Biden Was Warned About Kabul Catastrophe

BUCK: Clay, here’s where I am on the situation in Afghanistan. There’s this cable that has been reported on by the Wall Street Journal that’s saying, yeah, there were some folks who believed and tried to warn the alarm bell that after August 31st — the official withdrawal date — there would be a quick collapse of the Afghan central government; the Taliban would take over.

So the Biden administration could have known, should have known, but clearly — and we should get into the details of what happened at the airport — didn’t know enough to set up a process in place, a contingency, if you will, to prevent us from being in exactly the situation we are in right now.

CLAY: Which catches Joe Biden, Buck Sexton, in a massive series of lies. Just think about what has come out so far this week. We’ve had the intelligence apparatus all say, “Hey, you know what? We warned Joe Biden that things could get worse than what he was recognizing.” We also have all of these different military officials coming out and making the same arguments and the same claims.

And now the Wall Street Journal — in what I would classify as a kind of a blockbuster revelation, Buck. These are 23 different signatories from inside of the Afghan embassy who said back in July — and Secretary of State Blinken acknowledges that he read it. “Hey, all of your expectations, all of the things that you are laying out for our plan is going to fail.”

And they acknowledge that they read it. They acknowledge that they reviewed it, and now we have a situation, Buck — and I think this is pretty massive — where if anything goes awry… We talk about what happened with Hillary Clinton and Benghazi. This could be Benghazi on steroids if one Taliban member decides to start shooting around the airport at some American citizens — if any of the soldiers that are there trying to protect American citizens around the airport — and the American soldiers somehow get drawn into a confrontation?

Joe Biden’s entire presidency… Buck, I don’t think this is crazy at all. His entire presidency could go up in smoke. He is leaving on vacation again! He’s got a press availability — we may take a little bit of it during this show — and then he’s going on vacation. It’s just as if they either aren’t willing to recognize or aren’t aware how tightly wound the possibilities are here of a major conflagration exploding. I mean, is it cluelessness? What’s going on here in the Biden administration?

BUCK: So from the people that I’ve been speaking to who are actively trying to help get Americans out — because that’s where this is. This has become an all-hands-on-deck situation in a sense where no one believes, Clay, who knows what’s going on that the Biden team… They clearly had no plan for this. They were caught completely unready for the crush of people at the airport that’s currently going on.

That’s obvious to anyone. So now you have Americans that are trying to help. I’ve even heard secondhand from people that they’re calling a soldier. It’s ad hoc. They’ll call someone they know is deployed and they’ll say, “Hey, these are some Americans. Can you go and see at the gate?” and they’re calling out the names of people saying, “Are they there?” I mean, can you imagine?

CLAY: Crazy.

BUCK: There are thousands of people who are crowding these checkpoints, and this is —

CLAY: I know. Kids. Kids. It’s not even just adults. It’s a lot of kids.

BUCK: But this is inside the security lines or at the edge of the security lines of American control. This is past the Taliban checkpoint we’re talking about now.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: This is once you get past the Taliban checkpoints — which some people are, some people aren’t. What’s going on on the American side of this, they don’t know, ’cause remember there are Afghans and Americans who are trying to get through these choke points, effectively.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So it’s a total mess. People are trying to just get word out and get people through. They did not have a process in place. And to your point about the Biden administration, the Biden administration is one bad news cycle away from a collapsed presidency. That much is very clear. And we are entirely in the hands in this case… When it comes to these Americans right now, we’re in the hands of the Taliban, folks.

CLAY: Yes. They control it.

BUCK: The Taliban holds the cards here. They haven’t harmed Americans yet, which is a huge thing. God willing, I’m going to continue to be able to say this ’til every American gets oaf Afghan soil. But you’re also starting to see here the Pentagon spokesman John Kirby when asked how he views the Taliban, this is what he said.

BRET BAIER: Does the U.S. Military consider the Taliban an enemy?

KIRBY: Uh, w-w-we… Our focus right now… Uhh… uh. (sputtering) The — the — the thing we’re — we’re working against right now is — is — is time and space. And we want to get as many people out of Kabul as we can in, uhhh, as little amount of time as we can. There are no hostile interactions right now between American forces and the Taliban, and we want to keep it that way.

BUCK: He is dodging that question, obviously, Clay — and I have to tell you, rightly so!

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Because right now this Biden administration is reliant — and I’m gonna say this, and it’s true and people and I know are veterans. People are gonna seethe over this. We are reliant right now on the goodwill and the strategic thinking of the Taliban barbarians to not harm Americans. That’s where we are.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And of course, Afghans they’re already harming in large numbers, but that’s where we are right now.

CLAY: And honestly you could tell how nervous he was, Buck, answering that question. He was tremulous because, I guarantee you, one of the things that he was told as he got ready to go out there is, “Don’t say anything to antagonize the Taliban.” Think about how crazy that is. We have the general rule of “Don’t negotiate with terrorists.” We are past negotiating with terrorists. The terrorists are driving all of our interactions right now. We can’t even call them terrorists! We can’t even call them enemies. We can’t even say a negative word about them.

BUCK: Clay, we’re the most powerful government and powerful military in the world — at least for now, still; Biden’s doing his best to change that — and we are reliant not only on the goodwill, there is coordination going on right now. Behind the scenes, we’re trying to get U.S. government, NATO-allied government, the French, the British. They are trying to get in touch with Taliban intermediaries and are doing this to open up depths to let people through.

We’re asking, we’re saying, “Hey, can you please let them through.” This is the circumstance we are finding ourselves in right now. And it’s amazing that the Taliban has kept their word. There was a bilateral agreement with Trump. People forget this. There was no agreement with the Afghan government — that never happened — between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Ashraf Ghani fled with $160 million in a helicopter. He could care less. The guy’s corrupt. He’s a bad dude. But, Clay, they’ve kept they’re deal so far not to attack American troops, and that’s what’s holding this whole thing together.

CLAY: I just don’t even know how Joe Biden is sleeping right now. We all know he’s asleep at the wheel in a metaphorical sense, but who’s advising him to continue his vacation? Is he aware and even capable of understanding that anyone of those Taliban right now all throughout Afghanistan walking around with submachine guns, walking around with heavy artillery — much of which, by the way, is United States created. We’ve given them tens of billions of dollars. Reuters with a report they got helicopters. They got tons of Humvees.

BUCK: Attack aircraft! Yes.

CLAY: Yeah, the gear that we have left them. Any one of those guys has an itchy trigger finger, gets annoyed, gets angry and opens fire and American citizens are hit, I don’t know that Joe Biden’s presidency is able to continue. That’s how egregious. Now, maybe Joe Biden’s ace-in-the-hole here, Buck, is that Kamala Harris is so much less popular that there’s no way they would ever try to remove him. But this is… I can’t even remember… You may be able to remember one. For most of us out there in living memory, I can’t remember a more precarious position for a United States president to be in where he holds none of the cards.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: He doesn’t control anything that’s going on right now. He’s relying on the Taliban to make smart strategic decisions. It’s an embarrassment that we ever got here.

BUCK: His presidency is entirely in the hands of the Taliban, a designated terrorist group that we’ve been fighting for 20 years.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That is the reality of the Biden White House as I speak to you right now.