They Can’t Ban Him Here! Alex Berenson Brings Us Covid Truth

6 Sep 2021

CLAY: We bring in now Alex Berenson, who I think has been one of the biggest truth-tellers, as you guys well know who listen to this program. We’ve been talking to him for a year and a half now and he’s been telling us everything covid-related. He’s now banned from Twitter and one reason I am so excited to have this outlet, to have this program to be able to talk with you guys every single weekday is because I don’t know how long Twitter is gonna allow me to still be there or anybody else that has opinions that go against the prevailing narrative.

And I want to start here, Alex. First of all, thanks for spending part of your Labor Day with me.

BERENSON: Sure.

CLAY: But did you see the Rolling Stone story and the way it spread information about Ivermectin, which is 100% false.

BERENSON: Yeah.

CLAY: There’s no truth to it at all. Twitter has aggressively policed your sharing of factual data. That story’s 100% false and they’ve done nothing to try and bring that story down.

BERENSON: Yes. If you say negative things about covid or about people dying, you can basically make things up on Twitter and they will not police you. This was very clear last year, and now we’re talking about Ivermectin. And to be clear, I think there are a lot of questions about Ivermectin, and I don’t think people (chuckling) should be using it randomly or buying it from feed stores and using it. I think… I mean, you know, it’s a promising drug, but that’s all it is, and lots of promising treatments don’t work out in the long run and that’s why we have clinical trials. But to go to your point, Twitter will let you — and I’m just gonna say lie — lie about —

CLAY: It’s 100% a lie, the story that Rolling Stone ran is a lie.

BERENSON: Yeah. Just last year there was story after story about young doctors — this is back in March and April and May of last year dying of covid. There are residents dropping dead of covid. Somebody — a doctor in I believe it was Texas claimed that three doctors that she knew, she phrased it artfully, but if you read it quickly it sounded like she knew three doctors who died of covid.

And it turns out (chuckles) it was completely untrue. And it was retweeted I believe hundreds of thousands of times, certainly tens of thousands of times. Twitter takes no action to police any of this stuff. But I’m banned. And so, you know, when we talk — which I believe we last talked Friday a week ago, 10 days ago — this was, and I told you that I thought they might ban me. I said people really to need sign up for the Substack.

They really need to get on there because this could happen. It was Saturday night that they banned me, and they banned me because I said the vaccine doesn’t stop infection, which is true; that it doesn’t stop transmission, which is true. The CDC acknowledges these things now. I mean, it may do that in short term, but it certainly doesn’t do it for more than a few months.

And is certainly, you know, which is why they’re talking about boosters. And I said don’t think of it as a vaccine. You know, it’s not a vaccine in the traditional sense. It’s basically a therapeutic, meaning they’re giving it to you hoping it will reduce your symptoms. That’s much more like a traditional drug than a vaccine. Except it has real side effects! So that got me banned. So, you know, I’m not on Twitter right now, which is at the moment, you know, it’s problematic.

It’s gonna be become more problematic for me over time because, you know, I still… I still can get… You know, you’ll have me on, Tucker will have many on but, you know, over time, you know, Twitter was my most important outlet, and being banned from it is harmful to me. So I am… You know, I’m vigorously considering my legal remedies, and I think what I may wind up doing may wind up surprising Twitter and that’s all I’m gonna say right now.

I will move when the time is right. And I think I have some very good claims, and we will see, you know, what a court of law has to say. But for the moment, I can’t talk about, you know, that Bangladesh study that came out last week about masks and the problems with it on Twitter. I can’t talk about, you know, the fact that the Israeli data is still terrible on Twitter, and so it is a problem for me.

CLAY: Okay. Positive is, you’re talking to millions of people all over the country right now through us, and I also have told you — and I’ll say it publicly — at OutKick, the site that I run, we will also be happy to run your articles if Substack becomes an issue for you as I know what happens is, none of these people who try to get people canceled are ever happen when they get ’em canceled from one place.

They gotta try to get ’em canceled everywhere. And to me, OutKick has always represented, you know, the faster reaches of the First Amendment. And I think what you’re saying is important in the marketplace of ideas in a massive way. And also, by the way, the very foundation of science is to debate issues in a public sphere in an effort to try to find out what the truth is.

So let’s go in to that Israeli data. What is the latest that Israel…? I saw where they’re now going to require — to your point, on the difference between a vaccine and a booster, a therapeutic booster. They’re now saying in Israel — correct me if I’m wrong — that they’re gonna require a fourth different shot. We initially were told double covid vaccine shots, then they said they were gonna give a third booster in Israel. Now they’re talking about a fourth booster?

BERENSON: They haven’t said that they’re going to require that. The health minister said he thought that was likely.

CLAY: Yeah.

BERENSON: It is clear that you will need a third booster in Israel to be considered fully vaccinated. That’s not even an argument anymore. They are requiring a third… I should say a second booster, third shot —

CLAY: Yes.

BERENSON: — to be considered fully vaccinated. So here’s the thing. They started giving out these third shots, these boosters, more than a month ago now. This is not new at this point. You know, we’re going on five weeks. And Israel’s having its worst days ever for infections, okay, for new cases. So, again, the idea that (laughing) vaccines are–

CLAY: And let me unpack that a little bit with you, if I could. So Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world. They now are requiring a third shot of the covid booster. And the data in Israel right now, in terms of both cases and hospitalizations, is worse than it ever has been before?

BERENSON: So the data for cases is worse. In other words, they’re having more positive tests than they’ve ever had before.

CLAY: Yes.

BERENSON: Hospitalizations appear to have peaked, at least now, about a week or 10 days ago. Deaths are still rising, but hospitalizations have peaked. But they have peaked at a very high level, and both vaccinated and unvaccinated people are in the hospital. So here’s the thing. The booster (laughing) should be working right now! If it’s ever gonna work, it’s gonna work in a few weeks after you get it because what it does is it causes your body to produce a lot more spike proteins.

And that, in turn, should generate a strong immune respondent where you get more antibodies to those spike proteins, okay? So if you’re gonna be protected by this booster, it should be in the weeks after you are hit with it. And what we are seeing is nothing like full protection. And one of the things that happened that made people so optimistic about vaccines in the spring was cageses went effectively to zero in both Israel and the U.K.

And they went down quite a bit in the U.S. too. So people said, “Hey, these vaccines really work. You know, this mechanism is really great, and it works!” Unfortunately, it didn’t work long term. But what I’m saying is, it is very bad sign for the long-term or even medium-term efficacy of these vaccines that we’re not seeing cases plunge in Israel at this point, and we are not.

CLAY: Okay. Were you at all optimistic…? I started off today’s program, Alex, saying that the huge crowds of college football fans made me believe that a lot of Americans — and I think you’re seeing this in England and many other countries as well — that a lot of people around the world are finally just throwing up their hands and saying, “We’re ready to get back to normal.”

I don’t know if you watched the clips. Whether it was in Wisconsin, Virginia, Texas — all over the country, the width and breadth of this country — sold-out crowds for college football games. Nobody in the crowd’s wearing a mask. Did that make you believe, “Hey, maybe the great mass of normal Americans are finally saying, ‘We can’t stay curled up in the fetal position forever’?”

BERENSON: I mean, I hope so. That’s not quite what the polling data shows. The polling data shows there are still a lot of Americans who are afraid. But there’s a much bigger problem, Clay, right, which is (laughing) even if half of the country believes like you and I do, you know, it’s time to get on with life, right? You know, there are gonna be people dying from this, we’re gonna do our best to treat them, we’re gonna give them monoclonal antibodies.

Maybe older people should get these boosters, although, you know, I would say the data is iffy on that at this point. But we’re gonna get on with life. We have to get on with life. The people running the country are in exactly the opposite position. They are desperate to prove that what they have done the last 18 months, what they’ve put us through the last 18 months is right. And they’re now basically lying, okay?

Unless the data in the U.S. is completely different from the data in Israel and U.K. and other places that, you know, are sort of more transparent about who’s in the hospital, they are just lying. Because we know in Israel and the U.K. that the most people who are in hospital, even with the boosters, have been vaccinated, and we know from the U.K. that the great majority of people who are dying from Delta are vaccinated.

So, you know, it’s very hard to get from that to 90% of people in the U.S. who are in hospitals are not vaccinated. That is just probably a lie, and I hate to say the CDC is lying. So we’re at a really weird place right now because most people or at least a huge minority of people — maybe it’s 40%, maybe it’s 48%, maybe it’s 55% — want to get on with life.

They want to be done with this, period. But the people in charge certainly outside of a few states… Like you’re fortunately. You know, you live in Tennessee, you know, or Florida or Texas. People in my state, you know, I can’t… I can’t go to a restaurant in New York City right now. I’m not vaccinated. Like, the rules are getting worse in the blue states.

CLAY: So I want to bring you back for one more segment here if I can, Alex, because it is frustrating I know for so many people. And I just ran through the list of all the cities that are seeing their overall populations explode. And it’s not gonna surprise you. There’s a lot of Texas, there’s a lot of Florida, and there’s a lot of Tennessee because people in blue states who are losing their minds are saying I want to live in a free state.

BERENSON: (laughing) Yeah.

CLAY: And that kind of what we’re talking about right now. I want to ask you about why England is making such differentiate decisions with their schoolchildren both as it pertains to masks and vaccines compared to where we seem to be headed in the United States. We’ll ask that question of Alex Berenson next — he’s banned on Twitter, but he’s not banned on Clay and Buck — and we’ll get the absolute latest data from him to finish off that segment. That is next.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We’re talking to the most terrifying man on Twitter, according to Twitter.com, maybe other than Donald Trump, Alex Berenson.

BERENSON: (laughing)

CLAY: You gotta write a book, by the way —

BERENSON: I am writing a book!

CLAY: Oh, you are? Good.

BERENSON: It will be out at the end of the November. It’s called Pandemia.

CLAY: Oh, I love that. It’s a good title. All right, I teased as we went to break, Alex, that I was gonna ask you why we’re seeing such a divergence in response in England and the United States — and for people out there who aren’t aware, I want you to set the context for us. But remember, England initially was what I would say kind of a fear porn capital country because of all of the different forecasts that came out of England about how many people were gonna die, how devastating this was gonna be.

They locked down harder than most countries did at least initially, you know, with Boris Johnson there. What’s going on? They’re not making kids wear masks anywhere in English schools, and they’re also suggesting that kids don’t need to be vaccinated for covid. Why the divergence between England and the United States?

BERENSON: That is a great question. You know, because the English hate their kids obviously and they want them all to die.

CLAY: (laughing) And they want all the grandmas to die too.

BERENSON: Exactly.

CLAY: By the way, your kids were running around in the background. You have young kids; I have young kids.

BERENSON: (laughing)

CLAY: Maybe the most ridiculous argument that’s out there in general is that people like you and me don’t care about kids or grandmas or anything else. I mean, you will have young kids like I do, and as like any parent out of it you care about your kids, I imagine, more than anything that’s going on in your life. But also you care about facts and data and rational discussion as opposed to just allowing irrational motion to guide everything.

BERENSON: That’s absolute right — and, by the way, listen. Like everybody else in the world, my kids are gonna get covid, ad I’d rather have them get it right now. They are young, they’re all under 10, they’re healthy, they’re rarely sick, they have good immune systems. Let ’em get covid and be done with it and then they may have immunity for the rest of their lives!

CLAY: Yeah.

BERENSON: We can’t say that, but that would be a much better thing than for them to be on scheduled vaccines. Again, my kids are vaccinated with normal vaccines against everything else. But for them to get stuck on a schedule of these boosters? I would… I couldn’t live with myself if I allowed that to happen; so, yeah. I have kids. I care, as you said, about them more than anything else. And to me, there’s no argument. (chuckles) Let them get covid and recover and be done.

So, so, okay. England. You set it up exactly right. There was a very brief moment in March 2020 when England was actually talking about the Swedish strategy, the herd immunity strategy, and good old Neil Ferguson scared the daylights out of them, and they went into a very hard lockdown, and then Boris Johnson — as the prime minister — got sick. And he actually is the world leader got the sickest with covid, much sicker than Trump.

He was almost — not almost, but there was a chance he was gonna get — put on a ventilator, and I think that scared him personally. And so England had a very hard lockdown last year. They tried to lighten it up in the fall and then cases went up and they went into another super hard lockdown, and it actually didn’t work that well because super hard lockdowns take a long time to work when they work at all. And then they vaccinated very early.

They were the first country in the world to approve the mRNA vaccines, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Certainly the Pfizer vaccine they were the very first. And guess what? They had a ton of deaths this winter, even as a vaccination campaign was beginning, and they suddenly this spring… Again, the spring was pretty good for them but come July they had a ton of cases and deaths went up and there’s more people on ventilators there than there have been since late winter and they basically have given up.

They basically ended all restrictions in July, and there were people out there predicting, “Oh, cases are gonna reach some incredible heights after this,” and guess what? Cases went down after they ended all restrictions. They’re not making kids get vaccinate. They’re not talking about a booster shot for healthy adults at this point. They are looking at the same data as the United States is, and they’re saying, “Enough is enough is enough. Let’s get up to normal.”

CLAY: Alex Berenson, fantastic. We will continue to have you on, get your voice out there. Encourage to you subscribe to his Substack and search him out on Twitter @Alex Berenson — used to be — search him out on Google Alex Berenson, you can find that Substack. Alex, thank you.

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Fired Up and Fed Up! Fearless College Football Crowds Return

6 Sep 2021

CLAY: I was so fired up and exhilarated by what I saw over the Labor Day weekend with college football kicking off that I couldn’t stay out of the studio even on Labor Day. Buck Sexton is out today. He’ll be back tomorrow. The crew will be back rolling with a regular Tuesday edition of the program. But I have to tell you, starting on Thursday night when college football returned, some of you know that we are in the midst of an OutKick bus tour all over the South.

If you live in the South, you may see the bus with my image on the side of it traveling all over the place. We started off Thursday in Knoxville; that’s where I did the show from. Friday, we went to Charlotte. The big game between Georgia and Clemson was going on, and I met tons of you listeners out in both of those cities. By the way, I’m going to Fayetteville, Arkansas, this weekend for the Texas-Arkansas game.

I’ll be down in Gainesville, Florida, for Alabama against Florida. What I saw left me so wildly optimistic about people finally standing up against the coronabros, the authoritarian dictators who are trying to convince all of you that your kids can’t go to school, that you can’t go to work, that your kids can’t play sports, that you can’t go to a sporting event and sit in a crowd without wearing a mask.

All over America, millions of college football fans said, “We are done with this. We’re done with masks. We’re done with living in fear. We’re done with not taking our lives back.” The tailgates were vibrant, and they were exciting. The crowds were packed! It was 100% normal. There were no ridiculous coaches wearing masks standing on the sideline. The cosmetic theater was vanishing.

And some of you out there may not be sports fans.

You may hate sports.

You may not care about them at all.

But I will tell you this right now: Normalcy follows what middle America does, and college football fans are the heartbeat of America. It is the good and pure and true silent majority. All over this country millions of people, whether you’re an SEC fan, a PAC-12 fan, an ACC fan, a Big 12 fan — whether you’re Notre Dame (hell of a game last night between Notre Dame and Florida State), whether you’re a Big Ten fan; whether your schools are small, FCS level — millions of people were in our stadiums.

For the first time since the Super Bowl in 2020, everything was normal, and it started on Thursday. But for many people… I hope you saw this viral clip. I want to give props to the Virginia Tech Hokies and all of their fans in Blacksburg, Virginia, because when I saw this… They come running out. I want you to listen to this 16-second clip that we pulled. Completely full stadium. Nobody wearing masks. Everybody exulting pure joy because that’s the essence of college football.

Listen to Enter Sandman as the Virginia Tech Hokies prepared to run on to the field. Listen to this:

(wild crowd noise and Enter Sandman)

That was Virginia Tech, a, quote-unquote, “blue state.” Nobody in masks. Everybody joyous, rapturous for the return of a normal college football season. In Wisconsin, viral clip. Did you see Jump Around when they played it? The entire stadium came undone. By the way, Penn State Pete ’em, but it was an incredible team in Camp Randall if you were a Wisconsin Badgers fan, by the way, quote, “blue state.”

Did you see Texas A&M? Did you see what the Aggies did? Twenty years after 9/11, this did a red, white, and blue stadium: Red up top in the upper deck, white in the middle, and blue down on the lower level. I hope you saw those videos. If you didn’t, I encourage you to go look at ’em at OutKick. What happened was college football fans were declaring independence from fear, from covid, from authoritarian, left-wing, lunatic dictators who have tried to take away normalcy from your life.

We talk a lot about, “How do you win?” I get this that question all the time. “How do we win, Clay?” You win by being normal. You win by refusing to cow down to the fear and the mandates. Do you know what? There are more covid cases right now in this country over Labor Day than there were last Labor Day. Think about what they said. In Virginia… You just heard the Virginia Tech fans there going crazy in a full, sold-out stadium.

In Virginia, they didn’t let kids play high school football last fall. More cases of covid this year. Last year was an election year; they lied to you. They wouldn’t let you play high school football last fall in Virginia because it “wasn’t safe.” This year, more covid cases than there were last year; full, sold-out stadium, nobody wearing masks, everybody exulting. In Wisconsin, which is part of the Big Ten, the Big Ten wouldn’t let their teams play last September because they said it wasn’t safe.

Well, the numbers are larger now for covid nationwide, yet people are playing. All over this country, people are standing up. And that’s why Joe Biden’s approval ratings are tanking to 43%. I’m telling you what I am seeing and feeling as I travel across this country. I was in Knoxville, Tennessee. We were doing a documentary on southern football that’s gonna air on Fox Nation.

Absolutely packed fraternity house parties. Usually on the messages that they hang out on sheets in those fraternity houses are insults against the opponent — fun, college, juvenile humor — making fun of whatever school is coming to play against them. Do you know what those banners had on them at the fraternity houses all over the country? A lot of you were tweeting me and Instagramming me and sending me these messages.

I saw ’em for myself at the University of Tennessee. They had the names of the 13 servicepeople who were killed in the terrorist attack in Afghanistan. That’s what those kids were focused on. At Auburn, they left 13 seats open for the 13 soldiers who lost their lives. As we get closer to the 20th anniversary of 9/11, here is what I am seeing as I travel across the country: People are fed up with the Joe Biden administration.

People are fed up with covid restrictions, and they are fighting back by being normal. Burning their masks, going tailgating, tipping back beers, high-fiving their friends, living their best lives. I’m telling you what I am seeing right now is a revolution. I talked about it when I was at the school board and all those parents showed up to fight back against the insane mask mandates on our children.

I saw it in the packed stadiums that I was a part of this weekend. I saw it all throughout the college campuses. People are standing up for freedom en masse in this country. They’re sick of being forced into their basements. They’re not going to stand for it any longer. And I gotta tell you, what I saw was so exhilarating! I’m telling you where we are headed is, I believe, a new embrace of American exceptionalism.

I think people are so fed up over the last five or six years with being told how awful America is, with the Big Tech companies colluding with the blue checkmark losers, and every day you would get up and it would be another punch in the gut. “Oh, America’s an awful place! America sucks.” I think that we are seeing a swing-back in a massive direction. Huge numbers of people who voted for Joe Biden already regret the fact that they did.

If the election were taking place right now, Donald Trump would win in a landslide, and the college football fan bases across America — I’m telling you — look at them. Turn on your television and look at what normal joy represents because that’s how we win. I know where Buck lives up in New York City, they’re asking for vaccine passports.

Where I live, in the real America, people are living their lives without fear, and they are showing up in massive numbers. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Big Ten fan, an SEC fan, an ACC fan, PAC-12, or Big 12, those stadiums were packed and Americans were sending a message: “We are declaring independence for covid. We refuse to live in fear any longer.”

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Biden Heads Into Fall with Nothing But Failures

6 Sep 2021

CLAY: I think right now, as for many people, Labor Day represents a moment to think about where we are headed into the fall. What do you think the Biden White House was thinking when they saw all these full stadiums, all these people not wearing masks, and they knew in the Biden the White House that they failed at the border, that they have failed with covid, that they have…?

Again, I think it’s important to recognize this: There are more covid cases right now in this Labor Day weekend than there were last year in Labor Day weekend. Failed on the border, failed on covid — failed — failed with the murder rate continuing to skyrocket all over this country, failed on inflation, failed on getting the economy back up and running, failed on the $3.5 trillion budget because Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona and Joe Manchin from West Virginia have said they won’t support that.

Failed — and if there were an election today would get his ass kicked by President Trump. What does the Biden administration have to hang its hat on right now as we prepare to roll into the fall and the winter? He has a 44%, 43%, 45% approval rate, and we know that the polls almost always overstate support for Democrats. So if you’ve got NPR saying Joe Biden got a 43% approval rate in this country right now? NP-freaking-R?

If NPR says Joe Biden has a 43% approval rate, what is it really? Can’t get our troops out of Afghanistan safely. Can’t get our American citizens out right now because the Taliban continues to squash and control all departures. They’re demanding more payments in order to let Americans and our allies leave that country. We are negotiating with terrorists. The Joe Biden administration, short of the presidents who died — ‘casue they got pneumonia when they were given their address or they got executed, assassinated.

Short of the presidents who died in the first eight months of their term in office, no one has ever been more of a disaster than Joe Biden. And I say that as someone who is not rooting for Joe Biden to be a disaster. I don’t want America to fail. I don’t want America’s enemies to laugh at us. I don’t want China to be scrambling jets over Taiwan even more frequently because they know that we have a wimpy commander-in-chief who can’t do anything correctly.

I don’t want for Russia to be totally without respect for our commander-in-chief ’cause they know he has to take a nap every afternoon and that he can barely read off a teleprompter. I don’t want America to be in this position, but I’m telling you right now: As they prepare for the fall, the Biden administration has no answers at all. They have virtually no true allies. They have no real support.

Joe Biden goes out on the road; nobody shows up to watch him speak. This is, I believe, rapidly trending towards the worst first-year presidency certainly of any president of our lives and one of the worst first-year presidencies ever. And it was all eminently foreseeable. What are they saying? What are they thinking? How desperate are they? I’ll tell you next.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: So what is the Biden administration gonna do? I just ran through the long litany of failures that they are complicit in so far, headed for the worst first year in the history of — certainly modern history, one of the worst first years ever if you are a student of history. I mean, it’s gotten so bad that the New York Times had an opinion piece that said, “How has Joe Biden become so unpopular?”

The answer to this is he failed at everything. But when the New York Times has an opinion piece examining how Joe Biden has become so unpopular, and when NPR says Joe Biden’s approval rate is 43%, these are desperate times. So what is Joe Biden’s pathway? I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen. They are going to use the abortion debate. I’m telling, this is how desperate they are.

They are going to use the abortion debate in Texas to start to argue as their midterm case for the American public that they need to have a House majority and Senate majority because if they don’t, then women are not going to be able to have abortions anymore. This is their break-the-glass moment. They gotta get the fire extinguisher, and they’re gonna try to put out whatever they can.

And it’s gonna be messy, because the Supreme Court is going to hear actually not the Texas case but a Mississippi case dealing with abortion. But that is going to become the Biden administration’s entire hope for the fall. Now, they’re going to pivot. They’re trying to use the insurrection, remember? January 6th was gonna be their argument, and they were gonna use January 6th as sort of their cudgel to beat up on the Republican Party. They’re not gonna use that anymore.

They’re gonna try, but it’s not registering. They are going to try and terrify suburban women with the idea that you’re not gonna be able to get an abortion. Now, this is interesting. I saw an interesting study in the New York Times, and it said, do know what happen in Roe v. Wade were overturned? Because a lot of people don’t spend much time contemplating a world without Roe v. Wade as the law of the land as it has been since 1973.

What does America actually look like if Roe v. Wade doesn’t exist? Not that question different than what it looks like now, and I understand there are activists on both sides that are wildly committed to the battle over abortion. But what would happen is, states would get the right to decide whether or not abortions occurred inside of their borders. That’s what the practical impact of Roe v. Wade being overturned would be.

We would go to go back to a federalism setup — this is me putting my lawyer hat on — and states that don’t believe abortion should be legal would, for the most part, not have abortions taking place. And states that did believe it should be legal, would be having abortions taking place. There was a study in the Upshot section of the New York Times that I ready a while back that the total number of abortions would only change and decline by about 14%.

Now, the positive here — it’s like nobody actually wants to discuss it — the number of abortions that occur in the United States on a yearly basis have plummeted over the last generation. A large majority of that is because (and this is a positive) the number of young, teenage girls who get pregnant is every year getting smaller and smaller.

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What the Gavin Newsom Recall Means to America

6 Sep 2021

CLAY: Gavin Newsom, the recall election is underway. And you know there’s a panic going on ’cause they’ve even brought Kamala Harris out of hiding to suddenly start campaigning for Gavin Newsom. And Larry Elder came out and said, “Hey, you know what? If Dianne Feinstein were to step down, I’d promote a Republican.”

And you know it was starting to get really contentious in terms of the likelihood of Gavin Newsom and whether he’s going to win this recall election because all of the negative press started to rain down on Larry Elder’s head. They found every person who has ever had any negative story associated with Larry Elder for the last 50 years of his life to suddenly write a negative article. I mean, the L.A. Times in one of the all-time…

You can’t even make this headline up. The Babylon Bee couldn’t even come up with this. They called Larry Elder “the black face of white supremacy.” That was their headline. Yes. A black man running for governor in California, they labeled him the black face of white supremacy in California. And I don’t, first of all, think there’s that many white supremacists in California. I’ve spent a decent amount of time out there.

I don’t think there are that many white supremacists, period, and certainly the idea… (laughing) This is like the old Dave Chappelle skit, I think it was Clayton Bigsby, the KKK member who was blind and didn’t realize he was black, which is a really hysterical — one of many really hysterical — Chappelle show skits from back in the day. But this is next-level craziness, and the numbers out there are alarming for Gavin Newsom.

But the betting markets have started to swing back a little bit in his favor, as the millions of dollars that have coming raining in in his favor. Over $30 million they’re now spending in the last few days of this recall election to try to assure that Gavin Newsom wins this race, including lots of Big Tech industry companies — and I’m counting Netflix as tech industry company. Reed Hastings, the CEO of — co-CEO, I believe it is — of Netflix, rolling in over $3 million in his favor.

Kamala Harris is running around campaigning for Gavin Newsom — and look. I know a lot of you are listening to us right now in California. And I have been hearing from a bunch of friends in California who otherwise would be Democratic voters who are so fed up with all the choices and decisions that Gavin Newsom has made that they are voting for in favor of his recall, and so what I would say is this. The likelihood of Gavin Newsom losing is an upset.

But what I would encourage all of you to be doing is even if Gavin Newsom wins by a slim margin — which I think is probably what’s likely to end up happening if I were having to bet on the outcome here — the message that is being sent is very clear, and it is this one. It’s time to get back to normal all over the country because Gavin Newsom has a massive advantage in overall Democrats that are registered in the state of California.

The fact that he has even found himself in this donnybrook, in this tight election race that is requiring him to spend tens of millions of dollars to avoid is a testament to his failure as a governor and to the failure of the one-party state that is Democrats in California. People are abandoning the state of California in record numbers, the likes of which have never been seen since California became a state.

And people are abandoning California and moving in big numbers to states where freedom exists. Listen to this. Listen to the top inbound cities in 2021. I was looking at this data. This is from Axios Tampa Bay. Orlando, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; Dallas, Texas; Tampa, Florida; Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee (my hometown here); Fort Myers, Florida; West Palm Beach, Florida; Fort Walton Beach, Florida; Charleston, South Carolina; Melbourne, Florida (might be Melbourne, Florida, I apologize there); Raleigh, North Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina; Greenville, South Carolina.

That’s the top 20. And I just ran through all of the southern locations where people are moving. If Florida and Ron DeSantis was really that dangerous as it pertains to covid, do you think people would be moving to Florida in record numbers and fleeing the states in the Northeast and in the West where freedoms are less significant and pouring into the states where freedoms are the most significant? I don’t think so, and I know some people get nervous there.

You’re like, “Hey, Californians are gonna be like locusts. They’re gonna move to Nevada. They’re gonna move to Arizona. They’re gonna spread their left-wing politics and it’s gonna be even worse.” What I am seeing in my hometown of Nashville is the people who are leaving are red voters who are fed up with the failed policies of blue states. And so I think what’s going to end up happening with the covid map as it changes in terms of where people are moving?

I think the red states are gonna get redder and I think the blue state are gonna get bluer, and what we gotta do is win as many of those purple voters as we possibly can. And the message in California… Even if Gavin Newsom wins, if he wins narrowly, the message I think is gonna have to be heard, and that is failed, far left-wing politics are destructive to your electoral chances even if you live in a deep blue state like California.

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Rolling Stone Runs Fake Ivermectin Story, Twitter Does Nothing

6 Sep 2021

CLAY: I want to start here with a Rolling Stone story. And if you want to go see a story that perfectly encapsulates the failure of Big Tech companies to apply a consistent and even standard of editorial management to their platforms, this is it. And I want to open up a window for you here into what happened and then track through why a story like this matters. So here’s what happened.

Rolling Stone ran a story that claimed “Gunshot victims are left waiting as horse dewormer overdoses overwhelm Oklahoma hospitals, a doctor says.” All right, that’s the headline in Rolling Stone. It spreads like wildfire throughout social media, this idea that ivermectin is being used and it’s causing a huge number of people to have to be hospitalized, such that gunshot victims are not able to receive medical treatment at hospitals. That’s the headline.

This is the headline over the weekend. Okay. Turns out that it’s a 100% a lie. The story is 100% not true. Okay? There’s a difference between fact and opinion, right? This is zero factual basis behind this story. In fact, the hospital that is named as the one that is overwhelmed with ivermectin patients says the doctor who was quoted — this is the official statement that is put out from this Oklahoma hospital.

“Although Dr. Jason McElyea is not an employee of NHS Sequoyah, he is affiliated with a medical staffing group that provides coverage for our emergency room. With that said, Dr. McElyea has not worked at our Sallisaw location in over two months.”

So this doctor claims, makes up a story that ivermectin is overrunning the hospital and then the hospital puts out a statement and says not only is the hospital not overrun with ivermectin patients, they haven’t treated anybody due to complications, and there have been no ivermectin overdoses at all.

And they say, “All patients who have visited our emergency room…” Not only are there no gunshot victims who are unable to be treated, they say, “All patients who have visited our emergency room have received medical attention as appropriate. Our hospital has not had to turn away any patients seeking emergency care.” And they have to put out this statement saying everybody is fine; this story is 100% a lie.

The idea that Rolling Stone put out there that ivermectin is overloading a hospital and that it’s unsafe to be taken, it’s 100% a lie. I want to give credit to Drew Holden, who does fantastic work. He’s @DrewHolden360 on Twitter. Encourage you to go read through his thread yourself. You can also go read about this at OutKick.com. But everybody picks up this Rolling Stone article and runs wild with it, including Rachel Maddow whose tweet goes viral.

She says, “Patients overdosing on ivermectin are backing up rural Oklahoma hospitals in ambulances. The scariest one I’ve heard of and seen is people coming in with vision loss.” This is Rachel Maddow, the lead host of the most popular show on MSNBC. She tweets this story and over 10,000 people… It’s a 100% made-up story. Over 10,000 people are sharing it like crazy.

A MSNBC executive producer who has been complaining about fake news shares it like mad. It gets picked up by all the major British outlets. Newsweek, New York Daily News, The Hill, they all write their own version of this story. And it explodes and is everywhere on social media. Now, what does Twitter do about this? Twitter banned our guest, Alex Berenson, who we’re gonna have in the third hour of the program and I’ll directly ask him about this.

But they banned Alex Berenson for sharing actual facts about covid, the covid vaccine, discussing Israeli data. All of it’s fact. These are people sharing 100% inaccurate stories. That is totally made up, this Rolling Stone story. All that matters on Big Tech is not truth or fiction. It’s whether or not the narrative supports the narrative that they want to be true. Joe Rogan gets covid, takes ivermectin. Buck Sexton, by the way, did the same thing.

I had covid but I had such a mild case, I didn’t have to take anything. And everybody out there goes crazy in the Blue Checkmark Brigade, even though ivermectin’s been taken safely by millions of patients for decades, and even though there’s evidence that suggests that it may be helpful. Joe Rogan takes a drug cocktail; a couple days later, he’s back to 100%. This story is made up. It’s a lie. We know it’s a lie. You know it’s a lie.

There’s nothing on Rachel Maddow’s account about the fact that this is information that is untrue. There’s no checkmark against Rachel Maddow for spreading a story that is 100% true. There’s not even a demand for Rachel Maddow to take down the story that she shared that’s 100% false. How can you justify kicking a guy like Alex Berenson off of your social media platform at Twitter?

How can you justify when Buck Sexton or I share data that makes the Fauciites unhappy that there is a tab often added to our tweets that says, “Find out more information about covid-19 here”? How can all of that be occurring, and Twitter does nothing to all of the left-wing Blue Checkmark Brigade members spreading this story, which is a 100% lie as if it is the truth, and Twitter does nothing?

I know we get used to hypocrisy. But I believe that you have to keep hammering home these hypocrisies for a significant reason, even though it may at times feel incredibly frustrating and self-defeating. ‘Cause we’re not really fighting the 40% that is going to triple mask, and they’re gonna stay in their basements, and they’re gonna be triggered beyond belief by all the college football fans.

We’re fighting for the 20% who are reasonable, the people who might be willing to look and think about the data behind the masking children, the people who might recognize that England, for instance, is not giving the vaccine to young children because they’re under such limited risk from covid that it doesn’t make sense to do so. The fact that almost all European countries are not requiring masks on their school children because there’s no basis upon which to base that scientific decision.

These are the people we’re trying to win, the 20% of reasonable people.

That’s how we win.

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Time for Another Strongly Worded Letter to the Taliban

6 Sep 2021

CLAY: The craziness that is continuing to spiral out of Afghanistan is really not surprising to anybody who’s been listening to this program, ’cause Buck and I have been breaking down where we were headed as soon as we started negotiating with the Taliban. Right now, we have hostage situations taking place all over the country. Let’s listen to Congressman Michael McCaul lay that out on Fox News Sunday.

MCCAUL: They are not clearing the airplanes to depart. They’ve sat at the airport for the last couple days, these planes, and they’re not allowed to leave. We know the reason why is because the Taliban wants something in exchange. This is really, Chris, turning into a hostage situation where they’re not gonna allow American citizens to leave until they get full recognition from the United States of America.

My concern is that Zalmay Khalilzad, our special envoy, who’s met with the Taliban… They’re in talks right now, and I think — I worry — his recommendation to the administration will be to recognize the Taliban as the official government of the United States, a Taliban organization that is a terrorist organization.

CLAY: Sounds to me like we’re gonna have to send them some more harshly worded letters, ’cause that’s how everybody knows that you really make terrorists aware that you are taking them seriously: A really mean letter threatening them with U.N. sanctions and failure to recognize if they don’t start treating people better.

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Kirk Herbstreit, the Voice of College Football, on His Book

6 Sep 2021

CLAY: We are joined now by ESPN lead college football analyst, also one of the cohosts of College GameDay, Kirk Herbstreit. He’s got a great new book out, Out of the Pocket. Kirk, I appreciate you joining us, and I’ve got to start with this: It felt like college football was 100% normal. I mean, I really felt that.

I was in Knoxville for the Bowling Green-Tennessee game, and then I was in Charlotte for Clemson-Georgia. I watched, obviously — as I know you did — what was going on in Wisconsin, what was going on in Virginia Tech, what was going on all over this country. Full stadiums. It felt like — I know we had games last year, but that — things were back to normal. Did you get that sense too?

HERBSTREIT: Yeah. Yeah. How you doing, Bud? Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. It was for me. I saw highlights of the game at Knoxville, but I watched the Ohio State-Minnesota game. And just to see, you know, a tough environment and a full stadium, it just felt like college football. And that was kind of the kickoff to the weekend. And had games on Friday and obviously a full slate on Saturday.

The game last night… I can’t remember the last time I saw Doak Campbell looking the way it did last night. That was a full stadium, energy, passion, Notre Dame, Florida State, into overtime. It was like a Hollywood script with McKenzie Milton, who had a devastating, career-threatening, you almost wondered is he gonna be able to walk again-type of injury in ’18, and three years later he comes back and comes in late in the game to bring the ‘Noles back to tie the game and get into overtime.

It was unbelievable. So, yeah, it was great. We obviously all missed this last year. We had some stadiums with zero fans, some with 20% capacity. As you know better than anybody, college football is different, in my opinion, than the NFL. The pageantry, the tailgating, the sense of community, the marching bands, the cheerleaders, the student sections, that’s college football. And we finally got a taste of that this weekend.

CLAY: How much importance do you place upon that for the country’s normalcy? I started off show the today, Kirk, arguing that the width and breadth of college football fandom is sort of a heartbeat of Americana —

HERBSTREIT: Mmm-hmm.

CLAY: — in that regardless of who you root for, college football fans have a lot of in common. And being able to be back tailgating, being able to be back in full stadiums, the experience, whether it was Virginia Tech when Enter Sandman comes on and the crowd goes crazy or in Jump Around in Wisconsin — I don’t know if you saw the pictures — the red, white, and blue stadium that they had at Texas A&M,. Al of it is just, I think, so important to getting us back to a sense of normalcy.

HERBSTREIT: Well, and it’s grassroots America, right? I mean, you go to all these different communities around the country and depending on what region you’re in, I’ve always been blown away. I grew up in the Big Ten region, and when I started on College GameDay in 1996 — this is my 26th year — I was always so open-minded, intrigued to learn, to see how everybody gets ready for a game.

And I’ve just always paid attention to that. And whether you’re in the SEC or the Big 12, the Pac-12, or the ACC and everywhere in between, people are like, “I’ve had this parking spot if the games since 1982,” you know (chuckles), and it’s a real sense of community. The grandparents also went to that school, the parents went, now it’s their children’s chance to go to the school, like you are in Knoxville.

I mean, it’s very different than being a Titans fan, you know, and very different from being a Chargers fan or whoever your team is. It’s just incredibly different. I mean, I love all sports. I’m open to ’em all. I go to ’em all; I watch. But when you go to a tailgate at an SEC game or a Big Ten game, it’s an experience, and you really will feel…

People you never knew have the same color jerseys on that you might have, especially when your team’s on the road, and all the sudden there’s a connection. There’s fellowship. “Hey, come on over. Yeah, have a drink or have a sandwich,” and you’re just hanging out, talking with people, talking about the game and the anticipation of the game.

And I really feel, Clay, in college football, all of that stuff around the game is as big of an event as the game itself. And even the postgame, people get together; they’re talking about the game, “Can you believe that third-down play?” And I just keep going back to community because I feel that more in college football than any other sport that I go and watch in person.

CLAY: My cohost, Buck Sexton here… You’re gonna be blown away by this, Kirk. He’s never been to a college football game in his life. So I am gonna get him down for, I believe, Ole Miss-Alabama —

HERBSTREIT: There you go.

CLAY: — which I think his mind will just be blown. He’s also a single guy so I told him he’s gonna have to keep his head on the swivel with all the girls.

HERBSTREIT: (laughing)

CLAY: But what would you say to people out there right now, Kirk, who have maybe never experienced a big college football game? We got listeners in New York City. You know, they may be Giants or Jets fans, they may not even be that big of sports fans. What would you tell them they’re missing by not having been to a big college football game?

HERBSTREIT: Well, I work with a lot of people, you know, when I’m up in Connecticut, I work with a lot of people over the years that grew up in the New York or Boston area, wherever it might be, and they’re more into the rocks or they’re into Yankees or they’re into the Jets or NBA, whatever it is, and that’s great. That’s how they grew up. They’ve then all the sudden been assigned to work on College GameDay.

And then all the sudden they find themselves in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and all the sudden you talk to ’em after the game and they’re working and they’re like, “Oh, my God. I didn’t know it was like this. I had no idea it was like this. This is so great!” It’s so funny to watch a person who might be in their twenties or thirties or forties and they’ve never been to a big time college football experience.

‘Cause maybe it’s the Ivy League or maybe it’s a small school — you know, D3 — that they’ve been to on the East Coast. And they go to a big-time college football game, and they’re just blown away. Like I say, the marching bands alone at some of these stadiums will have you… You’ll have chills just kind of watching that part and the way the fans respond to the marching bands. That’s the beginning of it, and the teams come out.

I think the only thing that’s close in America to European soccer — like the passion that you see when you turn on a game and you hear the chants and all the emotion — is college football. And again, I’ve covered NFL, been around it. The playoffs are a prime time — like a Monday night game or a Thursday night game — it’s the only time the NFL comes remotely close to what college football offers, on a noon game that might be two top 15 teams going against each other. So you have to circle back to me and let me know how Buck — how he does and what his experience is like. But, yeah, you just… It’s just a different — it’s a very different — passionate crowd in comparison to what you get in the NFL.

CLAY: You communicate with millions of people to call games, and obviously they’re uniquely used to your voice. It’s a soundtrack, in many ways, of college football. How did you find it to be different and/or more challenging or less challenging to write a book, Out of the Pocket, which is out now? How was that communication experience for you different?

HERBSTREIT: Great question. When Gene Wojciechowski, who is the coauthor, approached me about the book idea, it was during the pandemic. I just felt like a good time to reflect. And there’s football in the book. There’s broadcasting in the book. Kind of my journey in that world. But this is a very different book. The book’s about fatherhood; I talk a lot about my dad. My dad was kind of my hero.

He played at Ohio State. He was a captain there. And I just grew up in Ohio. And he would take me to the games at Ohio Stadium. I’d go in the locker room after the game and sit on Woody Hayes’ lap and look up through his glasses with his hat on and put Archie Griffin’s helmet on when I was 5, 6 years old, and I was hooked. And my parents divorced when I was 8.

And I kind of lived in a neighborhood like the movie The Sandlot where you’re always outside playing. We didn’t, obviously, have video games or the internet or like, you know, we just… People my age, we just were outside, you know, playing freeze tag or four square, or Big Wheels or whatever. You know, we were just outside. And that world just disappeared in the blink of an eye. My parents divorced, and I moved.

And I ended up going to eight schools in nine years, and both my parents were married, both divorced again. I just was kind of bouncing around and struggling, and I’m a very quiet, shy, person — and especially as a kid, very introverted — and so when you move around like that, you kind of hold a lot in. And so you saw some stuff and didn’t communicate how I felt. I don’t really communicate in general how I feel.

And so to open up in a book (chuckles) and talk about things I’ve compartmentalized emotionally for over 40 years was really a challenge for me. Kind of like that might have Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon and Robin Williams, and they just kind of sit and look at each other the first couple visits. It’s kind of how it was for me with Gene, until I finally started to get more and more comfortable with him and just started to open up.

And so it’s a book that I hope will resonate with some people. I hope that they’ll see and hear a story that maybe they experienced something that they struggled with. Everybody has trials and tribulations that they’ve gone through. Today. You know, you’re always gonna have adversity in life. There’s a saying you’re either in a storm, you’re coming out of a storm, or you’re heading into a storm.

And that can be as an employee, that can be as a husband or a wife, it can be as a father or a father or a mother. We all deal with stuff. And instead of hiding from the stuff I’ve dealt with, I talk about it openly and become very vulnerable in this book. And like I said, my whole hope is… It’s not a how-to book. It’s more of a “here I am” kind of book, and I just hope it just resonates and people will be able to relate to it in some way.

And it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to struggle. And I think sometimes we all try to avoid that, right, whether it’s with our kids… It’s really hard to watch our kids struggle. I call it the snowplow generation of parenting. If it’s a bad teacher, instead of talking to your kid about, “You gotta figure this out. We gotta work through this,” it’s, “No, no, no! We’ll get ’em in a different class, get rid of that teacher.”

If it’s a bad coach, it’s not the kids’ fault; it’s the coach’s fault; we gotta find a new team. You know, and so I feel like it’s hard for me to watch my kids go through struggles. And at the same time, they’ve been through a lot of them, and they’ve come through, and it become better for it. And I talk about a lot of different stuff regarding adversity and challenges, both as a kid and as adult.

CLAY: Kirk Herbstreit with us right now on the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. Last question for you, Kirk. If college football didn’t exist, you would be where right now?

HERBSTREIT: My family didn’t have any money when he grew up. So I got a scholarship which allowed me to pay for school. That’s why when we talk about name, image, and likeness, I look at a scholarship as a game-changer for me. It got me started in life. I would have probably joined the Marines or gone to the Army, I would guess I don’t know. I have no idea.

College football, that’s why I love it so much, why I’m so passionate and so grateful for the sport and it’s why I get so grateful sometimes when people talk about, “What’s in it for me? I need to be paid,” when you have an opportunity to build a relationship with folks when you go to a school, and you can take advantage of the system instead of the system taking advantage of you. And I’m a perfect example of that.

I’m an anomaly. Usually… Think about people that you watch broadcast games. You know them from their playing days. They’re Hall of Famers or they won Super Bowls or they won Heismans or whatever it might be. I was just a solid quarterback in the Big Ten, and yet my relationship with Ohio State opened doors for me first as a local broadcaster and then two or three years later I caught a break and got to a national level. And those doors never opened for me if I don’t go to Ohio State.

So every day I’m grateful for that relationship and the fact that I went there. And I wish more players would try to look at it through that lens as opposed to, “The school owes me money,” you know, “the system owes me money.” I think you need to flip that way of looking at it and try to figure out ways that you can take advantage of the relationships that we’re lucky enough to have.

CLAY: Kirk, fantastic stuff, as always. We’ll be watching all season long, encourage people to check out your book, Out of the Pocket, and good luck tonight.

HERBSTREIT: Thanks, man. Always great to come on with you. Good luck with all your new endeavors and congrats on everything.

CLAY: I appreciate that. That’s Kirk Herbstreit.

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Three Goals That Keep People Out of Poverty

6 Sep 2021

CLAY: I wish, by the way, somebody would just run for president… I wish there were a Republican candidate who would pick up this platform and run on it, that we need to spend more time in schools — not focused on critical race theory and demeaning and denigrating America — and just giving people tools that they could actually use. One of my favorite stats out there…

I’m gonna keep beating the drum on this on the show because I’m hopeful that people are gonna pick it up and run with it. Do you know that if you graduate from high school, if you get married and don’t have any children before the age of 25…? You do those three things. Think about that. Those are three things that almost everybody out there can accomplish. Your poverty rate in America is virtually zero no matter what your race, sex, religion, sexuality.

None of that.

None of all these identity politics things where people constantly want to find victims. Do you know if you graduate from high school — that’s something that every kid should be able to do, graduate from high school — don’t have a kid before the age of 25, and get married — if you can accomplish those three things — your poverty rate in America is zero? That’s pretty crazy, isn’t it, that we don’t just spend more time telling kids in high school, “Hey, you know what?

“It’s important to make good decisions in a lot of different choices in your life, but if you get three big ones right — graduate from high school, don’t have a kid before 25, and get married. If you can manage to do all three of those things, which virtually everyone in America should be able to manage, you will have… Can’t guarantee you’re gonna be rich, but I can virtually guarantee you’re not gonna be poor.”

Doesn’t seem like that high a standard. I’m not saying to people, “Hey, you’ve gotta go get a master’s degree in engineering. You’ve gotta go to school ’til you’re 42 years old and get triple PhD.” No, no, no, no! In reality, you just have to graduate from high school, which isn’t that hard to do — graduate from high school — don’t have a kid before 25 years old, and get married; your poverty rate’s almost zero.

That’d be a heck of a message, wouldn’t it? Personal responsibility, individual work ethic, give kids very attainable goals. I’m not saying that should be the ceiling. Certainly, I want people to graduate from high school and go on to gain much more. But if you just focus on that and give people attainable goals, once they attain those goals, they can try to climb that ladder of success even more.

But just give ’em those attainable goals to begin with. Focus on that. Hammer it home. Personal responsibility, individual work ethic, freedom. These are the tenets of American life that lead to success no matter who you are or where you’re born or what your mama or your daddy did. We don’t hear enough about that from our political leaders.

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College Football Fans Confirm What Clay Saw This Weekend

6 Sep 2021

CLAY: I wanted to get just a little bit of a snapshot of how many people felt like I did. And I do believe it was a significant moment for our country, for college football fans everywhere to be declaring independence from covid. I really think that’s what we saw. And also from mask wearing and everything else. The punch back needed to happen because we have so many places — New York, L.A., Chicago — so many different cities that were starting to mandate mask wearing and were trying to creep back and take back control of your life.

And we finally saw the fight occurring on the other side, where reasonable — the great, silent majority, I would say, that is representative of the millions of people who go to college football games, they finally fought back.

Listen to Clay Talk to College Football Fans:

Clay and Buck

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