BUCK: “Manufacturing drama.” I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of a visit by a senior U.S. official — in this case Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan — the most senior government official to go there since, what, 1997, I think it is.

Reporter: “Why did the president bother w/ this drama…why not call the Chinese bluff or tell them to pound sand?”

Kirby: “What’s the drama?”

R: “Have you watched the briefings the past couple weeks?”

K: “I haven’t seen any drama…you’re manufacturing it with your question.” pic.twitter.com/gc1e8moDi0

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) August 1, 2022

And welcome back to Clay and Buck, by the way. Pelosi has touched down in Taipei. She’s in Taiwan right now, and there’s a lot going on here. First off, we think… I believe that the foreign policy establishment and the media become almost obsessive about the optics of things like this. Now, I did talk to you yesterday about this because China was making a lot of noise about how it would do extreme things, and it seemed unlikely that they would take any major action here.

Are they gonna buzz Taiwanese airspace or violate Taiwanese airspace with some planes? Yeah, probably. Are they gonna do some provocative things? You’ll see headlines about this in the days and weeks ahead, you know, “China, in a provocative move, decided to” fill in the blank with something. But it’s not going to be, in my opinion — and certainly we all hope — shot plane out of sky or opened fire on warship or anything like that, ’cause that would lead to war. That would be a terrifying circumstance not just for U.S. and for China, but for the whole world, right?

That would be a terrible circumstance. Low-probability, high-impact scenario. That’s what we would have called it back in the CIA analyst days, although I’m sure that’s just a thing now you can learn about on Wikipedia. So, they get obsessed with the “optics” of this, meaning the way that it appears to people, and what I just have to note here is that you’re having a lot of Democrats who acted like… Remember when Donald Trump wanted to meet with Kim Jong-un? We were told…

There were editorials written about how this could lead to nuclear war. We were hearing about that all the time. “Oh, my gosh. It’s undermining everything!” It didn’t change the posture of the U.S. posture toward North Korea. Didn’t work. Let’s be honest; it didn’t work, didn’t change the U.S. relationship with North Korea in any meaningful way, but he wanted to take a shot. But, see, that was a moment when they could all come together and say Trump is reckless and North Korea would end up firing a nuclear missile at Hawaii over this. Remember all that?

Nothing happened. Trump met with him, nothing really changed, North Korea is a problem set that really is actually part of the China problem set. Without Chinese support, the North Korean state would very rapidly cease to exist. It’s by far North Korea’s primary trading partner, and really China uses North Korea vis-a-vis the international community as a way of saying, “Okay. We’ll rein them in, but you gotta do the following for us,” or “you gotta back off us on this issue, and we’ll tell North Korea to stop firing the missiles toward Japan” or something or “test firing.”

That’s an issue, there’s a complexity there that we should always take into account, that the North Korea problem set is just like Hong Kong is a China issue, Taiwan is a China issue, North Korea is a different country. Taiwan is de facto a different country too. But North Korea is officially a different country, but it is really a part of the problem of dealing with China in so many ways. But when it was Trump doing that with Kim Jong-un it was, “It’s just reckless.” Now, Nancy Pelosi, why is she doing this? They’re all gonna say, ‘Oh, it’s standing in solidarity with Taiwan,” and I said to you yesterday — I stand behind this — you can’t let the Chinese Communist Party determine where the U.S. Speaker of the House is gonna land.

You know, you can’t let them have veto power over it. So once it was out there she was going, she had to go. She had to actually visit. So that was the right move. But what really changes as a result of this? Does anybody think…? I mean, the Peoples Liberation Army, I believe, has said publicly that they think — they even put out a date, I don’t know. I think in four or five years, they’ll be fully ready for whatever they need to do with regard to Taiwan and any other military obligations they may have. So does anyone believe that this changes the U.S. posture to Taiwan or changes Chinese calculations in any meaningful way?

I don’t think it does. It’s an act of solidarity. A lot of people that work at think tanks and who cover foreign policy for different media outlets will say this is a big moment. But you’re also noticing something, aren’t you? You got the Zawahiri strike ordered and you got the Pelosi visit to Taiwan all happening the same week. It’s almost like it’s August before a midterm election and Democrats have decided they went to figure out a way to change the narrative to, “Look at the bold things that Democrats are doing.”

Forget about the stuff that the American people are focused in on in their day-to-day lives, ’cause Democrats have been abject failures on those. Inflation, the economy, the border, crime, things that affect all of us. There’s no narrative that they can push about how that’s gone well the last 18 months. I mean, they can try. That’s why… Was it Paul Krugman was saying that Biden…? This was funny. I even had to say something snarky about this on Twitter. Paul Krugman — Nobel laureate Paul Krugman of the New York Times — saying that Biden’s economic policies have been so successful, they’ve caused inflation.

To be a useful tool of the failing Biden regime requires a willingness to gleefully embarrass yourself in public, and shame whatever professional credibility you had previously accrued https://t.co/RJWolJaE1p

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) August 2, 2022

It’s so amazing. We grew so fast, with so many jobs, that’s the cause of the inflation. Oh. So he’s so awesome, everything got more expensive is what…? How people can say this stuff out loud, it’s pretty amazing. But what you find is that to be a useful tool of the Biden regime, the failing Biden regime, requires a willingness to embarrass oneself in public and to gleefully embarrass one’s self-, to self-immolate one’s credibility professionally, to just light that credibility on fire. See? I’ll go along with it. I don’t even know what a recession is, and I’m an economist.

You get a pat on the head from the New York Times. You get a pat on the head from the Washington Post. People look at you and throw you all that smile at cocktail parties. Next thing you know, you’ll be announcing your pronouns. You’ll really be a member of the club. And that’s the way it’s supposed to work, right? That’s how this goes. You want to be invited to the cool kid table in the cafeteria at high school lunch? Gotta be willing to make yourself look like a jackass in public, as an expert. Whether it’s on covid or the economy or whatever it is, just gotta go along with it.

Things are great. Look at Mayorkas of Department of Homeland Security. He says the border is secure. I mean, when you bring that… I’ve done this. When you ask Border Patrol, different folks in Border Patrol, “What do you think of that…?” I mean, I can’t say it on air. You gotta take out the bleep button because of the expletives. “That’s just crazy,” is one way of saying it. It’s absurd. It’s gaslighting. But I think that they realize it’s not gonna work well enough, which is why you have these very interestingly timed grand gestures of national security on the world stage.

And I’m not gonna say… Pelosi, once it got out that she was going… Now, why’d she decide to go and all that? But once she said she’s going, she had to go, right? ‘Cause to back down would embolden a Chinese Communist Party that already has so much leverage against U.S. corporations in this country in ways that we could do whole shows just talking about. And then on the issue of Zawahiri, yeah, you gotta take that guy out. Why did they wait for months and months and months to take him out? Well, I think that’s an interesting question. They’ll say it’s because they had to verify and find the exact right conditions.

I find that hard to believe. So the timing here, it’s not quite an October Surprise, but some August Surprises thrown into the mix. What motivates Democrats more than anything else? We know one thing about them. They do not really believe in foreign enemies, external enemies, because the primary enemy to Democrats is the domestic political opposition. So most of their decision-making is always around that issue, it’s always around finding a way to secure their power against their Republican rivals. And that pushes more of their external and foreign policy and national security decision-making than anything else. How is this gonna look on CNN? Now, I’m not saying that’s the only consideration. I’m saying that is a primary consideration for them. And I think you have to take that into account, given what we are seeing right now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Nancy Pelosi touched down in Taipei, Taiwan, today. China is making a lot of noise about it. In fact, here is the Chinese ambassador to the U.N. on CNN.

This is the People’s Liberation Army, the guardian of the Chinese people for 95 years, who will not sit idly by when it comes to safeguarding national sovereignty & territorial integrity. pic.twitter.com/muJEtiQCXx

— Qin Gang 秦刚 (@AmbQinGang) August 1, 2022

QIN GANG: To achieve the reunification, as I said earlier, is the firm and the strong view of the whole Chinese nation. So, China’s sovereignty cannot be infringed, and Chinese people cannot be humiliated, and the reunification of China cannot be stopped. We said repeatedly in recent time that the PLA will no — will not stay idle, and the beauty of POA, the China’s military, is to define the China’s sovereignty, territory, integrity.

ANCHOR: Mr. Amb —

QIN GANG: So, we will take whatever we can to respond and to protect, to safeguard our sovereignty, territory, integrity, and our response will be very firm, strong, and forceful.

BUCK: Is that all bluster? We’ll see. Nancy Pelosi went forward with the trip. Now, all of a sudden, the focus of the media is on the Biden decision — after months and months of surveillance — to give the order to take out Zawahiri, and also, on Pelosi goes to Taiwan — instead of inflation, the economy, crime in major cities and in rural areas of the country, all across the country, and the wide-open border which we just talked to Attorney General Mark Brnovich of Arizona about.