BUCK: Here’s from the Associated Press: “Biden Decides to Stick with the August 31st Final Pullout from Kabul.” You might think to yourself, “Well, hold on a second. Why would Biden do that? I mean, he must have come up with some new, ingenious plan to get greater efficiency out of the evacuation flights they’re running.

“Maybe they have some secret contingency, Operation XYZ, that they’re now instituting that’s gonna get people out even faster.” You might think that because of the way the stories are posed here. But that’s actually not what’s happening. There’s also reporting on how the CIA director, William Burns, met with Mullah Baradar, the head of the Taliban, and asked, “Hey, can we have an extension?” So on behalf of the Biden administration, Clay, there’s a request for an extension for the evacuation for what people are calling Biden’s Dunkirk, which it does certainly feel a lot like that.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: And the Taliban said “no.” And now the compliant media is reporting on this as though the Biden administration made this decision. This is like someone who gets fired saying, “You can’t fire me. I’ve already quit.” That’s not how it works.

CLAY: Are you suggesting, Buck Sexton, that our strongly worded letter to the Taliban letting them know that if they didn’t play nice, that there were gonna be significant U.N. consequences did not make the Taliban actually play nice? This is embarrassing. This is a complete failure, an abrogation of leadership by Joe Biden.

And the rule used to be “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Now, we are not only negotiating with terrorists, Buck, we are allowing the terrorists to dictate terms to us. This is humiliating, and if Joe Biden had a spine or a functional military that had a spine, this would not be happening.

BUCK: I think the Taliban understands U.S. politics on this issue pretty well, and they realize that the last thing Joe Biden wants to have to do is go on TV and say, “We are reopening major hostilities against the Taliban because we’ve suffered” —

CLAY: You’re right.

BUCK: — “major U.S. casualties, civilian and military, on the ground from a massive Taliban assault.” So they’ve got ’em. My friend Jim Carafano from the Heritage Foundation wrote a piece in the New York Post where he called the biggest hostage crisis ever.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They haven’t quite been taken hostage, but they aren’t just hanging out because they missed their flight to the Bahamas. And if you listen to Jen Psaki talking about this, which we should get to in a moment here, she really does seem to take this attitude of “no big deal!” It’s like they missed their Southwest flight and there will be another one any moment now.” No, Clay, they’re in imminent danger, and the White House isn’t instilling a whole lot of confidence that they’re gonna get every American out by August 31st.

CLAY: Yeah. And, honestly, she’s arguing about whether or not Peter Doocy can use the word “stranded,” when I think it’s pretty fair to say that the literal definition of the word “stranded” would reflect that if you are unable to leave the place that you are currently in, that you are, in fact, stranded. And I think that that’s a valid position that she could put in place.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: One of the biggest issues the Biden White House has — aside from a president who can barely read or walk or maintain functional capabilities — is even the people who surround Joe Biden keep saying dumb things. The president is having to bail out some of his spokespeople, including Jen “I was on vacation during the biggest collapse in American foreign policy in my life” Psaki who said two really stupid things, Buck, yesterday in the press conference.

BUCK: Only two?

CLAY: The first one… Yeah, only two. I’m only gonna focus on two. These are demonstrably false statements that are incredibly dumb. The first one — you can play cut 5 here — is arguing that there are not American citizens and translators and people who have assisted us “stranded” in Afghanistan. Listen to this — when we know and in fact in hour 2, we’re going to talk to one person who is stranded in Afghanistan. We know that this is actually true even though Jen Psaki says it’s false.

PSAKI: First of all, I think it’s irresponsible to say Americans are “stranded.” They are not! We are committed to bringing Americans who want to come home, home. We are in touch of them via phone, via text, via email, via any way that we can possibly reach Americans to get them home if they want to return home.

DOOCY: There are no Americans stranded is the White House’s official position on what’s happening in Afghanistan right now?

Jen Psaki just completely SNAPPED at Peter Doocy after he called out Biden’s Afghanistan catastrophe and botched withdrawal.

This entire White House is living in an alternate reality. pic.twitter.com/27sEY07805

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) August 23, 2021

PSAKI: I’m just calling you out for saying that we are stranding Americans in Afghanistan when I suh — when we have been very clear that we are not leaving Americans who want to return home. We are going to bring them home, and I think that’s important for the public to hear and understand.

BUCK: (impression) “They’re just, like, not stranded, Clay. They’re, like, a little delayed.”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: You’ve gotta be kidding me. Tthe fact that you have the White House press secretary here, first of all, clearly just taking a swipe at the only guy who consistently gets to ask or is willing to ask real questions in the press corps that make the Biden administration a little uneasy and that she would dig it on this, Clay, it’s definition-of-stranded.

CLAY: I’ve got the definition of stranded right here in front of me, Buck. Here is the definition of stranded. “Left without the means to move from somewhere.” There are a lot of people, it seems to me, Buck Sexton, who are left without the means to move from somewhere right now in Afghanistan. Literally, they are stranded.

BUCK: I can only imagine if you’re an American right now and you’re already, first of all, very frightened — and I’ve talked to people who in contact with Americans on the ground still just in the last couple of days. You’re very concerned about what’s gonna happen — and it is very concerning. There’s no way around this, right? This is a dangerous situation. It’s a volatile situation, fissile, and those people are concerned.

They’ve already gotta be fuming over the idiocy of the Biden administration — the grotesque incompetence, the monumental stupidity — and then you add this into the mix? You know, you start to wonder, are they just thinking, “I’m just gonna… I’m gonna walk over the border of Pakistan and take my chances. These people are out of their minds.”

CLAY: Choose your battles, right? Arguing over the definition of the word “stranded” when you are in the wrong is just flagrantly inaccurate. You can say, “Hey, I understand some people who want out are not able to get out right now. We are going to try, and we are going to get everyone out,” right?

This is not a… I’m always astounded. We talk for a living, Buck. Simon always astounded by the incompetence of people who talk for a living in government. I feel like I could go do a press briefing for a Democratic or a Republican president, prepare for a couple of hours, and doing a good job. As a lawyer, you advocate for things all the time that you may not personally believe in. This is not the world’s most difficult job.

BUCK: But I think it’s also the White House here showing you and White House staffers showing you that there’s a sensitivity to, “Oh, gosh. Fox News has a reporter who’s got me cornered here,” and that upsets them almost more than anything else. It’s the optics control that they’re so worried about because now they’re finally in a place, how do they handle the border? They have the media not cover it.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That’s an enormously consequential editorial decision made by major newspapers and cable news channels —

CLAY: Just pretend it doesn’t exist.

BUCK: — except for one all across the country. It’s as if there’s no problem at the border ’cause they just won’t talk about it, right? Similar thing with crime going on right now. If you’re a Republican president and you would have the rise in crime you have that continued into this year after the lockdowns ended, you would have stories about it all the time. This is one of those issues where, because we have Americans who are imminently in harm’s way.

Thousands of them — we don’t even know — 10,000, 15,000; who knows? — are in contact with people back in the states ’cause they still have comms, they still have phones. They can’t ignore this, Clay. And they were ready to take a victory lap on it, too, right? Joe Biden’s speech a month ago was supposed to set up how he was a great leader on foreign policy.

CLAY: September 11th. The reason he wants out by August 31st is because 20 years after September 11th he wanted to be able to have a speech saying, “I ended this war. We’re all back in America now.”

BUCK: And this has blown up in the administration’s face in a way that even their staunchest allies in the media cannot hide, cannot cover up for, and that’s why there is this scramble. That’s why you have a circumstance where the White House press secretary will get caught up in saying something so dumb because her first goal… You know this.

Her first goal is not to provide information necessary for the proper consideration of America as a republic where people actually elect their leaders. Her primary goal is to try to crush Fox News, prevent conservative media from scoring points against Biden, and lead the easily misled into thinking that Joe Biden is not a blanking moron.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That’s her primary goal.

CLAY: That is accurate. And what I would say, Buck, is significant here is, this failure is cutting through. Even without the media having aggressively covered Joe Biden, he has a 32% approval rate among independents, Buck. Twenty-six percent approval rate for the Afghanistan withdrawal. (laughing) And, by the way, I’d like to know who the 26% are. You know, most people are busy. Most people are busy in their day-to-day life, Buck.

They don’t have time to sit around and monitor every little nuance of the news. But when you see that the Taliban took over Afghanistan, when you see the footage — even if it’s just an occasional still photograph — and you see the incompetence, it is cutting through. And I think a lot of Americans are watching Joe Biden speak. Again, they hid him, and they kept him in the basement and he barely talked for his entire campaign. And they’re thinking, “My God. I don’t even know if this guy’s gonna be able to finish reading what’s off the teleprompter in front of him every single day.”

BUCK: I keep seeing headlines: “Biden won’t extend deadline” is what they report.

CLAY: Yeah. They’re trying to spin it.

BUCK: That is not the headline. The headline should be, “Taliban will not extend deadline.” That’s the world we’re actually in right now, folks.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I hate having to say that out loud, but they have, on this issue, checkmated the Biden administration. There’s no way around this. There’s no reality in which they aren’t having to go and ask… I mean, they’re already in communication with Taliban checkpoints and Taliban leadership saying, “Please, please, let the Americans through,” and now we’ve asked for an extension on the deadline. They’ve said “no.”

I gotta tell you, I just feel like in Donald Trump were commander-in-chief, there would be a very different feeling here, because the Taliban would have to take into account, “Oh, this guy might actually decide that he’s gonna punch back and punch back even harder if we so much as harm one hair on one head of an American.” I just think it would be a different conversation underway. I think they can see… Because they’re not watching MSNBC and believing that it’s objective, I think the Taliban can see that Joe Biden is a clown and they’ve got him. That’s what I think.

CLAY: I think you’re right. You don’t have to be a genius to recognize when you have a strategic advantage at play. Think about it, Buck. They know that Joe Biden is an incompetent leader, because they made the decision to take over Afghanistan before August 31st. They could have just waited and said, “Hey, we’ll try to take over this country come September 1.”

Instead, with the Americans all still there, they had so little respect for us and our leadership that they decided to go over and begin the process of overrunning the entire country. I don’t know how much more clear-cut the lack of respect could be. You saw the picture of the Taliban reenacting Iwo Jima.

BUCK: They are trolling us.

CLAY: They’re mocking us.

BUCK: They are trolling us.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: That’s absolutely what’s going on right now.