CLAY: Buck, I’m curious for this 3:45 talk, which I’m sure we’re going to be discussing a great deal tomorrow. Do you think Biden is primarily going to focus on blaming Trump, or do you think he’s going to try to just put this behind him? What’s your expectation? Because I have my thoughts, too, of what this address a couple of hours from now is gonna sound like.

BUCK: I think he’s going to try to take a sweeping view of history, Grandpa Joe fireside chat approach to this. So essentially it will be, “This has been 20 years. There’s been a lot of mistakes made. There’s been a lot of challenge here. Our men and women in uniform served honorably.”

CLAY: Honorably.

BUCK: Yeah, you could expect the commander-in-chief to say certain things. And then I think he’s going to say, “This was what we inherited from the Trump administration as the timeline. We extended it. This was not gonna be easy, but we believe it’s the right move.” He’s gotta project some belief in competency here because otherwise people are gonna start saying… When I say “people,” obviously you and I are already there. But there will be folks who change their minds about this regime and Biden based on this.

CLAY: I think it’s already happened.

BUCK: Yeah, that’s what they’re trying to avoid here, and I think they’re realizing now. You go down the list, Clay: Tthe border, the economy, inflation, crime in major U.S. cities, and now Afghanistan. What is the major power — and of course the covid surge here and the covid authoritarianism and forever covid. What are they doing well?

CLAY: He’s the opposite of “everything he touches turns to gold.” We can’t say exactly what the opposite of gold would be, but you can think about what it might be. Everything Biden touches turns to crap, effectively. I think that’s the fear now. And, by the way, the silence for so many days, and the idea of people being out to on vacation. I just want to continue to hammer this home.

If either you or I had been on vacation we would have wanted to come on today. We would have gotten probably on the phone from wherever we might have been and said, “Hey, I want to weigh in; this is a big story. I don’t want to just miss this Monday,” right? I imagine. We need to talk about this off the air, but one of our pledges would be when really big stories happen we’re gonna try to be there for you even if we happen to be on vacation.

BUCK: Of course.

CLAY: Biden, you can’t reach him. You’ve got Jen Psaki can’t be reached. Who knows what they got Kamala Harris doing right now! It’s not only the disaster that you’re seeing happen on television. It’s that there isn’t even any acknowledgment or discussion of it from the Biden White House that is in any way remotely defensible.

BUCK: Right, because first and foremost the optics are what they’re most concerned about, because the prospect of losing domestic political power is what keeps them awake.

CLAY: Which is real.

BUCK: That’s what keeps Democrats up at night. It’s not really what’s happening in Afghanistan — and I’m just gonna say this. There will be… There already have been reports. The Taliban are putting out some of these videos… By the way, you know, the Taliban has a Twitter account.

CLAY: Wow. Yes.

BUCK: So they can make women dress up like beekeepers and they can do all these things that they do and atrocities and beheadings and all that stuff. They get to keep their Twitter account. Donald Trump, however, does not. Just think about that.

CLAY: That is a tremendous failure —

BUCK: That is worth pointing out.

CLAY: — when it happens with Iran and all these other countries that are basically destroying human rights.

BUCK: It’s gonna get ugly, folks, uglier than what you’re already seeing; so be prepared for that. And the Biden administration right now is gonna try to set a narrative where this was… Here’s the fundamental lie, and I want us all to be very clear about this. The narrative, Clay, will be, “This had to happen.”

CLAY: This way. It was impossible to avoid.

BUCK: “It was impossible to avoid this circumstance,” and I just want you to know that is not true. And, in fact, they promised you a month ago that it is not true. So this will be thermonuclear-level gaslighting. Be prepared for that to happen.

CLAY: Not only did they say a month ago, 5-1/2 weeks ago to be exact, that this wasn’t gonna happen, they said it was impossible to happen!

BUCK: Or “highly unlikely,” I think, would be Biden words.

CLAY: And now they are going to bring it back and try to claim, I think to your point, that it was all inevitable, even though 5-1/2 weeks ago some quotes, Joe Biden, the Taliban takeover was, quote, “not inevitable.” Also, they’re gonna try to try to avoid the Saigon on steroids reality because they’re gonna claim that this isn’t 1975 and this isn’t Vietnam all over again even though I think anyone with a functional brain says that it is.

BUCK: The South Vietnamese actually did continue on the fight against a heavily outside-backed communist regime in the north. There was no continuing to fight here, Clay.

CLAY: Yeah, they just laid down their arms.

BUCK: This fight was over. They’re just like, “We’re done.” So, in a sense, you could argue this is even worse.

CLAY: A trillion dollars, to say nothing, Buck, of all of the injuries and deaths from all the veterans that we’re hearing from. I’m not sure a trillion dollars has ever been spent with less to show for it than what we’re seeing now in Afghanistan.

BUCK: From a policy level, it’s about as ignominious an end as you could get. As our friend Sean Parnell says, “The suits, not the boots,” deserve the blame here.