Biden Administration Celebrates Shameful Evacuation

1 Sep 2021

CLAY: Here is Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as he tries to argue how heroic this ending in Afghanistan really was.

AUSTIN: Now, we have just concluded the largest air evacuation of civilians in American history. It was heroic. It was historic! And I hope all Americans will unite to thank our service members for their courage and their compassion. They were operating in an immensely dangerous and dynamic environment. Our troops were tireless, fearless, and selfless.

Our commanders never flinched, and our allies and partners were extraordinary. The United States evacuated some 6,000 American citizens and a total of more than 124,000 civilians, and we did it all in the midst of a pandemic, and in the face of grave and growing threats! I’m incredibly proud of those who made it happen, and they made it happen with grit and skill and humanity.

BUCK: We’ll analyze that, in just a moment. The celebration of the evacuation. That’s now the talking point.

BEAK TRANSCRIPT

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, it would have been the exact opposite, because, frankly, we were in perfect shape. Abdul, he’s now the head guy. That was the one I was dealing with, and he understood exactly what I was saying. I said, “There will be hell to pay if you touch any American soldiers or any Americans.” And even Biden said the other day — I think probably mistakenly from his standpoint, because they don’t usually do this.

But he came out and said, “Well, no American soldier was killed since the previous administration came to that agreement,” which is true. We had many other conditions, and they were strong conditions. And they didn’t meet some of them and we bombed the hell out of them. And they would have met them all. And we would have been out.

We would have had all of our people out. We would have had all of our equipment. I said, “Every nail! I want every nail, every screw, every tank, every plane,” and those planes are in very good working order. You look at Apaches. They cost a fortune, tens of millions of dollars, and they were flying them yesterday. They were having a good time flying our Apache helicopters. And they have, whether it’s 73, 83 or $85 billion worth of equipment — thousands of trucks, hundreds of tanks and other kinds of military gear — and it’s just disgraceful what happened. I think it’s the greatest embarrassment in the history of our country.

BUCK: That was President Trump yesterday on our show. We just wanted to share that with you again. We thought his analysis was so prescient, and it’s so important to hear, how it would have been different. Because right now, the storyline — and welcome back to the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, to all of you.

Because the story is that this would have been the case no matter who was president was. This is what the Democrats are saying. They’re actually saying this. I’m not interpreting it. They’re saying, “Yeah, this was as good as it could have been. Actually, it was a good thing how it went down overall.” This is the Democrat line.

It’s crazy, but we predicted it, because it’s obvious this is where they were going to go. Accountability, Clay. Is there going to be any under the circumstances that we have here? Lindsey Graham was on the Hannity Show last night on Fox, and he was asked the question: Is this an impeachable offense?

GRAHAM: Yeah, I think so. I think it’s dereliction of duty. He knew that we were going to leave Americans behind. And I think he lied to us, because there’s no way… I don’t believe this 10% crap. I think there’s hundreds if not thousands of Americans left behind, tens of thousands of Afghans. So the Biden administration is lying to us, about the threats we face from Afghanistan, about what they knew and when they knew it. And they’re trying to blame everybody but themselves. If you want to blame somebody, President Biden, look in the mirror.

CLAY: Twenty-four kids out of California — I’m surprised this isn’t a bigger story in terms of the media attention — are still stuck there. Yesterday, we played a clip from Clarissa Ward at CNN, Buck, that a family of four from Houston had been unable to get out. We started off the show with Joe Biden bragging that 90% of the people had been removed from Afghanistan who were American citizens, despite the fact that just two weeks ago he told George Stephanopoulos that everybody was going to get out.

Now, I think Lindsey Graham, from the perspective of what should happen, if the standard of impeachment — which, by the way, I don’t agree with. But if the standard for impeachment was a phone call that Donald Trump made with the Ukrainian president — and if the standard for impeachment was a riot, an issue, however you want to classify it on January 6th — this is much worse.

BUCK: Or alleged intervention, by the way, in the Russia collusion investigation that never should have happened in the first place that was all based on fabric restrictions and lies but they tried to take down a presidency with? Sorry.

CLAY: That’s the standard, right? And that’s unfortunate, because I do think in general all of this is a sideshow. Because the idea that that you’re going to get 64 senators who are going to vote for a president to be removed is a laughing stock, right? And we haven’t seen — and we didn’t have it with Bill Clinton. We didn’t have it with Donald Trump. If there were an impeachment with Joe Biden, the consistency of the standard would at least be being applied. But the result would be the same. We would spend months arguing and then nothing would change.

BUCK: Isn’t it amazing that on the issue of resignation — you know, because you’re right. Look, Biden is not going to be impeached and removed from office. We all know. The guy could pull off his head and we find out he’s actually a member of an alien species of lizards or something, and you would have MSNBC saying, “Look, he’s doing a great job.”

CLAY: Yes. Right.

BUCK: They wouldn’t care, right? It wouldn’t matter. There’s nothing he could do, that would make the Democrats want him to be gone or that they would take him — you know, take him out of office voluntarily. But as for the resignation point, we have these generals: the chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Milley; the secretary of defense, former four-star General Lloyd Austin, who I remember actually briefing in Iraq a long time ago.

CLAY: Yeah, we talked about that.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: You remember him. You don’t think he remembers you.

BUCK: Oh, no, no, no. I was just another guy wearing a T-shirt with some sunglasses on who is like, “Hello, sir. My name is (beep).”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Can’t say what my name is.

CLAY: He might know you now.

BUCK: Well, they could know me now.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: That’s true. That’s true. But anyway, I’m just kidding about this, of course. They could know my name. I’m an American citizen, and they were cleared for everything. But it was supposed to be a spy joke. Anyway, point being, Clay: Resignations. What do you resign for in this country? What are you forced to resign for?

Not sending senior citizens in the nursing homes to die by the thousands. That’s not why Governor Cuomo resigned. For sexually inappropriate comments and some alleged touching of subordinates. That’s what you resign for. What do you resign for in the military? Speaking out against the chain of command, as we know, not presiding over a massive blunder.

And this goes to, you know, what in our culture will people be able to get away with and what they can’t, what bureaucratically is defensible and what is not. In the way things go right now, it feels like there’s no accountability, because a lot of people, don’t care about the big things. They care about the hashtags. They care about what will get them love on social media from their friends.

CLAY: Yeah. And there’s no chance, that Biden is going to be forced out of office over this. And, by the way, we polled this last week, and 74% of our audience would rather have Joe Biden in office right now than they would Kamala Harris. So even if that were going to occur. But I think the dishonesty of the media, is being put to the forefront here.

Because there’s no demand for consequences. There’s no head on a platter, that can forced to be brought to bear and take the blame for what happened in Afghanistan. And that’s not even being discussed in any kind of significant fashion. Instead, you have Joe Biden just being able to lie. Same thing going with Defense Secretary Austin, with Milley, everybody else. They’re trying to focus on this and argue that it’s a success, which is a blatant lie.

BUCK: Right, but that goes to the resignation point, because how could you be arguing, as they are, that this is a big success, and people resigning over it? Soo it just turns into… I always say the CIA, the Intel community was a giant self-licking ice cream cone. Right?

CLAY: (chuckling) Yeah.

BUCK: It always took care of itself. Always first and foremost issued in its prerogatives, what it’s doing. Its pay and its perks. And what you see here, is that the narrative requires, for this White House no resignations. Because how could you resign over a catastrophic success, Clay. Because I guess that’s what this is.

CLAY: It’s funny. That’s a great phrase. Because Biden tried to in his address yesterday simultaneously say he had no options because of the deal that Donald Trump had made and so his hands were tied. And then also, claimed success for the plan! Did you notice that? Like, he was arguing two different things simultaneously.

If the plan was so bad, and you had no other options, why should you get to claim the success for it? And, by the way, we all know, because he did 100 executive orders or whatever else. The moment Biden walked into the White House, he started reversing many of the decisions that had been made by Donald Trump. He had plenty of time to change this outcome if he didn’t want to follow it. Instead, he wants to be able to blame Trump while simultaneously taking credit for the success.

BUCK: Right. Biden wants to have his ice cream and eat it too. We know this, in general. Certainly on this issue, he’s telling us that if we didn’t draw down in this way — if we didn’t have the exit, Clay — we faced a Taliban military onslaught that would have forced U.S. troops to go into the front lines and be fighting again, just like our Marines did in Helmand, just like our soldiers and airmen have been doing in Afghanistan for 20 years on and off, depending on the time period.

But then he also says that it’s Trump’s fault for putting us on this. So which is it? Was the Taliban ascendant to the point where you couldn’t stay without an escalation into a major war, or was it that Joe Biden…? It’s all self-contradictory. But they’re hoping to obscure things enough that the takeaway will be, “Okay, the war is over, so nothing matters about how it happened,” and then Joe Biden’s poll numbers start to go up again.

CLAY: I don’t know that Biden is even smart enough or functionally cognizant enough to recognize all of those conflicts.

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Left Panics Over Texas Abortion Law

1 Sep 2021

BUCK: There’s something trending right now on social media. You may not have seen if you’re not as active on social media as Clay and I are. “Christian Taliban” is what is trending right now. That’s the phrase, and it’s a reference… It has nothing to do with Afghanistan, really. It’s a reference to Texas bill SB8. This is a fetal heartbeat bill in the state of Texas.

The big news today is it goes into effect; the Supreme Court has decided not to put a stay on the bill. Now, Clay and I are going to break down and Clay will bring in his legal expertise in a moment, some of the specifics of the bill because the mechanisms of it are fascinating. I just wanted to give you some of the broad strokes.

The right to life is a central battle, I believe, for the moral compass of this country and for conservatism overall. And we are at a point now with a Supreme Court that is pretty… Well, calling it solidly 6-3 conservative leaning might be too much. But certainly, for the first time in my lifetime, you could see an overturning of Roe v. Wade, and perhaps Planned Parenthood v. Casey or a combination thereof.

And it could happen as soon as this June. There’s already a Mississippi law that has been challenged. It’s gone up to the Supreme Court. I believe it’s a ban on abortions after 15 weeks, but I should check up on that. Because I’m not as up on the Mississippi bill. In the Texas bill, they call it — you can see, Planned Parenthood released it.

They’ll refer to it as a “cardiac activity bill,” which is just a euphemistic way of saying tiny heart. Tiny heartbeat bill. So you’re not allowed to… Well, actually what it does, because you have to be specific about this. Is it deputizes individual citizens — not the state of Texas — to bring suit against. not the woman who has an abortion after fetal heartbeat has been detected, but the provider of the abortion, suing for damages up to $10,000.

Clay, this involves a whole lot of moving pieces where they’re essentially going to make it more challenging for providers to give abortions after the heartbeat is detected. It has to do with legal fees. It has to do with standing, a whole bunch of things. Break some of it down for us.

CLAY: Yeah, so this is… (chuckles) Let me start here. When you are in law school and you study Roe v. Wade, regardless of what your preconceived notions are as it pertains to abortion — strictly from a legal perspectives — Roe v. Wade is one of the messiest, least logically consistent opinions that has ever been written by the Supreme Court.

BUCK: Bad law.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Bad law.

CLAY: It’s just there’s a great legal aphorism, Buck, it’s that tough cases make bad law. There’s almost no way to read Roe v. Wade and think to yourself, “Okay. I can understand what’s going on here. The Supreme Court justices decided that they would want abortions to be legal, and then they did whatever it took to massage, to move, to blow up, all these different aspects of the existing Constitution to make Roe v. Wade into law.”

So what has been going on ever since that law… I believe 1973. It’s been a while since I took the bar exam. I think I’m right. Roe v. Wade came out in 1973. What happened since Roe v. Wade is many people out there — the right, the left, reasonable people — have looked at Roe v. Wade and have said, “This is a broken ruling. Is it possible do make sense of this?”

I don’t claim to know what’s going to happen, Buck. But legally, you are right. In theory, there are six Supreme Court justices who are willing to adjust and/or change and/or overturn Roe v. Wade. I think what’s going to happen is the Supreme Court is eventually — and I don’t know if it’s going to be this year, next year, or five years from now.

Because with the Roberts Court, it is very political, and oftentimes, he doesn’t want to step into a political mess. They try to have really narrow rulings. I think what’s likely to happen is abortion is going to be sent back to the states, and state legislatures — like what’s going on in Texas right now — are going to be able to make their own decisions as it pertains to abortion law.

That’s what I think is going to happen. And that is, in some ways, legally, going to create even more of a mess, right? Because you’re going to have a law in New York that could be drastically different than New Hampshire. And certainly the law in New York is going to be a lot different than Alabama. California is going to be a lot different than South Carolina. All these different hodgepodges of states. But that’s kind of what we have right now.

BUCK: Well, we have that with gun laws, and then you have that with a lot of things.

CLAY: You have that with everything. You have it with lotteries. You have it with assisted suicides, which is legal in some places not legal in others. And so it’s going to be a big mess. But I do think that they are going to uphold some of these laws like Texas, and then there’s going to be all these different challenges.

BUCK: The mess, as Clay says, would be a huge advance forward for the right-to-life movement. I think it would be an earth-shattering decision for the left because abortion is essentially the sacrament, the rite — R-I-T-E, better way of saying it — of the left. They believe it should be absolute. There can be no restrictions, whatsoever.

There is no right — and this is a fabricated right that they treat the way they do, the right — to kill a preborn baby in the womb. And so this would strike down what we agree is bad federal law. So at that level, they should have states like Texas and probably Mississippi, and, you know, other red states would have some pretty…

Clay, I don’t even know how many states would have total bans. A lot of them would have what they have in Europe, by the way, which is time restrictions, as in fetal heartbeats and beyond. That’s likely to affect a lot of places. What I found fascinating about the SB8, the Texas bill that is now going into effect is it allows people to bring suit against the providers.

It doesn’t allow the abortion provider to get legal fee damages, even if they win, from the individual bringing the suit. And beyond that, it essentially creates a situation where women are not being sued. Women are not being imprisoned. It goes after providers who give an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected. And allows monetary damages.

So it essentially opens up the floodgates of lawsuits. And incentivizes people who are pro-life, financially incentivizes them — never mind, of course, the moral incentive — to bring lawsuits against providers. And, I mean, Planned Parenthood is just on the warpath today. You’ve got, you know, “Christian Taliban” trending.

The shrill nature with which the pro-abortion left reacts to anything like this is honestly just deeply unsettling at a human level. They act like this would be the worst thing to happen in this country, certainly since slavery. The left believes that a pro-life surge in this country would be absolutely horrific.

CLAY: I think there is no doubt. That is the drumbeat that they did use to mobilize anything associated with the Supreme Court, and we talked about it yesterday, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, the Amy Coney Barrett hearings. The reason why those hearings were so wildly, so wildly — especially Brett Kavanaugh, so wildly — and awfully divisive and dishonest is abortion. Right? I mean, that’s the essence of the entirety of the anger about Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

BUCK: The ferocity over that was all about abortion actually. That’s why people thought they were being honorable by lying about Kavanaugh. Sorry to interrupt.

CLAY: No, no, no. You’re right. It’s also interesting, the reason why Amy Coney Barrett was not as wildly, outlandishly negative, was because of the timing. Because Democrats reason afraid of turning off suburban women by going aggressively after Amy Coney Barrett — a mother, I believe, of six children — and basically, if you talk to anybody at Notre Dame, one of the most beloved people on the Notre Dame campus, both as a teacher, and as a human being. And they recognized that she was a tough target in a way that Brett Kavanaugh wasn’t because he’s a white guy and Democrats can go balls to the wall after a white guy over abortion in the way they can’t with a woman over abortion.

Right? So that is the essence why the battle was so intense as it pertained there, even though Amy Coney Barrett was actually changing the overall makeup of the court. Right? Because she was replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg whereas Kavanaugh was just stepping in for Justice Kennedy. So this is the fault line. And I’m curious, for people out there who are just reading the tea leaves and trying to assess where we’re going, what is John Roberts going to do? Right? Because he has been an incrementalist. He has been an institutionalist. He has been someone who has tried not to rock the boat, in an aggressive fashion.

BUCK: For the first time in 50 years, we can agree, Roe is in jeopardy as a legal decision right now for the first time — real legal jeopardy — or at least, maybe you could say since Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

CLAY: That’s why I’m pointing to John Roberts. Because as an institutionalist, a lot of times, they don’t want to actually directly overturn a case. Right? They try to avoid it. They decide a case narrowly, which is why I think they’re going to try to finesse it in a way that allows states to have more power.

As opposed to overturning federally Roe v. Wade in some sort of aggressive fashion, they’re going to allow incrementalism from the states. Really the legal strategy is, “Hey, see how far we can go in terms of restricting abortion on a state-by-state basis.” We’ll find out where the Supreme Court draws that line.

BUCK: And to be clear, that was the Scalia argument. That was Justice Scalia’s line on this. I heard him making the case on this myself when I was in college. That it wasn’t that the Supreme Court would say, “There’s now a federal ban on abortion,” it would be that it would go back to the states, and there would be state determinations.

CLAY: That’s right. But I think a lot of people don’t understand that from a legal perspective, Buck. They think, “Oh, we’re going to totally overturn Roe v. Wade.” What’s more likely, I believe, is the incrementalism there, would be we’re going to give the power back to the states to determine what is and what is not legal as it pertains to abortion inside a state border.

BUCK: I am hoping that Roe gets struck down. That will happen in June, if it does happen. But we will have to wait awhile for it.

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California Recall: Frontier in the Battle for Freedom

1 Sep 2021

CLAY: What’s so frustrating about all this covid data, Buck, the CDC has now come out and they have told unvaccinated people that they should not be traveling over Labor Day Weekend. Now, this is pure madness, because as we continue to talk about on this show, many of those unvaccinated people — I’m in this camp; you used to be in this camp before your brother’s wedding — have already had covid.

BUCK: I’ve definitely had covid.

CLAY: Yeah. But you’re not unvaccinated anymore —

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: — because you also have been vaccinated. Because you got pressured into it, in order to go to your brother’s wedding. But the data out of Israel has suggested that up to 27 times as much protection for people who have had covid, who have natural immunity, as opposed to vaccinated immunity. But these people just continue to lie and no one calls them on it.

And it’s spreading right — and this is what you were talking about Kristi Noem. This is why we want red states to draw the line and try to protect our freedoms as much as they can. Because Pennsylvania — which decided the presidential election in 2016, which decided the presidential election, really probably, in 2020. Governor Wolf of Pennsylvania has now stepped forward, and he has put in a statewide school mask mandate for students and staff. K through 12. The power grab is not stopping. Play cut 18.

WOLF: Wearing a mask in schools is necessary to keep our children in the classroom and to keep covid out of that classroom. So to that end, the Department of Health is directing all early learning and child care and K-through-12, private and public schools across the country — across the state, to require students and staff to wear masks when they’re indoors.

BUCK: Now, Clay, you know we were talking about trying to protect of people’s individual freedoms and liberties. And how if you just sit around and hope that it’ll happen, you will keep on losing. Which is what we have been seeing during the course of covid. Notice how it’s for private schools too, a private entity. This is the state saying, “You must wear a mask.”

If the state can say, “You must wear a mask,” I can assure the state can and will also say, “You must get the shot.” Remember, they’re looking still for, I believe, the final tranche of approval data for the FDA to say, “This is fine for kids.” Right? This is where we are heading right now. And so that’s why they say, “Oh, it’s about individual freedoms first.”

No, we have a First Amendment to the Constitution, for example, about the free exercise of religion that is above and beyond what the state or what the federal government or what the local government is allowed to infringe upon. Right? There are some things that actually go beyond, just separation of powers, and arguments between plenary power, and what the federal government can do.

And when you’re talking about forced vaccine mandates on people across the country, that’s where people have to actually be able to — that’s where those in power need to take a stand, or else you’re just waiting for what variety of mandate, puts the needle in your arm. And I said here in New York, I had someone walk up to me in a coffee shop yesterday. I had sat down.

Empty, Clay — and I don’t mean empty like not a lot of people. I was the only person there. I was sitting there having a little caffeine while I do my TV show for The First after this. And the one clerk in the place who was 30 feet away, came over and said, “I know…” I didn’t have a mask on, of course. “I know I already sold to you. I’m so sorry, but you can’t sit there unless you present your ID and a vaccine card.” This is the country, that if you live in New York City — and I think soon to be some other cities as well — we are living in.

CLAY: It is pure madness and it’s not getting less mad, right? For a lot of you out there, I think you’ve been expecting that sanity is going to return. But just remember where we’ve gone since May. In May, the CDC said, “Nobody who is vaccinated, needs to wear a mask, indoors or outdoors.” And that same time frame, Dr. Fauci said, and Joe Biden said, “If we get 70% of people vaccinated by July 4th, we’ll be great.”

Buck, we’ve got almost 75% of adults vaccinated now in this country, 18 and up. Seventy-four percent is the most recent number I’ve seen having at least gotten one shot. And what’s happened? Our freedoms are disappearing. Many states are moving back in the direction of actual lockdowns, and I feel like the only way… I want of people in California to listen to me carefully here.

I feel like if you are in California right now and you are listening to us — which a huge number of you are — you need to try and recall Gavin Newsom with every fiber of your being. You need to get people on the phone who you haven’t talked to in a long time. We need to all be moms out there to lead the revolution.

Because, Buck, until there is a significant consequence politically for all of these Draconian measures — and until Democrats have to take a step back and say, “Wait a minute, are we finally losing — after 18 months — the majority of our support?” I don’t think it’s going to change. Maybe it’s irrational. But I’m hoping that California can flip the script for us.

BUCK: You are being told right now, everyone… If you are unvaccinated, you are being told by the CDC, officially: Do not travel this weekend.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Now, I understand that people can just say to this, “Oh, but, Buck, that’s just the guidance,” as Fauci would say. (impression) “It’s just a suggestion.” Look at their suggestions for the last now 18 months. It’s going to be two years of this madness before we can blink an eye here.

CLAY: There’s no doubt.

BUCK: That’s where we’re going to be. We’re still going to be in the middle of this craziness two years in which, if you had told somebody that, I think in March of 2020, they would have said —

CLAY: Fifteen days to stop the spread.

BUCK: They would have said, “Absolutely not.” They’re saying right now, “Don’t travel.” What do you think if we have continued spread…? And note that the spread is now in a bunch of blue states here. With higher-than-average vaccination rates. So what is going on there? Why was Florida and Texas a five-alarm fire a week ago, but Oregon and Washington State, the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, some of these other states with — in some cases — all-time high caseloads —

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: — they don’t get the same degree of attention — and not just attention, but scorn from the national media? We all know why. The CDC asking you — quote, “asking you” — not to travel this weekend if you’re unvaccinated, shows you the mentality which is going to transform, going into this winter, into, “The CDC now recommends unvaccinated people not travel,” which then will turn into the Biden administration saying, “Vaccine passports for air travel.”

CLAY: Which I’m afraid of.

BUCK: This is the progression. And this is why if we don’t have some states that take action now to protect people from having to do this — if you just wait until the progressives with their incrementalism and their obsession with controlling you can find a mechanism, to do that it — it’s just a matter of time. You can take out your watch now. Because eventually, they’re going to force you — even if you’ve had covid and there’s no medical necessity for you to get it — they’re going to force you to get the shot anyway. I’m telling you, it’s coming.

CLAY: That’s why we need people in California, Buck. You are, right now, the front line, because I do think Gavin Newsom getting a recall would be a “holy crap” moment for Democrats to lose in a state like California.

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Biden Lies Rain Down in Every Direction

1 Sep 2021

CLAY: The lies are raining down in every direction. I got to tell you guys, every time I think the lies can’t become more insanely easy to point out as being lies from the Democratic Party, from Joe Biden, from everybody in his orbit, they just keep raining down. Yesterday, after we went off the air, Joe Biden finally waddled his way up to rostrum. He did not take questions, by the way, because — let’s be honest — Joe Biden can barely read off the teleprompter.

And he attempted to claim an extraordinary success for the way that Afghanistan has been handled. I mean, this is one of the biggest lies that has ever been shared by an American president. This is what Joe Biden said, yesterday. Play cut number one.

BIDEN: No nation — no nation — has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will and the ability to do it, and we did it today. The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill, bravely (sic) and selfless courage of the United States military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals. For weeks, they risked their lives to get American citizens, Afghans who helped us, citizens of our allies and partners and others on board planes and out of the country. And they did it facing a crush of enormous crowds seeking to leave the country.

CLAY: Okay. That’s one big lie. The second big lie, I’m gonna play the cut that proves the lie as well. Biden claimed that we would get everybody out of Afghanistan, all of our American citizens. Well, in yesterday’s address, he turned that on its head and tried to take credit for getting 90% of our people out. Listen to this.

BIDEN: Bottom line: 90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave — and for those remaining Americans, there is no deadline.

CLAY: All right. Now, 90% — 90% can be good, if you got a kid on a spelling test. It’s not really that good when you’re leaving 10% of American citizens behind to face terrorists. And it’s a direct refutation of the promise, that Joe Biden made to George Stephanopoulos two weeks ago in an ABC interview. I want you to listen to this. He said, “We’re going to stay until all Americans are out.” This was just two weeks ago. Now, he’s caught in a lie, bragging about 90%.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American —

BIDEN: Yeees!

STEPHANOPOULOS: — who wants to be out is out?

BIDEN: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, Americans should understand that troops might have to be there beyond August 31st.

BIDEN: No! Americans should understand that we’re going to try to get it done before August 31st.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But, if we don’t, the troops will stay.

BIDEN: If we don’t, we’ll determine at the time who’s left.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And?

BIDEN: And if there are American force — if there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay till we get them all out.

On August 19, Biden said “if there are American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out.”

He lied. pic.twitter.com/yOKN8RRgO6

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 30, 2021

CLAY: Blatant lies, Buck, and we’re going to be one of the few people in media who is actually going to hold the president accountable for the promises he made and the promises he has not kept. And the lies he’s telling. And if you just listen to that audio, it’s staggering, the duplicity, the lies.

BUCK: Yeah. Clay, they’re already doing what we said they were going to do, right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Yesterday, remember when I said, “Clay, what do I expect?” We talked about this, that Joe Biden is going to start to focus on just the end state here of the end of the war in Afghanistan as all that matters, and the debacle of how we got to it, is irrelevant. Irrelevant, they want us to think, for whether Joe Biden is competent.

Irrelevant for whether the national security apparatus around him truly has experts that are worthy of the powers entrusted in them. They want to move past this. In fact, even worse, they want everyone to think, that somehow this was a stroke of brilliance, something to be deeply proud of.

Now, it’s tough. I will say this almost in Biden’s defense. We’re talking about him breaking promises. But he made those promises clearly under the incredibly false impression — and this also goes to the transcript of the call he had that has been leaked with Ashraf Ghani — that there was actually going to be a Taliban versus Afghan National Security Forces fight that would lasts for some period of time.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So when he was making all those promises, he was in the wrongest of wrong zones for his assessment of Afghanistan.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Now, he still is breaking his word. I’m not saying that. But clearly, this guy had no idea what the heck was really going on, and that’s why now… People have been asking me, Clay — and this is one of the big debates that breaks out, one of the big discussions: Will this place become a safe haven for terror?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Now the assessment is, we’ve lost about 90% of our intelligence collection capability in that country. I mean, there is no substitute for having diplomatic personnel in forward outposts, not just even in an embassy; for having military personnel all over the country, meeting with tribal elders, driving down the roads of Kandahar and Jalalabad and Khost.

And doing these things that give you a real sense of what’s going on. We hadn’t had that in a long time. We have retreated to the bases, and now we’ve cut that off entirely. So will it be a terrorist safe haven? Clay, we may not know until something goes boom; that’s the problem.

CLAY: Let me ask you this, Buck: You, unlike a lot of people who make a living talking, have actually done intelligence briefings. You’ve been on the ground in Afghanistan. How nervous are you about the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and one of these terror groups trying to do an attack, maybe overseas, but maybe even more so here in America?

Are you on high alert now in the wake of Afghanistan losing our ability to have a bunch of intelligence on the ground as we would have before? Are you nervous at all about somebody trying to strike us, to say, “Hey, 20 years later, we can still do the same thing that we did on 9/11?” Does that anniversary put you on edge, at all, from an intelligence perspective?

BUCK: Absolutely. The narrative here, really matters.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This is why in jihadist literature and communications, they’ll make references to the Balfour Declaration.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They’ll make reference to battles that occurred in Afghanistan or Syria or wherever hundreds of years ago.

CLAY: Years ago.

BUCK: Yeah, that are from hundreds of years ago that less than one-in-1,000 people in the West would have any idea what the heck they’re referencing. Narrative matters, and here’s what we’ve been going through with this. There’s been a downturn in the jihadist storyline, if you will —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — because of something that got very little attention during the presidency, and I actually had a member of Special Forces, a guy from Special Forces to come up to me to just say he appreciated during the Trump presidency, that I was talking about how they kicked butt in Syria.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They went after ISIS in Raqqa. They destroyed ISIS’s control there. So that was a huge blow. Because if you remember, from all over the world, you had these jihadis who were running around, acting out as terrorists on behalf of the Islamic State, because they really believed in this notion of caliphate and the rest of it.

The problem here, the concern, is that Afghanistan now has a huge propaganda victory to the forces of the global jihad once again. We’d had this low period, because of the destruction of ISIS.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Largely, the destruction of ISIS. And if they were looking — and, Clay, I hate the, “Oh, we could get hit any moment. Oh, it’s an orange zone. No, it’s a yellow zone.”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Because at some point if you cry wolf every day, you’re not being helpful. But can we think of a better moment in time for the jihadist, evildoers around the world to reset the narrative of their victory, of their black banners being unfurled in cities and countries around the world, than to have a mass casualty attack of some kind on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, after the fall of Kabul and Afghanistan to the Taliban? I think it’s hard to come up with one.

CLAY: And this is why I bring it up, Buck. Because as I’ve mentioned, you actually have a lot of experience here. I’m sitting around looking at what will be going around on 9/11 and the day after 9/11. For the first time, people will be going back to mass crowds, to college footballs on the anniversary of 9/11 and to NFL games on the day after 9/11, and a couple of days before when the season kicks off.

That will be a moment of great celebration. I think for many Americans out there. But in the wake of Afghanistan, where America — I think it’s fair to say — nose, at the absolute best, has only been bloodied, right? We’ve been embarrassed by what happened in Afghanistan.

To your point on the narrative of jihadist attacks being able to strike on the 20th anniversary, and try to send a message of, “We kicked your ass out of Afghanistan, and we can still do damage to you even 20 years later,” it feels like a particularly dangerous time in terms of the goals of terrorists.

BUCK: It absolutely is, because the storylines that the jihadists tell, whether we’re talking about Al-Qaeda, or the Islamic State, or any of the other innumerable jihadist entities all over the world… I mean, there’s everything from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. You could sit here and go through the list.

There’s Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. There are dozens of terrorist groups that operate in the AfPak region, that very few people know about. Literally dozens of them. And many of them have as a core tenet, attacking Western targets and waging jihad against the West. We’ve been in a downturn from that.

We’ve got used to, unfortunately, those kinds of attacks occurring, and there was that spike because of the Islamic State under the Obama administration, for years. It was one of the ways in which Obama’s foreign policy was so catastrophic. Now here we are with another weak Democrat who, let’s remind ourselves, has the same foreign policy team around him that Obama did that led to those catastrophic eight years.

And I don’t mean the same in general terms. I mean actually, in many cases, the same human beings — the same people making decisions, not just philosophically, similar. And you have to look at this now and see Afghanistan… And the optics matter as well. Because we obviously thought there would be some fight back against the Taliban.

That that didn’t happen means that our whole notion of working with foreign partners to fight against these jihadist entities. Any time the jihadis — whether it’s in Yemen or northern Nigeria or it’s in Somalia or it’s in the Philippines, wherever they decide to start attacking. And hopefully, by the way, Clay —

CLAY: We don’t want this to happen, by the way.

BUCK: No, no. Of course we don’t want it to happen, and it may not happen.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I’m somebody who believes you cannot predict the future. But if you look at the swirling pieces right now, and the players involved, between now and the 9/11 anniversary is a time for the black flag of jihad to be planted on a mass grave for a mass casualty attack somewhere in this country — I mean, somewhere in the world. That’s what I think is going to be a concern for all of us.

CLAY: And at the time, we have spent. You talked about how Trump did such a good job of going after of these jihadist organizations. We’ve actually turned crazily to the narrative of “h, the people that we’re in danger from in America. Are who? White supremacists!”

BUCK: The insurrectionists! That’s an excellent point, Clay. The primary counterterrorism mission under the Biden administration is bizarrely and psychotically, Trump voters.

CLAY: Yes. They’re the danger.

BUCK: According to the people in charge at the DOJ and DHS, it’s people that took selfies on January 6 in the Capitol Building. That’s the primary counterterrorism threat. We’ll see how long that narrative holds.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: After Biden’s speech yesterday, which I wouldn’t even say… I thought it would be a somber victory from the Biden administration. But it was actually a defiant, gaslighting, aggressive victory lap. I know it’s bizarre to think of it that way. But that is what was expressed by Joe Biden. And already, the narrative is out there. They’ve got the talking points. They’re going with it. “This was pretty well done,” they’re trying to tell you. Here’s the White House chief of staff.

RON KLAIN: It’s easy to second guess, but let’s just be clear. America was in this war for 20 years. And I think any effort to unwind it, any effort to bring our troops out, any effort to end our military presence in Afghanistan, was going to be filled with, uhh, heartbreaking scenes and difficulties. And I think, uhh, the Biden administration managed that as well as it could be managed, under the circumstances we were placed in.

BUCK: “As well as it can be managed,” he says.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: As good as anybody could have possibly thought it would be. I mean, sure, they dramatically miscalculated — and that’s putting it mildly — the speed of this whole thing. Sure, they left people behind. We’ve gone from “no man left behind,” to, “Nine out of ten of you will probably make it home,” and that’s supposed to be okay.

And now they’re trying to tell you that this was not only something that Biden will avoid major criticism or political fallout from. But it’s not that big a deal, because it was going to be rough no matter what. Here’s Claire McCaskill, another Democrat, doing cleanup on Aisle 5 for him.

MCCASKILL: I think he laid out exactly why he made this decision, and why he’s standing behind it. Umm, in many ways, I found it refreshing. You know, nobody really believed that the Afghan government would melt away as quickly as it did and that complicated this. But he’s right about one thing, Willie: You don’t ever announce you’re leaving the country and not have a rush to the exits. And that rush to the exits — whether it was the Bagram Air Force Base or whether it was at the Kabul Air Force Base — was always going to be really dangerous to the Americans trying, the military trying to process that!

BUCK: What will they not lie about, Clay? Is there anything?

CLAY: It is a level of blatant dishonesty that I’m not sure we’ve ever seen before, and what is so frustrating about it is the Washington Post headline, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” the New York Times’ “All the News That’s Fit to Print”? They’re not calling out any of these lies. If Donald Trump was president, and every single thing had happened in Afghanistan, the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, would be losing their minds to ridicule the president and demand, frankly, his impeachment over this.

And certainly, Buck, we need to talk about this later on in the show. How is it that nobody is having to get fired over this? Nobody is falling on their sword. Nobody is taking responsibility for the utter incompetence that this entire after began the mess, was involved in.

BUCK: Lieutenant Colonel Scheller is.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: He’s gone. The guy who said there should be accountability, he gets fired.

CLAY: Yes. That’s the only person who has lost his job over this. It’s shameful.

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