MIKE POMPEO: We had a strategic understanding. They knew the risk if they pulled the stunt that they pulled in these 96 hours, what would mean for them. We told them we knew where they lived. We knew where their community was. So, the first thing we did was we had established American strength, American vigilance, and American power would be brought to bear. So that’s the most important thing we would have done differently is we would have demonstrated our resolve to protect and secure Americans and get our people out.

Second, we had an understanding about how we were gonna execute the sequence. That includes, importantly, President Trump making abundantly clear to all of us we were gonna get all of our equipment out, every stitch. And so we had begun to develop the plan to get that equipment out as well. Lastly, we would have never begun to withdraw our military with so many American civilians still on the ground.

BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. There you had former secretary of state Mike Pompeo just establishing so that everyone can know and understand that it did not have to be this way, that the Biden team’s focus on, “Oh, we had to end the endless war. Oh, everybody wanted us to end Afghanistan.”

That’s not what the vast majority of the people complaining and outraged are talking about. They’re talking about the catastrophe of the actual planning here, lack of planning, really, and what’s going on. And the gear, for example, they can’t even avoid the fact that right now there’s billions of dollars of materiel, equipment, guns, Humvees, all kinds of stuff.

Those of you who serve know it’s gonna be an enormous list of what we essentially equipped the Afghan National Army with that’s fallen into the hands of the Taliban. Here’s the current, still (I think he should have resigned but he won’t) national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, just admitting straight up: Yeah, yeah, there’s some stuff that’s gonna fall into the hands of the Taliban that the taxpayers paid for. Play 7.

SULLIVAN: We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article, uhhh, of defense material has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban. And, uh (sputtering), obviously we — we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.

BUCK: Yeah. Don’t know how many Americans are there, Clay, don’t know how to get the Americans out, don’t know how much gear has fallen into their hands. People are starting to take note of this Biden administration’s absurdity, and it’s actually showing up in your data.

CLAY: Yeah, I’m gonna share some data here. But I just want to reinforce: Remember, those of you out there who are afraid that the Taliban might not use this military material to advance human rights, we have sent, according to Linda Thomas-Greenfield, our ambassador to the U.N., just so you know, guys, we sent — and this is a direct quote from her — “a very strongly worded press statement to the Taliban to let them know that we expect them to be respectful of human rights.”

So people out there, anybody thinking, “Hey, now they’ve got all of our weapons; the Taliban haven’t exactly been great guys,” I want you to know the Biden administration is on this. They sent “a very strongly worded letter.” They’re gonna put the letter in the file of the Taliban at the U.N. And you know with a letter in the file, that is serious business.

BUCK: The Taliban ambassadors are not gonna be invited to the next Martha’s Vineyard bash of the elites and the globalists, that’s for sure.

CLAY: They are not going to get it go to Obama’s 70th birthday party. This is, by the way, data that is pretty significant, I think. The question we asked, Buck, was, okay, this is a foreign policy disaster. Now, it ties in with the border. It ties in with the murder rate. It ties in with inflation. It ties in with covid.

We haven’t even hardly talked about these absurd booster shots that everybody’s gonna get after eight months. Rasmussen did a new poll to look at how people thought about their vote in the 2020 presidential election. Now, almost all of you out there listening to us right now don’t regret your vote at all because we voted for Donald Trump as opposed to Joe Biden.

But what we’ve been talking about, Buck, is this question: Would independents and even some Democrats, moderate Democrats start to regret supporting Joe Biden, buying into that fear porn? Here’s crazy. Democrats… Democrats! Nearly one in 10 of Joe Biden voters who are Democrats regret their decision now to vote for Joe Biden.

Twelve percent of moderates (a/k/a independents) are saying that they regret their vote for Joe Biden. And this is also interesting: 14% of black voters regret voting for Joe Biden. Asked how they would vote today, 37% said they would vote for Joe Biden for president today, down from the 45% who said they did after the election.

What would that look like? And 43% say they would vote for Donald Trump. So right now across this poll, 6% more people would vote for Donald Trump than Joe Biden, which means that Trump would win in a landslide if the election were taking place today.

BUCK: And this is supposed to be in roughly the honeymoon period for a new president.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This is year one. All he had to do was not mess everything up. Get us out of covid, get the shots out, let economy come back. But when you look at every decision that’s been made from the absolute relentless and lawlessness at the U.S.-Mexico border, an affirmative decision by the Biden team to make it so — and remember when Kamala was the border czar?

CLAY: Oh, yeah.

BUCK: That all disappeared. And the crime —

CLAY: Where is she, by the way? What is she even doing?

BUCK: She is smart enough to stay out of the political —

CLAY: Stay out of the fire?

BUCK: Stay away from the political blast radius as much as you can here because she knows… I mean, the border issue for her a few months back was a disaster, and she just ended up getting politically tainted by it at some level. And now with Afghanistan shows hoping nobody remembers that in April, she was leaking out there —

CLAY: That she was super involved.

BUCK: “Oh, I’m really involved in the Afghan withdrawal plans,” because she knows that this administration is embattled. And let’s remember, for an administration… Clay, you give those those numbers which is a powerful reminder to everybody —

CLAY: I’ve got one more for you, by the way.

BUCK: — that there is something else here, but this is an administration that has 90 to 95% of corporate media in its pocket, doing its bidding; propping it up, pretending like when Joe goes wandering into the petunias because he’s confused outside the White House, it’s no big deal. And we still have people regretting their votes.

CLAY: I want to hammer this home one more time, because we’ve talked, Buck, about how so many people are committed to their side of the political equation that they won’t look at the data. According to this Rasmussen poll, 13% of Democrats say they would vote for Trump today. That’s not independents. That’s 13% of Democrats say they would support Donald Trump right now if the election were being held today. Based on these polls, Trump would win in a landslide.

BUCK: Yeah. And the media will discount this. They’ll say that Rasmussen say traditionally pro-Trump pollster and everything.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Look, we all can see this now. If you were undecided going in to the 2020 election and you heard, “Ohhhh, but everything willing back to normal,” right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: You were promised normalcy.

CLAY: That’s what Biden ran on.

BUCK: Which is super appealing to people who had been through, at that point, almost a year of covid restrictions and madness, right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So the return to normalcy, Biden in the basement, that was the pitch. If you’re one of those people, you have to see what’s going on now. Does the economy feel good? Does it feel like cities have come back from covid? Does it feel normal?

CLAY: Does it feel normal? That’s the essence of the question.

BUCK: The answer is no, if you’re being honest about it. So there was a swindle involved here. And the same people in the press right now pretending, “Oh, Biden. We’re gonna ask real questions. This doesn’t look good,” they were the ones who were telling you a year ago that Donald Trump was worse than Hitler and Joe Biden would make it all nice and fun and better. They lied to you. They lied to you.

CLAY: And, you know what? Trump being forced off of social media might actually be helping him a little bit, because it makes Biden look more incompetent, and it’s hard to tie to it to Trump, right.

BUCK: Not the Orange Man Bad all the time.

CLAY: Without the Great Satan there for Biden to blame everything on, he has to deal with his own incompetence instead of being able to rely on Trump.

BUCK: I don’t want spend much of our time on it, but for everybody out there, if you’re wondering how awful journalists and journalism is —

CLAY: Oh my gosh, yes.

BUCK: — there’s a Washington Post… It’s an opinion piece, but it’s a Washington Post piece that what’s the headline, Clay, is what? It’s, sure, the Taliban has Twitter and Trump doesn’t because the Taliban plays by the rules.

CLAY: Why Trump’s banned and the Taliban, alternately, they play by the rules. The Washington Post, Buck! “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

BUCK: What did I say yesterday on the show, Clay?

CLAY: You’re right.

BUCK: I said if you really asked a leftist, “Who is more dangerous to have on Twitter, the ayatollah or Trump, the Taliban or Trump?”

CLAY: (laughs) Yes.

BUCK: “Who deserves more to get a terms of service violation be removed?” Nine out of 10 leftists would tell you, “Oh, Trump is far more dangerous than the Taliban.” This is what they’ve actually convinced themselves of.