The Cosby Case and the Politicization of American Justice

30 Jun 2021

BUCK: Big news story last hour that we covered in some detail here: Bill Cosby’s sex assault conviction vacated by Pennsylvania’s highest court. That’s huge. That is a news bombshell, given that Cosby was perhaps the first or the second, right? I think it’s first or second most visible target of the #MeToo era as a predator. I mean, he was targeted as a predator during that period of time. It was really Cosby and Weinstein were at the top of the list.

CLAY: I think you’re 100% right about that, and, again, there is going to be an argument that Bill Cosby was wrongfully convicted. The data does not reflect that he didn’t necessarily rape this woman.

BUCK: Right. Not innocent, but wrongfully convicted.

CLAY: Wrongfully convicted. And I think tomorrow we probably can discuss this in even more detail. We had a lot of callers who want to weigh in; they still do. But I’m actually curious, Buck, to see how this story plays in the media, because we talked a little bit. We’re gonna talk a lot about this. To me, the great evil of the Democratic Party is identity politics.

And for this you have a white woman who alleged that she was raped, got a conviction, and now a black man is able to use the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, thanks to his superior resources, to argue that the conviction should have never happened because of — and this is an interesting political angle — the DA, in 2005 who would later be in the second Donald Trump impeachment trial.

The primary defender of Donald Trump, that DA trial back in 2005, he made the decision that there was not enough evidence to prosecute Bill Cosby, and then that led to the further incrimination of himself by Bill Cosby responding to questions in a civil lawsuit. By the way, the DA at the time for Bill Cosby and the one who defended Trump at the second impeachment trial, Bruce Castor.

So, the fact that that would overlap and he would end up now with a guy in a significant role in the Bill Cosby case as well as a former defender of 45 is pretty wild, and I’m curious to see how exactly this plays out, because I think it’s fair to say — sometimes the phrase “bombshell” is overused, Buck.

But Bill Cosby, out of nowhere, suddenly having his conviction vacated, the charges can never be brought again, and he’s gonna walk out of jail within the next hours, maybe before this show ends today? We’ll see whether Cosby speaks to the media, whether he claims vindication, and how, again, it’s going to be covered. That is legitimately a bombshell.

BUCK: We have been lectured a lot in recent years, particularly under the Trump administration by the media, but even still now, about the need for our sacred institutions to be upheld and protected. And the justice system has to be very near the top of that. You know, you’ve got the Constitution; you’ve got our checks and balances, our system of government as envisioned by the founders.

But our justice system is absolutely critical, and it’s critical that people believe that it’s operating as it should and that people’s rights are respected and that it is not a partisan instrument, that it is not a system of political domination that is often used. I just bring this up because, on the one hand you’ve got this Cosby trial, where there is a different kind of politics involved there.

Which was in the moment if you’re a incorporate, in the #MeToo era getting Bill Cosby was something that there was a lot of pressure to do because of perception publicly. But there’s also the Trump Organization, which is still getting investigated. We spoke to the president for an hour yesterday. That was… I mean, let’s just say as an aside here, that was pretty awesome.

CLAY: In case you missed it. Just download podcast. Went really well.

BUCK: Pretty awesome. Lots of news stories about it.

CLAY: Everywhere, really. I’m actually, ironically, reading right now, basically every media outlet in the country covered that interview.

BUCK: And the Trump administration and CFO Allen Weisselberg are examined, according to the Wall Street Journal here just in the last hour, to be face-to-face charges tomorrow. Now, I understand they’ll probably have some way of making it seem like that’s not a partisan decision. But we all know it is. Right?

We all know that Cy Vance, who’s the district attorney in New York, that the people involved here, are Democrats who are looking to make a statement, to go after Republicans in this case. And I understand these are very different kinds of cases and involving — you know, one is, you know — horrendous criminal conduct, and the other one has to do with basically, you know, bookkeeping in the case of the Trump Organization.

But it all goes down to we have to believe, there has to be a belief that the justice system is fundamentally trying to be fair and that it is adhering to the rules and the principles that are set out in the justice system. And, you know, I think one of the problems you see continuously of the progressive, authoritarian left is that they…

Because power is the one absolutely critical thing that they pursue, above everything else, they view the Justice Department and the system of justice we have — and particularly prosecutors’ offices — as instruments of partisan warfare to be deployed whatever they see fit. I think that pulls us apart in ways that are really damaging as a country.

CLAY: And I think this case is emblematic of that in many ways, but in particular the rise of #MeToo, Buck. You mentioned, I think it’s fair to say, Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby are probably the twin pillars to the extent that you had to point to two powerful people who have been torn down by the #MeToo. Both of those guys convicted.

Jeffrey Epstein would be another one that I think a lot of people think of when that story emerges. To me, this represents how justice is influenced by external factors that have nothing to do with justice. Let me unpack that and explain it a bit. In 2005, #MeToo hasn’t happened. So the DA looks at the evidence; says, “This is gonna be a really difficult conviction to get.”

Which, by the way, he was correct about because the first trial is a mistrial. Later, they get a conviction. Not only the prosecutors, though. One of the reasons why justice is blind, Buck, is because we shouldn’t be allowing external factors to influence guilt or innocence, right? You see the scales of justice. Lady Justice is blind. Our juries are influenced too.

#MeToo, the reason why I found it to be so heinous on so many levels was because as a lawyer, I am taught that all that matters are the facts, the facts, the facts. And when you’re telling me that Brett Kavanaugh can’t be on the Supreme Court because I have to #BelieveAllWomen, that is the exact opposite of what the judicial system should represent. You should never believe someone — or significantly disbelieve someone — because of their race, their gender, their ethnicity, their religion, their sexuality, whatever it might be. Justice is needs be blind.

BUCK: And this is not a both sides issue in terms of the politics and partisan — and now I’m moving now more toward the Trump Organization prosecution, which is also a story in the last hour that is being updated here. The Trump Organization expected to be charged tomorrow. Really? For what?

Oh, with some tax malfeasance. Yeah, trust me, all of a sudden — Trump has never been charged before with this tax malfeasance or his organization, but just in time, just after he leaves office as president and the libs have been screaming about how, you know, he’s worse than Hitler for four years — now he’s being charged.

I would just note that when there’s a very important exercise I’d ask all of you to do, and it’s to think about in just recent memory the high-level criminal investigations and prosecutions of political figures that have occurred in this country. And how many of them just happened to be Republicans versus how many of them were actually Democrats?

The biggest one, of course, being the Russia collusion mess. That was effectively a criminal investigation of a sitting president based on a lie. So that’s the weaponization of the Justice Department against a sitting president, which Donald Trump had to sit through and that did hurt his administration just because the process was the punishment.

But then even beyond that… I mean, Clay, Chris Christie, Bridgegate? Any charges against him? No but they ran with that for a long time. Rick Perry when he was governor of Texas. Any charges against him? No but they said they couldn’t threaten to veto something. That was criminal abuse of power. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, the John Doe investigations trying to see if there was criminal collusion between a PAC and Walker’s gubernatorial campaign.

Did they actually do anything wrong? No, but they made people under the John Doe laws incapable of even talking the dawn raids on their homes about that. You go down the list. Even the former governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, they were trying to send his wife for years, federal prison, because he was hanging out with a rich businessman.

He didn’t take any official act on his behalf. You look at the list. I mean, Clay, is there a list of Democrats that have been treated that way? “Ted Stevens!” people are gonna yell at me. Prosecutorial misconduct against Senator Ted Stevens to make him lose his reelection effort in Alaska. If this doesn’t happen, by the way, if they don’t bring that prosecution where they hid exculpatory evidence — this all came out — do you have Obamacare fully the way you do now? Changes a lot, doesn’t it?

CLAY: It changes a ton. And I think what you’re talking about, in particular with this Trump investigation, for anybody who has spent sufficient time looking at the tax code, people think of the tax code as being sort of a scientific manner. You owe X-number of dollars; you plug in your tax returns.

When you’re doing big corporate tax returns, the tax code is an art, by which I mean there are arguments you work make against/for the way that you allocate dollars, the way that move money around. I really genuinely believe this. If you are paying tax on millions of his dollars a year, which a tiny fraction of people are, if you spent three years going over any organization’s tax returns, you would be able to find something that you think is an inappropriate act that could be potentially criminal.

And this is what they’ve said all the time, by the way. The NCAA, basically, is getting blown up tomorrow with athletes being able to get paid. But this is what they always said about the NCAA investigating your program in the world of college athletics. As soon as they show up on campus, they can find you breaking a rule. The IRS and the tax code in general is fundamentally broken. You give a prosecutor who wants to find a reason to charge somebody with a crime years to investigate; they’re gonna find, Buck, a crime to charge somebody.

BUCK: This is like the Soviet secret police director Lavrentiy Beria saying, “You show me the man, I’ll show you the crime.”

CLAY: Yes!

BUCK: Anybody who understands the system — or what about old, you know, you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, so to speak. There’s a lot of ways to look at this.

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Clay and Buck Break Down the Cosby Bombshell

30 Jun 2021

CLAY: I am reading right now from CNBC. This news has just broken in like the last 10 minutes or so. “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court…” A lot of people are like, “It must be election related.” (chuckles) No, not election related. “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned Bill Cosby’s sexual assault convictions, and has barred all further prosecution.”

Bill Cosby, 83 years old, will be released from prison today. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court overturned his conviction, finding two things. One, there was an agreement with a previous prosecutor which prevented Bill Cosby from being charged in this case in the first place — which is what Bill Cosby’s lawyers argued from the moment, Buck, that these charges were brought.

They said: No, no, no. We had a previous agreement that made these charges not permissible. “They also reviewed two aspects…” I’m reading from CNBC here, a story that they have up. “They also reviewed two aspects of the case that Cosby’s lawyers had challenged. The first involved the judge’s decision to let prosecutors call five other accusers in addition to the woman who was accusing Cosby,” and the trial judge allowed that to happen.

And they also said, again, that “the agreement was with the former prosecutor that he would not be charged in these cases.” So, Buck Sexton, this is a pretty significant story, I think, because Bill Cosby was one of the primary figures who got all wrapped up in the #MeToo universe.

And now 83-year-old comedian Bill Cosby — at one point, maybe the most beloved dad in all of America, certainly in the eighties and the nineties for those of you out there who remember The Cosby Show as the cultural force that it was. Bill Cosby had that beloved status stripped off him as he was paraded through the courts and eventually convicted, and now he’s gonna walk out of prison a free man.

Now, some people are gonna say, “Okay, what can happen now? ” The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled. Theoretically, the United States Supreme Court could get involved in this case. That would be the next iteration. I would be very surprised if they take this case. It will be interesting to see what the state of Pennsylvania decides. That’s a pretty big blockbuster, right? I don’t think anybody had on their radar, “What’s gonna be the top news story of the day?” Bill Cosby walking out of prison.

BUCK: You remember for about a 12-month period or so, #MeToo was one of the biggest stories in America, that whole moment where we were told that there was gonna be justice brought against sexual predators, basically. I mean, that’s really it. But then it was also people who were guilty of sexual harassment, right? There was this whole scale.

At the very top you had Harvey Weinstein and you had Bill Cosby and people that were accused of and convicted of — although now obviously Bill Cosby’s conviction vacated, but convicted of — serious sexual crimes, and then it went all the way down to people that, you know, had made a comment or said something on Twitter that was sexist 10 years ago, right?

There was this whole scope of what #MeToo really meant. But I think that part of this… As you read out why the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did this, part of this is there’s a reminder that our system is not supposed to change any of the things that it’s doing. We’re not supposed to be able to stack the deck even when we think we’ve got someone who’s a really bad person, a really guilty person, whatever the case may be.

You shouldn’t have politics driving changes to get an outcome that you want. And in that politically heightened moment, perhaps, it seems — I mean, I’m assuming based on what the Pennsylvania Supreme Court here has done — they felt like there were irregularities in the process which now can result in a situation like this. And I’ll just tell everybody…

You know, we haven’t talked about it yet here, but Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd. You know, he got a 22-plus-year sentence and is also about to have a plea deal, they believe (this is reportedly reached) on federal civil rights charges. This doesn’t count as, you know, double prosecution.

The state and the federal government can both bring charges for essentially the same conduct but under different jurisdiction. So, Clay, as part of that Chauvin has to recite, they believe, why he did what he did and then to allow him to only serve his 20-plus years in prison, and not do a federal sentence on top of that as well. Now, when you look at what you usually get for manslaughter, it’s not 20-plus years plus federal civil rights charges.

I mean, they’re throwing the book at this guy and then some. And whatever one thinks of the outcome of that case in terms of innocence or guilt, the system has to withstand political pressure. And it looks like in the Cosby situation there may have been people in the prosecutorial side who were too aggressive in trying to get a certain outcome.

CLAY: Not only that — and I think what you said is well said — there are many people, probably, out there, some of whom are defense attorneys (I have worked as a defense attorney) who know and have seen that people are not all treated the same. Right? Very often prosecutors want to make a name for themselves by going after the biggest possible target. Martha Stewart is an example. Remember the insider-trading case?

BUCK: Do you know who pushed that against her, by the way? Fun fact, by the way. James Comey.

CLAY: Oh, really.

BUCK: If you’re wondering what a headhunting, chase-the-headlines jerk that guy’s been forever, he was the one. In fact, Rudy Giuliani — who was at the U.S. attorney’s office Southern District at the time — told me, “This is outrageous. You’re gonna go after her for not actually doing insider trading, but being scared and saying the wrong thing about speaking to her broker?”

CLAY: Yeah. Well, this is to me emblematic of why many lawyers are sometimes skeptical of charges and allegations, right? The most, I would say, stunning prosecutorial overreach that I have seen in my life is the Duke lacrosse case, right? Where you had the narrative there: Privileged lacrosse playing, private school white kids alleged to have raped a black, single mother stripper. And you had power and prestige on the side of the Duke lacrosse case, and this Michael Nifong, I think was his name —

BUCK: Yup.

CLAY: — the prosecutor in that case, decided that he wanted to strike a blow for racial justice, even though the stripper — Crystal Mangum, I believe, was her name — was a total liar. I believe, in fact, that she is now in prison for murder, if I’m not mistaken.

BUCK: Yes, that is correct. She went on to kill somebody, which is also a reminder that even in those politically sensitive cases, they should have considered bringing false-statement charges against her because she was a liar.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: You brought up Nifong, who is just a horrifying disgrace all of human being, the prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case. There was a moment — and this has been, you know, written about extensively, and it just also goes to the Democrat social justice mind-set here of, you know, if you have to just make an example of a bunch of innocent people for the broader narrative of racial justice, go for it.

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: That’s the way very view it. That’s how Nifong viewed it. He actually had one of the kids accused miles away at an ATM machine, and when that came out, the family thought, “We’re okay.”

CLAY: That they’d drop the charges.

BUCK: No, he didn’t want to drop that charge. He didn’t move an inch on it, and it was a reminder to everybody that prosecutors, there’s very little oversight on politicized prosecution. And so it’s something, that if you’re looking to see what branch of the government can ruin your life the fastest unjustly? Oh, it’s prosecutors. I mean, the IRS may be number two, close, but it’s prosecutors.

CLAY: And also, the importance of having the resources to fight a case. Right? To me, what I always said is the Duke lacrosse case, we know that it was a prosecutorial disaster because they could afford good defense attorneys. And now, again, if you’re just tuning in and hearing, Bill Cosby’s conviction for sexual assault was overturned. He is now reportedly going to walk out of prison a free man today.

And, significantly, as a part of this Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision which just came down, Buck, they’re not allowed to prosecute him at all for these charges going forward, either. So, you know, sometimes when you overturn a case — I’m sure people out there have heard of this — there can be something wrong with the case, but the overall charges underlying, you can get a new trial and bring those charges.

According to what I am reading right now, the case against Bill Cosby is dead; it is gone. They are not able to bring new charges against him. So you mentioned the Derek Chauvin case, for instance. What his attorneys have been arguing for is because of the settlement with the civil case. I’m sure there were decisions made from a witness perspective about what evidence was introduced and whatnot. You would be seeking a new trial, not that all charges be thrown out forever. Here, Bill Cosby is being 100% vindicated in the fact that these charges should ever have been brought against him in the first place.

BUCK: Well, at least from the reading of this that we have based on the news stories, it seems that they’re admitting that there was some misconduct within the system.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That’s obviously a far cry from Bill Cosby didn’t do terrible things. They’re not saying that Bill Cosby — and correct me if I’m missing something in this breaking story. They’re not saying Bill Cosby didn’t do it.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: That’s not what’s being said.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They’re saying Bill Cosby was essentially, you know, fed into the system here; and because everybody wanted to get him — and I think that there was the #MeToo angle of it. There’s also, you know, Bill Cosby, his protection as somebody who would have been liked nationwide changed a bit when he started to become a little bit more vocal on some actual conservative issues, believe it or not.

So there was a greater political desire, I think — or, you know, there was a sense — that the machine really needs to get this guy, and he didn’t have any of the protection that he might have in the past just from people liking him and him being such a cultural icon. But he may very well still have done the things that he was convicted. I mean, it looks, based on the evidence, it seems like he certainly did. But the system overstepped. I mean, this is enormous, for heaven’s sakes.

CLAY: It’s a massive story. Really the way to convey it I think for people to understand it easily is effectively — and I want to make it clear, I haven’t read it. We’re live on the air, so I haven’t read the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision. But based on what I have been able to read so far, effectively what they’re saying is that there is a double jeopardy in play here.

In other words, he had already, in a previous prosecutorial settlement, had these charges taken off the table based on what he had agreed to in the past. So, to your point, it doesn’t mean that he might not have drugged women. It doesn’t mean that he may not have committed sexual assault, but that that was previously covered under prior negotiations. And he is expected, by the way, to be picked up by his publicist in the next couple of hours and officially walk out of prison a free man.

BUCK: Totally free.

CLAY: Totally free.

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New York Times Still Pushing “Insurrection” Narrative

30 Jun 2021

BUCK: This is pretty remarkable, because we were just talking to you — I mean minutes ago — about the biggest story on the New York Times, which was the New York Times website. And I know — but Clay and I, we peek behind enemy lines to see what the leftists are up to. We gotta know, right? I mean, New York Times, Washington Post, it’s like the opposition is laying out the battle plan for you to read.

You can see the propaganda being churned out in real time. But this was amazing. We were talking about the New York City mayoral race and the change in the last 24 hours, 135,000 votes counted that shouldn’t be. Now you got people saying, “Oh, there’s something wrong here. There’s an irregularity,” and the difference in the way this is being treated by the media.

And, suddenly, at the New York Times website, guess what ends up happening? The story changed. The main story right now is, “Days of Rage: An Investigation of How a Mob Stormed the Capitol.” It’s all about the January 6th insurrection. This is a fixation for the left and for Democrats now. It’s a news story on literally any day they can push it.

And it gives them so much of what they want because this is meant to create a perception that the right is — at any moment — a threat to this entire country, to our democracy, Clay. I even have here from ABC News — and this was just from this morning: “Perfect storm,” they call it, “a bulletin warns of extremist violence as pandemic restrictions lift, major story here on ABC News.” Clay, what extremist violence going into our Independence Day celebration are the biggest news organizations in the country worried about?

CLAY: This is, to me, a flagrant example of choosing narrative over truth, and there’s a difference out there. People who are listening, very often what our media does today — and this is what we pledged not to do for you, is we try to be as honest as we can about the news stories on any given day.

The threat as we head into the July 4th week — and Joe Biden’s gonna let you have all your barbecues again and you can gather with friends and family — is not violent, white extremism or white supremacy. It’s getting shot because the police aren’t able to protect you! And do you know who is doing the shootings and who is the victims of the shootings all over this country as our national crime wave is skyrocketing?

Inner city residents, Buck. Black lives are supposed to matter so much. The elites of the Democratic Party used Black Lives Matter to gin up outrage and turnout. As soon as the election is over, they vanish. The media is not covering this in the grand scheme of things. As the murder rate skyrockets all over this country, the threat over July 4th weekend is not the, quote, “insurrection” from January 6th. It’s all the bad guys with guns who aren’t being pursued by police now.

BUCK: And isn’t it fascinating? You see how this is being manufactured by the corporate — and I will say, I have some friends in conservative media that have convince me to stop… I don’t like this term “mainstream media” —

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: — because why give them that elevation. Mainstream? They’re left-wing propaganda organs. Yes, they’re corporate. A lot of them have legacy power and they’re institutions that sometimes, unfortunately, have a lot of funding and reporters they can deploy as little partisan propagandists. But the legacy, corporate media is in real time here as we’re going into the Independence Day weekend, trying to create a perception.

The number one story on the New York Times — which is, I think, the number one or two most read news site in the country overall. It’s usually in the top three, something like that. The number one story is the insurrection? I mean, it’s June of 2021, almost July, and they’re talking about this like it just happened yesterday. But this ABC News piece, Clay, the bulletin warning of extremist violence?

And at the bottom, it makes it quite explicit, that the problem is white supremacist violence. You see all these pieces coming together. I’m here to tell everybody, I used to write terrorism assessments and analysis for the government and at the highest level. I used to right for the PDB, for the president’s daily briefing, when I was in the CIA, and this is part of the job.

If you want to find threat reporting on any given day to talk about some white nationalist plot, yeah, you can find chatter somewhere on the internet. It’s all about what’s elevated, focused on, and exaggerated to create a certain perception of who’s the good political party in this country and who’s the bad political party.

CLAY: It’s all narrative based, and I think you raised a good point, ’cause you said, “Hey, we’re looking at the New York Times.” I think if you’re an intelligent consumer of media, I think you need to read everything. And I understand some people who say, “Oh, I want to sit in my silo, and I only want to read things that confirm what I already believe.”

I disagree with that. I think you need to read aggressively, because it allows you to see how agendas grow and how narratives are set — and I’m old school. People make fun of me about this. My wife makes fun of me about this. I still like to read, Buck, a tangible newspaper each morning. I get the New York Times. You’ve seen me. I bring it in.

BUCK: You and my dad, by the way.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I can’t even handle them.

CLAY: That’s what my wife says!

BUCK: You two guys are like —

CLAY: To turn the pages, my wife gets frustrated.

BUCK: — your expertise was flipping all the pages around. If it’s not on a screen that I can click, I don’t even know how you can read it.

CLAY: Well, I bring in literally the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times ’cause I want to point out some of the editorials that are being used to drive narrative. And I think — and I’m a subscriber of the Washington Post, and I understand people get fired up and angry about the work that these places do. But to me, you can’t see the big picture unless you’re reading the entire scope of the media universe.

And it actually, to me, exposes the dishonesty even more so, Buck, because what it shows you is the selection of the way stories are conveyed. I’ll give you an example recently. You live in New York City where there have been a massive number — at least historically, precedent-wise — of Asian attacks, right? We all had the big discussion about Asian hate and people who were innocent Asian people walking on the streets that were attacked.

Almost uniformly, who were attacking the Asian people? Black guys. Almost 100% of the time. The way that the New York Times would cover those Asian attacks was to leave out the race of the alleged perpetrator. Every time that a white person is accused of anything that fits the narrative of the New York Times, the opening paragraph features the white person’s race.

One of the most virulent of those attacks, Buck, against an Asian woman, didn’t even include the suspect description. It said, “New York police are requesting help in identifying and locating the suspect,” and there was no description of who the suspect was or what his race was! This is a targeted attempt to make violent white supremacy seem like it is the biggest issue in America today because they want to tie that to the Republican Party and because they want to make everybody look like they are completely off the rails.

BUCK: It’s not new what we’re seeing, and what Clay describes here is what is happening with the media’s focus on certain things to create a certain narrative. Because one of the biggest editorial decisions you make is what to talk about, what to focus on, more so even than how you will portray it. But then additionally things like leaving out the descriptions of suspects. New York has a local TV channel that’s only New York local politics, and it’s basically Pravda on the Hudson.

CLAY: (chuckling)

BUCK: I mean, it’s crazy how left-wing it is. And it really is just, you know, radical Marxist, socialist claptrap on a daily basis. But whenever they will describe a suspect, for example, they will say, you know, “Five foot 10 male, 185 pounds,” but there will be a photo that you can see sometimes.

CLAY: Yeah, you can see the race.

BUCK: The NYPD will release it, but they will avoid any actual description of the suspect because they think that that plays into stereotypes or whatever it may be. But in recent years, there were some moments where we saw — and just to bring everybody back into exactly where we are here, the New York Times’ main story for you today across the country…

I know a lot of you don’t read the Times, but Clay and I have to. We have to dive deep into the commie nonsense. Their main stories on the January 6th “insurrection,” which was not an insurrection. It’s a lie to call it an insurrection. It was a riot. It was not an insurrection. But that’s their main story.

We had in recent years the total abandonment not only of objectivity, but also rationality by the media. And we’re talking about suspects here in the way that racial politics gets involved in all this. I knew a lot of mainstream journalists who believed — and thought to the very end — the Jesse Smollett story was true.

CLAY: Oh, yeah.

BUCK: And I actually had people —

CLAY: Kamala Harris —

BUCK: Of course.

CLAY: — immediately believed it.

BUCK: And I had people reach out to me who know me from the media world, you know, blue checks, fellow media people from the left who were saying, “You’re lighting your career on fire.” I mean, ’cause I did a podcast within 24 hours I think of the initial allegation that was “Jussie Smollett is lying.”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: You knew it, I knew it with. Anyone who looked at the details of that situation would understand it. But here’s where we are in this country at this point in time. To be a leftist in good standing, you have to adopt the expected orthodoxy on these issues – even it makes you look like a moron, even if it makes it look like you don’t have the critical faculties to think through these things. Doesn’t matter. That is the sacrifice you have to be willing to make. I mean, there are so many of these hoax situations, hoax hate crimes that come up.

CLAY: Because if you question it, Buck, you’re racist.

BUCK: Of course!

CLAY: Right? We saw this in sports all the time. Michael Bennett, Seattle lineman at the time, accused the Las Vegas Police Department of profiling him. Video comes out — there’s everything in a casino, they have 120 cameras everywhere — it’s not true. But when people actually covered that story, they don’t cover the follow-up. It’s an absolutely joke.

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We Won’t Let Anyone Forget Who Wants to Defund the Police

30 Jun 2021

Amid a nationwide crime wave, desperate Democrats are now trying to run away from the Defund the Police movement.

But they can’t escape this: On June 12th, 2020, almost exactly a year ago, there was a big opinion piece in the New York Times with the headline: “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police”. “Literally.” You know what that word means, right, Democrats?

They’re trying to to say now, “We never said defund the police. We were never in favor of it at all.”

As Clay said, “Except, we got some receipts.”

Democrats support Defunding the Police.

Pass it on. pic.twitter.com/lR5p7iHMP2

— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) June 29, 2021

Listen to Clay and Buck Discuss This Montage of Democrats:

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NYC Democrats Question Primary Results? That’s Treason!

30 Jun 2021

BUCK: If we had a central premise here on the show, I think to tell the truth would probably be number one — to tell you the truth, to see what’s really going on — which brings me to what’s happening in New York City right now.

CLAY: Your hometown, Buck, is a mess.

BUCK: NYC. Anybody who follows — and I follow it pretty closely because I grew up there — New York City politics knows the Board of Elections is a disaster. It really is. It’s a disaster. And right now, you have what you’d have to call a massive election irregularity playing out in the mayor’s race in the largest city in America. And for everyone out there, I understand this is about one city.

But you have a bunch of national narratives that are playing out in this contest, one of which we’ve already talked about here, which is, of course, defund the police and how you have a candidate who is explicitly opposed to that, a former police officer himself. And you can already see the tipping point.

Now, you can already see Democrats moving away from defund, as crazy as it was all along, and some of us were willing to say it all along. But then there’s also, are you allowed to wonder about election processes? Are you allowed to be a person who asks questions about the sanctity of an election?

I mean, if you question election process in the last few months, the media wanted you to know that you’re an insurrectionist who is suppressing minority votes while threatening our democracy. Except this election, Clay.

CLAY: (chuckles)

BUCK: All of a sudden, it’s fine. Let’s just give the folks the quick background here on what happened. In New York City they’ve got ranked voting, which is a process by which you put one through five who you want, and then they do these rounds, and they get rid of the seventh-tier candidate and the sixth tier and the fifth tier and the fourth.

And they go down until you’re left. And that’s if no one gets more than 50% of number one votes the first time out. So if you don’t get a majority, you go into this ranked system. Other places have this, but other places are not the, you know, Democrat kleptocracy that is New York City.

You know, there’s so much corruption and nonsense going on in New York politics all the time. So here’s what happened. You had 135,000 test ballots that were included in a count that was initially put online that showed a tremendous narrowing between Eric Adams, who is the… Remember, these are all Democrats we’re talking about. There is Curtis Sliwa.

There is a Republican who’s running, but he doesn’t get a lot of attention right now. He’s a good guy. So 135,000 ballots added into this that shouldn’t have been at all, but it shows Maya Wiley and Garcia gaining, gaining substantially on Eric Adams. So, you know, as we see Kathryn Garcia gaining on Eric Adams, that’s a moment now where you say, “Okay.”

They then had to pull the tally down and say, “We’ll come back with more here. Don’t worry,” and today, I believe, they’ve released updated numbers. But, Clay, if they could erroneously count 135,000 ballots, put it online as an officially tally, and then pull it down, aren’t people allowed to say, “Maybe we do need to look at some of these election processes in some places,” maybe not just New York, either?

CLAY: Well, let’s consider what the candidates themselves are saying. Sounds eerily similar to a lot of people who questioned the 2020 election which we were told was racist and was unacceptable, an insurrection that threatened the foundations of our democracy. Here’s Maya Wiley, who is considered to be the most left-leaning of the candidates. Here’s the official statement that she put out, Buck.

“This error is not just a failure to count votes properly today. It is the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed.” This is the far-left-wing New York City Democratic candidate in her official statement, Buck. Imagine if Donald Trump comes out and says, “This failure to count votes properly is the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed.”

This is the farthest left-wing candidate, and then she says — listen — “Sadly, it’s impossible to be surprised. Last summer, the Board of Elections mishandled tens of thousands of mail-in ballots during the June 2020 primary. It’s also been prone to complaints of patronage.”

This is her official statement, Buck! “Today we have once again seen the mismanagement that has resulted in a lack of confidence in results, not because there is a flaw in our election laws,” just thrown in there, “but because those who have implemented have failed too many times.”

By the way, I would suggest that if the people in charge of it have “failed too many times,” that’s maybe a sign that the election law itself is flawed. “The BOE must now count the votes transparently to ensure integrity.” Okay. This is, Buck, the farthest left-wing candidate in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary who has basically said more aggressively, what Rudy Giuliani lost his law license in New York for saying — saying, “Hey, we need some transparency here. We don’t need voters going on. There are decades, generations of failures.”

This is a pretty big statement.

BUCK: I gotta tell you, I’m concerned right now, Clay. You brought up mail-in ballots being mishandled, and I’m wondering if during the show as we are live here Biden’s storm troops may come and grab us —

CLAY: (chuckling)

BUCK: — because that is the center of the insurrectionist mindset. “How dare you think that mail-in ballots may be subject to irregularities or mishandling or perhaps even tampering!” You cannot say that, Clay, unless you’re a Democrat who’s upset about being behind and your for defund police, and then the media is gonna give you a pass. Isn’t that fascinating?

CLAY: She said explicitly (I’m reading directly from her statement), “Last summer, the Board of Elections mishandled tens of thousands of mail-in ballots during the June 2020 primary.” Buck, am I wrong or was the 2020 election decided by roughly 40,000 votes?

BUCK: It’s amazing to see how quickly the standards change, because I’m old enough to remember, because I’m at least a few months old —

CLAY: (laughs)

BUCK: — when recounts, when official recounts were essentially a sign that you were ready to commit treason, where asking questions about tabulations and software would get you not only, of course, shrieking hysteria from CNN (while there is still a CNN, given how things are going), but shrieking hysteria.

Beyond that, you would have social media giants — who have more control over communication in this country than any other entities in the world, much more so than cable news, much more so than anywhere else. They would shut you down. You could get banned for saying the wrong thing about that election, but here we are.

How is the tabulation error that will be fixed…? I mean, they’re putting the new numbers out today.

CLAY: Who knows.

BUCK: I mean, when I say “fixed,” I guess, yeah, we’ll take that on faith. That’s the New York City political machine. Good luck with that. But there’s a willingness to say, “Oh. Well, they’re gonna do it the right way with this one,” but if you had any questions before, you were terrible person. You were destroying our democracy by wanting to verify as well as trust.

CLAY: Let’s also have this conversation. What’s the New York Times headline right now? The New York Times, which says all the time any question for Trump — for the last six months, whatever the heck it is, eight months, any question — of electoral integrity is a lie. It is a lie; it is unacceptable. Here is the headline. I’m looking right now. there’s your evidence.

I’m flashing my phone to Buck so he can see it too. New York Times top headline, live at the top, big headline: “Confusion Engulfs New York Mayor’s Race After Elections Board Debacle,” and then, underneath it a couple of tabs, “After erroneously counting 135,000 test ballots, the New York City Board of Elections said it would release new results Wednesday afternoon.”

And then another tab, “The tabulations that will be released will still not factor in more than 124,000 Democratic absentee ballots that were returned. Here’s the latest on the race,” and the next headline is: “Here’s a Look Inside Decades of Nepotism and Bungling at the New York City Elections Board.” That sounds like the New York Times to me, Buck, might be questioning the integrity of our elections, which they’ve told us is totally unacceptable in a democracy.

BUCK: I guess they should be banned from Facebook, kicked off of Twitter.

CLAY: It’s the only solution.

BUCK: I mean, there should be at least some preliminary FBI investigation of this incitement to undermining our democracy. I know that’s not really a crime, but you get what I’m saying. We all know, right, that no matter how this shakes out from here going forward, there is very likely — I know this is a prediction, very likely — to be some candidates, at least one or two I can think of, who will say, “There’s something wrong here;” that may demand some form of recount.

CLAY: They’ve already had it!

BUCK: Right. They’ve said had it.

CLAY: Maya Wileys has already said it — and we’ll get lawsuits, too, by the way.

BUCK: But we don’t even have the end result yet.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: You can imagine. Right now, it’s just people that are saying this to muddy up the waters.

CLAY: They’re angling for position.

BUCK: But when someone loses, I have a feeling that Maya Wiley in particular, if we’re really gonna take a guess here — although, you know, we could see Kathryn Garcia may decide to say some stuff, too. They’re gonna say that they don’t really think this was conducted in a way that we can all have full faith in the process.

And I assure you that people that have thought you’re never allowed to question an election ’cause they are Democrats, of course — and who tell you that this election in 2020 was truly beyond criticism because it was so perfect. We had a very special kind of election with all sorts of tricks and changes the last minute.

Enormous expansions of mail-in voting, changes in states like Pennsylvania to even how long you could vote and the requirements and signature match issues, all of this. If you even want to know a little more about that, Clay, you’re un-American. That’s what they believe — except in this election; then it’s gonna be fine.

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Get to Know C&B: Nerd Summer Camp

30 Jun 2021

Clay is a Civil War buff who’s fired up over the left’s unrelenting assault on American history and can’t wait to talk about the Democrats’ latest attempt to rewrite the past by removing Confederate (Democrat) statues from the Capitol. That will have to wait until tomorrow’s show… But what we have here is a must-listen in its own way.

Did you know Clay was such a Civil War history nerd that he went to Civil War sleepaway camp? His wife still can’t believe it.

Not to be outdone, Buck revealed his own summer camp experience… at the Bronx Zoo.

Listen to Clay and Buck Reveal Their Geek Summer Camp Pasts:

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Rush’s Timeless Wisdom: Chicago Violence

30 Jun 2021

BUCK: We are ripping through the biggest stories of the day, and one of them that we mentioned earlier in the show had to do with defund the police, which Democrats are now trying to convince us they didn’t say or didn’t want and maybe even Republicans wanted it — which is, of course, completely absurd. We have memories.

We know that that’s a lie, but sometimes the most effective lies as far as the left is concerned are the ones that are the most obvious. It kind of unbalances you. It makes you think that maybe you’re missing something. But there’s something else, and that is you’re not supposed to talk about crime in some of these cities.

They’d much rather discuss — ’cause they’re Democrat-controlled cities — the social justice concerns. They’d much rather talk about what statues are where and things like that. Here’s Rush talking about how, when Trump was in office, discussing Chicago, oh, that was a no-no when it comes to the gun violence or the violence in that city.

RUSH: What are you not supposed to mention? You’re not supposed to go to Chicago, and you’re not supposed to talk about all the murders, 530 murders last year. You’re not supposed to do it. You’re not supposed to mention it. You’re not supposed to talk about the inept Chicago Police Department. You’re not supposed to talk about Chicago as a sanctuary city where they treat criminals in Chicago better than they treat law-abiding citizens.

Trump just called them out on it and he’s getting practically standing ovations for it, in Chicago. He’s standing up for the cops. He’s standing up for the beat cops, the patrol cops, the detectives. He’s standing up for everybody on the street doing their jobs who are handcuffed by bureaucrats who, of course, are obsessed by political correctness.

You’re not supposed to go to a Democrat stronghold like Chicago and you’re not supposed to call ’em out for their incompetence and you’re not supposed to call ’em out for their ineptitude, and you sure as heck are not supposed to talk about all the murders. And you’re not supposed to say that Chicago has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country, which are not working, you’re not supposed to do that.

Why are you not supposed to talk about the murders in Chicago? Why are you not supposed to talk about the neighborhoods those murders happen in? Why are you not supposed to mention this? Because you’re not supposed to call out the left. You’re not supposed to call out liberals. He is jamming political correctness down their throats. This has been fabulous.

BUCK: And it’s true. You’re not supposed to say these things, as Rush pointed out, Clay. The narrative will focus on whatever is best for the left and the Democrat Party. And so that’s how, even today, that big, above-the-fold story on the “insurrection” instead of what’s actually happening in major cities across the country. You know, AOC, who often gets away with…

I mean, you could even say that her brand is essentially saying incredibly stupid things and getting away with it over and over again; in fact, having many leftists cheer for her. She’s out with the “it’s hysteria to talk about crime in these cities.” That didn’t go over well. The Democrats are realizing this is a liability for their political aspirations of continued control of Congress, and their continued control of the narrative overall.

CLAY: There’s no doubt.

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EIB 24/7: Clay & Buck’s Stack of Stuff

30 Jun 2021

This morning’s hit with @kilmeade talking Trump interview on @clayandbuck and will Trump run again in 2024. pic.twitter.com/xXLOFYvYQD

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) June 30, 2021

New York Times: Confusion Engulfs New York Mayor’s Race After Elections Board Debacle
New York Post: BOE botched NYC mayoral primary results by including ‘test’ run
New York Post: Elections Board handed to unqualified No. 2 before mayoral primary, source says
CNSNews: GOP Posts Video of Dems Calling to Defund Police, Responding to Dem Claims Republicans Defunded Police
PJ Media: Democrats’ Cop-Hating ‘Defund the Police’ Failure Is Complete
Federalist: ‘Defund The Police’ Was Always A Democrat Scheme, Not A Republican One
New York Times: Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police. Because reform won’t happen
AP: Bill Cosby’s sex assault conviction overturned by court
New York Times: Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol
Breitbart: Establishment Media Admits ‘Biden Has Struggled to Find Footing’ on Border Crisis as Trump Arrives to Inspect Wall
RushLimbaugh.com: Trump Goes to Chicago and Says What He’s Not Supposed to Say – 10.28.19

Democrats support Defunding the Police.

Pass it on. pic.twitter.com/lR5p7iHMP2

— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) June 29, 2021

If you question any process of an election, you’re an insurrectionist who is suppressing minority votes while threatening our democracy-

Except maybe this election. That’s fine. https://t.co/dQa3d31HRD

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) June 30, 2021

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Full Transcript: Power Hour with President Trump

29 Jun 2021

CLAY: We are excited now to be joined by the very first guest on the program, the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump. Mr. President, we appreciate you joining us.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, thank you both. Thank you both. Congratulations.

CLAY: Well, we’re excited about the opportunity to continue to fight for the things that Rush cared about so much.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, yeah.

CLAY: And you were a big part of coming on with his show and a big part of his success story.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, he was a fantastic man. And, you know, it’s incredible ’cause I didn’t really know him. Maybe met him once briefly. And when I ran for politics, still didn’t know him, and he liked what I said from the day I came down the escalator and he was right there at the beginning, and then I got to know him. And when you get to know him, you get to love him. And he was great. He was. What a voice. What a voice.

BUCK: President Trump, Buck here.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Hi, Buck.

BUCK: When you gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom so many of us just got chills. That was really one of the great moments, I thought, of your presidency in terms of recognizing somebody who had had such an impact on the country. We want to know what you think about what’s going on right now. How do you view this Biden administration now that we’re months into it?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, it’s catastrophic, if you look at the border, if you look at the way other countries are treating us. They treat us like dirt. Even Europe, of course, when I say “even,” Europe was always bad. Europe treats us so bad economically and even militarily, if you look at NATO. I got $430 billion by being strong on the NATO. They weren’t paying their bills.

They weren’t paying. Germany was at 1%. They’re supposed to be at 2%, and 2% is very low. So we were defending them and getting — excuse me, I hate to use the language but it’s very descriptive — getting screwed on trade. You know, I’d say, “How many…?” I said, “Angela, how many Chevrolets right now are being sold in Munich?” And (laughs) she looks at me and smiles.

You know, in the meantime we take the Mercedes and we take their cars and we sell ’em like hotcakes, right? So, no. It was a one-way street, both on trade and on the military. You know, NATO, they just weren’t paying their bills. And then they make a deal with Russia where they’re paying billions and billions of dollars for energy coming from Russia with the pipeline.

So, they have the energy pouring in, they’re paying billions of dollars, and we defend them. So I said to them, I said, “Listen. You’re giving all this money to a country and then we’re supposed to defend you from that country. What’s this all about?” And they just look, and they sort of smile. And I had it largely changed. It was changing rapidly. But, you know, a big thing was NATO: $430 billion. Think of that. That’s some number. We did a great job.

CLAY: We’re talking to President Donald Trump, 45 himself. You got criticized to the Nth degree for every press conference you did. Media talked about the 25th Amendment. You got Joe Biden now traveling around trying to negotiate deals, and I’m sure you’ve watched some of his press conferences. Do you feel like he’s going to be able to finish his term? Do you think Kamala Harris might end up president before we even get to 2024?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, I have to be fair. I don’t think I got criticized. I think they thought certain things, but they didn’t think he was a dummy, meaning your friend Trump. They never said that, and the 25th… You know, I did something that I noticed a lot of people are recommending. I took a test, a cognitive test — which they say is pretty tough — and I aced the test. And they put it out, and I never heard…

It was actually a great thing, I did it. And it was risky ’cause if you do badly it gets reported, okay? You know, there are numerous doctors watching, and it’s at a certain hospital that’s very public. So, if you do badly… But I did it, and I did it very well — I did, I think, perfectly — and a lot of people are suggesting that he do that. He would not pass it. He would not do well on it.

But a lot of people are suggesting that he do that. And look. I watch and you watch and we see the same things and you don’t want to talk about it. But the rest of the world, if they don’t respect your president, you have a problem. And they had a lot respect for our country six months ago and before.

They had a lot of respect. You wouldn’t have seen missiles flying all over the place into Israel. You wouldn’t have seen even China talking the way they spoke to our people, our representatives in Alaska. They never spoke to us that way.

BUCK: We’re speaking with former president Donald J. Trump here on the show, for anyone who’s joining us as we’re going. President Trump, Buck here. I just want to know, we had Kamala just barely beat you to the border. Now, she’s the border czar. You’re not the border czar right now. We want to know how you think the border situation is unfolding. Is it the worst it’s ever been? Is that fair to say?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: In history, absolutely. You know, they were saying it’s the worst in 20 years. I say (laughing), “What are you talking about, 20 years? It’s by far the worst in history,” and seven months ago, it was the best in history. It was the best we’ve ever had. That included drugs. That included human trafficking where we had it very strongly stopped.

You know, you’re never gonna make it perfect. It’s a big, long border. But we had it stopped. The wall. We built, you know, almost 500 miles of it and this guy stopped the final little portion of it, and, “You can’t do that!” And now they want to build it, I understand.

They want to build it and they’re having a hard time with the contractors ’cause the contractors say, “Well, you told us to stop. So give us five times more money than we would have gotten had we just completed it.” So it was — and, you know, the reason that frankly it took 2-1/2 years is because I had to win all these court cases.

We won, I think, 11 court cases to build it, many of them brought on by Congress. So, you know, we had the best border we’d ever had, as you know. I mean, you just look at those numbers. We had the best border we ever had, and we now have by far, by far the worst border. And giving up “stay in Mexico” is catastrophic. Catch-and-release!

Giving that up… You know, you catch the people… They can be murderers, they could be anything. You catch ’em, you take their name and you release ’em into our country never to be seen again. They’re supposed to come back. But they never do come back. They’re supposed to come back for a trial. But they never come back.

CLAY: I know you started your rallies. You just had one in Ohio.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

CLAY: How much of a challenge is it for you to have to sit and watch on the sidelines now in some way, and when do you think you need to make a decision if you are going to run in 2024? Do you have a calendar out in front of you —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No.

CLAY: — where you look at the primary season and everything else? What’s the deadline in your mind to make a decision? I know it’s still out there a ways —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Right.

CLAY: — but do you have a date in mind?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Okay. Well, your first part, it’s not a challenge per se, but it’s sad to watch, because we were… I thought I was gonna win easily. We did win easily. You look at what’s happening now in Georgia. You take a look at Arizona; we’ll see what happens with that. Those numbers are gonna be coming out soon. And others are looks at it.

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, they’re all looking. I think they’ll look at Michigan ’cause what happened in Detroit was horrendous, I mean, horrendous. And the elections were all very, very close. I think was 40,000 for the whole country. And what they did was disgraceful. So I think that’s all coming out. It’s coming out soon. It’s coming out now.

And the reason we had so many people… People say anywhere from 25 to 42,000. The haters say 25. The people that like say 42. You know, there’s always a big difference. But we had… I think we did have more than 42,000 people, and that was on quick notice, and the reason is they love the job that we did.

I mean, you guys love the job that we did. But they loved the job we did on the border. They loved the job we did with China and the tariffs. Did you notice he hasn’t taken the tariffs off yet? You know why? Because they’re taking in tens of billions of dollars. We saved our steel.

Our steel industry was going to be totally abandoned and closed. We wouldn’t have had a steel plant in the country. You know, I put 25% tariffs on all of the dumped steel coming in from China. And I’ll tell you, the people that love me the most are the steel companies and the steelworkers because we saved it, and aluminum.

But we saved it. And you need steel. Steel is not something… You need steel for the military, okay? You’re not gonna say, “Gee, we’ll have our tanks built in China,” right? That’s just what we need. So I saved it, and people — and, by the way, many other industries too. USMCA.

We got that done, as opposed to NAFTA, which was the worst the trade deal in history. I mean, it was so in… You know, when they made that deal, there was a huge error made, and everyone knew it was an error. And it was made on the first day. They realized it on the second day that they made an absolute error. It was a pure error; everyone knew it. They never changed it — an error totally to our disadvantage, they never changed it.

BUCK: President Trump, can we ask you about your thinking, ’cause so many of the people listening right now — and honestly just the whole country is curious. Just tell us about your thinking when it comes to 2024 and what your calculations are at this point as to whether you are going to run again.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So I’m watching. And again, it’s a frightening thing to see when you’re looking at the border, when you’re looking at trade, when you’re looking at all — and when you look at inflation. You know, when I left, gasoline was less than $2, and our industry was flourishing.

So you had the combination of inexpensive — it was $1.87, and now it’s gonna go through… It’s already through the roof. It’s, what, 3-1/2 dollars? But it’s gonna be a number that… I think a number that you have never seen before. In fact, I got it so low that we had to adjust. (chuckles) It was… You remember it was dropping.

We were energy independent. We got it down to zero. You remember that day, right? We got it down. We had to get it up a little bit ’cause, you know, we do have an energy industry and oil and gas industry. But, no, we had tremendous… So you look at that. Look at the cost of lumber: $70,000 more to build one house for lumber.

And, you know, we had lumber very, very low. Canada took advantage of us on lumber, and we did that when we did the trade detail. We took a great thing. But then these guys come in and they put environmental restrictions on all our forest so you can’t get trees. We’re forced to go to Canada, and lumber’s gone through the roof — and for other reasons.

But lumber’s gone just terrible what’s happened, and so many other things. Now, inflation is a disaster, okay? It gets very ugly, and you saw that during the Carter years. I think prime rate went to 21%, and a lot of other bad things happened. That was a bad, bad moment for this country, and that was caused by inflation, and the inflation that we have in this country now is…

If you take a look at cost of goods, but just look at oil, what’s going on with that. Look at gasoline, the cost of gasoline. Look at what’s happening. It’s not possible! We were energy independent. We were totally energy independent just a few months ago. We’re not anymore. The leases are being canceled. They make it impossible to drill. And I said this during the debates, and nobody wanted to believe it. Far worse! It’s actually far worse than anybody thought.

BUCK: President Trump?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And watch your guns. Watch your Second Amendment. Watch all of those things ’cause that’s gonna be next. And they run through Mitch McConnell like he’s a baby. He’s hopeless and he can’t stop anything. But they run through. I watched the Republican senators, many of them total RINOs. And they walk into the White House every time to work on the infrastructure bill, and they walk out; they get nothing. They get nothing, and they keep walking in. You know, the same people, some of them. And it’s sort of pathetic to watch, actually.

CLAY: You know, one of the biggest people who need help right now with you out of office is your old friends at CNN.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

CLAY: I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but their ratings have declined by 75% since you left office.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Mmm-hmm. Yeah.

CLAY: Do you feel like Jake Tapper’s maybe missing you pretty big right now, Don Lemon, that crew?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, it’s probably the only good thing about me not being in office, I guess. (chuckles)

CLAY: Yeah.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: But, no, he went down big, and I just saw some numbers. I guess they’re down 78/79%. Whoever heard of numbers like that, down? They’re all down, by the way. I must tell you. You know, they’re all down, every one. I see your friend Chris Wallace is way down. So that’s a different one. But “MSDNC” is way down. I mean, numbers that probably they never thought they’d see. But it’s boring. It’s boring.

BUCK: That’s right.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don’t watch much anymore. I used to watch all the time. I don’t watch anymore. Now, of course, I watch Sean and I watch Laura and I watch (chuckles) certain people but, you know, I don’t watch much.

BUCK: President Trump, I actually wanted to ask you about that —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, go ahead.

BUCK: — because last night Tucker Carlson said very clearly and openly that he believes that he might have been targeted — his communications — by the NSA under the Biden administration. You had people in your campaign who were targeted by the deep state, as we know, and then there were —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I was targeted. Yeah, me. How about me?

BUCK: Yeah. (chuckles)

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Do you remember when I said…? Hey, Buck, do you remember? You and I talked about this in the Oval Office? Do you remember I said that? I put out a tweet at that time. Now I put out press releases, and it means the same thing. But I put out a tweet, said, “I understand that I was targeted and that they were spying on my campaign.” Do you remember that?

BUCK: Yes.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And all hell broke out. I thought it was just… To me it was like (chuckles), “Ho-hum,” the tweet. And I get a call like four seconds later, “Sir, did you just say? ” Because the lines of every one I’ve ever done, I’ve never had a response like that. Maybe covfefe.

BUCK: What was your thought when you heard that Tucker Carlson —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Maybe. I think maybe covfefe. Covfefe, maybe.

BUCK: (laughing) Covfefe.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Other than that.

BUCK: What was your thought when you heard Tucker Carlson say that he thinks he’s being spied on?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think it’s true. It’s totally unbelievable. If you look at the whole thing with what’s gone on and what’s going on right now, no, I think it’s true. They’re trying to suppress the vote. They’re trying to suppress going into elections to find voter fraud. They want those people suppressed. They don’t want anything to do with that because the election was totally fraudulent.

So the people that are investigating the election — and there are a lot of them all over the country now. The people that are — and finding things that you see come out now, you see it’s coming out now. But wait ’til you see when the results come out, they don’t want anything to do… In fact, when they talk about silencing, “Let’s silence everybody,” the thing they want to silence?

They don’t want people looking into the election because they’ve been caught. Election was fake. And those states, those so-called states that we lost, we won. And we won ’em big. We won ’em big. And that stuff is starting to come out now, and that’s the thing they don’t want. That’s what they really want silenced.

BUCK: Are you still thinking about building your own platform —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yes.

BUCK: — where you won’t have to worry about left-wing censorship?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You can’t be censored by Amazon and by Google and by Apple and by all these. You know, that’s the problem. You saw what happened with Parler — or “parlay,” as they sometimes call it. But you take a look at what happened to Parler and others. They get shut down as soon as somebody puts something that’s somewhat controversial.

No, you have to have your own cloud or you have to have your own means of getting it out, because as soon as you get big or powerful or you start saying anything that’s somewhat conservative, they will censor you, and they will take off, which is what they did with Parler, which was a very sad day, I thought.

CLAY: We’re talking to Donald Trump. President, you got criticized for many things, but one of the things you got most vociferously criticized for was saying that you thought covid had come from a Chinese lab.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

CLAY: Now all of a sudden, everybody is circling back and saying, “Oh, maybe this did happen,” but all of these different tech platforms disallowed the conversation and debate to actually take place.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Right.

CLAY: Are you still as confident now as you were last year when you made those allegations that covid came from a Chinese lab? And what should the consequences be for China for the lies that they spread about where covid came from and allowing this to spread around the world as opposed to being transparent with everybody from the get-go?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Probably more confident. And, you know, I felt very confident last time, but I would say even more now in retrospect. Because a lot of the phony things that they were saying about, you know, it came from here, it came from a thousand miles away, from a bat colony a thousand miles away. Much of that has really been disproven. And I would say more confident. And it was amazing ’cause that was another one.

You know, I talk about when I said, “They’re spying on my campaign,” the place went nuts. When I said that it came from the lab in Wuhan, people went crazy. Now, it could be… It’s probably that I said it. In other words, if somebody else… I said hydroxychloroquine and people went crazy. If I would have said, “Do not under any circumstances take hydroxychloroquine,” probably they would have said, “Oh, that’s terrible. Let’s take it,” right?

CLAY: (laughing)

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You know, it’s one of those things. So they like to go had to explain, ’cause they think it’s good politically. I actually don’t. But now almost all of those things, maybe all of them I’ve been proven correct on. I think they have now a list of 18 different items. It was 10 two or three weeks ago, but they found other ones.

You know, they just go against — and no matter what you do, they want to go against. These people, I don’t believe they love our country. I’ll be honest with you. But with the lab and Wuhan — and, frankly, even if you didn’t or weren’t sure, why would they be so vociferous? You remember, they went crazy when I said that, and they tried to…

Now they’re all saying that I was right. But they’ve said that about a lot of things. Almost all of the things that I said, I was right. When I said that terrorists caused such-and-such an attack — and I said it early, like about two seconds after the attack, right? They’d said, “This is terrible.” Well, I’m 18-0 on those attacks, you know.

It’s like, they would take a little bit longer. In many cases, they wouldn’t want to say it. And in many cases, they didn’t say it. But they do have a tendency. And I guess they think it’s good politics. You know, I don’t see why it’s good politics. As far as China is concerned, they should pay us reparations. They should pay us for the damage that they’ve caused. And, frankly, the damage they’ve caused to the world.

Now, they don’t have enough money to do that. They don’t have nearly enough money to pay for the damages. But they should pay us $10 trillion. They should pay the world a lot. But, you know, we took a tremendous hit. And because of what we did and because I came up with the vaccine in nine months instead of…

I did it in less than nine months. It was supposed to be… Buck, you knew this. It was supposed to be five years, three years, but it will never happen. By that time every would have been dead. This would have been… If I didn’t do that, this would have been another Spanish flu of 1917 where perhaps a hundred million people died.

BUCK: President Trump, can I ask, ’cause Los Angeles County is reinstituting — this just today — indoor mask mandates. It seems like there are still people, and they are overwhelmingly your most vocal critics — so it’s interesting there’s a crossover there — who really want to take us back into lockdowns and what some of us call Fauci-ism.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

BUCK: Are you worried that that’s where we’re heading, and is there a part of you that wishes that you had fired Dr. Fauci when you could have?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I did the opposite of what he said every time. So if you really look, you know, he was talking about doing different things. He didn’t want to close… (chuckling) Actually, I was more severe than him in certain things. I closed it to China very early in January if you remember.

And three months later he was saying that was a mistake, and now he said I saved tens of thousands of lives, which I did. I also closed it to Europe. I saw what was going on in Europe, so I closed it to Europe. Now, with all of that being said, you know, he came in; he said, “No masks.” He didn’t want anybody to wear masks. And now he’s a “radical masker,” as I call them.

Radical masker. That’s what he is. I mean, I saw… It was sort of interesting. During Biden’s State of the Union address, which people compared to FDR… I was a big fan of FDR’s speeches. (chuckles) I don’t necessarily agree with what he said, but his delivery was very good. They compared Biden’s speech to FDR. And I said, “Oh, he’s gonna get killed tonight. This is really bad. Oh, this is really terrible.”

And then they said, “That was close to FDR.” And I said, “I can’t believe it.” But behind him was Nancy Pelosi. She had the single largest mask on that I have ever seen. I have never seen any… That practically covered her whole face. Look, I think it’s ridiculous what they’re doing. Kids have to get back to school. We have to stop. We have…

Between the immunity, natural immunity, which is the ultimate — probably the ultimate vaccine, if you want to know the truth. But between that and the vaccine that we did and did a great job with and did it in years and years ahead of schedule. The FDA does not like Donald Trump. Let me put it that way. They have never seen anything like it. They would have…

This, they would have taken much more than three years, and I don’t even think they would have even ever gotten it. But we did things that were miraculous. People call it a miracle, actually. And then, you know, I went out and did something else that people don’t talk about. I bought $12 billion worth of the vaccine before we knew it worked. We had an idea it worked, but before. And you wouldn’t have the shots ’til October of this year. So —

BUCK: No. Operation Warp Speed, President Trump, was an amazing miracle —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

BUCK: — and you deserve tremendous credit for that.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

BUCK: We actually have to take a quick pause here. We’ll see if we can convince the president to stick with us here, former president Donald J. Trump.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Mr. President, a great honor to have you join us. And thank you for staying with us. We have more we gotta get into.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Go ahead.

CLAY & BUCK: (laughing)

BUCK: Infrastructure, sir, something you know a heck of a lot about.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

BUCK: Where are we here with the Republicans negotiating over this? Are they getting fooled, are they getting swindled by giving this a bipartisan cover in this recent Senate announcement that they had a deal?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

BUCK: Looks like Biden was for it, then against it, then for it, then who knows. What do you make of all this with infrastructure?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, it’s the same people, and some are RINOs to the Nth degree, and they keep walking over there, and they get taken to the cleaners, and then they get used and they say that we have a deal, and then we don’t have a deal. Because when they go back to the cabal, they say, “You gotta be crazy to have made that deal.” So Biden changed the deal a couple of times.

And, you know, the Republicans are being used, the Republican senators. Now, some of the senators wouldn’t do that. I know plenty of them are great. But they seem to be… They’re used. They’re being used by the Democrats. They want to make it sound bipartisan. But there’s nothing bipartisan when you spent most of your infrastructure money on the Green New Deal stuff, and that stuff is like throwing the money out of the window. And it’s gonna cause big problems in the future.

CLAY: How frustrating is it to you, Mr. President, the 2017 tax cuts were really coming into full fruition. We had the best economy, lowest unemployment rate of all time. Now they’re trying to take those away. And also we got 9.3 million jobs out there, and people won’t take those jobs. How frustrating is the economic decision-making right now that you’re seeing?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, what they did with that payment is they made it so that nobody wants to work. And this is, you know, not what our country is all about. Some states are rejecting it, as you know — some very good states, very successful states — ’cause people can’t get anybody to go to work.

But if you look at the tax cuts, it was the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. People love it. It made people want to work, and people were doing great. African-Americans, Asian-Americans, women, everybody was set. It was number one ever in history. And they now want to end that. And you know what they’re gonna do? You’re gonna lose a lot of companies.

You will lose companies to other countries. You know, they move. They’re not very loyal, patriotic, most of them. And if they get a better tax deal in Ireland or in Europe someplace or wherever they want to go — and they will. We brought it down to a… It wasn’t the lowest, but it was low, and for a large country, it was just about getting to that point.

And we were bringing in thousands of new companies. And we were bringing in also the money that they couldn’t get in. We were bringing many billions and billions of dollars of money that was locked out of our country and it was pouring into the U.S. That’s gonna all go out with these companies that are gonna leave, and you just can’t do what they’re doing.

It’s so destructive what they’re doing. And the amazing thing is we cut the tax rate and yet we took in much more revenue, much more revenue. This place was booming. And then we got hit with covid and we did a great job with covid and we did a great job with the vaccine. But that obviously stopped it. But we created such a strong base, such a strong foundation that we’ve come back.

Now, they might kill it again if what you said is so in Los Angeles, et cetera, et cetera. Look, you know, going back to the old days of the masks and all of the things? You know, it’s an amazing fact that people that stayed in their apartments did worse than people that were outside.

In other words, people that stayed home caught covid at a higher level. It’s very strange. I don’t… Someday you’ll explain to me how that one worked ’cause, frankly, you would say that they would be on the right side of the issue. But people that stayed home did not do as well as people that went out. Sort of interesting, isn’t it?

BUCK: We’re speaking to former President Donald Trump, and, Mr. President, gotta ask you, who, in your mind, that’s still in office, still on the political scene, is getting it done for conservatism and is carrying forward the movement that you began, the Make America Great Again movement? Who should we be looking at right now as continuing to carry on the torch?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So I think you have some great people in the Senate, some really great. I think Mitch is a terrible leader and doesn’t have a clue, but I think you have some great people in the Senate and people that could take over that leadership position and do really well, who wouldn’t be used. And, you know, Schumer is just playing this guy. And that’s not good.

And in the House, you know many of them. I hate to mention names because I could mention many and you’ll leave somebody out (chuckles) and you have somebody that will never speak to you again. But in the House, you know, you have guys — Jim Jordan and the whole group, Banks — and I could name so many congressmen and women that are doing a fantastic job.

I mean, you look at what happened on the impeachment hoax where they stuck together. You know, the problem with the Republicans is that they don’t stick together. Good policy, but don’t stick together. Democrats, horrible policy, but you don’t see those negative votes. You don’t have Mitt Romney out there. You don’t have little Ben Sasse.

You don’t have these people these people that are so bad for the party. If they ran today… If Ben Sasse went back to Nebraska and ran today, he’d be run out of office. Same thing with Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney would do terribly in Utah. And others. I mean, look there are others. No reason to go into all of those names. But you have some wonderful senators, and you have some really incredible people in the House.

CLAY: Talking about senators, I know a friend of yours, Mr. President, Herschel Walker —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Right.

CLAY: — has been hinting that he might run for the Senate in Georgia.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Right.

CLAY: Should he run? Do you think he will?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, he told me he’s going to, and I think he will. I had dinner with him a week ago. He’s a great guy. He’s a patriot, and he’s a very loyal person. He’s a very strong person. They love him in Georgia. I’ll tell you, he was the greatest running back in the history of the state, but he was, you know, one of the best in the history of the country.

I mean, in college it was nobody like him. He went to the NFL, by the way. He has great records in the NFL. He is a fantastic guy, and they love him. So I think he’d win. I think it would be very, very hard to beat Herschel. I mean, they have the ballads. (chuckles) They made ballads to Herschel. They sing ’em all the time. They still sing ’em. So I think beating him would be very tough, and I think he’s going to run.

BUCK: President Trump, what would you like to see the Republicans in Congress do so that they’re in a good place going forward? What are some of the issues, some of the main narratives that you want to see them holding up so that we can take back… I mean, we’re not gonna have a new president — at least not gonna have a Republican president — for four years here.

So we gotta focus in on the midterm election, and I know you are advising a lot of these people and working behind the scenes to help the Republican Party by actually taking back majorities. What would you want to see them do? What are the issues, and what’s the approach that they should have so that we finally get back at least one, if not both houses of Congress?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, they can’t let go of the tax cuts because you’ll lose tremendous numbers of companies and people outside of this country. They’ll be heading back to where they came from. We were bringing in tremendous dollars and tremendous companies, numbers of companies. They have to hold on to the regulation cuts.

You know, I cut regulations more than any president in history — and look, I believe in regulations. You need things for environmental and for safety and other things. But they cut regulations. We cut more regulations than any president, whether it was four years, eight years, or in one case more. Nobody came even close. And they’re starting to put the regulations back.

You know, it would take you 19, 20 years to get a highway approved. And we got it down to two years. We wanted to get it down to one year. And with that being understood, you may get rejected for safety or environmental or some other reason. But to take 20 years? I mean, I could show you highways where they’re in the process of 22/23 years, and they’ll probably be rejected somewhere.

And they not only cost more in time value, but they’ll design it in a way that it avoids areas. I mean, it’s like you’re on a Ferris wheel. So, no, we have to hold the regulation cuts. We have to continue with our military. I built the strongest military ever. You know, when I came in, the military was exhausted. It was depleted. It was tired.

And your producer was nice enough to say that somebody called up and said, “Thank you so much. Please tell the president thank you so much” for what we did at the VA. The VA was a mess for years, and we had a 92% approval rating from the people that get to use the VA, the great people that get to use the VA and that need the VA so badly.

So 92% approval rating. It was much higher than ever by many, many points; much higher than ever before. It’s always been a mess. It’s always been. Ever since I can remember, you’d see shows all the time in the evening about the problems of the VA and this happening, that happening.

You didn’t see that for years. And under my administration, our people did a fantastic job. So, you know, so many things, so many things. Stop… One other thing is stop letting other countries take advantage of the United States on trade and on military and NATO. I mean, they really take advantage.

BUCK: Are you feeling a little bit like this is just almost too much to take, Mr. President, when you see that right now the White House press secretary for Biden, other prominent Democrats are trying to push the “Oh, it’s Republicans who wanted to defund the police; it’s Republicans who are opposed to law and order”? I mean, as somebody who was always supportive of the blue and stood beside them, it just feels like this is a lie beyond even the other ones they’ve told.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So it’s like Russia, Russia, Russia. You know, the first time I heard it, they said, “Sir, do you have anything to do with Russia?” I said, “No. What’s with Russia?” That was it. You know, I didn’t think about it. Then they’d come back a couple of months later. “Sir, do you know anything about Russia?” And I said, “No.”

And then three/four times, I said, “What the hell is going on with Russia?” And it was a total fabrication, total lie by Schiff and all these lightweights. And, you know, you win that battle, you win another battle. But you’re fighting all the time instead of focusing exclusively on making our country great. And it’s a disgrace.

Now I saw the other day — it was very interesting — on the border, it’s so out of control that we had it so in control, and I saw somebody say, “Well, we think it’s Trump’s fault.” Oh. Okay. It’s my fault. We had the best border, safest border we’ve ever had in history, and we really had it down. All he had to do is go to the beach and relax.

And they’ve destroyed it when they got rid of… Think of it. I kept the people in Mexico. Now, a lot of people don’t know what that means, but it means so much. Instead of keeping ’em — and, you know, when people cross the border, these people, many of them, they’re emptying their jails. You got murderers, you got drug dealers, you have traffickers.

But, fellas, they’re emptying their jails in various countries. You know the countries I’m talking about. Where the jails are being emptied and they’re coming in caravans mixed in with lots of other people. But they’re coming in caravans and they’re taking in these killers. We took out thousands of MS-13 gang members. And now they may be coming back through the system of emptying their jails into our country. How. Stupid. Are. We?

CLAY: Mr. President, you got treated differently, there’s no doubt, than Joe Biden has been treated by the media.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

CLAY: But so did your family. Hunter Biden. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the stories coming out about Hunter Biden using racial slurs, all sorts of stuff continuing to come out about the laptop. How do you think your sons would have been treated if they had done what Hunter Biden appears to have done?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, in business what he did is just terrible. I mean, just terrible, and I was never pushing… Some phony stories came out I was never pushing ’cause I think it’s sad. Terrible. But now things about the N-word and using it on a regular basis and other things? If that were my children, first of all, they wouldn’t do it.

Second of all, I wouldn’t allow ’em to do it. But it would be bedlam in this country. Bedlam. It’s incredible. The press doesn’t even report it. They don’t want to report it, and other things. But that word in particular, where it was used frequently and, you know, and they don’t want to report it.

We don’t have a free press anymore. We don’t have free press. We have a press that’s unbelievably corrupt, and if you look at their approval rating… You know, when I ran, the approval rating of the press was very, very high. And now it’s at the lowest it’s ever been.

But it’s lower than institutions that are horrendous, that are thought of very badly. So, you know, it’s unfortunate. Well, when you say CNN is down 75 or 79%, when you see some of the shows that they have on CNN… I mean, nobody’s ever heard of numbers like that. Because that’s because they’ve lost credibility.

BUCK: You know, you have, Mr. President, just the last 24 hours there’s been this announcement from the Manhattan district attorney or New York City district attorney Cy Vance that they’re not gonna bring charges against you but they might — they’re looking at the Trump Organization.

This seems like the most obvious partisan targeting that anybody could ever dream of. Yes, you’re prominent, you’re a fighter, you’ve got resources and a legal team. But what should people know about the continued, obvious and biased harassment that you’re getting in situations like this?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I call it the continuation of the greatest and most disgusting witch hunt of all time. Look. There’s never been anything like it. From the day I came down the escalator… Now, I was not a political person, but I got things done that nobody else could have gotten done.

And that includes those big tax cuts that now they want to give away. And they shouldn’t negotiate the tax cuts, either. We got the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. It brought in more income than when they were paying much higher taxes, as I said. And all of these other things that we got, we got such benefits, you can’t give it up. If they give it up it would be terrible.

It’s not really to be negotiated — and, you know, you’re at a 50-50 level. They should be able to talk somebody. It’s very interesting. The problem is you lose a Romney or you’ll lose a Sasse — or you’ll lose, I could name, three or four of them — and you lose somebody, and that puts you at a disadvantage. But a strong leader wouldn’t lose anybody. They wouldn’t lose anybody.

They give out the committee chairmanships. They have a lot of power in there, and they wouldn’t lose, and they give out a lot of money because they give out the campaign contributions to a certain extent. But you can’t give up the taxes, you can’t give up the tax cuts, and you can’t give up the regulation cuts. And with my thing, it’s just a continuation of the worst, most horrible witch hunt.

And don’t forget, I got all of this stuff done at the same time I was fighting Mueller, the Mueller hoax. I was fighting impeachment hoax number 1 and impeachment hoax number 2. And I’ll tell you, the Republicans — other than a few bad ones, 10 congressmen and women. There were 10. Every one of them, I think, is being primaried, every one of them.

Same thing with the senator. You have a certain senator in Louisiana, and he uses me. He used me. I love Louisiana. I did great in Louisiana by a lot. I won all of them a lot. I know you said before about ’24. Let’s see what happens. But we did great all over. We did great in Louisiana, and this guy was using me in his commercials and everything else.

And then out of the blue, he votes to impeach. Okay. You know, he was a surprise. And, you know, Cassidy. So he walks down the street now, and they’re booing him all over the place. So, you know, we have great popularity, not because of me but because of what we’ve done, what we’ve accomplished.

Like I said, rebuilding the military: We had planes that were so old you couldn’t get parts to ’em. They’d have to go to the desert to the plane graveyard to pick up parts for fighter jets that were so old you couldn’t even fly ’em. You know, we have all brand-new stuff. We did it right: Aall built in the USA, everything built in the USA. We really had it going.

And then we had a rigged election, and we lost. Because if you look at those states, we won those states by a lot. Not by a little, but by a lot. It was a rigged election. And, you know, and now I see what’s happening with Iran. I would have had to deal with Iran within seven days after the election. They were dying to make a deal.

Now they don’t even want to talk to Biden, and he’s already taken the sanctions off! How do you take sanctions off before you negotiate? So now they don’t want to meet with him. They said we’re not gonna meet with him, and I could tell you a hundred things outside of that. But it’s too bad, but we’ll see what happens, and we’ll see what happens in terms of the future.

As you know, the polls are very strong, stronger than they’ve ever been for anybody in this position, you know. We had a 95% approval rating in the Republican Party. So we’ll see. And everybody we endorsed seems to win. You noticed that, I think, fellas.

So every single person when I go out, whether it’s in Palm Beach or New Jersey or New York, they come to see me. When we endorse ’em, they win, because people have confidence, and they saw what I was able to do. And now it’s being pulled back, and the Republicans can’t let that happen. They can’t let that happen.

CLAY: You mentioned, Mr. President… Last question. We appreciate all the time you have spent with us, our audience is absolutely loving it. You mentioned 2024. The number one question we are getting as people are listening to you talk, is, “When will Trump let us know whether he’s going to run again? Is there a date in your mind where you need to make that decision?”

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, the most logical date would be right after 2022. Right? You try and win the Senate, which is hard because McConnell should have never lost the two seats, and they should have never lost the two seats in Georgia. But you want to win the Senate. You want to win the House — very, very great chance in the House.

You know, I made 56 phone calls — they’re called teleconference calls — that had thousands of people. They were supposed to lose 25 seats in the House, and they lost none. They gained 16. That’s some difference. All because of those calls, and, you know, you’d have 15, 20,000 people on some of those calls, and that would be in a district where somebody’s running for Congress.

Every single call I made they won. Every single call. It was sort of an interesting phenomena, which not easy to do, either. They take 11 minutes, and, you know, when you’re screaming into a piece-of-plastic telephone, it’s not the easiest thing to do. But that was very effective. And the same with senators. I mean, I helped a lot of senators.

I believe you’d be at 60-40 Democrats’ favor had I not campaigned for certain senators. I don’t have to tell you the states. You know the states. But there were senators that were in big trouble had I not campaigned for them. In some cases I did rallies, in some cases I did robocalls, and very importantly I did the town hall calls, where a lot of people get on from the state. But I think you’d be at 60-40. Nobody marks that down, nobody says that, but you’d be at 60-40 or maybe a couple short of that.

BUCK: Well, President Trump, we greatly appreciate everything that you’ve done and continue to do. And we hope you’ll consider the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show a home for you going forward where you’ll be joining us and telling us what you’ve got planned. And please give regards to your family from Clay and Buck personally. We wish them and you, of course, all the best. And thanks for everything you’ve done for this country. We appreciate you giving us your time.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Congratulations, fellas. Great job. Thanks a lot.

Clay and Buck

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