CLAY: New census data came out, and it shows the migration data in this country, from July of 2020 — shortly after covid had taken off — to July of 2021. The three largest losers in population, Buck: LA County, New York (Manhattan), and Cook County, Illinois (which is Chicago). Does that surprise you at all, Buck? I mean, that is exactly the three that I would guess, if I were going to say where the population moved from. Because those are the people that had moved into my city, into my state, that I meet the most frequently. New York City, LA, and Chicago. People abandoning those three cities in large numbers.

BUCK: I’ve seen that 300,000 people have left New York as a number that’s being shared around. Now, I assume that’s almost entirely from New York City and its environs. So that’s a stunning number. Think about it. That’s half the city of Miami by way of comparison. Imagine if half of — and I think Austin is about maybe half a million. Does that sound right?

CLAY: Well, they have the “metropolitan area.” Depends how you define it.

BUCK: Yeah. They always do that.

CLAY: If you use the county itself, where everybody is based.

BUCK: I think the actual city is like half a million, 600,000 — we thank all of our Austin listeners, at KLBJ — but I think that that’s an enormous number. But what’s amazing to me, I don’t know if anybody has an explanation for this, somehow, New York City has lost about 300,000 people, let’s say. Roughly that. Prices, for homes hire, and rental prices?

CLAY: Still going up.

BUCK: Never been higher, a rental. Never been higher. You’re paying more money now to rent in New York City, than you ever have. Three hundred thousand people fled this place, and the prices just keep going up, and the taxes are going to go up too, even more than they already have, by the way.

CLAY: I don’t understand that either, Buck. I wondered the same thing, because you would think the LA housing market has stayed white hot. New York, Chicago… Now, the housing market really kind of all over the country has gotten white hot. But those are the three cities that people have fled the most. Where have people moved? I thought this was interesting. This is not going to surprise our listeners down in Texas.

Five of the top ten counties to grow were in the state of Texas. Collin, Fort Bend, Williamson, Denton, and Montgomery County are the five that grew the most. The others were in Arizona. Maricopa County. That’s Phoenix, am I correct in that? I think. I believe. We’ll fact-check that, see if I blew that. But it’s Maricopa County in Arizona, which I believe is the Phoenix area. Riverside County in California, which I believe is kind of the inland empire where people are fleeing.

I think I’m correct in that. Might be wrong on that one too (chuckles) Now to Florida. Not surprising. Polk and Lee County, and then Utah as well. So people are fleeing blue states and blue cities, and they are overwhelmingly moving to red states by and large, or red state governors, if, Buck — this is always important, and the Corona Bros and the crazy people out there who are committed to covid — f all of these blue cities and states were so much safer, wouldn’t we see the reverse?

Wouldn’t people be saying, “Oh, my goodness, my family is in such danger! I’ve got to leave Florida! I’ve got to leave Texas. I’ve got to leave Tennessee. All these red state policies! We’re in danger of dying.” Instead, we’re seeing people leave the Draconian, restricted covid places, the places that are the most restrictive of personal freedom, and move to places that have the least restrictions.

BUCK: Well, also, when you start to hear from people in some of these states, I think that there is a concern. I hear this from my two brothers. My one brother is a permanent Floridian now. The other is kind of half and half in New York and Florida. And they will say, oh, well, people want to make sure, “If you come down here from New York, you vote the right way.” This migration wave for all of you in Tennessee and Texas and Florida, is —

CLAY: That’s a concern for people down here.

BUCK: I know. It’s generally the same people from the blue states though, who are fleeing. It is the Republicans or independents or right-leaning, right-of-center folks, who have just said, I can’t do this anymore. By the way, the crime thing is another huge component of this.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Covid was bad, for sure. But covid was bad, and crime got a lot worse, and what everybody was being told — and this has not been discussed nearly enough (and we will remedy that on this show, Clay, in the weeks ahead), we were told that the crime wave is so bad, because of covid lockdowns, which never made any sense whatsoever.

CLAY: That’s a lie. Yeah.

BUCK: It was progressive, left-wing, anti-cop, pro-criminal policies. The rise of the BLM movement, the fear of corporate America. The bending of the knee. The Democrat Party’s cowardice. That is what led to the huge surge in violent crime all across the country. And in places like New York City, you were treated — and this is true in Chicago. It’s true in San Francisco. It’s true in Los Angeles.

You’re treated to being told, “You’re a bad person if you won’t mask up, and how dare you call the police on that guy who is relieving himself in front of your building, you know, with children walking across the street in broad daylight while he has been a heroin needle sticking out of his arm. How dare you think the police should do something about him, you unmasked bandit!” People finally reached the breaking point. They finally decided, enough is enough.

CLAY: That is such a fear. What your brother talked about, if you live in Florida or if you live in Tennessee or if you live in Texas, these bastions of freedom, and there are other states certainly that have that same bastion. Utah, although they have an idiot governor, who is not standing up for athletes out there. That’s still got me fired up. People who are flooding into Arizona has a Republican governor right now. We’ll see what happens with Mark Kelly in the Senate. But there’s the fear that they’re going to turn a red state, either purple or blue, like what happened in Georgia, like what’s almost happened in North Carolina.

BUCK: I’m gonna tell all the Tennesseans, all right? We’re sending you our best from New York. Okay? We’re sending you the good ones from New York, overwhelmingly. Not everybody, there’s going to be some crazy libs in there too. But New York is sending you our best.

CLAY: Yeah, the locust analogy is the fear. I talked to a lot of Texans about this. You destroy where you used to be, and then you move into a new area like a plague of locust and immediately bring with it the left-wing policies that cause you to destroy where you were, and bring it with you. But I think the Florida data is fascinating on this, Buck, because we have Ron DeSantis on.

I think we have Ron DeSantis on next week, if I’m not mistaken. We have to schedule him for next week. But we talked for him, about what the data was showing inside the state of Florida. Florida, for the first time ever, now has more registered Republicans than Democrats. Never occurred in the history of the state, and by the time we get to November, there are projections that suggest, there could be 250,000 more Republicans, in the state of Florida than Democrats. Which really, I think, Buck, is going to take Florida out of the toss-up category and put it pretty squarely in the Republican side of the ledger.

BUCK: Right. And that’s a perfect example of exactly what I’m talking about.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And by “best,” I just mean mostly like-minded. The New Yorkers listening to us now are obviously like-minded with me, and we’re in this together, my fellow New Yorkers.