House GOP: Drop Budget, Focus on Afghanistan

BUCK: Our government, the White House, asked the Taliban for permission to extend the August 31st deadline. They’ve given up on this notion of using — meaning America has given up on — September 11th as being some kind of a symbol of the end of the war and the beginning of something new. Now the Taliban is the one that is going to be using that symbolism for their own purposes.

In fact, there’s a Wall Street Journal op-ed referring to “A Taliban 9/11” and going into that in some detail. We can talk about that with Clay here in just a few moments. But before we came back here to join you and bring everyone up to speed on what’s going on, you had Representative Mike Waltz.

He’s a former Special Forces guy. He was SF and a good guy. I know him, and know that he’s a straight shooter, so to speak. And he’s warning about the possibility already of this going so badly that we could have to send soldiers back into Afghanistan. Not for evacuation, perhaps, but even for direct combat roles.

WALTZ: This isn’t about politics. This is about the fact that America now is less safe. Here’s why we’re in even a worse position than we were in 2001. Because now we have no bases in the region. The intelligence community has been very clear they have the will and the intent to hit us again. So as we head into the 20th anniversary, the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we now face a prospect of our soldiers having to go back in.

BUCK: Clay, that’s what I think is in the back of a lot of people’s minds here. On the one hand, there’s just the… Look. This is one of those moments where this isn’t about politics. This is about what’s really important, which is getting every American out of Afghanistan safely. That’s what you and I care about. That’s what we’re sitting here hoping for, first and foremost.

If that doesn’t happen and something goes bad — and we all know what that would mean here in the context of a place like Afghanistan run by the Taliban — there’s the additional possibility of, we go in and we start trading blows with the Taliban again in direct combat operations. That’s not gonna be a short, quick thing, Clay.

CLAY: No doubt. And I think to your point, Buck, the biggest failure of the Biden administration is not necessarily the evacuation itself, although we know how much of a failure that evacuation has already been. It’s creating a situation where the Taliban has all of the control, and we have none of it.

And we’ve hit on this for the past couple of weeks as this maelstrom of disaster has continued to unspool itself. You’ve got situations where 19-year-old kids with guns who are Taliban really have the fate of the Biden administration on their trigger finger. Because if those kids — and I say “kids,” ’cause you’re 18, 19 years old — suddenly lose their cool or even accidentally start firing on crowds.

Then you got Benghazi on steroids for Joe Biden. And what is so humiliating about this is we have no plan for departure, and we have said — and this is the biggest failure of all — hey, we have to be out of there by August 31st. So, Buck, what happens if, as seems likely, there are still many people left in Afghanistan?

BUCK: Well, that’s essential, Clay, because we’re all wondering: Are we going to be able to get everybody out? And when you start to look at what the answer to that question is based on the numbers, the logistics, the realities on the ground, some are already saying, “No, in fact, we need to be prepared for the eventuality here, the imminent reality of Americans being stranded.” Yes, the word “stranded” would certainly apply.

If the Taliban shuts off all access the airport and says, “Sorry, you missed the deadline,” now we are talking about a mass hostage situation for could be 50, could be 500, who knows, could be 5,000 Americans stuck there, and we won’t be able to have the kind of visibility to know what’s even happening to them, necessarily, and Representative Mike McCaul, he’s just straight up saying, “We’re not gonna be able to get out,” and Biden may have blood on his hands.

MCCAUL: The president just announced a firm withdraw date of August 31st. I can tell you there is no way we can humanly get all of our American citizens and Afghan partners out of country by that time. I’ve called it, consistently, an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions. It will be a stain on this presidency — and particularly after the decision made today and what we heard today, he will have blood on his hands. People are gonna die, and they’re going to be left behind.

BUCK: Clay, I hope Representative McCaul is wrong. I hope he’s wrong. I do not think he will be.

CLAY: And that, again, goes to the essence of this failure of Joe Biden and the fact that, as we started the show talking about this, this is resonating in a big way with the American people without necessarily a tangible disaster occurring in terms of loss of life of Americans. Twenty-six percent, Buck, approval according to the most recent USA Today poll of our withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Now, you can quibble and say, “How many times did they poll Nancy Pelosi to find out that 26% is valid?” But 74% of people in a highly polarized American environment disagreeing with the president of the United States is really unheard of. And I think one of the questions we have to start to ask is — and we’ve been asking this, but I think it’s starting to become more and more apparent.

With that 41% approval rating for Joe Biden according to USA Today that just came out earlier today, how is this going to implicate everything in the Biden administration? Buck, you’ve talked about the failures at the border. We know about the murder rate skyrocketing. We know about inflation. How is this all going to factor in? The covid failures. How is this going to impact the three and a half trillion-dollar Bernie budget?

Literally, the argument for most people is foreign affairs doesn’t drive the ship when it comes to the American state. But I kind of feel like the failure in Afghanistan when it is a representative sample of the failures that are occurring everywhere just kind of becomes the cherry on the top of the crap cake that Joe Biden is baking for America right now.

BUCK: There’s also the issue of focus Clay and what are the people that have been entrusted with power and with the still awesome resources of the United States government and the United States military intelligence apparatus really doing right now? What is Congress doing? You’re bringing up some of the machinations behind the scenes around the budget issue.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Shouldn’t this be a moment where, instead of Congress…? I think there’s even some briefing this week from the select committee on the January 6th Commission. No, that’s the fake insurrection.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Maybe we could actually look at the real insurrection in Afghanistan that’s put thousands and thousands of American lives in imminent peril. Not getting some pepper spray in the face. Not being assaulted. But maybe not making it back home at all. I think that the Congress would shift their focus on that, and Kevin McCarthy, as a member of Congress, is saying, “What are we even doing here? How is this not the one and only — between now and August 31st — goal of Congress and the United States federal government?”

MCCARTHY: Our entire focus — Republican, Democrat, independent alike — should be nothing else than bringing our Americans home. We shouldn’t work on other items, especially the spending of trillions of dollars. That should be our only focus. We shouldn’t cut off our briefing with the administration because they have to get back to vote on their rule.

CLAY: I think that’s a strong argument.

MCCARTHY: This is what we should be voting on. I looked to the U.K.; they brought their Parliament back to work on bringing their citizens home. We should be doing the exact same.

BUCK: All hands on deck in the U.K., Clay. Pelosi wants to have fancy fundraisers and talk about trillions of dollars of spending.

CLAY: I think McCarthy is making the right decision here in saying, “Hey, shouldn’t we be focusing on the biggest foreign policy disaster in most of our lives as opposed to trying to cram a budget through where, frankly, a lot of Americans aren’t necessarily paying attention — and for those of you out there who have not been paying attention, there are around 10 moderate Democrats that are standing up to the idea of this $3.5 trillion bill in the House.

The question is whether or not the votes are there for Nancy Pelosi in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate. But really this shouldn’t be a debate that’s taking place while there are this many Americans in harm’s way in Afghanistan. I think Soon-to-Be Speaker McCarthy is right. They should stand down and wait to see what actually happens in Afghanistan before they’re debating whether or not to pass this $3.5 trillion Bernie budget bill.

BUCK: How could anybody, Clay, who draws a paycheck from the federal government and has any national security role — which Congress certainly is supposed to! We got the Defense Committee. We’ve got the Intelligence Committee. Congress is supposed to matter with these things. How could they have split focus right now? I know they’d say, “Oh, we walk and chew gum at the same time.” No. We’re actually looking at a clock here that is running out and we can all see it where if we’re not out within a week — a week from today —

CLAY: Yeah. That’s right.

BUCK: — August 31st, we’re in a whole other situation. What do we do then? When the Taliban says to this administration, “Sorry, guys. Now we’re gonna process all those Americans ’cause we don’t know who might be a spy for the other side or who might be” whatever. They can make up things. They can say whatever they want. They’re gonna hold people, and what are we gonna do about it? Deny them greater legitimacy to the international community?

CLAY: Write mean letters?

BUCK: They’re gonna be saying, “We made a deadline. The U.S. didn’t meet it. We were still working for with them.” We will all know it’s bull, but Russia and China won’t care. Other countries are gonna say, “Well, it’s not our problem,” and this is what the Biden administration’s facing. So I’m curious what the folks out there who have any experience in Afghanistan, with Afghanistan think about this one-week deadline and what it feels like to hear after we have so many people listening to the show who fought and went toe-to-toe with the Taliban.

CLAY: No doubt.

BUCK: And now we’ve got the Biden administration begging, basically, for the ability to get American civilians out of this country. Taliban says “no.”

CLAY: And, by the way, we’re gonna talk at the bottom of this hour… Remember, for people who recall last week we got a call specifically focused on one individual that was trying to get out. One of our listeners called in. We’ve got an update from him. We’re gonna play that at the bottom of the hour, what it’s actually like on the ground right now in Kabul.