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We had a diplomatic incident last month and a lot of Americans didn't even know what happened. The government of France did something they haven't done in hundreds of years. They recalled their ambassador to the United States. They also accused the United States of behaving in a manner that is, quote, unacceptable between allies and partners. No, it wasn't a cheese embargo that made the French mad. They were angry that the Biden administration agreed to provide nuclear power submarines to Australia. 

France had wanted to sell its own submarines, and the Biden administration effectively killed that deal. It hurt France, and they were mad about it. Now we haven't had a problem with France, this profound sense, to be specific, 1798.  John Adams was president then, and the interesting thing is, he had no idea that we had a problem with France. It took months for words to reach him back in Washington that American and French diplomats were fighting with one another. 

By the time Adams learned about this diplomatic dispute, which became known as the XYZ affair, it was too late to stop it. A naval war mostly fought in the Caribbean broke out between the United States and France. So the lesson from that conflict was pretty simple. If you're going to run the United States, you have to be pretty aware of what the rest of the world is doing, particularly major world powers, particularly your allies. 

JOHN KERRY GOES VIRAL AFTER SAYING BIDEN ‘LITERALLY HAD NOT BEEN AWARE’ OF WHAT LED TO US-FRANCE DUSTUP

So with that in mind, John Kerry, the former secretary of state now our climate czar, was asked what happened here? And his response was really simple: Like John Adams, Joe Biden had no idea that the French were upset. Now, unlike John Adams, our current president has the benefit of cell phones and the internet. But he still didn't know. Joe Biden didn't know because he's in mental decline. There are a lot of things he doesn't know, including when our allies are furious with us and start withdrawing their ambassadors. 

So Kerry was asked to explain all of this by a French news channel. Why did the Biden administration cut France out of a nuclear submarine deal with Australia? And his response was amazing. He said Joe Biden did this because Joe Biden was completely unaware there was a problem in the first place. 

JOHN KERRY: And President Biden asked me about it, and I told him, and expressed…

FRENCH REPORTER: You told Joe Biden that it was not the right… 

JOHN KERRY: He asked me. He said, What's the situation? And I explained exactly, he was, he had not been aware of that. He literally, literally had not been aware of what had transpired. 

When was the last time you heard someone from the U.S. government admit that the president was completely clueless? "He literally had not been aware of what had transpired." You’re probably not shocked by that. Joe Biden was visibly confused throughout the entire presidential campaign. Here's one example:

JOE BIDEN: Bounce? Good evening…thanks so much for tuning in.

JOE BIDEN: No man has a right to raise a hand to a woman in anger other than in self-defense, and that rarely ever occurs. And so we have to just change the culture. Period. And keep punching at it and punching and punching at it.

JOE BIDEN: Play the radio. Make sure the television, excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night. 

JOE BIDEN: Poor kids who are just as bright and just as talented white kids. 

JOE BIDEN: We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts. 

We're not trying to be mean, as we've said many times, we feel sorry for Joe Biden, all of us hope to live to the age where we face those kinds of problems. And the truth is voters knew what they were getting when they voted for Joe Biden. What's interesting is that now that he's in office, Biden's handlers are doing everything they can to prevent us from noticing that he's not really in charge.

PSAKI ATTEMPTS TO WALK BACK KERRY CLAIM THAT BIDEN ‘HAD NOT BEEN AWARE’ OF FRENCH REACTION TO SUB DEAL

Take a look at the latest example. There are pictures of a fake White House set that the Biden administration has for some reason constructed across the street from the actual White House. It's in an auditorium at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Why go to the trouble? They already have a White House. 

Well, Stephen Miller spent the last four years in the White House as an adviser to Trump, and here's his explanation for it, because he would know: "The reason Biden uses this bizarre virtual set for televised meetings—and not an actual room like East Room, Cabinet, Oval, Roosevelt, Sit Room, etc.—is because it allows him to read a script directly from a face-on monitor (& w/out teleprompter glass that can be seen on camera).." 

Oh. Now, we can't verify that that's true, but it certainly sounds right. Joe Biden can't speak from the Oval Office because he's not sure what to say, so he has to read it all here. So that raises a much deeper question. The question is not: is Joe Biden mentally impaired? Obviously, he is, and again, we're not going to gloat over it. But a much more important question for the rest of us is: If he's not running the government, then who is? That's a real question. Clearly, the FBI, the DOJ and the military are already acting independently of the elected president of the United States, as you just saw, they don't even keep them informed of international incidents.

Instead, they are in some cases freelancing to crush anyone who opposes their power. Michael Flynn, for example. He was briefly the national security adviser in the Trump administration. What we learned from the destruction of Mike Flynn, really, was that sure, you can elect Donald Trump president, but does he really run the executive branch of government? No. It turned out Barack Obama was still in charge, even though he was no longer president. 

So Obama had his cronies charge Mike Flynn with a crime, talking to Russia as the national security adviser, which of course is not a crime by any stretch. And they wrecked his life for doing that. It took years for us - this is how slow we are to figure out exactly what had happened there - but now it's very obvious. We just sat down with a long interview with Mike Flynn. It's coming out Monday, and he told us what is really obvious to everyone who watches: An unelected group within Washington effectively runs the country without reference to voters. Here's his assessment:

MIKE FLYNN: We have two separate governments. We have the one that actually gets elected and goes into office. And then you have a government inside of Washington, D.C. that operates under no rules, no authorities other than their own or who's ever in charge… 

TUCKER CARLSON: Sounds like that government was still controlled by Barack Obama.

MIKE FLYNN: Yeah, and I would say that that's that, to a degree, is is what we're operating with today. 

By the way, Mike Flynn is not some internet celebrity or conservative activist, he was a three-star general. He was the head of an intelligence agency. He was the number two guy for all American intelligence. He spent his entire life working in the federal government and succeeding at that. So he knows what he's talking about. He is a reliable guide to how the government actually works. 

Our whole conversation with Mike Flynn, by the way, is on Tucker Carlson Today. It's coming up Monday on Fox Nation. But it's not just Mike Flynn who's being destroyed. Every ideological opponent of the regime is under attack parents at school board meetings saying unapproved things. Yesterday, Joe Biden's flack refused to rule out using the Patriot Act to hunt down American parents who are upset about what their kids are learning. 

PETER DOOCY: Will the administration be okay with the FBI using the Patriot Act to surveil these parents if that is what they decide?

JEN PSAKI: don't speak on behalf of the National School Board Association. I speak on behalf of this government. The attorney general has put out a letter. They will take actions they take, and I would point to them for more information.

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Oh, so this is the spokesman for the President of the United States, saying atthe Justice Department, they're going to take actions that they're going to take, we don't really have any control over this. And she may be on to something there. It does increasingly seem like the national security state runs everything. You remember, the DOJ recently dispatched its Anti-Terrorism National Security Division to investigate ordinary parents, calling them domestic terrorists. The DOJ is also developing training sessions to tell school board members that free speech is actually violence. 

So who's really in charge? It's a really interesting question.

This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the Oct. 7, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."