Ned Ryun on His Battle to Free Kids from Masks at School

2 Feb 2022

CLAY: We bring in now, I believe, Ned Ryun, who has been on the absolute front lines of everything that’s been going on in Loudoun County, and also on the front lines of helping to ensure that Glenn Youngkin sent shockwaves throughout the American political establishment by winning the gubernatorial race in the state of Virginia — and then coming up and actually doing what he said he was gonna do, including removing the mask mandate in Virginia schools. And now there are rebellions against the idea that you should be able to choose whether or not you wear a mask. Ned, what’s the latest on the ground there in Loudoun County as it pertains to the mask debate?

RYUN: Well, it’s pretty interesting today, Clay, because the last two days were teacher conferences and grading. On Friday, the students — my children included — who did not wear masks were given a letter saying, “If you show up on Wednesday,” today, “without a mask, we will suspend you.” So, you know, we had conversations, all four of our kids are in the school system here in Loudoun County, and the two older boys, one’s a sophomore in high school and the other one’s in seventh grade.

We talked through the implications and said, “We’re behind you all the way. What do you choose to do?” And they said, “We want to show up maskless on Wednesday,” and I said, “We will walk you in and we will have the conversation with the powers that be about what’s taking place.” So as of today both of the older boys are suspended from the Loudoun County public school system for refusing to wear a mask and actually complying with Younkin’s executive order.

You know, it’s pretty interesting, Clay. I took my seventh grader in and we sat with the principal and he read the suspension letter, and about halfway through — and it was about defiance and willful disobedience — and I said, “If you could hold on for just a second,” and I looked at my seventh grader and said, “You know, James, principled defiance in the face of arbitrary rules that are not backed up by science or data or facts is always the right thing to do.

“And I have your back in this entire situation and I believe what you’re doing is principled.” And I looked at the principal, and I said, “You may continue.” So right now, it really… The amazing part, Clay, is it feels like really random… You know, with our schools out in western Loudoun, they’re saying it’s a day-to day-suspension.

If they choose to show up with a mask tomorrow, the suspension will be lifted. But in certain places like Stone Bridge High School — which most people do not identify except for those who have been following the whole story of the rape that took place. This is the exact same high school — you know, a student was not suspended for raping another student — and they’re handing out 10-day suspensions today for not wearing a mask.

BUCK: Wait, wait. Ned, Ned, it’s Buck. My blood is boiling here. I know everyone across the country is the same way when they hear this.

RYUN: Join the club.

BUCK: Just so we’re all very clear, the governor has said via executive order, you do not have to wear a mask; correct?

RYUN: It’s optional. The executive order said they are — we’re lifting the mask mandates. They are now optional.

BUCK: But so, Ned, is there any…? Just so we’re all clear, is there any…? When you’re sitting there with this principal, I mean, what he’s doing is effectively in defiance of state law and state authority. So what is their argument? I don’t understand. It feels like they’re just engaged in some kind of, you know, pro-Fauci nullification of the law or something. What is this?

RYUN: What they are saying as their defense is that obviously the previous governor and the previous House of Delegates that was controlled by the Democrats, they passed a piece of legislation saying Virginia will follow CDC guidelines regarding mask mandates. Oh, by the way, the CDC has come out recently and said basically paper and cloth masks are worthless. So there is no real justification for it, and it really is…

There are other school districts, but Fairfax and Loudoun, which are two of the big northern counties, have said, “We’re going to fight this. We will implement mask mandates,” and so people understand, Jason Miyares, the newly elected attorney general, is arguing this case today in front of the Virginia Supreme Court. So we’re very — all of us are very — curious to see how that turns out. I don’t think there will be a decision today, but I hope that within a couple days that we’ll get a decision that will be, you know, on the right side from the Supreme Court.

CLAY: First of all, I commend you and your kids making this stand.

RYUN: I’m so proud of them.

CLAY: When you were telling us this story, I’m just sitting here… You know this, Ned. There’s so much discussion from left-wingers about being on the right side of history, right?

RYUN: Mmm-hmm.

CLAY: They’re always trying to lecture people. When I sit and look at this — and look, I’ve got a history degree. I am like Buck — and I bet you are as well, Ned — a student of American history.

BUCK: He just wrote a history book, actually, a great one about Bunker Hill.

CLAY: That’s right. We talked about that the first time I think we had you on, we were asking about that. So I have zero doubt that the people who are going to be on the right side of this issue are people like your kid and your kids 20 years from now. ‘Cause you know what that sounds like when you have that principal reading that letter explaining his suspension?

It sounds to me like principals who would have not allowed minority kids into their schools and argue that they were doing the right thing and then 20 and 30 years ago — I know Joe Biden’s trying to make this George Wallace argument right now — there are principals and school leaders who are effectively standing on the schoolhouse steps and disallowing kids to enter based on the flawed reading of the currently existing law.

RYUN: Right.

CLAY: But also there’s no justification for mask mandate in schools. They have no scientific ability. So not only is your son or your sons on the right side for purposes of freedom, they’re on the right side for purposes of science as well.

RYUN: That’s right.

CLAY: Which is an incredible accomplishment for a young kid to be willing to recognize and stand up when there are consequences for him taking those actions.

RYUN: Yeah. No. And I told them on the way home ’cause I walked them both in — one’s in the middle school, obviously, one’s in the high school. We went through the process, got ’em in the car, you know, drove ’em home and said, “You know, guys, you probably… Some of this probably is not gonna make sense to you, but allow me just a few minutes to talk to you. You know, we were founded…’

“This nation was founded about the idea of natural higher law in which in some ways we have a moral obligation to reject arbitrary rules. I mean, that really is… If you were to, you know, summarize the American Revolution, that was the basis for it, in which founders said we’re not gonna follow and comply and submit to these arbitrary rules,” and I said, “You know, this… You know, some people say this just about a mask.

But it’s about something much bigger in which you actually have to stand up and say, ‘No, this is wrong,'” and again, like you said, Clay: There is no scientific backing for any of this based off all the studies we now have that show that the masks virtually are worthless, ineffective. The other thing that’s deeply offending to me in all of this is really kind of the bullying and intimidation in which they literally told our kids on Friday.

My sophomore in high school, they gave him a letter and said — looked him in the eye and said — “If you do not comply, if you do not submit, you will be suspended,” and he took the letter and he came home and said, “I’m not submitting, and I’m not complying. I am showing up on Wednesday without a mask.”

BUCK: We’re all proud, Ned, of what your kids are doing here and obviously you standing behind them. We’re speaking to Ned Ryun who is the founder of American Majority and his book, speaking of history, is The Adversaries: A Story of Boston and Bunker Hill, available now in paperback. Ned, do you think if you get this decision — ’cause, look, as goes Virginia, a lot of other I think purple —

RYUN: Right.

BUCK: — politically purple states may follow. You know, Colorado has started to have some breaks because of Jared Polis in Fauciism. They’re starting to say, “Look. The masks and the lockdowns and all this stuff…” They’re starting to wake up to reality slowly but surely. If there is a decision from the state Supreme Court in Virginia that says, “Yeah, the governor — the new government, the new governor — that people just elected of Virginia can get rid of mandatory masking in schools,” do you think that the schools will comply or is Loudoun just gonna engage in outright nullification of law and say, “Whatever. What are you gonna do, arrest principals?” I mean, how do you think this goes?

RYUN: You ask a very good question, Buck, because right now I don’t think we have a clear answer. But knowing based off past behavior from the Loudoun County school board, they’re not gonna take this sitting down. I think they will fight tooth and nail to resist anything from Glenn Youngkin. They will do their best to try and resist. You know, we’ll see. I’m really curious.

BUCK: By the way, is this just a spite-against-Youngkin thing —

RYUN: It feels like it.

BUCK: — from Democrats in the public school, which, as we know, is like the heart of the commie power center in a lot of states, is the whole public teachers union, public school unions and all the rest of it. Is it mostly that, or are you coming across…? You’re a Loudoun County parent. Are there parents who just — I don’t know — can’t read what’s in the news and figure out that masks don’t actually work? I mean, are they truly terrified? What’s going on?

RYUN: I think it’s a mix of both, honestly, Buck. I think there is not an insignificant percentage of parents and teachers who, quite frankly, do not think for themselves, are accepting blindly, you know, what I consider old, outdated information in that somehow masks work, that they have any effect against the virus. So I think there is absolutely a part of that.

And I also do think that they are fighting. I think they deeply resent the fact that Youngkin won. They are going to fight this as hard as they can with whatever means and resources that they have. They were even… So you know, the principal of Loudoun Valley High School — the county sheriff in Loudoun County — made it very clear that the SROs in all the various schools were not to enforce in any way removing parents or students from school grounds for not wearing a mask.

This principal, Sue Ross, went out of her way to call the local Percival Police Department to see if they would enforce it, and they informed here “No, we’re not enforcing that, either.” These people are truly demented and out of control trying to call the police to say, “Will you back up or try to enforce suspension over masks?” and the police department both in the city and the county level said, “Absolutely not. You’re on your own.”

CLAY: Ned, sometimes elections with lower the overall temperature of a body politic.

RYUN: (laughing)

CLAY: I think you can probably tell where I’m going. And so Glenn Youngkin obviously wins election in Virginia, Attorney General Miyares, as you said, doing really good work, and Winsome Sears. They sweep, take back the House of Delegates, all that happens.

RYUN: Yep.

CLAY: Do you see going forward now that people are going to be just as energized in Virginia for the midterms as they were for the governor’s a election in those other races?

RYUN: Oh, I think so. You have to understand, Virginia 10 basically is Loudoun County with Prince William and other parts, but it’s essentially Loudoun County. Virginia 10 I think is now one of the toss-ups, potential pickup for Republicans purely off this school board issue.

CLAY: Yep.

RYUN: So I’ve made it very clear to people that the school board issue is not going away. School boards have made it very clear. They voted 8-1 to condition these mask mandates, the Loudoun County school board did. I think that this will continue to be an issue throughout the country to various school districts, and I think it will have implications, obviously not only at the school board level, but at the congressional level as well.

Because, again, I will remind people, it’s not just me. It’s not just the conservative Republicans saying this is idiotic; it has to stop. It’s Democrats, it’s independents, it’s all parents of all stripes saying, “This has to stop. We did not sign up for this. You can’t stop teaching advanced courses. You can’t indoctrinate our kids. What about just teaching our kids the basics to give them the best opportunities in life?”

And so this parents movement crosses all party lines, all party affiliations. And I think when they see these school boards saying basically, you know, “Shut up and sit down, you dirty little peasants,” I think a lot of parents are saying, “No, we’re not going to; we’re done,” and we’re gonna hopefully run a lot of them out of office here.

BUCK: Ned, man, we always appreciate you. Our friend Ned Ryun coming on here telling us what’s going on. He’s the founder of American Majority. Folks, check out his book history book, The Adversaries, about the battle of Bunker Hill. Ned, great to have you, man. Thanks so much.

RYUN: Guys, enjoyed it. Thank you.

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What Our Sources Tell Us About Jeff Zucker’s Ouster at CNN

2 Feb 2022

BUCK: Jeff Zucker is out at CNN, and I can tell you… Maybe we’ll get into some of the specifics about my experience years ago at CNN, Clay. I don’t want to dive into that before we tell everybody what’s happened here. He had a relationship with a subordinate — a very senior executive, but still a subordinate — ’cause CNN was Zucker’s kingdom. People got paid what Zucker wanted them to get paid. They got the shows Zucker wanted them to get. He was… Could you say the “malevolent” tyrant, instead of “benevolent”?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: The malevolent tyrant of CNN. And now he’s gone because he didn’t disclose this relationship. A couple things, Clay, I just want to throw this to you ’cause, you know, you also know that there could be some big lawsuits that come out of all of this. The subordinate female is staying on at CNN. He is gone. He resigned effective today. Didn’t disclose the relationship. What I think’s so interesting is this: Chris Cuomo.

Chris Cuomo thought that he could get away with things that nobody reasonably could have imagined would anyhow. I mean, the helping with his brother, using his pulpit to do so, and behind-the-scenes comms assistant. I think it’s ’cause he knew about what was going on with Zucker and he felt like he was covered from on high. And for everyone listening to this, the head of CNN — so one of the most powerful lib media executives out there — is gone because of the investigation into Chris Cuomo which then led to this revelation. What do you make of it?

CLAY: So there are a bunch of different angles here. So we should say… I mean, this is all public now. Allison Gollust is, I believe — I mean, I might be pronouncing her name wrong. She is the woman that he was having a relationship with. She is the executive VP and the chief marketing officer at CNN. So what is interesting about this, Buck — and I think this adds more complexity to the overall situation surrounding Chris Cuomo but also Andrew Cuomo and the way that CNN covered this story.

Allison Gollust worked with Andrew Cuomo back in the day. In fact, she’s “a veteran PR expert.” I’m reading from RadarOnline. She was the communication director for Andrew Cuomo, and — this is according to go Radar — “there were many discussions that one reason why Zucker initially helped to protect Andrew Cuomo and Chris Cuomo was because of the fact…”

Remember CNN had the Bro Cuomos on together during covid. They were allowing Chris Cuomo to cover his brother, Andrew. They made Andrew a hero. They tried to brand him as the anti-Trump, right? There are all those Cuomosexual shirts. There was the argument that he was gonna run for president. Supposedly, one of the reasons why the Cuomos were protected is because of this woman, Allison Gollust.

And, by the way, it also supposedly this has been going on — their relationship — for a long time, that both of their marriages broke up over this affair. So to me what stands out here is the incredible belief by Zucker that when he fired Chris Cuomo that somehow this wasn’t going to come out, that he was going to emerge unscathed. And it seems what happened basically is Chris Cuomo said, “Hey, you owe me.”

This is me reading what’s going on here. “You’re gonna fire me? You better pay me out the $18 million that you owe me under my contract,” ’cause they tried to argue they fired him for cause. And when that battle and investigation into why he was being fired took place, my bet is Chris Cuomo said, “Hey, you’re firing me for inappropriate behavior? Do you know that Zucker has been engaged in a relationship with a subordinate for a long time?” Buck, I find it hard to believe there weren’t a lot of people inside CNN that didn’t know this was going on, this relationship, for a long time.

BUCK: I was, before CNN went completely insane… If 10 is the craziest a lib can be, before CNN went to 11, it was probably solidly at an eight, I would say, pre-Trump era, and I worked over there for a couple of years. You used to CNN until your… Clay is banned from the Republic of CNNistan. But, anyway, the reality here was that everyone knew that there was stuff going on in that building for years, that the media just wasn’t as interested in talking about, didn’t come out.

I was surprised that some of it took as long as it did to come out, and I think — I’ll tell you this right now, and of course can’t name names, but — there’s more stuff that will likely come out about CNN and the practices in that building. But the question I have here, ’cause I very much see the Cuomo thing — and isn’t it fascinating that Governor Andrew Cuomo, the hero of the pandemic for the libs, second only to Fauci in the entire nation…? You know, Gavin Newsom was having —

CLAY: They gave him an Emmy. They gave him a special Emmy, and they had to rescind it.

BUCK: Because, you know, he was the man during that. He was doing (impression), “Here I am. I want to talk today about the numbers. Let’s look at the numbers. The numbers say that I am the best. Why am I the best? Because…” You know, this was what Cuomo was doing day in and day out. I know. It was pretty good.

CLAY: Not bad.

BUCK: Thank you. And he would do this whole thing and the song and dance, and everybody’d say, “Oh, my gosh. He’s such a great leader,” and then it all started to fall apart. He lied about the numbers. He hid the number of deaths, by the way — the death numbers, lied about that — in nursing homes. He lied about what’s happening in the state, covered it up.

And then the stuff about the sexual harassment and then all of a sudden his brother was covering up for him and then the brother, you know, had the issue of harassment that came up too and then he got termed for helping his brother deal with his harassment — and now Jeff Zucker is gone. I think in part, you know, or rather, I think that this came out because of what happened with the Cuomo brothers.

So the dominoes falling here for the left-wing media is remarkable. But here’s the question I have for you, Clay. Disclosing a relationship with a subordinate is one of these things, you know, the way they’re framing this, clearly this was going on for years, clearly when both were probably still married which… By the way, families breaking up, it’s a sad thing. It always is a sad thing.

So whenever this happens, I never celebrate or say, “Yeah, look at this guy, or this woman, their life is in tatters.” I want all families staying together. But why not disclose this, right? There must be something that we don’t know about the situation, and I think there are things we haven’t heard yet that are actually worse, ’cause this is a very sudden resignation from a guy who’s making probable $15 million, $20 million a year to run CNN. Who is a more powerful news executive on the left than Jeff Zucker, than he was? It’s tough to name one.

CLAY: There’s not one.

BUCK: There isn’t.

CLAY: I mean, also he was running sports. So, I mean, Jeff Zucker was massively powerful, and so to me, I think you’re right. When these resignation letters pop out of nowhere, it usually means there’s a big investigative piece coming within a day or two somewhere down the line, right, and they know that that media source has got the goods on them and that they’re going to be sharing it.

My first thought is, failure to disclose a relationship… Let me just say this: If that relationship had just started six months ago, they wouldn’t be firing him over failing to disclose that relationship. I think what’s likely come into play here is he probably hired her while already being in a relationship with her, which is a big no-no, right?

BUCK: He said he’s worked with her for 20 years.

CLAY: Yeah, right. But he brought her from the Cuomo office to come work at CNN a few years ago, and so I think there are probably gonna be some details coming out about what he did or did not reveal. I also believe the big question here, Buck, and I’ll actually… When we come back, I’m curious what you would do.

Let’s presume that CNN suddenly came to Buck Sexton, and they said, “Buck, you were on air, and we went back and we looked at all the data, and we determine that, yes, we weren’t yet fully crazy yet when you were on the air, and we value your opinion for what to do at this network. What should we do to…?” I mean, this is a crazy stat, Buck. Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have more Democratic viewers in the evening on their shows than CNN or MSNBC do. They have lost all of their audience. What do they do to matter again, other than as a pathetic punching bag for left-wing lunacy?

BUCK: They would have to actually try to be a news network — and not a perfect one. They’re still gonna be liberal. But this is what they used to be. It used to be a liberal news network. Then it turned into Pravda for the DNC. It just went completely anti-Trump, ferociously insane. That’s what happened. Could they bring it back to…?

I always say this. I have more respect for MSNBC. As insane as the commie opinions over there are, they admit that they’re commies. I mean, they don’t use that term. But they admit that they’re left, they’re liberals, they’re Democrats. So there’s not this pretense. CNN lives in fantasyland, and the anchors over there live in fantasyland on this issue. And that’s why they would never debate it publicly, ’cause they’d look so stupid, but they like the pretense. They pretend.

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AZ Senate Candidate Blake Masters on How to Stop Dems

2 Feb 2022

CLAY: Big battleground state for the United States Senate is going to be Arizona. And we are talking now to a candidate for the seat there in Arizona, Blake Masters, who is also incredibly accomplished in worlds of business and finance. Blake, appreciate you joining the Clay and Buck show. How is the campaign going? What are you seeing on the ground from voters in Arizona?

MASTERS: Well, thank you. It’s going well. People are fired up, you know. It is an election year now. I saw the shift in energy as we crossed from 2021 to 2022. You know, my campaign’s up and to the right. I’m beating my opponents in fundraising and getting out there and being bold in the media, and I think we’re gonna crush it this year.

BUCK: You know, Blake, the jobs numbers have come out, and they are, to put it mildly, not good right now for the Biden regime. (chuckles) “Companies…” This is CNBC headline from earlier today: “Companies Unexpectedly Cut 301,000 Jobs in January.” Now, the Biden talking point on this continues to be they had more “job creation,” they call it, in 2021 than at any time I think in the post-World War II era or something crazy like that.

What they mean is they’re counting jobs that came back online because of shutdowns before it. So, really, it’s just the end of shutdowns means there’s jobs that people weren’t allowed to do in restaurants, et cetera. What do you see really happening right now with the economy? ‘Cause it feels like the Biden team is running out of talking points.

MASTERS: Yeah. And that just shows you how desperate they are to cling to anything that they could call success, because they know it’s not going well. We feel it. We see it every day. It’s not going well. You know, Biden, at this point, is making Jimmy Carter look like JFK. And unfortunately for the country, you know, he doesn’t know how to manage anything. And I think we’re, you know…

We’re nominally inflation right now, they say, it’s 6 or 7%. I actually think it’s double digits, like the actual Costco basket of goods, you know, the people stuff — the stuff people need to buy every day to live. I think it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. It’s why we need a change in leadership. Biden is just failing.

CLAY: Blake, you obviously have a lot of experience in the business world working with Thiel Capital, and you just referenced what’s going on with inflation. Buck just hit with you the overall numbers of jobs that are continuing to decline. What should be happening, in your mind, as a business guy in order to get the country back to the employment levels that it was in February and March before we shut down for covid?

MASTERS: Well, I think we need to stop paying people not to work. If you’re gonna lock down, obviously you need to support the small businesses that you’re forcibly closing. But we probably never should have locked down in the first place, you know, and right now, the business community is looking for some stability. They’re looking for some future they can be confident in.

And when the government is pursuing all of these reckless spending policies, paying people not to work — you know, print four or five trillion here, another trillion there — pretty soon, that’s real money. It adds up and it creates this inflationary spiral that I fear we’re just in the beginning. So I think literally reversing everything that Biden is doing, going back to President Trump’s America First economic policies, that would be a hell of a start.

BUCK: Speaking to Blake Masters, COO Thiel Capital, and he’s running for a Senate seat in the great state of Arizona. Blake, you also have been vocal on the issue of specifically illegal immigration and our wide-open southern border. There’s been a lot of stuff that’s come out in the last few days. Of course the Democrat-aligned media is suppressing most of it because it looks so bad for the Biden White House right now.

They had about 180,000 illegal — encounters with illegals — in the month of December for which we just got data. We’ll have the January data from DHS in a couple of weeks and everyone I’ve talked to — and I’ve been speaking to folks from Border Patrol, and I spoke to the former chief of Customs and Border Patrol yesterday — say that they expect that this year might be even worse.

Last year was close to two million illegal crossings. This year they think could be an even greater degree of a violation of our sovereignty. What do you think is gonna happen here, and what do you think should be done about the poorest — to put it mildly — really, the open southern border we have?

MASTERS: Well, it really is impeachable. There’s no other word for it. I mean, it’s criminal. Biden has thrown the whole southern border open. He’s basically ceded all of that sovereign U.S. territory to the Mexican drug cartels — and it’s not just drug cartels, right? These are professional criminal racketeering organizations. They’re trafficking, yeah, fentanyl. But also weapons, also women and children.

And, yeah, 200,000 that we know about every month. This is more than two million people per year. Over four years of Biden and Harris, you’re talking about eight or nine million illegal immigrants, and that’s more people than live in Arizona. So I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this is an invasion. It’s outrageous — and he caused it, right?

It wasn’t perfect under President Trump, but it was pretty darn good. And all Biden had to do was nothing. Instead, he just reversed all the policies that were working. He invited millions of people to come here and — surprised, surprise — when you the invite the world to come into the United States, they will and we’re all paying for it.

CLAY: We’re talking to Blake Masters, candidate for the United States Senate in the state of Arizona. I’m sure you saw this story, too, Blake: Army soldiers who refused covid vaccine are going to be immediately discharged from service. That’s despite the fact — I’m sure you’ve looked at the data – that covid shots do not stop soldiers from getting Omicron and also these are, for the most part, young and healthy people that are being discharged from our services. What should happen, in your mind, with that policy?

MASTERS: Again, I think that policy is just criminal. And it’s obviously not about health. You know, the Democrats will say, “Oh, we want to, you know, maintain health and wellness in the enlisted ranks.” No. Like you just said, covid doesn’t hurt these young, healthy soldiers. If anything, you know, they shouldn’t get the shot, probably. It should be an individual decision but, like, why would a young and healthy soldier want the covid shot?

Probably doesn’t make sense for most of them. And so this, to me, is about power, right? The Biden administration is looking for an excuse — some pretext — to fire all of the people who don’t want to go on board with their agenda, and it’s really dangerous for our Armed Services.

BUCK: What is the top of the list for you of what…? If we have Republicans, if you’re part of a Republican majority Senate starting next year, what’s the top priority? What do you want to get done?

MASTERS: Well, we have to close the southern border and actually, you know, remember illegal immigration’s illegal. The correct amount of illegal immigration is zero. You know, but I wouldn’t just want to stop there ’cause, okay, you close border. Congratulations. What about election integrity? You could have a sealed border, but if you don’t have safe and secure and fair elections, you live in a banana republic.

But then gun rights are important too. You know, we can’t let our citizenry be disarmed because then we’ll have a totalitarian police state like Australia — and, you know, you could fix all those problems but if the government is just printing $6 trillion every year pretty soon inflation will be so bad you almost won’t have an economy so I almost don’t know which issue to pick because there’s like 10 that are existential and we’re going the wrong way on all of them.

BUCK: Blake Masters, candidate for Senate in Arizona COO of Thiel Capital. Blake, always enlightening, my friend. Thanks for joining us here.

MASTERS: Greatly to the chat with you. Thank you.

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C&B Break Down the Brian Flores Lawsuit Against the NFL

2 Feb 2022

CLAY: Buck, the story that is ricocheting everywhere — and he is doing his media roundtables right now, CNN, NBC, ESPN, basically every direction you look — is former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores has sued the NFL alleging racial discrimination in coaching. I know you are not a monster NFL fan — far from it, Buck — but this story has ricocheted through so much of the media establishment that it’s almost impossible to ignore. I went on Fox & Friends this morning and talked about it from a legal perspective, but I want to start with this, Buck. Even you are like, “Wow. This is kind of a big story.”

BUCK: Yeah, of course. Well, because it comes, Clay, at a time where there’s already this huge national conversation because of Biden explicitly declaring —

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: — and, as you have rightly pointed out, that over 95% of lawyers or people from the legal profession will not even be thought of as a possible Supreme Court pick. We also have the case making its way through the Supreme Court — and I believe we are going to get a decision here in June — that will say affirmative action… I mean, this is plain, letter of-the-law stuff.

Affirmative action is not equal protection under the law. It should be and is unconstitutional, that there was a time — because of whether it’s liberals’ white guilt or whatever the rationalization was — that people preferred a certain policy outcome with affirmative action does not make it constitutional, flatly, plainly, clearly. So, with all of that background, now we have — and I thought it was fascinating, Clay, ’cause I was learning.

The great thing is when I have a sports thing that comes into the realm of just breaking news/top five story, let’s say, I’m like, “Clay, explain,” and it’s like “Encyclopedia Clay” goes to work and then I feel like I know what’s going on. One of the things that’s remarkable is this guy is saying these things that we’re hearing him say — after he’d already been paid multimillion-dollar contracts to be a head coach, right?

After he had already done all this tremendously rarefied and highly successful stuff in the NFL, now he’s saying that he’s being discriminated against and in fact he always feels like he has to be better than his counterparts? Based on what? Where does this come from?

CLAY: So the complaint is a mess, and this is me analyzing it from a legal perspective. He alleges that he is being racially discriminated against. Now, background for Brian Flores. At the age of 38 years old, after having the job of linebackers coach for the New England Patriots and Bill Belichick — who is roundly considered the greatest NFL coach of all time. If you work for Bill Belichick, you have a very good chance of getting a head coach job somewhere.

That has been the case for many people, white or black. So Brian Flores gets hired at the age of 38 years old to a multimillion-dollar head coaching contract with the Miami Dolphins. He is there for three years, and he just got fired in the off-season. That surprised some people. But there was a lot of behind-the-scenes issues evidently inside of Miami both with player and coach relationships that the owner there — Steven Ross, of the Dolphins, a billionaire — decided to move on and hire a new coach.

Then Brian Flores is interviewing. There are, right now, five open head coaching jobs in the NFL. Lots of guys got fired, and he is interviewing for the New York Giants, and Brian Daboll is hired who is offensive coordinator of the Buffalo Bills, and there is an allegation that — based on a text message from Bill Belichick — Brian Flores was not really considered for the job that they already knew who they were going to hire.

He also says that several years ago, he had an interview with the Denver Broncos, and he’s alleging that John Elway — who is one of the great quarterbacks in NFL history and an executive with the Broncos — was hung over and that he didn’t feel like he was taking it very seriously. Based on those details, he’s arguing that he has been racially discriminated against.

Now, to me when I read this complaint and I read the complaint, there’s almost no evidence of racial discrimination in this entire complaint. That is… I don’t know about you, Buck. I’ve gone on interviews before where I haven’t gotten the job for what I interviewed for, and that was disappointing.

And sometimes I felt like the guy that they ended up hiring, they knew that they wanted that guy most likely beforehand. I bet almost everybody out there has been in a situation where you’ve gone for a job interview and you have thought, “Hey, I’m probably not gonna get this, but I want to try to prove that I’m worthy of the job anyway.”

BUCK: There’s actually a storyline for fans of the show The Office, which I do think is a great show, for whatever that’s worth.

CLAY: It’s fantastic.

BUCK: There’s storyline where Michael Scott — who is played by Steve Carell, I think, amazingly well — goes in for an interview for the Dunder Mifflin executive role, and later on in deposition it comes out that he was never really under consideration for the job, but they wanted give him the shot, right? So this is not a new thing in corporate America where you go in for an interview and they think they already have somebody else picked.

And let me just say, unless there is actually — and to your point about the legalities of this and the reality of it contractually and otherwise, unless they’ve already made an offer, even if they think they know who they’re going to pick, the willingness to give you an interview always leaves open the possibility that minds will be changed. So there’s also an assumption built into all this that it could change, even if they had picked — or maybe they can make an offer and even rescind it if they found a better candidate based upon whatever the contractual agreement is they put forward initially. So we’ve all been there.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And, by the way, in the media world everything that we deal with, Clay, at some level is unfair Meaning that there’s a lot of subjectivity. Meaning who’s gonna be this, who’s gonna be the next big this or that. You learn to deal with it. You don’t turn around and just claim that there’s some force arrayed against you, especially if you’ve been remarkably successful as this guy has.

I mean, 38-year-olds, multimillionaire, head coach the NFL, doesn’t get the job he wants and now the NFL is racist? Based on what? I mean, speaking of what this guy’s been saying, I mentioned to you he’s going around now as part of his TV show. He’s all over the media saying he always has to be better than his colleagues in the same place. Based on what? Where does that come from?

CLAY: That’s also the job of competition. You have to be better than your colleagues in the NFL in order to win. That’s sports.

BUCK: Oh, but he means he has to be better just to be on the same playing field as others, essentially. “For me to be a head coach, I had to be 10 times the head coach of other head coaches,” is basically the subtext here. That’s… Based on what?

CLAY: Yeah, and look, here’s the other thing. He’s are important facts, I think, too, because we live in a… I’ve told you this, Buck. Nobody is pushing back against Brian Flores on any of these interviews, right? Every single sports media person presumes that he is the victim of racial discrimination, and no one is actually saying, “Okay, Brian Flores. If you’re so discriminated against, how did you get a head coaching job at the age of 38 and become a multimillionaire?

“Also, by the way, how is it that you were poised to get another head coaching job; you just didn’t get the one that you wanted with the Giants?” And also, there is no business, Buck, in the history of the world that has created more black millionaires than the NFL. Truly in the history of the world, 70-some-odd percent of all NFL players are black. And really what this comes down to is an argument that there needs to be more black coaches.

It’s very similar to the Supreme Court, honestly, where you almost get the sense that there is an idea that there needs to be a quota. But what’s fascinating about this to me is, first of all, everybody in America should be able to compete evenly to be an NFL head coach, right? White, black, Asian, Hispanic. That’s what I believe. The black population is around 12% of the overall population.

So they are wildly overrepresented as NFL players, but most coaches start at the age of 22 or 23 and work themselves up for decades to be eligible to become a head coach. So to me, the overall head coaches in the NFL should roughly approximate not what the player percentage is — ’cause most players never become coaches — but what the overall population of interested coaches are in the United States.

BUCK: And let’s remember, the NFL is — professional sports is — one of the few places where you have a meritocracy in real time with real consequences. I do know enough about it. I grew up watching the Knicks and my family are Giants fans, and I spent way too much time in my mind watching professional sports, but I’ve seen enough to know what goes on and I’m aware of the size of the contracts, Clay. When you’re paying somebody… I just saw Neymar, the soccer player, signed a $200 million contract.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Okay? When you’re paying somebody in the NFL… I mean, that’s soccer, granted.

CLAY: There are $100 million guys in the NFL.

BUCK: Exactly. When you’re paying somebody $100 million, you just want the best. You’re doing everything you can to get the absolute best, and so when you’re trying to assess — and there’s always going to be some degree of subjectivity. That’s what I meant about the media aspect, right? We have tons of super-talented colleagues and media on TV and radio and podcasts, whatever. It’s not a perfect business, but you have to be good. But there are gonna be some decisions made. In the NFL they’re putting the best players they can possibly get out on the field because there’s a lot of money on it and there’s a lot of money in winning.

CLAY: And there’s no BS on it. You can tell who’s better or not.

BUCK: You see this and it’s like, “Well, you know, what NFL franchise is having a coach come forward that they think would be the best fit for them and would make them millions, would affect the price of the franchise hundreds of millions of dollars over years or over a decade,” and say, “Yeah, we’re just still a little racist so we’re not gonna hire that guy.”

It just defies comprehension, especially given what you see with the players on the field. They’re like, “Who’s the best tight end? Who’s the best quarterback? Who’s the best wide receiver?” and that’s all that matters, right? But with coaching, all of a sudden, they’re gonna take a different approach? I don’t buy it.

CLAY: You’re 100% right there. And, Buck, even if some teams were doing that, then by being not racist you would gain a competitive advantage, right? If there are teams out there that are taking talented minority coaches off the board because of racism? Okay, I don’t believe that’s happening, but if it were happening, then you would have a competitive advantage against them because you would be able to hire those coaches and your team would win more.

It’s not only that racism is wrong. It’s that purely on a competitive basis, if your competitor is racist, you would get to beat them more often. And I just don’t buy, based on how competitive every scintilla of the NFL is, that any team is choosing not to go with the best possible candidate whether it’s for a kicker or whether it’s for a GM or whether it’s for a quarterback or whether it’s for a coach.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: This is pretty remarkable. A former NFL Players Association president on CNN — George Martin, I believe, is his name, yes. He said… You know what, actually? Clay, I’m just gonna let him say it.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Play 16.

JOHN BERMAN: The league is 70% black players. There is currently one black head coach. How do you see this?

GEORGE MARTIN: Well, it’s a statistical anomaly, first of all, and there’s no way to justify that the kind of inequity, and that’s something that African-American players have — and coaches have — had to deal with for years now. And with this lawsuit, I mean, it’s obvious that Brian is gonna become the Rosa Parks of the NFL, and rightly so. It took an inordinate amount of courage for him to file this lawsuit and is to stand up against one of the largest corporations in the world and — and talk about the fact that there is less opportunity for people with of color than there are otherwise.

BUCK: So, Clay, I’ll just say this, ‘caues you’re a truly unique and lone voice in the sports media world on these things in so many ways. First of all, this guy calling Brian Flores the Rosa Parks.

CLAY: No pushback, Buck, which is symptomatic of what happens.

BUCK: Of course. To be a multimillionaire, former coach, you’re still, you know, likely to get a very senior and very highly paid coaching position in the NFL? You know, it’s somehow similar to the fight against true racism and segregation in the South. I mean, it’s outrageous. But I’m just gonna say, man: This is why conservatives, we go through these phases where we say, “They’re kneeling. They’re anti-cop in the NFL.

“They’re anti-cop in the NBA. There’s all this woke stuff. I’m never watching it again.” I have so many people writing me, “I’m never watching the NFL again.” I’m done with it, man. I feel like you fight it from the inside because you don’t want to give up sports ’cause you love sports. For me, I sit here and I see this, and I see a lot of overpaid people who are ungrateful to the country that supports them and gave them this opportunity. I don’t know. I’ve had enough. I can’t seem to get around it.

CLAY: We had that conversation on the sports show back in the day, and my thing is if you love something — and I understand if you’re a casual, “Hey, I’m gonna watch the NFL or I’m gonna watch something on Netflix,” or whatever it might be. I’m a die-hard sports fan. I’m always going to be a die-hard sports fan. So my perspective is if you love something, then you try and fight to preserve what you love in that.

And what I love in sports is that all of us — white, black, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight, male, female — can all pursue excellence by a common set of rules. I love the feeling Buck, and I’ll never shake it, of being in an arena or being in a stadium watching your favorite team play and how it brings everyone together. I’m never going to lose that feeling, and I’m never going to lose that desire to try to make sports something that everybody can enjoy.

But when I see the lawsuit like what Brian Flores is saying here, Buck, he is selling the idea that the NFL is fundamentally a racist organization. And I think it’s 100% the opposite of that, because the NFL, as I’ve said, has made more black millionaires than ever before. They have lifted tons of people out of poverty and allowed them to have better lives than they otherwise would have in so many different fascinates of future life after football. Just disappointing to see what I believe are lies here.

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Dr. Wen: Don’t Vaccinate Kids Under 5 Until It’s Safe

2 Feb 2022

BUCK: Here is Leana Wen — among the favorite blue check docs over at CNN, while there still is a CNN — who is saying something interesting here about vaccines for kids under 5. Play 7.

WEN: Well, I’m ambivalent right now, John, which is not something that I ever thought I would say (chuckles) about vaccines for under 5-year-olds. I’m the mom of two little kids under 5. I can’t wait until they are vaccinated. But I would wait until we find that the vaccines are safe and effective, and I’m not sure that we can say that at the moment because we just don’t have the data.

Now, I definitely understand the urgency that many parents are feeling, and I can also understand the point of view that, “Hey, if three doses are being studied and two doses will give you some level of protection and the vaccine is safe, then why not give it?” Maybe some parents will make that choice. But I also think that other parents would want to wait until we know that three doses will produce the intended effect.

BUCK: Gotta wait ’til three doses, Clay?

CLAY: Well, first of all, I give Leana Wen some small measure of credit for saying that the data doesn’t reflect that it works on kids under 5. Where I give her no credit is in the fact that these days kids are under zero — almost statistically zero — danger from covid. I just keep hammering this home because I know our audience hears it, but I want…

Maybe you grab this segment from the podcast, and you share with it your friend and you say, “Hey, go look up the data. This is actually true.” Your kids, if you took your kids to school today, which I did, I took my fifth grader and my first grader to school, I’ll probably pick ’em up at the end of the day today too. My kids are under more danger of dying riding to and from school with me in a car than they are from covid.

My kids are under more danger of being murdered than they are of dying with covid. My kids are under more danger of drowning, and my kids are under — really, on average — more statistical danger from the seasonal flu than they are from covid. I bring all of that up to say, “Who are these parents and how are they so poorly informed that they believe that their kids who are 5 years old and younger need to be given an experimental vaccine for a virus that poses them no risk?

Which, by the way, Buck, a huge percentage of them have already had. We know the percentage of kids that have had covid is monstrous just based on how Omicron has rolled through, but also based on Alpha and the Delta and all the other variants. This idea that kids don’t already have antibodies to covid is mostly untrue for the vast majority of them.

BUCK: And yet they’re marching along with this, and there is this fixation on getting children vaccinated. What has been done to kids during the pandemic in so many ways is, I think, the most inexcusable aspect of Fauciism because they have no say in this, as we know. The adults make all the decisions for them.

And what we see are a lot of neurotic and virtue-signaling people who themselves are, of course, much greater risk of any covid complication or issue walking around without masks on, indoors, outdoors, masking up their kids, fixated on this. I mean, I think I saw CNN — while they’re still a CNN — Jake Tapper saying that opening schools… We had the sound bite on the sheet yesterday.

We didn’t use it, but opening schools before kids are vaccinated, like, why should we do that, something to that effect. I’m sitting here saying, every infectious disease doc that I know — and I know a bunch of them. I have friends who are a number of them and obviously more have been reaching out to me, Clay, since we’ve been doing this show. They all say the same thing: There is no basis for mandating vaccines for children — that’s completely outer-world lunacy and that’s completely nuts — and really there’s — they wouldn’t encourage any parents to get their kids vaccinated, unless there’s a very specific circumstance of lack of immunity.

CLAY: You want some entertainment? I don’t think you’ve heard this, Buck. We actually Geraldo — and if you’d told me that I was ever gonna get in an argument with Geraldo in my life when I was like 10 years old watching the Geraldo Rivera Show during school breaks. Listen to me and Geraldo right here go at it over this exact issue.

CLAY: Spicy.

BUCK: You gotta… You know, if you’re gonna be a TV news guy, you gotta have a fight with Geraldo at some point, right? You know, you’re gonna… By the way, another guy, I will say this, everyone says super nice guy. Everyone says Geraldo’s a super nice guy.

CLAY: I’ve worked with at Fox and I’ve gotten along with him. Geraldo was just wrong there. I had to tell him.

BUCK: Yeah, you gotta lay it down.

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Johns Hopkins Study Agrees with C&B: Lockdowns Didn’t Work

2 Feb 2022

BUCK: So, I’m just saying, that’s one thing. We got this covid study from Johns Hopkins University, Clay, that I did want to get to ’cause I think it’s important — lockdown study specifically. We’re gonna be talking to our friend Ned Ryun, who is the founder of American Majority, about the fight over masks in Loudoun schools, ’cause guess what happened?

The governor of Virginia has come in and said, “You guys can’t do this mask mandate in schools. You can mask your kid if you want, but you can’t make kids do it.” The Loudoun County school district has decided, “Yeah, but, like, we’re more powerful than the governor. We’re just gonna do it anyway!” That’s not how this is supposed to work, folks. So we’re gonna discuss this with Ned.

But, you know, the study, Clay, said that lockdowns — this is out of Johns Hopkins University, numerous statisticians, data analysts looking at all of the numbers. Just looking. This is just the numbers that are out there on deaths, on duration of lockdown, where it occurred per capita, everything. And this what they found in the study out of Johns Hopkins.

It reduced mortality — the lockdowns, folks, the actually like shelter-in-place, stay home, shut down your businesses, they think it reduced mortality during the lockdown 0.2%. They found that shelter-in-place orders — sorry, that’s the extension of the lockdown, the most extreme lockdowns — reduced covid mortality about 2.9%. They also in the study said this quote, which I think says it all, Clay, “Lockdowns should be rejected out of hand,” as in this was disastrous and wrong and should never be repeated.

CLAY: Prediction: Within a year you will hear almost no one saying that kids should have ever been masked. It will be like defund the police. You know how right now people say, “Oh, I never said defund the police,” and you have to go back now and grab their clips and say, “You legitimately said, ‘Defund the police.’ You said it — and when I say ‘defund the police, I mean defund the police.’ That’s what you said.”

A lot of people are gonna say, “Well, I never really thought masks on kids made any sense, but what else were you gonna do?” Within five to 10 years, Buck, everything that we did to respond to covid, everyone is going to pretend that they were saying what you and I have been saying for the last two years, just like you cannot find anyone in the entire the United States now who says, “You know what?

“I supported the Vietnam War, and it was a really good idea to have fought that war.” Remember, all of the quote-unquote, experts told us that fighting in Vietnam was a necessity. They told us we had to be there. The best and brightest minds of America led to the Vietnam War. They were wrong, and now it’s pretty much universally understood that they were wrong. Well, the, quote-unquote, best and brightest — the experts — all told us that we had to lockdown.

They said that our kids couldn’t be in school. They said that our kids had to wear masks. They told us that we had to get the vaccine, or we were gonna lose our job. They told us that the vaccine would stop the spread of the virus and would prevent it from continuing to go around the world. They told us all that. They told us six feet of separation made sense. Buck, in your home city of New York, they drew circles in parks and told people to sit there!

They’ve made children go outside and eat while masking between bites, sitting on little stools in cold-weather climates. This has all been madness. And all I would say to everybody out there is: Remember who was telling you all this when it wasn’t acceptable to say it. Hold the politicians who argued otherwise accountable.

BUCK: Just because… I think, you know, we’ll use this historical analogy ’cause we’re more able to talk about it. You think about in the Soviet system. People that were going along with what I refer to as the apparatus, and I think it’s very accurate for what you’re seeing from the Democrat media and the Democrat Party in this country now. People who went along with it, they didn’t think they were the bad people.

They always were able to convince themselves while they were benefiting from it and while their team was in charge that this was the best we had, that this was necessary; there were external enemies. You can rationalize anything for your own benefit whether it’s just emotional-psychological or also financial and when it comes to power.

And there’s gonna be, Clay, a major reckoning for a lot of people who went along with Fauciism. It’s gonna take them awhile, but they’re gonna have turn around and realize that people’s livelihoods were taken from them, their businesses were destroyed; there were over 100,000 drug overdoses, an all-time high. They have delayed — in a way that will permanently, permanently affect children and disproportionately minority children in this country — their learning, their progress.

They put them through a tremendous ordeal for no good reason. They even engaged in state-mandated — you mentioned the eating of lunch outside in the cold with a mask on, that is state-mandated — child abuse. I mean, I remember I was at a camp and there was a counselor who, you know, would take the towel, you know, rat tail like hit one of the kids with it. He was out that day, right? They fired him right away.

You can’t ever strike a child in your employ. Can you make a child sit outside in 30-degree weather with a mask on because you feel like it? Does that strike anybody as reasonable? That is child abuse, and Fauci sat silently by or encouraged this the entire time. I think a lot of people are gonna have some real reckoning, some real soul-searching to do over this. It’s gonna take them a while.

CLAY: No doubt. How about taping masks on kids’ faces? That’s child abuse.

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Trump Destroys Zucker in Statement: “World-Class Sleazebag”

2 Feb 2022

CLAY: Here is what Donald Trump said. Donald Trump put out a press release since we started this show, and he says — you ready for this, Buck? — “Jeff Zucker, a world-class sleazebag who has headed ratings and real-news-challenged CNN for far too long, has been terminated for numerous reasons, but predominately because CNN has lost its way with viewers and everybody else. Now is a chance to put Fake News in the backseat because there may not be anything more important than straightening out the horrendous LameStream Media in our Country, and in the case of CNN, throughout the World. Jeff Zucker is gone — congratulations to all!”

BUCK: That’s actually a really fitting epitaph for an era at CNN right now, because Trump broke CNN. It was never the same after Trump, and that’s why when I say that it changed as a place, I really mean it. It was ideologically left but did have some semblance of journalistic ethics that it would occasionally show. That went absolutely out the window, really openly so, so they could turn into an anti-Trump machine.

And it was very personal. Talking to Clay about this off air. Jeff Zucker and Trump knew each other for a long time, and Zucker decided that, you know, he didn’t like Trump and Trump didn’t like him, and it turned into… He really used CNN almost as a personal feud weapon against Donald Trump — and that’s not a good idea ’cause, you know, the Trumpster knows how to hit back. But I’d also say this.

Yesterday I think I mentioned how — or this week we talked about — people in media — and it might be just interesting for folks out there to know. Like I said, people say Whoopi Goldberg is very nice, you know, a very nice person, you know, irrespective of all the stuff that’s been talked about that’s been going on this week. Whereas Keith Olbermann is just universally known — left, right, center — as just a horrible human being. Jeff Zucker, not a nice guy. (chuckling) Not a nice guy. So a lot of people across the media landscape right now are going, “You know, too bad for you, Zucker. You know, too bad for you.”

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Clay’s Idea to Save CNN: Hire Megyn Kelly

2 Feb 2022

CLAY: Buck, you teased that you have a Jeff Zucker story, the former head of CNN. What happened?

BUCK: In my very limited interactions from over there, I was actually always surprised when he knew my name and would come over to talk to me when I was a short-term contributor over at CNN, but he did. And on the terrorism stuff a few times, he came over and he was like, “That was really good. You’re really astute. You really know your stuff,” and I was like, “Of course. Come on. I’m Buck Sexton! Give me a break. No big deal.”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But whatever. But I remember they asked to extend me after the Trump election and I was like, “This place is completely lost.” I was just always going in there texting my friends, “This place has lost its mind, like, they think Trump is worse than Stalin. I mean, they’re completely crazy, “and I was in the lobby, ’cause I was doing an HLN show for a friend of mine who was hosting a show there.

I was a guest on an HLN show after I had said I didn’t want a contract extension from CNN — and I had no TV job, which is like unheard of in TV, like, “You don’t want to be on a hundred million home cable network or whatever?” No, I didn’t, ’cause they’re crazy. And, for whatever reason, Zucker happened to walk past me in the lobby at CNN. (laughing) The last thing I ever got to say to him, he looked me up and down, and he goes, “What do you think you’re doing here?” just like that, and I was like… (laughing)

CLAY: Like, in a negative way, like, he was, like —

BUCK: Yeah, of course.

CLAY: — disgusted that you turned down their offer?

BUCK: Like, I thought he might tell security to escort me out ’cause I told him I didn’t want to work there anymore. He’s like, “What are you doing here?” I was like, doing… I didn’t have like a good quip or comeback, so I was like, uh-oh. Just said, “I’m doing my friend’s show.” They let me do it. Oh. I was never back on the show, by the way. Never. You’re officially banned from there, but, by the way, maybe not anymore. Maybe the Zucker reign of terror is over.

CLAY: Maybe not, now, that Jeff Zucker’s gone.

BUCK: Clay, maybe we would both be welcome to try to win the libs over, to try to bring them to the side of sanity. They could have conservatives on. You can’t ’cause of Fox. But I could. I could go over there and tell them to stop being crazy.

CLAY: So that could be one suggestion would be to bring Buck in. But here’s my thing. If you truly had some testicular fortitude, whoever takes over at CNN, you look at the numbers; they’re in an incredibly difficult spot, and so my suggestion? Go hire Megyn Kelly. Go hire Megyn Kelly and put her in. I don’t know if she’d do it, but Megyn Kelly in for the Chris Cuomo chair, because you send an immediate message.

In the middle of Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon, “Hey, we’re back to being somewhat sane.” Megyn Kelly has a big fan base. I think she’s done well with her podcast. I did it on Monday, by the way. I know that the situation at NBC didn’t go well. But that’s partly, I think, a function of NBC just being a den of thieves, right — I mean, just a cesspool.

And so we know how good Megyn Kelly was in the evenings on Fox News, how great her audience was. She’s fearless; she’s smart. And it would send a message that is, “We’re not going to continue to be a far-left-wing network that no one watches.” The data on this… I mean, you just look at the numbers, Buck, I mean, Tucker and Sean have more Democratic viewers than MSNBC or CNN do in the 25 to 54 demo.

I was just reading it in The Wrap today just right before we were about to go on the show. So CNN is not even getting left wing viewers. I’d go get Megyn Kelly. If I were fearless and I were trying to remake that network, you know you have all sorts of issues now with men, right? You kept Jeffrey Toobin. You now are having to get rid of Zucker and you had to get rid of Cuomo. Bringing in a woman I think is smart, regardless, and you gotta shake things up in a big way.

BUCK: Just so everyone remembers this to give you a sense of how much CNN has changed — and this was really — and I remember growing up CNN was around long before Fox so when you thought of cable news, CNN was the 24-hour news channel until Fox came around in 1996, and it took a couple of years for Fox to really grow its massive audience, right? So, in the early nineties, it was CNN, man. That was the only game in town for cable news.

CLAY: Rupert Murdoch was crazy to start a news network.

BUCK: Yeah. But Tucker got his start at CNN on TV, right?

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: You think back to this, like, this used to be a place where conservatives would go through and conservatives aren’t even allowed in the building anymore, folks. That’s how crazy it is.

CLAY: It is pretty wild. You think that’s a crazy idea, Megyn Kelly to CNN?

BUCK: No, I think there could even be discussions underway, for all I know. Who knows?

CLAY: Yeah, who knows? I mean, I think it’s actually a smart move if CNN’s trying to matter going forward.

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2 Feb 2022

CLAY: Whoopi Goldberg, two-week suspension, Buck Sexton, at The View. There now are reports that Whoopi is furious that she has been suspended for two weeks, and I’m sort of torn on this, Buck, because on the one hand, I abhor cancel culture more than anything other than identity politics. I think those are the two pillars of the Democratic Party right now.

So whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, independent, I hate to see somebody lose their job for something that they say, even if it’s stupid like what Whoopi Goldberg said, because it just further reinforces the precedent of cancel culture. On the other side, Buck, I understand the argument from people out there who say, “Hey, if they’re going to insist on cancel culture rules, then we have to apply them as steadfastly as possible to left wingers as they try to do to right wingers,” whether it’s Gina Carano getting fired by Disney for The Mandalorian or Roseanne Barr getting fired by Disney as well. Both of those women were fired, and now Whoopi Goldberg gets two weeks. Where do you kind of come down on the larger cancel culture battle yourself?

BUCK: I think it’s a great question because I go back and forth. I mean, you’re essentially — and a lot of people I know on the right, because we want essentially Mutually Assured Destruction that then transitions into a society that allows for grace, forgiveness, and some sense of just decency toward each other. But where do you draw that line?

So I don’t think there’s a simple answer, right? I don’t think there’s a straightforward we let the — ’cause the left will let the left get away with so much more. By the way, Whoopi Goldberg, if she were… First of all, to say that if she were a conservative, it’s almost… She wouldn’t be where she is in so many ways. She’d be fired. She wouldn’t be suspended.

CLAY: If one of us had made the… First of all, we’re not as dumb as Whoopi Goldberg, at least not on that issue. If one of us had made the exact same argument that Whoopi Goldberg’s made, Whoopi Goldberg would demand that we be fired. If Joe Rogan had said it, if Tucker Carlson had said it, if Sean Hannity had said it, all of them on The View would have their long knives out, and they would demand that we be fired.

BUCK: Right. Look, I want to play rough with the commies, but I don’t want us to become the commies, if you know what I mean. I think that they should suffer consequences, but I also don’t want us to turn into the ideological infant that the left represents these days in so many ways. So here’s my sense of the Whoopi…

Oh, you know what we always say about facts, by the way? ‘Cause I said a bunch of numbers we’ve been discussing. We did our actual history when we talked about this as soon as it broke. All my numbers were correct: Over six million Jews, over 11 million killed, about eight or 900,000 — they don’t know — Europeans formerly known as Gypsy, now known as Roma.

I said 1.5 million Polish Catholics killed in the death camps. I believe it’s actually closer to three million. So just, again, if I ever get any number wrong, I want to update it right, ’cause I went back to check that ’cause I don’t know all the numbers offhand and I was doing that from the top of my head. But, Clay, to me there’s two issues here’s. There’s Whoopi Goldberg, the person saying these things and then there’s the ideology that led her to say these things at some level.

What I mean by that is — I sounded like Clay there for a second. “What I mean to say,” that’s a Clayism, is she just doesn’t… I think at some level she just doesn’t know the history of the Second World War at all, really. I mean, you know, the very, very, very baseline truth of it. So it’s mostly, if we’re breaking this down… I think it’s mostly ignorance on her part of the history, and so, you know, when people just don’t know, I’m more likely to say, “All right, they didn’t know.”

Remember, I said at the time I don’t think that she meant to be — and I truly believe this still. She didn’t mean to be disrespectful. She’s not going on The View and saying, “I’m going to antagonize the Jewish people not just in America but around the world and make them think that, like, I have maybe some kind of an anti-Semitic bent.”

I don’t think that was her intent at all. But why would she say something so wrong? And it is because — and we touched on this as well — the American left has created a paradigm where the only racism, in their minds, is white against nonwhite and primarily and overwhelmingly white against black racism.

There is no other historical framework for analysis of racism between different races, by the way, that don’t involve European whites at all. There’s no analysis of racism that involves the Jews as a race that have been discriminated against still to this day and, of course, in the genocide of the Holocaust, but going back to the time of the pharaoh and Egypt and the Bible.

CLAY: It’s kind of a big deal that the Jews have not been treated well if you’ve done any sort of historical research.

BUCK: But the left has this campaign of, you know, everything gets fit into this mold. There’s no easy overall descriptor for it, but it’s almost like the way that the 1619 Project defines all of American history. White-on-black racism is the only race issue that comes to mind for a Democrat leftist in good standing today, and I think that is part of what pushed Whoopi Goldberg to say something that would obviously be…

I know people who are friends with her. I will say that. They say she’s a nice person, you know, personally, and I will give her credit for that. And I don’t think she meant to be disrespectful. I just don’t think she knows any better and I think the left is brainwashed on this issue. You know what I mean? That’s how I see it, and what she said is really bad, as a result of those two things.

CLAY: Yeah. To a large extent, it is a form of historical illiteracy that has allowed to flourish in the United States. And one of those ideas is, for instance, that the United States was the only place that ever had slavery. Right? To your point on the 1619 Project, slavery existed all over the world for tens of thousands of years. Virtually every person at some point in their lineage — whether you’re white, black, Asian, or Hispanic — had slaves in your background, right, because slavery…

Whether it was in Rome, whether it was in Greece, whether it was all over Africa, all over Asia, if you beat another tribe of people, you very often took the men as slaves and you took the women as either wives or slaves as well. That is a historical reality from all over the world, right? And so I believe what has happened with the Democratic Party is they have embraced both cancel culture and identity politics.

They have allowed America to be exclusive based on race, and that is based on slavery and racism, which is almost exclusively, Buck, being seen as white to black, right? There’s no racism of black to Hispanic or Hispanic to Asian, even though my argument — and I think this would be a revolutionary argument if a political party would adopt it — is that racism exists in all races.

And, by the way, it exists inside of racial groups. Consider the way that, for instance, Hispanic, which is a broad categorization. How different groups of Hispanics see each other, how different groups of Asian and black people and white people initially…? Look at the big battles that were fought in the United States, Buck, over immigration when it was Italians and Germans and people who didn’t speak English coming into this country.

BUCK: My ancestors came into Brooklyn from Ireland during the potato famine, and there were “Irish need not apply” signs in stores’ cause the Irish were considered a criminal underclass and they were the less-thans in Europe. By the way, all the Italian-Americans listening right now are like, “Oh, you think you had it bad?” By the way, all the Jewish-Americans listening now are saying, “You think you had it bad?” Polish?

CLAY: All of these different European ethnic groups were discriminated against if they didn’t speak English or if they came from particular caste systems if you want to describe it as that way. So this has been the story of American life, and what typically happens — and this is why the melting pot idea used to be a liberal idea, right — was we bring everybody to America, we’re one big melting pot.

We all end up ending up with the same values of lionizing American multiculturalism and everybody can have success regardless of what your background is. Now what the Democrats argue is America is fundamentally broken and no one who is a minority can have success here because of the systemic racism and white supremacy which underlies everything.

That’s the argument they make, and it’s one that I reject wholeheartedly, and ironically enough (laughs), it’s one that even Barack Obama rejected wholeheartedly! If you go back and read his 2008 presidential campaign, it wasn’t about cancel culture and it wasn’t about identity politics at all.

Clay and Buck

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