do this.” But either way, if he told him to not and the president did that, he should resign. If he agreed with the president, he should be fired. That’s when I was at war. If men and women on the ground actually fighting, if we were wrong like this, we either died or we got fired. That’s it, that simple. And it’s a spoof right now.

BUCK: Rob, it’s Buck, man. Good to have you on, my friend. Thanks for being with us. The Afghans on the ground right now who were interpreters and/or promised some kind of a visa to the United States, we’re seeing a lot of footage of them swarming around the airport. We’ve got Americans in harm’s way. The administration’s actually not prioritizing, they said, for all these flights, Americans.

So why don’t I do that actually for a second here and ask you about the Americans first. What do you think happens here tactically if we get to a point where the Taliban just says, “We’re not letting some of these Americans through.” And we don’t know what’s gonna happen to them. I mean, are we gonna have to send in guys like you to go get them out?

ROB: Yes. Yes. What… I mean, this… To be perfectly honest, this is not a complicated problem. You jump in the 82nd Airborne, you fly in some Marines, and you go kill everything that looks at you the wrong way. Simple. Period. That’s what we do. We’ve lost that in this woke culture of political correctness and garbage that we have Marines…

I’m not making this up. I’m still in touch with some people in Afghanistan. They’re saying that right now the Taliban are torturing people right outside of the walls of the airfield. Marines and soldiers are being told to stand down. Why aren’t every one of these officers fired? This is insanity. Marines can go in there and kill. That’s what they do.

Soldiers go in and kill. Infantry can kill. We can do this. We fought the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in 2001-2002 and crushed them. Web do it again. We’re just weak right now. We would rather have symposiums on, “Hey, you’re this soldier, but you have to use this bathroom,” and it’s nonsense.

CLAY: Rob, what should happen? I know we’re still… The first answer is we gotta get as many — hopefully, all — of the American citizens out of Afghanistan safely as we can. But you’re starting to see military and intelligence officials throw Joe Biden under the bus and say:

“We told him that this was what would happen if we pulled out, that the Taliban were advancing rapidly.” So far as I know, it’s rare that we’ve seen Biden take any shrapnel like this from military and intelligence advisers. Where do we go from here with the Biden administration and this disaster of a fallout?

ROB: Well, I think the first thing we need to do with the Biden administration is figure out who is actually in charge and who’s making the calls, who’s doing what. And, you know, I wish we could trim the fat, but we don’t really do that because everybody wants to stay in power because eventually, they’re gonna work for the military-industrial complex and get a cush retirement.

We… I mean, the reality here is we need to decide how we’re gonna take Bagram airfield back before China does. If you’ll notice, the Chinese embassy in Kabul did not close. The Russian embassy in Kabul did not close. There’s some stuff going on right here, and it’s… I mean, there comes a time that you need to plant your feet, stand your ground, and kick somebody’s ass.

And that’s where we’re at right now. I don’t think we have the leadership to do it. I don’t even know who the leader are, because it seems like everyone goes on vacation. We can’t even hear from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs! We get a national security adviser who, in his defense, has basically no idea what he’s talking about.

He’s trying to define when someone asks him, “You know, well, why did the president go on vacation again?” and he’s trying to say (laughs) just stumbling over his words with, “Well, you know, he… I know how he works and…” No! Unh-uh. That’s not the case at all, and it’s a sad state of affairs. We do have the people to go in and win this again. We just don’t have the willpower.

Most people on media or on social media are basically lying to not just Americans, but to the entire Western world of what’s actually going on. The realization that just because you don’t want to be at war with someone doesn’t mean they don’t want to be at war with you, and that’s where we’re at. I mean, we can give it to the Taliban and hope they never do anything, but hope doesn’t get us a long way.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Rob O’Neill, who’s a former Navy SEAL and was the man who shot bin Laden on that raid in Abbottabad about a decade ago now. And, Rob, I want to ask you, as somebody who was as up close and personal in this fight as literally any person could be:

Do you feel like we should have stopped, we should have withdrawn right after we got justice — thanks to you and your team and all the people that put you there — against bin Laden, or would you have wanted there to be some kind of residual special operations force staying either behind or at least in the region to do the counterterrorism mission? On the strategic level, what would you have recommended?

ROB: For that area of operation in Afghanistan, there’s obviously mistakes made and the way you get successful is you learn from the others mistakes and that’s fine. I’m not blaming anybody for that. We shouldn’t have done a huge surge like we did, but we really should have kept an airfield in Jalalabad which we had which was really nice.

And then Bagram airfield, and then obviously in Kabul, just for the counterterror operations across the border — drone strikes, whatever. Whenever we to need kill somebody, keep them right there. But the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS were afraid of Bagram airfield. All we had to do here — and I wish I was at least in the room or invited to one of the birthday parties with no masks where I could tell you people, you can —

CLAY: (laughing)

ROB: Here’s how silly it is. (chuckles) Not silly, but I’m trying to explain to your listeners: I’m not making this up. Bagram was a fortress. We could defend it. We have pilots, mechanics — everything — a hospital, a prison, all that stuff. We can have our brave pilots bomb the Taliban and literally be back in time for karaoke night and Green Bean coffee. That’s how we had it.

Look, would we rather go to Germany for deployment? Yes. But if you have to go to Afghanistan, it’s fine. Not that bad of a place. They’re scared to death. They will not try to do anything. Air power will win. And instead (laughs), we just left! Didn’t even have the courtesy to throw the Afghans the keys. Just leave, and then obviously…

I don’t know what they’re calling it, the military something, that the Taliban have their hands on. But they mean machine guns, guns, and tanks. That’s what we gave to them. Yeah, keep a presence. Because if you keep Bagram airfield right there in that part of the world, now you have a foothold against China, against Russia, against our enemies to the south, Iran.

You’re just there — which is going to happen, because we never learn from our mistakes. I mean, the fall of Saigon looks almost better than the fall of Kabul. But now we have to fly jets and bombers from other countries, aircraft carriers, refueling. Just the logistics involved is so complex now when we could have just flown from Bagram, killed them, home.

BUCK: Rob, what do you think of the…? The Taliban advance, obviously, caught this administration by surprise. That’s clear. But there’s a lot of back-and-forth over the Afghan army folding. Was this inevitable? Was this known? Was this surprising? I mean, from your experience working alongside some of our Afghan partners in the fight, when you saw this whole thing unrolled, what were your thoughts?

ROB: Now, again, some of the best, most loving, caring people I’ve ever met have been in the country of Afghanistan. And that is a fact, and they’re great people there and most people in a war zone are just trying to get on with their lives and I truly feel for them. Having said that, we used to do things towards the end of my service we were calling them Afghan-led missions, which is complete nonsense.

Working with them… Look, if you train someone for 20 years to fight, they should at least be a black belt, right? And the guys on the ground were saying, “Here’s what will happen: If we’re arming these guys with these weapons, the Taliban will have them eventually,” and here’s… Look, and I know people want to be politically correct and say, “No, I knew some of the best fighters.”

Here’s proof, and sometimes I get in trouble for telling the truth. Here’s the truth. If we have been training you to fight for 20 years, given you the weapons and vehicles and all that stuff, and you have twice the amount of fighters as the Taliban and you lose in three days, my guess is someone is not fighting.

CLAY: I think that’s fair to say.

BUCK: No doubt. Rob, man, thank you.

ROB: One more thing, too.

BUCK: Go ahead.

ROB: If you notice a lot of C-17s taking off with about 800 people on it? There was a heck of a lot of fighting-age males there that aren’t fighting, and I didn’t see one mask.

BUCK: There were not masks. I agree. Nor were they telling everybody —

CLAY: And how is covid not killing the Taliban? They took over the whole country, and it doesn’t seem like covid has even had any impact on them. We don’t even know what their preferred pronouns are.

ROB: Well, you gotta figure covid doesn’t hurt a lot of people in Afghanistan (laughs) because they don’t have televisions.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: There you go. Rob O’Neill, everybody, former Navy SEAL. His book is The Operator.

CLAY: It’s a great book.

BUCK: If you haven’t read it, go check it out. The man who shot bin Laden. Rob, thank you, man. I know you have a lot of people that say thank you to you all over the country, but we thank you for that and for joining us here today and we’ll talk to you soon.

ROB: I appreciate it. Any time. Congratulations on the new show too. It’s awesome. Appreciate it.

CLAY: Appreciate that.

BUCK: Thanks so much, brother.

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New Hawaii, Oregon Data Shows Masks Don’t Work

18 Aug 2021

DR. STEVEN STACK: Uh, those who are spreading false and dangerous information are killing people. I don’t know how to say it any more directly. People who are going out there and saying false and demonstrably inaccurate information about the utility and value of masks, about the safety and importance of vaccinations to prevent this disease are killing people.

CLAY: Yeah. That is Kentucky Department of Health commissioner Dr. Steven Stack. I’m Clay Travis. He’s Buck Sexton. Here’s the deal, bud. Masks don’t work (laughing) and we’ve been saying that for a while, Buck. I just tweeted the data out. You know, everybody was focused on everything surrounding Texas and Florida.

And now that it’s starting to be the case that states like Oregon and Hawaii — deep blue states that have masked as hard as you can mask — are now setting hospitalization records, well, all of a sudden the storyline is changing. The CDC just came out and said, “Hey, these vaccines, they wane a little bit.” Hawaii, Buck, has had 486 straight days of masks that they have required people to wear; and Hawaii just hit a brand-new record for hospitalizations in their state.

BUCK: I just want to know what Ron DeSantis is doing to Hawaii, Clay.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Why is Governor DeSantis spreading covid in Hawaii?

CLAY: It’s amazing how this storyline changes as soon as red states start to wane, and, look, we told you this was gonna happen, and we’re gonna get Alex Berenson on maybe Friday again because he’s been proven right.

BUCK: Super right on this, on the vaccine waning and efficacy.

CLAY: When everybody was banning him — remember, he got banned on Twitter for saying, “Hey, the data reflects that the vaccines wane,” he was looking at Israel; Twitter shut him down for a week — we let him come in studio with us and talk to you for an hour. Last week, I was showing up at the school board arguing against kids having to wear masks ’cause they don’t work, but Hawaii and Oregon are surging now. Florida and Texas look like they may well have hit their peak and all the red states are gonna start to decline, and the storyline is changing now.

BUCK: I just want to say, how many people right now all across the country have heard anywhere other than on this show, Clay, that Oregon actually just set on August 17th an all-time high? I’m looking —

CLAY: At the chart.

BUCK: — right now at the data from the New York Times, Oregon in December 2020, 1800, January 800. Oregon just set by far its all-time case high.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Why aren’t CNN anchors badgering Governor Kate Brown of Oregon but why she wants old people to die? Why aren’t they harassing the state of Oregon about how they don’t listen to the science? The politicization of the covid situation from the Democrat-aligned corporate media is disgusting. It’s so obvious!

CLAY: And it appears, Buck, as soon as a red state goes off the stage, right? We’re talking about Hawaii and Oregon — the bluest of the blue states, governors who have been as restrictive about covid as any governors could be in the country — and they just set in Oregon and they just set in Hawaii all-time highs for covid hospitalizations, for covid infections, for covid cases. It’s not talked about. Probably everybody listening to us as just heard it for the first time.

BUCK: Hawaii, as we all know, one of the most beautiful places on earth.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I love the people who live in Hawaii, but somehow it has among the worst state-level governments and officials.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It gave us Mazie Hirono, for heaven’s sakes.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So that’s… Hawaii, I got a bone to pick with you. I got a bone to pick with you. But on the issue of cases, Clay, and where it’s all going now, there’s gonna be a desperation to try to convince people not to look at this data. And so that’s why they have, for example, this AP stories DeSantis or promoting a drug… It’s an AP story on DeSantis’ promotion of effective covid drug criticized as an attempted hit job.

That’s on Fox News. The Associated Press wrote a piece on this guy saying that he was promoting a drug that is effective, Regeneron, a monoclonal antibody, which remember how Alex Berenson said —

CLAY: Yes. Right.

BUCK: — why aren’t they talking about monoclonal antibodies? They work really, really well. Ron DeSantis is talking about this, getting the word out. The AP runs a piece on how, “Well, there’s some kind of a financial incentive from DeSantis!”

CLAY: The same thing that 60 Minutes tried to do. And we talked about that story and what is ultimately going on — you should pay attention here — is the Democrats are terrified of Ron DeSantis, because he calls into question their entire covid fear porn industry. And if that happens, then, as you start to look forward, if Trump tries to run again, DeSantis is a really good VP, right? Really great VP choice.

BUCK: I think Trump right now, he’s making his own Rocky montage for the comeback. Given what’s going with Biden, I think that’s what’s happening.

CLAY: Well, the data we talked about earlier from Rasmussen… I don’t think Biden would run, by the way. I don’t think Kamala would run. This is gonna be fun to watch play out as everybody is running for the hills as the Biden administration is falling apart.

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State Department Spokesman to Taliban: Be Nice!

17 Aug 2021

NED PRICE: Additionally, the U.N. Security Council issued a joint press statement earlier today calling for a new government that is united, inclusive, and representative — including with the full and (sputtering) — full and meaningful participation of women. The Council spoke with one voice to underscore that Afghanistan must abide by its international obligations, including the international humanitarian law, and ensure the safety and security of all Afghans and international citizens.

BUCK: Well, I’m sure the Taliban are shaking in their bare feet over that one. They must be terrified at the notion of the international community not being happy with the way the incoming new government — let’s be honest — of Afghanistan treats international norms and respect for minority rights and democracy and all… Look, I got it. By the way, welcome back to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. This is Buck. I can’t say I’m surprised, Clay, that this is where the State Department spokesman, Ned Price, is going with this.

CLAY: Could Ned Price sound any more like a loser in that statement? Like, I understand that he probably doesn’t write the statement and that they trot him out to say it. But how, with a straight face, if you have paid attention at all to the Taliban over the last 25 years, can you say that you expect for them to be inclusive and representative?

BUCK: Could you imagine sitting down with, let’s say, like a member of Al-Qaeda after… Oh! Oh! Kind of like the way the Obama administration released a senior guy from Guantanamo. Remember all the crying about, “Oh, it’s just a goat herder who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” That’s what that guy said. Now he’s showing up on the elliptical machines in the presidential palace or sitting at the president’s desk in Kabul saying, “Yeah, I’m actually running the Taliban basically in this area.”

CLAY: Do you think the Taliban would have any respect at all for Ned Price sitting down in his suit, weighing a buck twenty-five and saying, “Hey, guys, I really hope that you’re gonna be inclusive and representative and, hey, what we really wish you would do is go ahead and share your pronouns here as we begin this conversation”?

The disconnect between what the world is like and when the Blue Check Brigade on social media all day long obsess over is so massively gargantuan. I think a lot of people, Buck, have forgotten about what the Taliban is and what they do, because it’s been 20 years since they were really in a position of power.

BUCK: Well, there’s a big difference here, and I think everyone listening to this knows without us even saying it. Let’s say Trump was presiding over the withdrawal and let’s say things got a little messy. Let’s say things turned into what we sort of see — which, by the way, I don’t think that would have happened and I think the people he had around him on issues like this were more sound and serious by a mile than the Biden administration team.

That’s where, again, pronouns and your bio in this White House are the most important signifier of your strategic genius. But if Trump went out and said, “If you guys do anything with the Americans, if you guys come at the American people in any way right now in Afghanistan,” we know that he would have rained holy hell down upon them. There would have been MOABs dropping out of the sky by the dozen.

CLAY: Yes. And, more importantly, they would have known it.

BUCK: And they knew that words from Trump to that end I think would have real impact. You talk Biden, State Department spokesman, yeah.

CLAY: He has to walk out and say it, but it’s so pathetic and weak.

BUCK: The State Department is a place where wokeness has taken root for a long time. I’ll tell you this because I know. I spent a lot of time staying around State Department folks and in Foggy Bottom. It’s a very left-wing place. Yeah, there are awesome, patriotic former Marines who also sign up to be Foreign Service officers. That’s true. But in general, the State Department is a place where you’d be shocked at how… A lot of them you feel like would trade — I’m just telling you the truth. They would trade their American citizenship for international citizenship if they could.

CLAY: They’re citizens of the world.

BUCK: Of the world. There’s a lot of that at the State Department. So that’s reflected in this.

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17 Aug 2021

BUCK: Obviously, the chaos in Afghanistan and Joe Biden’s speech yesterday afternoon is big news. He rolled into the White House, he read off a teleprompter for around 20 minutes, he went immediately back on his vacation. This is one of the most tone-deaf foreign policy decisions and outcomes that has happened in most of our lives. Let’s listen, cut 1 here as Joe Biden reinforces, in his mind, that he made the right decision based on the chaos.

BIDEN: After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces. That’s why we were still there! We were clear-eyed about the risks. We planned for every contingency. But I always promised the American people that I would be straight with you. The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. So what’s happened?

Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight. If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision. American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.

CLAY: All right, Buck Sexton. This is not really a huge surprise. We kind of hinted at this. He also blamed Trump and his other predecessors in the White House for not being willing to make the decision to end the war in Afghanistan beforehand. But what he tried to do — to much criticism, honestly, across the board from Democrats, Republicans, independents as well.

Even, as you said yesterday, not many Democrats are trying to carry water for Joe Biden right now. He focused on the decision to leave Afghanistan as opposed to the disaster of the way that we are leaving Afghanistan, which is what most of the American public has been upset by. What did you think of what Biden said and his attempt to avoid blame for the chaos?

BUCK: There are just certain things he said that were obviously untrue. The only real concession that was made seemed to be that it happened faster than they anticipated, which is obvious to everybody, right? I mean, there’s no way that you’re pulling out troops and then sending in 6,000 troops because this thing happened the way that they thought it would.

And all you have to do… You don’t have to take my word for it or Clay’s word for it. If you listen to the Biden speech from about a month ago, the stuff that he was saying now just looks preposterous. In fact, as I said yesterday, it’s almost as though the Taliban was listening to what Biden said and they’re like, “Oh, well, actually, the thing he says will not happen? Let’s make that happen.”

CLAY: We’ll accelerate it and embarrass them.

BUCK: Yeah. We’ll go even faster. It was like Biden laid out a road map for what he thought was going to occur in this country. And instead, the Taliban decided that they would create the entirety of the road map. So Biden said, “The buck stops…” Pardon the phrase, of course, from me.

CLAY: (chuckling)

BUCK: But he said the buck stops with him and then said that, oh, there was this deadline that Trump put into effect. And the truth about that is, on all these different areas of foreign policy, Biden brags about breaking with the predecessor administration, right? He brags about how he has a different approach to climate change. He has a different approach to the Iran deal.

These are things he says, “I won’t do it the way Trump did,” but on this one, his hands were tied? There’s no way to make this look good. The optics of this, which, as you know, is the obsession in D.C., couldn’t be much worse unless there was really mass violence, God forbid, against the U.S. and our allies.

CLAY: Which could still happen. This story is not over.

BUCK: We have thousands of Americans that are still trying to get out of Afghanistan. There are reports that Americans aren’t even being prioritized by American resources at Kabul airport, which I think people hear that and they’re just… Their minds explode. We would think that Americans would obviously be the first by far priority. But I should say, that should be the case.

I think with this administration it’s actually not surprising it isn’t the case. But now we see the Taliban are in a negotiating position with us. They’ve got checkpoints set up, Clay. They’re blocking access to the airport. So while Biden’s saying we prepared for every contingency, really?

With thousands of Americans still stuck in Kabul, not able to even get to the airport, never mind get on those flights, we’re being told that this is what they planned for? That’s obviously not true. There are certain things he said in that speech that were just clearly false.

CLAY: And also, Buck, the big issue now is, we don’t control what happens in Afghanistan in any way. We are relying on the largesse, on the generosity, on the rationality of the Taliban now when it comes to what’s gonna happen to American citizens and also the allies that worked with us in Afghanistan. And this a group that has historically impressed you with their generosity and their fairness?

BUCK: Right. This is a group that, as we all can recall — and I think this has been suppressed in a lot of our minds because the Taliban has been an insurgency operating in the shadows, mostly, now for decades, although in some areas they’ve had shadow governance and been operating Sharia courts — particularly in the South of Afghanistan — stretching back for years.

In fact, they’ve been able to leverage the opium crop for not only funding themselves, but also creating deeper ties into the community and having better… Believe it or not, they’re gonna try to have better governance in some areas of the country, and I mean this. They’re gonna try to do that.

CLAY: That’s their plan.

BUCK: Their plan is they’ll have governance that is more to the liking in some parts, Pashtun-dominated parts of the country with the central government.

CLAY: Almost Nacos-esque.

BUCK: That’s right. This is classic when you look at narcoterrorism. You brought up the show Narcos.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: You look at Colombia. They understand. They’ve been fighting this insurgency for a long time. The Pakistan ISI which was also working very closely with the mujahideen back in the day against the Soviets. The Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence agency has been working and will be working very closely with the Taliban going forward, providing training, assistance, intelligence support.

That’s what they always do. Pakistan is not an ally, obviously, against the Taliban and not even an ally, really, in the War on Terror anymore. That’s a whole other conversation. So what you’re gonna see, Clay, is the Taliban consolidating. We’re all focused on Kabul because that’s where we have visibility.

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: It’s the rest of the country we have no visibility no, we have no idea what the heck is goes going on. Who’s gonna speak to an American (chuckles) or who wants to be a journalist these days in Kandahar, or the outskirts of the city even more so? So they’re gonna have these videos we’ve already seen. Remember yesterday you played the CNN reporters who said they’re yelling, “Death to America!” but they seem kind of nice.

CLAY: Yeah, right.

BUCK: We’re gonna see these videos —

CLAY: Incongruities.

BUCK: You’re gonna have Taliban spokespersons with Twitter accounts which we’ve also pointed, saying, “Oh, no we want decent governance. We’re not gonna punish minorities,” and all this.

CLAY: They’re trying to pretend to be a kinder, gentler Taliban, right? Right now.

BUCK: That right now is a strategic move for them. Meanwhile, there will be these reports that continue to bubble up. People see of them taking women not as wives but as sex slaves. That’s actually what’s going on. They use the term “wife,” but it’s really sex slavery at the point of a gun, and they’re going to execute people.

They’re going door-to-door already in Kabul. So they’re gonna use the public international community facing pronouncements as cover for the atrocities. The Taliban used line people up in soccer stadiums and execute them and stone people to death for perceived offenses against the Koran. That’s who these guys are, and that hasn’t changed.

CLAY: And we have to also keep in mind it may not even be the top-down organizational decision that ends up creating a crisis inside of Afghanistan right now, right? If you have guys going door-to-door, there may be lower-level leaders who have a great deal of authority that could put American citizens in incredible danger even if “the kinder, gentler” — and we’re putting that in quotation marks — Taliban is trying to play nice with the United States government on some level right now, you can’t negotiate with terrorists.

You can’t rely on these guys and you certainly can’t rely on them to have a top down, well organized structure. There could be violence, there could be death that befalls American citizens. We certainly hope that that’s not the case. But this is what makes, in my mind, Joe Biden’s dismissive nature of this story in general. You fly in from Camp David, you show up, you give an 18-minute address, you don’t take a single question, you don’t address the chaos that’s going on right now. You only address your choice to decide to leave Afghanistan, which isn’t what is at stake right now.

BUCK: The Taliban spokesperson has answered more questions from MSNBC, as we have seen. If you’re Tucker, you can’t interview Viktor Orban in Hungary, a Western democracy that’s an ally of the United States and a great country. You can’t do that without them freaking out. But you could sit down and be a mouthpiece for the Taliban effectively or a platform for the Taliban right away and all the sudden we’re supposed to think that’s fine. Look, Clay, we all see this. Everyone listening to this knows that they could have known, meaning the U.S. government, the Biden administration. They did not know what was going to happen here in terms of the speed of the collapse at all.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And they could have prepared to actually get everyone out.

CLAY: He should have had a lot of those people out already.

BUCK: Already. They delayed this to the last minute. The tactics, the implementation of the withdrawal is an abject catastrophe. It could get worse, God forbid, but hopefully won’t.

CLAY: We’re already seeing China take shots over Taiwan.

BUCK: The saber rattling you’ll see from them over whole bunch of issues I think is only gonna go up, now the Biden administration looks so feckless.

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De Blasio Forces Buck to Get the Shot

17 Aug 2021

DE BLASIO: This is absolutely strategic to say to people, “To fully participate in life in the city and to love and enjoy this city, go get vaccinated.” Uh, we believe it’s gonna make a huge impact. We’re obviously seeing a real uptick in vaccinations already. We made a decision weeks and weeks ago. The whole ball game is vaccination, and, once you made that kind of profound strategic decision, you throw everything you got at it. Uh, we are not interested in lots of measures. We’re interested in vaccination. So making vaccination something that allows you to enjoy all this good in life…

CLAY: That is New York City mayor Bill de Blasio announcing that in your hometown bars, restaurants, gyms, sporting events — you name it, basically –you’re gonna have to have a vaccine passport in order to go and be able to fully participate in city life. So, Buck, we talked about this a little bit last week. Your brother is getting married this weekend, right?

BUCK: Yes, sir.

CLAY: And in order to get married, they were requiring that you have vaccines in order to fully attend the event. What decision did you make?

BUCK: I had to get the J&J shot.

CLAY: So, you went in.

BUCK: There are a few things. I know people right now I can feel the (groans) people are frustrated. I’ve been getting emails about it. I’m not missing my brother’s wedding.

CLAY: Bottom line. The only suggestion I had was you can either get the vaccine or get a fake vaccine card.

BUCK: Right. And, for me, given what I do and say here to be caught with a forged government document possibly or to be on air talking about how I’m unvaccinated and then going to places that require vaccination? I don’t think a restaurant is gonna necessarily call the Feds on me, but I don’t want to test it out. So, here’s just a few things about how this all went down. For anyone who’s listening, before anyone thinks, “Oh, this is a New York city thing.” It’s New York, L.A., San Fran, New Orleans, all those cities already are doing this. So, this is happening.

CLAY: It’s spreading rapidly.

BUCK: Philadelphia.

CLAY: Philadelphia, all over the country.

BUCK: They’re going to make this national. I’m telling you right now the same way that we told you that boosters were coming for everyone and have been saying that now for months. We’ve been saying it together on this show. I’ve been saying it previously on my show and Clay on his. I’m telling you they’re going to try, if they can get away with it, to use the interstate Commerce Clause to have a federal mandate about travel, airplanes.

They’re gonna say, “You don’t have to fly. You don’t have a right to fly.” This is what they’re gonna do. So for anyone who thinks this is not their problem, I’m telling you they are going to try to make it your problem. So here’s how I went down to New York City ’cause I thought you’d appreciate this, Clay. So, I’m looking at this saying, “What am I gonna do? If I don’t get the shot…” By the way, the venue is requesting in advance proof. So, you can’t even show up. So, now you’re talking about that.

CLAY: You have to email it to ’em?

BUCK: You gotta email it to them, and then they’re gonna have a list at the door and they’re gonna be just checking IDs. It’s a fascinating situation, too, because now we have New York City saying , “You need not only a vaccine passport but a matching ID to go into any public or government building in the entire city,” I guess except for when you want to vote ’cause that, Clay, as we know would be racist. Racist to have ID and vote.

CLAY: Yeah, and let’s also reinforce here that the impact of this rule, this law, this regulation that New York City and other cities are putting into place is going to be a lot of black and Hispanic people don’t have the ability to enter into many public venues in their cities.

BUCK: More than half of the African-American population —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — of my hometown, New York City —

CLAY: — is now unable to go to a bar or restaurant.

BUCK: Unable to go to basically anywhere —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Any movie, any gym, any public place under New York City law. Any public place. This is madness. Just to give you a sense of what I went through. So I’m walking. I’m going where… The whole time I’m not getting a shot because I medically didn’t need it.

CLAY: Because you already had covid.

BUCK: I already had covid. There was absolutely no medical basis. I haven’t changed my opinion. And for those of you who are wondering, I am more ticked off — shall we say — now, than ever because I was, basically, forced. In my mind they gave me an impossible choice just as we’ve had people writing in to say, “Should I lose my job at a hospital or should I get the shot, Buck?”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This is a tough call. People have pensions. People have families. They have mortgages to pay, right? And they’ve turned the screws.

CLAY: And this is what the government is relying on to force you to do it, making other places not the federal government but local and business to do it.

BUCK: They said they wouldn’t do it, and they are doing it too. Just remember that. The incrementalism of progressivism is on display here with the way that they’ve said, “Oh, no, no. It’s not a slippery slope.” It absolutely is. They’re saying as we’re slipping down the slope together.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And people across the country think, “Oh, I’m in, Texas. It’s not gonna effect me.”

CLAY: Or Tennessee where we are now.

BUCK: Yeah, or Tennessee, where we’re sitting right now. Yeah, it won’t affect you until you’ve got a sick grandma — not from covid-19, necessarily — in the other part of the country, you want to go visit her and make sure she’s okay, and they say, “Where’s your vaccine passport?” The airlines don’t want to have to do this. I think the federal government will likely step in and say, “Well, we’re the ones that are gonna request this.”

I have a whole pitch as to why, by the way, ’cause I know that right now the Biden administration says they’re not gonna do it, but it has to do with boosters. But here’s what I wanted to say about going to New York City. Clay, I’m walking… You come visit New York a lot. I’m walking just below Times Square north of Herald Square, and there’s, like, a mobile vaccination site and there are these two young guys both of them are minorities, two young guys who are kind of the —

CLAY: Front-facing employees. Yeah.

BUCK: They’re sitting there at the desk taking in people that at this van. And I go up and I start chatting, very nice guys. I’m chatting ’em up a little bit and I’m like, “So, guys, I think I’m gonna go get this done ’cause I’m looking at the wedding invitation on my phone, and I’m just like, I can’t have this stress.” So I walk up, I’m just wondering, so I have a choice here. I think it was Pfizer or Moderna or maybe there was another site nearby. So I said, “Just wondering,” and I just asked, “What did you guys get?” and one of them looks at me goes, “Oh, I didn’t get the shot.” (laughing) Well, hold on a second.”

CLAY: They’re not mandating it for people who are working at the vaccine clinics, I guess.

BUCK: That’s what I thought. I’m sitting here; I’m thinking, “Okay this is a pretty remarkable circumstance,” and then I go to another city clinic. So I went through this whole process. I didn’t go to the drugstore. It could have been easier. No. I went to the city clinic because I wanted to get the J&J shot.

CLAY: Which is the one shot, right?

BUCK: It is the one shot and also a traditional vaccine, and also not an mRNA vaccine technology. So I figured is what I gotta do. So I go to this city site that the city of New York sets up and I walk… Okay, I went in. I had a scooter, but let’s not worry about that right now. So I go scoot scooting —

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I know I didn’t have to tell everybody that.

CLAY: Wow. That was fantastic.

BUCK: I’m an honest guy, Clay. I’m an honest guy. So I go scoot scooting into the place.

CLAY: You and the State Department dude having fun hanging out together.

BUCK: That’s right.

CLAY: You can ride scooters around —

BUCK: (laughing)

CLAY: — and talk about how inclusive you are.

BUCK: We put down our tiny macchiatos for a second to get our shots. I go in there and I sit down with this nurse. I can tell you… I don’t want to say that I know that she probably listened to us on radio in New York City on 710 WOR but I have a feeling she probably does. She sits down; she looks at me, and I’m like, I can’t believe I’m furious that I’m doing this. She goes, “Are you sure you want to do this? You do your research?”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I’m like, “What do you mean am I sure I want to do this?” I looked at her.

CLAY: Did you ask her if she had gotten the vaccine?

BUCK: Yeah, she said she was mandated to. I said, “Yeah? Well,” and I told her about the wedding and everything and she was like, “I know. Natural immunity, it’s so crazy, the city’s not taking that into account.” So she was totally on board, the woman about to give me the shot. She was like, “You sure you want the J&J?” She was like, “I don’t know. You might want to get…” “I thought the idea was supposed to be jab me as fast as possible?” She was very sweet and put a nice little Band-Aid on me and sent me on my merry way. I didn’t have any side-effects.

CLAY: What day did you do it?

BUCK: Right before the weekend.

CLAY: So you had no side effects, you had no issues?

BUCK: No issues, no nothing. My arm is a little sore the way it might be for a flu shot but I’ve had no issues.

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: Here’s the point I’m making, Clay. They’re making people that are adamant bend the knee. What choice, f you live in New York City, if you have rent or a mortgage to pay, if you have a job that depends on it…? The media companies now a lot of them have mandated everybody gets the vaccine.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: What are we going to do? I would offer that part of the problem here is that we’ve been split, because in places where you’ve had greater freedom. My friends including my two brothers who had moved to Florida over the pandemic, they feel like this is a problem for other people.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I’ve been trying to wave the flag, saying, “You don’t understand. These progressives, these leftist loons in the Biden administration — Dr. Fauci — they’re nuts. They’re never gonna leave you alone until we stand up to this together,” and so now I feel like we’re taking vaccine hits here and people are realizing, oh, this is actually coming for all of us.

CLAY: Yeah, and we need to talk about this booster element, too, because the big fear — if you listen to us when we’ve talked with Alex Berenson, by the way, his numbers continue to become more and more accurate based out of Israel — is, even if we had a hundred percent vaccination rate in the United States right now, covid’s not going away. We’re never going to be at Covid Zero and that’s important we need to talk about that.

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