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Clay and Buck

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The Biden Doctrine: Always Be Wrong

7 Sep 2021

GEN. MILLEY: My military estimate is that the conditions are likely to develop of a civil war. And that will then, in turn, lead to conditions that could, in fact, lead to reconstitution of Al-Qaeda or a growth of ISIS or other myriad of terrorist groups. You could see a resurgence of terrorism coming out of that general region within 12, 24, 36 months.

BUCK: Twelve months, 36 months, five years, ten years, who knows! That was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley. Welcome back to Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. This is Buck. That was General Milley. He still his has job, which makes it very hard for anyone to think or that believe there is accountability for a clear screw up with the withdrawal. I mean, that’s putting it mildly.

But because of the FCC, there’s only certain words I can use here. It’s very obvious that there were senior-level decisions made on the military side that should require resignations. It didn’t really happen. In fact, in response to what General Milley just said there on Fox, former acting DNI, Ric Grenell… Great guy. I know Ric. Smart guy. Here’s what he said about Milley’s, “We could see a resurgence of terrorism.”

GRENELL: Look, I know General Milley, and I’ve been highly disappointed that he’s being very political. That is an answer to cover yourself for later, now that those warnings are happening. I’ve also heard him say that General Miller, who was in charge of Bagram, gave advice to shut down Bagram. Now, I can tell you that that’s not true. I know that very (chuckling) firsthand information. I know that General Miller.

He made those stark warnings to Jake Sullivan and said, “Do not close Bagram,” and Bagram was closed. Our troops were removed. We left 10% of the Americans behind. Look. The Joe Biden Doctrine, the Biden Doctrine for the rest of history will be 90% is good enough. And I think that that’s shameful. And the American people should not feel safer when they have a president of the United States willing to take 10% of us and leave us.

BUCK: You know, Clay, he’s obviously talking about his version there — the former DNI Ric Grenell — what he views the Biden Doctrine as, there was a piece in the New York Times, news analysis, not even editorial over the weekend, on the Biden Doctrine. And it’s amazing to watch them try the Cleanup on Aisle 5 here of, “Ohhh, it’s Biden trying to balance strategic priorities.”

The Biden Doctrine is, “If you’re screwing up, stop screwing up.” I mean, there’s actually no framework here; there’s no way to look at this other than to say, “This guy, Biden, has been wrong for a long time on a lot of things when it comes to foreign policy, and here he’s wrong again.” That’s the Biden doctrine.

CLAY: I just keep looking at Joe Biden every time he speaks, Buck, whether it’s on Afghanistan — which is a disaster — whether it’s on the border, whether it’s on the murder rate, whether it’s on his flew $3.5 trillion budget bill, which I know we haven’t really talked about a great deal. I think we’ll probably touch on some this week in more substance.

But obviously that struggling because you’ve had Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona come out and say, even as Democrats, they’re not gonna be willing to support it. We’ve been asking how covid ends, Buck. I’m genuinely afraid of how this Biden administration ends, because every single week and every single month it seems to me that Joe Biden is further in the grips of deteriorating mental condition.

BUCK: I think they think they’re past this already, Clay. I think that they believe that this is no big deal.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: “The Americans? Some will get out; some won’t. Yeah, there’s some delays.” But they got the media in their back pocket. Do you think they’re still…” Yeah, they’re worried about his poll numbers, no question. I think you’re talking about his mental faculties, which is a whole other thing. But on Afghanistan, I think they’re all… I mean, they’re already rolling up the narrative of “Joe Biden got it done! Sure, it was messy, but it was always gonna be messy,” and they’re rewriting the history of the last 30 days in process right now!

CLAY: Yeah. I think that’s their hope. I think their hope is that Americans have the memories of goldfish, and that whatever occurs next is going to make people forget. The problem that I think the Biden administration has here is when every story ends with you being incompetent and a failure, there’s a pretty good theme that’s going on. So, to me, Afghanistan sticks in the mind of the American public because it further confirms the failure of the Biden administration.

And what they need, Buck, is something that is significant of a story enough that takes away the attention from all the things that they’re failing on. I don’t know what that is. And I’m sure they’re sitting down right now as they enter into the fall trying to scramble, ’cause think about it, Buck. If you were trying to make an argument… Pretend that you are the advocate for Joe Biden. Covid you’ve totally failed on.

I think we need to keep hammering this. There are twice as many people in the hospital right now with covid as were in the hospital last Labor Day. Okay? He’s failed on covid, he’s failed on the border, he’s failed on crime all over this country, he has failed on Afghanistan, he’s failed on everything that he has touched.

I think they’re gonna try to argue infrastructure, and I think they’re gonna try to argue the budget. I’m not sure either of those get through. And then we’re gonna be into 2022. So, to me, this is a White House without ideas and without the functional ability to advocate in an effective way on behalf of the American public. I think it’s gonna keep getting worse.

BUCK: Yes. Your report card, though, is all reported in reality and in results and what’s actually happened. You know how the Democrats operate. How did they get Joe Biden elected? I mean, there were a lot of things that went into it: The changing laws in states, breaking the Constitution in certain states.

CLAY: I think it’s all covid.

BUCK: Covid was obviously a huge part of it. But they told us this lie that, one, Joe Biden was a guy who would bring together the country and he wouldn’t be just some pawn of the left. But also, beyond that, they never thought that he was competent, Clay. The people that really pay attention to politics and know Joe Biden understood that he was deteriorating, understood that it was obvious that it was reckless to put this guy in the commander-in-chief role.

But it was, in their minds, fully justified. The lies they told are still fully justified in their minds because it’s not Trump for four more years. And we haven’t even talked about — so, yeah, you’re right. I mean, I obviously agree. We talk about the failures all over the place. But you know in the next year the narrative is gonna shift to racism, the insurrection, the War on Women, all these distractions.

And the media apparatus… You know, only a small percentage of the country is gonna be the difference in the midterms. Really, when you look at it, the media apparatus is still 90, 95% in the tank for the Democrats. So we have a lot to overcome, even with your report card of reality that reflects as poorly as it does on the actual Biden administration policy.

CLAY: I think the challenge for them is even with all that in the tank, when you control the entire government, it’s hard to argue that somebody else is responsible for your failures. Now, here’s what I think they’ll do in response to that. You own the House, you own the Senate, you own the presidency.

BUCK: Kind of own the Senate, right, by a tiny bit.

CLAY: Yeah. They’re going to try to shift the attention to the Supreme Court. That’s what I think their pivot is gonna be. I think if you look forward, they’re going to argue that the Supreme Court is blocking, is blocking the full fruition of the Biden White House and the House for Nancy Pelosi and everything else, and they’re going to make the Supreme Court the foil in 2022 and probably in 2024 as well.

BUCK: There’s also the Biden court-packing commission.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They thought something else.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They call it “The Judicial fairness” whatever. It’s the Biden court packing commission, and you’re right. That’s gonna be a part of the narrative, especially with this whole War on Women abortion thing that’s the state of Texas has this really interesting law in the way that they’ve instituted it; I think you’re gonna see other states go along with this too. One thing that I don’t think has gotten enough attention with all that, Clay, as well — and we can come back into this. We never have enough time, Clay and I.

CLAY: We could do a six hour show easily.

BUCK: Literally we could do a six-hour show every day. Don’t worry. We’re not going to, but we could do a six-hour show every day.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But it is… I think it is a statement almost of fact. You could say it’s an assessment, but I think it’s an assessment for which it’s very hard to find a strong counterargument. That as we see this playing out right now in Texas and heading to the Supreme Court over the abortion issue, Donald Trump’s election win in 2016 — and Donald Trump as a president — was the most pro-life, most consequential pro-life president since Roe v. Wade was adopted.

Donald Trump will have done more for the cause of life as president based on just the Supreme Court picks that he’s made than anyone who came before him. That’s pretty remarkable, especially when… I’m sure you’ve seen out in Trump world they’re saying, “He smells weakness with Biden.” It’s looking more and more like he may do it.

CLAY: I would be stunned at this point if he doesn’t run, and he almost… Was it two weeks ago that we had him on or was the last week? Everything runs together. I can’t remember.

BUCK: We’re gonna get him to do it! We’re gonna get him to do it during the Mar-a-Lago show.

CLAY: He almost announced on our show. We’re gonna it to Mar-a-Lago and give him three hours to hang utilize with us at some point in the near future.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: I was just playing during the commercial break for you, Buck, a lot of the crowds in college football. We heard earlier Dr. Fauci saying that he didn’t like the fact that all these mass millions of people were willing to go to college football games in stadiums that were packed all over the country. But you are hearing — and I heard it in person — so many college kids out there with anti-Joe Biden chants that are breaking out inside of stadiums. I’ve never seen anything like it.

BUCK: Are they yelling, “Fauci, Joe Biden”? ’cause it’s something like that.

CLAY: There’s an F-word in front of Joe Biden. I’ve been going to college football games my entire life, and I have never heard a group of college kids chanting anti-American president chants like this. Look, when Joe Biden’s got a 43% approval rating from NPR polls, Buck, when the New York Times is writing articles on their editorial page, “Why is Joe Biden so unpopular?”

We were just talking in the last segment, I always like to think about politics from the perspective of, “Okay. Let’s try to figure out what both sides can do to maximize their perspective.” As we come into the fall, I think it’s fair to say that Joe Biden has had one of the most disastrous opening years in modern American history as the president. I think that’s fair to say whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, in terms of approval rating; in terms of actual, substantive accomplishments; in terms of being able to point to anything that is impressive that he accomplished.

BUCK: Yes, we agree.

CLAY: So what do they do now?

BUCK: So what’s fascinating is that if they had a vice president that they really believed in —

CLAY: Yes, you’re right.

BUCK: — I think you would say, I think it would be much more likely that there would be right now a groundswell among Democrats for… Not for Joe Biden to resign. Joe Biden’s not gonna resign. He’s not gonna step down. That’s never gonna happen, okay? That’s actually not going to happen. But there would be a groundswell for — and he said this himself; people forget this now — “One term only. Pass the torch to the VP.”

And you would start to hear that realistically after the midterms. You still could see something like that. There may still be some Democrats who say that. We’re a year out; we’ll have to see. But, in the meantime, what’s very clear is that even Democrats recognize Kamala is not gonna get it done. Kamala running… They can’t hand the presidency to Kamala Harris.

She would have to run; Joe Biden would step down. She’d run, I guess, as the incumbent. Well, it depends on how they did it. But, anyway, the point being, she would have to actually become the head of the Democrat Party. And Clay, I think that even Democrats recognize that that’s not gonna work. So then maybe you get, “Do they run Joe Biden?” You always said the Weekend at Bernie’s presidency.

CLAY: Yeah, the Weekend at Bernie’s part 2. Yeah.

BUCK: They get Joe Biden to run, maybe he wins and then he steps down at the beginning of term 2. As dastardly as that scheme may seem… What, you put it beyond Democrats? They’re about to lie about covid stuff in a year and how it’s too dangerous to be in line to vote so they can try to win more elections the midterms.

CLAY: Here’s what I wish. I wish the presidential election was next year because I think if Trump ran, he would absolutely obliterate whoever’s gonna be running for the Democrats, if the election were in 2022. There are so many things that can happen between now and 2024 that it’s hard to forecast —

BUCK: Yeah, we have no idea.

CLAY: — exactly where we’ll be, who’s gonna run. Would you have foreseen if we were sitting here in, you know, 2013 and one of us had come on the air and said, “Hey, you know, I think 2016 it’s gonna be between Hillary Clinton and I think Donald Trump’s gonna run, and I think he’s gonna beat Hillary Clinton,” that would have been a pretty crazy prediction in 2013.

BUCK: I was in conservative media at the time, Clay, and I was over at CNN, and there were all these different…. I was an on-air conservative when they still allowed them. They don’t even allow that anymore.

CLAY: Of course not. Yeah.

BUCK: They’d bring you on and say, “Ahem, right-wing lunatic Buck Sexton,” and all the anchors attack you and the whole thing. But even at that stage, let’s never forget, they put Trump on air at CNN in 2015 winning going into the 2016 election, they put him on air because they thought it was funny.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They thought it was amusing.

CLAY: Good ratings.

BUCK: “Look how dumb these Republicans are! They’re going with this guy,” and of course, we got the last laugh. Which is why, Clay, also they never would forgive Trump because the thing that he did, even more than about the Supreme Court picks and how there’s now a real threat to Roe, thank God, and all these real policy changes that came from Trump. The unforgivable sin of Donald Trump as far as the media was concerned was that he was a threat to the vanity of the journo elites. That was too far, too much. Calling them Fake News, all of it.

CLAY: We should mention, the study that came out, 25% of Biden voters now regret their vote, and so I don’t think there’s any way they can Weekend at Bernie’s 2-style try to drag him across the finish line. I just… I’m not even sure what they pivot to. I think abortion and the Supreme Court will be one of the things they try to distract people with. I think that’s where they feel maybe they can energize some supporters who aren’t energized in any way by Joe Biden. I’m curious to see what happens with the budget ’cause I think that’s a big part of this, too.

BUCK: If Roe is struck down, though, as we talked about here, Clay — and this will be a big issue from now until June — it just goes back to the states.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: And then what I think will happen people will say, “Okay, state legislatures will pass laws about this, and some will have a six-week or a ten-week or whatever restriction, others will be abortion at any time for any reason,” and when people see that it’s not actually this Handmaid’s Tale dystopia —

CLAY: Yes. It’s a great point.

BUCK: — it may not even be the issue they think it is. So basically, “Everything is racist,” I think, is their most likely play. Oh, and class warfare socialism stuff. There you go.

CLAY: And we’ll see what happens with the budget. That’s gonna be huge, I think, to see whether Biden can get that pushed through, and I’m not sure that he can.

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