Buck Talks Afghanistan with Guy Benson on Fox Business

12 Aug 2021

BENSON: Could there be a Taliban flag flying over the U.S. Embassy in Kabul by September 11th, 2021? Joining me now, former CIA officer and radio host Buck Sexton. Buck, as you watch these images — and there’s reporting late in the day that Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan, is now under Taliban control. You see these pictures and these videos and you watch these reports coming across the wire, what do Americans at home who might be grappling with perhaps mixed emotions about this…? In your view, what do they need to know?

BUCK: Well, there’s so much here that’s really just in conflict with each other. I think on one level, Guy, you have people that… I was in Afghanistan a decade ago, and what’s happening right now wouldn’t be a surprise. If you’d asked me then, I would have told you that the moment the U.S. pulls out, you’re gonna have deterioration.

The surprise, I think, is at how rapid it has been. I think people would have expected that after 20 years, a trillion dollars, countless tens of billions of dollars of just mentoring and direct support of the Afghan military plus a trillion in the overall war effort, that we would last — or we would expect, rather, the Afghan war allies to last a bit longer than this.

So, I think that this has to be remembered as something the Trump administration wanted to do. There is a bipartisan sense that it was time to go, but the withdrawal is about as awful and messy — it seems right now — as it could possibly be from the perspective of security in the country of Afghanistan.

What an absolute debacle! And then we have to think about the possibility — and I know nobody wants to hear this, but we’re all thinking about it; everybody is — is this going to get so bad, is the Taliban going to decide that they’ll bring in Al-Qaeda again —

BENSON: The cycle continues.

BUCK: — and then we’ll be discussing whether it’s a U.S. military mission?

BENSON: It’s like the cycle begins again —

BUCK: Yeah.

BENSON: — which is why we were in there in the first place, Buck. But to your point about how quickly it looks like the Afghan forces and the government just sort of melted away and has been quickly overrun. Is that perhaps an indication that after twenty years, this was never going to work? I mean, yes, there’s a humanitarian catastrophe underway.

This feels like a national humiliation for us. It does, given so much blood and treasure that’s been spent there. Nevertheless, the results are speaking for themselves. Is this perhaps adding fuel to the argument that we should have gotten out a long time ago, because all the extra years apparently didn’t achieve very much, which is a horrible thing to say, but here we are.

BUCK: Well, as I said, the assessments even at the start of the first Obama term, which is when I was handling Afghanistan issues at the CIA’s Afghanistan desk, Guy, those assessments would have told you that the training of the Afghan national military — just in general throughout the government throughout the intelligence community — we all knew there were tremendous problems of corruption.

And this was going all the way up to the very top, and also just ineptitude on the part of the Afghan national security forces, Afghan national police. And so none of this is really surprising, and I do think people are wondering, how was it we had so many cycles of military leadership…? Look, a few thousand U.S. troops basically holds this place together, right? We all know, yeah, we have the best, most efficient, bravest military in the world.

That doesn’t translate (chuckles) necessarily, obviously to the Afghan army. How was it we had so many cycles of leadership — generals, four-star generals — coming in, who were saying, “Oh, we’ve figured it out, we’re making progress”?

BENSON: No.

BUCK: Obviously, we weren’t really making progress, Guy, at least in terms of a sustainable Afghan state. So we need to look at that as well, and then also the possibility of having to go back again in the future, which I know nobody wants to hear, but that’s something we have to consider.

BENSON: Yeah. And your heart just goes out. It’s gut-wrenching to the people who have sacrificed so much — Americans — in that country. And you think about the people in Afghanistan, women and girls in particular. It is going to be very ugly. Buck, we appreciate you coming on tonight. Thank you.

Our Intelligent Analysis of Masks and Vaccines

12 Aug 2021

BUCK: There’s obviously something happening right now, and we’re not being told the whole truth. There are people who say they know answers about what the covid spread is, what’s behind it right now. There are people who tell you they can protect you, that if you just listen to them, everything will be much, much better.

But what exactly could the justification be if you look at the data? I mean, what is the rationalization of what’s happening here? They don’t really have any good answers for you. You look at places like Florida and Texas. Right now, CNN has “Texas, Arizona, Florida push back against covid mitigation measures.” They want particularly Florida, but all these states to cave in right now.

Here is what’s going on. The Broward County of Florida school superintendent is saying they’re just gonna go against the state mandate here.

VICKIE CARTWRIGHT: You know, my core value is students first. No amount of personal financial loss will cause me to go against this value. No amount of money can compare to a person’s life or the impact that this virus may have on a person or their family.

BUCK: Clay, this is where we are now. They’re just going to do what they want to do. She’s saying that… All the governor is telling people is parents have choice.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Schools can’t make kids mask up if their parents don’t want them to and some school districts are saying, “No, Governor.” Well, that’s not how our system works, Clay.

CLAY: Yeah. Look, I want to give some data. One of the things that we try to do on this show is — and this is a big story, and I think there’s a lot of discussion around it right now, and I understand why people sometimes feel overwhelmed. But the way the daily media cycle… Buck, it’s like you’re drinking from a fire hose.

If you’re just right now tuning in to us and you’re like, “Hey, what’s going on?” what I believe we can do is be as honest as possible with our audience with real data and try to interpret that for you. So let me give you a couple of data points here. We’ve got an article up at Outkick right now.

I’d encourage you to check out Outkick.com, the site I run. In the past year, according to the CDC, there have been 40,396, kids 11 and under, die. There is an awful story that is a tragedy for each of those parents. I’ve got three kids. Everybody knows once you become a parent, you have two primary fears. One, that something could happen to your kid

And, two, that you might not be there to raise them to adulthood. That’s every single parent no matter your race, no matter your gender, everything. So these are all tragedies: 40,396 kids 11 and under have died since the start of 2020. Fewer than 200 of those deaths are from covid. That means 99.5%, roughly, of all deaths that have occurred in children 11 and under are from something other than covid.

Now, this is a big deal to me because I think it ties in with the fear, because the fear really is about kids and masking and everything else. So I walked my kids, Buck, to school this morning, my two youngest, my first grader and my fifth grader. They’ve now implemented a mask mandate in the area where I live, but they’re not really endorsing it. Everybody was walking in.

I would say the vast majority of parents their kids did not have masks on; these are not parents, by the way, that are making irrational decisions because they want to risk their children’s lives. I think this is important about parent choice. I care more about my kids’ health and safety than I do anything going on in my life.

I look at all the data and know that wearing a mask is not making them safer. And I think that’s what the vast majority of parents out there are doing. And, Buck, unfortunately, you know how we’re gonna be covered ’cause we already saw it. CNN is doing hit pieces based on the event that I went.

In the past year 40,396 kids under 11 years old have tragically died in the United States. Less than 200 of those deaths were caused by covid. https://t.co/9LZPozaj2s

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 12, 2021

We played you yesterday the clip of my speaking at the school board meeting, and CNN today, this morning, Ali, our producer texts and us says, “Hey, CNN has got video where they’re trying to make everybody, thousand-or-more parents who showed up like they’re Neanderthals who don’t care about science.”

BUCK: Yeah. You’re mask insurrectionists, Clay.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: That’s actually happening right now. That’s the circumstance. That’s the situation. Play clip 1.

AMARA WALKER: They ended up voting in favor of, of a temporary — temporary! — mask mandate that would only apply to the elementary school students there. And what you saw after this meeting in the parking lot was the anger — and, frankly, the vitriol boiling over with supporters — or I should say opponents of masks lashing out at the supporters of masks and even heckling people walking out of that meeting wearing masks! “We know who you are. We will find you.” We also heard someone in the background saying, “I am a parent.” So, uhhh, these are parents heckling other parents, Erica.

ERICA HILL: What an example they’re setting. It is disturbing, to put it mildly.

BUCK: Play the world’s smallest violin and pass around the soy milk, Clay. You were there. Here’s CNN is trying to make it seem like anyone who shows up at a meeting like this to voice their opinion about what Ireland found… Tucker did had his show last night on Fox the study that the Irish did. They looked at the data; it’s basically child abuse.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: You’re making kids uncomfortable, causing anxiety. It does not make them safer. Obviously, people should be upset about that but the hysterics to think that Little Timmy or Little Susie is gonna die if they don’t have some stupid please of cloth over their face all day? They’re the barbarians who are threatening people now. That’s what they’re saying.

CLAY: Yeah. And this is emblematic of how unfair reporting can be, right? We talked about the mostly peaceful protests that CNN covered for months, the BLM riots that were taken place all over the country, and what did they say? Even the people who were burning down police buildings, who were trying to burn down courthouses, they were saying, “Oh, that’s a small minority of the protesters.”

A couple of people are really fired up as these people who have gotten a mask mandate put in place walk outside of the building, and they tell them, “Hey, we think there should be consequences for what has happened here,” and this, to me, is indicative of what happens when your representatives — and I had a buddy call me, and I’m curious what you think about this, Buck.

I had a buddy call me and he said, “You know what? I’ve never paid attention to who’s on the school board before.” That’s what he said, candidly. He’s got four kids, and he said, “I’ve never cared. I pay attention to who I vote for governor, I pay attention to who I vote for Senate, all those things.” He said, “I’ve never thought about the school board. But what this showed me is the school board, the lowest level of the democratic process, often can have the most impact.”

I bet most of you out there listening to us right now… I put myself in this category. I didn’t know who my school board representative was. I never really thought about it when I went in to vote. I’m gonna care now because they are not reflecting — in our neighborhood and in our county, they aren’t reflecting — the democratic values of the people. And so when you do that, you create anger, and you create discord and distrust. And that’s what we saw in the wake of that meeting.

BUCK: It’s gonna get worse, everybody, unfortunately across the country. It’s gonna get worse because you have more of the dominoes falling. You have the governor of New York, incoming governor of New York, Hochul, saying gonna be a universal statewide mask mandate in all schools in New York. Does anybody think that California’s not the gonna make sure that they —

CLAY: Kentucky just did it, Buck! Kentucky just made a universal mask mandate for everybody in the schools.

BUCK: Kentucky. It’s even hard to keep up because these things are changing day in and day out in these states. What they really want is Florida because Florida is the beacon of freedom, has been the beacon all along of they did not lock down, they did not go to that place that they were told they had to or else it was gonna be an experiment in death and all this other stuff that they said.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Now what they’re desperate to make sure happens is that Florida can’t be the control group because if you have schools in Florida without masks and all these other states with mandatory masks for children, we’ll be able to do a very clean comparison of whether or not this stuff matters.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: And I’m telling you, I would bet a large sum of money on if we can get to this place where we see what the control group of Florida says, we’ll know that this is all stupid and the people that are pushing this are hysterical loons. They want to avoid that at all costs. So all they need is Broward County, a few others to have… If you have a patchwork system, it’s gonna be, “Well, the data is muddled.”

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: “We can’t really see. Some schools had it; some schools didn’t.” We need to have some places that hold the line against this madness, and I’m worried that pressure right now is gaining so much. And part of it, Clay, is how are we having when we have…? What is it? Over 190 million people in the U.S. have gotten at least one dose of this vaccine; 163.9 million people have been fully vaccinated.

And we’re being told that there are some states that have 50%/60% vaccination rates that are, “Oh, my gosh, the Delta variant’s gonna get us!” It’s only possible for this to be as bad as it is right now if there are some things that they’re not telling us yet but we’re gonna find out soon, like this vaccine or the vaccines wear off even faster than was anticipated.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — which, when you hear Dr. Anthony Fauci saying — he said it today, Clay — everyone’s gonna need a booster.

CLAY: And I’ll tell you this. These are quotes from Axios that I saw this morning, number one story: “Biden’s covid fear: Fading vaccines,” and it says here, “Surprising new research,” not surprising to people who have been paying attention to this show, “shows the effectiveness of covid vaccines,” I’m reading directly from Axios, “fading faster than expected, raising fears inside the Biden administration about the health and messaging consequences for Americans.”

I’m reading directly from Axios, and this is a senior Biden official that is not named, but the quote here is, “I think everybody believes this wanes over time. The question is, to what extent? Nobody wants to be behind the eight ball here. We want to catch it before there’s an issue, and that’s why there is very intense scrutiny.” They’re looking at Israel, Buck. They are looking at England.

Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, and the overall hospitalization rates are skyrocketing. There is very — and we talked to Alex Berenson last week. A lot of people criticize Alex Berenson. They try to cancel him. But the data doesn’t lie, and ultimately the data is telling us there are major issues with these vaccines and how long they last.

BUCK: We’ll come back to this in a second ’cause there’s also a New York Magazine piece that looks at vaccine duration of protection, and this is a huge. you can imagine what the implications of this are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We are trying to be one of the last places you can have an intelligent conversation about data, risk analysis, and everything else as the continuing covid madness spreads across the country. I was talking about the mask-related situations, and CNN did this morning a story ripping the parents who had shown up for the school board meeting that I spoke at on Tuesday night.

We talked about it and played the clip on Wednesday. I actually went on with Tucker and had a good conversation with him. He did a great job, Tucker Carlson did, last night on Fox News laying out exactly more arguments for why masking children is pure madness. But CNN — and you know this, Buck. They are trying to portray everyone who is opposed to masking children as if they are lunatics.

And I will just say this. Thousand people showed up. Almost all of them very respectful making the arguments that they hold dear. You know how this works, Buck. You find one or two people, and you use them as a stand-in for arguing that everybody is irrational and deranged who is in favor of kids not wearing masks.

BUCK: Yeah, I remember when I used to cover the Occupy Wall Street protests back when I started at The Blaze.

CLAY: Oh yeah.

BUCK: There were people that I could have interviewed and put on air that were talking about, like, the lizard space lords that were actually running Wall Street and the flying saucers.

CLAY: (laughing) Right.

BUCK: But I realized, “Okay, that’s not really a fair representation of the overall Marxist lunacy here. “So I’ll go to somebody who’s actually gonna talk about how money does grow on trees and AOC actually understands economics,” although she wasn’t in office at that point. But you get what I’m saying. I gotta tell you, this clip they have, Clay, of the guy… We gotta play it ’cause otherwise —

CLAY: We’ll try to run and hide from it.

BUCK: You have all these parents, all these parents who are just saying, “Hey, with stop abusing our kids with your anti-science nonsense,” and this is what CNN wants people to take away.

MAN 1: Everybody’s taking notes, buddy! (unintelligible)

WOMAN 1: Put it back on!

MAN 1: Put that mask on!

WOMAN 1: Put the mask on!

MAN 1: We know who you are!

MAN 2: Keep it calm!

MAN 1: We know who you are!

MAN 2: Let’s keep it — keep it calm!

MAN 1: No more masks!

MAN 2: Keep it calm! Keep it calm.

MAN 1: No more masks!

MAN 2: (referring to police) We’re on these guys’ side. They’re…

MAN 1: No.

MAN 2: …on our side.

MAN 1: No, they’re not. They’re not on our side.

MAN 2: Police are on our side. Police are on our side. Let’s calm down.

CLAY: All right. So they find one or two people who are fired up — and look, I get it, because you’re not having your democratic rights respected.

BUCK: They weren’t even that bad. They weren’t threatening anybody.

CLAY: It’s not even that bad in the grand scheme of things, but they’re gonna play that over and over. And you know what already happened, Buck? One of my buddies sent me the Daily Mail and he’s saying, “Hey, are these your quotes?” and the Daily Mail has these guys’ quotes, and they have my picture up like it was me speaking and saying!

BUCK: You’re not only the leader of the masked insurrection.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I have to be the unmasked bandit and keep it stealthy here in New York because I’m completely outnumbered, but you can actually lead a rebellion —

CLAY: We got the revolution that would win. We’ve got the revolutionary army that would actually win. I don’t think there’s any doubt about this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Why are cases surging in Florida, and why is Florida so important right now? That’s a big discussion I think we need to get into.

BUCK: I love that tweet I sent you from —

CLAY: I saw it.

BUCK: Florida is Stalingrad right now. If they got Florida to fall, we all turn into Australia. I’ll give credit to that guy in a second. It’s a brilliant tweet.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Let’s start with William in Raleigh, North Carolina. William, what you got for us?

CALLER: Hey, guys, thanks so much for all you do. We appreciate you taking up the mantle here.

CLAY: Thank you.

CALLER: What I wanted to discuss was, how soon — especially after that Axios that you just talked about — will the administration begin to blame Trump and Warp Speed for not getting the vaccination efficacy that they feel like they should have and why this is wearing off, why the third booster, the potential fourth booster shots that they have been talking about?

I just feel like that that is coming because these guys, nothing sticks; nothing they do is their fault. I just feel like some of this stuff is getting ready to come down with this administration and how all of this going and Dr. Fauci. There’s just a lot out there that I think they’re gonna try and turn this thing around on the whole Trump process again.

BUCK: William, can I just say I think your analysis here is really astute, and I think that you’re right about how the narrative — the media narrative and the Democrat narrative — will shift very rapidly if we get to the point where “vaccine fading,” and I don’t know what we really call it. Vaccines fading over time. We’ll have to come up with a term for this, ’cause it’s not the same as vaccine failure which means it doesn’t work. I’m not saying that, no one’s saying that, but vaccines fading over time, that seems to be the case. why do we need boosters if that’s not the case?

CLAY: And the older you are, the faster it fades.

BUCK: I think it’s likely that there will be a Trump rushed this thing through, Clay. I think you will hear that. I think William’s correct.

CLAY: I think he’s right too. And we’ve talked about that off the air ’cause sometimes we talk about off the air, “Hey, let’s play this forward several months.” Nobody’s got a perfect crystal ball. But, yes, they will start to argue that they moved too quickly. And again, this is one of the flaws, I think, that is the most pronounced of the CDC in general, they have created an expectation that vaccine solved all problems and it’s gonna lead to covid-19 zero. And that’s not in any way reflective from the data itself. And I think that disconnect blows up very quickly on people.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Okay, why does Florida matter so much, and why is, to use the example, it the Stalingrad of the covid resistance? We’re gonna talk about that.

BUCK: Michael Watson was the guy on Twitter who wrote that.

CLAY: Yeah, you sent that to me, and I do think it’s a good analogy. By the way, I’m headed to Florida tomorrow. I spend a lot of time down there. We’re gonna talk about what exactly is going on in Florida, why it’s so significant, and why Ron DeSantis has emerged as maybe the default battleground, the leader of the anti-Biden resistance. All of that and more when we come back. I appreciate all of you hanging out with us. Florida: It’s the battleground.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Grant in Maine. Grant, what you got for us?

CALLER: Hey, guys, thanks for taking my call. Hey, you know —

CLAY: Thanks for listening. Sorry, go ahead.

CALLER: Hey, no problem. Hey, you know, I’ve been looking around and seeing how Paris is rioting and in Italy, and they’re burning their covid vaccine cards in Italy. And here in the U.S. seems like we’re kind of starting to softly comply and go along with the program, you know. We’re talking about getting fake vaccine cards. Well, that’s kind of like the same thing as if you — if they said they’re gonna ban guns and confiscate guns you go bury your guns and hide ’em.

You know, you’re not using them for what they’re intended for. You’re not using them to protect and defend your freedom. I think that we should — we need to stop complying and stop accepting. We’re gonna have to do some hard standing up and potentially lose our jobs and force these people to stop this craziness.

CLAY: I agree with you, Grant, about the fact that people need to stand up and make their voices heard, and that’s what I tried to do at the grassroots level on Tuesday with my school board. And that’s what I think people all over the country need to do. Because I do believe there’s a huge segment of the American population that believes that government overreach is a major issue here, that the facts and the data don’t justify it, and I think it is a majority of the country. I really do. And that doesn’t mean, by the way, that some of those people also aren’t getting vaccinated. I think a lot of —

BUCK: Difference between a mandate — there’s a difference between a mandate and deciding that this is something, oh, no, it’s bad all across — you — we said this a million times. I don’t want to bore our audience by saying the same things a lot. You told your parents, I told misrepresents get vaccinated they are vaccinated there’s no question right? We’re not — there’s absolutely no anti-vax that we’re talking about here. We’re just anti-mandate and ask some questions about why we need boosters and things like that —

CLAY: Especially if you’ve already had covid. Why are we making a distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated. Really it’s between those with covid and those who have not had covid, right?

BUCK: It’s about control and it’s about they don’t want to water down “everyone has to get the shot, everyone has to get the shot,” that’s the fixation that they have. We have — let’s see — I want to see what Don — in Nashville, Clay’s hometown. Nashville — I’ll be in Nashville with Clay next week, so at least I’ll get to experience a bit of freedom. But go ahead, Don.

CALLER: Hi, guys thanks for carrying the torch. I’ll be quick. I’m going through Nashville, and I’m listening to you talk about Louisiana and their wanting to put these mandates on, New York wanting to put the mandates on. And the proof that it’s about political power, not about medical, is the fact that it’s no longer being considered a pandemic. There is no medical reason for these governors to be making these mandates that they’re attempting to make.

CLAY: I agree. Look. I think that this Superdome story, which, again, just broke if you’re listening to us right now, New Orleans reportedly going to join New York City in having vaccine mandates for bars, restaurants, and next step, although I haven’t heard this, Buck. I don’t think, like, Yankee Stadium is included in the vaccine mandate right now, is it, like if you wanted to —

BUCK: I have to check. But look. Let’s understand what the mentality is here. If you support vaccine passports in restaurants in a major city like New York — when I say “if you,” I mean the people that are pushing for this — they want everyone to get vaccinated. So until that happens and as long as they have the power to harass, annoy, and coerce, they will continue to do so.

And that means that everything is on the table to get there. And this is exactly what we’re seeing. By the way, you see what de Blasio did. It was essentially a bait-and-switch. No indoor mask mandate from the city. Oh, about a vaccine mandate a week later, right? So they’re playing games here to see what they can get away with. Dean up in Boston. Dean, what do you got?

CALLER: What do we do when we can’t trust the CDC or the NIH because they politicize something that you can have other information that contradicts it such as other countries’ studies — England and Vietnam and other countries — and then you have Johns Hopkins and some of the other great medical centers that do the research, they come out and it contradicts what these people say that we’re supposed to take as the Word of God. What happens when we do need ’em? We can’t trust ’em.

BUCK: I think that the credibility — thank you, Dean. The credibility for the medical establishment and apparatus in this country is certainly lower than it has ever been in my lifetime. Doctors have tended to be — it’s usually, like, military and doctors at the very top of the public trust list in America. And I think doctors, Clay, have lost a lot of that. And it’s not fair, ’cause I know there are a lot of good doctors listening, but you see all these white lab coat tyrants like Fauci out there, and you say, what the heck is going on?

CLAY: Yeah. And they are advocating for things that aren’t supported by data. That’s where I think many Americans of reasonable temperament, they look. And I use that as an example at the school board hearing I attended on Tuesday which we’re gonna talk about tomorrow because Joe Biden now has come out and called the people who are in favor of masks in my county heroes in his press conference. We’re gonna play that for you tomorrow as this is continuing to blow up. The reality is, they weren’t citing any data that kids are safer wearing masks than without. I love my kids more than anything in the world. I want all your kids to be safe. Masks aren’t proven to be working for them safely.

BUCK: I just want you to know if you do get sent to Gitmo or something, I know people, we’ll get you out, buddy. I’ll make some of the calls from the old days, we’ll get a team together, we’ll get you out of there, ’cause when the president’s got his eyes on my man Clay, we gotta key an eye on what’s going on here. We’ll bust Clay out of the joint if we have to.

Afghanistan Collapses Fast as Biden Blunders

12 Aug 2021

BUCK: We’re gonna have to talk about Afghanistan as well because it’s collapsing even faster —

CLAY: Before we officially leave, Buck! We’re not even getting out of the country and we may have lost the whole thing to the Taliban before we even leave.

BUCK: They’re telling everybody in the U.S. embassy, “Americans, get out.” We’re at the… this is starting to look like, “Run for the exits. this is gonna get ugly and we can’t guarantee any American’s safety that’s still left in the country.” That’s what this is looking like right now. They just seized Kandahar or at least they’ve made it to Martyr’s Square which is kind of like the Times Square of Kandahar, if you will.

They’ve gotten into the center of the city and they’re still fighting maybe over who’s in full control, but they’ve already gotten Kandahar, they’ve taken more than a half dozen provincial capitals, they control more than half the country, they just seized Ghazni, which is just to the south of Kabul and is close enough on Kabul’s periphery that it starts to become a access choke point to the capital city.

So the boa constrictor of the Taliban, if you will — the coils — are getting tighter around the throats of the Afghan people are every passing hour. it’s just stunning that, Clay, we’ve been training the Afghan military and Air Force, and we’ve spent almost a trillion dollars in this country, and it’s not gonna last a summer after we’ve said, ‘we’re not gonna hold this thing together anymore which is amazing.”

Now the argument for people seems to be for people who still make this argument — and there are some people I like in media who still say this stuff — well, obviously we shouldn’t have left because we could have held it together with 3,000 troops forever. Other people look at this and say, “This is as much as we could accomplish in terms of stability operations after 20 years?”

CLAY: I don’t know what the right answer is in Afghanistan. I think I’m somewhere in the middle where it’s almost like there’s a lot of people out there who penned getting married to people that they shouldn’t have been married to because they dated for a long time. I feel like if you say we have to stay in Afghanistan, you’re kinda like those people.

‘Cause even though you are gonna get divorced eventually and you should have never gotten married but you said, “Well, we spent all this time together, it’s kind of a logical next step and it’s a marriage that you know is doomed to fail at some point. I feel like that’s what’s going on with Afghanistan where even the people who are arguing we should stay there are primarily arguing we should stay there because we’ve stayed there as long as we have and because we’ve invested so much time and money in it.

It at the moment that you leave, it immediately collapses, it proves that basically we wasted a trillion dollars there. A trillion dollars! We talk a lot about the infrastructure bill and everything else. We could have spent a trillion dollars a lot better ways in the United States than what we ended up spending in Afghanistan.

BUCK: You can go back… there was a book that I remember, I was actually told to read even before, Clay, I joined the CIA by Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris. This was published back in, what, 2004. And what he was just saying if you look at the history of Afghanistan, all the attempts in the past to do exactly what the U.S. had decided by 2004 was the mission set, the chance of this succeeding, if you believe that history matters, was almost year.

CLAY: Yes. Yes.

BUCK: But we had four-star general after four-star general, diplomat after diplomat, people who were special envoys and at the very top. And I saw this up close and in person when I was there. If you want to get promoted and you want to get the book deal, you want to be on the board of Raytheon, you want to get invited to the Aspen Ideas Festival, you had to be a person in the Afghanistan context who is going to say, “Oh, we figured it out now.

“We figured it out in 2008. We figured it out in 2011.” They would keep on saying, “Now we have the winning formula,’ because, Clay, the person who comes back from being in charge of Afghanistan the last 20 years or so telling everybody, “This is a society that in term of infrastructure, cohesiveness, development, and history, has almost no chance of being a coherent and durable state…”

That person, , when you have the whole military-industrial complex focused in on Afghanistan, they don’t get promoted, they don’t get elevated, they’re not treated like a hero. And so I think that the echo chamber effect was very role. By the way, one or more point on this was just that Obama when he came in… I was in the CIA in 2008 and in the transition in 2009 when Obama took office.

Clay, there was a seismic shift even in the intelligence community from, “Okay, well, Iraq was the bad Bush war. Afghanistan is the good Obama war,” and no one ever stopped to think, “Well, hold on a second. Why is that true, and what does that even really mean for right now and for the mission set that we’re facing?” Domestic politics was driving it.

CLAY: I think the only way we could have gotten out of Afghanistan and declared victory is if we had done it immediately after killing Osama Bin Laden. Right? Because ultimately, he was the reason to go into Afghanistan. That’s at least for people out there, whether you buy it or not — and I know he wasn’t in Afghanistan, but he was being protected by Pakistan in Abbottabad. but that would have at least been, I think, narratively a way to declare victory and leave right?

BUCK: They would have the exact same circumstances that you have.

CLAY: The exact same thing would have happened. Now we’re leaving and we don’t even have the illusion of being able to declare victory. At least then you could have sold the idea of we accomplished our mission.

BUCK: You could your “mission accomplished” banner and the whole thing. Right now, what we see is that it’s just the American people. The problem with this is — or I should say the problem, but the reality of it is — that Trump wanted us to get out. Trump voters; I was one of them. I advocated for us leaving when Trump was in office.

I thought that we should draw down. So we can’t forget what we thought was a better strategy for America, for an America First foreign policy a year ago or two years ago just because Joe Biden is president now, and that all said, though, the people who are advocating for withdrawal all thought this was probably gonna happen.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It wasn’t like, “Oh, withdraw. It’s gonna be fine.” It was, “We tried; it’s up to the Afghan people.”

CLAY: The rapidity has surprised some people, but the end result has not. Is that fair to say?

BUCK: The IC — and, by the way, for every IC assessment that gets reported on to the press whether it’s open source or someone’s kind of leaking the executive summary or something. For every one intelligence community paper, Clay, that assesses these things, there’s hundreds of others. People think that it speaks with one voice. I think there are even 17 intel agencies now. It was 16 when I was in. They’re expanding them; they’re all fighting with each other all the time. It’s a mess. They thought, though, that you had at least once we drew down, six months. That was kind of the consensus.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: We’re not even at the drawdown, and it’s looking like we’re gonna be air lifting people with helicopters off the rooftop of the embassy in Kabul is kind of what it feels like right now.

CLAY: It’s gonna look just like what happened when Vietnam collapsed. There’s going to be that element. And that’s why I say, narratively you’re correct that the end result was gonna be the same no matter what. But I think Americans, if we had said, “We got bin Laden. Let’s leave,” at least then there is an idea that we might have had some success.

BUCK: So I think the Obama administration in that case was also in a more difficult spot to do that because, remember, Obama surged over a hundred thousand troops to Afghanistan.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: You’re gonna surge, and then you’re gonna pull out precipitously?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Remember, he announced — and this goes right to the Afghanistan good war, Iraq bad war concept that the Democrats were all invested in including, by the way, Joe Biden. He was a big Iraq bad, Afghanistan good. Joe Biden also wanted to cut Iraq into three separate countries. And then people who knew Iraq had to explain to him the lines that you would draw go through Kirkuk and Mosul and oil fields.

CLAY: All the different tribal areas. Right.

BUCK: It’s not just like you sit there, you draw a line on the map, and everyone’s gonna be okay with this. But you had the Obama administration surge troops there and also you had had the withdrawal from Iraq turning into the ISIS and ISIS was JV and you start to look it all these things together. The biggest and most obvious failure of the Obama administration…

Okay. I can’t say that because everyone’s gonna get on me and say, “Oh, there’s a difference.” Okay. One of the biggest and most obvious failures of Obama administration, top to bottom, was on the foreign policy front where every challenge that they faced starting in 2009 they made worse. Every area where there was violence and conflict deteriorated, essentially, over the course of Obama’s presidency, most notably Syria and Libya but also Iraq and Afghanistan and name a place. Wow, we actually did do Afghanistan right now.

Buck’s Dilemma: Brother’s Wedding Venues Require Vax

12 Aug 2021

BUCK: As we’re looking at the way forward here, I’ve gotten word that… So, I’ve got my brother’s wedding next week, which Clay knows about. I’m very proud of my little brother. He’s gonna be getting married. But the restaurants and venues in New York City starting next week are requiring vaccine proof to go inside, vaccine passports.

CLAY: This is crazy.

BUCK: I’m sitting here telling you right now, I’m in a situation where I have my three siblings — older brother, little brother, little sister — all fantastic human beings. And I got my little brother’s wedding next week. We’re all so excited about it. But I’m not missing my brother’s wedding. I’m going to my brother’s wedding.

CLAY: Of course.

BUCK: Obviously, right? They would have to take me in the hospital bed with the IV in my arm to the ceremony. I’m going no matter what. But I feel like, Clay, this is what they finally gotten to the point of now where they found a way to turn the screws on people to coerce people. I know people are gonna say to me, “Oh, Buck, but come on. Do the…”

What choice do I have? This is where the rubber finally meets the road here. I’ve got my brother, who I would take a bullet for gladly, getting married next week. It’s a joyous occasion, couldn’t be happier about it, and de Blasio is now praising all these restaurants that are getting ahead of the official enforcement date.

They’re saying, “Fine, if you’re gonna make us do this.” Now, there are some places, Clay, in the outer boroughs here in New York City. Someone sent me that article from outer Brooklyn, Bay Ridge. In the Bronx… By the way, the Bronx, more than half the borough, the entire borough —

CLAY: They can’t go to restaurants or bars or gymnasiums.

BUCK: — is unvaccinated and cannot go to restaurants. So this whole thing is gonna be a cata. But I can’t play games. I can’t roll dice with going to my own siblings’ wedding. So, Clay, I’m sitting here telling you as somebody who… I have it on my desk on top the proof of my infection. I have antibodies.

CLAY: Yes. You have your antibodies.

BUCK: I’m gonna have to probably go get a shot now because — and I know everybody’s saying, “Buck, don’t do it!” What am I gonna do? I’m not gonna miss the wedding. So, this is the kind of coercion they said they would never do. It’s now, “Get the shot, peasant, or you miss your own brother’s wedding.” That’s New York City right now.

CLAY: And you’re in a tough spot. And we talked about it off the air, and you’re saying, “I don’t know if I even necessarily want to have to share this story,” and I said, “Hey, everybody who does our job, you have to decide at some level how much of your private life do you put out there in the public arena.”

So we were talking about it privately, and I said I thought you had two options. I said, “Do it, ’cause you can’t miss this.” Let’s start here: Like every decision that you make you have to decide, “Okay, what’s the end result here?” The end result is you can’t miss your brother’s wedding.

BUCK: Hundred percent. No chance. No chance.

CLAY: There’s no chance of that no matter your politics, and I think most people out there would agree with that. If you had to analyze something if I heard you say, “Hey, I care so much about this I’m gonna skip my brother’s wedding,” I’d say, “Your brother’s wedding is, to me, by far the focal point.” So you have to go. I think you’d be a total imbecile, in my opinion.

BUCK: So my real options, Clay, are basically get the shot or somehow find a way — and I’m not advocating this.

CLAY: Just like when you were… That’s what I said. I said you had two options. Get the shot or you have to go back like you’re 19 years old in college again, and when everybody was trying to get fake IDs to be able to get into a bar before you were 21. (laughing) You have to find a fake ID.

BUCK: Did you have a good fake ID? Fake IDs when I was growing up here in New York were huge. It was a business, man. They were everywhere. People would pay real money for fake IDs. It was crazy.

CLAY: I got two good fake ID stories for you. So, first of all, I went to college in Washington, D.C. So lots of people —

BUCK: I thought we were talking about covid and me getting a shot. Now we’re talking about fake IDs?

CLAY: I want to circle back around to how this plays in. So they had what was called a D.C. Walker’s license all right? D.C. Walker’s license because a lot of people didn’t have driver’s licenses. So I got a D.C. Walker’s license, which was total garbage. It worked everywhere. So much so that when I actually got my real license, it was Tennessee, and it was one of those old laminated ones.

They wouldn’t let me in the bar because my real ID looked faker than the D.C. Walker’s ID. So I think you have to explore — surreptitiously, pretend that there aren’t millions of people listening right now — what would a fake vaccine ID card look like to allow to you attend your brother’s wedding.

BUCK: I cannot abide, man. I’m a rule of law fellow.

CLAY: I’m looking into it.

BUCK: I would rather… Look, by the way, I have to wear a suit, go through the whole thing. So I’m thinking I gotta go Spider-Man and find a way into these venues back door, through the kitchen.

CLAY: That’s a funny idea too. I didn’t even think about that.

BUCK: For the actual wedding I gotta go black tie, so then I’m going full James Bond, 007, through the window to avoid the shot, or I just get the shot, but see this is —

CLAY: So how do they check it? Do you know? That’s my question.

BUCK: This is the crazy part. This is all happening right now in New York, and we have a lot of people in New York that are listening — and for the rest of the country, I keep telling you. For people who say, “Oh, that’s not gonna be a problem for me.” Really? You live in Austin, you live in Los Angeles, you live in Denver? You’re sure they’re not gonna do this to you? Because they’ve decided.

CLAY: How are we gonna check it? I think that’s where a lot of people say, “Oh, so like you got the wedding; there’s X-number of people that are gonna be there…”

BUCK: They’re asking for it, Clay, in advance to check.

CLAY: You have to email it to them?

BUCK: Yes. Yes.

CLAY: Oh, my God.

BUCK: Yes. So this is what I’m saying — and, by the way, there’s multiple venues.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: There’s a church and there’s the rehearsal dinner place but the reality here is that places now all have their own enforcement mechanism which actually makes it even harder or their own enforcement levels. It’s basically anywhere you go now, are they really checking?

Some places accept — and these are the actual rules — a note from a medical institution or a religious institution plus a negative covid test net last 48 hours. Other places, it has to be proof of vaccination only. Other places, I think some of them are thinking about taking — and they should, obviously — proof of a previous covid test.

Well, all this does is… Do you want to be constantly harassed with this or do you just finally give up? They’re forcing my hand. Look, Clay, this is what people are dealing with. I brought up earlier in the week we had someone texted me and said, “I’m about to…” It was a friend of a friend. “I’m about to lose my job and my pension for a New Jersey health system…”

I don’t want to get any specifics. “I’ll lose this New Jersey health system thing unless I got the shot. What do you do?” I’ll tell this audience, you and I, one promise we make is we’ve always gotta tell the audience the truth and what we really think. I told the person, “I would not risk your pension.”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: “You’re about to retire. You’re clearly at an age level where the vaccine has a higher upside for you.’ So I would get the shot even though she really doesn’t want to get the shot. Now I’m that person because I gotta a wedding next week and I either get the shot or I gotta pull a Spider-Man and pull into the window in my tux 007 style, which maybe I’ll do.

CLAY: Or get a great fake vaccine card.

BUCK: Clay, we cannot promote fake documents on the air, sir!

CLAY: Is it even a government document? I don’t think that it is. It’s not like it’s a passport, like a real one.

BUCK: City government document is like, come on, come on. Federal government documents, CDC stuff? That gets a little dicey.

CLAY: I don’t think it’s a federal document. It’s not like you’re, you know, like, Jason Bourne and you got eight different passports that you’re trying to sneak into a country with. That we know of. Although you were in the CIA. You may have eight different passports. You may have eight different identities for all I know.

BUCK: I can neither confirm nor deny.

CLAY: I think this is what they’re trying to do. The goal of these rules is to put somebody in such a socially awkward or business-wise difficult situation that you must comply.

BUCK: The point is force compliance.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: There’s no more choice in this. They’re gonna find a way. Everyone listening to this, they’re gonna try to find a way — the Biden administration, the apparatus, the Fauci-ites — to make everyone got the shot, a hundred percent of us.

CLAY: And let’s just be clear here. We’re not like anti-vax guys. I just want to reiterate for people who might not know. We’ve already had covid, and so when we talk to Rand Paul or we talk to Dr. Marty Makary, actual doctor experts that we have on this program, they say that it probably doesn’t make sense because you already have better immunity having had covid and survived it than you would. Natural immunity works better than vaccinated immunity. So they’re not giving you the option to use, as you said, the fact that you have antibodies, which is the exact purpose of getting the vaccine.

BUCK: I have definitive medical proof of previous infection this year.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I am, based on every expert who’s honest, safer to be around than people who have only been vaccinated in terms of transmission risk — and yet, again, we go back to this. I think I gotta get the shot and what you’re gonna find is that more and more people are gonna be in positions where it’s get the shot or you lose your job, and unfortunately, I think this is going to stand up in court. Lawyer Hat Man, what do you think? Is it gonna stand up in court? I think it’s gonna stand up in court.

CLAY: I don’t know if it is. But the problem is, you’re not gonna be able to find out whether it’s gonna stand up in court before most people out there get put up against it. Your brother’s wedding is next week or whatever —

BUCK: I can’t wait to this to coarse through the system. This isn’t a Law & Order episode where it all happens in five minutes.

CLAY: I’m actually fascinated. the next time I come up to New York —

BUCK: I won’t be able to take you find out for steak — which, by the way, you should pick up the check. I won’t be able to take you out for steak because, if you’re not vaccinated, Clay, no steak for you.

CLAY: Are you gonna be embarrassed if we go out to a bar or restaurant and it’s like when the guy doesn’t have good enough shoes to be able to get in the bar? For a long time, I would always be the guy who was in shorts and flip-flops and my buddy would say, “Dude, you couldn’t just have worn normal shoes? They won’t let you in the bar here.” Is that gonna be the situation for you?

BUCK: I’m going to be trying to basically bribe the covid bouncer to let in my buddy Clay Travis.

CLAY: Buy me in.

BUCK: But you’ll probably say, “Hey, here’s some Super Bowl tickets” or something ’cause you got the hookups.

CLAY: (laughiung)

BUCK: But anyway, point is, we gotta figure out what’s going on here.

CLAY: I’m sure there are a lot of places out there where we have restaurant owners that would be ecstatic to smuggle us in next time I’m in New York, if I otherwise wouldn’t be able to get in.

BUCK: There needs to some kind of a symbol outside for that.

CLAY: That’s a great idea.

BUCK: Actually, the symbol is let people in without checking their vaccine passports, but Clay we should go back to the Texas Senate passing the election bill remember when they fled?

CLAY: I gotta figure out the House right the House has to balance it out.

BUCK: Right, but they’re gonna lose all their tweeting out their sad salads and their little soy macha lattes and all the rest of it.

CLAY: Ali just sent us, by the way, “Covid-19 cases surges as do sales of fake vaccine cards.” They’re around $100, Buck. That’s a story. It’s out there. Just saying.

BUCK: Law & Order man, Clay.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But we’ll talk offline.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: I’m not trying to sell you on this specifically, Buck, but as you make the decision about what you have to do Spider-Man/Batman style to get into your brother’s wedding; you’ve already had covid, you’ve got antibodies, but New York City is implementing an aggressive vaccine passport. They’re requesting that everybody prove that they’ve been vaccinated.

This is the research of Ali on our staff. The headline story here is: “Covid-19 cases surge as do sales of fake vaccination cards – around $100 for something you could get free.” Here where some of the quotes: “The availability of fake vaccination certificates has risen, too. Since March, there’s been a 257% increase in the number of sellers using the Telegram messaging app to advertise fake vaccination cards…”

I’ve heard that the Telegram messaging app is a good place to go if you don’t want your texts to be able to be examined. I’ve heard. So they’ve using it “to advertise fake vaccination cards to ‘those who do not want to take the vaccine…’

The company said there are now more than 2,500 groups on Telegram trying to sell fake vaccination certificates … As anti-vaccine groups have grown, the price of fake vaccination cards has dropped, from $200 in March to about half that today,” which obviously would reflect that there is a lot of demand on these. So far, no one has been prosecuted for one of these.

BUCK: What does the FBI say about this?

CLAY: What did FBI say?

BUCK: The FBI put out a statement. “An FBI spokeswoman said, ‘using a government agency seal without permission is illegal. You could face a fine and up to five years in prison.'”

CLAY: Five years in prison! That doesn’t sound likely.

BUCK: I gotta tell you, they’re gonna lock people up five years in prison for using a fake vaccination card? First of all, federal statutes usually you end up getting much less ’cause everyone ends up pleading guilty.

CLAY: They might lock you or me up for five years.

BUCK: Well, that’s the problem. They want to make an example of one of us.

CLAY: They’d Marth Stewart us!

BUCK: Absolutely. So this is why people telling me, “Oh, I can’t…” I’m among the commies here, folks. I’m living behind enemy lines. I’m bringing you guys stories of what it’s like. It’s like I’m reporting on this show every day, Clay, from behind the Iron Curtain. I’m like a Soviet Bloc dissident here in New York City, and I’m trying to tell everything what’s really going on here. But if I give the KGB, if I give the commissars an opportunity to make an example of me, that’s not gonna be smart. It’s not gonna be a good idea.

CLAY: I’ll say this too. California evidently did arrest someone in May. They arrested a bar owner for allegedly selling fake vaccine cards. So you can go in the bar and try to order a fake vaccine. I need to know more about how this ends up happening.

BUCK: They wear a trench coat. “I got the fake Moderna. I got the fake Pfizer.” They got everything for you.

CLAY: (laughing) I’ll have an old-fashioned and also, please, could you give me a fake ID?” I’m reading this story now.

BUCK: What are they gonna say when — I really believe this, and maybe we could mark this down as a Buck thought or prediction for the future — when within 60 days they’re telling us, “Oh, yeah, guys. For the winter season, you need to get boosters — and, by the way, that’s obviously because the vaccines are wearing off and not effective enough.” What are they gonna say then about all of this?

CLAY: Already the boosters are gonna have to happen, right? The question is, like, how many different versions of the booster are you gonna have get and for how long?

BUCK: It’s gonna be forever, folks. It’s gonna turn into the flu shot. That’s what’s gonna end up happening here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Kathryn in SoCal, Southern California, what do you got for us?

CALLER: Hey, as you know, Buck, I’m with you. I work in the school system here in Southern California. I had just found out that they’ll be requiring us to get vaccinated or be tested once a week. But I’m assuming further down the line, it’s going to be a force that we have to be vaccinated or else. I am not an anti-vaxxer. I am an anti-covid vaccine.

I have no idea what’s in this vaccine! I have done some research. My daughter is a nurse. She has been advising me not to take it. She has been working in the public health system calling patients from this, from the get-go, and she’s absolutely against it. There are many people that I know that are in the medical field that are against it.

I am at the point now where I don’t know where I’m gonna go. Do I have to get vaccine? I’ve been exposed, actually. I’ve been exposed to covid two times in the last month. My son’s family, they got it, very mild symptoms. I think the worst thing that they had to do was be consigned for, what, 14 days —

BUCK: So Kathryn are you facing either get vaxxed or get fired? Is that the sum total of what you’re looking at here?

CALLER: Well, probably. I’m the lone reed in my office. I’m working with tons of liberal people, and a lot of them, I know if they find out that I am not vaccinated, I’m gonna be vilified.

BUCK: Oh, yeah. No, they’re probably gonna make you daybreak Kathryn, I wish we had answers for you. I appreciate you holding and calling in from Southern California. But, Clay, there’s gonna be more and more of this. Jill has been holding from Loveland, Ohio, for a long time. Jill, welcome.

CALLER: What’s up, guys? Right on! Right on! Rest in peace, Maha Rushie. But I gotta say I am a raging mama bear, because I live in Ohio where Governor DeWine, although a RINO, has left it up to the schools to make the decision and our daughter is going to be a first grader at a Catholic school that told us last week, “No masks, it’s optional,” and then last night, flips the script and said it’s mandatory, if we signed all our paperwork. We go to drop off school supplies on Monday! How can a private school that takes our money ’cause we chose to come to your school ’cause you share our values, how can they do this? The public schools are making this optional.

CLAY: Jill, let me give you a couple of ideas here, and I understand your frustration, your anger. I went and talked Tuesday. I’ve got two kids in school, public school. This has turned into a big flashpoint for moms and dads everywhere. One, I would look into whether your school has a medical exception or a religious exemption opportunity.

I know you thought a religious school, but it a lot of different states and communities have exemption forms that you may be eligible for. The other thing I would say is, Jill, I think you gotta organize the parents. What happens if you guys who are paying tuition…? First of all, you could leave and go elsewhere. But what happens if you just send your kids and say, “We don’t believe in masks.

“Our kids aren’t going to wear them,’ and there are a large group of you who are making that choice, I think you have to stand up against this authority. That would be my suggestion. Thanks for listening. And I know there’s a lot of people out there dealing with the same dilemma all over the place.

BUCK: Let’s open it up for everybody if you got thoughts on this. If you’re facing a choice like the one I am right now, basically vax or else. Vaccine or else, can’t go to my brother’s wedding. Okay, that’s what I’m faced with in New York. People say move. I can’t move the wedding; so this is where we are.

DeSantis vs. Biden: Battle Lines Drawn in Florida

12 Aug 2021

CLAY: The battle lines are really getting drawn in a big way as it pertains to Ron DeSantis against Joe Biden, the decisions made by the governor of Florida versus the decisions being made by Dr. Fauci and others in the Joe Biden administration. So as we went to break, I was talking about the fact — and I know, Buck, your brothers have spent a lot of time in Florida.

We’ve got a monster audience in the state of Florida. We appreciate all of you. We know a lot of you have traveled down to Florida to get away from the Draconian covid restrictions that may have existed in your states, especially if you’re on the East Coast or in the central part of the country. I’m headed down to Florida tomorrow. My wife, it’s our… I almost blew the number here.

I think it’s our 17th wedding anniversary, and so congratulations to her on being able to last that long with me, which I think no one really anticipated. But we’ve got a place in Rosemary Beach, Florida, down there right on the Florida Gulf Coast. We spend a decent amount of time down there. In fact, when everything got locked down last year, we spent the month of May there.

Our kids were out of school. We just relocated and moved to Florida for the month of May and lived a normal life. Ron DeSantis is under siege because he represents the last, best hope right now of everyone out there who is trying to live a normal life. Kids in school, sports going on, normalcy in America is represented right now by Florida.

And if Florida falls in line with the New Yorks and the Californias of the world, then there suddenly is no control group to be able to compare covid responses. ‘Cause right now you look at the data, Buck, if you compare let’s say Florida and Texas with New York and California, what you see is that the data reflects Florida and Texas have done a better job of managing covid, both from a health and economy perspective, than New York and California have.

But if Florida goes down and if they start masking and if they start restricting, which is what the White House wants — and I’ll play Jen Psaki here — then there is no control group to be able to point out how much this is different and how little some of the responses matter, and suddenly we spiral into Australia. Play cut 8 here, Jen Psaki on DeSantis.

PSAKI: Our war, uhh, is not on DeSantis. It’s on the virus, uhh, which we’re trying to kneecap. Uhhh, and, uh, he does not seem to want to participate in that effort to kneecap the virus. Hence our concern.

CLAY: There you go, Buck.

BUCK: Oh, yeah, that’s right. He doesn’t want to participate. He doesn’t want to fight back against the virus. The things these Democrats say are so stupid and so dishonest at the same time. On MSNBC they have people theorizing, as though they’re being brilliant, that DeSantis doesn’t care about children dying, all he cares about is MAGA.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: All he cares about is what the base tells him. And you reach this point where you just say, there’s something emotionally and psychologically wrong with people that not only will say that but will believe that.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: Obviously Ron DeSantis doesn’t want anyone to die from covid. And beyond that, the fact that we even have to say this out loud? Ron DeSantis has done a better job than the comparable states run by Democrat governors throughout this. But here’s the thing, Clay. They know that not only is DeSantis a challenge for the covid control that they want…

Not only is Florida this outlier as a major state, but beyond that, he’s a challenge to the entire Democrat power apparatus for Biden or whomever’s reelection effort in 2024, and so they’re throwing everything they’ve got at this guy. They used to lie about the data sometimes. Remember there was the woman — I forget her name; Rebecca Jones, I believe — who would just make stuff up at other hiding data?

It wasn’t true at all. And now what they’re doing is they’re just trying to focus in, drill down on Florida and get essentially local officials to defy state officials. Can you imagine if Fox News, let’s say, or if we here on this show were advocating for cities in the state of New York to defy the state quarantine guidelines or mask mandates or whatever? People would have said, “That lawlessness. That’s nullification.” That’s exactly what they’re doing in Florida right now because it’s never about what’s right or what’s fair. It’s just about what they want and what gives them power.

CLAY: And imagine how much different our covid response would have been if Andrew Gillum — who only lost I think by 30,000 votes in 2018 — had ended up beating DeSantis. he would be running Florida right now, assuming that he was still in office and he hadn’t had his ridiculous sex scandal that he had back around the Super Bowl, if I remember correctly.

It would be a total mess, and what they’re trying to do now is they are trying to use covid to beat Ron DeSantis in 2022. Because they know if DeSantis wins reelection in Florida in 2022, next year, he is going to be one of the top contenders for the White House, and I don’t think there’s anybody that the Democrats could run against him.

He’ll either be, maybe, Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate — I think there would be a good chance of that happening — or, if Trump decides to sit out the election, I think Ron DeSantis would have to be the substantial favorite to be the standard-bearer right now. If you were buying stock in someone who was gonna be elected in 2024, not named Donald Trump in the Republican Party, I don’t keep there’s any doubt you’d have to go with Ron DeSantis.

BUCK: Yeah. You could throw some other names in the mix. Actually, I think Mike Pompeo has more of a path and higher aspirations than often gets talked about. Nonetheless what we’re seeing in Florida, Clay, is the all-out effort to just convince… They just have to get DeSantis to do what Texas did, because there was the problem with Texas.

Governor Abbott initially went along with the mask mandates and the closures and it wasn’t until what felt like DeSantis Miracle had occurred where you had a state that stayed open and gave sort of safe harbor for those who believe in freedom and living relatively normal lives during the major wave of the pandemic, the initial waves of the pandemic. Now you had Texas come out of it, but here’s the Austin, Texas, Mayor Steve Adler’s talking about masks in schools.

ADLER: The choices that people are making not to get vaccinated for themselves are not choices just for themselves. The choices that they’re making to leave themselves more vulnerable for ending in a hospital is impacting everyone. That’s why it’s important to — to especially protect our children. A parent can make a choice for their child, except that the choice that they make impacts everybody else in the classroom.

And people should have a right to pick a choice to be able to be in a classroom that keeps their children the most safe, and we’re gonna do everything we can. We’re gonna do as we said from the very beginning, we’re gonna follow the doctors and the data, uhh, even when we have a governor that seems to be following the donors and not the doctors.

BUCK: This is the favorite talking point of totalitarian morons all across the country. “We’re not infringing on your choice. We’re just following the data,” as though they’re not making a subjective judgment and often making predictive judgments about what that data tells them and suppressing contravening ideas or contradictory theses about what’s really happening.

CLAY: What’s frustrating to me about this — and I want to play something, ’cause this is emblematic of where we are. (chuckling) I don’t know how many of you guys have heard this, but let’s play cut 5, Oklahoma public school board member Linda Sexton in Norman, Oklahoma —

BUCK: No relation.

CLAY: Do you know what she said?

BUCK: No relation!

CLAY: I think this is Buck’s mom.

BUCK: Hey, hey, hey! You take that back there, Travis.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Those are fighting words, son. Back yourself up. There’s no relation to this Linda Sexton lady.

CLAY: Linda Sexton, the black sheep of the Sexton family, is on the Oklahoma public school board in Norman, Oklahoma. Did you see this? This is crazy. Listen to what she said. This is not data. This is not science. This is not in any way being rational. These are who we are fighting with now. Listen to Linda Sexton.

LINDA SEXTON: It’s just not okay for kids to commit murder by coming to school without a mask. And when it comes down to it, it’s possible they will — they will cause a death of another child because they came to school without a mask.

CLAY: Murderers!

BUCK: It’s possible you’re gonna cause a car accident every single time you get into a car. you might kill somebody by accident; so you’re a murderer, Clay. We actually… We have seen people now get so crazy; so hysterical that the basis of common law, of natural law, of morality no longer applies. These people have no… they’re completely unmoored. They have no way of connecting with reality around them. You’re a murderer if you go in?

CLAY: It’s a level of madness — and I just want to keep hammering home these data points because I think it’s significant. Again, you always have to say this. I used to say this on my sports talk radio show, Buck. Nobody hates death more than me. I hate death more than anybody on the entire planet ’cause people will say like, “Oh, I don’t care about grandmas.” I wish everybody lived forever. Okay? I am more in favor of immortality than anybody you’ve ever heard. I don’t want anybody to ever die.

BUCK: It’s a very brave stand you’re taking against death and against the Grim Reaper. We might lose some Grim reaper listeners, Clay. You’re a brave man.

CLAY: I hate death more than anybody who has ever talked on the radio in the history of the world, all right? But data matters, and we can’t stop death. The worst death of all is young children dying, and we have the data that 40,396 kids under 11 years old died in the past year. That’s a tragedy for all those parents. That is an unbelievable, incredible difficulty.

We wish that did not happen. But part of being an adult how to assess risk. It’s a huge part of being an adult. Well, 40,396 under 11 died since the start of 2020. Fewer than 200 of them are from covid. That means if you are a kid out there or you have kids… I think these are important data points to share with kids to try to make them understand risk.

There is a 99.5% chance that the kids who have died in America in the last year have died from something other than covid. What percentage of the time that we have talked about kids have we spent focused on those under 200 deaths from covid? There are more, by the way, seasonal flu deaths.

BUCK: It’s mostly not about protecting kids. It’s hysterical adults who are terrified that they’ll get infected by the kids, who are demanding this stuff. It’s the soy-drinking, CNN-watching, latte liberals who are, even after double vaccinated and double mask, they’re worried that if they have to go into school that they’re near children somewhere — ’cause remember, kids can’t be vaccinated. So it’s actually mostly hysteria adults, I think, that is right ones that are insisting that children be masked up ’cause they can’t actually… No one could look at those numbers — it’s impossible —

CLAY: I don’t think they know.

BUCK: — that you cited and say you’re really worried about kids from this. Although they’re trying to run these stories about pediatric ICU wards are very small in terms of beds for good reason, obviously. So when they say, “Oh, my God. It’s a hundred percent!” well, if you went from six dices 12 cases, yeah, that’s bad as we discussed.

CLAY: They’re also run, Buck, to be always near a hundred percent. It would make no financial sense for a hospital to have an ICU ward that is only 25% full. They are run to be near capacity at all times.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: In the same way that they’re going after DeSantis with everything they’ve got to try to destroy him even if they have to inflate numbers, misrepresent things, the apparatus of Democrat control is reliance upon people not really understanding how disastrous covid response in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts in particular have been. They don’t want to dig into this.

CLAY: No. And it goes to data. We can all have… my mom like to say when I was a kid, “Opinions are like butts; everybody’s got one.”

BUCK: I’m pretty sure someone else said that before your mom, but yeah.

CLAY: Yeah, she probably didn’t…. (laughing)

BUCK: I don’t think she came up with that one.

CLAY: She did not come up with that first. But it’s a good mom line, right? Gets your attention when you’re a young kid, makes you aware. The inability to distinguish between fact and opinion in American society today is at an endemic level. It is everywhere that people can’t distinguish between the two. And it’s important because you can’t have good opinions unless you have reliable facts to cite. And so knowing what the data shows us can help to drive our response.

And that’s why I’ve been so favorably impressed by Ron DeSantis because he’s smart enough to trust his ability to understand data, and what you find, Buck — and you know this to be true — in media and in politics, there’s a lot of sheep. There’s a lot of people looking around to go and follow someone else, even people in high positions of power.

A lot of governors decided to shrink from this challenge of covid. Others, like DeSantis, looked at the data and said, “Let that guide us,” and it’s still staggering to me how few people are actually looking at the data.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Governor Abbott along with DeSantis is getting a ton of pressure from the press, mask mandates, mask mandates, mask mandates. So then you answer you do that then whole thing — then you bent the knee, you’ve caved. But Clay just pointed to me, big breaking news. I keep saying this ’cause you know, Clay, before we joined up, before we joined forces here I was doing a show on hundreds of stations.

I talked to people all across the country about this, and they would say, “Oh, that’s a New York problem,” and I kept saying, “I’m telling you it’s coming for you, too,” in terms of these lockdowns. What’s the latest? We’re on a great station in New Orleans, WRNO. What’s the latest down in New Orleans?

CLAY: We are. We love our people down in New Orleans. This has broken in the last 25 minutes or so. I’m reading from NOLA.com, the New Orleans online newspaper. Mayor LaToya Cantrell is planning to announce — this is the opening paragraph, that people will need to show proof of a covid-19 vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test before entering New Orleans restaurants, bars, and other venues, including the Superdome.

The Superdome is where the New Orleans Saints play. This is a monster deal. Now, look. Bourbon Street is not exactly known for its cleanliness or its safety. So the fact that this announcement they say is coming as soon as Thursday afternoon, it would make New Orleans one of the first cities in the United States to mandate vaccinations. And again, I’m reading from this article which is saying that it is going to come out in later this afternoon —

BUCK: Clay, do you see this now coming to other cities across the country? It’s New York in effect next week, New Orleans in effect. Do we really think that Los Angeles, do we really think that Denver, do we really think that Minneapolis, you know, go down the list. They’re not gonna have —

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: And so then it turns into, okay. Maybe you don’t live in the city, but do you ever go into the city from any reason? Are you gonna have to have a work dinner or a wedding in this whatever it may be? Clay, they’re turning the screws, man. It’s happening all over the place.

CLAY: Well, what’s gonna be interesting is the interplay between the governor and the mayors, right? We’ve already seen this tension in particular… now, remember, New York, blue state, blue governor. California, blue state, blue governor, blue city.

BUCK: For now.

CLAY: But New Orleans, a lot of people aren’t aware the governor of Louisiana is a Democrat, John Bel Edwards. So there’s not somebody to push back in Louisiana or in Kentucky where they have put in place a mask mandate for all kids because they have a Democratic governor.

What I’m interested to see will be what we’re seeing play out in Florida a little bit when you have a Democratic mayor and a Republican governor, because that is mini-red states, rights? Where I live in the state of Tennessee we’ve got a Republican governor but Nashville is very often a Democratic mayor.

So how will the tension and interplay play out here? Because as you point out, Buck, for something like the Superdome, which is where the Saints play in the NFL, a huge majority, I would imagine, of people that are coming in to watch the Saints play aren’t residents — maybe not a majority, but a large percentage are not residents of New Orleans.

BUCK: That’s right.

CLAY: So when you have these — yeah, right. When you have these big venue events —

BUCK: This is the back door mandate that we’ve been worried about all along is they’re gonna get national chains and big places where people congregate that are technically private to say, “Sorry, you know, you have to get the vax or else.” It’s happening right now.

CLAY: Now, some states have been forward thinking here. I believe Texas and Florida, for instance — and they have already banned vaccine passports. So the state itself has banned it so something like what New Orleans is trying to do would theoretically not be permissible, but the governor of Louisiana is a Democrat. Is he gonna stand up to the mayor of New Orleans, probably not.

BUCK: So you better be not only a state with a Republican governor, but a state that’s red enough in general where you’re not gonna have people who cave to this at the business level.

CLAY: No. Yeah, Buck. My thing is, just think about this from a procedural perspective, all right? This is a big deal. When you try to get into a stadium or a concert, any kind of big venue like the Superdome… For people who haven’t been there, the Super Bowl’s been there. It’s a 70,000-seat indoor football stadium. Are they gonna have —

BUCK: They’ll have code scanners. They’re gonna have QR scanners like they would for your ticket but for your vaccine passport as well. That’s what’s gonna happen.

CLAY: With random people who can barely… Let’s be honest. The people scanning your ticket are not medical professionals. This is going to be, I think, a massive mess in terms of getting people checked. Regardless of what you think about vaccine passports — and obviously I’m against it — just getting in and out of a stadium is already supremely difficult because of crowds. Now you’re gonna have ’em checking multiple things.

BUCK: They had a vax bouncer at a wedding that I gotta go to next week. They’re gonna have somebody outside from the venue checking that you’re vaccinated. This is insane 37. Obviously people are fired up about this ’cause they know that this is gonna be a big problem.

Cuomo’s Resignation Is Just the Beginning

12 Aug 2021

BUCK: There’s the other Cuomo, not Bro Cuomo, but the former Gov. Cuomo and the nursing home scandal, which we think we know everything we need to know about. But, Clay, I don’t think we do, and neither does Nicole Malliotakis, who’s a congresswoman here in Staten Island. Here’s what she said about it.

MALLIOTAKIS: I think it’s incredibly important that we don’t just accept resignation in lieu of accountability, and so I’ve been pushing the assembly Judiciary Committee to pursue and continue its investigation because they were looking at all facets of this. They were looking at the sexual harassment. They were looking at his directive to put covid-positive patients into the nursing homes with our most vulnerable, even when there are alternative setups, like the U.S. Navy Comfort ship that President Trump sent to New York City. And also, by the way, the $5 million book deal that he used state time, employees, and tax dollars to write. So, I think that the Assembly Judiciary Committee must move forward with this.

BUCK: It’s not over, Clay. It’s not over. Just ’cause the guy left doesn’t mean there aren’t still questions.

Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot to Re-Fund the Police

12 Aug 2021

BUCK: Here’s Lori Lightfoot right now, the mayor of Chicago, saying, “Oh, yeah, no, no. there’s gonna be more money for cops in the next budget.”

LIGHTFOOT: The police department’s budget will increase. No question. We have to. We have to make sure that we are continuing to provide resources, uhh, to, umm, recruit the next generation of police officers and in particular make sure that we’re doing that recruitment in a way that reflects the diversity of our city.

BUCK: Clay, of course! Of course this is what should be done. The fact that Democrats… We talk about political leadership. If you’re not willing to stand against the currents of the mob demanding that there be not only… Remember, defund the police isn’t just about the actual money behind law enforcement. It’s about whether prosecutors are going to go after cops for doing their jobs in good faith.

It’s about whether prosecutors are gonna go after the bad guys for attacking cops because, you know, oh, they don’t look like they’re too harsh on them. It’s about the DOJ doing consent decrees investigating police departments for alleged racism. That’s all part of this defund the police. It’s just handcuffing the cops so they can’t handcuff the bad guys.

CLAY: It’s also about the culture that you create in your communities of disrespect that exists for police. And that, to me, is the very essence of the difficulty that our police officers go there on a day-to-day basis. Because if you go back and you look at every single interaction that turns violent between police and the people that they are trying to protect, almost every single one of them, if the person that was being investigated by, police had complied with police instructions would have never happened.

Almost every single one of them. Just comply with police instructions. I have this conversation with my kids on a regular basis. Just did it again recently in the car, got a long drive. We were going to East Tennessee to visit with the in-laws. And I was talking with my oldest, who’s 13. He’s an eight grader.

BUCK: How did the in-law visit go, by the way? How’d that go?

CLAY: The in-law visit went pretty well. You know what’s wild? The biggest upset in the 17 years that I’ve been married to my wife is I have gone from the least favored person of my mother-in-law so maybe her favorite person in the whole family. I kid my wife all the time that her mom likes me more than she likes her.

BUCK: Clay, your humility is the stuff of legend.

CLAY: Oh, I mean, it is. There’s no one who is more humble than me. But it is the most amazing comeback story of all time, at least in our relationship, that I have gone from detested by my mother-in-law to now more beloved than her own daughter. But it was a great visit, ’cause I have one of the best mothers-in-law in the world because she has great taste in her sons-in-law.

But I was in the car with my kids, Buck, and in particular my 13-year-old, who’s about to be an eighth grader and is starting to get out on his own a little bit more. As you get eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, you’re starting to have a little bit more independence. And we were talking about this.

He was asking me about the defund police in the car cause he’s learning about it. He’s a debater. He’s learning these different topics, and that was one of the topics they were debating. I said, “Hey, before we talk about the idea of defunding the police, there’s a big lesson here: When a police officer tells you to do something, do it. Do it!”

I think that’s something that parents out there all should be teaching their kids, because I said, “Look. Your dad is a lawyer. If a police officer behaves inappropriately and you get investigated in a way that you shouldn’t at some point, we can file a lawsuit. We can have a Fourth Amendment case about whether or not the evidence is admissible or whatever.

“One, don’t get in trouble, right? But two, do what a police officer says,” and I just… I don’t know how many parents actually have this conversation with their kids. But just comply, and there’s virtually a zero percent chance of your family ever having an issue with a police officer.

BUCK: Isn’t it amazing we’re teaching kids now to comply with a cloth over their faith in school because that’s going to say save the people next to them, prevent them from maybe even committing murder if you listen to that woman from the council in Oklahoma —

CLAY: That imbecile.

BUCK: — and that they have to have Plexiglas around them. Of all the things, that’s maybe the absolute dumbest, the foot markings in elevators and, “This is where you put your feet for social distancing.”

CLAY: Ali our producer said people have to face opposite directions in some elevators?

BUCK: That’s actually new.

CLAY: Don’t they have to face against the wall?

BUCK: That was really dumb you get into the list, you start to realize how stupid some of this is remember when they started putting circles in the grass in public parks to show you how to social distance in a park?

CLAY: Yeah. (laughing) They have that not everywhere. In New York, that was a big deal.

BUCK: That was a big deal. Yeah, I, no, look, it’s gotten completely out of control and crazy. But it is true that they teach kids this stuff in school but if you were to say, “Hey, we should do a module on…” There are few modules I think should be taught to kids at a pretty young age. Basic personal financier would be one.

CLAY: That’s a good one.

BUCK: Law enforcement would be another.

CLAY: Just comply! Just do what a police officer says. I don’t know how many other parents have that conversation.

BUCK: This is a very police friendly and law-abiding audience.

CLAY: Yeah. I’m not saying that you should just completely assume that everything that you’re being told is a hundred percent constitutional. I’m a lawyer. But I am saying all of those issues can be litigated afterwards. (chuckles) If you escalate a situation where it turns violent, it’s an unbelievable error of judgment of the initial person who’s being asked questions. It’s just… I’m blown away that we don’t talk more about it.

BUCK: Lori Lightfoot is gonna have more funding for cops. She learned the lesson it seems after the terrible year Chicago had with violence and the increase in shootings.

Look Who Discovered Inflation, Oil Prices

12 Aug 2021

BUCK: Clay, there’s something else that I think is interesting right now, and that is when it comes to the economy, people are starting to figure out, “Hey, hold a second!” When they said it was gonna be temporary inflation or a temporary worker shortage, what they mean by “temporary.”

Well, when we talk about oil and gas prices going up, they said it was just a cyclical thing that’s no big deal. But I think people are starting to figure out that they’ve got bigger problems here. Jen Psaki telling everybody, “Oh, I don’t want to actually get more oil out there.”

PSAKI: That wasn’t an ask we made. The point we have made in these — these communications is that we do have the… we’re not making a supply question here, or we’re not posing a supply question domestically. Obviously, OPEC has its own unique role on the global marketplace. We do also think that there should not be any price gouging at the pump when there is available oil. So that is what we are highlighting and marking out there.

BUCK: Price gouging at the pump. I don’t think Jen Psaki understands supply and demand.

CLAY: We were energy independent, Buck. For generations we have talked about not wanting to relying on OPEC and all the sudden Saudi Arabian oil producers and being able to create our own energy independence. And we were there. We were there, Buck. We had drilled, baby, drilled to the point where the United States, for the first time in most of our lives, was 100% energy independent.

BUCK: Have you seen the most recent data as well? First of all, inflation is real, it is here, it is growing, it’s going to get worse. No one wants to say it because it turns into a confidence game. “Oh, no, it’s not gonna be that bad.” You hope that that somehow will make the economy continue to function better and, right, this all turns into a fear versus greed situation.

But there were stats out today. I can find the exact numbers, but something like used cars are up 40% in cost. Oil, the price of gas per gallon, huge increases. Remember over Fourth of July, Clay, where they said that you were saving about four pennies on your barbecue or your beer — or your boozy Mountain Dew in your case?

CLAY: I gotta try that. I gotta try the boozy Mountain Dew. But, yes, this is a real drain. And this is where real people, right, who are driving around in their car looking at gas prices and recognizing how much they are surging. And it is a direct hit on the pocketbooks of the American consumer. This is where inflation becomes a default tax increase.

And this is also why I think the analogy of Joe Biden as Jimmy Carter 2.0 has some cogence for a lot of people out there because inflation the last time it ran roughshod over the American economy who was the president? Jimmy Carter. And I think we are in danger of going right back there all over again.

Has CNN Reversed Its Ban on Clay Travis?

12 Aug 2021

CLAY: Buck, I just got invited on CNN! I just got… I don’t even… I feel like we need the breaking news sound effect.

BUCK: I thought you were banned, and you’d be arrested by Jeff Zucker’s minions at arrival in the building. Apparently, the lifetime ban no longer applies to Clay Travis for the B-word situation?

CLAY: I don’t… Yes, for saying… well, the B-word. I said I believed in only two things completely about four or five years ago: The First Amendment and boobs.

BUCK: Oh, my gosh! He said it again. Get the bleep button.

CLAY: And CNN banned me. And while we were on the air right now, I got an email from one of Chris Cuomo’s producers. I’ll read it to you. “I’m a producer on Chris Cuomo’s show at CNN, and I hope this email finds you well. I’m reaching out regarding the use of masks in your school district to see if you might be interested in being a guest on our show tomorrow night to discuss your point of view. We’re on from 9 to 10 Eastern. Kindly let me know if this might work for you, and we can go from there.” Now, that’s a nice email, right?

BUCK: Yeah, that’s totally professional. I wish you could go. You know you can’t go because of Fox. But it would be great.

CLAY: Yeah. Fox. That would be a really fun event that would probably kill, if they had cross pollination, Fox News and CNN, sort of like you went on rival shows for a week where you —

BUCK: It’d be amazing. It’s actually what political commentary media 10 years ago did have some of that.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: People forget, Bill O’Reilly —

CLAY: Used to work at CNN.

BUCK: I was a right-wing political commentator at CNN, and now in the Trump era that broke them, and they couldn’t handle that anymore but before that, yeah, you’d go on TV and I would say stuff all the time. We’d get into huge fights. I did a lot of stuff about…

The classic thing at CNN was I would go on air after some massive terrorist act because I had worked at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and actually knew a lot of this stuff, unlike a lot of clowns they put on to talk about it. And everybody at CNN, all of their people, would say, “This is what happens when X or Y country doesn’t do a good enough job of making its migrants feel comfortable” or something.

They would have some horrible take, and I’d say, “I don’t know. I think we should defeat the bad guys and actually fight them,” and they’d say, “How dare you!” They’d all flip out and everything else. CNN is crazy. But, back in the day, you used to have people —

CLAY: Diverse opinions.

BUCK: Bill O’Reilly in the Fox News days used to have leftists on, and he would throw down with them all the time.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And it was good TV. No one does this anymore, and I feel like there’s an audience component to it and there’s obviously a host component to it. We haven’t yet seen…? Here’s an example. Why haven’t we seen a debate between Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow, for example? I think Tucker would do it, by the way. MSNBC would never let that happen. Why?

CLAY: I think it’s a fantastic point, and look, I would go on Chris Cuomo’s show and talk about why masks make no sense. I’m not allowed to do that because I’m a Fox employee in the same way that CNN is not allowed to have any Fox employees. If I had said I was gonna do this, Buck, I bet that almost immediately I would have gotten shut down by CNN.

They have to send in their list of guests that want to be on the shows and one of the executives would have taken a pen and said, “Yeah, this isn’t happening.” I do think… The reason why I think that would be important is, so many people live in media silos where they don’t challenge whatever they believe, that there are huge… We were talking about those numbers of kids that have died with covid.

Under 200 kids have died with covid compared to 40-some-odd-thousand who have died under the age of 11. That’s data that everyone should have. I bet that almost no one at CNN or MSNBC has any idea those numbers are real. If you ask them how many kids 11 and under have died of covid, they would have no clue.

So, you have all these media silos where the truth doesn’t get through. And that’s why I would go on a network like CNN to say the same thing that I say to you guys on the radio show and on the television programs I do go on.

BUCK: I would love to go on cable news and fight with leftists. I would do it all day, every day.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: When I first started out, they would put me on MSNBC and I would debate people, and then at CNN. But now they won’t give me anybody to actually debate, ever.

CLAY: You would win. That’s why.

BUCK: So, you sit there and you say, “Well, how can people actually understand the strength or weakness of an argument?”

Who Shot Ashli Babbitt? Trump Says He Knows

12 Aug 2021

BUCK: Trump claims to know the name of the police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt.

CLAY: I saw you tweet that out. I was intrigued by it. Certainly we talked about the wrongful death lawsuit that’s been filed in her case and that the fact that whoever the shooter was would eventually be named as a part of that lawsuit to figure out exactly why.

Fmr. President Trump: ‘We Know Who Shot Ashli Babbitt’https://t.co/7kJ5plwhMz

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) August 12, 2021

BUCK: I think we’re gonna know. We’re gonna know pretty soon. Interesting from Trump. That’s up at BuckSexton.com.

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