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Clay and Buck

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Go See Clay and Buck in Alabama This Weekend

29 Sep 2021

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CLAY: We’re gonna be down in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, this weekend. Ole Miss-Alabama — and, Buck, you’re getting blown up. People are so excited that you’re gonna experience the game.

BUCK: All these people in media, people that have known me from listening on radio now for 10 years, they’re sending emails and direct messages saying, “Oh, my gosh. You’re gonna have the best time ever. I can’t believe you’ve never been to an SEC football game.” So the buildup here is huge. People are even saying, “I don’t know.

“People are even saying, ‘I don’t know. I gotta ask the wife. Maybe I’ll fly down and hang out with you guys.'” Everyone’s very excited about this. They can live vicariously through someone who has never been to an SEC game. It’s like I’ll be discovering video games for the first time as a 10-year-old or something.

CLAY: Like you never had pizza and you’re about to have your first-ever pizza and people are saying, “Oh, you’ll love it.”

BUCK: They want to watch that pepperoni hit. They’re saying, “Oh, it’s gonna be amazing!”

CLAY: We’re gonna be, by the way, at the Innisfree Pub. We’re also doing the show together in Birmingham, which I know there’s a lot of listeners in Birmingham that are excited. They did a giveaway. We’re gonna meet a lot of you. So, it’s gonna be an awful lot of fun.

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DeSantis Tells It Like It Is on Australian Authoritarianism

29 Sep 2021

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CLAY: I want to play this clip, Buck, which is pretty fantastic. And I thought Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, continues to nail a lot of the different angles associated with covid and governmental response, and he’s asking a big question. We’re seeing what’s happening now in Australia where basically there is no freedom, and Ron DeSantis asked the question — and it’s a good one, it’s a provocative one — is Australia freer than China?

DESANTIS: You guys look what’s going on in Australia right now. You know, they’re enforcing — after a year and a half, they’re still enforcing — lockdowns by the military, and that’s not a free country. It’s not a free country at all. In fact, I wonder why we would still have the same diplomatic relations when they’re doing that. I mean, is Australia freer than China, communist China right now? I don’t know. The fact that it’s even a question tells you something has gone dramatically off the rails.

BUCK: Let’s just think about some things that are true about Australia, Clay, right now. You’ve got Sydney and Melbourne in lockdown. They’ve been in lockdown for months. The military’s enforcing it. Police officers will give $3,000-plus fines for people being out of the radius — the allowable radius — from their homes, being outside without a mask on.

Outside without a mask? Mask wearing outside is stupid! Even the CDC has admitted this. There is no reason. But they always leave this like, “Well, what if,” Fauci will say, “you’re in close proximity?” No. Outside mask wearing is dumb. Everyone knows it, and yet they also have a curfew in place, 9 p.m. What, the virus goes to sleep?

It doesn’t make any sense. Or it doesn’t go to sleep; it comes out late at night? It makes no sense at all. And yet Australia also has had more cases in the last 60 days than at any time. It’s only got about 40%, 42% of the population vaccinated. And you know what they’re saying? They’re not gonna go back to normal ’til 80% of the population is vaccinated!

This is a country — let’s just all be very clear — that has only had a few thousand deaths total from covid. And yet they have been willing to live this way because they think the mitigation measures — and not the fact that it’s an island that cut off travel from the rest of the world — is what has saved them. It’s madness.

CLAY: They gambled, Buck, that Covid Zero was possible — and to be fair, this was what Fauci was saying was possible as recently as May, when Fauci came out and said, “Hey, we’re gonna be, I think, able to effectively eradicate this virus in many ways thanks to the vaccine,” and now it’s clear that’s not going to be the case.

And if anything, everybody in Australia and New Zealand and all these countries that strictly locked down? Buck, they’re sitting ducks because they have almost no natural immunity in those countries. And now there’s a more dangerous variant in terms of its ability to spread, the Delta variant. And effectively, I think, they’re just gonna have to throw up their hands and acknowledge in some way that their strategy is flawed.

BUCK: So here’s what I think you’ll see — and note Sweden. You never hear about Sweden anymore, because Sweden is essentially going back to full normalcy. I mean, there’s some things here and there, but Sweden has very low covid deaths.

CLAY: Is it Denmark that announced basically they’re done with all restrictions?

BUCK: Yeah. There are countries in Northern Europe that are making that move. But let’s move to the point about Australia and New Zealand. Even in Australia — this is interesting, I think. Perth, which is like way out west by itself — one of the most remote major cities in the world — is effectively completely open ’cause it has almost no covid and they think it’s because they mask up so hard. It’s like they don’t have access to an atlas or to Google Earth and understand it’s because you guys in Perth are in the middle of nowhere and you shut off all travel.

CLAY: (laughing) you’re a city in an island in the middle of nowhere.

BUCK: Right. So you could have Covid Zero at your substation in Antarctica. And so, yes, you can have it really limited in Perth but the problems for Australians and these other countries is they’re playing… The timeline they’re working with is gonna be a problem because natural immunity, as we know, is more durable and higher in efficacy than the vaccinated kind.

And so they’re gonna have to get boosts. They’re having a hard time rolling out the vaccine in Australia. They’re gonna have get boosters and boosters. Look. Australia is just interesting I think for our purposes because we think of it as England with nicer people and better weather.

And it is East Germany with koalas. This is what I keep saying. It’s gone completely out of its mind. And there are people in this country for whom Australia is what we should have done and what we should do going forward, not just on covid but on climate and on other things.

CLAY: If we didn’t have — and I think it’s important to keep hammering this home. Because as frustrated as many people have been over the last 18 months, if we didn’t have federalism in this country and if we didn’t have Republican governors who had proven… Buck, you have to look at the data now, right? You notice how Florida is starting to completely disappear again from the national media storyline?

That’s because cases in Florida have absolutely plummeted, and that has happened — as we suggested it would — because it tends to be the case that covid goes up in the summer because that’s when people go inside in Florida because it’s super hot, and they’re all sitting around in the air-conditioning, and that’s what’s likely to happen.

I’m looking at the most recent data, and the reason why I say this is significant is, there’s no real place in Australia where they can point out that there was no reason for what they did, right? Because if the whole country does the same thing, there’s no sort of comparison where you can look at it and say, “Okay. Well, this state did that, and their results were this.”

This is why Florida has been such a threat to Democrats and the Biden administration for so long because when they don’t lock down and they have the ability to see already the cases plummeting. This is why Fauci, I think, was so upset with the college football crowds ’cause he said: Oh, covid was gonna feast. And instead, it has come roaring back down because there’s no basis for it whatsoever to support.

BUCK: How much is anyone actually hearing right now from the national corporate news media by the 14-day change in covid cases is down almost 30%. So, hold on a second. Is this because we’re masking up so well now, or because people are talking about social distancing again? And if someone’s gonna say, “Oh, it’s because we have more and more people vaccinated,” oh, okay.

So more people being vaccinated in July and August didn’t have this effect, but now? Now they’re saying it does have the effect, right? They always take the data to fit whatever the preferred narrative is. We’ve known this is seasonal for the last year because we saw what happened last summer. And, as expected, you look at the covid hot spots; it is moving north.

It’s moving toward the places in the country that are more in the temperate band instead of the warmer Sunbelt and southeastern United States. So this is what’s happening. It’s not surprising, but the one that we have to see here is: Who’s right? The people that believe this winter we’re gonna be pretty much okay because of a lot of natural immunity as well as a lot of vaccinations and boosters out there?

Or are we gonna see pretty massive vaccine fairly and the collapse of the entire Fauciite narrative — which they’ll just replace with another one, by the way. They’ll just say you didn’t get the boosters fast enough. But it’s gonna be one or the other.

CLAY: There’s no doubt, and I think that’s where you kind of look at the overly narrative here, and that’s why I think they’re waiting as long as they can to implement all of their restrictions and regulations, ’cause if they put ’em all in place right now, Buck, and we still have a surge in the fall and the winter, it’s a clear indication that their entire strategy has failed.

Now, you and I know that their entire strategy has failed but it makes the narrative more difficult. They’re going to keep creating an opportunity to just lock down harder. That’s what they’re gonna try to convince us all. And again, as bad as it’s been in the United States, it’s amazing to me that a country like Australia has acceded to the authoritarian demands like we have seen them do. And it’s an interesting idea to think about, Buck, but there are all these kids on college campuses now that are protesting, and they’re demanding for the government to do more to them, which is something I’ve never really seen before.

BUCK: A lot of people want to be controlled. A lot of people actually prefer it.

CLAY: Control us more.

BUCK: Yeah. They prefer being told what to do with the false promise of freedom. If you look throughout human history, there are a lot of political movements, a lot of different political organizations and polities where the promise of being kept safe and warm is all that it takes, and people will go along with it and they’ll do whatever and they just don’t care.

That’s been the most disappointing thing for me about the response to covid in this country. I thought we were more of like — when push came to shove — a 70-30, “I actually want freedom and to make my own choices” country. We’re like 52-48 country on that, right? Maybe 50-50. We’re right there. Half the country wants to be controlled.

CLAY: And arguably, the younger people want to be controlled the most, right? Because sometimes people talk about how 2020 is a mirror image of 1968. The difference between, like, 1968 and now is the hippies and the anti-war movement were against most people in positions of power. Kids today are advocating for people in positions of power to be more powerful over them.

BUCK: Oh, yeah!

CLAY: It’s really a strange dynamic.

BUCK: The movement… The left has gone from being against The Man to being The Man. That’s where we are as a society.

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The Worst Mayor in America Celebrates: Tyranny Works!

29 Sep 2021

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BUCK: New York is on the very front lines of the vaccine mandate fight and — no surprise — the authoritarians of the collectivist left like Bill de Blasio, the worst mayor in America… I’m sorry, Los Angeles. I know you think you’re able to compete with us on this one, and I know Portland’s got something to say, too.

But I think de Blasio is number one, the worst mayor in the United States — worse than Lori Lightfoot, worse than Garcetti, you name it — and here he is coming up with a very de Blasio line, which is: Wow! When you use the force of government to threaten and coerce people, they do the thing that you make them do.

DE BLASIO: The mandates have worked. John, I would say everybody out there, private sector, everyone should move to these mandates because they’ve been so strikingly effective. In the end when it comes down to you have to choose: Keep that job, keep that paycheck, do the right thing, get vaccinated, the majority of the people choose to get vaccinated.

BUCK: It’s like, hey, if I put a gun to Buck’s head and say, “Give me all your money” it’s an effective way of taking his money.

CLAY: Correct.

BUCK: Wow. Wow, Bill. Good job. This is wild. The fact — and I want to hit this data on Florida that I meant to hit last time, Buck, ’cause I think it’s significant as it ties into Australia and also to de Blasio saying, “Hey, this works.” You’re not gonna see this or hear it talked about. This is according to the New York Times. Florida cases are down 57% over the past 14 days.

The covid rate in Florida, 41 other states have a higher covid rate than Florida right now. Do you know what Florida did to make that happen, Buck? Nothing. They didn’t change the way that they were taking and allowing people to live in that state. And the fact that they didn’t do anything and the cases still plummeted…

And, by the way, the fact that the kids who didn’t wear masks had a roughly equal or even lower rate of covid infection than the kids that did wear masks… Again, you have to have comparable data in order to find out whether something works or not. So the New York people are gonna say, “Oh, this is what happens. It’s fantastic. The vaccine works perfectly.” But New York right now has a higher rate of covid than Florida.

BUCK: I just want to know: What did Ron DeSantis do to the state of Vermont? We should call DeSantis’ office and say, “Sir, what did you do to Vermont?” which has an almost 90% vaccinated rate and has the highest level of cases in the month of September that it has ever had in the entire pandemic, folks. Not the highest in three months or six months or a year.

Since the beginning of this when we thought hospitals were gonna be overwhelmed and we need to a million ventilators and everyone was, “Oh, my gosh. The world is coming to an end!” Vermont has more cases now than it did then. And, of course, we all know it’s Ron DeSantis’ fault.

CLAY: Yeah. And, by the way, Buck just some data here as I look at it: The states that are increasing the most right now, blue states with Democratic governors. And all of a sudden, the story is disappearing as to what they’re doing that’s so wrong. I can’t believe Ron DeSantis infected these people all over the country.

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This Is Comedy? Colbert Dances with Vaccines

29 Sep 2021

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BUCK: Clay, I actually walk past — on a pretty regular basis — the Colbert show where they tape it here in New York.

CLAY: Yeah. It’s Letterman’s old studio.

BUCK: Yeah, it’s Dave Letterman’s old studio. There’s a line. Look, I get it. I’m just happy that anybody wants to visit New York these days, given some of the stuff the city’s going through. So, the more the merrier in terms of tourists. Actually, it’s so good for the city. It’s so important for the economy here. And look, I think New York’s still a great place, despite all the challenges it has.

But there are hundreds of people who, I mean, it will be raining and they’re waiting in line to go into the Colbert show. You know, they’ll be standing out there and they’re kind of instructed by these audience coordinator people. It’s a little bit like children. They’re like, “Okay, everybody! When we do this, you clap. When we say this, you laugh.”

But people like to go and see live shows. I got it. The problem is Stephen Colbert is not fun and hasn’t been fun since he’s been basically pretending to be Bill O’Reilly or some version of right-wing punditry years ago on The Daily Show. Not The Daily Show. On Comedy Central. What was it called? The Colbert Report.

CLAY: The Colbert Report. But he initially got his start on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

BUCK: But last night… We’re gonna play it for you. There was this moment where they had a whole… They’re playing the tequila song. I don’t know. What’s that song called?

CLAY: I think we’ve got 30 second cut. They had already dress up like vaccines, right?

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: Dressed up like vaccines and danced on the stage. Here a 30 second sample of what.

BUCK: Tequila!

CLAY: Except they’re saying “vaccines” instead of “tequila.”

BUCK: Right. Right. That’s whole point. They were playing Tequila in place of vaccines.

CLAY: Who watches? Donald Trump broke late-night television with the exception of the Greg Gutfeld show on Fox News —

BUCK: Beating Colbert.

CLAY: — which outrates all of them.

BUCK: Yep.

CLAY: Everybody followed Stephen Colbert into this woke, anti-Trump universe. ABC with Kimmel. Even Jimmy Fallon, who used to be totally not a political angle guy, right? And as a result, there’s almost no humor on these shows anymore. It’s strange.

BUCK: I would watch… If they were just being funny and even funny —

CLAY: I used to love them.

BUCK: — in how they made fun of the other side, meaning our side, I would be willing to at least sometimes watch. If the jokes are really funny, I’d be like, “All right, we’re getting it.” They’re not funny, man. The Colbert thing is not. I see clips of it sometimes. You see what’s going on with it. But to have everybody dancing to vaccines? It’s just weird, man. People have the vaccine necklaces and your trucks backup dancers and all this stuff.

CLAY: It’s super weird.

BUCK: If we had said a year ago that this is where it the consensus Democrat culture was going, where people actually… If you talked about —

CLAY: Your governor, Buck, has a vaccine charm on her necklace!

BUCK: Necklace! Yes! Clay, people will not go on dates with people unless they know they are vaccinated now, as if that’s the biggest concern you should have. “Oh, what if you have covid!”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: It’s amazing to see how it’s just infiltrated so many aspects of the culture. You wonder, what actually…? We talk about going on back to normal. What will it take for people to realize how weird all of this is?

CLAY: Well, what’s so crazy is you mentioned, was at 54th Street where the Colbert studio is in Manhattan?

BUCK: Yeah, it’s on Broadway and like between 53rd and 54th.

CLAY: So I know you did not love him, but I loved David Letterman back in the day. I would watch it. Letterman was, in my opinion, a rebellious individual who basically made fun of the concept of a talk show, right? You didn’t like him. You liked Leno. But either way, they made equal opportunity jokes at the expense of any political figure, whether it’s Rudy Giuliani, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush.

BUCK: They were going for mass appeal.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: They were going for anybody. Whether you were a conservative truck driver from Nebraska or a left-wing software engineer in the Bay Area, they were making jokes that you could basically laugh at. Certainly, I could speak to Leno. I can’t speak to how you think Letterman’s better than Leno.

CLAY: I loved Letterman, and I went and sat in his studio audience as a kid in college on a trip to New York City and it was an incredible highlight for me to get to watch that show in person. I understand why people line up to watch it. I don’t understand how late-night television — the Johnny Carsons, the Jay Lenos, the David Lettermans, whoever you enjoyed watching — has descended into this absurd universe where everybody has the same opinions. It isn’t funny, and you’ve got people dressed up as dancing vaccines?

BUCK: It’s awkward, too, man. You see it, and people the kind of know; they’re being told to clap. Look, I want people to have fun. I actually like when there are these parties and no one’s masked and we have to point out that, sure, there’s a double standard. But at least there are people out there enjoying themselves, which we need more of that, not less. But wouldn’t it be so nice if…? Clay, do what you can. Can you make some calls? If we could just depoliticize sports and late-night comedy, I feel like we’d have some of the soul of the country back that the left has taken from us.

CLAY: Yeah, no doubt.

BUCK: So make some calls.

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Governor Abbott Updates Us on the Situation at the Border

29 Sep 2021

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CLAY: We are joined now by Texas governor Greg Abbott. Governor, I appreciate you coming on with us. Watching Fox News in the last 15 minutes or so, they have live footage from inside of Mexico of massive caravans of illegal immigrants continuing to work their way toward the border.

Governor, I think a lot of people who are listening to us right now wish you were in charge of all the border between Mexico and the United States and all of the illegal crossings. What’s the latest you can tell us about that, and how can the state of Texas help to secure our border even if the president is asleep at the wheel and not doing it himself?

GOV. ABBOTT: Sure. Let me answer both of those questions. So these caravans that you’re talking about, this is something that we have had information about for several weeks now. And I had a meeting with the National Guard in general and the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety yesterday. I was in Laredo today, and I have been working with local officials up and down the border as we prepare for what may be this oncoming group of caravans.

I’ve never seen this. The reason I say “group” is because we have multiple reports about different caravans coming to different regions across the border. And so what we’re going to do in response to it as we are preparing as we speak, is exactly what you saw at the apex moment when people were coming across the river in Del Rio. And I’m gonna give you the words of the Border Patrol officers themselves.

Who, by the way, we work very closely with and I find despicable the attack on Border Patrol officers by the Biden administration is… You have the commander-in-chief attacking his own officers who are on the front lines doing their best to safeguard our border. It is wrong for the president to attack them.

That point aside, those Border Patrol officers said that the way in which the border was shut down in Del Rio — as you saw people walking across that dam coming from Mexico into the state of Texas — was the moment that Texas Department of Public Safety as well as Texas National Guard, they put all of their armed vehicles back-to-back-to-back-to-back.

And then had their officers on the border side of their vehicles, and they said at that moment, that is when people stopped coming across the border. My point in telling you that is, that is going to be part of a similar policy that we’ll use with regard to these other caravans that are coming toward the Mexico-Texas border. We need to obviously first identify the exact location.

Then second, we will identify where we will set up these barricades. And then we have some other strategies that we will be employing. One thing we have done in the state of Texas that’s different than has ever been done before and that is historically state law enforcement can make arrests of people who are coming across the border illegally.

And those are based upon the federal immigration laws, because it’s a violation of law when you do come across the border and we can legally make arrests of these people. But when we do so, we have to turn them over to federal officials which when Trump was present the federal officials would not use catch-and-release.

However, under the Biden presidency they use catch-and-release. Because of that, what Texas has done, we stepped up and created our own court system in south Texas where we are arresting and processing and then jailing people who are coming across the border for criminal trespass. Because I declared a disaster in this region along the border, it immediately elevates the time in jail and the penalties for trespass in the state of Texas and it turns it into a six-month to a year behind bar penalty.

And so we opened up thousands of jail cells where we now have more than a thousand people behind bars who crossed across the border illegally and trespass on areas in the state of Texas, and we arrested them for trespass.

And so we are using those strategies and more to make sure that we will be able to do a better job than even what Biden administration is doing to secure our border. Now, out of that is top of this multilayer strategy that we have because while we are doing all of that, we’ve also begun the process of building the Texas border wall.

All of this was capable because of funding provided by the state legislature where the state of Texas and Texas taxpayers themselves are coming up with three — not coming up with, they’ve allocated, they’ve provided to us, they’ve budgeted — $3 billion for Texas to be able to respond to this tidal wave of people coming across the border. Which, they would not be coming across the border in a tidal wave but for the fact that the Biden administration has implemented open border policies that are dangerous to our health, dangerous to our safety.

And, listen, I would be neglect full if I didn’t tell you something else that we’re working. And that is a month ago, we filed a lawsuit in a federal district court in Texas and got a judgment ruling in our favor by a federal district judge compelling the Biden administration to reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy. Even though a federal judge has ordered the Biden administration to do that, they have not complied with that federal court order.

So last Friday we went back to court urging the court to command and compel the Biden administration to follow the federal judge’s order. So we’re seeking that, and then in a separate proceeding we’re seeking the reinstatement and full application of Title 42, which is the policy that Trump put in place and where — because of the potential for people to bring covid into the United States — they need to prevent anybody from coming across the border.

And so, if all Biden did was to leave in place exactly what Trump had left him, we wouldn’t be having any problem whatsoever. It’s because the Biden administration has abandoned all of the strategies that Trump put in place that we are trying to reinstate the policies that Trump put in place that were effective assist securing the border.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Governor Abbott of Texas — and, Governor, I just want to ask you before we let you get back gubernatorial work. What exactly does the federal government, does the Biden administration do in response to any offers you’ve made to give additional resources? I mean, I know from speaking to Border Patrol in, say, Southern California along the U.S.-Mexico border that they feel that there is a state level government hostility in California to their work.

But under the Trump administration, there was obviously governmental support for it. In Texas, you have state-level support for a security border. That’s what you’re laying out for everybody. Is there any cooperation that is asked for by the federal government or is there any cooperation that is denied by them that people should know about?

GOV. ABBOTT: Well, we need to separate terms here from the federal government, which I consider to be the Biden administration —

BUCK: Right.

GOV. ABBOTT: — and separate them from the border patrol. Which, I know Border Patrol are federal government officers. But the Border Patrol are professional law enforcement officers, and the border patrol works very collaboratively with state law enforcement. So the state has two different entities on the border. We have the Border Patrol and we have separate from that more than a thousand Texas Department of Public Safety officers down there.

And the Border Patrol officers themselves were extremely collaboratively and supportive of both the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety. The Biden administration separate from the Border Patrol, candidly, they have never even talked to us. Whether it be the president, the vice president, Mayorkas or any of them —

BUCK: That’s amazing.

GOV. ABBOTT: — none of them ever talked to us. None offered my help or any assistance. They never even offered any challenge to us, which is good because it means we are able to step up and do more than has ever been done to put up forces, put up barriers to try to do everything possible to prevent these people from coming in. But this is a complete dereliction of duty by the Biden administration. They are acting contrary to the constitutional command for them to secure the border, and I hope Congress holds this administration accountable.

BUCK: Governor Abbott of Texas, we appreciate it. Thanks for being with us and breaking down what’s really happening at the border. We’ll talk to you soon.

GOV. ABBOTT: Y’all take care.

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LeBron James Admits He’s Not an Expert on Something

29 Sep 2021

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BUCK: LeBron James is out there urging people to get vaccinated. Clay pointed this one out to me and I thought, “Oh, this is interesting. We should have a little chat about this one.” Here is, the most — right now the most — famous basketball player in the world on vaccines.

JAMES: You’re talking about individuals’ bodies, y’know, we’re not talking about something that’s, y’know, political or — or, uh, racism or police brutality and things of that nature. The… We’re talking about, like, people’s bodies and well-beings. (sic) So, y’know, I don’t feel like for me personally that I should get involved in — in — in what other people should do for their bodies and their livelihoods.

It’s… It would be talking about somebody if they should, y’know, take this job or not. Uh, listen, you have to do what did he say best for you and your family, if they should relocate. You have to do what’s best for your family. I did what my family I know some of my friends what they did for their families. But as far as speaking for everybody and their individualities (sic) and things they want to do, umm, I feel like that’s my… That’s not my job.

BUCK: I’m glad that he recognizes he’s not a vaccine expert, Clay, but I’m pretty sure he’s not a law enforcement expert either.

CLAY: That’s what’s so funny about this is I agree with him, and I agree it’s the same advice that we’ve been giving, which is you should listening your doctor; make the decisions that are best for your family. We give advice to our family members. But implicitly here what LeBron is saying is that it is important for him to speak out on politics and police issues and issues of race, as if he’s an expert on those things.

When anyone who has ever paid attention to the comments that LeBron has made, he’s making things I think — very frequently — worse. In fact, the most recent comments I’ve seen him make at all about police… Do you remember this, Buck, when the Columbus Ohio police officer saved the life of the girl that was about to be stabbed to death and shot the woman with the knife?

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: LeBron James made the decision to post that police officer’s image on his social media account and demand that the police officer be held accountable, rather than doing what he should have done in labeling that police officer a hero for reacting in real time and saving a life.

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: So I don’t think LeBron is an expert on any of these issues. In fact, I think he often makes it worse.

BUCK: I just wish that whether it’s athletes or celebrities, the standard was, “If you’re ignorant on a subject, just be quiet. You don’t have to talk about it. We just appreciate the skill set that you have.” But no. That’s not how it goes.

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Democrats Really Want to Spend Billions on Tree Equity

29 Sep 2021

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BUCK: I’ve been talking to Clay all week about “tree equity” and then the wonderful Senator Marsha Blackburn comes on and mentions also the tree equity. Let me explain to you. This is a real thing, and it is a line item.

CLAY: Billions of dollars in tree equity, not even a small number. Billions with a B.

BUCK: No, it’s like real money in considerable numbers being spent on this. Tree equity is kind of like tree socialism. It’s there’s not enough trees in some neighbors so they’re gonna take government money to make sure that everybody has the same number of trees, because they like trees, the climate, and it provides shade. This is a priority of the government, apparently, and I would just say, it’s actually not… You could plant trees. If people want trees in the neighborhood, it’s a thing that they could do.

CLAY: Seems like also something that maybe local government should be focused on, as opposed to the national government deciding to spend billions of dollars on trees. Just an idea.

BUCK: It doesn’t really seem like a federal priority. If you don’t have enough… The federal government’s not gonna help you when you have a giant pothole on your street that will rip your axle or tire off or whatever. But they are gonna make sure that you have equal trees in different neighborhoods. This is just another version of micromanagement.

By the way, if you’ve never read a book called Seeing Like a State, I would highly recommend it because it goes through government programs from the top down. One of them is in village planning in Tanzania. The one that it starts out with in the book is German forestry, Clay, and the smartest guys in Germany.

I think it’s the latest nineteenth century figure out, “You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to…” The experts, the Faucis of that time. “We’re going to only plant one kind of tree in rows, an exact degree apart. We’re not gonna allow for just forestry management,” and what they had is over time — because they thought they would have a much better league — it turns out that the local farmers and local forestry knew this was a terrible idea. Because if, one, pestilence goes through it —

CLAY: Wipes out everything.

BUCK: — it wipes out everything. If you have a fire you don’t have the underbrush there necessary to sort of be a stopgap against the fire, that actually the natural order of things with trees was better than what they were trying to do by planting trees in perfect rows, but the federal government never learns. They always think that they can make things better. It’s a little academic, but it’s a really interesting book.

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Senator Blackburn on the Budget, Border and Afghanistan

29 Sep 2021

Listen Here:

CLAY: We bring in now Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee — and, Senator, as we get ready here, I want to give a shout-out first. A couple of weeks ago I met your husband, and he said he had been a longtime Rush listener, that he loved listening to Rush and that he is enjoying listening to Buck and I as well.

So I’m assuming that he is probably listening. Your husband, Charles. He is a stalwart patriot, obviously — good dad, I’m imagining, and good grandfather as well. So I know you’re the senator, but I wanted to give him a shout-out because I know he’s listening as well.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, Clay, you are going to make his day. Yes. He enjoyed listening, and every night when we talk — and, of course, I’m in D.C., and he’s home in Tennessee. And so many times Chuck will say, “Let me tell you what Clay was talking about today” or something that happened on OutKick. So, he’s a good one. He’s a keeper.

CLAY: Well, we appreciate that. All right. Let’s dive into some of the chaos that’s going on right now. It’s a wild week on Capitol Hill, and I know there’s a lot of wild weeks, but this one is really up there with the budget mess going on right now. What’s gonna happen in the Senate with reconciliation in your mind? What do you think Kyrsten Sinema out of Arizona and Joe Manchin from West Virginia are going to do based on what you’re hearing? What’s gonna happen with the budget side of the equation in the Senate?

SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, what we think will happen this week is that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will offer a continuing resolution. This will take us through December 3rd, and that way there’s not a government shutdown. Pelosi really did not want a government shutdown to happen on her watch. Then they will go back to dealing with the $3.5 trillion budget, which really is closer to 5.5 trillion.

But they do not get support from Sinema, Manchin. They’ve got some issues with Hassan, with Tester. You’ve got some of the moderates in the House, Democrats that won purple districts or districts that were slightly red. And those people are upside down in their polling. So they’re not wanting to back this $3.5 trillion spending bill.

And I think what they will do is take the number down so that they can just get some of these programs on the books, because they feel like, if they can lower the age for Medicare, put in place the early childhood education program, expand Medicaid, put in place some of these programs like “tree equity” (crosstalk) —

BUCK: Told you about that one.

CLAY: Buck told me about that one.

SEN. BLACKBURN: (laughs) Yeah. — that we won’t be able to get ’em off the books. So that’s going to be what Pelosi has to say. Now, the third bucket is the debt ceiling, and the Democrats are on that one on their own. We wouldn’t be having this discussion had they not run up so much spending right off the bat, had they not…

The bipartisan bills that passed under President Trump could have been done for much less. The Republican number was always less, and who ran it up in order to get “bipartisanship”? It was Pelosi that added hundreds of billions of dollars. that’s their issue; they’re going to have solve it.

BUCK: Senator Blackburn, it’s Buck. I want to ask you about the border. I actually have some contacts who have been down there recently and well south of the border as well who have sent me information about the latest on the continuing caravans now of largely Haitian-origin migrants making their way to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Is there anything that you think could get this administration, at this point, to take action that would actually secure the border, given what we’re seeing? Or are they just so allergic in a sense to imposing, implementing some of the Trump-era policies that worked that they’d prefer to have a border that’s effectively a sieve and de facto open than deal with the fact that the American people are currently seeing it’s easy to get into the country now if you come across the border.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, you’re right about that. They’re expecting people to not really pay attention to this. I think Obama kind of kicked ’em pretty good yesterday when, in his remarks, he said you can’t sustain an open border like this. I mean, we’re a sovereign nation, and when you have these waves of people coming in 10, 15, 30,000 — and we’ve already had upwards of 1.5 million people cross that border this year — this is a real problem.

It’s also a problem for a lot of these communities where they’re finding out that illegal immigrants are coming into their communities. They don’t have covid vaccinations. They have no idea individuals are coming. They need additional educational benefits, social service benefits, health benefits. And, of course, that cost gets transferred to your local government.

And some of our local mayors… We’re actually, Buck, working on legislation that would require more transparency with these communities because they just find out, you know, you have children showing up for school and all the sudden the school systems got to go get a portable classroom because they’re out of space.

It’s things, problems of that nature. But the border, people are very concerned about it; women are concerned about it. A lot of security moms out there. And whether it’s crime in the street, an open southern border, the debacle in Afghanistan, we are hearing a lot about — so much from women about — the issues of security.

CLAY: Senator Blackburn of Tennessee talking with us now, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. I know you have been aggressively questioning General Milley, General McKenzie, and Defense Secretary Austin about what happened in Afghanistan.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Correct.

CLAY: What, in your mind, have you learned from what they have said in response to those questions, and what should those three men do as a result of the debacle in Afghanistan, in your mind?

SEN. BLACKBURN: Yes. Well, first I think it’s important to note — and I add General Miller, who was with us in a classified setting a couple of weeks ago, what we know is the president was advised that you could not draw down the troops and exit the military force before you got all of the American people out. So he received that information. But then he did not take an action on that information. We… Quite frankly, I think that he… Uh, I hate to say it but, Clay, he didn’t tell the truth when he was talking to George Stephanopoulos.

CLAY: Yes.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Because — now, all of those — the three generals and the secretary have said the president was told it was unwise. Even general McKenzie said, “You need 4,000 troops, not 2,500,” and we know that it was the president who made the decision to give up the Bagram airfield, to let the embassy go and just to focus on HKIA. We know it was the president or his team that decided that they were not going to defend Kabul, that they would let the Taliban go ahead and take it.

And this is when they were offered to keep Kabul until they got people out. We know that the Department of State and the Department of Defense still –this far into it, 45 days into this, they still — cannot tell us how many Americans, how many of our partners, how many of our Afghan partners are still in Afghanistan waiting to come out.

Every time we turn around, they say, “Well, it’s about a hundred.” Well, you know, some of the groups like Task Force Pineapple and Nazarene Fund, these groups of veterans who are Special Ops guys who were working to get people out, have brought out a hundred here, 175 there. So, for goodness’ sake, it’s more than a hundred! My office alone had 2,000 cases. So this is reprehensible that they still do not know who is left behind enemy lines.

BUCK: Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Senator, always appreciate you coming by the Clay and Buck show. Thanks for being with us.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Good to be with you. Thank you!

CLAY: Tell your husband, hi. I know he’s a big fan, Buck.

SEN. BLACKBURN: (laughing) Will do!

CLAY: I like to hear that.

BUCK: He’s got great taste in radio.

CLAY: Great taste in radio!

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Matt Walsh, Virginia Parents Blast Leftist Indoctrination

29 Sep 2021

Listen Here:

BUCK: You remember it was just a few months ago when critical race theory was all over the headlines, and the left was running for cover. First they were saying there is no critical race theory being taught in schools, and then they said, “Well, you can’t know what critical race theory is unless you have a PhD in it.”

And then they said, “Well, shut up! You’re racist.” That’s basically the way the progression went on the critical race theory discussion. And parents, it turns out, when they find out — and a lot of it happened because the Zoom instruction at home. When they find out what their kids are being taught, they get upset because they don’t want this leftist indoctrination of wokeness starting at age 8, 9, 10, something like that.

That’s what’s happening in a lot of these schools. Loudoun County has been on the front lines of this for a while, and it’s interesting because it’s actually Loudoun and Fairfax counties are next to each other. I lived in D.C. for a number of years. I know these places pretty well. They’re affluent compared to the national average in terms of income. These are actually quite wealthy communities overall and skew a little bit Democrat.

But they are solidly — when the parents actually get involved and know what’s going on — opposed to CRT teaching in school. Well, our buddy Matt Walsh from The Daily Wire — and I haven’t got the full logistics on this yet. But apparently, he has a lease on a property or something in Virginia, so he qualified to go speak at the meeting.

He’s a Virginia resident. That’s all I know is Matt now is apparently a Virginia resident on paper. I’m sure in reality too. But he spoke, he only got 60 seconds, and he spoke at Loudoun County on what he thinks of CRT, and we thought he did a nice job, so we wanted to share it.

WALSH: I would thank you all for allowing me to speak to you tonight. But you tried not to allow it, yet here I am. Now, you only give us 60 seconds, so let me get the point. You are all child abusers. You prey upon impressionable children and indoctrinate them into your insane ideological cult — a cult which holds many fanatical views, but none so deranged as the ideas that boys are girls and girls are boys.

By imposing this vile nonsense on students to the point even of forcing young girls to share locker rooms with boys, you deprive these kids of safety and privacy — and something more fundamental, too, which is truth. If education is not grounded in truth, then it is worthless. Worse, it is poison. You are poison. You are predators.

I can see why you try to stop us from speaking. You know that your ideas are indefensible. You silence the opposing side because you have no argument. You can only hide under your beds like pathetic, little, gutless cowards hoping we shut up and go away. But we won’t! I promise you that. Thank you for your time, and I’ll talk to you again very, very soon.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I feel like they probably don’t love Matt at that school board, but I think the folks outside cheering for him were fans.

CLAY: Yeah. Look. He lives here in the Nashville area with me, but they changed the rules to assure who was allowed to speak and who was not allowed to speak. And my understanding is he had to have proof of property, basically, in the county in order to be able to speak at the hearing, at the school board there, but this is part of a bigger picture, Buck.

Because we have an election going on in Virginia right now, and Democrats — Terry McAuliffe in particular — are getting super nervous that they are going to lose this election. It would be a massive upset because Virginia has tilted, as you said, towards the Democrat Party over the last decade plus or so. So if Republicans could punch back and Youngkin — who we’re gonna have on the show at some point — could win this election, it would be a major statement going into the midterms.

And they had a debate, and I think this is pretty significant ’cause it ties in with what Matt was saying. They had a debate about whether or not parents should be able to be involved in what their kids are hearing inside of their public schools. I believe we have cut 29 here from that debate, which I think is gonna be a pretty significant statement that was made by Terry McAuliffe as he is trying to win not reelection ’cause you can only serve one term in Virginia, but he’s already been the governor of Virginia. He’s trying to become the governor again. Listen to this.

MCAULIFFE: The parents had the right to veto books, Glenn, not to be knowledged about it, also take them off the shelves. And I’m not gonna let parents come into schools and actually take the books out and make their own decisions!

YOUNGKIN: You vetoed it.

MCAULIFFE: So… Yeah! (snickers) I stopped the bill that… I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach!

BUCK: Oh, I don’t think parents should be talking to the schools that their taxes, by the way, support and pay for.

CLAY: That’s a big statement. He actually understands how business works, unlike almost every Democrat.

BUCK: Very savvy guy. I think he’s got a really interesting political future and obviously beating Terry McAuliffe… (chuckles) I will support a whole range of folks if it means that Terry McAuliffe gets an L. But think about this. Terry McAuliffe just says it, ’cause this is an unguarded moment where he lets out what he really feels.

(summarized) “Oh, these stupid parents telling the school boards what their kids should and shouldn’t be taught when it comes to indoctrination.” Yeah, dude. The parents should be able to weigh in on what their kids are learning in school.

CLAY: Yeah. No. My wife was a guidance counselor was public school here in the Tennessee area, and one of the number one things that dictate whether a school is going to be successful or not, Buck — in fact, the number one thing — is how involved parents are. So, the schools that fail the most are the ones where the painters care the least about what their kids are being instructed.

So what McAuliffe argued there is not only saying the quiet part out loud, but, Buck, it’s actually a direct repudiation of parental involvement in schools, which has been shown to be overwhelming important in terms of having a successful school. So I want parents engaged in what their kids are learning. I know we’re all busy. I’ve got young kids in school.

I know how challenging it can be to make sure and keep tabs on what your kids are learning, but I think, Buck, to your point — and I think this is true. So many parents were stunned by what they saw their kids learning when remote schooling was going on and everybody was locked down that many of them said, “We’ve gotta fight back.”

BUCK: And the media’s tried to come to aid of the critical race theorists and leftist indoctrination machinery of the public school system in this country. Now, look, I know some areas of public schools that are not doing quite this level of stuff. Although it would be surprising to folks, I think, to hear just how many school districts across the country are engaged in teaching some form of what could be called CRT. You know, Chris Rufo — who, of course, the lib education apparatus lives in constant fear of Chris Rufo over at the Manhattan Institute.

CLAY: Yeah, he’s a fantastic guy.

BUCK: He’s got data on this. “Parents in America’s fastest-growing cities oppose critical race theory in public schools by a massive 42-point margin,” he writes. “A strong majority…” This is the other part of it that I think the media really doesn’t want people to know.

“A strong majority of black and Hispanic parents oppose critical race theory and support removing ‘concepts such as white privilege and systemic racism’ from the curriculum.” This is in direct contravention, by the way, of the conventional corporate media wisdom which is, “Only right-wing Trump supporters oppose critical race theory!” No, it’s a lot of just Americans. Like clear majority of that of all backgrounds knowing that they’re teaching this poison, this crap in schools.

CLAY: Yeah, no doubt.

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NBA Won’t Pay Kyrie Irving, Other Unvaxxed Players

29 Sep 2021

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CLAY: We’ve been talking about all of these crazy mandates coming out of New York City. And I would say the league that has been the most aggressive in terms of trying to mandate its players getting vaccinated, even though there’s not an official mandate, is the NBA. And New York City and L.A. will not allow NBA athletes to play in their arenas in those towns — I believe San Francisco as well — if they are not covid vaccinated.

And this is becoming a major issue, particularly in New York, with Kyrie Irving, who is a top player. Mayor Bill de Blasio was asked about that. Then there’s another crazy additional nugget here that I want to hit you with. But first let’s play cut 7 as Bill de Blasio talks about Kyrie Irving refusing to be vaccinated.

DE BLASIO: Look. I’m a fan. I’m a fan of the Nets. I live in Brooklyn. I’m a fan of Kyrie. I would just appeal to him, get vaccinated, support your fans, want to see you. We all want you back, your teammates want you back. Uh, look, there are teams now that are a hundred percent vaccinated. That’s a great example to everyone else.

REPORTER: But no wiggle room for you?

DE BLASIO: We have a rule that has to be applied whether you’re famous, whether you’re not famous, whether you’re everyday workingman or woman. Get vaccinated ’cause that’s what makes us all safe.

CLAY: So he’s not gonna be able to play, Buck — and, first of all, vaccination does not make everybody safe. We know that that’s not true even though it continues to be hammered home. But the NBA has now announced, Buck, that if you aren’t able to play because you are not vaccinated, they will not pay you your salary. So for Kyrie Irving, every game he did not play in New York would be $400,000 that he is not receiving.

BUCK: I gotta come back in another life as a top NBA player.

CLAY: Yeah, no kidding. But this is a really fascinating example of the stakes that are at play here. I’m not sure whether the NBA has the legal authority. For people out there, plays in the NBA sit out of games all the time for nonhealthy related reasons. So the idea that you could fine $400,000? Remember, he wouldn’t be able to play in over half of all Nets games because he wouldn’t be eligible to play in particular in New York City. And so this is a mess.

BUCK: And you know what I was thinking when he was doing this? De Blasio, as much as he is an ignorant commie who has ruined my home city as much as he can… There’s still a lot of great stuff in New York. I still love this place. But it’s taken a beating. Not just ’cause of covid. It’s taken a beating ’cause of de Blasio and the idiotic policies of the left. But at least they don’t have, from what I know… I could be missing something. They don’t have the same kind of baked-in double standard they do out in L.A., where essentially if you’re a celebrity, no rules.

CLAY: Actor or actress, didn’t matter.

BUCK: You know what I mean? I guess the Met Gala somehow fell under some exemption. I’d have to look at all the rules.

CLAY: It’s a great point.

BUCK: But if you’re a famous actor doing a production in Hollywood right now, you basically can get away with being unmasked. When you actually dig into all these rules, what you find out is that it’s not really about health. It’s about control, because they’ll make exceptions when they want to for whomever they want to, not every stop to think. I don’t think the virus cares how much revenue you bring in. I don’t think the virus cares how connected you are to the mayor’s office.

CLAY: Well, and those ridiculous example of that, Buck, was when Black Lives Matter protesters. Oh, they were allowed. But if you wanted to go and do anything else, no.

BUCK: There was doing us a huge favor, the Blue Check MD Brigade because if you were a person capable of thinking for oneself, you knew in June of 2020 that the Clue Check Mafia were a bunch of covid frauds.

CLAY: There’s no doubt.

 

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