CLAY: We are talking about Washington Post’s story surrounding the Department of Justice investigating Trump to see whether or not they may be charging him with something of a criminal offense relating to January 6th. And we’ve been discussing the legal permutations of that. Let’s talk about the political angles on this, Buck. My theory is one reason the Department of Justice is panicked is certainly this is an unbelievable move to…

We’ve never seen anything like this. You mentioned Third World country, banana republic. The idea of charging the Department of Justice that is currently in power for the president who ran against Trump, meaning Biden, the idea of charging the guy who may well run against you in 2024 with a crime while you are in presidential office is a huge expansionist overreach of anything that we have ever seen before, and so, I think the legal ramifications are seismic.

I also think politically, Buck, there’s this idea that January 6th hearings are going to weaken Donald Trump and make him not the nominee or knock him out of the political establishment. I think if the Merrick Garland Department of Justice charges Donald Trump with a crime related to January 6th, I think the people who support Trump are going to support him even more aggressively and, far from knocking Trump out of running for the 2024 presidency, I think it virtually guarantees that he is going to run, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I would find it stunning if… You, off air, were talking about how they’re basically poking the bear. I don’t know that they’ve recognized that they are, in seeking, in their mind, to knock Trump out of political contention, actually ensuring that he remains in it with their behavior. The best thing they could do to Trump, I think, Buck, is just ignore him and claim that he’s not relevant. That’s the thing that he would hate the most. Charging him with a crime pretty much guarantees he runs.

BUCK: And just so you know, Clay and I, we were out to dinner here in New York last night with some friends and we’re constantly going back and forth and talking about the different ways that this situation — ’cause this is the future of the country, right, and with it at some level the future of certainly the free world, who’s going to be the next commander-in-chief.

There’s big stuff at stake here. And there’s a lot of different ways that you can see this playing out. And the psychology of this, I think, is in constant state of flux. I think that Democrats haven’t come around yet to the thought that maybe Donald Trump, a third time around in total, but a second time against Biden, would be a different and harder-to-defeat candidate for Biden because, one, now Biden has a record as president that is abysmal.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And, two, I do think that there were some lessons learned about the games they played with actual mail-in balloting, the drop boxes, all these things they used covid to change. So, I think that there would be much closer watch on that in another presidential election. But effectively their assumption, I think, up to this point has been, the Democrats have been assuming that Biden can still beat Trump. I think they have thought that. But now with the polls where they are, with Biden — you see the thing he did, when was it, last night, his eyes didn’t blink. It was weird. There’s something going on here.

CLAY: They definitely shot him up.

BUCK: There’s after happening here, folks, okay? And also, they’ve done so much stuff to his face at this point. I mean, I wonder if we have any surgeons who specialize in plastics in the — can they do too much of a face-lift? Is it dangerous at some point? They gonna pull the skin too tight? The whole thing they’ve done to Biden is meant to present something that’s not reality, which is an astute guy who’s got plenty of energy, who’s not too old, who looks the part, who sounds the part, all that’s fallen apart now. And so, Trump going up against him again, I think that they believe that’s their best shot, Clay, of him being able to win. I don’t know about that. I’m starting to think that maybe they should be a lot more scared of the bear they’re poking than they are.

CLAY: I think you’re right. And there’s a couple of things that I would build off there. First of all, Biden’s entire justification for running, by and large, was that he was gonna get America back to being normal, that Trump represented a period of abnormalcy and Joe Biden would restore normalcy to the country. Does anyone out there — Democrat, Republican, or independent — think that Joe Biden has done that in any way? I think the answer is “no.” And Democrats are overwhelmingly telling you that the justification for his entire candidacy to exist has failed.

That came out last night, Buck. Who do you think Democrat Party should nominate as the party’s candidate for president in 2024? This is from CNN. In a poll that came out in January and February of this year, 45% of Democrats said Biden; 51% said a different candidate. Now we are sitting here in July, just about six months after that previous poll. Only 25% of Democrats think that Biden should be the nominee. Seventy-five percent of Democrats — this is a CNN poll — say there should be somebody different than Joe Biden nominated.

I think that’s because they all recognize that he has failed as a president. And so, I feel more confident in Republicans by far nominating Donald Trump than I do in Democrats nominating Biden. Now, your point, which is one that you have made for a while, is the only way that Biden gets nominated is if Trump runs ’cause that’s the Democrat they feel like can beat Trump. I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think even Democrats are looking at some of these polls and saying, “We’re not winning Pennsylvania. We’re not winning Michigan.”

“We’re not winning Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia.” All these states that are sort of in the margin, the purple states as it were, Trump is leading pretty substantially in those right now. And I don’t know that Biden has that salability now that he did when James Clyburn back in 2020 in South Carolina basically said, “You’re our guy, go beat Trump.” And covid’s not gonna be a factor. And I think Big Tech is gonna have to be a lot more nervous about all of the hands that they put on the scales of justice in favor of Biden going forward. I think Trump would whip Biden if they ran in 2024, based on what we’ve seen of 18 months of Biden.

BUCK: You have to think so. At this point, if Trump isn’t going to be able to defeat Biden in a matchup, what would it take, right? Think about this. The Democrats could have had a pretty mediocre presidency with Biden up to this point, they’d be telling everybody how brilliant he was, how great he was, and there would at least be some ability to hold together the initial narrative, the initial promise. But as you point out things are so bad —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — things are so awful that Democrats themselves realize it, because what matters to them isn’t consistency and isn’t principle; it’s power. And Joe Biden becoming a threat to their handle on power is the one thing that gets them more upset, that gets them more bothered than absolutely anything else. So, I don’t know if they think that charging Trump would be at this point in their… They would love to do it, right? It would be cathartic for them. They would get fired up.

Aw, that’s right, we’re showing Trump. But would it mean that they would then have to deal with a completely reinvigorated Trump, Trump base, Trump movement, the MAGA movement? This is why I still think they’re not… I’ll just go up. Do you…? I still think they will not — or no, I’m sorry. Do you think they’ll indict Trump and Biden, but if they don’t indict Hunter Biden, are they gonna separately indict Trump?

CLAY: I don’t think… The only way I believe that they are gonna indict Trump is if they indict Hunter Biden. I’m not saying a hundred percent that if they indict Hunter Biden they’ll indict Trump, but I think that’s what gives the cover to the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland will claim no one is above the law, the president’s son isn’t, and the former president himself. I think that’s the only argument he can make. If Hunter Biden doesn’t get indicted, I think there’s no way they indict Trump. If Hunter Biden gets indicted, I think it makes it far more likely they indict Trump.

Not a hundred percent, but I think that politically, like, just take a step back and think about this from Merrick Garland’s perspective, he’s got an entire conference room table full of political lawyers sitting around trying to figure out how to do something truly radical in indicting Donald Trump. That’s what they want to do, right? They want to fulfill that expectation in their base. The only way I can see them doing it is if they make the argument, “The president’s son commits a crime; we charge him. Former president commits a crime, we charge him too.”