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Clay and Buck

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Bidenomics Jacks Up Inflation, Oil, Gas

11 Aug 2021

BIDEN: Today, gas prices are lower than they were early in this decade. But they’re still high enough to create a pinch on working families. One key thing about the infrastructure bill that just passed the Senate is there are no gas tax increases. No gas tax increases. I made that absolutely clear that I would not raise gas taxes. I’m glad everyone in the Senate seemed to agree with that.

But that’s not enough! Recently, we’ve seen the price that oil companies pay for a barrel of oil begin to fall. But the cost of gasolines (sic) at the pump for more American people haven’t fallen. That’s not what you’d expect in a competitive market. I want to make sure that nothing stands in the way of oil price declines leading to lower prices for consumers.

BUCK: Feeling that pain at the pump, you can thank Joe Biden for it, along with the inflation that’s coming your way already. Welcome back to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. I’m Buck, and that was Biden, and yeah. He knows gas prices not looking so good, Clay. Turns out that when you’re pushing policies and regulations that make it harder for energy to be found, processed, refined, and sold, prices go up.

CLAY: Even you who doesn’t even drive a car!

BUCK: I can drive a car. I just live in New York City.

CLAY: You don’t drive one on a daily basis.

BUCK: In New York City, you gotta have big, you-just-sold-your-company-money to drive a car in New York City ’cause the garages here are a thousand dollars a month. It’s crazy how expensive they are, $800 a month. It’s crazy.

CLAY: I remember. I mean, I went to college in D.C. and nobody could afford a car because of that exact reason, at least college kids. But, yeah, for the average person out there driving around the price at the pump is just massive. We don’t talk a lot about that but that’s effectively a tax increase on the average person.

BUCK: What was your first car? My first car was a Buick Roadmaster station wagon with wood-paneled sides and about 85,000 miles on it, baby. That thing, it was like a boat. If you tried to turn going more than 30 miles an hour, you’d fishtail. It was amazing.

CLAY: My first real car I didn’t get ’til I was like 25 years old, but I drove a 1985 Volvo station wagon, which was also like a boat.

BUCK: We’re station wagon brothers!

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: We didn’t even realize this.

CLAY: Yeah. My mom got the station wagon for my sister and I when we were little and then by the time I was a high school-age kid who was driving to school I drove a 1985 Volvo station wagon.

BUCK: I was on Red Eye back on Fox when that was the show that Greg Gutfeld was doing.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: They dubbed my wood-paneled Roadmaster “the Shaggin’ Wagon,” because there was, they said, no shaggin’ with that wagon.

CLAY: Yeah. (laughing) You were driving it as an adult.

BUCK: Yes of course! As an adult, I was happy to have wheels.

CLAY: I’m not saying, I was driving the ’85 station wagon in high school. It wasn’t real my car. It was the family’s car, but that was what I drove. And then I won a car at a halftime football contest.

BUCK: Wait! What?

CLAY: You haven’t heard that story, have you?

BUCK: You are like a lottery winner. How does that happen?

CLAY: I was in the stands for a football game; they came and said, “Hey, would you like to be in the halftime contest?” I went out onto the field. This is an NFL game, Titans were playing the Eagles. I was wearing shorts and flip-flops and the halftime contest was, “Can you catch punts?”

For people who know the JUGS machine, they shoot the punts up in the air, and you had to catch a 25- and a 40-yard punt on the field in the middle of halftime with 60,000-70,000 people in the crowd. I caught both punts and then I got to come back, and there were like seven of us that had qualified over the whole season. I drew a key out that started the car on Monday Night Football at halftime.

BUCK: What was the car?

CLAY: It was my first-ever car. That’s what I was gonna say. Mercury Mountaineer. It was fantastic. It was as big SUV.

BUCK: A Mountaineer man, I see.

CLAY: And it also came, Buck, with a pontoon boat, which I didn’t have anywhere to take a pontoon boat, so I sold the pontoon boat back to be able to pay the taxes on the car, because at the time I was in school; I had no income. But I drove that the car for a decade. That was my first car that I ever owned.

BUCK: I’ve always wanted to go on Jeopardy! or something.

CLAY: I’d love to do Celebrity Jeopardy!

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Alcohol-Infused Mountain Dew vs. White Claw

11 Aug 2021

BUCK: Clay, I don’t know if you saw this. Mountain Dew… Clay is a devoted Mountain Dew drinker.

CLAY: I do love Mountain Dew.

BUCK: Booze-infused Mountain Dew is now a thing.

CLAY: (laughing) I saw this.

BUCK: So if you come on this show and you’re a little sloppy one day, I’m just gonna say, “I think we all know what’s happening.”

CLAY: The idea… I saw this, and I thought, “Oh, my God. They’ve gone straight to my heart.” Everybody makes fun of me for loving Mountain Dew — this is the redneck in me — and now they have alcohol-infused Mountain Dew! I thought to myself, “If I ever try this, this could be a tough spot for me,” Buck. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop.

BUCK: I’ll be sitting here sipping my White Claws while you’re drinking your Mountain Dew with alcohol.

CLAY: I don’t know that you could judge me at all, then, with White Claws.

BUCK: Are you kidding me? White Claws? Give me a break.

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Rush Says Andrew Cuomo Is Chip Off Old Democrat Block

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

11 Aug 2021

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EIB 24/7 OT: Buck on Afghanistan

11 Aug 2021

As Afghanistan collapses, Buck Sexton reflects on how we got to this point, sharing his experiences in the country and the lessons he learned as a CIA officer there during the war.

This is the kind of intelligent, first-person analysis you’re not getting from the Democrat-corporate media talking heads.

And only EIB 24/7 members can access this exclusive analysis.

If  you’re not a member, sign up now. You can also use the special VIP email to tell Clay and Buck what you think about this topic or anything else on your mind.

Watch here:

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Blockbuster News! Cuomo Quits, Denies All Wrongdoing

10 Aug 2021

BUCK: Governor Cuomo had his lawyer sitting before the Seal of New York in really what looked to be an official capacity — which was pretty strange when you think about it, outside counsel sitting in the governor’s chair — to present his side of the case, pulling apart, picking apart piece by piece every allegation of impropriety against Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Didn’t interview all the witnesses. Didn’t give transcripts for all the witnesses they did interview. No governor’s side presented. Just going through it like a defense attorney would, but doing it in what seemed to be an almost quasi-official capacity during a press conference, and then followed up immediately by the governor. Now, the governor’s position on this is he might have been a bit insensitive.

You know, he’s from a different generation, Clay. He’s a guy who sees things through an old and perhaps out-of-date lens. But at worst he gave some degree of offense or discomfort without actually intending to. At worst, he was an older guy who was trying to be affectionate and supportive, he says, not actually someone who’s a predator or coercing or doing any of the things that we were led to believe last week were going on.

Clay, what I see here, my man, is delay and redefine. He even mentioned how long the process would take to impeach him, how difficult it will be at a time when the City of New York and the State of New York need excellent leadership. And the rest of it seemed to me to be, “What’s really harassment, though? What’s the difference between a touch on the back that you mean as a friend versus a touch on the back for sexual gratification?” Clay? He’s definitely not resigning, but is he even going? What do you think?

CLAY: Let me just say this: Andrew Cuomo believes that he has a skill in talking to the people of New York and, in a larger context, to the people of the country and that he can persuade them that what he did may have been —

BUCK: Wait a second, Clay. We got breaking news. He’s saying he is stepping aside!

CLAY: What?

BUCK: We gotta take this live. We gotta take this live. Can we bring this?

BUCK: All right. Okay. Clay, my mind is completely blown.

CLAY: Your mind is blown! He did exactly what you said he would never do, and I’m just saying: We got so much to unpack here.

BUCK: I was talking to people on New York state legislature and council, and, as of yesterday they’re like, “He’s gonna at least fight it.” He must have decided… (laughs) There was no advance warning of this at all. Clay, he had his lawyer come out and basically say all the allegations against him are untrue. He came out and said, “Yeah, I made a few mistakes, but no big deal.” It looked like we’re in the last two minutes of the press conference and he’s like, “Actually, I’m out.” I’m stunned. Stunned!

CLAY: What did I say yesterday?

BUCK: Absolutely stunned.

CLAY: This feels, listening to this, like it might be an argument that he tries to come back in 2022.

BUCK: (sigh)

CLAY: He’s gonna resign. He’s done it in time to potentially put himself into the Democratic primary. He used this opportunity… Just think about it. Just think about it. He used this opportunity to make the case that he did nothing wrong but that he was stepping down because of the mess that would be caused if he were going to be impeached. He now can step away and say, “I did nothing wrong,” and, in theory, if he sits out for a couple of months, he could come back and try to get reelected, then he’s wiping all the problems clean, and he is the governor again in 2022.

BUCK: It’s stunning. Stunning. Clearly, there was a reputational protection strategy here. Why have your lawyer come out, right? He could have… First of all, he could have resigned the first time out. So, clearly, he thought —

CLAY: He could have also resigned in the first five minutes of this speech —

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: — as opposed to when we were listening, we cut it out ’cause we’re thinking, “Okay, he’s not gonna resign,” and then he drops the bombshell. Again, if you try to think like Andrew Cuomo —

BUCK: Right. This is a theory. You may be right.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: (laughing) But I will tell you right now, in the prediction game? My God! Resigning like this?

CLAY: He doesn’t… He can’t disappear, right? So, if you think about this, what is the end goal? It is to maintain his relevancy. Instead of getting dragged through the mud, he gets the final word in some way. Everybody took this live — Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show — and he decides to suddenly pivot at the very end and say, “Hey, despite the fact that I did nothing wrong, I’m gonna fall on the sword basically for the betterment of New York.”

Two months’ time, Buck, or whatever the time frame is, he comes back. He reemerges, he says he’s a changed man, he’s learned, and he’s running, and he gets to run against maybe the woman who said that he was a sexual harasser, Letitia James. He gets to run against whoever the other Democrats are that would rise up and be interested in this job. And the ultimate vindication he can claim is — if he gets the nomination — that the people of New York still believe in him, they still believe in Andrew Cuomo, and he can run again in ’22. I’m not saying he’s gonna do it, but I’m saying all these pictures —

BUCK: Right, I think we also should spend some time on why he decided to resign now, as much as the future component of this is interesting as well.

CLAY: I think that’s the answer. But yes. This is blockbuster news breaking live literally as we were on the air. You heard it with us in real time.

BUCK: I’ve never seen a press conference like this. Usually, this leaks. Clay, this didn’t leak beforehand.

CLAY: That’s what I’m saying. Nothing.

BUCK: Nothing. There was no one saying this. There was no expectation that he was gonna resign today in the media, no one leaked. Anyway, we’ll come back into this. (laughing) I gotta say, I am shocked, absolutely shocked. I didn’t think he was gonna do it; he did it. So there you go. Nobody can really predict the future.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CUOMO: I love New York and I love you. And everything I have ever done has been motivated by that love. And I would never want to be unhelpful in any way. And I think that given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing. And, therefore, that’s what I’ll do, because I work for you. And doing the right thing is doing the right thing for you. And my resignation will be effective in 14 days.

CLAY: That is New York governor Andrew Cuomo blockbuster news. I mean, it’s rare to actually have blockbuster news, but I think that’s fair to say. Literally as we were coming on the air, we were listening to the beginning of this press conference. They then opened the show and as we opened the show, he makes the decision to resign.

One of my first thoughts is, “Is he gonna have to give back the Emmy that he won, Buck? Will they rescind that?” But we are trying to figure out exactly what went on. My theory is that he’s trying to set the table to come back in 2022. But, in the meantime, Buck, you live in New York; you’ve been talking to a lot of people ever since this scandal began. It’s fair to say you are stunned that he has made the decision to resign in the method and manner in which he did just in the last 20 minutes.

BUCK: There must have been conversations with Democrats behind closed doors in the state legislature where they just said, “We don’t care; there’s nothing you can do,” ’cause Cuomo’s known… This is a guy, just so everyone understands, who will call and threaten city councilmen personally — threaten their careers, obviously not like mob boss style.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: But he’ll say, “You cross me and you’ll suffer the consequences.” He’ll call them at home at night. He’s known to do this. This is somebody who is considered one of the most vindictive and just difficult people to work with in politics in New York, in Albany, which is a very corrupt place to begin with. And just the fact that this didn’t leak!

The fact that you didn’t get that precursor announcement. It’s amazing that he also did the whole, Clay, the lawyer coming forward beforehand. What was that? What’s the purpose of that? Maybe to forestall or to push aside some of the actual criminal investigation that’s going on, to give him protection at some level for that?

It did not seem at all… We knew that we were down to the last couple of minutes before we came on air. No way it seemed like he was about to resign based on the 20 or 30 minutes you had heard before then and then he just switched gears and said, “I’m resigning.” It’s crazy.

CLAY: I think the only way it makes sense — because your point is a good one. He laid out for people who didn’t hear it, a very detailed defense against all of the allegations of sexual harassment that have been put forward against him, and then at the very end — and he may have handwritten this; he may have added it at the last minute — he decided that he was going to resign after he had already made his defense. Why would he do that? To me, the only possibility — the only possibility — is he’s trying to set the table to be able to come back.

BUCK: Or, Clay, he just couldn’t handle the political pressure because he had no allies and they wanted him to go.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show where Clay and I are just sitting here dealing with… People use the term “bombshell.” “Breaking News” is abused all the time.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They’ll run breaking news banners or CNN for “Artifact Found From the Titanic! Really Shiny! Breaking News!”

CLAY: (laughs)

BUCK: They’ll put nonsense on. This is breaking news, folks. The governor of New York, after Fauci at one point, the biggest Democrat hero of the pandemic. Let’s remember that. He was getting Emmys for his covid press conferences. He got a $5 million book deal for his covid leadership. He was getting people writing into him, putting hashtags on social media, calling of themselves “Cuomosexuals.”

There were celebrities who were talking about how gorgeous and brilliant and amazing he is. There was even talk of him standing in as the last-minute Democrat candidate for president of the United States in 2020 because he was so amazing. Clay, now he had a lawyer come out and say that basically all the charges against him are false and uncorroborated.

He comes out and spent about 20-30 minutes telling everybody he just was trying to be affectionate, no big deal. And in the last moments, Governor Cuomo resigned effective 14 days from now. I’m gonna say this, man. I think this for a lot of folks — I don’t speak for myself — is the biggest political surprise to the establishment, perhaps, or to some section of the establishment since Trump — or certainly the biggest shock overall with him stepping down since Trump won in 2016. This is seismic.

CLAY: Yeah. Look, I don’t disagree with any of that, and I think spinning it forward, the question is… You raised, I think, a good point, which is this didn’t leak at all. So we know a lot of Cuomo’s advisers had abandoned him. So it’s possible that he laid out this entire defense and then at the very end pivoted and decided that he was going to resign.

I always look, anytime a politician makes a choice like this, whether you love or hate Andrew Cuomo — and, look, I think he is one of the worst governors. If you look at his record with covid and if you look at these allegations regarding sexual harassment, I think he’s one of the worst governors that any state has elected, certainly in the twenty-first century.

And if your goal is to protect your citizens based on the way he responded to covid with the nursing home collapse and everything that spiraled out of that — which, miraculously, is not the reason he is ending up having to resign, which is wild to think of. It’s the other scandal, the #MeToo element getting him here. I think you have to think, Buck, what is his goal?

So the easy read here — we talked about this a little bit — was he was going to be impeached, right? The votes were there. He knows that he wasn’t going to be able to survive an impeachment process in New York, and that was going to take some period of time to play out.

So, if you know that you’re going to be forced out of office, then you are left with options. Do you choose to go out on your own terms, or do you fight tooth and nail until the bitter end when they remove you from office? And, in what way, based on those decisions, do you best preserve your political viability? ‘Cause I just don’t think…

I could be wrong. I just don’t think Andrew Cuomo is gonna throw up the peace sign like Richard Nixon did and hop on a helicopter and fly away and never run for elective office again. I think he’s trying to think, “How do I — trapped in this corner with no real moves — in some way still preserve a viable political future for myself?”

BUCK: So the way that he’d have to gauge that would be, “Which is the worst situation? Is it to…?” This is a resignation in disgrace. He can call whatever he wants, but he’s resigning because 11 women came forward and said he’s a grabby, creepy, sexually harassing bad guy.

CLAY: And their stories were confirmed, by the way.

BUCK: There’s corroboration from different people, et cetera. So, he is resigning in disgrace. So, you’re telling me you think that he’s preserving the possibility of a total political reversal in the future, which is at least legally true, right? He could run again legally.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Okay. Fine. But, in the meantime, I think that you have to look at why did the Democrat Party turn on him from the White House on down, all the way down to the statehouse? This guy was left with no allies.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: There were people who would say when… You have to look at some of the other situations where there were calls for resignation. You had the Al Franken situation, where it seems like the takeaway now — and I don’t know if you see it this exact same way — but the takeaway now is maybe that was actually too harsh on Franken for Democrats.

CLAY: They overreached. I think that’s correct. I think they acknowledge they overreached.

BUCK: And then in Virginia there was the Northam/Fairfax/Herring —

CLAY: (laughing) Yeah.

BUCK: — the top three members of the executive branch for the state of Virginia. Now, Fairfax had two sexual assault allegations. He’s the number two guy, but Northam and Herring —

CLAY: Both had blackface issues, right?

BUCK: — had blackface situations in their histories.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: None of them, none of the three stepped down for their various issues, and I think there was a sense of okay, we’re kind of just admitting that Democrat Party has no principles. So now —

CLAY: Well, also it would have ended up with a Republican in power, right?

BUCK: That’s right.

CLAY: So, the lieutenant governor in New York —

BUCK: Had resigned, which —

CLAY: All three were forced, but I think the idea was kind of ridiculously funny in retrospect. But each of them had their own unique scandal that, if one resigned, the next would be the target and the next would be the target then you would end up with a Republican governor. Whereas it’s so dominated by Democratic Party in New York, that isn’t the issue here, right?

BUCK: I just also… He thought he was gonna… I’m not gonna say this because I really believed he was gonna fight it out, and I own that this guy resigned and I didn’t see that. I didn’t see that coming and neither do the people I know working in Albany. Keep in mind I talk to Republicans —

CLAY: To be fair, no one saw this coming.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: Even in the middle of the speech, you and I turned it off because we thought he’s not resigning.

BUCK: I watched every minute of it. Clay and I were watching the speech together, and we were saying, “Okay, so he’s getting in the trench.”

CLAY: Defending himself as much as he can.

BUCK: Yeah. “He’s getting ready to go. It’s gonna take months, but he’s gonna fight it out. He’s gonna defend his reputation.” So, here’s one thing I think is apparent. The first thing when we talked about it, he was planning to fight this in the first speech. Why would you do this twice?

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: In the first speech, he was planning to take it on.

CLAY: He was gonna go to war.

BUCK: But I think that he underestimated, one, the control that the feminist left wing of the Democrat Party actually is able to exercise in contemporary Democrat politics at some level, and I think he also believed that his allies in Albany and, you know, that he would be able to sort of retreat to his home base. Pablo Escobar style when he decided to go back up into Medellin where people would remember him and take care of him when the government was actually really starting to track him down.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: But Cuomo basically went to Medellin and they said, “No, we’re actually gonna hand you over.” (laughing) That seems to be what happened.

CLAY: So, here’s the question that I think we need to discuss as we go forward — because he’s gone now, right? And we can talk about the impact of what that means for the Democratic Party. It doesn’t seem that substantial in the state of New York. For the moment, it would take Andrew Cuomo off as a potential 2024 contender, right?

If you’re Kamala Harris, you’re probably having a nice toast of your wine glass or champagne because — presuming that Joe Biden’s not going going to run — this knocks down another heavyweight in the Democratic Party. But do we actually believe that he’s done? I think that’s the big question here. Is he actually going to be done going forward, or is the way in which he did this trying to preserve a future for him? And that’s going to be —

BUCK: There’s one piece that we do have to enter into the where this will go, and that’s sort of down in the future quite a ways. It’s like us sitting here and saying, “What’s the composition of the House gonna be in the midterms?”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: We can kind of guess, but it’s a long way off.

CLAY: But will he run? I think that’s gonna be really interesting for the nomination.

BUCK: So, the assumption is that his lieutenant governor —

CLAY: Who just took him down.

BUCK: — is obviously stepping in. That’s the way the system works, the attorney general, Letitia James, who is, I will say, within New York state politics rather broadly — not even just from the Democrat Party — people like her. I have friends who like and respect her. They don’t agree with her, but they say, you know, she’s a reasonable actor on a number of different, you know, state-affecting policy issues. Clay, she’s gonna step in to run on the Democrat ticket for governor.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So, think about the optics again. Look. Predictions, everyone’s got them, and sometimes we get ’em wrong. (chuckles) But you’re gonna have the black female Democrat darling who just put out the report to destroy Andrew Cuomo’s political career running for governor! (laughs) He’s gonna run against her.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Oh, my God.

CLAY: Because he’s going to be able to argue, Buck, that her entire report was political and was about giving her the opportunity to be governor. That’s my theory.

BUCK: I… (laughing) Look, man. Clay, we are living in a world today where I gotta feel like anything is possible. But that would be almost as mind-blowing as what just happened if he pulls it out. But, hey.

CLAY: That’s what I think may happen.

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Santa Claus Wins, Bloated Budget Passes

10 Aug 2021

CLAY: The budget is underway. It’s $3.5 trillion, and the infrastructure bill snowed under. We would have spent a lot of time talking about this as well, passed in the Senate 69-30. So 19 different Republican senators ended up supporting the Joe Biden-driven infrastructure bill.

BUCK: There’s not enough political will to fight against Santa Claus. When the goody bag of federal spending is opened up, even Republicans decide, “You know what? I might as well get some if everyone’s getting some,” and very few are willing to say the long-term projections about what it will mean for our economy. Not even that long term, by the way. I mean, inflation is already kicking in now.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: And the thing about inflation you look at historically, when it starts to happen, the government always says, “Oh, it’s not gonna be that bad,” and then it tends to get a lot worse and then it reaches the point where they say, “Wow. We’re not actually particularly good at trying to control or handle this. Let’s just hope for the best.”

I’m very concerned about that. But right now there’s not the political will nor are there the votes. The truest thing that Obama ever said or is credited with saying is, “Elections have consequences,” and, Clay, I hate to be that guy but we needed to win one of those two Georgia Senate seats.

CLAY: Yeah, that’s what’s so frustrating about this is it’s not even the presidential election, right? Which is frustrating in its own right, but then you got double Senate races in Georgia. All you have to do is win one out of those two and… Just think about trillions of dollars less are going to be spent. People talking about how much Senate campaigns cost and how much electoral races end up costing. That race, those two races in Georgia — in terms of money being spent, tax increases being passed, all of that — had trillions of dollars at stake, and Republicans lost both.

BUCK: This is also an end run in a sense on the system we actually have because a lot of what is getting included. So we have to remember there’s the infrastructure piece and the budget bill, right? Two separate things. The infrastructure piece that the Republicans have voted for is mostly what you’d consider to be infrastructure in some capacity.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: There’s some things wrong about it.

CLAY: It’s broadly defined.

BUCK: It’s broadly defined but there is roads and bridges money. How will it be spent? Will it be efficient? No, it will not be efficient. Will there be tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse? Yes, there will. Okay. We know all that. But the part of it that should be more concerning is in this budget bill, which they’re gonna push through with reconciliation by really these lawyerly tricks of pretending that anything that touches on the budget can be part of a budget reconciliation maneuver, even if it’s a tenuous connection. Things like amnesty. “Oh, yeah, well, that means there will be more people on the welfare rolls. So that’s a budget issue now.” That’s their actual justification. I’m not making it up. That’s their actual claim.

CLAY: No, that’s the argument.

BUCK: That’s the argument they’re making. They’re trying to legislate without the actual majorities, without the actual will of the people behind them to do it. The Democrats are trying to sneak through their agenda with a razor-thin margin in the House, a 50-50 Senate, and they think now is the time…?

After we spent, what, $5 trillion deeper into the hole last year, now is the time to pass not only an enormous spending package but tremendous tax increases, all kinds of regulation? Clay, this bill is thousands of pages. We’re gonna have to go through this thing and look into it in detail to see what’s really in there but what it just becomes is a Trojan horse for the leftist agenda of the Democrats that’s hidden in the actual pages of a bill that nobody’s gonna read that they call “spending.”

CLAY: And, by the way, it’s also set up to be retroactive, which I can’t believe more people aren’t talking about. That means that whatever tax you’re paying in 2021, you don’t even know what it is yet. For everybody out there who runs businesses and is trying to figure out, “Hey, what is budget our gonna be? What’s our cost structure gonna be? Who can we hire? What can we afford?”

You don’t even know what your tax rates are gonna be on a corporate tax level. If you have capital gains — let’s say you’re selling a home like a lot of people are out there — you don’t know what your capital gains cost basis are gonna be, what sort of dollars you are gonna owe. It’s madness.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

JORDAN: You’re exactly right. That’s the position we should take. Unfortunately, some of the senators — Republican senators — chose to go along with this so-called infrastructure bill. I mean, Maria when have you ever seen an infrastructure bill that had the word “equity” in it over 60 times? That’s part of this $1.2 trillion or whatever it is, is not really infrastructure.

And now we got the $3.5 trillion or whatever that’s gonna be coming after. Again, this is all part of the Democrats’ ridiculous economic plan. Here’s their economic plan: Lock down your economy; spend like crazy; pay people not to work — and, oh, by the way, for all you Americans who have been working hard? We’re gonna raise your taxes. Those are four stupid ideas. That’s the crazy economic plan, and the idea that you had Republican senators go along with some of this makes no sense to me.

BUCK: Jim Jordan with a double-leg takedown and a half nelson of the Democrats spending.

CLAY: Well done.

BUCK: Thank you. Thank you. I did a little wrestling back in the day.

CLAY: Did you really?

BUCK: Oh, I did, yeah. Yeah. I was pretty good, for whatever it’s worth. Welcome to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. Waiting for you to upset our wrestling fans soccer fans, Travis.

CLAY: No. You did soccer, I knew. I didn’t know you did wrestling, too.

BUCK: Did a little boxing, did a little wrestling. Gotta be able to deal with the commies when they get a little out of line.

CLAY: Boxing in school?

BUCK: No, I was at a program called Saturday Morning Boys in New York City at the New York Athletic Club.

CLAY: Yeah, we’ve got… Actually, my wife has a pro-boxing fight to her credit.

BUCK: That’s amazing, by the way. Does that ever creep up in the back of your mind when she’s saying, “Hey, we’re going to go to this restaurant,” you think, “My wife can really throw a punch so I’m just gonna go with it”?

CLAY: He’s 1-0 she won her fight, she’s five two, 105 pounds, probably, a rough registration.

BUCK: The true athlete of the Sexton family is my mother, Mrs. Sexton, who was a professional ballet dance at one of the top companies in the country.

CLAY: That’s a pretty big deal.

BUCK: Pound for pound, gymnasts and ballet dancers among the strongest people you’ll ever find.

CLAY: No doubt.

BUCK: They actually studied this. Yeah.

CLAY: No doubt. That is… Well, props to Mrs. Sexton. I didn’t know that. Yes. So we actually have a boxing trainer that we work out with twice a week. Early this morning, I did seven rounds.

BUCK: Is it Tae Bo or do you guys actually hit the bags?

CLAY: No, it’s boxing. This is a professional boxing trainer. So, I’m not getting hit back; so it’s not like I’m sparring, which is… Yeah.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: I’m throwing punches.

BUCK: That’s the one thing about boxing that I learned the hard way is you can enjoy other sports when you lose. Like I’ve lost basketball games.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I’ve played in tennis matches and you’re having fun.

CLAY: It was a good experience.

BUCK: It was a good experience, spar hard. You lose in boxing, you’re like, I don’t know if I want to do this again. That wasn’t cool. That wasn’t fun.

CLAY: It’s also there’s something definitely crystallizing about somebody being able to hit you.

BUCK: And when you’re tired, by the way. You’re already tired, and then you’re getting hit. Same thing’s true in wrestling, though, if you get slammed to the canvas, which is like also happening. I guess it’s not really canvas. You know what I mean. (laughing) That’s the WWE. To the mat. To the mat. There we go.

But, Clay, I want to bring us in with the Jim Jordan comment because it’s amazing. Democrats 50-50 in the Senate. It’s a tiny majority in the House. Joe Biden, it just feels like this guy is barely even there. And they know how to work the system. They know every trick in the book and that’s what they’re doing right now about this massive spending bill. They’re getting through their agenda just using the power of the purse instead of actual legislation.

Recent Stories

Sen. Rand Paul: The Science Is on Our Side

10 Aug 2021

BUCK: The senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, is with us now. Senator Paul, thank you for making the time.

SEN. PAUL: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me.

BUCK: So, you’ve said that it’s time for people to just stop doing the things that we’ve been told — forced — to do, so-called mitigation measures, the Fauci-ite mitigation strategies. What do you want folks out there to take it upon themselves to do at this point, Senator?

SEN. PAUL: There’s no science behind mask mandates or standing apart from people actually slowing the spread. There is science that the vaccine and also natural immunity have slowed the spread of this. But, really, putting masks on our kids is not and not based in science, and it’s a disservice to our kids.

So, our kids should be able to go to school unmolested by their government and we should try to do the best we can during this, but let’s give facts out there. Let’s don’t spread the misinformation that everyone’s dying from the Delta variant. The truth is that it’s more contagious but less deadly.

CLAY: That’s an important distinction that certainly many people who watch television news do not get. So, can you walk us through that? Thanks for coming on with us, Senator Paul. When you say that the Delta variant is more contagious but less deadly, does that also mean for children? Explain. Kind of unpack that statement for us, if you would.

SEN. PAUL: One of the largest studies of the Delta variant comes from England. So, Public Health England had a study of 92,000 patients. The people who’d been vaccinated under age 50, no one died. Zero. If you were under 50 and you were unvaccinated the deaths were .08%. So less than the typical flu. This is a good sign that the death rate for vaccinated was zero, and for the unvaccinated under 50 was still very small.

Now, if you go above age 50 in the vaccinated group, there still were some deaths. It was pretty small, but there were some deaths — about 1.4%, and then among the unvaccinated, about 3.4%. So really under age 50% vaccinated or unvaccinated there were very, very few deaths. Above age 50, there’s more. This is what I’ve been saying all along. If you are at risk for this, get vaccinated.

If you catch the disease, be aware that, as you get sicker, monoclonal antibodies can save your life. Dr. Fauci will never tell you this. He’ll tell you to put on 14 masks and put ’em over your ears and your nose and everything else, but he won’t tell you the one thing that could save your life, and that’s monoclonal antibodies. If you become congested, if you get a bronchitis, if your doctor thinks you’re getting sicker, the monoclonal antibodies can save your life.

BUCK: Senator Paul, that’s essential, and I want to know why… President Trump, when he got covid, they treated him with monoclonal antibodies at Walter Reed, I believe, it was right away. And he was back in action within 48 hours pretty much, maybe sooner. Why haven’t we been hearing more about them? I have not heard a public health official mention monoclonal antibodies in months; I would bet Clay hasn’t either. Why is that?

SEN. PAUL: It’s a real service because they’re hung up on politics. So, for example, there’s this television station — I don’t suggest watching it — called CNN.

CLAY: (laughing)

SEN. PAUL: And on CNN, the doctors will tell you that a mask is more important than a vaccine. That is outright malpractice. They ought to be sued and taken off the air. The masks largely have not prevented the infection. When we put mask mandates in place, the infection has gone up in incidence. And here’s the thing: You’re actually telling somebody something that could kill them. If you tell them that a cloth mask works and they decide to take care of their…

Let’s say you’re 80 years old and you’re gonna take care of your wife who now has covid. If you take care of her and you wear a cloth mask, you’re going to get infected. The cloth mask doesn’t work. So you’re actually telling people to wear something that would encourage dangerous behavior. The only mask that works is the N95.

But it only works if it’s tightly snug to your face, and you throw it away after a single use. It can work a little bit other than that, but really the cloth masks don’t work, and so what we’re doing is encouraging people to do risky behavior, thinking the mask protects them, when in reality the mask is probably not of any benefit at all, the cloth mask.

CLAY: Senator Paul, I’m going to my school board meeting as a parent. I’ve got a kid. He’s a first grader now and a fifth grader along with an eighth grader, and they’re debating whether or not masks should be required in our schools. There are gonna be a lot of parents. I think they’re gonna show up and advocate as I am that it doesn’t make sense for kids to be wearing masks.

We had Dr. Makary yesterday from Johns Hopkins. H was fantastic; he was talking about his Wall Street editorial. I think it’s important when you’re getting banned by YouTube and everywhere else. Can you talk to the parents out there? Does it make sense for their kids to be wearing masks in school from a scientific basis?

SEN. PAUL: The death rate from covid among people under age 25 is one in a million. That’s less than the seasonal flu. So if we’re gonna wear masks for covid, we should wear it for the seasonal flu, too, which means your kids would never be free of masks for the rest of their lives, ’cause the seasonal flu is not going away. So it’s not a rational sort of statement.

So, yeah. I think we should push back on them and we should show ’em the science. The biggest study on this was in Denmark, and it involved 6,000 people. Three thousand people wore masks all the time when they left their house, 3,000 didn’t, and the incidence of covid turned out to be the same over a long period of time. The other controlled study was from Vietnam.

Sixteen hundred health care workers were studied, and interestingly, the people who wore cloth masks got more infections than the people who wore no mask. They also looked at virus-size particles going through the cloth mask, and 97% of the particles went through a cloth mask. The cloth mask was just a sieve. It don’t work.

I presented these in a speech and YouTube took ’em down. This is the real danger we have of a world in which the only thing that is considered to be truth is dispensed by the government, and anybody who disagrees with the government is going to be banned. That’s what’s happened to me on YouTube.

I’m banned for seven days. But, to tell you the truth, I’m having really second thoughts about going back on at all. There’s Rumble.com, where I put videos. There’s also LibertyTree.com where I’m posting news. So we have to, as conservatives, maybe quit lending our time, our content, and our posts to people who hate us and despise us.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senator Paul, when we look at the actual numbers, it’s pretty stunning the degree of fear that is out there in the media right now that they’re trying to cause in people versus what the numbers would seem to suggest.

They’re talking about pediatric hospitalizations for covid, for example, and nationwide right now there’s about 200 — give or take – in the entire country, kids who they think are in hospital for covid. They could also be in the hospital for RSV infection. I’m sure you know a lot more about than I do, as a doctor.

But there are other reasons they could be even there. The numbers don’t seem to justify the panic at all based on where we’ve been and where we are now. So what is it going to take? When do the Fauci-ites leave us alone, in your mind? What do we have to do?

SEN. PAUL: I think they have a secondary intention. I think their secondary intention is basically to gain power over your lives and to grow government bigger and to have government dictate your behavior. It’s submission to the collective. It isn’t really about the science or the lies. In fact, if you look at it, particularly with the children, they’re more likely to be struck by lightning than die from covid.

That still is true. That is a fact. That was with the first covid. We now have a covid that is less deadly than the first, and all the statistics say Delta is less deadly. Now, it’s pretty darn contagious. So people who’ve been vaccinated may still get it. People who have natural infection, like myself, could still get it. But the most important thing is to he will it people what to do if you begin getting sick.

So people over 65 are at great risk. People overweight are at significant risk. If you’re 40 years old and 40 pounds overweight and you get covid and four days later you’re starting to cough and getting congestion in your chest, you need to get the monoclonal antibodies. Now, you’re gonna have to ask the doctor to evaluate and agree with that.

But the things is the squeaky wheel gets the grease on this, and a lot of patients are not being treated because they aren’t advocating strongly enough for themselves or their family, or they’re older and don’t know the treatment exists. But this is the real disservice of Dr. Fauci. He’s supposed to be for public health.

He should be on television doing public service announcements about monoclonal antibodies. Instead, he’s haranguing us about putting masks on our children inside or masking up parents when you talk to your kids in your house at home, or putting masks on people running track. Completely contrary to any scientific evidence.

CLAY: Last question, Senator Paul. How do we end this? There are a lot of people out there listening to us right now that are saying, “It’s been 18 months. How do we get back to some form of normalcy?” We get that question all the time. “What can I do? What can an individual do?” What would you tell people who want to reclaim normalcy in America and end the covid madness?

SEN. PAUL: You know, I think some of the best speeches I’ve heard have been at school board meetings. So when you go to your school board meeting (chuckles), be ready and be prepared. And the thing is, the public gets it. But you have self-interested people who don’t want to show up for work, unions who say, “We’re not gonna work! Even though we’ve been vaccinated or offered a vaccine, we’re still not going to work.”

But the science is with us. The left has been saying, “Obey the science.” But the science is overwhelming that we are at a point where we may not be able to eradicate this. This thing may come back every couple months, every year. But the thing is, we have ways to treat it. The vaccine lessens the severity of the disease, and so does natural immunity.

There’s a large study out of Israel that said actually natural immunity, having had the infection, prevented reinfection even better than the vaccine. I’m not arguing against the vaccine, but we need to lump into the people and include the idea that natural immunity is part of our community, developing enough immunity to slow this thing down.

BUCK: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Sir, we really appreciate your time and just all your work on this issue. Thanks for being with us.

SEN. PAUL: Thanks, guys.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: You just heard us talking with Senator Rand Paul. Seven days YouTube has banned him for sharing data that goes against the idea that everyone is going to die of covid and that we all have to be curled up in the fetal position. Look, a couple of stats that I jotted down here. Rand Paul told us just a few minutes ago, Buck, one in a million people under the age of 25 have died with covid, less than the seasonal flu.

Again, this is under the age of 25. That’s less than the chances of being struck by lightning. He’s been suspended by YouTube for seven days for saying, “Masks make no scientific sense for children.” Regardless of what your political beliefs are, how terrifying is it that YouTube can make the decision that a medical doctor who is a (chuckling) democratically elected senator is not allowed to share his opinions on covid on their platform?

BUCK: Clay?

CLAY: It’s wild!

BUCK: They banned a sitting president of the United States. (laughing) We didn’t cross the Rubicon; we leapt over it and ran a thousand yards past it. This is insane.

CLAY: These facts are all true, though! This is where it gets… At least you could argue in other sort of — again, in quotation marks — “disinformation,” that… When you’re looking at real raw data, I’m with you; it’s crazy. But this is next-level crazy because he can demonstrably prove that what he’s saying is true. It’s not an opinion.

BUCK: Everyone has to understand this. There will never come a time — there will absolutely never be a moment — when you have the Fauci-ites, the Democrat Party, the apparatus of control admitting that they made any real mistakes in the policies that they have forced down our throats and on our faces, if you will. That’s the reality. It will never happen.

It does not matter what studies come out. It does not matter what the science tells us. They will say that they did the right thing; it was necessary, and Clay — and this is the critical piece — they would do it again, because they like the ability to institute this level of control in society. We used to worry about civil liberties after 9/11, right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: There actually were some leftists who were concerned —

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: — because they thought that there was going to be some bigotry against the Muslim-American community or just Muslims more generally around the world and there were all these concerns. And, yeah, okay, the Patriot Act. There were some things in there, look at reading lists of libraries.

There was some stuff people that said, “Hmm, that seems not very civil liberties oriented.” What we have been through with the covid lockdowns over the last 18 months is so much more egregious and damaging to individual liberty, to constitutional protections, to basic freedoms in our society, and what’s so troubling about it is how many people are okay with it!

They’re saying, “Yeah. As long as my two masks and my goggles and my hand sanitizer keep me safe and warm at night, no big deal.” This is terrifying to me, Clay. I actually still believed the Spirit of 1776 and the founders and the Constitution was alive and well with more than 30% of the country when it comes to freedom and constitutional protections. But I don’t know. I’m starting to worry.

CLAY: How much different would our country be right now if Rand Paul had been the head of the NIH? Certainly if he had been president, but just if you didn’t have Fauci, if you had Rand Paul in that exact same office.

BUCK: Oh, I say this to friends of mine all of the time. I think Rand Paul would make a… I don’t think he ever will win the presidency just because he’s not that retail politics, handshake, grinning guy.

CLAY: He doesn’t kiss say babies. He’s kind of the brusque doctor.

BUCK: He’s kind of like, “I don’t know about your baby.”

CLAY: (laughing) Right! He’s a doctor. Yeah.

BUCK: He’s a little laid back. But he’d be a good president, man, ’cause he wouldn’t… He would be like a Calvin Coolidge circa 2020 whatever, right? He would be a guy coming in who’s not trying to harass and push all the stuff on all of us all the time. Wouldn’t that be so refreshing.

CLAY: I just want somebody who looks at the data and gives me honest facts. I’m not asking for you to wow me. I’m not asking for you to blow my mind. But if we just had Rand Paul able to walk into the White House Situation Room and just walk through all the data? To me, that would be a different maker of enormous magnitude. Again, brusque doctor sometimes but, yes, he’d been incredible.

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Vote in Clay’s Poll: Will Cuomo Ever Run Again?

10 Aug 2021

CLAY: Do you think Cuomo will run again, Buck?

BUCK: No.

CLAY: You think he’s done.

BUCK: I think… Well, I’ll have to hedge this insofar as saying, “He will never win again.” Will he run again? I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t put that in my view of absolute Crazy Town. But could he win statewide in New York again? Could Eliot Spitzer win statewide in New York? (laughs) No. That guy was toast and his political career was done forever? CNN did hire him and give him a show. It was a very bad show, but then again so are pretty much all shows at CNN.

CLAY: But think about Bill Clinton. I know Bill Clinton didn’t resign. But if Bill Clinton could have run for office again in 2000, I think he would have won, even with the Monica Lewsinsky intern scandal, even with lying under oath.

BUCK: But resignation is a little bit like an admission of guilt in politics. I mean, he can say it’s not. But this is why I think… First, there’s no way his first speech was an “I’m gonna resign” speech. No way. We heard it; we saw it.

CLAY: Last week. A hundred percent. He was gonna fight. Yes.

BUCK: So clearly he thought he could dig in and win, and it was the Democrats in the statehouse in New York who weren’t just saying — ’cause oftentimes the game, as you say, is, “Oh, so-and-so has to resign,” and then a couple of weeks pass and it’s, “Meh, he’s doing a good job. We’ll let it go.”

They weren’t willing to do it now. I’ll be fascinated — and, Clay, I’ll be making calls and reaching out to sources to try to find out what was it really was. Why did they decide that this thing, this time…? Remember, sending your grandma in a nursing home to die? Not enough for Democrats in the state of New York!

CLAY: They lifted the DOJ investigation on that.

BUCK: Right. Not enough for them to get so exercised about it that they would impeach him over it. By the way, I find that far more impeachable.

CLAY: Way worse, yes. I agree. I agree.

BUCK: The other part is why I feel like I’m living in the crazy world here, my friend. But it is American politics.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Boom! Bombshell! Literally as we’re coming on the air, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the patron saint of the Democratic response to covid — even though the disaster that happened with the nursing homes kind of gets overlooked by Democrats, got a special Emmy.

I don’t know if he’ll get a new Emmy for this or not, but he resigned. And in 14 days he will officially be out of office. Remember, we’ve got the potential of Gavin Newsom being recalled in a little over a month in California. Can you imagine, Buck Sexton, if we ended up with the two patron saints of the Democratic response to covid, Andrew Cuomo — now gone — and Gavin Newsom potentially gone as well?

BUCK: I mean, I think that Fauci is the pope and these are —

CLAY: Can’t get rid of him ’cause he’s not elected.

BUCK: Maybe Fauci is not even a patron saint. I think the libs think Fauci is God now, so they’ve completely lost their minds.

CLAY: The Holy Ghost and the Son and everything else.

BUCK: Yeah, he’s all of the above. You know, there’s also a part of me that I’m a little disappointed in Cuomo as the bad guy here. I kind of thought he was —

CLAY: You wanted it to drag on. You wanted a real fight.

BUCK: You thought he was gonna go out like Tony Montana in Scarface. You know what I mean. I thought it was gonna be him in the mansion with all the guys coming, and he’s like, “I’m going down fighting.” By the way, still a great movie.

CLAY: It is still a great movie.

BUCK: Very violent, but great movie to this day. And knowing he must have thought that he could rally allies in the state legislature, didn’t have ’em, and realized that it was a doomed effort, ’cause I do believe that if he thought there was any chance he could survive an impeachment, he would have gone to trial.

I don’t think he’s trying to… His whole thing in the speech was (impression), “I’m trying to prevent New York from being dragged into…” No, no. I think his thing was, “I can’t win this fight; so what’s the point?” If he had any belief that he was gonna come out, I think he would have been willing to go to the mattresses on it, but he absolutely did not. It was also just a crazy moment of political theater to be defending yourself. Imagine if Bill Clinton did this.

CLAY: And just pivot like he did.

BUCK: Imagine if Bill Clinton would have said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman but I’m not president anymore. I’m done.” You would have been like, “What?” That’s basically what Cuomo did, right? It’s like, “I didn’t do it, I’m not a bad guy, but I’m actually gonna step down.” So that’s —

CLAY: I think what’s happening here, Buck — and I think you’re gonna eventually come around on this, ’cause it seems like as you’re kind of processing it, I think this is about maintaining his political viability.

BUCK: Okay. We’re gonna have to just place a bet on this one.

CLAY: Only way. What is a good bet here?

BUCK: Fancy barbecue in Nashville versus fancy barbeque in Brooklyn in New York, and meal on me, ’cause maybe he kind of thinks about running… Even when Anthony Weiner was running everybody thought it was gross —

CLAY: Yeah, right.

BUCK: — when he was running for mayor of New York after he had resigned from his congressional seat. I just don’t see —

CLAY: Who’s the biggest comeback kid of all time? Well, I say “all time.” Modern era in politics.

BUCK: Well, you could go to —

CLAY: Clinton obviously.

BUCK: Grover Cleveland, right? He came back after losing.

CLAY: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the modern era. I mean somebody who would be alive that we would be able to point to. They went out in some way in a scandalous fashion. I think Clinton is probably the closest.

BUCK: Yeah. The Clinton brand somehow managed to get much wealthier, much bigger, and much more corrupt even after the debacle of Clinton’s actual time in office.

CLAY: Monica Lewinsky and everything else that went on there. He managed to fight his way through, but in terms of somebody that everybody just totally wrote off, I mean, Nixon when he lost the first time people said, “Oh, Nixon is done when he lost to Kennedy,” and then he managed to go out and come back and get elected in, what, ’68 and reelected in ’72.

BUCK: You gotta say, as grotesque as it is, it’s amazing that Ralph Northam is still the governor of Virginia given how that whole thing went down.

CLAY: That’s pretty wild.

BUCK: That’s pretty crazy.

CLAY: He’s a one-termer, and we talked about that a little bit. It is this perfect political theater that all three of the top people in Virginia who were Democrats were going to have to resign, which would have gotten a Republican in, because I think if that hadn’t been the case, they probably would have chopped each of those guys down.

BUCK: Yeah, I don’t think the best story there was that number three, Mark Herring, initially called for the Governor Northam to resign over the blackface/Ku Klux Klan, “I’m not sure which one it was.”

CLAY: Yes. Yes. Yes.

BUCK: — and Herring had to say, “Well, actually I’ve got my own little issue with a blackface thing in my past.” So basically, it was the Democrats looking at this and realizing, “We’re gonna have a Republican from the legislature taking over.” It’d almost be like Nancy Pelosi becoming president.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That’s kind of the chain of succession they were gonna have in the Virginia statehouse and so all the sudden it was, “Ah, I guess we’re just gonna pretend like this all cancels each other out or something.” It was insane.

CLAY: Remember Northam, too, not only did he have the picture in, like, the medical school yearbook or whatever that was, he also had put on blackface and pretended to be Michael Jackson, I think it was, back in the day.

BUCK: You’re also leaving out —

CLAY: Break dancing.

BUCK: — probably the liberals’ favorite politician outside of the U.S. on planet Earth —

CLAY: Oh, Justin Trudeau.

BUCK: — Justin Trudeau of Canada, who seemed to think that every party he went to, he had to darken his skin.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: This was his thing for a while!

CLAY: It wasn’t even that long ago. That was the nineties, he went as Aladdin. And, by the way, do you have to darken your skin to go as Aladdin?

BUCK: This is why if you walk around with a T-shirt on that says, “male feminist,” you’re not gonna get a lot of dates, but you are gonna get a lot of political protection and cover. You know what I mean?

CLAY: Those pictures were unbelievable of Justin Trudeau.

BUCK: It was wild, the whole thing.

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What’s Next for the Disgraced NY Governor?

10 Aug 2021

CLAY: It’s a word that’s overused, but legitimately blockbuster news if you’re just starting off with us: Andrew Cuomo has resigned from office effective 14 days from now. He did it in an address that was live as we were coming on this program. It has sent shockwaves throughout the Democratic Party nationwide. It certainly has sent shockwaves throughout New York state.

Remember this was a guy who got an Emmy, who was the hero of the initial covid response, who represented everything that Donald Trump supposedly did not in the way that he handled things. There were controversies, body blows that continued to rain down upon him. As you pointed out, Buck Sexton, he got a $5 million book deal to write about the heroic response to covid.

Even in his resignation, he talked about the way that the state of New York had responded to covid and the battles that they had fought. And now the lieutenant governor will be stepping into his office. He was scheduled to have his term end next year. And there are just so many shockwaves emanating here.

As you pointed out, Buck, every Democratic politician ran from him. No one was willing to back him up in the wake of this sexual harassment investigation. And ultimately, he decided maybe the most politically viable move he had left — given that impeachment was coming — was to resign.

BUCK: Indeed. I’m still sitting here… Rarely does it feel like you get a political story with this kind of a jolt and also the fact that they were able to keep this from leaking. Cuomo must have written this final speech. It was probably a number of advisers and confidants you could count on one hand who knew about what was gonna happen here, including his personal attorney, his outside counselor who spoke before he did.

I also want to tell everybody we are gonna get to Senator Rand Paul joining us in the third hour of the show. We’re gonna talk to him, Clay, about just everything covid related, where we are with the vaccine mandates. Dr. Fauci has just straight-up said now he wants vaccine mandates.

Plus, we’ve got the infrastructure bill passing in the Senate. What’s gonna happen now with the $3.5 trillion budget bill? And we’ve got also the judges in D.C. when it comes to Jan. 6, some of them show you where their politics lie. But let’s go to the Mike in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a second here with reaction to this huge story. Mike, what’s up?

CALLER: Hey, Clay and Buck. I absolutely love your guys’ show and think you’re just doing a great job. I appreciate you taking the call.

BUCK: Thank you.

CLAY: Thank you.

CALLER: My idea is that maybe he really doesn’t resign in 14 days. You know, he’s never been trustworthy on anything else and, you know, maybe there’s some emergency, you know, that he can hang back and say, “Oh, covid, you know, requires me to stay in my office.” So I’m not really convinced that, you know, he’s — like you said, Buck, he’s — gonna do the Richard Nixon and go off on the helicopter —

BUCK: That was actually Clay but, yeah.

CALLER: I’m sorry. Clay. (laughing)

CLAY: I don’t think… Yeah, I understand that argument. There are lots of stunning directions that the world of American politics and American life has gone in general. I don’t think, Buck… I would be stunned beyond belief if you can say, “I’m leaving in 14 days,” and then he just doesn’t leave.

BUCK: Yeah, I think, Mike, it’s with me insofar as he’s still shocked.

CLAY: Nothing would surprise me.

BUCK: (laughing) Mike, I think we’re both shocked about this. I’m getting all these text messages. I’m getting text messages from people who all they do is report on New York politics, New York local, New York state, and they’re saying, “I didn’t think he was gonna resign, either.” So it’s a pretty remarkable phenomenon. Mike, thanks for calling in from Ohio. Claire in Florida, what have you got for us, Claire?

CALLER: Good afternoon. Hey, there. I think we should use this Cuomo crap as a learning, teaching pointed for young women to have situational awareness and not go places where they may not be safe and their parents and their educators should teach them this. They need to be aware.

CLAY: I appreciate the call, but I think the perspective would be, you should be safe in the governor’s office, right? You should be safe from sexual harassment in the governor’s office and be able to do your job regardless of whether you’re male or female. And I think even Andrew Cuomo would say that. Now, what Cuomo tried to say is that basically the things that he was doing were generational-in-nature problems.

BUCK: He was saying it was basically like Biden sniffing kids’ heads which is also a little weird.

CLAY: He was a touchy-feely politician, and in his generation that was normal and that circumstances have changed since then. And I think that’s why he laid out his sort of legalistic defense before he resigned, saying, “Hey,” it’s almost like he’s falling on the sword, “I’m doing this because I’m saving the people of New York a bigger problem.”

BUCK: I think it ties into what our friend John in Brooklyn wants to talk to us about. We got another New Yorker. John, what do you think? You shocked? Where’s this going?

CALLER: I’m a little surprised at what happened here today. But, more importantly, you guys had commented. He said he resigned in disgrace. I would take issue with that.

BUCK: I said that, just to be clear. Go ahead.

CALLER: I don’t think these guys feel disgrace. I don’t think they feel any of that. I think that guys like him — could be left or right or Republican or Democrat. But in his case, if he’s gonna stand up and it’s gonna be generational? Well, the last three goes over of New York have resigned in scandal, and all three of them are Democrats. So now do the Democrats own this generational nonsense?

BUCK: You’re talking about Eliot Spitzer and… There’s a long history of disgraced New York politicians. But when I say disgraced, John — and great to have you calling in from Brooklyn — I mean our perception is like the public perception of Cuomo. Whether he feels disgraced or not is a whole other thing. That’s getting a little Freudian. But, Clay, we’ll dive back into this plus everything else we got going on.

CLAY: Everything. By the way, poll questions up. I’m curious what our listeners think about this: Do you believe that Andrew Cuomo will ever run for political office again? You can go vote in that @ClayTravis. I’m curious.

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