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Clay and Buck

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Covid Distracted Us from the Spending

12 Aug 2021

CLAY: Candice in Wisconsin, what you got for us?

CALLER: Hi. Congratulations on the show, guys. I became a conservative during the first year of Obama’s presidency at the recommendation of my late father. He told me to start listening to AM radio, listening to Rush, ’cause I knew something was very wrong with this man. So, I’ve been a volunteer in the GOP for quite some time, about 15 years.

I’m really… (sigh) I’m really upset to see this infrastructure bill coming so close to passing because I think it’s the hammer to implement a lot of tyranny that the Democrat Party and states have not been able to go through with because they don’t have the money and the foot soldiers to do, and I’m very angry that AM radio hasn’t done a better job framing this for people and keeping this bill from going through.

We spent way too much time on covid hysteria for a year and a half, and it’s been a distraction also. It’s been a lot of things, but it has also been a distraction from other things that we’re doing, and we should have spent a lot more time on this infrastructure and what was in it, and I think it went through because we didn’t spend enough time on it. I think it’s gonna go through.

CLAY: Well, it’s gonna pass.

BUCK: Clay, what do you got?

CLAY: It passed 69-30. So I understand people can be upset with the infrastructure bill. We talked a lot about the infrastructure bill yesterday. And I think the biggest take-away is, it’s a gamble by Mitch McConnell that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — two of the moderate Democratic senators — are going to be willing to dial back in a big way the $3.5 trillion budget bill. That’s the gamble that they are making.

BUCK: Wants to vote for stuff he thinks were popular.

CLAY: Well, he also was in favor of infrastructure for Trump.

BUCK: Infrastructure was… I don’t think this is a tough call. I don’t think there was a tough sell for a lot of those people in the GOP. Republicans like to spend money, too — and they like to buy sneakers, too.

CLAY: (chuckling) Yeah, and I think it is a good point, but I think the risk is what is gonna happen with Sinema and Manchin, and we spend a lot of time on that.

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Rush Calls Out Phony al-Reuters Photos, But Big Media Will Never Investigate Itself

12 Aug 2021

Be sure to listen daily to Rush’s Timeless Wisdom podcast here or on iHeartRadio. It’s absolutely essential information from America’s Forever Anchorman.

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12 Aug 2021

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Clay Talks Masks with Tucker Carlson on Fox News Channel

11 Aug 2021

TUCKER: He’s a busy man. He’s the host of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. He’s also the founder of OutKick.com, one of the only websites covering sports and politics that you would want to read. He joins us tonight. Clay, thanks so much for coming up. So, I love the clip. I know it was a much longer speech that you gave, and God bless you for doing it, and it was entirely fact-based. The reaction from the other people in the room really struck me.

CLAY: (chuckling)

TUCKER: What is your sense of where parents are right now with what’s happening in schools?

CLAY: First, Tucker, thanks for having me.

TUCKER: Of course.

CLAY: Second, we’re in the middle of what I think is a grassroots-mobilizing, parent movement to take back this country.

TUCKER: Amen.

CLAY: I know there are a lot of people out there frustrated because the reaction that I saw demonstrated that and where we are in Williamson County, I think there are countless people all over the country who feel the same way that we do, that we have to go right to the root, right? Tucker, you’ve got a television show. I’ve got a radio show. We make good livings doing our jobs. But the most important job we have is being a parent, being a mom, being a dad. I think what happened during covid is many parents became aware of what their kids were being taught. Look, I’m a public-school kid, Tucker. I went to Nashville City public schools K-through-12. My kids, two of them are in public schools right now. I want for them to fit in in the society (chuckles) and make the world a better place.

TUCKER: Amen.

CLAY: But it has to be a fact-based reality, and right now it isn’t, and I’m excited about how many parents are now rising up. Over a thousand people, Tucker, showed up at that school board meeting here just outside of Nashville to combat the decisions being made by the board.

TUCKER: I think that’s the only way. I mean, you have been engaged in this — and other people have — for the last year, trying to reason with the people in charge of the schools, from the Biden administration, to the teachers unions, to the school boards, to the teachers and say, “Look, this is poison. You can’t create Hutus and Tutus in America. You’ll wreck the country,” and they just won’t listen. I don’t think there’s another option other than for parents to say, “No more!”

CLAY: That is the option, Tucker. I encourage everybody out there. I’m saying this is a mom-led revolution, because, if you look at the crowd, moms have had a lot put upon them for the last 18 months. They had to bear the brunt of childcare when we had fifteen days to stop the spread, Tucker, and they are just fed up with it —

TUCKER: Yes.

CLAY: — and they are leading this charge, and that’s what I encourage everybody to do. Speak out. Go to the grassroots. Confront your school board members, demand that they used fact-based analysis —

TUCKER: Right!

CLAY: — and we will win. I’m telling you, Tucker, we will win. It is going to grow and spread and become bigger than it already is. The anti-mask, the anti-CRT, it may well be the new Tea Party.

TUCKER: Boy, I hope you’re right. That’s the first hopeful thing I’ve heard in a while. Clay Travis, I sure appreciate your coming on tonight and for doing that. Thank you.

CLAY: Thank you, Tucker. Thank you very much.

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Clay Lays Down the Law on Masks to the School Board

11 Aug 2021

CLAY: Buck, it was a wild night in the mom revolution against masks that I have been predicting. This is playing out all over the country right now. There are parents who are fed up with their schools and their school boards, and they have had enough as it pertains to covid mask requirements. They’ve had enough as it pertains to critical race theory. And I’m one of those parents.

I’ve got a 13-year-old, I’ve got a 10-year-old, and I’ve got a 6-year-old. And I came on, Buck — and you know this. On Friday of last week, we had a first half day of school. They opened up the school, no masks, and everybody could walk in, free and clear. It felt a hundred percent normal. Same thing on Monday. Same thing on Tuesday.

They called an emergency school board meeting, okay? I live in the Nashville, Tennessee, a county called Williamson County. For those of you who might be somewhat familiar with Nashville, it’s a little bit south of town. Franklin and Brentwood are the two biggest towns that are in that county. It’s a highly educated county.

It’s a place where education matters more than almost certainly anywhere in the state, and one of the places where education would matter from the purposes of parents being involved — I would imagine — almost more than anywhere in the country. Over a thousand people showed up for the school board meeting debating whether or not masks should be required.

I was fortunate enough as just a parent, I’ve got a fifth grader and I’ve got a first grader in public schools. I went to public school myself, K through 12, in Nashville. I got to stand up and speak. We’re gonna play that for you. And then, Buck, I’m gonna talk about the experience. I want you to be able to weigh in as well. But this is the very foundation of democracy. Go out, if you are a parent, to your local school board and fight for what you believe in.

This is where the rubber meets the road. This is me. I got one minute here’s what it sounded like.

CLAY: Good evening. I’m Clay Travis. I have two kids in Williamson County Public Schools, a fifth grader and first grader. And you all should be ashamed of the choices that you are about to make.

WOMAN: Mmm-hmm!

MAN: Preach it!

CLAY: We teach our kids that facts matter. That’s why they go to school. The facts are these: Masks don’t work. There isn’t a single scientific data that has ever proven that masks work. Also, let’s talk about risk analysis, which is the key.

I feel bad for all these people walking around in masks, engaging in cosmetic theater, thinking that they are making a difference against covid. They aren’t. Here’s the truth. Our kids, under 25-year-olds? One-in-a-million chance that they are gonna die of covid! They are more likely to be struck by lightning!

They are more likely to be struck by lightning; they are more likely to die of the seasonal flu. Have any of you ever mandated masks for the seasonal flu? Well, shame on you, because every kid in Williamson County schools has been under more danger from the seasonal flu every year than they are from covid. I would tell every parent here: “Don’t let your kids –”

BOARD MEMBER: Time!

CLAY: “– wear masks. Refuse!”

CROWD: (cheers and applause)

RUSH: This is what pushback looks like, and it’s gonna take a lot more of this.

BUCK: So, there we go, Clay. You got a standing ovation from the folks that were at the school board meeting. I saw the video. I shared it last night on Twitter as soon as I saw it. This is what we’ve been talking about for weeks. I had thought for a while now — actually had written at BuckSexton.com about a month or two ago — that it was the pushback against CRT that would be the beginnings of (we just had the voice of Rush there for a second) the pushback from the right against the madness of the Biden administration.

Now it’s starting to seem like it’s the pushback against mask mandates in school and CRT training in school, essentially the socialist indoctrination and collectivization of our children all across the country. You were in Tennessee. This is a huge fight right now in Florida where Governor Ron DeSantis is saying, “If you institute mask mandates, I’m gonna cut your pay as an employee of the state.”

So that’s gonna be a real interesting one. And it’s funny ’cause you’re having, in Tennessee, finally what I’ve been waiting for in New York — and I gotta tell you, man, I’m not seeing it. This is what’s gonna end up happening. You’re gonna have the red states and the blue states. Aand the blue states are desperate to force places like Tennessee, like Texas, like Florida to go along with enough of this stuff, particularly the mask mandates in schools, so there’s no control group for the study, so to speak.

So they can’t actually look at whether masking in schools does anything per capita and have a definitive answer because, Clay, I would… I know you’re a betting guy; I’m a betting guy sometimes. I would bet a large sum of money that if Florida doesn’t have kids masked up in schools, you will see no difference from covid spread in New York City schools which are gonna be masking up their kids like the lunatics these adults are.

CLAY: The masks don’t work, Buck, and I should give an update on what happened. So being look. Sometimes you fight and you don’t get the result that you want. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be fighting. They instituted a mask mandate, illogically, for kindergarten through fifth grade. No other ages will have a mask mandate.

BUCK: Wait. Why kindergarten through…? What about sixth graders? I hear they can be very virus full.

CLAY: Yeah. So the argument is because 12-year-olds and up can get the covid vaccine now. Basically, it’s illogical. Because kindergarten through fifth grade are actually the kids that if you are worried about kids and the virus, the younger the kid is, the less I go of an impact it is. The reality is, no matter who you are in school, you are under more danger driving to and from school of death than you are from covid.

So they implemented this now K-through-5 mask mandate, and I don’t know what the next step is, but I will tell you this, Buck. And I posted the video ’cause we were texting and you were saying, “Hey, get some videos. Show what it looks like there.” So I walked out. You could see this is a mom-driven revolution, Buck, and here’s why.

Moms, when we said, “Hey, we need to two weeks to stop the spread,” they took it on their shoulders. The kids got out of school. You know this, anybody who’s got a kid, moms bear so much more of the child-rearing responsibilities. And moms across the country… Dads too. I’m one of them. I’m a dad; I’m fed up. But I think moms uniquely are driving this fight all over the country because they’re looking at the data and they are saying, “There’s no legitimate basis to require my kid to wear a mask,” and the mama bears out there are furious.

I was texting with some friends, Buck. I think this has the potential to be a Tea Party-like revolution led by moms out there. And if you look at the data, the place where elections are decided is the suburbs. That’s where Trump had his failures as it pertained in 2020. He lost white moms; he lost white dads. That’s the issue. That’s the rub of the road here. And I think these are the people that are the most fed up about these mask mandates. And what I saw last night, Buck, it had the feeling of a groundswell.

BUCK: We got a problem, which is that the school district still went with mask mandates even with all these people showing up.

CLAY: Well, sometimes you lose.

BUCK: Right. So let’s be clear: We’re talking about like this is the beginnings of it but we’re up against a determined adversary —

CLAY: There’s no doubt.

BUCK: — here with the apparatus of control —

CLAY: There’s no doubt.

BUCK: — that the Democrats, the teachers unions have. Think about it this way, my man. There are more Republicans in New York City than there are some states —

CLAY: There’s no doubt.

BUCK: — when you look at the way that the distribution goes across the country. You’re gonna have people that are forced to go along with this. What I’m saying is if in Tennessee you’re having school districts not even in Nashville which already is doing masking but in Williamson County, I think everyone needs to understand, they’re doing this to people.

They’re so close right now, Clay, to getting mask mandates reinstituted in Texas. Texas. I was talking to somebody close to Abbott’s office. Texas is under a lot of pressure right now. So while I’m happy, I just want everyone to know we’re defending on our 10 yard line. We’re not about to run into their end zone.

CLAY: There’s no doubt. But I felt even in losing that vote, that school board, I felt emboldened, and I felt better about things than I have in a long time, seeing how many people were willing to show up and fight the thing. Because you lose some battles, you lose some battles, and then you know what you end up doing? Sooner or later, you find a way to win the war.

So I think we’re at… I’m with you. It’s frustrating, and I understand how many people out there feel this way. I think my county and what went on in that school board is emblematic of what many people are feeling all over this country that are listening to us right now. But I’m telling you, for a long time people were taking it and they weren’t fighting back. I’m telling you: The revolution has begun. (chuckles) There are gonna be some losses and there certainly are gonna be some losses.

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: But this mom revolution is real.

BUCK: But the red states that for a while have felt like, “Oh, we’re good. This is a…” I’m speaking from the blue state perspective, ’cause I’m here in New York which, by the way, masks are back in my building now. Mandated. I don’t wear them, but they’re back in my building. Mask mandates are back not only in schools, of course, here but also in about half the businesses.

I went to get a cup of coffee this morning. Guess what? They said, “Put your mask on.” They got the Plexiglas thing.

CLAY: Oh, geez.

BUCK: The Plexiglas thing may be the dumbest, because no one actually thinks that those do anything. There’s no study, there’s no data.

CLAY: Oh, gosh. It’s true!

BUCK: But people put them up there. It is their little security and safety blanket, it’s their little blankie that they grab like a little kid to make them feel safe. Clay, I think people don’t realize right now DeSantis and Governor Abbott specifically are under immense pressure from the media apparatus. Now, I don’t think they’re gonna bend the knee, but that’s where we are right now. They’ve created so much fear. No one looks at the death data.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They’re only looking at cases and hospitalizations in a very localized sense. So, yeah, the mom revolution is fantastic. But as I’m saying, “Man, we’re trying to push for something that is…” It’s crazy that we’re even in this place, and right now you’re talking about a Biden administration that’s discussing a federal, across-the-board school mandate.

So for everyone out there who thought, “I’m in a red state; it’s gonna be okay,” I warned people. Just like I knew Fauci was the worst person ever, I warned them and said, “This White House is not done with you, Texas. This White House is not done with you, Florida,” and it’s not.

CLAY: Here’s what I will say. I am optimistic — and I understand people out there say, “You’re optimistic!” I tend to be an optimist guy. My wife, I drive her crazy by being an optimist all the time. But I’m hearing from a lot of my friends — liberal, left-wing friends that I went to law school with — and, Buck, their kids are not getting to go to school still. Their kids are having to wear masks, and they are fed up. These are people who might have been interested in Bernie Sanders. They might have been interested in Hillary Clinton. They donated money to those people.

BUCK: I wonder, man.

CLAY: I’m telling you.

BUCK: The social pressure to conform with this stuff is great. They may tell you that because they know Clay is a safe space, but I’m worried.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Florida is now the primary focus of much of the media when it comes to covid, of course. There was some CDC misreporting of cases in Florida which of course they thought the number was much higher. They’ve since had to correct that. But now the school board in Broward County is putting forward a mask policy. There are basically local or county school boards that are saying, “We’re going to have masks even though the governor says no masks, no-mask policy.”

It’s always voluntary. This is what they like to leave out. It’s just a question of, ‘Can a school say you have to do this to little kids, 8-year-olds?” Also, the same way that we all know mask up between bites on the plane is for moron authoritarians. We also know that 8-year-olds — and I would defer to Clay, ’cause he actually has kids around this age.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, they’re gonna pull the mask down, pull the mask up.

CLAY: They’re petri dishes! They’re messes. Give me a break. I think that’s why the question is a lot of people ask, “Is noncompliance the answer?” Should thousands of parents out there in these school districts just say, “Hey, we’re not gonna put masks on our kids,” and see what the school district does. I don’t know what the answer is with kids, but Ron DeSantis is fighting this battle better and I think more aggressively than any governor out there.

BUCK: He’s saying that he’s actually gonna take action against this.

DESANTIS: We’re gonna do whatever we can to vindicate the rights of parents and make sure that parents are in the driver’s seat when it comes to the health, education, and welfare of their kids. They should not be decreed by the government. They should be something that a parent is ultimately making the decision on.

CLAY: Amen.

BUCK: He’s trying to say, “Look, it should be up to the parents, Clay.” But he’s also gone as far as to say that they are considering withholding funds. And it’s so fascinating because when the federal government floats this out there, you can see CNN and all the enablers going, “Oh, yeah, that’s… If they want to pull…” ‘Cause Biden’s saying out loud they may have a federal mask mandate in all schools. He said he’s thinking about it, considering it.

CLAY: Which can’t be remotely constitutional.

BUCK: Hey, neither is extending the eviction moratorium and creating a new one, right? So we know they don’t care about the Constitution. But when a state government which actually has more power about quarantine and health and the things that we’ve had to deal with during covid says, “No masks required,” then — and if you do we’re gonna pull funding for that local — that county, that school district, then it’s tyranny in the other direction, Clay. That’s what they tell us.

CLAY: There’s just no basis in scientific logic for fact for this, and that’s why I would encourage everybody out there. I’m fortunate ’cause I get to talk with you every day and say exactly what I think about the issues that are going on in the world. But the most important job that I have is not radio show host or TV host or any of those things. It’s dad, and so when I talk to my kids and my first grader and my fifth grader say, “Dad, we hate wearing masks in school and all of our friends do, too. Nobody wants them,” you gotta stand up for your kids. And that’s why I would encourage everybody listening to us to do as well.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Clay, if Kentucky is putting mask mandates into place for children, it can happen anywhere.

CLAY: Now, they do an idiot governor, Beshear, who they managed to elect who’s a Democrat. So that is a factor. There are only two southern Democrat governors in Louisiana and this idiot in Kentucky.

BUCK: Yeah, but Clay, Abbott had a mask mandate for how many months, right? The point here —

CLAY: I understand it a little bit more last year. There’s no defending it now. Last year people were panicked, there was chaos; you’re right. But the idea that you would be mandating pre-K kids in the state of Kentucky, in the same state where Rand Paul is your senator, and he is making totally logical doctor arguments about what should and shouldn’t happen? I think that’s the challenge for us.

BUCK: There are people who are willing to come forward now a little bit more. One of my huge disappointments is how many of those who are MDs and scientists in some capacity — real scientists, not the lab coat tyrant bureaucrat Fauci — and they won’t come forward because they’re afraid. They don’t want their careers to be tarnished. They don’t want their hospital system to cast them out. I know that there are nurses, ’cause I talk to them and I get notes from them.

CLAY: Oh yeah.

BUCK: I always can tell when it’s somebody from like a major medical system somewhere where in the email it says, “Not for reading out on the air,” and then it will be, “We all wore our masks; we all got sick anyway. We know this is crap, but I can’t say this.”

Clay, at some point you realize, until there is that mass movement, the loons will get their way. This is not gonna be a fair game, because people that believe we have to do this stuff, unfortunately, really believe it. Matt Walsh over The Daily Wire, I saw him. He did the same thing you did, by the way. He went to the school board in Tennessee. He said there were adults practically in tears —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — because they’re afraid their children are going to be die of covid!

CLAY: (laughs)

BUCK: If you’re afraid your kids are gonna die of covid, you’re just ignorant. You’re just not well informed. They don’t care. “Gosh, my children!”

CLAY: It’s true. It’s true, and there were people who showed up at the school board meeting where I was at making those same arguments. And, by the way, I want to give a shout-out. I’m not gonna say her by name, but one doctor got up — neurosurgeon, she’s got five kids in Williamson County schools — and she was one of the people who spoke out. By the other way, the cosmetic —

BUCK: She spoke out against masks?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: What’d she say?

CLAY: She said there’s no scientific basis for it.

BUCK: And she’s a neurosurgeon?

CLAY: Yes. She did a phenomenal job, and she’s a friend of our family. Our kids overlap in schooling and in extracurricular activities. But, Buck, I’m so fired up about this. The doctors who spoke, they put their masks on for the cameras!

They were there all day getting ready to speak to argue for masks not wearing their masks and then what do they do? As soon as all the cameras showed up — cosmetic theater actors — they put on their stupid masks, and they got up to speak in a school board meeting indoors wearing their masks.

You knew when you got to the school board meeting and you saw some of those loser school board members wearing masks at the meeting, they were going to be trying to implement a mask mandate. I’m still super fired up about this, but I feel better having been to that meeting and meeting all the other parents that were standing up for actual science and fact.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: I’ve been telling you about how they’re all-in on trying to destroy the governor of Florida right now over this whole covid situation, the covid surge. I think if you start to look at the numbers, you say, “Hold on. This is going to have the same pattern.” If you look at the overarching theme here, there’s a surge and the cases come down.

Usually it’s about a four-to six-week process. But I still think that’s likely to be what we see in places like Florida and Texas where they’ve had more cases. Fatalities are way down. You’ll never… Fatalities overall nationwide are very far down from what they were. You’re at a rolling average now I think about 500-plus a day, when at one point we were more like 3,500.

The actual peak we were more like 3,500 a day. I think it even got up to 4,000 at one point. So we’re way down on fatalities. You don’t get that sense in the media, and instead what they’re doing… This is the actual narrative, and I know you’re gonna hear this, and Clay, everybody who’s with us and trying to live in a rational, fact-based, normal-person universe will hear this and say, “Come on.”

This is such cheap, weak stuff. It’s so dishonest. Yeah, Governor DeSantis wants people to die. He doesn’t care about people dying. This is what they actually say on these different networks. But, unfortunately, a lot of left wingers believe this stuff, and they actually take it to heart, and it gets ratings over at MSNBC. Here is Joy Reid saying Ron DeSantis’ strategy is kill people.

REID: What is the strategy behind killing children in your own state and letting children die of covid? I can’t figure it out!

MILLER: I think the strategy, as macabre as this sounds, is “project strength at all costs, own the libs at all costs,” and that’s what it comes down to. It doesn’t come down to any policy. They’re not counting the numbers of how many people are dead or alive. They’re not concerned about the well-being of their own citizens.

It’s, “How can I project that I’m against Joy Reid, that I’m against Dr. Fauci, that I’m against the elites? I’m against the people on the coasts and the brown folks and the black, folks,” right? Like, that’s it. That’s all this is about, and so they’re doing that at the expense of their own citizens.

BUCK: I guess at some point, all the soy milk has seeped into this guy’s brain. Clay, people just don’t want their kids wearing masks because it’s dumb! It’s actually not, “Oh, I voted for…” I’ve always hated this! I’ve hated it from the beginning.

CLAY: Buck, if I told you right now that you needed to wear a football helmet when you drove around in your car in order to make yourself safer, that might well be true if you got into an accident.

BUCK: Oh, it would definitely protect me from head injuries. Cyclists have made this argument before.

CLAY: Yeah. NASCAR drivers wear helmets in their NASCAR race. They wear them in F-1 cars because if they get in accidents — and they’re more likely to get in accidents – -the helmets keeps them safer, okay? A helmet in a car would make everyone safer. If every time we got into a car we had to put on helmets.

But it would also be wildly uncomfortable and not actually make you that much safer relative to the actual data. So what frustrates me about people like those losers on MSNBC that we just heard talking is, they’re not actually analyzing risk. Adulthood is about figuring out how to analyze risk.

And raising children is about teaching your kids how to analyze risk safely while still becoming an independent adult themselves, right? This is what the entire purpose of raising a child is! “Look both ways when you cross the road, but don’t refuse to ever cross a road because you might get hit by a car if you do.”

You have to balance risk in order to live life, and when you are requiring masks — which do not work! That’s what they’re missing. It’s all cosmetic theater. They don’t work, and they particularly don’t work for young kids that are not (laughing) very good at keeping their masks on in the first place!

BUCK: Clay, to your point about understanding risk and figuring out what’s acceptable, what’s not, they keep falling back on… We had Dr. Makary on, remember.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: He’s talking about masks on kids has all kinds of bad effects. And they always say, “Masks work.” There may be some minimal, impossible to actually quantify benefit, and you’ll have doctors say that.

Makary said it’s the fourth in the mitigation, fourth in the mitigation strategies. Meanwhile, why is it the one that people are the most insistent about? Because it’s visible, because there’s political tribalism involved, and because people want to think that by doing something so minimal, they’re showing that they take this seriously and they’re smart. It’s a personal branding exercise for a lot of people.

CLAY: None of the data reflects — and this is why we’re fortunate, thank God, that we have a federalist system in this country and we are able to have different states making different decisions. What that has shown us is that virtually everything that a state like New York and California, for instance, have done — and they’ve been very Draconian.

They filled in skate parks with sand. They took down rims on basketball hoops. They wouldn’t allow you to go to the beach or the parks in California. None of that stuff actually impacted whether or not covid spread. It was all a bunch of bunk.

BUCK: But to the federalism point, Clay, they managed to get around to all of this by convincing… Florida, as great as Florida was — and I had two brothers who moved there during the pandemic and I spent a lot of time in Florida during the pandemic. You had to mask up in Miami. People forget this. It was better than other places.

CLAY: But they did have every school open. Yeah. It wasn’t perfect, right?

BUCK: It wasn’t perfect. So the truth is what we really needed was one state to just say, “We’re not doing this.” (laughs)

CLAY: South Dakota basically refused to do anything. That’s a different state.

BUCK: Really even Kristi Noem at the beginning, there were some restrictions. There were some mandates about distancing and all the rest. Now, that was early, to be fair. She also has a very red state legislature that kept her from, I think, caving more on some of these things —

CLAY: It was all geographically quite a bit different between South Dakota and Miami.

BUCK: I love South Dakota. I’m not disrespecting South Dakota. But I’m just saying from an epidemiological perspective, per square mile, it’s a little bit like being in Mongolia or something. It’s not a very dense place.

CLAY: No doubt.

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Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) Talks the Budget

11 Aug 2021

CLAY: We are joined now by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley who is, I imagine, a little bit tired after an all-night event on the Senate floor. Senator Hawley, first thanks for coming out, and I just kind of give you a broad question here. Our audience is paying attention to this $3.5 trillion budget. How is it gonna shake on you, in your mind? Is there any reason to have any faith at all in Kyrsten Sinema or in Joe Manchin to help to cut this back? Give us the lay of the land so far as you can.

SEN. HAWLEY: Well, thanks for having me. It’s great to be on, and congratulations, Clay. I think it’s the first time we’ve got to chat since your new and great gig here. So, this is awesome. It’s great to be with you. You know, the $3.5 trillion is a total boondoggle.

I mean, let’s not mince any words here. It’s a disaster. It is full of the woke, lefty politics. That’s what this is all about — and, of course, it’s fueled by just outrageous pork barrel spending, the worst kind of stuff, like building highways in Canada — seriously — and all this ridiculous research on salmon spawning, all these giveaways to senators to try to get their votes.

I mean, it’s just… It is really, really outrageous stuff. So, you know, what will become of it, I’m afraid that the Democrats are really on track here to get this thing passed. They only need 50 votes in the Senate because of procedure that they’re using to do it so I think that right now Republicans have gotta be crystal clear that this is bad for the country.

This is not what the American people want. I mean, if this continues on the track it’s on right now, Clay, nobody’s gonna be able to afford to buy any food to put on their table with the inflation that we’re having. They’re not being able to afford to get their car repaired, for heaven’s sake.

I mean, it’s outrageous and the Democrats just want to pour it on and pour it on and, in the meantime, they want to turn the whole country woke. So, we got a lot of work to do here. But I think Republicans gotta take a stand, gotta be clear that this is a disaster, would be a disaster for the country and offer a clear alternative.

BUCK: Hey, Senator Hawley, it’s Buck. I just want to know, given that they do have this budget reconciliation maneuver to try to get through a lot of this stuff, it seems like that Republicans in the Senate can do is try to raise the flag about — which is really what we’re doing right now — what this is all going to mean.

How concerned should we be, though, about some of the stuff that’s in there, in the budget, that just no reasonable person could think is actually a budgetary measure that should be able to be considered through reconciliation? I’m thinking specifically of the amnesty that they’re trying to get through. Is the Senate parliamentarian rock solid on kicking that stuff out, or is there a real concern?

SEN. HAWLEY: Oh, I’m concerned. I’m concerned. We should all be concerned. People needed to be wide awake to this. The Democrats are exactly as you say, Buck, they’re gonna try to get amnesty for illegal immigrants. That’s in this bill. They’re gonna absolutely try to jam that in. I fully expect they’ll try to jam in measures that will take away legal protections for cops.

Right now, our cops… You look at the assault on police officers in this country, 50% assaults on cops over this last year. Of course, that’s no mistake because the left has just declared open season on cops. I fully expect that the Democrats will try to get in their anti-cop measures into this reconciliation bill. Green New Deal will be in this bill.

So, hey, it is their wish list. It is their woke left wish list and it would be terrible for the country. So I can just say this: Republicans have gotta fight this at every turn. Last night, we voted for hours on end. That is just the start. We are going to fight this at every turn, every inch of the way. And then, you know what?

We’re gonna give the American people a real alternative here, and I think that they’re gonna be able to say, “isten. This is not what we want,” and in a year, we get to go back to the polls and the people can register what they think. And, boy, that’s gonna be, I think, a great opportunity for people to weigh in.

CLAY: Talking with Senator Josh Hawley here from Missouri. Senator, you’re trying to get more… You were just talking about the lack of respect for police. What are the odds…? We know that Cori Bush on the House side continues to advocate that defund the police is the right idea. I know that some senators are now running for the hills.

As you mentioned, there is an election next year, and they are aware that defund the police is toxic with white, black, Asian, Hispanic, all Americans of all different political persuasions. What are the chances we get more police on the streets, and how do you see this political issue playing out going forward?

SEN. HAWLEY: Well, you’re exactly right, Clay. The Democrat policies are endangering this country; they’re endangering children. People are not safe in their home, they’re not safe on the streets and there’s one group of people is responsible for that is Joe Biden and the Democrats. And this defund the police movement which they have fully embraced. That is their platform.

You’ve got members of Congress who are actively pushing it, United States senators who are actually pushing it. Joe Biden has basically endorsed it by talking about the need to cut back on protections for cops, making them more vulnerable in effect. It’s terrible. So you’re right. What I think we ought to do is go the exact opposite direction.

I think we need 100,000 new cops on the streets right now and we need to give a pay raise to every single cop in America. That’s what we should be doing. Will that ultimately be in the bill that the Democrats pass? I doubt it. I mean, I highly, highly doubt it. I think what they want to do is say, “We don’t want to defund the police. We don’t want to defund it.”

And then they just switch up the labels, and they go ahead and they cut the funding. They redirect it to something else. They take away the protections that cops have to do their jobs. So it’s say one thing, do another right now. But I’ll tell you this, Clay. What has become very apparent to these Democrats who are up next year is that their policies are hugely unpopular and they’re making this country unsafe.

I think the American people, they’re gonna know who’s done this, and they’re gonna say, “Listen. I want my kids to be able to go to school in safety. I want my kids to be able to walk down and buy a gallon of milk at the store in safety,” and right now in many parts of this country that just isn’t true, and Democrat policies are to blame.

BUCK: Senator Hawley, Buck again. You mentioned the price that Democrats may pay on the issue of police and what they’ve done with defund the police. But I see what’s going on at the southern border. I’ve been down there numerous times to see with my own eyes exactly what’s going on. I have contacts in Border Patrol and ICE who tell me openly and in back channels these days, that it’s the worst it has ever been, that the Democrats have no interest in stopping the massive flow.

You’re talking about now a couple of hundred thousand in the most recent months apprehensions. You gotta add tens of thousands of got-aways at our southern border on top of that, thousands and thousands of them with confirmed covid cases, by the way, as they are coming across the border. They’re trying to not test so that we want really know the full-scale of covid cases coming across the border.

Senator, the Democrats, how are they gonna…? Is the plan here to try to just ram through the amnesty so that they’re not held to account for the open border? Because it feels like this has gotta be a disaster in the making for them in the midterms.

SEN. HAWLEY: Yeah, I would think it would be. And, Buck I, think that is their plan. I think they want to jam through this amnesty. But again, I think that this is not gonna work because the American people are seeing this crisis on the border that you described, and it is real. And let me just tell you a little bit more about what ICE tells me.

What ICE tells me is that currently not allowed to make arrests of criminals, criminal illegal aliens. Tthat now, because of the Biden administration, if you are an ICE officer and your job is to go arrest criminal illegal aliens, you gotta ask for permission from your supervisors before you go out and make an arrest! Can you imagine a cop on the beat saying, “Oh, wait.

“I see a crime in progress. Let’s see. Let me call back to headquarters. Maybe let me call back to the chief. I’ll call back some of them. In the meantime, I’ll just sit here in my car and wait until I get approval.” It’s insane. That’s what they’re doing, Biden is doing to ICE. And I know it’s true because ICE officers are telling me. ICE leadership is telling me. And here’s the real deal.

The administration will not release the data on how many times ICE officers have asked for approval to arrest and leadership has said no. They are desperate to keep those figures hidden. They are desperate to keep ICE under wraps. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to testify about it. They don’t want to release any information, and it’s because they are allowing criminal illegals to run rampant, and they are doing nothing about it.

So I agree with you a hundred percent. This is a huge, huge issue. They are actively endangering the citizens of this country. That’s before we even talk about the drugs on the border, the criminal gangs on the border, the cartels who basically control the border on the southern side, it’s crazy. And I think the more people see this, the more they’re gonna say, “Whoa, that is not what we want, it’s not what we voted for, and it’s not what we’re gonna support.”

CLAY: Well, much less seriousness than that, there’s a lot of people out there that are hoping your Kansas City Chiefs are going to fall back to the pack a little bit. New offensive line. I know Patrick Mahomes is the greatest quarterback in maybe the history of the world. Is there any reason for me as Titans fans or anybody out there who’s a Bills fan or anybody else in the AFC to have a little bit of optimism that maybe your boys in the Kansas City Chiefs are going to be a little bit more normal this coming year, or are you still wildly optimistic on their future?

SEN. HAWLEY: I’m hugely optimistic and I think you should be very depressed, because we’re gonna be amazing.

CLAY: (laughing)

SEN. HAWLEY: The Chiefs are gonna be amazing. No, I think that the off-season… Listen, we had a great off-season, got five new starters, big additions on our line. That’s really obviously what we had some major holes, you can see that in the Super Bowl. Mahomes is a generational talent. That is obvious.

I mean, anybody could see that. I think he is gonna end up as greatest of all time at that position. He’s got a long, long career ahead him. I think he’s just getting started. I mean, he’s just getting started. So I think the Chiefs made some great moves. I think you’re seeing good stuff out of training camp.

I think the Orlando Brown move in particular was a great one and he’s getting ramped up and we’re seeing it in training camp. He may be a little rusty but he’s getting into the system, and I think it’s gonna be good and they’re gonna be — we’re gonna be — amazing this year.

BUCK: Clay, I’m just gonna coast on the senator on all of this football analysis ’cause I have no idea what you two guys are talking about.

SEN. HAWLEY: (laughing)

CLAY: Is it gonna be important…? How important…? We keep talking on this show, Senator, about the importance of returning to normalcy. And having full football stadiums, even if you’re not a big football fan, is a big part of the sign of normalcy. Do you think we’re gonna have full stadiums? And how important is it 18 months into this ridiculous covid response to finally get back to feeling and looking normal in some of our pastimes like football?

SEN. HAWLEY: I think it’s absolutely vital, and I predict that in the red states where you have Republican governors and legislatures, you are gonna have full stadiums. I don’t know what the Democrats want. The Democrats have become the party of the permanent pandemic. They want this to last forever. They want kids to live in fear.

They want them to be masked in schools or not be at school! Let’s be honest. We know where this is headed. The next round is gonna be, “Oh, well it’s too dangerous. The kids can’t go to school,” despite the fact that all the science says kids are not at high risk, and you all have talked about that quite a lot. This is what the Democrats want!

It is pandemic forever because that’s gives them control, that gives them the ability to scare the country, and it gives Joe Biden a permanent excuse for his failures. And I mean failure or every policy issue we’ve been talking about including the pandemic where he’s been an utter failure and that’s become their policy and I think it’s bad for the country.

We do need to return to normal, and we need to give people hope! We need to give people home that, “Listen, we are on the far side of this; the end is in sight.” We’ve gotta get people encouragement to get back out there, live their lives, and particularly kids. Clay, you and I have talked about this. You’ve got young kids. I’ve got young kids. The thought of our children being forced to mask up and to social distance, maybe miss their activities, miss sports? It’s insane.

CLAY: Amen.

SEN. HAWLEY: It’s just insane.

BUCK: Senator Josh Hawley, great to have you on here. Thanks so much, and hopefully you’ll come back and hang out with two of us soon.

SEN. HAWLEY: Hey, thanks so much, guys.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Clay and I just talked to Senator Josh Hawley. Great discussion covering a range of issues: The budget, the Democrats being crazy, lockdowns, the border, and then some stuff about sports that Clay and him were talking about that could have been in Ancient Greek.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: They’re talk all these names I’ve never heard before. But I’ll say this, Clay, there was another voice, so to speak, a weighing in of somebody on the budget that has been advanced by Democrats using the reconciliation process. I want to be very clear, because they’re using reconciliation, they got the 50-50 plus Kamala to break the tie, there’s actually no filibuster to block this.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: Republicans can’t actually stop it which is why I’m asking Josh Hawley, “What are we really gonna do here?” and the answer is not much. What about the struck bill, though, which got 19 Republican senators going along with that. We’ll come back to that in one second. But, Clay, the former president — I’m sure you saw this — Donald J. Trump.

I miss him, man. Not only did he Make America Great and make the country better, but he made this job of political commentary and media just so rich every day because it was just awesome watching him crush and own the libs and make them cry constantly. I miss it very much.

CLAY: He was the only guy who was up when I was doing my early morning radio show in that 6 a.m. hour. You hit Twitter and there’s nobody awake tweeting and then the president’s there.

BUCK: There were days where he retweeted me at 6 a.m. six times, seven times in a row to his 80 million, roughly, followers or whatever. I’ve never seen so much crazy stuff on Twitter timeline.

CLAY: Oh, yeah. You can’t even check your mentions.

BUCK: Oh my gosh. I have actors and I’m saying to myself, “I think you were in a movie in 1997.”

CLAY: (laughing) Yeah.

BUCK: They’re saying, “I hate you, Buck Sexton! Jump off a bridge.”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I was wondering, “What did I do?”

Anyway, President Trump weighs in here, and here’s what he says. This is statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th president of United States of America. “Good Morning America. While you were all sleeping, the radical Democrats advanced a plan that will be known as the $3.5 trillion Communist Plan to Destroy America. This legislation is an assault on our nation, on our communities, and on the American dream.

“It destroys our borders and the rule of law by granting dangerous amnesty that will flood America’s beautiful cities. It will overwhelm our schools and make our nation less safe. It raises taxes like we have never seen while also making many things you buy every day more expensive — gas, groceries, and much more — and don’t forget the crazy Green New Deal.

“America, you are being robbed in the dark of night. It’s time to wake up.” By the way, Clay, the Communist Plan to Destroy America? God, I miss this guy. Think about how useful it would be if we could get Trump back on all the social media platforms — and, obviously, get him back in the Oval Office. But I miss him.

CLAY: There’s no doubt, and look. One of the biggest issues with not having the presidency is not only the lack of power, it’s the lack of a bully pulpit. You can’t drive the narrative. And whether you love or hate him, Trump drove the narrative amazingly well for four years and got a lot done.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We want to talk a little bit more about the budget because this was happening in the cover of night, as you just said reading from Donald Trump’s statement, Buck. And a lot of people out there are asking, what’s going on with the interplay between infrastructure, which is around $1.2 trillion — and it was passed 69-30, including 19 different Republicans supporting that infrastructure bill — and also what’s going on with the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill which is the budget. So Mitch McConnell was asked, Senate minority leader, about the budget, and this is what he had to say.

MCCONNELL: The policies they want to put behind this budget resolution read like somebody walked across the rotunda to the House and handed The Squad a pen and piece of paper. Sweeping, sweeping amnesty for illegal immigrants in the middle of a border crisis, regulations that are so radical that our colleague, Senator Markey, quote, said, “The Green New Deal is in the DNA of this budget resolution.”

BUCK: That’s stuff I know we want to get into. The Democrats do act like they have a mandate.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They’ve got a president who, let’s just say, things were tight. (laughing) Okay? Just to avoid getting into that whole discussion —

CLAY: Even the best-case scenario for Joe Biden, he won by 40,000 votes.

BUCK: A super tight election.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I think we could say that much without…

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Everyone’s saying, “Buck!” We’ll talk about that another time. But beyond that, it was as narrow as it could be, literally as narrow as it could be in terms of it’s not even a real majority, a de facto majority in the Senate what, a handful in the House. And they’re trying to slip through to get around the filibuster by doing this reconciliation bill thing.

They’re really momentous changes, generation-defining changes to our system of government, to our law, to our systems. And they’re doing it with what mandate, exactly, Clay? While Biden’s like wandering off into the woods looking confused, what exactly do they think gives them this right? I just want to put that out there. The backdrop of this is they act like half the country doesn’t exist.

CLAY: It’s very well said. And this is the gamble, ’cause a lot of people out there saying, “Well, why aren’t the Republicans stopping this?” The answer is, they really can’t. If 50 Democrats are able to stay together under the budget reconciliation process, then they are going to be able to shove through this budget.

Now, you heard Mitch McConnell there going after the budget and effectively saying — I think fairly — that this is streaming left-wing budget. And to your point, Buck, it’s happening with almost no mandates at all. The risk here… What is going on, I think, behind the scenes is, all of these Senators, 19 Republicans who ended up supporting infrastructure, including Mitch McConnell, are gambling that they are going to be able to…

Now that the infrastructure bill is passed, that Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona and Joe Manchin in West Virginia and maybe a Jon Tester in Montana — we don’t know exactly. That some of these moderate Senators that are representing states that either have substantial Trump support or are the biggest Trump-supporting states in the country, which is the case with West Virginia, that they are going to slice and dice this $3.5 trillion down by a massive amount and that the power is there for Sinema and Manchin in particular because there is no margin for error on the Democratic side. They need all 50 and Kamala to support it.

BUCK: So can I give you another possibility here? It’s that they’re putting all this stuff in… We talked to Hawley about Senator Hawley a minute ago about the Senate parliamentarian and can they get his okay.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: By the way, I don’t think they’re really gonna get through amnesty. It’s hubris to even include amnesty in the budget.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: If they got that through —

CLAY: There’s no point in the parliamentarian then.

BUCK: Yeah, then it’s like, “Smoke ’em if you got ’em. Our system of government, our hte thing is completely corrupted and fetid and falling apart.”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That’s like a game-over situation. So I am hopeful that’s not where we’re going. (laughing) But my concern, Clay, is that some of those pieces getting stripped out or being told “no” by the Senate parliamentarian might even create some grounds for Sinema and Manchin to say, “Well, the really crazy stuff is out.

“We could all agree the stuff that, as McConnell says, The Squad from the House of course would want in there…” People are also referring to this as the Bernie budget. “Since that’s gone, we’re just spending money on critical things.” This is the biggest expansion of the welfare state in over a decade, the biggest —

CLAY: Since Lyndon Johnson.

BUCK: It’s game-changer in that sense. And as we said, there’s no mandate here, but this is exactly… If you were expecting the third term of the Obama administration, which has just been pretty conventional wisdom for anybody following politics on the right for a while, that’s what you’re getting here.

CLAY: I think it’s even beyond that. I think this is even more expansive than what Obama tried to do, and he’s doing it, Biden is, under the mantle of the fact that he’s just a “unifier.”

BUCK: To that point because Obama did have a filibuster-proof —

CLAY: Mandate.

BUCK: So he actually went all the way with Obamacare. I can’t believe that there would be a future in which if the Democrats had a-filibuster-proof majority right now, the first thing they would do is amnesty. They would call it five million in the legislation, and then we’d find out it’s not 11 million. It’s probably more like 15 to 20 million if you talk to…

By the way, whenever I ask Border Patrol about this… I’ve done it many times. I say, “Do you believe the Census number, the official numbers that is 11 million?” They say, “Well, considering we’ve got a half million to a million coming in year in and year out, uh, no.

CLAY: (laughs) Right.

BUCK: They do not believe the number. That, Clay, is that is game-changer long-term strategic view from Democrats this is one of the big criticisms people have of Republicans. We had on the House, the Senate, and the Trump administration, and what did the machinery of the Republican Party want? Tax cuts. Okay. We didn’t get the full change in Obamacare that we wanted. We didn’t get a number of things. So you just see Democrats go all the way. And they go as far as they possibly can. They’re unified on that point.

CLAY: I think the big question here is, effectively the government is boiling down to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. People want to talk about Joe Biden. They can talk about Nancy Pelosi and The Squad and everything else. But ultimately, the entire United States government — the biggest budget of any of our lives — is going to be a function of what Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin decide.

BUCK: And the people who were voting on it and in favor of it have not and will not read the entirety of it or even a majority of it.

CLAY: Oh, God no! Of course not.

BUCK: This is a Frankenstein’s monster budget. This is all pulled together from different pieces. I know Frankenstein was actually the guy who created it, but whatever. The monster. People like to call me out on that. “That was Dr. Frankenstein!” The point being they pulled this thing altogether. It’s a Democrat, Squad-approved wish list of just massive spending increases.

Here are some of these things in here since we’re talking about it. It includes funding for universal pre-K (universal prekindergarten), tuition-free community college, paid family leave, clean energy source development. Now, Clay, those are the sweeteners. Those are the things that some people would say, “Well, it’s maybe expensive, we don’t have the money, but those things sound good.”

Oh, but when you start getting into the “equity councils” and the Green New Deal parts of this — you start getting into the fine print — is where you find out that they’re also enlarging and empowering the administrative state at the expense of the American economy and American freedom.

CLAY: I’m a business guy and so the fact that we still — and I keep harping on this ’cause I think it’s very significant, and I know there are a lot of people who run small businesses and are affiliated with making business decisions. Buck, the fact that we still don’t know what the tax rates are going to be in 2021, despite the fact that we are all the way up to August and they’re not gonna try to reconcile a lot of this stuff until September and they’re talking about retroactively — which is a wild idea, right?

It’s a wild idea that deserves way more discussion. They are talking about retroactively applying tax increases all the way back to when Donald Trump was still president for any decisions that were made from a business perspective. This is an outlandish, unbelievable attempted change in law to retroactively put in place laws that didn’t exist when many business owners are making decisions out throughout this year. (laughs)

BUCK: It’s like we’re in the gym and we forget about dinnertime. We’re just too busy with all those steps.

CLAY: Well, the budget is a big deal, given they were going to 4:45 in the morning.

BUCK: Oh, no, it’s a huge deal!

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: We got a lot on the cutting room floor still.

CLAY: I feel like there’s a lot of people fired up about it.

BUCK: We have not yet begun to fight here. We’re getting going.

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American Majority & Voter Gravity’s Ned Ryun

11 Aug 2021

BUCK: Our friend, Ned Ryun, joins us now. He is the founder of American Majority. He’s got a great new book out as well, The Adversaries: A Story of Boston and Bunker Hill. Ned, my friend, good to have you.

NED: Yeah, it’s good to be with you guys. Looking forward to it.

BUCK: So you are a Loudoun County guy, right?

NED: Yes.

BUCK: You live right down around there. Clay and I have been talking a lot about how that was kind of the spark for a lot of the anti-CRT parent protests that have been going on; now teachers are getting in on it. Can you just bring us up to speed? Why it happened in Loudoun, where it stands right now, the pushback against the CRT stuff?

NED: Well, the pushback is coming in the firm of a recall effort in which, you know, Iain Pryor has done amazing work. We’ve come alongside with American Majority Action, the C4, to do signature gathering. And we’re gonna go after, I believe, it’s six of the board members to get them recalled. Hopefully we’ll go through the circuit court.

We’ll get a special election probably first of the year to be able to replace them. First of all, they’d be removed, then be replaced and then we could go after and really put in the right people in, probably in January or February of next year if things go well. No, I’m Loudoun County is pretty surprising.

Loudoun used to be one of the bastions of Republicanism. Obviously, those dynamics have changed over the last decade as more of the swamp has moved out into western Loudoun. We’re about an hour outside of D.C. but it’s been pretty disappointing to watch.

We do about $1.5 billion in taxes toward the school system here in Loudoun County. And basically, the school board has told us to go pound sand. They take our money and say, “Go pound sand. We’ll teach your kids whatever we want to teach ’em. You sit down and shut up,” and a lot of us are saying, we don’t think so.

CLAY: Ned, I think that’s well said. We’re seeing something similar where I live in Williamson County —

NED: I saw that.

CLAY: — which is right outside Franklin, Brentwood, the mask mandate battle. I was there. I spoke president school board as a parent, and I know you’re a parent as well. Why do you think there is this crystalization of anger, and it’s coming at the ground roots level associated with school boards? What has made this happen? ‘Cause my argument is, this feels like the inception of a new Tea Party movement —

NED: Yes.

CLAY: — that’s being led by a lot of parents out there who’ve just had enough.

NED: Yeah. Now. I think the thing that’s encouraging, too, is it goes across party lines.

CLAY: Yeah.

NED: When people are surveyed at the door, “Do you support or disagree with CRT?” about 51% actually disagree with CRT. Only about 30% here in Loudoun County support it. Where you’re getting the Democrats and independents however is the fact that the school board won’t teach advanced math courses or other advanced courses and a lot of Democrats and independents are saying, “Hey, we didn’t sign up for this like we want the best students for our kids.” So I’m encouraged that it is this grassroots groundswell and I think part of it the fact that everybody at home over the last year, year and a half going, “Wait, what are they teaching my kids? What are they not teaching my kids?” We get to see what’s being taught on video.

All the sudden, this clarity in which a lot of parents again across party lines said, “Hey, wait a minute. We’re spending a lot of money on this, we’re spending a lot of time and effort. These are our kids, this is our kids’ future, and we didn’t sign up for this. You’re not gonna do this anymore,” and the school board’s arrogance and really just looking at the parents and going we can do whatever we want, and parents are saying, “We don’t think so.”

So my hope is that Loudoun County and other places we’re gonna be able to demonstrate, you can take out school board members. You can get the right people in and hopefully people that are responsive to the parents’ needs. This is the amazing thing to me about all of this not only in school boards, but across the country with elected officials, “Hey, I’m sorry. You’re supposed to serve us. We have made you stewards of the money and the power given to you by the American people. We don’t serve you. You serve us. So figure it out.”

BUCK: Ned, it is amazing that you’ve got this one teacher who said that he would not use the “preferred pronouns” because he felt it went against his religion.

NED: That’s right.

BUCK: A judge… This is all, again, in Loudoun County, Virginia, everybody. It’s the front lines. This is across the country in a lot of places, but Loudoun County’s gotten a lot of attention. He said that he wouldn’t go along with this. A judge reinstated him into his job after he got fired —

NED: Yes.

BUCK: — and now the school district is fighting still to get rid of him! That’s how dedicated to this people — some of these authoritarian, Democrat brainwashing cadres — really are, Ned. I think people should know about this. They won’t even give it up even when a judge says, “No, you really can’t fire a teacher of good conscience over this.”

NED: There are a couple dynamics with this. First of all, they’ve been paying attention to the state and local level positions for a long time, much to our shame because we haven’t focused like we should have on school boards, our city councils, our county commissions. So they have a leg up on us because they have put a focus into it.

But you’re right. The thing that we have to remember, Buck, is this. For them, this is not a career. They are religious zealots. This is, for them, a worldview in which they have to make sure that every idea is implemented to the absolute last Nth, because it is a belief, it is a system in which they will change the world. This is the whole premise of progressives, that we will actually use the state to advance progress so that someday we’ll all reach nirvana or utopia.

And if you don’t like it, well, you’re part of the irredeemable deplorables. But this is the amazing part to me, again, the arrogance on display. And I hope that the American people across the country are going to rise up and say, “We’re done. We’re going to run you out of office not only at the state level and local level but also at the federal level as well.”

CLAY: Amen. Speaking of the federal level, Ned, I know you are an expert in many ways on the budget. We had the crazy budgetrama going on last night ’til 4-some-odd in the morning, $3.5 trillion. What’s going to happen? Is or are we gonna see Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema put the skids on this R3.5 trillion or not?

NED: (sigh)

CLAY: How would you handicap the budget as we sit today?

NED: Well, you’re always in a terrible position if you have to rely on Joe Manchin to be your backstop. That all to say his comments even in the last couple hours should give us hope that he’s not for this 3.5 trillion. He feels it’s irresponsible; he feels like it will help inflation explode even more.

So, boy, I gotta tell you, I feel optimistic that Manchin and Sinema will toe the line and hopefully say, “Enough’s enough.” This is the insane part. We went from a $1.2 trillion, quote, unquote, infrastructure bill, which is not infrastructure at all, to then literally in the next moment doing another $3.5 trillion, and we don’t have the money.

We’re already $30 trillion in debt and here we are spending money like drunken sailors. At some point, we have to stop and say, “We don’t have the money or the resources to be able to do this.” We’re putting ourselves on a terrible trajectory.

BUCK: Speaking of Ned Ryun, he’s the founder of American Majority and also has a great new book out, The Adversaries: A Story of Boston and Bunker Hill.

CLAY: Ned, we’re nerds. I’m actually curious about the book. We’re history nerds.

BUCK: I gotta tell Clay, “We gotta do news of the day first; then we’ll do the history stuff.”

CLAY: I’m glad to hear about your book, Ned, because I’m an American history nerd. I know Buck is too, even though he sometimes pretends that he isn’t. Tell me about the book because I’m fascinated. I just finished and a guy’s name gonna escape me now but he’s doing a trickle on the American Revolution and I just finished the first one recently. It was financial.

NED: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he did a great job. I believe it’s Rick Atkins that you’re referring to.

CLAY: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right.

NED: It’s phenomenal and that’s more of historical nonfiction narrative. But I would highly recommend it as well. But no, The Adversaries… Boy, it started with the fascination of Dr. Joseph Warren, who was a young protege of Sam Adams — a young, Harvard-educated doctor — who really in those last nine or 10 months became one of the leading organizers in the political resistance against Parliament, against the king’s ministers.

He became president of provincial Congress, major general in the new army. But it became much more than that as I started doing research of really trying to understand, why did Englishmen stop talking to each other and start shooting each other, because most of Massachusetts at the time was direct English lineage.

So it just is this last nine, 10 months as things accelerate, as Englishmen on one side of the Atlantic realize, “We have these rights. We have sacrosanct rights that we believe were given to us by a transcendent Creator. No earthly power gave them to us. No earthly power can revoke them.”

Parliament and the king’s ministers said, “Yeah, we think those are more a series of suggestions, and you’re gonna do what we want you to. You’re going to pay your taxes. You’re gonna pay for the damage to the Boston Tea Party. And if you don’t, we’ll send more men, we’ll send more warships until you actually submit and comply.”

I think the thing that’s the overall arching theme of this is principal defiance in the face of authoritarianism. What do you actually believe about your rights? What are you willing to do to actually resist? The founders of the free American republic didn’t just wake up one morning and go, “Yeah, we don’t like the English anymore; we’re just gonna stop obeying their laws.”

No, this was a principled, thought out process in which they said we have rights, we believe these rights to self government, elections, to property. All of these things are rights that we have a right to defend but an obligation to defend, and so you see these things start to accelerator. So it’s the last nine, 10 months before Bunker Hill and then culminating with the battle of Bunker Hill and really involves around truly somebody I believe to be a singular man, Dr. Joseph Warren.

BUCK: Check out The Adversaries: A Story of Boston and Bunker Hill. I’ve got my copy at home. The author is Ned Ryun, our friend, Ned. Mr. Ryun, always good to have you, buddy. Congrats on the book. We’ll talk to you soon.

NED: Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.

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Biden on Cuomo: “He’s Done a Helluva Job!”

11 Aug 2021

CLAY: We are soon to have a new governor in New York, and Joe Biden was asked about the situation that Andrew Cuomo has resigned, and Biden said…? What did he say? Well, he said Cuomo “has done a helluva job,” and then he got called on it. Let’s listen to both of these back-to-back in yesterday’s White House press availability.

BIDEN: Well, he’s done a hell of a job! He’s done a hell of a job. And, uhhh… I mean, both on — everything from access to voting to infrastructure to a whole range of things. That’s why it’s so sad.

COLLINS: Can you really say that he has done, quote, “a helluva job,” if he’s accused of sexually harassing women on the job?

BIDEN: Now, look, you asked two different questions! You the substantive… “Should he remain as governor?” is one question. “Did he do a good job on infrastructure?” That was the question! He did!

COLLINS: No, the question was, “How did he do as a governor?”

BIDEN: No, the question was —

COLLINS: He’s accused of sexual harassment.

BIDEN: Correct me if I’m wrong.

O’KEEFE: How was he as a governor generally?

BIDEN: Well, the governor generally, obviously —

O’KEEFE: (crosstalk) Outside of his personal behavior?

BIDEN: Outside of his personal behavior? Okay.

COLLINS: But can you separate the two since he was involved —

BIDEN: No! I was asked a specific question!

COLLINS: Okay, how —

BIDEN: I’m trying to answer specifically.

BUCK: Hey, look, when journalists — alleged journalists — ask real questions, we gotta say that was what was happening there for a second. It’s kind of funny, but in Joe Biden’s defense, Clay, if you see the video of him wandering off into the bushes after being directed by the Secret Service yesterday, is it even really clear that he knows what’s going on at any point in time? If we’re gonna be fair, we gotta be fair. Does Joe Biden know where he is or what time it is? I don’t know.

CLAY: I do know, probably, in his prepping they were saying, “Hey, don’t refer to the governor who just resigned in disgrace for being accused of sexually harassing 11 different women, nine of whom worked for him — and who also, by the way, killed, probably, or is at least was partially responsible for –”

BUCK: His order was responsible for it, yes.

CLAY: “– thousands and thousands of deaths. I don’t know that I’d call that “a helluva job,” right? I think maybe that’s not accurate.

BUCK: What didn’t get any attention I think people should remember is another part of the Cuomo saga that was looming in the background: He had state troopers doing VIP covid testing, driving samples to and from Albany and doing all this stuff for friends and family, basically. This is like Third World dictator crap.

CLAY: I think that’s the question about whether or not Chris Cuomo ends up falling on his sword, too, over this entire process. Remember, Cuomo… Look, you can criticize him. Here’s Chris Cuomo at CNN was advising his brother, but he’s been on vacation right now. He still hasn’t been able to address any of this, and I think certainly his legitimacy — to the extent that CNN has any at all — is totally crushed going forward.

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Fighting Critical Race Theory Indoctrination

11 Aug 2021

BUCK: We have been discussing Clay’s foray into the anti-mask revolution yesterday in Tennessee. But, as we know, there’s been school board meetings stretching back for months now, and it really began with the pushback against CRT or critical race theory.

Now, if you’ve paid attention to the Democrat response to our rebellion against the racial underpinnings of CRT indoctrination and, if you’ve listened to the way the Democrats try to set all this up, you would say, “Hold on a second. They change every few weeks.”

At first it was, “There is no CRT in schools,” and then it was, “You don’t know what CRT is! You’re not allowed to criticize it,” and then it was, “CRT is actually history,” which is just a lie. These are all either misdirections or outright fabrications or falsehoods. This is going on now in schools across the country. They say it’s no big deal. They say it’s not happening.

They say you don’t know what it is. They say it’s something other than what it is. You picking up a pattern? They’re running scared from this one because they’ve gotten away for a long time with indoctrinating your kids, with teaching your children that their skin color…

We had all thought that we were in a country now where we understood skin color has no bearing on who you are or your worth or your merit or your skill or anything, correct? We thought we were trying to be in a totally equal country, a meritocracy where skin color doesn’t matter, just the content of your character.

But that’s not what CRT teaches, and one teacher yesterday at the Loudoun County public school board meeting decided that she had had enough, and so she resigned. Laura Morris, a fifth-grade teacher down in Virginia at Loudoun County public schools, gave an emotional appeal to people. We want to play this one for you.

MORRIS: After reading about your lack of consideration for the growing population of concerned citizens in this division, clearly evidenced by this empty room tonight, where you shut the doors to the public, as well as the emails sent by the superintendent last year reminding me that a dissenting opinion is not allowed even to be spoken in my personal life. Going so far as to send a form to my colleagues and I encouraging to us fill it out if we hear one another speaking against the controversial policies being promoted about this school board and adopted in this county.

BUCK: Clay, there’s more, and we want to get to the other part where she gets really emotional. But can we just jump in here for a second together (chuckles) to weigh in on how she’s supposed to snitch! If you hear people opposing this, they’re sending forms? What is this all about? This really sounds like some crazy, Bolshevik nonsense.

CLAY: I think what we are seeing — and this is big picture. Obviously, this woman, I applaud her, this fifth-grade teacher, for speaking out in the same way that I would applaud anybody who is showing up to their local school boards, the grassroots of democracy. I think this is the new Tea Party movement.

Now, you can argue that the Tea Party matters more now than ever before because of the budgetary crisis that we may well find ourselves in, $1.9 trillion covid that Joe Biden passed, the $1.2 trillion infrastructure, the $3.5 trillion budget bill that’s out there. There’s a great line, “You start talking about a billion dollars every now and then, they add up.”

Well, now we’re talking about trillions of dollars, and they add up in a hurry. And I think what’s going on is there is an innate feeling — and I know many of you listening to us right now feel it — that something is rotten. In Hamlet, something was rotten in Denmark. Something is rotten in America.

I think at the foundational level, many people are circling back to public schools, Buck, and they’re seeing it with CRT, and they’re seeing it with mask mandates, and they’re seeing it with what kids are being instructed. And they’re realizing that the rottenness is coming out of what is their taxpayer-funded schools, and people are fed up. Just fed up.

BUCK: They’re teaching essentially racial Marxism, right? So Marx is all about class warfare and all about taking people based upon where they are in an economic sense and turning it them against each other for the elevation of a revolutionary elite — the kind of revolutionary elite that has big parties in fancy places where they don’t have to obey the rules and the people who show up at those kinds of parties.

But instead of it being class based, we have one that is now increasingly is based on notions of the fight against white supremacy and the oppression of nonwhite minorities, and that’s all at the heart of CRT. I do give credit to those who say that really CRT is just the “everything is racist” ideology, which in the 1990s we just referred to this as PC.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: A great movie, which I’m sure Clay has seen, is PCU. I’m sure you’ve seen PCU, right? Of course.

CLAY: And it seemed like it was a satire that would be impossible to ever become a reality, and now it’s been so surpassed.

BUCK: I couldn’t make PCU today because that’s how PC the broader society has gotten.

CLAY: You couldn’t make most great comedies. I was talking about this, Buck, with my wife the other day. Old School.

BUCK: Never.

CLAY: You can’t make Old School now.

BUCK: Never. Oh, my gosh. I couldn’t make There’s Something About Mary. I don’t even know if you could get away with The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Never mind you go back to Blazing Saddles, even further. No way.

CLAY: Even crazier. But think of the Ace Ventura movie? Go watch Ace Ventura again.

BUCK: One of the teachers that we’re gonna talk about here in a second got into trouble for just saying, “I’m not going to use the preferred pronoun thing.” The “preferred pronoun” thing for anyone who’s wondering how absurd that has gotten now, it is now an expectation, and there are teachers who have put out who are leftists who have put out videos that you have to adjust on a day-to-day basis pronoun usage almost like the weather.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: “Today I feel they/them. Tomorrow I feel she/her.”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: People who don’t abide by this, they’re “transphobic,” Clay. “They’re transphobic. They’re scary. They’re horrible. They’re bad people who don’t obey!” This is where we are. Let me just bring you back to this teacher in Virginia for a second, Loudoun County public school teacher — well, formerly now because she said she has had enough. This is Laura Morris, and she got emotional about this one.

MORRIS: Within the last year, I was told in one of my so-called “equity trainings” that white Christian able-bodied females currently have the power in our schools and that, quote, “This has to change.” Clearly, you’ve made your point. You no longer value me or many other teachers you’ve employed in this county.

So since my contract outlines the power that you have over my employment in Loudoun County Public Schools, I thought it necessary to resign in front of you. School board, I quit. I quit your policies. (choking up) I quit your training. And I quit being a cog in a machine that tells me to push highly politicized agendas on our most vulnerable constituents: The children.

BUCK: Clay, this is somebody who clearly loves her job — loves to do it the right way, loves teaching kids — and it’s being taken from her.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: It’s being taken from her by ideologies who listen to too much NPR and think MSNBC is actually news and probably triple mask alone in their pool at home. That’s what we’re up against now.

CLAY: The great flaw of America right now is the Democratic Party has allowed itself to be captured by identity politics and cancel culture. And that is the root of everything that they are advancing. And I believe those twin pillars are destroying America from the inside. We have to destroy the concept of identity politics, which is part of CRT, and teaches that you are inextricably defined by what you look like, at birth. That you don’t have a choice except for your sex, which you can choose, by the way.

BUCK: Yes. You, Clay, and your children are guilty of something you have not done —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: – -because of what a framing of history suggests according to the interpretation of people who today want power and, by the way, also never want they might to have to suffer any ill consequences of the framework and the approach, the ideological brainwashing that they want to do to the rest of everybody.

CLAY: Which is a great example. We talked about this maybe a month ago for people who remember. The Rachel Nichols ESPN story was a great metaphor because she said, “Wait. You can’t take my thing,” right? Everybody wants external blame to foist onto someone else. “Oh, white men, they’re responsible for everything.

“They’re the reason that this country is such a dishonest and not equitable place.” Buck we were gonna talk about this. I pulled this today because I couldn’t even believe that it was real, but this is a natural outgrowth of CRT. The Oregon governor signed a law suspending the state’s proficiency standards for reading, writing, and math, in the name of “equity.”

And they said they had suspended that proficiency requirement because the state needed to develop new graduation standards to benefit people of color who weren’t testing high enough on the state exams. Reading, writing, and math. We want people to test high!

BUCK: You cannot have, as a central policy decision — whether it’s in education or an admissions to colleges, you cannot have — the abolition of meritocracy and then tell people they can’t talk about the destruction of meritocracy, right? You can’t actually do this. There’s a cognitive dissonance at the heart of all this. You mentioned the Oregon governor. Is this really helping people?

Is it helping people for them to be graduating from school without very basic skills? We’re talking about individuals here, young people, who are gonna be graduating with, effectively, a level of literacy that won’t allow them to get through life and without being able to do basic math. But we’re gonna say they’re high school graduates because that’s gonna equalize in society? That’s actually not how it works.

CLAY: Also these are things that you can test, and this is what so fires me up about the entire anti-testing agenda. Read a book, first of all. Actually study why the SAT and the ACT came to be. It was because Jewish students were being discriminated against getting into elite, Ivy League schools.

So they said, “Hey, we gotta figure out a way so that we’re not just rewarding the same rich kids with admission, and so we want to be able to test in some way and apply an even standard to kids all over the country,” and these baseline tests are not difficult. But we know, Buck, whether somebody’s good at reading, writing object, or math. You can objectively analyze skills in those professions and in those tests.

BUCK: The left today has a situation where they have to explain, how is it that the penniless parents of a Vietnamese immigrant who arrived in America who talk about the greatness of this new American dream they have, who raise their children to value education and to do their very best, they apply to Harvard — and this is actually making its way to the Supreme Court or up to the Supreme Court right now.

CLAY: It’s a monstrously important case.

BUCK: They apply to Harvard and they’re told, “Oh, I’m sorry. Your skin color as an Asian immigrant to the United States doesn’t get you in.

CLAY: It works against you.

BUCK: Not only does it not get you the same benefit as being black or Latino, it is actually held against that student in that process,” and somehow that’s not racist, Clay. Somehow that’s not unfair. The left hasn’t been able to figure out how to explain that, although they will try these days to say it is actually an outgrowth. The Asian students, the problem there?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: It’s actually an outgrowth of white supremacy to give you something crazy.

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Libs Embrace “Your Vaccine Papers, Please.”

11 Aug 2021

BUCK: It’s impossible to live through this current moment of vaccine mandates in New York City — which are happening. I’m already hearing from people. I’m hearing from restaurants. They’re gonna do the papers. “Papers, please.” Show me your vaccine papers, if you want to go into bars, restaurants.

They’re actually gonna do this, which is mind-blowing, but it’s where we are. But, Clay, when people in the past have had fights about things like a national gun registry, they would always say, “Oh, come on! The government just wants to do that to keep everybody safe. They would never use that against us!”

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: If you trust this government with your vaccine mandates, you trust this government with your gun registry, there’s so many places now where you see there is a tyrannical momentum here. The tyrannical impulse of the left has been on full display, and if you let them get away with this stuff, they keep going. It’s not like they get tired of it.

They like it, they want more of it, which is why the pushback — and, as we just said, the noncompliance, which is also tied together — is so essential. But, Clay, I think it’s gonna get ugly. I think people are gonna start getting dragged out of buildings. We’ve already seen a little bit of that.

But it’s gonna get uglier, because I’m sorry, if you think a plexiglass piece between you and somebody else is protecting you from an aerosolized virus that’s at a level of microns that’s blowing around in the air, you’re just not very smart, and people should not have to live based upon the fears of others’ ignorance.

CLAY: Also, Buck — you’re a big history guy — when has creating two distinct caste systems, by and large, which is what they’re trying to do with the vaccine passports and the idea of vaccines in general…? When has that not led to conflicts within the culture between those castes? I’m telling you, I was encouraged by the people who showed up at the school board meeting and voiced this.

The thousand people, they’ve never seen anything like it. But also, that is going to lead to some conflict. Now, I like conflict, outside of my personal life, because conflict often leads to resolution. And, if you don’t actually address things, then you don’t get a resolution. But that resolution can be violent, it could be uncomfortable, and I think that might be where we’re headed in some parts of this country.

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