If You’re Gonna Support a No-Fly Zone, Know What It Means

10 Mar 2022

BUCK: I want to remind everybody that a lot of the people who are in charge really don’t know anything, and I think that this — and it’s not just Democrats. There are some Republicans that are saying some really foolish stuff about our involvement in this conflict in one way or another. This was Congresswoman Maria Salazar yesterday. She wants a no-fly zone and she knows nothing about a no-fly zone.

BUCK: Okay. So I think she realized by the end of that very quick interview that she had just stepped in it a bit, but let’s just be clear. “I’ll do anything.” Okay. So should we stop…? Does she agree with no more Tolstoy in universities, no more teaching of the Russian classics including the anti-Soviet dissidents in universities? Dissidents, folks! People that were trying to bring down the Soviet Union from inside, people like Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn.

These are people who, when you look at this, you look at this system, you look at what they’ve been pushing, Clay, you would think they would know something about this. You would think they would have some idea. If you’re gonna say, you want a no-fly zone — and obviously Dostoevsky’s pre-Soviet. Solzhenitsyn was a dissident form inside. But if you look at this, shouldn’t they know what a no-fly zone is if they want a no-fly zone, and they could be actually voting on this as a member of Congress?

CLAY: It should be bare-minimum knowledge. If you believe that a no-fly zone makes no sense, then at least understand what you are endorsing. I mean, this is not some crazy novel idea and that she could bungle. This is a fairly well-discussed and debated issue, and there are a variety of perspectives on it, if she truly thinks that a no-fly zone makes sense, can disagree with her, but at least make the logical argument.

This is what I used to say, Buck, sometimes I feel like you should just have a tag-team arguer. This is really kind of what Jen Psaki is, right, although she’s not very good at advocating for arguments that make sense, either, but I could argue for her in favor of a no-fly zone better than she can and it makes me highly — and, by the way, as you said, Democrat and Republican, it makes me highly — suspect of all the decisions that are being made when she’s one of whatever, 435 congresspeople, and she can’t even conceptualize an argument, not even a conceptual one, Buck.

And this is a big deal. It’s not like you quizzed her unexpectedly on — I’m just trying to think — some esoteric Medicare cost-of-living increase and maybe she hadn’t been briefed on it, right? I mean, it’s hard to be on top of everything. But this is a pretty big deal. Having a perspective that is logically sound as it pertains to Ukraine should be the number one thing that every congressman and woman in the country is on top of.

BUCK: And let’s think about it for a second here. The vise is tightening around the Ukrainian people with the Russian war machine right now. There was a lot of reporting yesterday about the shelling of a maternity hospital and people being killed there, women and children being killed in the shelling. That is only likely to increase here. Vladimir Putin is willing to go to extreme and inhuman lengths to try to establish the control that he wants in Ukraine.

We should be very clear-eyed about what he is and is not willing to do, especially when you have members of Congress who are saying things like, “Yeah, if we have to shoot down Russian planes, no big deal.” Really? No big deal? Here’s even Senator Bob Menendez, longtime Senate Foreign Relations Committee guy, who’s pointing out no-fly zone?

MENENDEZ: Once you do that, you’re in a war with Russia. I don’t think that the support of the American people extends to that. Our heartstrings are tugged every day that we see the horrific pictures in Ukraine. But, you know, the fundamental question, “What is in the national interests and security of the United States?” is what has to be answered. And at this point I don’t see our ability to engage in a no-fly zone, especially when we don’t have NATO partners that are willing to engage with us.

CLAY: This is a difficult spot, Buck, because what we’re really trying to figure out is how do we go up to the edge of giving as much support to Ukraine as we can, without putting Russia over the edge in provoking a response that creates far more danger than any benefit of our activity? Right? And there’s not an easy answer here. So I can respect a variety of different perspectives, Republican and Democrat and independent, in terms of exactly what the right spot is.

Because we talked about this as soon as the news broke about the idea of the airplanes, right, and of the fighter jets being given to Ukraine. Buck, what was my first thought? “That seems more substantial to me.” If I’m trying to think about it from the Russian perspective, I can see how that could accelerate what Vladimir Putin is willing to do to us and to NATO allies in a way that hasn’t occurred so far with conventional weapons that are being given to the Ukrainians.

Now, it could be wrong. It could be the case that he’s not going to accelerate things and that if the Ukrainians get these jets, that they’re gonna be able to really fight back in a way that they can’t right now against Russia. So this is a difficult thing. This is not “Should there be masks on airplanes?” Like, this is a really difficult thing.

BUCK: Yeah. These are tough calls with super-high consequences, no question about it. But that’s why you want people who have at least some understanding of what’s involved to be the ones speaking about it publicly possibly voting on. We’re talking about members of the U.S. government, members of Congress here. Menendez has been in the game a long time. So I’m not just gonna trash what a Democrat says ’cause they’re Democrats, and especially on an issue that’s this important.

Democrats who understand that this is not our fight, I agree with those Democrats on this issue. I’m not gonna move, not gonna be throwing tomatoes at them just because they’re on the other team, so to speak. This is too important. When you think about the implications of what a no-fly zone would actually mean in the context of Ukraine and against Russia, you’re basically saying — if you wanted this to happen — somebody would be signing on for is that Russian forces on the ground are no longer gonna have air cover, and Ukrainian forces are gonna be able to kill them at a higher rate.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Now you’re talking about greater losses of Russian forces on the ground, Vladimir Putin is gonna be suffering through. He’s gonna be seeing that happening. And you’re gonna say, “Well, he won’t shoot down U.S. planes.” Really? While his guys are being ambushed and you can’t call in close air support because there are American planes in the sky, you think he’s not gonna decide to have surface-to-air missiles or fighters engage?

Guaranteed that you’re gonna have U.S. and Russian planes shooting at each other when this happens. There’s active combat operations. It’s not like… If we’d established a no-fly zone before the invasion, Clay, might have been a different calculation. Now, you would have had the political will to do that, and we didn’t do it but once the Russian planes are already in the sky you’re talking about their military on the ground now that’s taking casualties.

Yes, it’s a war of aggression. Yes, they’re the bad guys. But they don’t care. They’re gonna want to save their guys, and looking at it from the American side, okay, we get a plane shot down, let’s say, if we’re having this no-fly zone. Now you’ve got an American pilot let’s say goes down in Ukraine behind liens that are controlled by Russia. Are we gonna send in U.S. ground forces?

We gonna send in a search-and-rescue team to get him? What happens when they come under fire from Russians? This is how a war with Russia starts, and the people who understand the implications of all this see that. And that’s why to say, “Yeah, shoot down Russian planes, no-fly zone,” for a member of Congress to say that, pretty terrifying.

CLAY: Especially to say it and not understand the significance of the argument. If you are going — ’cause you can make an argument for a no-fly zone, but you have to understand the consequences that can coming from that. She clearly didn’t, and that’s what’s scary. That’s how you stumble into war, and I don’t know what the resolution is gonna be as it pertains to these jets because the idea of getting them out of Germany seemed to be, “Well, there’s no way that Russian is going to bomb Germany.”

But Russia very well could bomb Poland if there are jets that are soon to take off to be attacking Russian assets. They certainly could do it for any of the Baltic states. I don’t know what country ends up feeling comfortable having these jets on their airfield in order to take off and get them into Ukraine, and I don’t know, Buck… Maybe there’s some sort of solution where you can find a way to get these jets into Ukraine secretly. I don’t know.

Shipping them without actually flying them in so they take off for the first time on Ukrainian airfields? I don’t know if that’s a possibility. But at least then you could follow — and this is the lawyer in me — the precedent of, “Hey, we’re already shipping other weapons across the border, and now we’re just going to ship these planes across the border”? I don’t know. I’m not an expert in transport of airplanes like this. But is that a solution that could get the Ukrainians access to the jets? That’s maybe where we’re left thinking through this.

BUCK: I think the Democrats realize — the ones who can see this and have an understanding of the implications, Clay. I think even the Democrats see that the closer you get to this, the closer you are to an open war with the Russian Federation over Ukraine, and is Ukraine really…? This is when it’s hard to have the conversation. It’s easy six months ago to say, “Ukraine’s not a core U.S. national security interest,” ’cause it was obvious then, right?

It’s a country that we like, we wish the best for, we do trade with, et cetera. But now when buildings are being leveled and more will be leveled in days ahead, it’s gonna get worse. And I’ve been saying this for weeks, in the first few days, when everyone’s like, “Oh, the Ukrainians are kicking all the Russian military, kicking them out of the country. Just give it some time.” I was like, “No, it’s not gonna happen. This is getting worse.”

So it becomes harder to make the case that, as an American, this is not our fight because we see the devastation, we see the inhumanity, we see the suffering, and we want to, as humans we want to do something. But this is where you have to make that determination. Is this a core national security interest that you should be sending United States military, our men and women, to fight and die for? I still say the answer is now “no” and that’s why I say no no-fly zone because one leads to the other, in my mind.

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Infuriating! Biden Regime Extends Mask Mandate on Planes

10 Mar 2022

CLAY: Buck, I am so mad. It’s rare that I come on the show angry, but in the last hour, the Biden administration has extended for another month the requirement that you wear a mask on airplanes, on trains, in airports, on public transit, according to no scientific basis in logic whatsoever. Anyone who has been — and I’m gonna focus on airplanes because I think that is where much of the angst and ire is directed now.

But, Buck, the only place you now have to go in much of the country and wear a mask is an airport and on an airplane. It is nonsensical. It is anti-science. The masks do absolutely nothing at all. This was set to expire on March the 18th, and it now has been extended until I presume April the 18th. I think that the Biden administration is going to get destroyed over this because we know in Congress — we saw the State of the Union — nobody wears masks anymore. Even in schools, as dumb as it has been, kids are now not required to wear masks most places now either in the near future or it’s already happened. Are you as angry as I am about this nonsensical rule being extended?

BUCK: I’m furious and also kind of break out into laughter at the same time because these libs are morons. They really are. This is now Moronville. This is not “I disagree.” This is not there’s good faith, let’s all sit down and look at the data and the numbers. This is impossibly stupid. Can we please try to get Pete Buttigieg, Mayor Pete, of the transportation administration? Assuming he’s not still on paternity leave, can we get him to come on the show?

I would love to hear… Didn’t he go to Harvard or Yale or something? I’m sure he thinks he’s really smart. Please try to defend this, somebody. I’d love to have Walensky or Fauci come on. They would get annihilated, and they know it, and that’s why they won’t actually come on. Somehow, this is a policy that no human being can defend without looking like an abject fool, but it’s still the policy of the Biden administration?

PR lady Jen Psaki is gonna be coming forward to say, “Yeah, we still just need to keep everybody safe,” and there are all these Democrat idiots who are seeing the country fall apart around them in a whole variety of ways who are gonna say, “Yeah, it’s real safe on the planes now.” What is wrong with them? Clay, what percentage of our lives do we spend…? You and I fly a fair amount.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Less than 1% of our lives are spent on the plane. Are planes a uniquely dangerous environment for the spread of covid? No. In fact, we know the science says because of the HEPA filters in the planes, they are uniquely safe place to be gathering when it comes to respiratory viruses. And yet the I’m gonna be in crowded bars, Clay. I’m going to a crowded bar this weekend.

I’m gonna be elbow-to-elbow with New Yorkers telling them to move to Florida, and it’s gonna be mask free. What possible epidemiological justification for this can there be? So I kind of laugh because they look so stupid, but I go back and forth ’cause I’m also furious, ’cause this just shows what a joke this whole thing was for two years. It’s all so arbitrary and moronic.

CLAY: American Airlines and Southwest Airlines both had their CEOs testify that the mask mandate made no sense. They said that under oath in Congress, specifically citing the extreme air-filtration systems that exist in airplanes. I want someone to explain to me — and, by the way, I presume that this means also if you take an Uber or you take a Lyft that they’ll technically still have their policy in place that you have to wear a mask in those vehicles, by the way.

I want someone to explain to me why the only place in my city that there is even the mention of a mask… I’m gonna go get on an airplane flight to Florida as soon as we finish the show today, Buck, like this afternoon. I’m gonna head to the airport, I’m going to pull up at the airport, and I am going to get out of my car, put a mask on as I walk into the airport, and then I’m gonna be required basically to keep that mask on until I get to Florida and step outside of the airport and can take the mask off again.

What sense can this possibly make from a scientific basis? In the city of Nashville — and I know there are many other airports just like this — I will walk past, Buck, the indoor dining area where they have a bar set up that looks out into the main terminal of the airport. You can high five people as they are walking by. People drinking beer, eating food. They’re not wearing masks.

You could, if you wanted to… You got your girlfriend or your wife, husband, whatever. You can walk over and you could kiss them right there as they are eating. There’s no barrier, there’s no wall, they’re looking right out into the middle of the airplane terminal. At a minimum, look, I think it’s insanely stupid that there are masks anywhere. But what basis is there for a mask mandate in the airport?

Like, it doesn’t make any sense in the airport. It doesn’t make any sense in the airplane. But at least you’re tightly corralled in an airplane. I’m so angry at this process. If they just said, “You only have to put a mask on in the airplane,” I would be like, “Well, whatever. At least you don’t have to wear one in the stupid airport.” I just… It rarely gets to the point where I’m furious over a decision. There’s no way to justify this.

And the only way I have any sort of solace on it, Buck, is it just further cements the absolute destruction that we have to see in November. Every single person listening right now, you have to go vote based on the covid lies that you have been told by the Democrats, and you have to — we have to — put forward maximum pain, utter destruction.

Because, Buck, they’re going to bring all this back, I really do believe, if they can, as soon as we are through with the midterms. I really legitimately believe as we get into winter and fall, they’re going — late fall and into winter, they’re gonna try to bring back masks if they haven’t already done it.

BUCK: Their narrative for all of us is that the vaccines were great, and they did a great job, and the mandates were necessary, and that’s what got us through the winter. Now, they’re a little quiet about it, because that’s also absolutely absurd. The vaccines were — Walensky even admitted — far less effective than they thought.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Which, you know, Clay, I sit here and you know what else I’m furious about? You and I have been right about this. Honestly. I’m not just saying this. Clay and I were talking about this, as you know. You can go back. We’ll pull some of the tape. I think you came on my show in April, on the Buck Sexton Show in April, to talk about this. And you’re like, “Yeah, masks, it doesn’t… This is idiocy,” and I’m like, “Yeah, Clay, great to have you on. Masks are so stupid.”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Somehow, we now on Spotify, which we know is —

CLAY: Yeah, I saw this. Somebody sent me this.

BUCK: — just overrun with leftist children, “Waaah! Joe Rogan has to get banned.” They’re such babies. Somehow, over there we’re listed… Basically they put this on every podcast now: “For more information about covid. For more information about covid.” They should be putting, “Clay and Buck were right. Clay and Buck were right. Clay and Buck were right.”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But this is all part of the Soviet-style rewriting of history that’s going on right now, and these are the same people who will say, “Yeah, masking up on planes is really smart, keeps us safe.” People are morons, and they think they’re smart, which is the worst part about it.

They actually think they’re smarter than the people who have been right all along. We are tagged on Spotify as though we’re spreading misinformation. I mean, they’re not blocking it, right, because then they’d have to actually specify what. But they’re kind of warning everybody, “Oh, don’t listen to this! You might get red pilled by reality if you listen to this show.”

CLAY: I just — and look, we’re gonna get into inflation and Ukraine and everything else, but this news just breaking in the last hour or so, and I don’t think it’s even been officially, officially announced yet. This is a good question. I would love to see a poll of the American public that is being taken right now, “What percentage of Americans, Buck, do you think agree with us that it is absurdly ridiculous to require a mask mandate on an airplane?” If you truly believe masks work, you’re wrong, but you can still wear a mask. It’s not like they’re banning the use of masks. If you truly believe that they work, you can wear ’em. I think it’s probably 70-30 now. Do you think we’re there?

BUCK: I think so, but, Clay, I also want to make sure that we are clear: The policy on airplanes… You and I have just done a lot of flying recently and some of the other folks listening to us know what we’re talking about. And we got, like, pilots who listen to us and —

CLAY: Flight attendants who agree with us, by the way, are coming up to me now.

BUCK: Yeah. The pilots give me the thumbs-up in the wings. They’re like, “Don’t worry if it’s beneath the nose. It’s no big deal.” But it’s not actually mask up on planes. It is mask up between bites on planes.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: And we all know it. So for 30-minute stretches at a time you’re actually totally just breathing normally in the air but, “Oh, I’m gonna mask up.” It’s the official federal government policy right now is to make people mask up between bites in the airport and on airplanes to protect them from a virus that the country just got wrecked by, half the country just got it, basically, and they act like they’re the people who believe in science? No, they’re the people who believe that just having male genitalia doesn’t make you male. This is who we’re dealing with.

CLAY: The whole time that you’re drinking — well, and the whole time that you are physically chewing — it really is maybe the dumbest thing in our lives that adults have been made to do, right? When you’re kids, sometimes you have to do dumb things. Can you think of anything?

BUCK: No.

CLAY: You’re 40 now. Can you think of anything dumber that you’ve ever been made to do than the masking rules in place?

BUCK: I like how you kind of gently welcomed me into the 40-plus club, by the way.

CLAY: You’re in the 40 club, because —

BUCK: “You could be listened to, Buck Sexton. You’re over 40. You actually have opinions.”

CLAY: You’ve got two generations now of experience on this planet. I can’t think of anything dumber that we have made adults do in my life than the masking rule.

BUCK: It is debasing, and I actually think at some level that’s the point. It’s humiliating, and it’s forced humiliation of the public at the whim of the federal autocrats and the federal bureaucracy and the apparatus, and I think that’s the point. It’s meant to show you, “You do what we say. You do what our most hysterical, left-wing base demands when we have the power to make you do it, and you shut up about it no matter how dumb it is.” It’s humiliating, honestly, and people who have masked shamed other people should hang their heads in infamy for all time for being such dumbasses, honestly.

CLAY: Yes. I agree with all of that and more.

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C&B 24/7: Clay & Buck’s Show Prep

10 Mar 2022

Quite a price America is paying for “no more mean tweets” isn’t it? https://t.co/HIs6dgaU8u

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) March 10, 2022

• NBC News: TSA to extend mask mandate for planes, public transportation until April 18
• USA Today: ‘Fix the breach’: Harris on a clean-up mission with Poland after US rejects fighter jet plan for Ukraine
• NY Post: Harris laughs at Ukrainian refugees
• WSJ: House Passes $1.5 Trillion Omnibus Package That Includes Aid for Ukraine
• CBS News: U.K. calls Russian strike on Ukraine hospital a “war crime” as Moscow dismisses “pathetic outcries” over “so-called atrocities”
• Washington Examiner: Inflation rises to 7.9% in February, highest in four decades
• CNBC: Jobless claims jump to 286,000, the highest level since October
• SLATE: Are Gas Prices Too High? Or Is Your Car Too Big?
• BBC: Russia hits back at Western sanctions with export bans
• U.K. Independent: Canadian sniper from famed regiment joins Ukraine’s foreign legion: ‘I have to help’
• Philadelphia Inquirer: Mystery deepens on whether 12-year-old boy was armed when police shot him in the back
• WSJ: The Two Blunders That Caused the Ukraine War

Confession: I liked the Harry Potter books. But I love JK Rowling on Twitter way more than I ever liked the books. https://t.co/CNsv1Qnoc6

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 10, 2022

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Buck and Jack Carr Co-Author Column on Ukraine

9 Mar 2022

Buck and former Navy Seal, Jack Carr, a guest on today’s show, co-authored this piece on how Ukraine can hit back at Russian forces with America’s help.

Read It:

Fox News: How America Can Help Ukraine Cripple the Russian War Machine- by Buck Sexton and Jack Carr

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Ukraine Crisis Gets Uglier and More Dangerous

9 Mar 2022

BUCK: This is on the Daily Mail right now, for example — Putin’s hospital atrocity. I mean, you are seeing the awfulness of war and people are becoming more emotionally involved in the desire to do something in Ukraine. What does this mean if Putin starts to lose? Here is a nuclear weapons author Joe Cirincione saying if Putin starts losing, the risk grows.

CIRINCIONE: That’s the danger, ironically. If he is losing the war, the nuclear risks grow. The stakes for him become very high and he may feel like a gambler at the table who’s losing his hand. He’s just gonna bet the house — and Russian doctrine does allow for something called “escalate to deescalate,” to use a nuclear weapon first to try to back off the West if they’re losing.

“It is absolutely insane. It is dangerous. I’m afraid something is going to go horribly wrong,” says nuclear nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione on Russia attacking a Ukrainian nuclear power plant. pic.twitter.com/DBigd4X7ue

— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) March 4, 2022

BUCK: He’s right about that. That is Russian military doctrine that they will use a nuke as essentially a back-off maneuver if they think they’re about to lose dramatically, Clay. We’ve gone quite a ways from just a couple of weeks ago where the country seemed very much in favor of nonintervention where now over 70% say they want a no-fly zone.

CLAY: I think this is utterly the danger. The analogy we’ve used and I think it’s a good one on this show is the guy who loses the fistfight and maybe Putin is losing the fistfight right now and isn’t happy with the result and the embarrassment that comes with that loss and decides to bring in a knife or a gun or brings in a bunch of more guys to try to exact revenge over what has happened. I also think we should mention, Buck, the situation in Poland.

We talked about that live on the show yesterday, and I think diagnosed what ultimately the State Department ended up coming to that psalm conclusion, which is — and to reiterate for people out there who may have missed this, the idea was Poland was going to give airplanes, jets, fighter jets, to Ukraine. But they were going to do it by using a base in Germany to make the transfer.

And initially they said, “Look, if they try to do it in Poland then the Russians may well attack those jets before they get airborne,” and so Poland said, “Hey, we’ll put those jets in Germany.” But what you then create is the possibility of Vladimir Putin attacking Germany to try to keep those jets from going into Ukraine and making it to Ukraine airspace. And so what you’re pointing to, Buck, 70% of people may favor a no-fly zone but they’re probably thinking about the no-fly zone in the context of what happened in Iraq, where we had total air superiority and we weren’t in danger of creating World War III.

I thought Marco Rubio said it well when he said (summarized), “Look, a no-fly zone basically creates the entire situation for World War III to exist,” and if that were to end up happening, what we’re doing is sort of a slow walk up to potentially an escalating situation where the United States gets officially drawn in. And that’s the debate we were having yesterday, Buck. At what point does aid become not aid anymore but an actual tacit action to put you in as a combatant? To me, fighter planes feels like it’s pretty close.

BUCK: I think it was last week, Clay, when I said here, “I understand we’re rooting for Ukraine because they’re the underdogs. They’ve been invaded, and there’s all these reports about how strong the resistance has been. The Russian war machine is vicious, it is fierce, and it is gaining ground. They are currently, if you look at it on a map, carving up areas of Ukraine and establishing total control on the ground.”

Now, it’s not a majority of Ukraine, but there’s a whole region in the north, a region in the east, and a region in the south where they’re effectively creating a de facto annexation for the Russian Federation. That’s happening right now. They’re also increasing the shelling, they’re increasing the destructiveness that they’re willing to engage in at this phase, and when we’re talking about a no-fly zone to the point you just made a second ago, it is…

When you put American planes in the sky and you say, “We will shoot down Russian planes,” now it just turns into who’s gonna fire first, because there’s no way Russian planes and American planes are in no-fly zone and they’re just flying past each other, nothing happens, right? We know that. So here’s a former ambassador was actually on MSNBC saying you shouldn’t call it just a no-fly zone. Here’s what you should call it.

“Let’s just get rid of this euphemism ‘no-fly zone.’ Let’s call it for what it is — it’s war,” former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul urged on @MSNBC. pic.twitter.com/t4cCMxroaF

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) March 8, 2022

BUCK: That was former U.S. ambassador to Russia for a long time, McFaul — who I’ll say, is a leftist and something of a loon on things like Trump issues, but on this point, on this issue, Clay? I think what he’s saying is true. I think what he’s saying is right.

CLAY: And also, Buck, it doesn’t even require a conscious decision and intent to shoot down a plane. You know this as well as anybody out there listening to would also. The amount of potential errors that could come into play when you’ve got all of these jets flying around over Ukraine, even if there is an attempt to avoid conflict, it virtually is impossible to have that conflict avoidance occur. So, yeah, I think that’s really where the rubber meets the road.

We have to decide what is our limit in terms of engagement as it pertains to Russia and Ukraine. And so far, to me — and I don’t know if you agree with this, Buck — but putting jets, giving jets to Ukrainians and allowing them to take off and pilot those jets feels awfully close to me — and I don’t know if you agree with me, but I’m trying to think about it from a Russian, Vladimir Putin’s perspective. It’s one thing if you’re giving guns. It’s another thing if you’re giving even the anti-tank apparatus and everything else.

Theoretically, Ukraine could find ways to buy that on the black market. You can’t buy a jet on the black market, right? Like, you can’t just randomly end up with one of these high-powered jets. So there is, to me, a standard where giving armaments goes beyond just, “Hey, here’s some guns, here are some anti-tank missiles, here’s some Javelin material — and, oh, by the way, here’s 20 fighter jets.” The fighter jets feels to me, Buck, like a pretty substantial acceleration, if I’m looking at this from a Russia perspective.

BUCK: Well, if they are taking off from bases outside Ukraine —

CLAY: Yes which they have to be.

BUCK: They initially would be.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I don’t think they’re gonna draw them… They’re not gonna put them on trucks and take this across the border by land. So they’re gonna fly them in… But if they’re flying strikes from outside of Ukrainian territory, the Russians are gonna see that as an act. That is an act of war. We need to start using these terms. That’s an act of war. If you’re allowing someone to fly planes to do strikes against you, you’re gonna look at that as they’re a belligerent now. They’re in the conflict.

CLAY: Even to your point, you have to start that way, right? Because they’re not gonna put these things on trains or on big trucks and try to somehow cross the border with the plane on the ground. Like, you have to have them take off with Ukrainian pilots from another country to fly in. That feels to me like, if I’m Russia, a declaration of war in some ways. It’s different than bringing guns or bringing these other materials across the border, to me. Do you feel the same way, that that feels like a fairly substantial acceleration?

BUCK: It’s an escalation for sure, which is why I think the U.S. response to it has been, “Whoa, hold on a second! We didn’t coordinate.” Yeah. So there’s clearly something different. Plus, we were already selling armaments. The Chinese… There are people have been selling armaments to Russia. We’re not about to say we’re at war with them.

But there’s something more specific and something right, you know, next to the battlefield, so to speak, about allowing the MiGs to be transferred to Ukraine that clearly is raising concerns, raising tensions. And I’m amazed, Clay, at the people say — and I’ve seen this now — “Putin’s not gonna fire nukes if we start shooting his planes out of the sky.”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Really?

CLAY: It’s a big, bold gamble to just be saying that.

BUCK: Think what we’re talking about. I’m not saying, “Oh, the ruble might tank 15% if we start shooting planes out of the sky.” It’s, “He won’t fire nuclear weapons,” folks. This is what… We’re having this discussion right now. We’ve just come out of a two-year pandemic, and we’re closer in America, at least, to the prospect of a nuclear exchange than, what, any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, probably? Let’s be realistic. When was the last time we were really sitting around saying, “This feels like it could be wrong and there could be nukes at any moment”? It’s been decades, at a minimum.

CLAY: Certainly thirty-five years at least, back to the eighties.

BUCK: Look at how quickly we moved along. I’m kind of stunned, Clay, by the polling. People say, “Buck, maybe you shouldn’t believe the polling.” A lot of people, a lot of people on the right are saying, “No, we need to do this no-fly zone for Ukraine.” Really? All of a sudden, a no-fly zone? We’re two weeks into this. And, by the way, what have I been saying?

It’s gonna get ugly. Forget about the Ghost of Kiev and the beauty queen with her airsoft rifle and all this initial propaganda about the glorious resistance. This is going to turn into hell. It’s going to look awful. We’re going to see some of it. It’s going to be playing on the emotions of everyone who’s not in the conflict, and you have to think about this stuff rationally and in calculated fashion.

Because miscalculation here, Clay, that’s the kind of stuff that keeps people up at night. I don’t know what else to say. How much higher can the stakes possibly be than what we’re talking about right now with these decisions about U.S. involvement in Ukraine, which I’m sitting here saying, “No, no, no.”

CLAY: Here’s a question that I have for you, Buck, and you may know the answer and I don’t know, and I haven’t even seen it covered very much. What kind of protection, missile shield do we have in the event that Putin decided to launch a nuke? Let’s talk… To what extent do we have the knowledge technologically to be able to try to keep one of these things from landing. That used to be talked about a lot in the 1980s and the early nineties when the Cold War was still kind of in conscious thought. I don’t remember having that conversation in 30 years.

BUCK: I’ll pose to you this way, and then we’ll bring in somebody who understands the combat on the ground very well, how this stuff goes, Jack Carr, former Navy SEAL. He’s a sniper, saw combat overseas, he’ll be joining us. Best-selling author too. You guys, I’m sure, read his books. He’ll be joining us in just a few minutes. Clay, I will just say this.

The government that just made us mask up for two years unnecessarily is not a government that I sleep well at night hoping would be able to shoot a nuclear weapon out of the sky in time. I’m gonna tell you that right now. I don’t know. I’ve been out of the system. I’ve been out of the national security side for a while. So I don’t even know what the current capabilities are, unfortunately, ’cause they’re very, very sensitive and secret. But I don’t sleep well at night thinking that.

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Libs Distort Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Bill

9 Mar 2022

BUCK: Parental rights, schools, and the fight over education because this is something that we remember in the last election was critical in the victory of Glenn Youngkin, which was not expected, they all thought that Clinton flack Terry McAuliffe was gonna come out victorious in that one.

Turned out not to be so because Youngkin came out saying schools should take the opinions and interests of parents in the education of the parents’ children very much into account. They should actually listen to them. It should matter. And they also should be responsive to the needs, first and foremost, of children and parents, the families that send their kids to these schools.

Not teachers unions and lazy Democrat-voting adults who just want to get away with the bare minimum, which I know is not all teachers, but teachers unions do some really bad stuff and have done some really bad stuff during the covid period here. So this has turned into a battlefield over parental rights. That’s why in Florida they passed a parental rights bill that has been signed by the Florida Senate.

It awaits signature by Governor Ron DeSantis. The activists — and I mean quite specifically, the activists of the LGBTQ+ community — have dubbed this the “don’t say gay” bill, which is not in any way in the bill. It actually doesn’t allow you to say anything about sex, whether it’s gay sex, heterosexual sex, doesn’t matter. It’s just a do not have sexual or gender identity or sexual relations instruction for kindergarteners and pre-K up to the third grade.

This shouldn’t be super controversial, but the Democrats see an opening here based on the propaganda they’re using to make it seem like they’re on the side of the righteous hear, and it’s the bigots in the Republican Party that are causing the problems. Here’s chief PR lady at the White House, Jen Psaki.

Psaki on Florida’s “gay” education bill: It “discriminate[s] against families, against kids put these kids in the position of not getting the support they need at a time where that’s exactly what they need. It’s discriminatory. It’s a form of bullying. It is horrific.” pic.twitter.com/3BbLaMHqvq

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 9, 2022

BUCK: Papa Clay’s got some thoughts here.

CLAY: Oh, I’m fired up. This is just a lie. Okay? I can’t imagine there is anybody out there with a kindergartener to a third grader who believes that sex should be a topic of conversation, either straight or gay sex, in the kindergarten — pre-K, kindergarten — all the way through third grade. I know that we have a lot of kids that ride around in the car with their parents, so I always try to be conscious of what I’m saying on the radio in some way, especially since I have young kids of my own.

This is just a lie, Buck. It’s just a lie that there is in any way discrimination going on in these bills. There does not need to be any discussion of biology or sexuality in kindergarten classrooms. This is madness, right, that it would be. And so what is going on here is clearly the fear that that was occurring. And some of you out there say, “Well, that’s crazy.”

Did you see what — I believe his name is — Tom Bevan, who does Real Clear Politics said? I work with my kids some — in fact, yesterday I was helping my first grader with his spelling bee, the words that he’s gonna have every week that he’s learning how to spell. Did you see the fifth grader science class words that Tom Bevan put out that his kids in public school were getting?

BUCK: Didn’t see it, no.

Last night my 5th grader told us his vocabulary words for "science" class this week:

adolescence
consent
transgender
cisgender
non-binary

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) March 8, 2022

CLAY: This is where this kind of fear is coming from. He has a fifth grade kid, science classroom, adolescence. Okay. You might say it made sense for a fifth grader. Consent. I’m not sure that a fifth grader needs to be having discussions in a science class about consent to sexual acts. It seems a little bit strange. Maybe you’re like, “Okay, they need to have that conversation.” I don’t personally. Transgender? Fifth grade sciences? These are his fifth-grade science vocabulary words? Cisgender?

BUCK: I learned that word three years ago, and I have a large vocabulary, sir.

CLAY: There you go. I like to think, Buck, that you and I would do very well with the SAT vocabulary tests. Still, I’m sure we did good back in the day too. Still, I didn’t know what cisgender was. And here’s another one, nonbinary, fifth grade science class. Does your kid need to learn nonbinary, cisgender, transgender? Like, are these science terms that your fifth grader needs to be using?

And again, I’m citing him. This is Tom Bevan. He runs high up in the running of Real Clear Politics — great website, encourage you guys to check it out. They do a good job of presenting a variety of perspectives in the political world. I use it all the time, Buck, ’cause you know I’m kind of a polling nerd. I like to just look and see what polls are out there, different states, everything else. Okay. This idea that this is banning the use of the word “gay” is a lie. It’s a lie that is being spread widely.

BUCK: And they go even further than that, and this is a common tactic that you will come up against if you’re having any discussion, public debate about transgender issues, the trans agenda. This is an extension of the left’s speech-equals-violence argument. It’s unless you concede to the agenda — the trans agenda in this case. Unless you concede, you are forcing people to commit suicide.

Therefore, you are effectively murdering people. You are engaged in violence. That is actually an argument tactic that is frequently used. People that I know who on the front lines of this debate will often be told, “Children will commit suicide because of you.” That’s what they’ll say, and here is Florida State senator Shevrin Jones suggesting that this bill will in fact increase suicide.

JONES: It’s gonna create an environment where it’s going to continue to keep children, uh, more closeted. Uh, it’s gonna put more of a censor on teachers were teachers — as a former teacher, teachers — are the first responders, uh, to, uh, a lot of problems, uh, that children, uh, come to speak to someone about. Uhh, so is — is — is not going to be beneficial to, uhhhh, to the teacher nor to, uh, to the student. And let’s be clear.

The Trevor Project, umm, did a, uh, study, and come and find out that LGBTQU are more times more likely to, uh, commit suicide. Not because of their sexual orientation, but it’s how they are treated, and that is actually the message that I was trying to convey to my colleagues in the room. Yes, you can have your belief, but who you are hurting, uh, in this language that you’re pushing, not just in Florida, but nationally?

BUCK: Allow 6-year-olds to be talked to about cisgenderism and pansexualism and whatever else the left decides, or else you’re encouraging child suicide? Clay, this is vicious. This is evil.

CLAY: It is. It is vicious. It’s just untrue. And I would imagine that most people out there explain that babies initially when you’re talking to kindergarteners and first graders and whatnot, they come from the stork, right? That’s what I was told back in the day. That’s what most kindergarteners and first graders were told.

BUCK: I told you guys what I learned, and I thought that was true for a while.

CLAY: Yeah, that would have been biologically implausible, almost as biologically implausible as being told that a man can get pregnant and have a baby which is what we are sometimes told now as well. And so it’s just craziness.

BUCK: Clay, when I was 6, I think I thought was a stegosaurus for a few days.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: They’re little kids. This is for parents and for families to handle. This is not for the public education system to dive into. But you notice the left is very bothered. The same way they were very bothered by the any kind of talk about and then of course prohibition on critical race theory indoctrination in school, they’re very bothered on “gender identity” issues for pre-K, for 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds. What is wrong with these people?

CLAY: I give a lot of credit to my wife for summing this up well. When you’re talking about 6-year-olds being able to pick their gender. We don’t let 6-year-olds pick their lunches, right? Because they would eat birthday cake for every meal, if they could. They would eat candy. They would eat cookies.

They would only eat sweets if we let 6-year-olds pick all of their food. So why in the world do we let a 6-year-old pick their gender — this is craziness — or teach them that it’s normal to be ticking their gender at 6-year-old? Biology is real. You know, I want to start selling T-shirts on OutKick that just says, “Biology Is Real.” Boys and girls exist. This is crazy.

BUCK: A 6-year-old couldn’t decide… If you let your 6-year-old decide — without setting up homeschool or something — they’re just not going to go to school, Child Services might be called, unless you set up a separate instruction. You say, “My 6-year-old doesn’t want to go to school,” the state will actually mandate instruction for children to go to school at some level.

But you’re supposed to have 6-year-olds, 7-year-olds who decide that they’re actually not their gender and then the school is supposed to…? By the way, we all know it’s not like the school talks about it. The school encourages it. These programs want to encourage “gender transition,” which is why the study out of Brown University on rapid onset gender dysphoria which proved by the numbers that young children who are around other young children that are suddenly made a big deal of because they think they might be a girl…

It’s usually boys transitioning to girls. They try to bury the study. Because it wasn’t what the narrative, which is that maybe children are very vulnerable to manipulation and to psychological imposition. And that’s why the parents want to have them protected and not have them subject to the whims of a school system that nobody should really trust.

CLAY: Buck, we won’t let kids buy alcohol until they’re 21, but we let them pick their gender before they even hit puberty and start pumping them full of drugs if they want? That’s child abuse.

BUCK: It would be fascinating to see if you could do a study of when people have their first… Let’s say a 12-year-old goes in, a 12-year-old boy goes in and says, “I think I’m a woman.” I guarantee you in every school system across the country, the overwhelming majority of any administrator would celebrate and act like it’s time to break out a birthday cake instead of saying, “Hold on a second, like, let’s talk this through.” I don’t even think… I think that the agenda is to push as much transition as possible for as many people as possible because that then further normalizes taking hormone therapy when you’re not even fully developed.

CLAY: You can’t buy a beer, and you’re gonna pump somebody full of hormones?

BUCK: By the way, this is a losing issue. This is a losing issue for the left, which is why they have to lie about it. So if we stay on this folks, we stay on this.

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Raheem Kassam on Ukraine: How We Got Here and How It Ends

9 Mar 2022

BUCK: We have our friend Raheem Kassam in the mix right now. He is the editor-in-chief of The National Pulse. They’re breaking all kinds of news stories on a regular basis, including on the national security front. Raheem, my friend, great to have you back.

KASSAM: Thank you for having me.

BUCK: What do you see going on right now? I mean, just at the macro level with this Ukraine situation, what’s your take on how the West, how Europe and the U.S. have responded to this and where do you see it going?

KASSAM: Oh, entirely predictable carnage, Buck. I mean, I have been talking about this Ukraine situation since the Maidan Revolution of 2014. I was actually in Kiev while that was going on. I didn’t have any kind of understanding or preconceived notions of what was taking place on the ground when I left London to go there. But it became very apparent to me that if we continued on this trajectory, this tit-for-tat that we’ve seen over the last decade between NATO and Russia, that we would end up in a sort of conflict like this.

And I think it’s just one of these most regrettably predictable end results of a failed foreign policy that’s emanated from London, from Washington, and has resonated across the Western world for the past several decades now. It’s predominantly concerned with people making money. It’s predominantly concerned with what we in the industry know as “managed decline,” and that is sort of the very same notion that had Obama take his first foreign trip as president to Cairo and bow before the Eastern world and effectively say, “We’re sorry.”

And it’s one of those things that is entirely predictable when you look at the last several decades of political philosophy that is the underlying consensus that the elites in D.C., the elites in London have subscribed to be, which is predominantly Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History” theory, right, that liberal democracy will pervade; nothing can stop it. And here we are now staring down the barrel of Mr. Putin’s guns.

I happen to believe as a matter of analysis within myself looking at this situation — and I wrote an article about this for Newsweek a couple of weeks ago — that this will, of course, end with a prolonged negotiation, a new set of treaties, and a whole lot of blood that’s been shed for virtually no reason. So I said back then and I continue to say, “Can we just skip to the good part?” The “good part” being when people stop dying.

CLAY: That is well said. And we just got a great question as we went to break about what we think is going to end up happening when all of these people do stop dying. What is the end result in your mind look like, Raheem? Like, how do we end this conflict in Ukraine and Russia, and what is the result of the end?

KASSAM: Look, unless we as a civilization are willing to risk a pretty level of certainty behind a nuclear World War III for the sake of a non-NATO member country — and we can get into the Budapest memorandum if people like as well — and these small pockets of disputed territories, then an end is necessarily coming to the table and saying, “Right. What is actually your beef?”

Now, the interesting thing about all of this where we are now — and really it reached this kind of crescendo of nonsense a couple of weeks ago when Vladimir Putin goes out and gives this long, winding, 90-minute setting out his stall of historical and culture and ethnicity and land and Stalin and Lenin and all kinds of stuff. And the next day Biden stands up in front of a lectern, gives an equally winding but extremely short and unspecific speech that doesn’t actually deal with any of the specificity that Mr. Putin raised.

So these two sides, what I’m saying, are not even speaking the same language at the moment. One side is speaking realpolitik. One side is saying, “Hey, we want this territory. We believe it’s ours. Here is our justification,” and the other side is pretty much putting its fingers in its ears and saying, “Yes, but you’re just a warmonger and you’re corrupt and so we’re not gonna do any business with you.”

Well, it’s funny (chuckles), isn’t it, because the West has actually been pretty happy — and some European countries especially have been pretty happy — to do extremely high levels of business with Russia over the last several decades. My country especially, selling football clubs, property, all sorts of things to the Russians for the past several decades. And now here we are wringing our hands saying, “How on earth could this have happened?”

As a nation, as a civilization, we have sent mixed messages to Russia. On the one hand, you’ll remember Barack Obama sort of whispering to Medvedev, “I’ll have more flexibility after the election.” On the other hand, this posturing about ho, “Russia’s so small, it’s not a threat, we don’t even have to worry about it.” And all of those things lead to somebody like Mr. Putin looking at the West’s foreign and national security apparatus and saying, “They don’t know what the heck they’re doing.”

And that, I fear, is absolutely true. There are more parallels between what’s coming out of the White House today with a show like The West Wing than there are parallels with actual geopolitical theory. I’m talking about Alfred Mackinder, Mahan, all of those great geostrategic theorists who warned about what happens in Eurasia and the control of that landmass and why those conflicts arise and how to avoid them. Well, I have yet to hear any of these geniuses in this administration — I call it a regime, this regime — talking about those things. How do you actually bring this conflict to a close quickly? And that brings us to the other point, doesn’t it? Do they want to bring this to a close quickly?

BUCK: Here Raheem Kassam he’s editor-in-chief of The National Pulse. You should all go check it out. They’re breaking great stories there on a regular basis. Raheem, I’m sure you caught this, but I wanted to bring it to the attention of our audience all across the country here. Yesterday, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Ukraine, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland — who anybody who knows who the neocons are knows from previous multiple administrations who Victoria Nuland is.

This is an exchange I want everyone to hear with Marco Rubio and Nuland, and I want you to react to it. Play it.

The most important part is Rubio’s initial question. Nuland could’ve just said no.

We don’t yet know what they were doing at those labs but it would be extremely ironic (and catastrophic for US credibility) if, unlike Bush 43, Putin found actual WMD.
pic.twitter.com/ZnXIEP4NIl

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) March 9, 2022

BUCK: Okay, Raheem, just two things here, ’cause that went a little longer than maybe was helpful, ’cause I wanted to go into this one part of it. If it’s medical research that’s being done, why wouldn’t she just say, “Yeah, there’s medical research trying to cure cancer or whatever,” and if it was just medical research, why refer to it as “biological research that you’re concerned the Russians may get a hold of”? That struck a lot of people, who are not trying to be conspiracy theorists, as quite strange.

KASSAM: Well, people will cast their minds back to the beginning of the pandemic when the likes of me (laughing) were talking about this BSL-4 bioweapons, bioresearch facility in Wuhan. And the level of just flat-out denial that we heard at the time, that this thing was even something to be concerned about, something to look into. And then, of course, fast-forward to just about a week ago when people started to raise the specter of these issues in Ukraine.

And almost the entirety of corporate media in the United States bore down pressure on people asking questions — questions like Mr. Rubio just asked there — and said, “This is fake news, this is Russian propagandize, no such things exist,” and then come obviously to yesterday where you have new land herself saying and you’re right to point out the very cagey terms that she uses there, right?

And you can hear the kind of stuttering and stammering, and if people go watch the video as well, you see her body language when she’s talking about all of these things. She’s very clearly deeply concerned about what is going on at these labs. Now, we did a little bit of digging into some of this last night, and we found out that actually none other than then-Senator Barack Obama in 2005 was one of the people who helped set up U.S. aid going to Ukraine — to use the words that they used as a time in a press release — to “secure these facilities” in case of any accidents or like we’re seeing now, whatever conflict and so forth.

But it was really interesting to us that these Web pages had been taken down over the last couple of years. And we actually had to go back through the web archives to find this information. Funnily enough at the same time as all of that is happening, who is nowhere to be seen? That would be Dr. Fauci — Mr. Fauci, as I call him, because he hasn’t acted like a doctor over the past couple of years. And he’s nowhere to be seen at the moment. So now the questions and the Freedom of Information requests all start pouring in.

Where were these labs, who was funding them, what research was going on there, and what NIH grants, if any, and what NIAID grants, if any, were going — i.e., with Fauci sign-off — to all of these things? Yes. This is now — and look. I gotta tell you this. When it comes to the fog of war, especially in the propaganda realm, you can’t believe either side. The numbers are nonsense. “We’ve shot down four billion planes and the Ghost of Kiev is lurking behind every corner.”

It’s all nonsense. You gotta just look through all of that and get right to the signal. And the signal here again comes back to our first point. How did we end up in this situation? How do we get out of this situation? Because to me — I said this back in November — Mr. Putin knows that this is a prolonged conflict if he wants it to be, and he is now seeking to normalize conflict in that region. I would say that responsible people — the grown-ups, with all the grownups, the grownups — should be talking about how not allow conflict to become normal in that region and in Ukraine.

BUCK: Raheem Kassam, everybody, National Pulse is the website he is the editor-in-chief of. They’re doing great work over there. Raheem, my friend. Thanks for being with us. Appreciate it.

KASSAM: Thank you, guys.

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Zelensky Echoes Churchill in Appeal to Europe

9 Mar 2022

CLAY: The Splendid and the Vile, which is about Churchill during the bombing of England. Have you read that book, Buck?

BUCK: I’m about 75 pages into Dead Wake by Erik Larson, the same author, about the sinking of the Lusitania. We really do nerd out. This is like when we show up on TV wearing the same outfit.

CLAY: Exact same outfits. I will say, I am an unabashed Churchill stan. I read about Churchill as much as I can. One of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten to do was going to London. If you’ve ever been to London and had an opportunity — or if you will be going at some point, because I know all the travel has been restricted to a large extent for the past couple of years — the Churchill War Rooms in London. Buck, have you been there? Have you ever been able to see this?

BUCK: I’ve only spent two days in London when I was 12, so I don’t remember anything, really. I didn’t get to go.

CLAY: So I love London because, again, the history. I’m not sure any city… I haven’t been to Rome. I would love to go at some point. But of all the cities that I have visited, London does one of the best jobs of mixing amazing history with the modern day, and you can walk into the Churchill War Rooms. You can tour them. This is where Churchill managed the war against Hitler, and it’s underground, and they’re bunkers because obviously of all the bombs that were falling on London.

And it basically is set up… Buck, you would be in disbelief of how amazing it is. It’s as if time has stood still. The moment that they ended the war in Europe, they essentially came out from underneath the ground, and they have preserved all the maps, the cot that Churchill slept on, where all the armies were located at the day when they were finally able to achieve victory in Europe. It is one of the coolest experiences — if you are a history buff — that is possible. I’m telling you right now, just put it on your list. If you ever have the opportunity to be in London, make sure that you go there.

BUCK: What’s your favorite Churchill biography?

CLAY: What’s the big…?

BUCK: William Manchester, The Last Lion?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That tends to be the one. I like the Roy Jenkins biography of Churchill, too, but —

CLAY: Yes, but The Splendid and the Vile, if you haven’t read that, focuses specifically on the period where Hitler was ascendant and the question was, “Is he going to come across the Channel and invade?” and they totally believed that the psychology of all of the bombs that they were dropping on England was going to defeat the British people.

Churchill made a calculated decision. He read Hitler better than anybody who was alive at that time, and he understood what he had to do in order to keep the war going until he could get the United States and others to come and join him. And, remember, initially the United States was providing materiel and resources while avoiding getting involved in the war in Europe.

And so let me play this, because Zelensky is making a calculated attempt to appeal to the Europeans who remember and honor the legacy of Churchill. He is making a very calculated attempt to be that version. But I want to play for you… I believe we have — let’s see here — on the Zelensky take is good one, but I wanted to play first, I think they went back and they pulled Churchill saying that we would resist. Let’s play the Churchill from 1940.

CHURCHILL: We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.

CLAY: That was Churchill, June 4th, 1940, speaking to the House of Commons. Well, Zelensky invoked Winston Churchill in his remarks to the United Kingdom, to the Parliament there. I want you to listen to this and take into account the historical echoes.

ZELENSKY: We’ll not give up and we will not lose. We will fight ’til the end at sea, in the air. We will continue fighting for our land whatever the cost. We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets.

CLAY: So you hear the historical relevance there. Great job pulling those cuts to put them side by side by our crew. Buck, Zelensky has become the focal point of Ukrainian resistance both in Europe and around the world. What exactly…? And he’s clearly invoking Churchill, continues the analogy which some want to make of Putin as a modern-day Hitler. And let’s be fair.

Every single time somebody does something bad or something that you’ve disagreed with, the Hitler analogy is tossed out there. But you’re a guy who studies history too. What is the evocation here long term of Zelensky clearly aligning himself with Churchill, and what do you think of the historical resonance, the historical analogy, and what it means going forward for the Ukrainian fight?

BUCK: He understands the messaging here is to draw a direct connection between his stand against Putin’s invasion and the Western world at the time, really, the British Empire and the United States and Canada — well, those two together, but you know what I mean — coming together to fight against Nazi Germany. This is what he wants people to be thinking of, that this is a moment in time just like we’re back at the early stages of World War II and that it’s effectively inevitable.

This is a fight for humanity, for all of mankind, and this is whether the long night of fascism takes over or not will be determined in this conquest. I don’t think that that is actually a fair historical analogy, unfortunately. I think that this is, yeah, obviously Putin has launched an aggressive invasion here. But the people that are saying, “His next stop will be, his next stop will be,” and it’s the NATO countries, “He’s gonna take over Poland, he’s gonna take over the Baltics, he’s gonna…”

No. At some point, we will fight. We’re already talking about a no-fly zone, folks. It’s been two weeks, and I think Putin realizes if he tries to roll tanks into Poland, we’re gonna have American A-10 Warthogs blowing up Russian tanks and World War III may be upon us. I think he does know that. But as we’re seeing this right now, I’m prepared for it, Clay, but, so now if someone somewhere invades another country, America has to get involved directly with troops in some capacity? Because a no-fly zone is American military in a war zone as active combatants, and that is what the — and they realize it’s a big tipping point because once you do that, what comes next? What’s the next step?

CLAY: I’m not concerned about Putin taking the next step because I don’t think, based on the way that the invasion has gone in Ukraine, that he even has the supply lines, Buck, to be able to take him from Ukraine into another country like Poland. I don’t believe… Now, he could fly in with planes and drop bombs and attack that way. But the idea that we’re gonna see a blitzkrieg-style attack where you’re rolling across multiple countries as we saw Hitler suddenly initiate in World War II is not.

BUCK: I think that’s bad. I think that’s bad-faith analysis. I think that’s meant to terrify people who don’t want us to get into Ukraine into thinking, “Oh, my gosh. If we don’t do this, next thing you know, he’s gonna be flying the Russian Federation…”

CLAY: The poeple that are arguing he’s gonna take over Poland, everything else.

BUCK: That’s not gonna happen.

CLAY: You agree with me that they have to recognize that that’s not a probability, right? Like, it’s almost impossible to even conceptualize.

BUCK: Yeah. He doesn’t have the… He can’t do that is the point I think that you’re making.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: He can’t trigger Article Five of NATO response and withstand that unless he wants… Putin doesn’t want a nuclear war. He wants, probably, half of Ukraine, and a promise that it will never be in NATO. I’m not saying that’s okay, but I’m saying I think that is his end state here. He can’t take over all of Europe. Russia’s got a $1.4 trillion economy. They’re not gonna be able to do this.

CLAY: They can barely get to Kiev right now with the resources… They’ve been straggled out and strung out on the road for 40 miles as we’ve seen for a while, and they seem to have major supply issues there. The idea that you’re gonna roll into another country, not to mention one that would trigger potentially NATO defense protocols seems to me kind of crazy. But I do think the historical relevancy for Zelensky is he’s playing clearly into the Churchill analogy.

Because he knows that people now looking at this, Buck, know that Churchill’s on the right side of history, right, and maybe one of the few people in the twentieth century that everybody can agree on is a true lion-hearted hero, and that might move European leaders and American leaders who are fond of Churchill’s legacy to be more supportive of him and Ukraine than they otherwise would be. I think it’s a smart play by him.

BUCK: Yeah, sure, and I think a lot of people will have in mind the movie Finest Hour, where Gary Oldman is playing Churchill, similar to The Splendid and the Vile in terms of the time period, right, Churchill is in the bunker trying to keep the war going despite the machinations of Halifax, who now is treated like a bad guy. I think it’s interesting, the debate at the beginning of World War II of who in the British government wanted to get involved.

Obviously, Churchill was much more bellicose and now we say, “Well, Churchill turned out to be right.” Europe had just gone through World War I. They’d effectively thrown an entire generation of men into a meat grinder for what purpose? For what reason? It was understandable that there was a lot of hesitation to go through, in a generation, yet another war.

CLAY: Which is why France fell so quickly, right, because France succumbed to that same thing. The Maginot Line, everything else fell apart because of the historical demand that World War I extracted upon that entire country.

BUCK: But the other part of this we have to remember is that America didn’t even want to get involved in WW2, right?

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: We were attacked by Japan. We were trying to remain neutral. We had the neurological act. In that movie, Finestt Hour, you had that phone call with FDR, is like (impression), “Well, maybe we can let you pull the planes, old boy, across…” Remember that?

CLAY: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

BUCK: Not a bad FDR impression.

CLAY: There haven’t been a lot of FDR compressions on the radio in a long time so I think everybody’s gonna believe it’s a dead ringer.

BUCK: There we go. But we were trying very hard at that point — the U.S. government was true very hard at that point — to not get involved. Look, war fever is a very contagious thing. I always am reminded of the Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens… Essentially, it’s a short story about the guy who comes in — about the church and — I think it’s called The War Prayer.

And it just goes to how people get very caught up in the moment where you’re saying, “Hold on a second. What are we doing here?” they look at you like you’re the crazy one. “What do you mean you don’t want to go to war right away?” It feels like we’re moving in that direction right now. We have a lot of coverage of a hospital that was just hit. It’s horrible. I was saying last week and the week before, “This is going to become atrocious.

“It’s gonna be awful. We’re gonna see more…” Remember, Clay, those opening days it was people spreading all these memes about how the Ukrainians are just kicking butt everywhere and everything’s amazing? This is gonna get very, very ugly. This is what war actually is. And when people are proposing, let’s say, Zelensky — to bring it back to your point about Zelensky as Churchill — okay, we lost a lot of people in the Second World War.

And that was a conflict that we tried to stay out of and found ourselves brought into. Do we really want to risk the possibility of open warfare with Russia? I think a lot of people in this country believe that we could kick Russia’s butt so fast that we would barely even feel it and that they wouldn’t fire nukes, and I think that’s wrong on both counts.

CLAY: Well, and also the challenge would be, we could find ourselves in a first Iraq war situation, Buck. Remember in the first Iraq war, we dominated, kicked Saddam Hussein’s butt when he invaded Kuwait. But the problem was Saddam Hussein was still in control after the first Iraq war. And to what extent is Putin…? Even if we were able to come in and kick them out of Ukraine, to what extent are we committing to a regime change in Russia? ‘Cause if we’re not, the danger is perhaps even more elevated and remains such with Putin still in control of Russia even if we beat him in Ukraine.

BUCK: Let’s understand this: The Donbas region, for example, and Crimea clearly, that’s… Unless people wanted to have the 82nd Airborne and U.S. Marines deploying to fight urban and ground warfare against Russians, that’s never gonna go back to Ukraine. The Russians will dig in on that and treat that like Russian Federation territory. So this is where we get into, “How do we bring this thing to an end?”

I just want this thing to end as quickly as possible. I know everyone wants it to end as quickly as possible. But whatever achieves that right now I think and preserves the most human life should be the goal. But look, apparently, that’s a minority position right now: 70% of people want a no-fly zone, according to the most recent polling I’ve seen. So we may be heading there, Clay.

CLAY: I don’t think most people understand what a no-fly zone means. Again, I think everybody wants this thing to be over. The question is, how do we get there and how do we do it with the least loss of life, as well as the least risk of the loss of life because this idea… We had this good conversation in the first hour about what would happen if a nuclear weapon actually got let loose, and I don’t think hardly anybody’s actually talking about it.

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CLAY: Buck, I was telling you this off the air: There’s been all sorts of craziness at the quarterback position in the NFL. So I got a good sports story for you. Washington, first of all, they changed their name from the Redskins, right, which, again, it just puts other… Now the Cleveland Indians had to change their name. I got asked at our Houston event, somebody said, “Hey, you moved from sports to politics. How did that happen?”

Jesse Kelly was asking me that at our event with Michael Berry. I appreciate all you guys who came out, KTRH, I believe, listening down in Houston. And what I should have said — better, more succinct answer — is, “Politics just became sports.” And the Washington Football Team, now the Washington, I think they’re the… I can’t even keep up. I think they’re the Commanders now, which is a weird name in and of itself.

They have traded for Carson Wentz, who is kind of a perpetually star-crossed quarterback for a long time. So the only thing that may be more incompetent than the Biden administration is the Washington Football Team. So the Washington Commanders now have traded for Carson Wentz. So it is an epidemic, as some might say, in Washington, D.C., of stupidity spreading widely all over the place.

Clay and Buck

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