POMPEO: He should be less focused on trying to blame this on someone else than solving the problem of making sure that we protect and defend American security. Chris, it’s worth noting: This did not happen on our watch. We reduced our forces significantly. The Taliban didn’t advance on capitals all across Afghanistan.

So, it’s just a plain old fact that this is happening under the Bush administration’s leadership now almost a quarter of the way into his first term. This is this is not the way leaders lead by pointing backwards. We had a bad deal we inherited, the JCPOA. We got out of it. We secured America from the risk from Iran.

Mike Pompeo on Afghanistan: Biden “has utterly failed to protect the American people from this challenge.” pic.twitter.com/tmz4iGfkJU

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 15, 2021

We inherited a horrible deal in Syria where ISIS controlled real estate the size of Great Britain. We crushed them! Every president confronts challenges. This president confronted a challenge in Afghanistan. He has utterly failed to protect the American people from this challenge.

BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. Clay and I together here in Nashville, Tennessee, as Afghanistan collapses. Kabul is in the hands of the Taliban, and the airport, the last territory in the hands of U.S. forces in control right now, the Kabul airport, surrounded by Taliban forces. Evacuation flights are going on as I speak to you now.

The tarmac is being swarmed with desperate Afghans trying to grab on to the landing gears, trying to do just anything to get out country. Already reports of reprisal killings. There will be large-scale executions of anybody left behind who worked with the U.S. We know this. It’s terrible. How could the Biden administration have been so inept and unprepared in all of this?

Clay and I want to hear from veterans ’cause we know we have a huge veteran audience that listens to this show, and we thank you, first of all, for your service. And we also want to remind everybody that there’s a reason why, when our soldiers were in that country, the Taliban were hiding, usually in Pakistan.

They were going across the border, laying low. They were hiding. And the moment that we decided we’re gonna hand the fight over to the Afghan National Army, that’s when the Taliban knew it was time to go. 800-282-2882 on the lines. We’d love to get some veterans in. Clay, there’s so many fascinates of this. You’re gonna have a lot of speculation in the days ahead about the relationship that the new Taliban government — which I think we all know is absolutely inevitable right now — will have with China and Russia and Pakistan and Iran.

We’re also gonna be talking about the possibility of Afghanistan as a platform for global jihadist terror attacks once again. But, in the meantime, Biden on vacation. Did you see that photo which, by the way, that’s not the kind of photo that they should be sharing out in a moment like that and there was also a bunch of stuff on the screen that I was very surprised —

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: — that they were actually sharing what they did. I can tell you that much. It really was an iconic moment of a president who looks bewildered and alone at a moment when we’re supposed to have leadership that we can count on.

CLAY: Also, he’s afraid to say anything for fear, I believe, that he will immediately be wrong. I imagine what they were trying to do was avoid having him talk until they had gotten all American citizens out. But I think you talked about the big question in Afghanistan going forward is going to be, “Will Afghanistan under the Taliban, again become a fertile ground for the planning of another 9/11-esque attack?”

But I think we can just think about this domestically, Buck. What does this do to Joe Biden domestically? What does it do with the failure of all of his administration to handle this retreat out of Afghanistan with any semblance of competency? What does it do for the covid experts out there? What does it do for trust in this administration in general? What does it do for his larger budget plan?

He’s trying to get this $3.5 trillion budget plan rammed through, and there are all sorts of controversies emerging inside of the Democratic caucus where you’ve got congressmen who are moderates that are saying, “Hey, we’re not gonna vote for this $3.5 trillion until we have the infrastructure bill come through.”

To me, Buck, this is did he give you to any sort of argument that Joe Biden is competent on any level multiply, and I think it impacts so many different aspects of his administration going forward. Because the American people watching this — Democrats, Republicans, independents — most of us in living memory, Buck, the majority of Americans have never seen something this incompetent occur on a foreign soil with American military.

BUCK: Well, there’s a difference between experts and opportunists, and you’re seeing that. Joe Biden is an opportunist. He’s a guy who did whatever he had to do for the 40 years in Democrat politics to get reelected as the senator from Delaware. No offense to Delaware. Great beaches, nice state, but not exactly a place that’s at the center of the political storm on a regular basis.

Joe Biden’s a machine politician. On foreign policy specifically — which was, you remember, his calling card for vice president under the Obama administration. It was, “Oh, Joe Biden is a great foreign policy, a steady hand, a foreign policy mind,” and if you actually listen to anybody who had worked in those circles because there is a foreign policy apparatus.

I’ve worked at some of the think tanks and obviously spent time at the CIA and know some of these characters who have been at the top of the decision-making process, they would all tell you, Joe Biden was — the famous line was from Bob Gates, who was secretary of defense and CIA director — “reliably wrong on every major for the purpose of decision for the horizontal.”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So how could anybody view what’s going on right now as in any way a surprise in that framework? And I would also say that if you’re talking about real experts Clay, just because somebody is the national security adviser or secretary of state, as we all know, doesn’t mean…

Those are hard jobs to get the, but it doesn’t mean that you’re the best at the job. True Afghanistan experts for the last 20 years have been saying, “They call it the graveyard of empires for a reason. The Taliban is not going anywhere with the Pakistani sanctuary.” They’ve been beating the same drum and now they’re all looking at us saying, “We told you so.”

CLAY: How about Joe Biden has been wrong in virtually every major foreign policy decision over the last 40 years and now his mental faculties are declined from the 40 years of failure? Because I genuinely want to know how he’s going to be capable at 3:45 Eastern of sitting in front of the American people or standing, however he’s going to give this address, and doing anything other than reading directly off the teleprompter what he is going to say.

BUCK: Can I make a prediction? You like predictions.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I’ll make a prediction for what Biden’s gonna say. And we’ll come back to this tomorrow. He’s going to say that this was a tough call but the right call for the American people, that moved a little faster than they thought but they basically were prepared. They had contingencies in place — and, oh, by the way, this is Trump’s timeline for withdrawal. They actually extended it so they should get credit for not going too fast on it. Orange Man Bad. Blame Trump,” and then he’s gonna walk off stage.

CLAY: No doubt.

BUCK: I think that’s the only move he’s got at this point.

CLAY: There’s no doubt he’s gonna blame Trump. The counter to that is, I even wonder whether the general media is going to accept that because he spent seven months changing every decision that Donald Trump made.

BUCK: Oh, and he took credit, by the way, for the changes in the timeline, and Kamala, who he should have made the Afghanistan czar, by the way.

CLAY: Yeah. Yes.

BUCK: Throw her under the bus once again, so to speak. Kamala was leaking that she was also involved in this process a few months ago and it seemed like she stands astride the foreign policy stage. I don’t think she’s leaking anymore about that right now.

CLAY: Where is she?