×

Clay and Buck

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

Kari Lake Vows to Take Control of the Border as AZ Governor

28 Jul 2022

BUCK: We have Kari Lake with us now. She is the Trump-endorsed candidate for the governor of Arizona. She’s leading in the polls right now for the Republican primary, which is just about to come up here. Kari, thanks for calling back in. Good to talk to you.

LAKE: It’s great to be on with you. Yeah, right now people are still voting, and we vote for, unfortunately, 27 days in Arizona. But Election Day officially is next Tuesday. We’re doing great. Looking forward to it.

BUCK: So let’s… One thing that we try to talk about on the show, Kari, with frequency — because I think that the Democrat-aligned corporate media has very little interest in telling your story — is what continues to happen at our southern border. In fact, some of the national level polls show that this is a major concern, certainly among Republicans, but even independents, the open-door policy the Biden administration has set up. What’s the latest? What are you seeing in your state and what is the state of play going into this fall when it comes to the border?

LAKE: It’s just wreaking havoc on Arizona, and also this whole country, and that’s why people from all over the country are interested in watching so closely this particular race because it’s going to take a strong governor to put it to an end. We can’t count on Joe Biden. He’s illegitimate. He is the one who opened up our border. You know, as a journalist, when I was a journalist, I covered our border and Arizona for 27 years.

I’d never seen it more secure than under President Trump, and Joe Biden came in on day one and tore that back. So it’s going to take a strong governor to go down there and take back control of your border — and we have right to do that be and it’s right there in the United States Constitution. Article I, Section 10, when we are being invaded, when our people are in imminent danger and there’s no time for delay, we can basically take control of the border and enact states’ war powers, basically, in so many words.

BUCK: So if you become the governor, what would that look like, then? What actions would you take as governor of Arizona to secure the border?

LAKE: Well, for starters, day one we have to call it what it is. We issue a declaration of invasion, and then we are going to put our Arizona National Guard on the border and prevent people from coming across. Right now, we have the Border Patrol. They’re under, of course, Joe Biden’s control. And they can’t stop people. So they’re taking people in every day by the hundreds and thousands who cross our border, and so when we put our Arizona National Guard down there to cover those gaps in the wall, we’re gonna stop people from coming across.

We will not allow them to come in, and then we’re going to finish President Trump’s wall project. There’s only about 20 miles left. The materials for that wall have been left on the border; so, I’ll work with the legislature to redefine what “abandoned federal property” is. And, frankly, they canceled the contracts and left the stuff laying there for a couple years now. So, we’ll redefine that and we’ll take that property back and finish the construction of President Trump’s wall. And we will take on the cartels. We’re not gonna let them have operational control. We’re gonna blow up the drug-running tunnels and we’re gonna shoot down their drones, and we will take back control of our border.

BUCK: Speaking to Kari Lake. She’s running for governor in Arizona. How is the economy doing in your state under this Biden administration? I mean, what does the…? They call it a non-recession, but we know what’s actually happening. What’s it like for folks now, for businesses and for individuals who are trying to make ends meet while this White House is calling the shots?

LAKE: Truly hard for people. I’ve been on the campaign trail for over a year now, and when things first started kind of going south under Biden, people would say, “Kari, it’s getting harder to fill up the gas tank. Gas is costing more.” Now I’ve heard people say, “We’re looking at food prices. We can’t afford three meals a day,” especially for folks who are on Social Security. They cannot afford to make ends meet, and it’s getting to a critical level, and so we’ve got to stop… We gotta stop allowing the federal government to print out money like there’s no tomorrow.

They’re devaluing our dollar and really pushing inflation up. And everything Joe Biden has done, you don’t need to be a world class economist to figure out that every move he’s made has hurt our economy. And we’ve gotta do everything we can here in Arizona to make sure that small businesses have the support they need, that we get out of their way. We pull back regulations, we make sure that they’re able to thrive as much as they can in this difficult economic environment, and then we need to make sure we have honest elections so that we don’t get another stolen, shoddy election where we end up with the wrong guy in the White House.

BUCK: What has to happen there, Kari? Give me some details. I mean, how do we secure — ’cause I got people writing in to me all the time, and I understand is their frustration. They say, “Well, Buck, what does it matter if they’re gonna cheat?” I say, “Please. Don’t vote because you… Their cheating should not stop you from voting,” right? Please go out and vote. How do we secure elections?

LAKE: We have to go out and vote, and we have to vote in droves. And we’re way up in the polls, but I tell everybody, don’t get lazy. We got get out and vote, because we’re gonna have to win by a mile to eke out a one-inch win — and then when I get into office, I believe we’ll have a Red Wave at the legislature. And the state legislature is the only entity that can write election law. And we will secure our elections. I told you we vote for 27 days here in Arizona.

We’re gonna bring it back to Election Day, paper ballots, we’re gonna show photo ID, and we really need to clean up our voter rolls in Arizona. We have people who moved a decade ago who are still there. I talked to a woman who said she moved away, she moved back and registered to vote; she found out she was in the voter roles twice under both registrations. We gotta clean those up. But even if we do all that and we get that squared away, as long as we have these electronic voting machines, we’ll never have secure elections.

That’s why I’m involved as a citizen and a candidate in a lawsuit trying to get those banned. We can’t have a private company — we can’t hand over a hundred percent of our sacred vote to a private company — that won’t tell us how their machines work. We know for a fact they can be hacked and manipulated. We’ve seen it. We have the best cyber security experts in the world who have testified to that. And we know that these things aren’t safe. Also, the components are made by our adversaries in China. So, we need to get rid of these machines and go back to the old way of doing it, which is a hand count. They did it that way in France this last election; they had the results by later that night on election night. It is possible to do. We used to do it that way and we didn’t have the troubles we have now.

BUCK: Speaking to Kari Lake. She’s running for governor in Arizona — and, folks, just weeks away from Election Day there for the primary.

LAKE: Right.

BUCK: Kari, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has taken some pretty considerable steps to protect people from what I would call Fauciism, from vaccine passports, from mask mandates in schools, things of that nature. If you’re the governor of Arizona, I’m seeing here that there are counties in Arizona — Maricopa County among them — that have, considered under the CDC guidelines, “elevated covid levels,” we’re seeing masks coming back in places. What kind of freedom from Fauciism could you promise the people of your state in Arizona?

LAKE: We will not shut down your business ever. We will not require your children to be masked up. And we will work to pass legislation immediately to prevent a boss from forcing you to take a experimental shot against your will. What happened to the American people during covid was one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen government do to the citizens of this country. We can’t have schools — we can’t have appointed or nonelected officials, anybody — imposing vaccine mandates on our people. We’re learning a lot, frankly, Buck, about Big Pharma and what they’re doing and what they’re up to.

And we can’t even trust our CDC. We can’t trust somebody like Fauci because he’s lied to us. And so I’d put the blame squarely on them. They have not been straight with the American people. They’ve lied, they’ve misled us, and now we’re learning about all of the dangerous side effects of these shots. So how dare they even try to attempt to force people to get these shots anymore. Until we know exactly what’s in them and what the effects are, we can’t be forcing that on our people.

I stood as a candidate shoulder to shoulder with our airline employees, with our medical employees, with our first responders — all kinds of employees — who were being forced to either get the jab or walk away from their job and not be able to put food on their table. I can’t believe what we witnessed in this last year with these shots, and I vow as governor to do everything in my power to prevent this from happening again.

And we’re not gonna fall into the monkeypox thing and start shutting businesses down and masking people up. What I want to do is much like Kristi Noem did, the governor of South Dakota. She laid out the problem, she gave the people of South Dakota the facts as we knew them at the time and said, ‘Hey, here’s some things you can do to protect yourself. Here’s some things you can do to protect your business. Now, you take that information, and you make the best decision for yourself and your family and your business.”

BUCK: She’s running for governor of Arizona, folks. Kari Lake. Get out there and vote. Kari, thanks so much for calling in again. Good to talk to you.

LAKE: Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Recent Stories

Get Password Hint

Enter your email to receive your password hint.

Need help? Contact customer service.

Forgot password

Enter your e-mail to receive your account information via e-mail.

Need help? Contact customer service.

Rufo’s Latest: They’re Teaching 5 Genders in Portland Public Schools

28 Jul 2022

BUCK: Chris Rufo does phenomenal work. I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with him. I think he was on Laura’s show last night on Fox. By the way, I think I’ll be on Hannity’s show tonight on Fox and maybe on Jesse’s show tomorrow. So that’d be great. But, you know, that stuff changes depending on the news cycle. I’m not an econ guy so I might get bumped. That happens. Always appreciate being on either of those shows.

They’re great shows, huge ratings. Millions and millions of people watching Sean. Millions and millions of people watching Jesse. But I saw Chris last night. I think he was on Laura’s show. And Chris Rufo does great work. And you’ve gotta hear some of this. This is from his Twitter thread. Because this is yet another area… We’re really hyperfocused on the economy right now, as we should be, but there are other places where I think people have had enough of the lunatic Democrat Party. I think the commies have run rampant enough without the pushback that we can give with a unified voice of the American people at the polls in this upcoming midterm.

Here’s Rufo on this. This is stunning. I’m gonna read a little bit about this. As you know, there is gender identity indoctrination going on all over the country in the school system. Ron DeSantis in Florida is fighting against this. I’ve started to see some Glenn Youngkin stuff where he might be fighting against it. There are some people that are pushing back on the indoctrination. We should check on him. I haven’t heard from Youngkin in a while. We should get him back on the show, see what he’s up to in Virginia. But in Portland, as you can imagine, things have really gone over the edge when it comes to the brainwashing they’re doing of children there.

This is from Rufo’s thread.

Okay? You see this and you say, “How can they be teaching this to children and then turning around and telling us that they’re not doing gender identity and indoctrination training?” But they are doing it. They’re teaching little kids there are five genders in the Portland Public Schools. And the problem that you face with this, I would also note, is that even… I can tell you in New York City, which has super expensive private schools, they’re doing a lot of the same thing there.

In fact, a lot of the private education options are even more woke because, you see, they’re terrified. They feel all this guilt. “Oh, I’m wealthy enough that I can afford to send Little Susie or Little Timmy to this rich school, this ritzy place. So we have to allow for the woke gender identity training of our children.” That’s the idea. And the administrators, the people that are calling the shots at these places, at these private schools specifically, you expect… What do you think? The chancellor of schools or whatever the term is in Portland, Oregon, if that individual does not have, like, a blue Mohawk and face tattoos, I’ll be a little surprised.

I don’t know, but I’m just saying you’re expecting very left-wing, very left-wing school bureaucrats in the Democrat cities to be making those administrative decisions. But even in the private schools they’re doing this. And I note this, and I point this out because, see, all Rufo does is find the receipts. He finds the proof. He finds the reality of the teaching materials and assures it. And the left hates him for it because what they want is they want parents in America to be complacent over this. Because it’s a little bit shocking, right? It’s jarring.

It’s jarring when you hear from people or when you see that children — perhaps in your school district, certainly in your state — are being taught that there are five or 15 or it hurt genders, are being taught about white colonialism and white supremacy — you know, when they’re 6. I’m pretty sure that it’d be better, a better usage of time in the schools to have kids learning their ABCs, the basics of addition and subtraction, maybe sing some songs, work on some hand-eye coordination. I’m not an educator, but I think that stuff would be important.

I think that would be a good focus of time and energy. Instead, you have this radical left. It’s a fringe in terms of American society, but it’s not a fringe in education because they now control so much of education. They have seized the commanding heights of our educational institutions, whether it’s preschools or Ivy League universities. I mean, University of Pennsylvania just put up a man for the Woman of the Year award for the NCAA.

If you had said that 10 years ago, if you had made that joke, people would have said, “Come ooon. That’s too far.” Well, now we’re there. She — he — did not win, by the way. A she did actually get the nod for NCAA Woman of the Year. So at least they picked a woman. So that’s good news, because Lia Thomas is not a woman, and they can shout and scream and yell at us and call us bigots and do all the things that they’ve been doing. It will not

They can scream and be irrational and live in their delusions as much as they want. But they want to make your kids delusional. See, that’s where you have to understand that it’s not enough to just live universal with principles and truth. You gotta watch what they’re doing. They are coming after kids with this stuff, this indoctrination, all across the country. They are doing it — and when they get caught, you know what they say? “Oh, that’s not right. That’s not happening.” Yes, it is. Don’t believe them. They’re lying to you, and good work.

Again, hat tip to Chris Rufo.

Recent Stories

The Biden Regime Spending Bill Will Make Everything Worse

28 Jul 2022

BUCK: Let’s join the Biden speech in progress here if we can. Bring it up there, Mike.

BIDEN: I hope the House is gonna pass this bill today. My plea is, put politics aside and get it done. We need to lower the cost of automobiles, appliances, smartphones, consumer electronics, and so much more. And you can’t do it… All of these things are powered, (sputters) most everything in our lives are powered by these semiconductors and tiny computer chips the size of a fingernail tip.

Look, we should pass this today and get moving. I know the compromise on the inflation bill doesn’t include everything that I’ve been pushing for since I got to office. For example, I’m gonna keep fighting in the future to bring down the cost of things for working families and middle-class families that matter by providing for affordable, accessible things like affordable childcare, affordable elder care, preschool, the cost of preschool, housing —

BUCK: All right. We get it. We get the idea. I just… I took some notes while we were in commercial break there. Biden got into the most of what he’s talking about. Let’s all understand this for what it is, folks. This was all planned. This legislation, this was the plan all along, obviously. This has been the plan for days, if not weeks, that on the day the Biden regime is official Joe Manchin suddenly caves and they have this scaled-down build back a little bit better, a version of the Build Back Better bill, which is exactly what this is.

And the fact that they’re calling it the anti-inflation act or something like that is absolutely absurd. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022! This, though, is an important moment because as you hear Biden blathering on about this — and let’s all be very honest. The only jobs Joe Biden really knows how to create are for family members like Hunter who are selling influence to countries like China and to corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs. He’s not really a job creator. He’s a lifelong bureaucrat. So he keeps saying, “We’re gonna bring down the price of… We’re gonna bring down the price of…”

It’s actually not the job of government to set prices. That’s called price controls, and it is really bad for an economy, and it creates all kinds of distortions in the market, and this is… I mentioned Venezuela in the last hour. It’s one of the worst things they did. They did a lot of bad things in Venezuela. Remember, it went from a pretty wealthy country — third wealthiest in the western hemisphere in the nineties — to a place with true hyperinflation and people losing weight ’cause they can’t even get enough calories ’cause there’s no food on the shelves.

What did they do there? Well, they obviously made a lot of poor decisions. They ran an economy rooted in social justice and not functioning markets, decided to become truly socialist in so many of the ways that they approached everything. But they set price controls. They said, “Okay. This is no longer… The price of bread, price of milk, the price of a washing machine is what we say it is.” You know what that results in? No washing machines, no bread, no milk — or the black market then actually has people paying the real price for it.

So this idea that Biden, at a time of inflation — which is caused by government monetary policy — should just be telling us that they’re gonna set prices lower for things, which is a huge part of this. They’re saying, oh, they’re gonna have a cap on the price of prescription drugs: $2,000 a year for those who are on Medicare. Obviously, this is meant to get seniors who are getting crushed right now by the Biden economy, by the Biden recession to say, “Oh, well, hold on a second, at least I’ll be saving on my prescriptions.”

First of all, you’re not gonna be saving anything else even with this bill, and second of all, well, what happens to the actual price of the pharmaceuticals? Now, that’s the thing that they’re going to focus on. That’s what they’re going to tell you is a place of real benefit. They’re gonna spend a lot less time on the $125 billion that they think they’re gonna get from increased IRS enforcement. They are gonna sic the tax man on you. That’s the plan. They’re gonna squeeze more out of you.

We’re in a recession, and the Democrats are passing a bill that is gonna have the IRS go after you much more aggressively than they have in the past. So that’s a part of this that I think everybody should be aware of. But the really insane stuff — and isn’t it all just so clear, right? They knew they had to throw something together, they had to pull something together. So on the day we are in the Biden recession, they pass this Biden legislation — through reconciliation, mind you, which is really a budget gimmick. It shouldn’t be used for things like this, but that’s what they do.

You will recall they even used reconciliation to get a part of Obamacare through. Not all of it, but a part of it through. And this is now a standard that they’ve set in D.C. where the Democrats, when they really want something, they just change the rules or find some loophole, find some way to sneak it through. And then they tell us how popular it is and how everybody wants it. Well, why can’t you get more votes for it if it’s so popular, if the American people want it so badly? But the “climate crisis” component of this?

I just want every person in America to know that at a time when you’re paying record high gas prices, we still have not caught up to our domestic energy production that we had before the pandemic — we have a Democrat Party that is ludicrously opposed to fossil fuels and to the reality of our need for oil and natural gas to have a modern economy, to have a high standard of living, to be energy independent, to have more leverage around the world when it comes to national security and comes to international commerce.

They hate this stuff (impression), “Because it’s yucky! Because CO2 is so bad!” They have convinced themselves of this. And we are all supposed to go along willingly with the $360 billion they’re gonna spend. Biden said in his speech just now, the most significant bill in history to address the climate crisis, $360 billion plus of spending. He even said the words — you know what’s coming — wind, solar. This is a religious belief for Democrats. They will invoke the Defense Production Act in the Biden administration for solar panels.

But when it comes to gas, every gas company CEO you speak to, everybody who understands the international energy markets will tell you that the Biden regime is psychotically, deeply ideologically opposed to fossil fuels, and we are all poorer as a result. As a country, our national security and economic status is harmed by this. It just is! They can tell you as much as they want about, “Oh, we’re gonna have the clean energy of the future!” They’re talking about in this bill, a huge reduction in CO2 by 2030 and carbon zero by 2050.

These people are out of their minds. These Democrats — and these are senators! They are out of their minds if they believe this. It’s just really tough to tell. Are they that reckless, are they such frauds that they pretend to believe this stuff — while they purchase beachfront property, while they make sure that they live as close to the water as possible even though — hmm — I thought we were supposed to be underwater. Even got a shout-out in that Biden speech to Al Gore. “Even Al Gore says it’s good!” Oh, well, then you know it’s crap.

If Al Gore likes it, this is a whole bunch of taxpayer money going toward Green New Deal boondoggles. This is gonna be Solyndra on steroids. You remember Solyndra? That was under the Obama administration. It was the loan guarantees courtesy of the taxpayer for a solar panel company that was losing money on every unit it sold. There’s an old joke that they were losing money on units but they’d make it up on volume? You know, that’s the plan of a bad business. That was what Solyndra was doing.

They were selling solar panels at a loss, and the federal government backstopped this company under Obama to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, and for what? Because it makes them feel like they’re doing more to stop all the CO2 emissions. Notice how Tesla, Elon Musk’s company — and Elon has said this. If you really are opposed to CO2, you would constantly be touting how Tesla has really revolutionized the electric car market, made them things that people want to drive, not that they drive so they can say to their neighbors, “Look at me. I’m stopping the global warming and you’re not!”

They’re actually cool vehicles that function well, that go fast, that have good electronics, et cetera. But they hate Elon Musk. Why? ‘Cause Elon Musk isn’t one of these climate drones who wanders around bemoaning how everybody else needs to be riding on a bicycle and needs to be eating worms and insects because beef creates too much CO2. You may not have seen this, but the tyrant to the north, Justin Trudeau, up in Canada? He saw what’s gone on in the Netherlands with the farmers there…

Remember, Netherlands the second biggest exporter of agricultural products in the world, this tiny country. Is a pretty amazing statistic, isn’t it? So the farmers are a big deal there. Big deal for the economy, big deal globally, at a time when we’re already worried about the supply chain and how it will affect food, wheat prices, and all the rest of it. Trudeau saw what’s gone on over in the Netherlands and he goes, “Oh, wow. That’s great. Wow. Yeah, let’s do that in Canada!”

And now he’s pushing to have a similar mandate in Canada that would essentially put a lot of farmers either out of business or dramatically reduce their ability to produce. Why? Climate change! Don’t forget for one second — and I was saying this in the beginning. Those of you who were listening to the Buck Sexton Show back in 2020 when I was doing radio before I teamed up with Clay know this. The whole pandemic lockdown, listen to the science, emergency, emergency, shut up, do what we tell you movement that they created under the broad rubric of Fauciism?

They aren’t gonna just stop with the virus, and of course they’re trying to resurrect that plan right now with the next variant. They also want to do that on climate. This is why they use phrases constantly like “an existential crisis.” An existential crisis is something you can effectively do anything to address because nothing could be more important than that! Nothing could be more important, including the U.S. economy, including your ability to pay your bills — including growth, productivity, prosperity, economic freedom.

None of that, to a true-believer Democrat, can get in the way of the Green New Deal agenda because they are, in their minds, saving the planet. And if you think that’s any kind of exaggeration, at this moment in time, we have just entered .9% the second quarter down, 1.6% down the first quarter. We are in the Biden recession, and what do they do in this moment? They try to buy off the votes of seniors with a promise to reduce their prescription drugs while everything else is more expensive. Your mortgage is more expensive. Everything else is getting worse right now.

The cost of groceries, cost of gas. They try to try to buy off seniors with this prescription drug plan while they also spend $369 billion on completely worthless and absurd climate pet projects. That’s how devoted to this they are. In this moment, this is what the Biden regime does. Look, we have to absolutely crush them in the midterms. You have to take away Biden’s ability to continue to do damage because a reasonable person would see what the Biden policies have done up to this point and change course.

You know what today was? “Hey, yeah, we’re in a recession. You know what we’re doing? Doubling down on Bidenism, peasants! Deal with it.” Doubling down right now. That’s what they just announced to you. That’s what they’re doing. And all that stuff about Joe Manchin being sane and, yeah. West Virginia, what are you doing? No West Virginian should ever cast a vote for Joe Manchin again. What are you doing voting for that guy? You’re a red state. It’s ridiculous.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Well, it is a recession there, Joe. You can spin it as fast and as hard as you want. Still gonna be a recession. No one buys his nine-million job figure. I mean, this is just ridiculous. (impression) “I created nine million jobs. Er.” Yeah, really? I mean, you’re counting jobs that came back online because you were no longer — like a maniac — shutting down businesses with covid lockdowns and covid restrictions that did nothing to help anybody when it comes to the actual covid virus? You’re gonna count those as jobs created? At least in the Obama administration — you all probably remember this — they came up with a brand-new metric: “jobs created or saved.”

That was what they were always saying, ‘cause you’ll note in the first couple years of the Obama administration it was a bad economy, too, and it led to the Tea Party wave in 2010. People were like, “Uh, this isn’t going well.” The slowest… Here’s what they had to deal with: The slowest recovery out of a recession since the Great Depression. That was the salient point. That was the critical statistic, the central truth of basically an increasingly socialist Democrat Party in charge just makes everything go more slowly, less prosperity, less growth, less wealth to go around for everybody.

What’s that old Churchill line, that capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings and socialism is the equal sharing of misery? That’s real the ethos of the Democrats, especially the very rich Democrats. They want the system for everybody else as long as they get to stay shielded from it all, as long as they get to remain part of the elite. And then the peasants can eat their bugs and ride their bikes and save up so one day, 10 years from now, for a electric vehicle that doesn’t work very well, right? This is their vision of the future for you.

I mentioned to you the truth about Canadian Trudeau’s plan for farmers. They really want to do this. They want to artificially limit the things that we need and want and make us rich and prosperous and free, they want to control you, and they want to force you to do things that have no attendant benefit whatsoever. There is not one part of me that sits around saying, “I’m worried about the CO2 emissions. Hey, if you just stop the CO2, the planet’s not gonna melt.”

Who…? No one believes this, really, but they pretend to believe it. But that’s the part of it. They don’t actually… Well, I guess there are people now that are truly, I tweeted something out about this. There are people that were standing on ice blocks in London with nooses around their necks to make some point about… They were climate change activists, and the reality is that climate change activists have a very close correlation with severe mental illness.

I don’t say these people are crazy as in, “Ha-ha! Oh, you’re being crazy.” I mean they’re actually not of sound mind. They need help. But, you know, the gluing themselves to paintings and all this stuff. Biden, they’re a key constituency. The maniacs that are doing these things, they’re a key constituency for the Democrats. I can’t tell who’s cynical and who’s the true believer among the Democrats. That’s where it’s so difficult to separate it out.

Recent Stories

Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip: Why Now?

28 Jul 2022

BUCK: Welcome back to Clay and Buck. This is Buck.

I remember they used to tell us when I was in the CIA that they only wanted one-handed analysts because they never wanted to hear the “On the one hand… On the other hand…” This was always the… These are analyst jokes. You think dad jokes are bad? Analyst jokes are really bad. You could always walk in, “On the one hand, this could lead to nuclear war. On the other hand, maybe it’s a good move.” That was a little bit of what you got there from Senator Coons. And, you know, Pelosi, on her possible trip here to Taiwan, it’s interesting, isn’t it, the timing of it all?

On the one hand, you have this bill making its way through Congress, the CHIPS Bill, which would spend a whole bunch of money to improve domestic semiconductor production. Basically, it’s a big giveaway to that industry. Now, they argue, of course, that that industry specifically is of tremendous national security implications; so that’s why we should do it. But Nancy Pelosi is now in a position where she either backs down to China’s demands or she goes and risks some kind of provocation from Chinese Communist Party.

Now, I will remind everybody that it was the consensus opinion in the foreign policy establishment, it felt like, at least, from all the news reports that Russia wasn’t really going to invade Ukraine, right? That’s crazy. He’s not gonna do that. He wouldn’t risk the international sanctions and all the… Yeah, actually, he did and he would, and I think Vladimir Putin would probably do it again, even if he had to restart the whole process because of his view of what that war means for Russian security and even a Russian irredentism, a desire for lost territory from a Soviet imperial era.

Whatever, right? You gotta get into Putin’s mind, not an easy thing to do. But what does China think about the situation in Taiwan? Here’s what it all comes down to. It’s not, “Can they take Taiwan?” It’s “When they try, will America do anything about it?” And if Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, as much as it is a little bit of a sad thing to say out loud, third in line for the presidency, the most powerful figure in the United States Congress right now.

If China says, “You can’t go to Taiwan or else we’re gonna throw a fit! We’re gonna do something,” and she doesn’t go, even if she wasn’t really that excited about going in the first place, although I’m sure she’d get all kinds of really good information about the semiconductor industry, investment moving kind of information, but not that she’d ever or her husband ever act on that. No, never. But if she doesn’t go now looks like she’s bending the knee to Beijing.

And that’s not a good thing, either, given the trajectory in that part of the world. Remember we were all talking about Hong Kong? You’ll notice there are these people who are all about, “Oh, we stand with the people of,” fill in the blank. “We stand with the people in Hong Kong,” they said. Did they really stand with them? Who ended up winning that contest? The authoritarians, the totalitarians of the Chinese Communist Party or the people who were making a lot of noise on social media about how we stand with Hong Kong?

What about Ukraine, by the way? You’ve probably seen there are fewer Ukraine flags in people’s bios these days, which is strange. I told you in the first week of February, I think it was, first week of February that my expectation was that the Russian military would grind on, that there would not be some rapid defeat of Putin’s Russia no matter how much we sent munitions and whatever we tried to provide in materiel to Ukraine and that they would slowly but surely try to take over half of the country. Well, here we are in July.

The people that were all about Ukraine stands and, “We stand with Ukraine,” where are they? ‘Cause I’m sitting here saying, yeah, Russia is taking territory day in and day out, as I expected them to. I also think it’s a little bit heart right now for some of the Ukraine flag wavers here — and look. I’m rooting for Ukraine insofar as they deserve to have their country back from Russia, but this became an item of virtue signaling for so many Democrats. It was all…

They went from the Ukraine flags to then lots of pride flags to wear their masks in all their photos to whatever the thing is of the moment, people that are sharing it all. But when Zelensky does his whole posing for Vogue with his wife, for Vogue magazine in the middle of a war, people do ask some questions. They start to say, what is the message here? There are soldiers on the front line losing their lives in their country every day. Zelensky is posing with his wife? Seemed very strange. But, remember, if it makes people people in the Democrat Party in Malibu and on the Upper West Side of New York feel like their guy, Zelensky, is doing a good job over there.

It’s all that matters to the Vogue editors.

Recent Stories

Ohio Senate Candidate JD Vance on the Crumbling Economy

28 Jul 2022

BUCK: I’m joined by JD Vance. He’s the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio. He was a proud Marine, Yale Law School grad, author of Hillbilly Elegy — great book. JD, thanks for calling in.

VANCE: Thanks for having me.

BUCK: What do you make of this…? Obviously we can get into the recession stuff. I’m curious what you think about Manchin deciding that he was gonna go along with what they’re calling the Inflation Reduction Act — which is very Orwellian, intentionally misleading. Should Republicans have expected this in the Senate, or is this the kind of treachery that is just gonna happen when you’re dealing with Democrats? What do you make of the Manchin move?

VANCE: Well, yeah, I think we should have expected it. We probably got played a little bit. I think that we’ve gotten so dependent on Joe Manchin that I think probably guys just assumed that he was always gonna be there for them, and I really don’t know what he’s doing. I mean, with all my disagreements with Joe Manchin, the thing that he seemed to be pretty smart on was American energy policy. Obviously, he comes from West Virginia.

It’s a state that just wouldn’t exist if you don’t have exploring our coal, natural gas, and oil resources. And the crazy thing about this bill, like you said, it’s straight off Orwell: $750 billion, something like that, which will increase inflation substantially, and they’re calling it the Inflation Reduction Act. I can’t get over the shamelessness of this sometimes. But some of the individual positions — provisions are just so ridiculous if you look at it from the perspective of Joe Manchin, right?

So why do we need to be giving Tesla owners tax credits at a point when we’re in a hyperinflationary recession? Like, how does that make sense? How is that good for the people of West Virginia? “Hey, everybody! Let’s go buy Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles while you can’t afford to put food on the table.” It’s just a preposterous thing. But, you know, it is what it is, and this is why we need to take it back to the Senate.

BUCK: I mean, $369 billion they’re saying in new spending to “address the climate crisis.” You know, there are some things. The chips bill, for example, which I mentioned right before you joined us here, the CHIPS act, right? That’s supposed to make American competitiveness when it comes to semiconductors, chip manufacturing better. Now, you could say maybe the government shouldn’t be involved in that.

You know, the government’s intervening in the markets in a way that’s excessive and also spending in a way that’s excessive. But at least that’s a thing that maybe people could agree would be helpful. It would be good to have more domestic manufacturing of semiconductors. $360 billion for a climate crisis? I don’t think there is a climate crisis, JD, so I don’t understand where Manchin or anybody, for that matter, would want to go along with this.

VANCE: No, I don’t think there is, either. And even if there was a climate crisis, I don’t know how the way to solve it is to buy more Chinese manufactured electric vehicles. The whole EV thing is a scam, right? So set to the side these questions about, you know, how much carbon drives the climate situation. Look. I’m with you on this. I do not wake up in the morning thinking (garbled) “a climate crisis, we need to destroy the economy to deal with it.”

But even if you take these people’s arguments at face value, Buck, the thing I don’t understand is how is manufacturing more cars in the dirtiest economy in the world — and not relying on American automakers, how is that — gonna make our economy more clean? Because of course if you have a Tesla — and I think they’re kind of cool. I don’t own one. They’re pretty fast. But, you know, not my thing. If you plug it into your wall, it’s like do these people think there are, like, there are (garbled) elves back there making energy in the wall.

It comes, of course, from fossil fuels. So you’re manufacturing cars in the dirtiest economy in the world. You’re still relying on fossil fuels to produce your energy, how does this make any sense? It’s like they’ve created this slow environmental crisis just to justify (garbled) Democratic donors. That’s what it’s all about. At least that’s the only way I can possibly wrap my head around it.

BUCK: Speaking to JD Vance, running for Senate in a critical race in Ohio. He’s running against Tim Ryan.

Recent Stories

Manchin Double Crosses GOP, Makes Spending Deal with Dems

28 Jul 2022

BUCK: Welcome back to Clay and Buck. This is Buck here in NYC. Clay on the LIV golf course right now. So, I’m in solo today.

And there you had Tom Cotton explaining a little bit of what’s going on here. Just so you know, there was some agreement among Senate Republicans. They’d vote for the chip bill — which was a huge spending bill in favor of semiconductor and effectively microchip domestic production in this country, right? That you’re gonna have more chip making here in America and they’re gonna spend a whole bunch of money to do it. Senate Republicans went along with that with the understanding that any piece of Build Back Better was done, right?

Joe Manchin had said he wasn’t gonna go for it; it wasn’t gonna work. What do you think happened right after Senate Republicans passed the chip bill? All of a sudden, all of a sudden there’s another spending bill that Democrats revive and Joe Manchin’s going along with it. That’s the double-cross that Senator Cotton’s referring to. On the one hand, you get annoyed because Democrats are so utterly contemptibly dishonest. Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, these people will just lie about anything, with no integrity. It doesn’t matter.

But, on the other hand, I also want to say, do Republicans have to get schooled like this over and over again? Are we really to believe that they didn’t know they were going to be double-crossed? Shouldn’t they have assumed? You’re dealing with Democrats. You’re senators. You see how these people operate all the time. You need a lesson in this again? I don’t know. I think maybe they just wanted to go with the chip bill and now they’re saying, “No!

“But they promised us they wouldn’t do the big, bad Biden bill,” and they did, or they are doing it, I should say. What does it do? $369 billion invested in “energy climate programs.” Oh. You know, 300 billion here, 300 billion there starts to add up after a while, doesn’t it? This is some of the Green New Deal, folks. This is some of Biden’s crappy Build Back Better idea coming through. It’s terrible for the economy, but they’re doing it.

Recent Stories

It’s Official: The Biden Recession

28 Jul 2022

BUCK: The Fed chair… It’s a tough day. What does the Fed exist to do? What are they supposed to be getting done as their primary…? You know that thing, “You had one job!” What’s the Fed’s one job? It’s really to manage inflation. That’s the primary thing. Have they done a good job at that? Does anybody think that the Fed it looks like they’re on it, looks like they’ve known what’s going on here?

No. If anything, politics have been driving so much of the economic decision-making in a reckless and an irresponsible fashion. And this was true during the pandemic when we had… You gotta know some of these numbers. It’s jaw dropping when you really start to pull it all — piece it all — together. “Between 2019 and August 2021,” this was in the Wall Street Journal.

“The U.S. money supply … grew by $5.5 trillion, a stunning 35.7% increase in only a year and a half, driven primarily by the Fed’s purchases of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.” So, the Journal “estimate[s] that by the end of 2024 the money supply will grow another $5.1 trillion.” We are running an experiment to see how quickly we can get inflation to go in the wrong direction, or we have been running that experiment until they finally started bringing rates up.

And now we’re in for the pain. This is all cause and effect. If you run up credit card bills, if you spend too much money on a credit card, in the beginning, it’s great. You’re like, “I’m just great! Look at me! I’ve got a new jet ski. I’ve just bought a whole bunch of new golf clubs,” whatever it is, right? And it can feel like, “Well, that’s not anything to worry about because it just goes on my credit card.” But, yeah, then you have to start paying the balance down — and if you don’t do that, then you have to start dealing with the 20% or 29% APR, whatever it is.

That’s how people really get behind, right? As you know, first thing you want to pay down is high interest things like credit cards whenever you can. But a lot of people are gonna be running up those credit card bills right now because of the overall trajectory of the economy. But it’s cause and effect for you as an individual. Why isn’t that clear at the government level as well? You print too much money; you’re gonna have inflation. Some of us were saying, including me, you can’t shut down your economy because there’s a virus out there that you’re not gonna stop anyway.

You can’t just send people checks to stay home. There’s going to be a hangover from this. Welcome to the hangover. You can’t just spend $2 trillion as Joe Biden did right off the bat when he comes into office in addition to I just told you about the trillions that were spent to expand the money supply. What did they think was gonna happen? That’s what I really want to ask some of these people. I want to ask Jerome Powell?

I want to ask some of these experts, what exactly did you think the result was going to be? You thought it wouldn’t be this? Remember, they thought inflation was gonna be — they told us inflation would be — transitory. That was absurd. They’ve also been saying for months now and up until the last few days there won’t be a recession. We are in a recession. And I don’t think it’s gonna be a quick one. I think it’s gonna get ugly out there in the economy for at least 12 to 18 months.

It’s gonna be a lot of economic suffering. There’s gonna be job losses. You’re probably heading into the stagflation that we saw in the seventies and the early eighties. This was preventable, but there were people in charge who make really bad decisions, and that’s the part of this that there has to be accountability for and they’re doing everything they can right now. The spin you will feel, you’re gonna get dizzy from it. You’re gonna get dizzy from it.

“Oh, it’s not really a recession! Oh, this is just… We’re on the right path.” What does the wrong path feel like? Someone should ask Joe Biden that. If this is the right path, what is the wrong path? How does that look — 15% inflation 20% inflation? I think, you know, if we turn into Venezuela I think we’re all gonna realize that we’re on the wrong path.

But what are our options? Biden told us that he would shut down the virus, he would not shut down the economy. Which one of those feels like it’s been more shut down, exactly? The Fed chairman Jerome Powell is trying to tell everybody that he’s not about to get into the definitions of this; they don’t make a judgment on that. But, you know, there’s some good stuff.

BUCK: They keep telling us how great the labor market is. I come across individuals all the time who are saying they can’t get people to do jobs, and so they’re limited in their productivity. Everything from people in aerospace and defense to restaurants to, you know, operating your local department store or drugstore or whatever. They can’t get workers. This is how the great labor market is supposed to be operating? And then you say, “Well, shouldn’t they just pay them more, they’ll get them?”

Well, they say they can’t. There’s supply chain disruptions. They’ve already had to raise prices. In fact, they’re raising prices some of the biggest companies in the world. There was a big piece earlier the week — early this week — in the Journal about that too. They’re just gonna pass on costs. You think you felt the costs already. More costs are gonna be passed on to the consumer. But what do you think the people in charge…?

What do you think Biden, his economic propagandists, the Fed chairman, what do you think they’re gonna say? “Sorry, we’re idiots”? No. Of course not. They’re gonna say, “Oh, this is great.” In fact, this was the best. The White House trying to tell the American people that recession… You think recession means bad things, but let me tell you, peasants, White House wants you to know, the recession is actually really good and healthy.

BUCK: Does anybody feel like this is a good economy? I would love that explanation from people that are just trying to pay their bills and have some financial stability in their lives. They feel like things are going well right now? A lot of people miss that era of the mean tweets or that guy that was in charge that they said was doing Russia’s bidding. Stock market was booming, unemployment, real unemployment was very low. Labor force participation… They keep talking about the unemployment rate.

You still have millions fewer people working now than before the pandemic. “Oh, but it’s a… Biden’s created millions of jobs!” Yeah. Just feel all that prosperity while you’re paying $4.30 a gallon for gas and everything, you’re buying at the grocery store is 15 to 20% more expensive, and your wages aren’t keeping up with inflation and, yeah, all that prosperity. They just want to evade accountability, folks. They’ll lie to you. That’s what this really comes down to. They want to evade accountability for their bad decision-making, for their belief that they know how to allocate the capital of the American people better than the market.

That’s what’s going on.

Now we’re all seeing it; we’re all feeling it.

Recent Stories

C&B 24/7: Clay & Buck’s Show Prep

28 Jul 2022

  • Wall Street Journal: The Monetary Bathtub Is Overflowing. Many economists say inflation is transitory. It will be persistent
  • NBC: Covid Hospitalization Rate in NYC Soars 70% in Month, ICU Patient Tally Nearly Doubles
  • OutKicK: President Trump, Dustin Johnson Paulina Gretzky, Nelly, Caitlyn Jenner, Brooks Koepka, among star-studded attendees at NYC LIV gold event
  • CBS: Columbia grad student hospitalized after apparent attack, Inwood family seeks answers
  • FOXBusiness: Biden says ‘no surprise’ economy ‘slowing down’ as economy enters technical recession
  • Breitbart: Bidenpression: U.S. GDP Shrinks 0.9 Percent in Second Quarter
  • Daily Wire: U.S. In A Recession After Second Straight Quarter Of Negative Growth
  • HotAir: Schumer’s big deal: Whither Sinema — and House Dems?

  • Daily Wire: Joe Manchin Revives Biden’s Agenda, Agrees To Democrat Package Of Tax Increases And Climate Spending
  • NewsBusters: Politico Spins for Biden: Tomorrow’s GDP Numbers ‘Inaccurate’
  • NewsBusters: Doocy Calls Out Biden WH Disinformation on Defining a Recession
  • HotAir: Biden goes full Chip Diller: Economy “on the right path”
  • PJ Media: Biden Thinks You’re Stupid About the Economy Because He’s Stupid About the Economy

  • UK Daily Mail: Build back broke: Republicans tear into Manchin deal with ‘giant tax hikes’ that will ‘kill American jobs’ in package with a 15% rate on billion-dollar companies, $369 billion on climate and $433 billion in new spending
  • New York Post: Democrats are pressuring Merrick Garland to make an anti-Trump case he doesn’t have
  • BizPacReview: Schumer dupes McConnell, convinces Manchin to resurrect ‘Build Back Broke’ bill, but the joke is on Dems
  • ZeroHedge: Pelosi ‘Appears To Have Taken Advantage’ Of Inside Information: Former Dallas Fed Chief Fisher

  • FOXNews: Joe Biden met with at least 14 of Hunter’s business associates while vice president
  • FOXNews: Hunter Biden investigation developments ‘don’t add up’, former federal prosecutor says
  • FOXNews: Hunter Biden business partner made 8 additional White House visits in 2016, visitor logs show
  • FOXNews: Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings: 4 countries with financial links to president’s son

  • NewsBusters: CNN Sympathetically Covers Hunter Biden Legal Woes: ‘Struggled to Pay Bills’
  • New York Post: Hunter Biden’s biz partner called Joe Biden ‘the Big Guy’ in panicked message after Post’s laptop story
  • New York Post: Hunter Biden scandal may lead right back to Joe – Miranda Devine
  • Federalist: DOJ May Have Obstructed Important Biden Corruption Investigations Out Of Pittsburgh And Delaware

  • New York Post: Donald Trump attends LIV Golf party in NYC ahead of Thursday tournament
  • BizPacReview: Trump announces intent to file lawsuits against CNN, other outlets for defamation, defrauding the public
  • Daily Caller: ‘Shlong COVID’: Tucker Asks Viewers For Best Alternative Names For Monkeypox
  • Breitbart: Monkeypox Warning: W.H.O. Chief Tedros Tells at-Risk Men to Reduce Number of Sex Partners ‘for the Moment’

  • Breitbart: Los Angeles Times Sounds the Alarm on Mass Immigration — in Mexico City
  • Federalist: Jordan: FBI Exaggerates Domestic Violent Extremism Cases To Bolster Biden’s ‘Greatest Threat’ Narrative
  • Breitbart: Expert: Russian Gas Cutoff Could Collapse European Power Grids
  • Daily Wire: ‘Racist Trope’: Woke U.S. Scientist Changes Name Of ‘Asian Giant Hornet’ To Be Less Offensive To China

  • UK Daily Mail: Clarence Thomas cancels himself: Conservative Supreme Court justice quits George Washington University law lecturing role after 11,000 signed petition calling for him to be removed following overturning of Roe v. Wade
  • New York Post: Lia Thomas competitor says she felt ‘extreme discomfort’ sharing locker room
  • Breitbart: Female Swimmer Says She Felt ‘Extreme Discomfort’ Sharing Locker Room with Lia Thomas
  • Daily Wire: Portland School District Indoctrinates Students To Become LGBTQ Activists In K-5th Grade
  • HotAir: FDA admits puberty blockers can cause serious harm to children

  • New York Post: Russia launches attack on Kyiv for first time in weeks
  • UK Daily Mail: ‘Read the room!’ Zelensky and wife raise eyebrows by posing for glossy Vogue cover with famed photographer Annie Leibowitz as Ukraine’s war against Russia rages on
  • UK Daily Mail: HALF of Putin’s army wiped out: 75,000 troops have been killed or wounded in Ukraine as invasion ‘all but stalls’

  • Recent Stories

    Clay Discusses Latest Details on Hunter Biden

    28 Jul 2022

    After holding the line to ensure they dragged Joe Biden into the White House like Weekend at Bernie’s, the leftist media has been forced to cover the story of Hunter Biden and “the Big Guy,” his father, selling influence and U.S. policy. Clay discussed this unfolding scandal with Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino on America’s Newsroom.

    Recent Stories

    C&B 24/7 VIP Video: Kamala (She/Her) Is At It Again

    27 Jul 2022

    The Veep has produced another hilarious sound bite for us. Watch Clay and Buck break it down.

    Only C&B 24/7 members can watch this exclusive video.

    If you’re not a member, sign up now. You can also use the special VIP email pipeline to Clay and Buck to share whatever is on your mind or take a deeper dive into the day’s top stories with Clay and Buck’s Show Prep.

    Watch: Kamala (She/Her) and THE Question That Will Win Any Election

    Recent Stories