BUCK: We had Biden address the nation. Honestly, nothing big from it. Clay and I were thinking about this. We spent the last few minutes of that talking about Biden saying, “There’s lots of logistical challenges. We got it, though, trust us, we got the terrorism mission.” One journalist did say, “Why should we trust you on the counterterrorism mission when you didn’t know the country was gonna fall in the blink of an eye?” which I gotta say —

CLAY: Which was the best question. (laughing) It was the best question, important question.

BUCK: — was a valid and important question there. We’re gonna think that you can stamp out Al-Qaeda cells at will all over Afghanistan, if that is indeed what ends up happening with this country? But here’s the other thing, Clay — I’m gonna put this out there — and then we’re gonna stop. We’re gonna talk fun things. We’re sending everybody off to have a fun weekend but we’ll address it again on Monday.

The Taliban is using leverage here in a way that I think shows they’re trying to pull off something almost mind-blowing in its total scope, which is not only the takeover of Afghanistan in the blink of an eye, but to do so where the U.S. is going to look at them and have to say if — if, if — this continues and the Biden administration says where there’s no U.S. casualties. They’re gonna say, “Okay, we’re ready to be treated like a real nation in the international community.” We have to take seriously the prospect that the Taliban is gonna have a seat at the U.N. within, I don’t know, a year or two. Who knows, right?

CLAY: In the space… Think about this, Buck. In the space of 20 years, the Taliban can have gone from creating such toxic culture and providing cover to Al-Qaeda so that they could destroy the World Trade Center, to now being a legitimate government that we are treating in some way as a representative universe. That’s crazy!

BUCK: Trying to be. Trying to be a legitimate government, right? This could go bad in the blink of an eye but yes. That’s what they’re try to do.

CLAY: The fact that that could happen in 20 years is pretty unbelievable.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: And they have all of the cards in their favor because of how badly Joe Biden has misplayed everything in terms of leaving Afghanistan.

BUCK: Anything’s possible. I’ll tell you, Khadafy gave up their nuclear program in Libya and before we decided to do the whole invasion thing under the Obama administration. Libya, Khadafy was starting to bring Libya into the international community in a way that you go back to the Reagan area and the discotheque and the Lockerbie bombing. You go back into this stuff and you say, “Well, that would never happen.” Anyway… See? Clay, I’m sorry, the counterterrorism part of me starts coming out.

CLAY: We’re gonna talk a lot about this on Monday.

BUCK: I just want to put out there for everybody, the Taliban is positioning itself to have taken over the country will almost no losses to speak of — I mean, very, very few — and be recognized by the international community, including perhaps European countries, not just Russia and China, as a legitimate country very rapidly.