CLAY: You may remember the last time Joe Biden was in the White House addressing everything Afghanistan. He finished his speech, went to a sheet of paper, and said he had been told to call on a particular person. Here is that cut from last week.
BIDEN: Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on was (pause) Kelly O’Donnell of NBC.
CLAY: That is last week. Who is this person giving him a list and telling him who to call on? You’re the president of the United States. And then yesterday talking about the hurricane, Biden was told one more time, they told him not to take questions. Listen to this.
BIDEN: I’m not — I’m not supposed to take any questions but go ahead.
REPORTER: Mr. President, on Afghanistan —
BIDEN: I’m not going to answer Afghanistan now. Okay.
REPORTER: — can you say if there’s still an acute risk?
BIDEN: Thank you.
CLAY: Buck, what is going on here? Who’s telling him not to take questions? (laughing) You’re the president, you should be able to decide whether you want to talk to the media or not.
BUCK: You feel like he’s about to run into the basement at any moment, because remember, that was the safe space during the actual campaign for the 2020 election. Joe Biden got to hide out from the press. We all knew that this was a guy that Democrat voters had rejected resoundingly many times over, and so now all of a sudden — in the pandemic year — he becomes an option of normalcy.
“Oh, he’s been around so long.” But they never stopped to think whether they should do this, meaning elevate Joe Biden to be the president. It was, “Could they?” Could they get it past enough of the American people with all the election law changes and all the shenanigans, which we can talk about another time. But, Clay, I think right now you’re seeing the so-called 3 a.m. phone call with Joe Biden.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: Remember, it’s always, “Oh, who do you want to answer the phone when the United States is under attack or when there’s a moment where the chain of command from a national security perspective really matters?” And with Joe Biden, you say not only are you worried about what his decision’s going to be, you worry if he’s going to be able to pick up the phone and mumble something coherent or not. It’s just the guy’s not up for it. We all know it, and we’re suffering as a country because of it.
CLAY: I think we just need to know who is actually directing the Biden White House. Is it his chief of staff? Is it Ron Klain, who is basically the default president of the United States right now? Certainly, it’s not Kamala Harris, because I don’t think anybody trusts her or her entire regime right now. So who is making these decisions? Who’s telling Biden, “Hey, you can’t take questions”?
“Hey, here’s the list of the order in which you’re supposed to call on people,” because, I mean, really, think about that. Some people say, “Why is that a big deal?” I think it’s a pretty monstrous deal that you, as the president of the United States, aren’t capable of standing at a rostrum and pointing to someone and on-the-fly responding. What’s happening, I believe — you can tell me if you disagree, Buck.
I think what’s happening is the press secretary, whoever that is — could be Jen Psaki, could be other people — are talking to the media. They’re saying, “Okay, it’s your turn to go first. What are you going to ask him?” They are then letting him know, in addition to who he’s calling on, what the questions are likely to be. Look, I’m not saying that…
In the same way that a debate is not a perfect approximation of what kind of president you would be… You can be a great debater and an awful president. You can be not that great on your feet, and really good when you have time to decide things. But, Buck, it is a sign of mental in… I don’t know if incompetence is the right word, but certainly decline.
CLAY: Capacity.
BUCK: It’s a capability issue.
CLAY: He clearly has a mental capacity issue, which (chuckles) is terrifying, should be terrifying to anyone out there who’s an American citizen.
BUCK: Clay, the guy is going to be in his second term if he runs deep into his 80s.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: And this is to be the president of the United States. This is not to run a local run business or something. I know there are people who are… We had this discussion. I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole.
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: People who are deep in their eighties, they can do more pushups than you and me combined and they’re great and they’re with it. Joe Biden is not that, right? This is one of the problems —
CLAY: Yeah, Warren Buffett good at running Berkshire Hathaway, right?
BUCK: — is on a regular basis, he’s showing us that he’s not in a place where he can manage these things. He doesn’t have the energy. And when you’re talking about these moments that you’re highlighting for all of us where he’s saying, “I’m not supposed to do this. I’m not supposed to take questions.” Is he not smart enough to know how that sounds to the American people in a moment of crisis?
We have 300 — according to the Pentagon’s estimates, which I’m talking to people who are arranging some of these he vac operations. They say 300 Americans is still a substantially low number, that it’s more than that, but they believe there are 300 in and around Kabul. We’ve got the deadline looming tomorrow. We have no real sense —
CLAY: Questionable, let’s be honest, decisions about what’s exactly going on with these drone strikes, which are important decisions to be made. And it’s not clear exactly what happened there. What are you hearing about the drone strikes?
BUCK: Well, here’s the big question that all of us from the intel side — and it’s amazing to see how many people, Clay, who are retired intel community, ex-CIA, ex-DIA, ex-special operations, Delta Force, you name it — all these people who were in government service in some capacity and are now rallied, and are just using their contacts with people that they know and people from within the community, people in country to try to get Afghans out.
There’s a tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes effort and communication going on to that end. First and foremost, to get out our Americans, but also to get out Afghan allies, the SIV holders, interpreters. And the question that’s come up among them is, “So we are to believe…?” And I could pose this to everyone listening right now. “We are to believe that somehow the Biden administration and the sources that inform it on the national security side, didn’t know that the Afghan — couldn’t foresee that the Afghan — national security forces were going to collapse in days?”
BUCK: Never mind months, in days! But were able to find and have a drone strike, send a Reaper drone into eastern Afghanistan to take out a few bad guys that they have, as of yet, not named.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: Which a lot of people are pointing to and saying, “You take out senior leadership, you say who they are,” right? You get the bad guy in the Old West; you want to know who is on the poster. You don’t just say, “Oh, we got a bandit,” and they’re not telling us. They haven’t told us yet. But, Clay, we’re supposed to believe that they could find them that quickly, that the intel that we have is that precise and good?
CLAY: No.
BUCK: Hard to buy that. Not impossible, but hard to believe.
CLAY: Here’s what happened. Taliban had two guys that they wanted to get whacked, and the Taliban… Here’s what I think happened. The Taliban went to our intelligence forces and they said, “Hey, these are bad dudes. They were involved in ISIS-K in this attack. Here is their information. Here is where they are,” and gave these guys head-on-a-platter to us. We went ahead and did the strike.
But I think there’s uncertainty as to exactly how involved those guys are, and so I think we just ended up doing the bidding of the Taliban who they gave us these two guys. This is my theory, because I’m with you. I don’t buy that our intelligence apparatus — which has been unable to basically predict anything — is suddenly able, this quickly, to figure out exactly who was behind this attack and you wipe them out.
BUCK: Now there was also the strike on what they believe was an SVBIED, a Suicide Vehicle Board Improvised Explosive Device — essentially a big car bomb — which they hit in Kabul on its way to the airport. And, look, that’s a use of force that’s entirely justified. You’ve got to protect the Americans, the service members and Afghans at those gates. There was also… There’s also been reporting that you had a number of civilians.
A family is saying 10 of its members were killed as a result of likely the secondary explosion from that, because the drone strike itself is pretty precise. But if you hit a car packed full of explosives, the explosives go, right?
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: This isn’t like a nuclear bomb or you have to hit a trigger or else it doesn’t actually detonate the way that you plan it to. So the secondary explosion looks like it killed a number of Afghan civilians, which is very sad. But we’re still in this place, Clay, where over the next 24 hours, two big things: Can we stop the next strike —
CLAY: Yes.
CLAY: And also, how much protection — to the extent we’re getting any — are the Taliban going to provide for all of those Americans that are theoretically left behind who reportedly we’ve given the names of to all the Taliban out there. So they are now aware of exactly who these Americans are. And, Buck, other big question here:
Once we leave, presuming that we do, are we going to get any sort of consequential punishment or action taken based on the futility of this disastrous departure? Or are people going to pretend as soon as we leave the country as if this didn’t happen and this story, they try to have it disappear almost overnight? That’s the other big question that I think is out there.
BUCK: Oh, I want to get back to how they’re going to spin this. They’re going to spin this, and it’s going to be dizzying for people who live in reality. The Biden team is going to have a whole narrative of what’s going on here that’s different from what we’re all observing.
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