BUCK: We are joined by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley once again. Senator Hawley, great to have you with us.

SEN. HAWLEY: Hey, thanks for having me.

BUCK: Let me just start with… I hadn’t heard, and I’m sure you’ve shared it, but I was curious about your feelings with this announcement from the Biden administration of an open Supreme Court seat that he would only — that he would follow through on the initial promise of only — appointing a black female jurist to the high court. What do you make of that, Senator Hawley?

SEN. HAWLEY: Well, you know, he can appoint whomever he wants, I suppose. I said I think it’s a mistake to appoint based on a quota and to rule out large numbers of people before you’ve even looked at their merits or qualifications. But listen, my criteria are this: This needs to be a pro-Constitution judge who is going to apply the law as it’s written and not how they want it to be — and also, by the way, who believes in the rule of law.

I mean, I don’t think the president’s noticed, but we’re in the midst of a historic crime wave and we need judges who actually believe in our criminal law system who believe that it is just and fair and not systemically racist. And I tell you, he’s been sending up to the Senate one activist, left-wing, pro-crime, pro-criminal judge after another. So, I hope that’s not who he sends us for the Supreme Court.

CLAY: Senator Hawley, appreciate you joining us. I know the White House has been coming after you basically accusing you of, as close as they can get up to saying it (laughing), that you’re basically a Russian plant for the arguments that you’re making about Ukraine. Now, first of all, are you, in fact, a Russian plant?

SEN. HAWLEY: (laughing)

CLAY: And second, what did you think when you saw what Jen Psaki said at the White House?

SEN. HAWLEY: Oh, my gosh. I mean, just… No, I’m not, to answer your first question, Clay.

CLAY: (laughing)

SEN. HAWLEY: I want to get that on the record. I just think that it shows how intellectually and morally bankrupt this administration is. I mean, they don’t have the ability to engage in any kind of an argument for any of their positions because they are historically unpopular.

Nobody likes what they’re doing, nobody believes in their policies, and they don’t want to have a debate about it. They don’t want to have an argument. They want to shout down their critics, whether it’s me or Joe Rogan or anybody else, shout ’em down and shut ’em down because they don’t want open debate ’cause they’re losing.

Listen, on Ukraine, who’s responsible for the position the United States is in with regard to Ukraine? Joe Biden is. Who came into office and allowed Russia to start up their energy pipeline, Nord Stream 2 it’s called, the energy pipeline that stuffed dollars into the pockets of Vladimir Putin and his cronies? Who did that? Joe Biden did that.

Who denied Ukraine military aid last year when Ukraine asked for it? Joe Biden did — and now that we’re in a crisis, now he wants to send American troops from our country to Europe. We already have tens of thousands there; he wants even more! I think that’s a mistake. I am opposed to sending thousands of additional troops, and I’ll take my stand on that any day.

BUCK: Speaking to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. Senator Hawley, you’ve got the Olympics… I’m sorry. Clay’s the sports guy, I have to look at him make sure I get the hand signals.

SEN. HAWLEY: (laughing)

BUCK: I think starting today in Beijing right? That’s enough of news story. Clay is giving me the thumbs up; I appreciate that. But, you know, for me the angle of it that is particularly interesting, and I think for a lot of other folks is, what’s happening in China… I feel like more and more Americans and honestly the whole world are waking up to the realities of not just the threat of the Chinese Communist Party internally to dissent and human rights but obviously to the rest of the world. So how do you think people should be approaching this? Obviously we’re supportive of the athletes, and that’s great. But what do you think about China being able to hold this? I feel like some people are saying it feels like a little bizarre.

SEN. HAWLEY: Oh, they never should have ever been allowed to host the Olympic games. No question about it. And the fact that large corporations and NBC, I guess it is, is televising it — I’m not watching any of this I don’t know but I think it’s NBC televising it — you know, making money on this, who knows, just truckloads of cash on it. I know is really repulsive. I mean, it’s just…

The fact that China is allowed to try and sugarcoat its record of being the most oppressive, totalitarian regime on the planet. It’s, frankly, just sickening. So listen. I certainly support our athletes. I hope they do great. I wish them well, but I personally am not gonna watch on television and not gonna give my support to that as a citizen. I think it’s wrong, and I think it’s wrong China has the games.

CLAY: We were talking earlier — and I agree with everything you said — about bowing down to China and allowing them to host the winter Olympics at all. I think it’s a disgrace that we’ve allowed that to occur. But speaking of allowed to occur, you mentioned Joe Rogan, and certainly we’ve seen with Whoopi Goldberg and what’s happened to her and all of the discussions this week surrounding what should and shouldn’t be permissible to be said.

I’m a big marketplace-of-ideas guy, Senator Hawley. I think you are to a large extent too. But on the show, we were discussing what I believe is a monster story that isn’t being discussed enough. The White House is directing Big Tech companies what they believe should or should not be happening in terms of speech. The government can’t do that directly.

You know this better than almost anybody because you are a legal scholar. But it’s even not allowed — and it should be called out more than it is for them — to use Big Tech to regulate in a way that they themselves would be unable to from a constitutional perspective. What do you think about what’s going on, and are we not giving enough attention to really what is a radical proposition that is being put forward by the Biden administration almost on a daily basis now as it pertains to Big Tech and regulations?

SEN. HAWLEY: It is absolutely radical, and you’re exactly right about it. And my view is that it is a profound threat to our constitutional norms and constitutional values. Clay, I can’t imagine just 20 years ago — barely a generation ago, I cannot imagine — an American president urging media companies, newspapers, television — which is the equivalent of today’s social media — urging them actively to censor viewpoints he doesn’t like and disagrees with. Can you imagine the outcry?

BUCK: It’s crazy.

SEN. HAWLEY: And now, now they’re doing it brazenly. I mean, now they’re using the bully pulpit of the White House in their tech companies with their public forums to shut out voices they disapprove of. And it’s not… They’ve been doing it to the right, they’ve been trying to censor the right for a long time but, you know, Joe Rogan, you could say a lot about Joe Rogan’s political views. I don’t think you can characterize him.

He’s certainly not a right winger. Let’s put this that way. The guy is fairly independent to his credit. You know, and I just think that the idea that the president would urge this, it just shows, I think, that this administration certainly — and unfortunately many on the left, the readers of the left — no longer believe in the fundamental principle of free speech. They don’t believe, Clay, what you alluded to just a second ago which is that the cure for speech that you don’t like or for speech that is inaccurate is more speech.

CLAY: Amen.

SEN. HAWLEY: You don’t throttle it down. You open it up. And this is why the whole idea that, “Well, if I don’t like I’ll call it misinformation and then I’ll censor it.” Oh, my gosh! That’s exactly what our First Amendment is designed to protect against. So I’m really worried about it — and also, you know, same thing is happening on campuses. But to come from the president, to come from the White House I think is really, really destructive and it’s really dangerous.

BUCK: Speaking to Josh Hawley, senator from the great state of Missouri. Senator Hawley, it seems more and more like the Biden administration is just running out of narrative. They are trying to convince people that the economy is great, they created all these jobs. It was all hinging, it seemed, on the Build Back Better plan.

Is there going to be a renewed effort in any serious way for that to pass before the midterm election? Because absent that, it just feels like failure is the only way to describe what we’ve seen so far and therefore a Democrat pivot is the only way they will be able to respond if they get crushed in the midterms — or that’s the way they should respond. How do you see this playing out? I know we’re early 2022, but it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna change anytime soon.

SEN. HAWLEY: Oh, and I don’t think that… Up here on Capitol Hill I can tell you they don’t think that they really have any problem. I mean, they think that what they’re doing is great, which shows you how out of touch they are with reality. This is the most unpopular administration of my lifetime. This president can hardly complete a sentence. It is stunning. It is scary.

And the American people are looks at agenda and they’re like, “Wow. You’re giving us inflation that is totally out of control. You’re giving us foreign policy disasters everywhere you turn — Afghanistan, China, Ukraine, and Russia — and this is a guy who he is leading this country into disaster after disaster,” and people don’t let it. They don’t want it.

But I think the Democrats — to answer the question, I think they’re just gonna try to forge ahead. And I don’t think they’ll accomplish much this year because they’re so internally divided. But the American people are getting a good look at Democrat leaders and what they want for this country. And what they want is a basically economic socialism combined with their hard-left wokeism when it comes to social policies — just radical stuff opinion –and the American people, they don’t want it, and in fact they hate it. That’s why Joe Biden’s so popular.

CLAY: Senator Hawley, couple of questions for you to close out. One, what happened on your Chiefs?

SEN. HAWLEY: Oh! (laughs) Oh.

CLAY: Two, second part of that that, did you see the mayor of Los Angeles saying that when he was getting his picture taken with Magic Johnson it wasn’t an issue with covid because he held his breath?

SEN. HAWLEY: (laughs)

CLAY: He was at the 49ers and Rams game. There’s video. That’s a direct quote from him. So I’ll let you first address the Chiefs collapse, and second, how good of a breath holder you might be and what that might mean for your future photographs.

SEN. HAWLEY: (laughing) Well, on the second part first, the hypocrisy on this is unbelievable. I don’t want you don’t want to call out any of my Senate colleagues by name. But I’ll just say the rank hypocrisy, to watch these people walk around with masks and then as soon as they get away from the cameras, to rip off their masks because it’s all theater?

CLAY: Oh yeah.

SEN. HAWLEY: It’s all theater — and for Joe Biden to be out there blaming folks who are unvaccinated and saying that they’re the reason the pandemic is raging? No, they’re not! We know that people who are vaccinated, fully vaccinated, can get covid and are. You know, through no fault of anybody’s own. The truth is in this administration, the hypocrisy, the failure to plan, it’s unbelievable. Okay, the Chiefs, though, I mean, you’re really kind of twisting the knife on that one.

CLAY: Well, look, I’m a Titans fan. We lost to the Bengals first.

SEN. HAWLEY: (laughing)

CLAY: So I’m still angry at Ryan Tannehill. So you’re better off than me ’cause at least you were in the AFC Championship Game.

SEN. HAWLEY: Fair enough. Fair enough. I just, you know… (sigh) I don’t want to be a Monday morning quarterback on ’em. Obviously, it was a disappointing loss. Let me put it this way. I’ll try to put it in a positive way. I thought the Bengals came out and did defensive adjustments after halftime. Particularly, I think, what they did with their safeties and getting to basically play one high, having one of the safeties come forward, do some spying — sort of clogging up that middle that Mahomes had been using really effectively in the first half — I thought that that was…

They do a good job. You know, they did a good job defensively and unfortunately we just didn’t find an answer to that until the end, too late in the game. I mean, just didn’t happen. So a lot of credit to them for their defensive adjustments. And, you know, and then offensively, obviously. I mean, the Bengals, they really got it going, and when you score — when you allow 21, I think, unanswered — that’s hard to do in an AFC Championship game (chuckling) and expect to win.

But listen that all sounds accuse negative. I’m really… I’m a huge Chiefs fan, lifelong Chiefs fan, will be forever, they had a great season. I wish they were gonna be playing a couple of Sundays from now, but you know what? They’re young, and I’ve gotten to know some of the players on the team. They’re great guys, and this will be a great learning experience and they’ll be back and better than ever.

CLAY: No doubt. Four straight AFC Championship Games. I bet he didn’t think use see that as a Chiefs fan.

SEN. HAWLEY: No.

CLAY: Good talking to you, Senator Hawley. We’ll talk to you again soon.

SEN. HAWLEY: Thank you.