What Clay and Buck Did Instead of Watching the Jan. 6 Show

22 Jul 2022

CLAY: Buck, did you watch any of the Jan. 6 hearings last night at all?

BUCK: Not a movement of it my friend. I watched “The Terminal List,” based on the book written by my friend, Jack Carr. Fantastic, Chris Pratt, recommend it to everybody. Clay, you’ve got to check it out.

CLAY: I want to check it out. I was out to dinner. Morgan Ortagus, a good time to meet her. And Congressman Jim Jordan was in town. So we were all hanging out. I did not see any — and Blake Harris, who does a phenomenal job, former chief of staff of the Tennessee governor. We had a really fun group hanging out during the course of the evening. I didn’t see a single minute of it.

But, because everybody is going to be, like, what about January 6th. Let’s play one of these loons here. Let’s see. Eugene Robinson is demanding that Donald Trump be held accountable. Let’s listen to this just so you know what’s going on out there in the Jan 6 frenzy.

ROBINSON: What matters now — and, again, I sound like a broken record — but what matters now is how is this man going to be held accountable for what he did and did not do, but what he did on January 6th, what he did leading up to January 6th and what he did after January 6th, how is this man going to be held accountable for that? I just don’t think we can just sort of say, oh, well, now we know all this stuff and let’s move on. There’s got to be a reckoning here.

CLAY: They want a reckoning, Buck, and one of the January 6 committee members, Representative Luria from Virginia, a Democrat, she is demanding effectively that Merrick Garland go all-in on a criminal investigation into Trump.

1/6 committee member Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA): “I sure as hell hope that Merrick Garland has an open criminal investigation into Donald Trump … No one needs to wait for some formality from our committee to have that ball in motion.” pic.twitter.com/mFZHuo0RhO

— The Recount (@therecount) July 22, 2022

BUCK: What would the charge be? That’s what I would love to ask some of these very ignorant people on television, which unfortunately — just so everyone knows, the barriers for entry for TV are, you know, very, very limited in terms of talking about any of this stuff. A lot of very dumb people speaking about things they know nothing about. They really want to charge the former president of the United States with what, attempted insurrection? They’re going to use the Insurrection Act, what are they going to do?

CLAY: I think they’d probably charge him with some sort of conspiracy to incite. I think there would be a conspiracy-ish charge. I’m not saying it would work.

BUCK: I know, but that’s a big deal, man, that’s a big deal.

CLAY: I agree. I think if Merrick Garland does it, it’s also because he’s charging Hunter Biden — I’m calling my shot. Sticking to my guns, Buck.

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Bannon Found Guilty of Contempt of Congress

22 Jul 2022

BUCK: Steve Bannon, folks, this just broke, guilty on both counts of contempt of Congress. Steve Bannon, just found guilty in a court of law, Clay, over the January 6 thing. Folks, this is big breaking news. We unfortunately have about 30 seconds, Clay, this is not over. This is just the beginning in some ways.

CLAY: I want to know, I think he faced a year, potentially, in prison — what actually is going to happen to him now. And I’m sure we’re going to be talking about it a lot on Monday.

BUCK: Has anyone gone to prison for contempt of Congress? I don’t have an answer for that. I think the answer is probably no.

CLAY: It’s not a very common charge.

BUCK: Will they make Steve Bannon the first? I think the answer is yes.

CLAY: Yes, that’s the question.

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Noah Rothman Pushes Back on the Left’s War on Fun

22 Jul 2022

BUCK: Noah Rothman with us. He is over at Commentary Magazine. He’s got a new book out, I like the title, “The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun.” Noah, thanks for being with us.

ROTHMAN: My pleasure, thanks for having me.

BUCK: Libs hate fun these days. That feels like something that we talk about on the show regularly. They don’t like comedy. They don’t like people to have too much of a good time, it seems. What does this have to do with puritanism? And bring me into the crux of the argument of your latest opus.

ROTHMAN: Yes, so basically I think you’re probably familiar with the premise, is that essentially we’re treated to lots of moral crusades now from the left, which is very jarring if you grew up in this country over the last 30, 40 years. Normally, for our experience, the tendency to see in seemingly innocent cultural fair the stuff that corrupts you and degrades society was something that was native to the right. It was a less-than-emphasized self-fulfillment, self-gratification, even hedonism by contrast.

Today, as you say, we’re treated to moral crusades, where entertainment products have to have a grander social value than just being entertainment, where comedy and comedians emphasize the pain that somebody had to experience, so you could have something as trite and frivolous as a punch line, sports coverage that shoehorns digressions about the lamentable state of race relations into their coverage. And when fans object, as they often do, they’re admonished for clinging to escapism over their duty as a moral, responsible citizen to dwell on the world’s horrors at all times.

As the committee has alleged, America’s armed forces responded to directions from actors outside the chain of command. https://t.co/oWIJS4JPfi

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) July 22, 2022

Why did this happen? That’s the question I ask in this book, and I’ve come to this idea of a moral framework that is informing this, which is derived from the origins of progressivism as progressives identify more as progressivism than liberalism. They’ve adopted its habits of mind. Among them puritanical traits like utopianism, about fear of banalities and an anxiety towards idleness that which isn’t productive contributing to the project, the project of our time being the advancement of the progressive project, the mission. It’s worse than worthless. It detracts from that effort.

So, this book is designed to help you identify, sort of solve this puzzle that we’ve all been staring at for the last five years unable to discern. But it is also kind of irreverent. It’s supposed to give you a permission structure to laugh at these people because, while it’s a small group, they punch above their weight and they’re very intimidating. But they don’t have to be. A lot of what they do is objectively hilarious, and this book is designed to allow you an opportunity to laugh at that which is objectively funny.

CLAY: Okay, this is perfect, Noah and thanks for coming on the show. If you remember the first protest that they had against Dave Chappelle and Netflix, another comedian showed up there and he just made a placard and it just said “I like jokes. Jokes are fun.” And he just kind of walked around saying that. And the woke community ripped down his banner and basically kind of attacked the idea that he could walk around and say jokes are fun. So here’s the question that I think a lot of our listeners have out there. You’re right in the diagnosis that you have given and how crazy this has become. When can we get back to comedians just being able to tell whatever joke they want to tell, and how do we get there?

ROTHMAN: I mean, there are real commercial pressures at work breaking down this censorius moral structure that’s being imposed on comedy. I see parallels with how the moral strictures around comstockery, the 19th century efforts to police public morality, broke down based on commercial pressures. I sort of identify that in the story “Banned in Boston”. That phrase used to delineate titillating literary experiences that had the power to corrupt you, corrupt society with a warning against pure literature and it was very successful well into the 20th century. When it began to break down it broke down because “Banned in Boston” stopped being a warning against impure literature and became a powerful advertisement for it.

BUCK: Trigger warning: You’ll have too much fun if you read this.

ROTHMAN: Publishers tried to have their books banned in Boston to increase sales around the country. If there’s a modern equivalent, I think it’s banned on Facebook, banned on Amazon, where conservative books, and they’re usually conservative books, tend to be censored by 20-somethings who don’t know what they’re doing. And they have profound reach. They become best sellers, well beyond, disproportionate to the PR campaigns around that book because it becomes an advertisement for them.

You’re always going to have iconoclasts and taboo breakers. That’s the cost of living in a free society. And it’s a low price to pay. And that’s sort of an advertisement for experiences that you just have to have yourself, will contribute to the breaking down of this phenomenon. There’s probably going to be a lot of pain along the way. But the bottom line is just something that a company that has a fiduciary responsibility to its investors can’t ignore, like, Netflix, like Spotify. You’re beginning to see the cracks in this facade.

BUCK: Speaking to Noah Rothman. He’s an editor over at Commentary Magazine. His book is “The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun.” And that’s definitely a thing they’re fighting, the war on fun.

Noah, switching to a very different kind of fight, a real conflict, a war that’s underway right now, I know you have a degree in Russian studies and political science. You focused on the former Soviet Union for your graduate degree and are following the situation in Ukraine closely. I’m seeing today we’re considering sending over the A10 Warthog platform, fixed-wing platform to help the Ukrainians against Russian armor. Where do you think all this is going, and how do you think the Biden administration has handled this?

ROTHMAN: I have not seen that report. That would be something of a game-changer, right? Remember, very early in the conflict, it was a stalled convey on the way into Kyiv. And it was miles long. And every military analyst said, well, they only had an A10 that could knock this convoy out; this war would be over in a minute. That’s very interesting.

The west has sort of hamstrung itself because we’ve had conversations among ourselves over what’s escalatory, what’s not escalatory, what Ukraine is allowed to do with the platforms that we give them; if they’re not allowed to train, fight, track fire coming in from Russia and then return fire based on whether there’s a track. We’re tying one hand behind their back. And the Russians are paying attention. We set the pace of what we decide as escalatory and they subsequently adopt what we determine as escalatory, only to reverse ourselves later on. Fixed-wing aircraft, drones. As we said, multiple launch rocket systems. We should probably stop doing that.

Right now it’s a game of inches in the Donbas, but we’re not paying as much attention to the counteroffensives that are going around, Ukrainian-led counteroffensives, and they’re being relatively successful. Right now you can only foresee stalemates. But there’s movements. And it has a lot to do with these weapons platforms that we’re giving Ukraine, to great effect. We should probably — if our objective is for Ukraine to win this war — and it is — then we should endorse that objective and stop behaving as though we sort of want victory but not a total victory. Either we want Russia to lose or we don’t.

CLAY: Yep. It is kind of wild to think about where we are headed here. Are you optimistic? You just wrote this entire book, looking at the direction that our censorius culture has gone. You talked about maybe the political pressure, the “Banned in Boston” angle, and some of that may be starting to filter into Netflix. We certainly saw the biggest and most successful hit of the summer across many different age groups was Maverick Top Gu or “Top Gun” Maverick,” I should say which had almost no woke-related commentary inside of it. Are you optimistic that we’re coming through the tail end of this or do you think we have a bunch more years left?

ROTHMAN: Oh, we have years left. But I am optimistic that we’ve reached peak woke. That’s a great example of this. Not because it’s anti, per se. It just isn’t pro. It didn’t advance any of the themes of — it didn’t have this plodding didactic narrative. It’s very tyrannical to have the modern contemporary morals forced on you and it can’t be subtle because you can’t be trusted with subtle.

BUCK: “Maverick” did not come out as a pansexual member of the trans community. So that did not happen.

ROTHMAN: Who knows. I think we’re coming out of the end of that. I’m optimistic about that. And I’m optimistic to a degree about the war in Ukraine. I don’t know how that ends. And it may not end in a way that the West would see as satisfactory. But I don’t think that Russia calculated properly the degree to which NATO would respond in a sustained material way to its aggression. I was surprised by the response and the cohesive response because the Russian strategy has always been to break NATO alliance. And that would be to test the frontier, to force terrorists in London and Berlin to contemplate a real war with Moscow for (indiscernible). And the assumption on Moscow’s part was that NATO would blink.

I don’t think they think that anymore. I certainly don’t think that anymore. So there are certainly some benefits that come out of this in the form of a reinvigorated, cohesive Atlantic alliance, which will certainly stay Russia’s hand in the future. That also probably means our adversaries have misjudged us and we probably misjudged them so there’s a lot of misjudgment coming.

BUCK: Check out Noah Rothman’s book, “The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun”. We’re all fighting the war on fun because we want to have fun here. Thanks, Noah. Appreciate it.

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Caller Explains What It’s Like to Have Foxes as Pets

22 Jul 2022

CLAY: Evidently, there’s tons of people out there who loved your idea of getting a pet fox. And we have a, what is he, a pet fox breeder? I feel like we’re engaged in illicit activity here even taking this call. Eric in western Ohio has raised foxes. Eric, what have you got for us to know about foxes as pets?

CALLER: Yes, sir, I had several foxes. There’s a fox rescue also. But the foxes that we get, either the mother was killed by a car or killed in the wild and the babies are left to fend for themselves. We will take those babies and bring them in and feed them and raise them. And my German Shepherds actually raised several foxes.

BUCK: Can you send us some photos on our website, Clay and Buck, of the German Shepherd with the baby foxes? This is what we call in the business a “wholesome hit.”

CLAY: This is a wholesome hit, yes.

BUCK: Are the foxes —

CALLER: I have to find them in my archives.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by JUNIPER & FRIENDS (@juniperfoxx)

CLAY: We want to see that. That is an amazing story. Are the foxes — I was asking the question, can you put a fox on a leash and walk it around? Are they affectionate? Do they bite? How would you describe foxes as pets?

CALLER: They’re playful. They’re very tame. Very hard to describe. Their teeth are very sharp. They can break skin, if they get a little bit rough. But generally they don’t. If they’re treated well, like any other animal, like a dog, they sleep right under your bed. They’re very affectionate. They get very attached to other animals.

BUCK: I’m sending this segment to Carrie, by the way. This is amazing.

CALLER: I had a red fox and I had a silver fox. And, as I said, they were both awesome, awesome pets.

BUCK: I like to think of myself as a silver fox.

CALLER: I also had raccoons. I had owls. I had a skunk, a pet skunk.

CLAY: You’ve had a lot of animals over the years. Really quickly, would you date a woman with a snake?

CALLER: Not a snake.

CLAY: There we go.

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Clay and Buck Light Off the Coulter M80

22 Jul 2022

BUCK: We are very pleased to be joined by our friend here in New York City, Ms. Ann Coulter, 13-time New York Times best-selling author. Her Substack, you’ve got to check it out. You’ve got to subscribe to Ann’s Substack. She’s doing a lot of writing and some short-form videos there. Ms. Coulter, thanks for joining Clay and Buck. Good to see you.

COULTER: It’s so great to be here. I just realized, I forgot to tweet that I was going to be on. I’m doing a lot of writing right now. This is why you just have to listen to Clay and Buck. You never know when I might pop up.

BUCK: Exactly, you also share your podcast with your millions of Twitter followers after the show. We always appreciate that. We’re talking a lot today about the general state of the Biden administration right now. And we do seem — we’re always trying to tell each other, there has to be something we’re missing or anything else because it really looks like we’re at the phase where this can’t be the plan, right? Like just running Jan. 6 hearings — what’s going go on between now and the election?

COULTER: I am glad you mentioned Biden because one of my favorite things going on, right, which I did send out a Substack on because it’s so comedic is how all of his top advisors — we can see Biden giving speeches. It reminds me of Robert Mueller, or if you’ve ever had a family member with dementia in your life, you can see he’s really old. I’m sure listeners who see your show don’t need to be reminded he’s constantly calling Kamala “President Harris.” He’s constantly confusing, announces that he has cancer. And his advisors then leap forward, tell all of the New York Times reporters, oh, no, boy, behind closed doors he’s on. He’s asking questions. It’s the tales. He’s up until 2.00 a.m. He’s calling cabinet members. And yesterday I saw Ron Klain, who is the president; he’s the Jared Kushner of this administration, saying the exact same thing on MSNBC, not even with covid. You know, he’s got sniffles, but he’s at work, he’s asking really important questions. He’s talking to foreign leaders.

BUCK: Doing dead lifts in his spare time. Yes, he’s having a great time.

COULTER: They did this back when Gore was running against Bush, and Gore was such a gigantic dork. There was a front page story on the New York Times about how in private Gore has an unbelievable sense of humor. In his bath tub, he reaches comedic heights like you would not believe. This is not available for the public, however.

CLAY: Ann, you’re a lawyer. You’re trained. You probably at some point in your career had to be hired to advocate for positions that you didn’t particularly agree with. That’s what every lawyer has to do at some point in time.

COULTER: Uh-huh.

If it’s helpful to be warned about crime, why did real estate websites strip crime data from their sites?

We’re not asking for a national AMBER ALERT, just data. https://t.co/1BhpqKhtX1

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) July 20, 2022

CLAY: Let’s pretend that you were in charge of Democrat strategy — not for the midterms because I think we all agree they don’t have any strategy there. And let’s also presume that Biden is going to get shunted to the side, although I’m curious if you agree that he’s going to be off on the side. Who is the Democrats best option to run in 2024?

Buck and I have sat around talking a lot about it. We kind of feel like it might end up Gavin Newsom before it’s all said and done. But if you were out there and you were the maestro, you were the Ron Klain of the Democrat party right now, and they gave you gobs of money and said, Ann, you have to come up with a strategy and a candidate. Who is out there that you think you could massage into some form of decent candidacy? Because it doesn’t seem to be like — the Republicans, I feel like, have a bunch. I feel almost every Democrat is incompetent right now.

COULTER: We have three — DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin and Greg Gianforte. You know DeSantis — I don’t bother giving his first name. He’s so big, you just need the last name.

BUCK: Could you call him Ronnie D these days? He’s got a lot of names.

CLAY: You’re in Florida so you’re all in on DeSantis as many people are. But for the Democrats, who is the pick?

COULTER: I’m actually in New York City and Los Angeles. But I did spend covid in Florida. I’m so glad you asked. This is my favorite topic. I can talk about it for hours, particularly with Democrats. They are so screwed.

CLAY: Yep.

COULTER: Even if we didn’t have DeSantis, Gianforte and Youngkin, and we do. Look at the Democrats. After Hillary lost, black voters, democratic voters took the position, no, there’s got to be a black person on the ticket. There’s got to be a black person on the ticket. As you will recall, Joe Biden was coming in sixth and seventh in the primaries, Democratic primaries for 2020. Then representative James Clyburn said to South Carolina, we’re voting for Biden. And black voters, Democratic voters, same thing, in South Carolina said, okay, then we’re going for Biden.

So I want to know, first of all, how the Democrats are going to gently move the first black female vice president out of the way. I don’t think they can run a white male. I really don’t — unless James Clyburn comes forward and supports one. But right now he’s supporting Kamala. This is why I think there is a small chance — it may be just — it can’t be done — that they do the “Weekend at Bernie’s” thing with Biden because he’s the last white male they’ll be able to nominate for president. And Newsom, no, I think he’s a nonstarter. He’s like the waiter at a chic restaurant.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Ann Coulter. Her Substack is “Unsafe.” You should all check it out. She’s writing and posting short form there on a regular basis. And Ann, the issue of crime is getting a lot of attention because of major incidents that pop up, including, for example, that you have Lee Zeldin attacked on stage on video on stage running for governor of New York. My home state.

COULTER: Sure.

BUCK: I believe our team told me, I think he was out on bail. I think technically he was released on his own recognizance, which is, all right, we’ll see you in the courthouse in a few weeks or something. Have we crossed over to the line of crazy? This is what happens, this is how Giuliani became mayor is that New Yorkers had a red line, even Democrats, of craziness. Are we getting close to the red line of pro crime crazy?

COULTER: Boy, I hope so. And unfortunately, I mean, I wish you and Clay were the ones running for office. As I always say, never put it past Republicans to ruin an election. I think talk radio and normal Republicans are thinking, well, these midterms are going to be fantastic.

Then you look at Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, and are they talking about crime? Are they talking about the border? Are they talking about wokeness and what won the governorship for Glenn Youngkin? No. They’re just sitting back, oh, inflation, we’re going to be fine. Talk about it, Republicans. Lee Zeldin is.

BUCK: He says he’ll fire Alvin Bragg, the DA of New York, on day one. That’s one of his biggest talking points.

COULTER: Yes, and please, New Yorkers, please, please, you guys have survived with Republican governors before. They’re not crazy. It is New York. I mean, Giuliani as mayor was Mr. Pro-choice. There was Pataki, he wasn’t exactly —

BUCK: Wasn’t lighting the world on fire in any direction.

COULTER: You can handle a Republican governor. You got the democratic Senate. You’ve got the democratic House. Please just for the issue of crime vote for Lee Zeldin.

CLAY: Ann, what do you think or make of the sort of map of how voters are going to vote being remade? I don’t know if you’ve looked at the data. But overwhelmingly now Democrats are the party of the white, woke, college graduate. That is where they get the vast majority of their support and that drives much of their narrative. And you’re seeing now, I saw in the Quinnipiac poll, Joe Biden has a 19 percent approval rate among Hispanic voters. 70 percent are now turning away from Biden. He’s uniquely incompetent, I think, even in that respect. What do you make of the tectonic plates shifting in terms of where support for parties are coming? And are Republicans making an aggressive enough play in your mind for voters that might not have been Republican in the past?

COULTER: I’d like to make another bet with you, Clay, since I’m already winning my last one or two bets. And that is, no, I think Republicans are spending too much time trying to get the black and Hispanic vote. The way Republicans win is by driving up the white vote. And my bet to you is Republicans — 70 percent of the non-Hispanic vote, not a chance. They will not even get a majority.

CLAY: Okay, what’s our number?

BUCK: She said not a majority. Clay, you’re going to be buying a lot of —

CLAY: 50/50, all right. I will take that a majority of Hispanics will vote Republican in the midterms. If we get to 50.1, I win.

COULTER: Right, correct.

CLAY: And we have to find some data point that we can rely on.

COULTER: Sure.

CLAY: We’ll have a mutually agreeable, yes, I’ll put a …

COULTER: This is a steak dinner bet, and the steak dinner that you already owe me, so you can’t weasel out of it, I’ll say it on radio, I bet you that Trump will not be the nominee.

CLAY: I think Trump will be the nominee in 2020.

COULTER: Fine.

BUCK: Clay will be buying a lot of steaks.

CLAY: I’ve got a lot of steak bets out there. And I want to ask you this, this is not serious, I don’t know if you heard our last segment but Buck and I were talking about if a woman has a snake as a pet, that we would not want to date her. Now, Buck is engaged now. I’ve been married for a long time. And the other thing I was saying, I saw a really good looking girl with a skull tattoo on her back.

BUCK: Was the skull flaming, because that is an additional —

CLAY: I would be more — at least it would look a little bit artistic. This was a highly realistic version of a skull on her back. Is there, for men, is there something that a man, like, does, the equivalent of having a snake as a pet, skull on the back tattoo for me — you can think about it. I don’t want to necessarily have — you don’t have to necessarily answer immediately.

COULTER: Think about it? I can answer it.

BUCK: Not going to be a hard call for Ann.

CLAY: What immediately are you like —

COULTER: Even though I will lose fans over this. I’m sorry, you can get them removed — no girl, I may save some people — no girl should ever, ever, ever get a tattoo. I know that wasn’t the question. Your question, I’d say, really, tattoos, if you were in the military, you know, you’re a huge, hulking brute, okay, fine, you can have an arm tattoo. But beyond that, no, no tattoos for anybody, knock that crack off. You’re basically marking yourself I’m the servant class here in America; I will never rise above being the busboy.

CLAY: Oh, my goodness, every tattooed man in the community right now is Ann Coulter has —

BUCK: Clay Travis takes the heat for this, everyone.

COULTER: I think if you’re really buff you can pull it off as a male. No female, and I have female friends who have gotten them, males who have gotten them. And they spend a lot of money getting them removed. Remember what outfits were like, or you can look back and see like the disco outfits in the ’70s with the lime green leisure suit. What if you were forced to wear that your entire life? You’re going with a fad right now, is that going to look good a decade from now? Two decades from now?

CLAY: That’s why I’m fashionable. I wear shorts and T-shirts and jeans all the time. I’m never going to look fashionable. But nobody will ever put a photo up of me and be like can you believe Clay Travis ever wore that? Because I don’t think T and shorts…

BUCK: This is where we can count on Clay to light the Coulter M80. Right at the end of the segment.

COULTER: I have one more for you before the end of the segment because I’ve done this. You see the guy’s apartment and there are no books.

BUCK: I’m pro-books in the apartment.

COULTER: I’m not including a few almanacs or dictionaries. No, no, I want some bookshelves.

CLAY: This is one of those things, Ann, where guys would say, “I read but I usually read magazines.” I’m like no, no, dude you don’t actually read anything.

BUCK: Your comic book is not what anybody is looking for here. Clay, you’ve got a read, which is going to save us from the avalanche of opinion that coming our way.

CLAY: Ann, I don’t even know if you should even be comfortable going downstairs now. These tattooed men, you’ve alienated they’ll be lining up on the streets.

COULTER: Right, but not the stubbly ones, and they’re the only ones who would be able to hurt me, right?

BUCK: Clay, for the love of God, do your read, sir. (Laughing).

CLAY: I don’t think the snake people will be angry at Buck and I.

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Things to Avoid: Pet Snakes and Girls with Skull Tattoos

22 Jul 2022

BUCK: There’s some things, Clay, maybe I shouldn’t necessarily admit on the radio show with a few million people listening to this, but one weird idea I’ve had, I’ve actually told Carrie, my fiancée, about this, I’ve always thought that there were certain animals that would be really cool to have as a pet. And certain states, Florida, for example, if you get a license, you can have a pet fox if you want.

CLAY: What animal would you think you would like to have as a pet?

BUCK: I think this is weird, and I know this, we’re going deep into nerddom, folks, I think having a pet red fox would be really cool. There are these Instagram accounts with people with their pet foxes.

CLAY: Can you train them to walk like dogs and stuff, or no?

BUCK: I mean, they’re technically wild animals. They’re not really domesticated, but they make cute noises and they’re furry and you can rub them.

CLAY: You can have a pet fox if you want a pet fox?

BUCK: In some states. In New York you can’t even have a pet hedgehog. I’ve looked into this. And hedgehogs are tiny and really inoffensive. What I’m saying is some exotic pets would be cool. A wombat is technically endangered so that’s not going to happen. But if you’ve ever seen a wombat sanctuary, it looks like people are having fun with wombats there. They kind of look like a fat koala.

CLAY: You, by the way, are a good test on this because you’re now engaged. But have you ever dated a girl with a pet snake? It’s a rule.

BUCK: I do not date females with pet snakes. Pet tarantula, even scarier. But I’ve known a couple of women with pet snakes. Everyone needs to be judged as an individual, but I do think it’s a bit of a warning sign. That’s all I’m going to say.

CLAY: It’s a huge red flag. I’ll give you an example of something I saw. I was down in Florida where I spent some decent time. I was in a gym near my place. And this really good-looking girl, probably in her 20s, is in there working out. She has a huge skeleton, like, head tattoo on her back. Like you see her from the front, you’re like, hey, this 24-year-old girl, she’s really good-looking. I’ve never seen a more terrifying tattoo.

On her upper, like, shoulder, is a huge skull. Like just a skull tattoo. I actually am kind of curious why she got it. But that to me is kind of the equivalent of girl who has a snake. Like skull tattoo on the back. I don’t know what’s going on there. But I’m staying away. There is trepidation. There is fear. Even if I were a single guy, good-looking girl, skull tattoo, I’m out. Same thing with a snake.

BUCK: There are snakes and then there are snakes. If you want to have a little pet garter snake or something that you feed crickets to, I don’t get it because I just think that the mammal/reptile barrier, reptiles they’re not our buddies. They’re not bonding with you. You’re either a source of food or are the food. Like there’s not really anything else you’re doing. But when you have a snake that is — and you see these, sometimes they have these shows on Animal Planet, there will be some guy and it will be, “Oh, man, we just got the call. One of these guys who has a spitting cobra, he was doing his laundry and knocked over the spitting cobra cage…”

CLAY: Every snake gets out of its cage. This is my theory. They always gets out.

BUCK: And he’s like, “I’m real scared now because it’s not just very venomous, but it spits the venom in your face from up to 20 feet.” But I thought this was cool. So I got it as a pet. You’re looking at this guy like you’re out of your mind. Clay, in Pennsylvania, this is why we’re talking about this, they had to call cops because the owner of a 15-foot long python, a 15-foot long python.

CLAY: How big is the cage for a 15-, or a tank or whatever, for a 15-foot python?

BUCK: Not big enough. It got out — what a shock — wrapped itself around the owner, and then was, as snakes do, because he’s food to a 15-foot, started to constrict and block his airway and basically slowly asphyxiate him. He calls 911

CLAY: While being choked out by the python?

BUCK: While being choked out by the python. The cops get there, because fortunately it was a slow enough process, they were able to get there. The cop gets there, has to draw his side arm and blow the python’s head off while it is still wrapped around the owner. The owner is apparently okay. But, right, this is crazy.

CLAY: I’m like…

BUCK: If you have a 15-foot snake, I’m going to say, it’s 14 feet too long, everybody.

CLAY: I want to hear from this cop. So did he have to hold the snake’s head?

BUCK: It’s crazy. On Fox 29, “I’ve been doing this job for 19 years. This is the first time I’ve seen a thing like this.”

CLAY: You think?

BUCK: Crap.

CLAY: I’m saying, the cop was, like, well, I can’t fire the gun at the snake because it will go through the snake and kill the guy. So I’m genuinely curious.

BUCK: The middle of it was wrapped around the guy. The head, they talked about this in the local piece on it, the head was separated enough from him. Remember, this snake is killing this guy.

CLAY: I get it, yeah.

BUCK: And the guy had to line it up and blow the snake’s head off while it was still wrapped around and constricting him.

CLAY: What I’m saying, that’s a tough shot, right?

BUCK: He got up close to it because the snake can only — I’ve seen Anaconda. They can usually only take down one at a time. Once it’s got the guy, it’s immobilized. They’re able to line it up. But it’s still scary as all hell, man. This is crazy.

CLAY: I don’t know the answer to this, but how long after you blow the snake’s head off was he able to get the guy out?

BUCK: I think they got it off relatively quickly. I don’t know, though.

CLAY: How would you ever sleep again?

BUCK: By the way, they found this was the man’s pet and there were several other snake enclosures in the home. This dude is crazy, I’ve got to tell you.

CLAY: Totally crazy.

BUCK: Couple things, folks, for the single male listeners of Clay and Buck, if a young lady sits down and says, I hate my dad/I have a 15-foot boa constrictor, either of these things are not a good sign.

CLAY: You agree with the skull tattoo, too? That this would be tough to get over?

BUCK: Dating and tattoo conversation, we have to do a whole conversation on that.

CLAY: There’s a lot of tattoos I’m not terrified of. Skull tattoo? I’m running.

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War Gaming a Trump-DeSantis Primary Without Taking Sides

22 Jul 2022

CLAY: This is a conversation I’m having on and off more and more with people. I’m curious what you think. Let’s say that Trump decided not to run in 2024. You and I both expect Trump will run, that he’ll be in the Republican nominating battle that will go on all throughout 2023 and into 2024 when the primary season starts. But, if Trump decided, hey, you know what, I’m stepping back, how do you think everybody else who is running would be treated?

Have we now entered across the proverbial Rubicon, if you want a history analogy — you’re an old-school history guy, Buck, you would appreciate that. Have we crossed the Rubicon into an era where it doesn’t matter who the Republican candidate is or who the candidates are for national office, all of them will be treated as existential threats to democracy. And this derangement syndrome is going to pass from Trump on to the Republicans no matter who is running? Or will everybody who has been arguing Trump is the biggest threat to democracy ever, when he steps off the stage, could be after he wins re-election in 2024 and serves four more years — I’m genuinely curious how the Washington Post, the MSNBCs, the New York Times of the world — are going to handle everyone else.

What’s your thought, will it transfer, the Trump virus of, he’s going to destroy democracy, is it going to be passed whoever the next Republican candidate for president is, or will they treat them differently?

BUCK: Well, Mitt Romney, who was about as edgy and defensive as Ned Flanders from the Simpsons.

CLAY: That’s the perfect analogy for who Mitt Romney is. He’s Ned Flanders.

BUCK: Yes, he was giving cancer to people while strapping his dog to the roof and building binders full of women. Will they at least go through a process of whoever the Republican nominee is, is a carrying of the torch of Trumpism and therefore just as much of a danger to our democracy? Yes, that will happen, but it won’t be sustainable. The thing about Trump is that he reveled in sticking his thumb right in the eye of the mainstream Democrat corporate media. And it was amazing. It was highly entertainment for those of us working in media, highly entertaining for the country. Nobody else had done that before.

I think about even during the George W. Bush administration, there was always a sense New York Times, it’s very important, Washington Post, very important paper, we’ve got to give access to their reporters and treat them with a bit of deference. Now, Trump sat with too many New York Times reporters, too, gave them more access than he probably should have. But he was also taking shots at CNN and all the rest of it. They were completely enraged by this. They took it personally. I don’t think you would have that with “name other Republican nominee.” I’ve got to say if Trump runs and Ron DeSantis does not run, does any other Republican, does any other Republican really want to get into that royal rumble?

CLAY: That’s a great question.

BUCK: I think Trump runs unopposed if Ron DeSantis doesn’t run against him. Liz Cheney will run for president. We’re all going to go, oh, that’s cute.

CLAY: Yes, she’s about to get wrecked, by the way, in Wyoming. Those polls are coming out. She’s going to get destroyed by Wyoming Republicans in that primary. I think you’re right. If DeSantis runs and I think DeSantis is going to run I think and Trump is going to run, that’s the two 800-pound gorillas. They’re going to be in the ring throwing heavyweight punches against each other.

I think Mike Pompeo is going to run. I think Mike Pence is going to run. I think Liz Cheney is going to run, to your point. I don’t think any of those guys or girls have any ability to cut through the noise. And if DeSantis doesn’t run — he’s 100% going to run — but if he were not to run, I think basically the field would get cleared for Trump. I think DeSantis is the only person that can go and throw some punches in the ring with Trump. I think Trump would eviscerate everybody else.

BUCK: I don’t think they would view it as worth it. Who other than DeSantis, who would step into that ring in a serious way? They might stage debates to see who the VP is; and to be fair, the VP, under a second Trump term, would be a really big deal because you are only getting one term of Trump if he runs and wins again, right?

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: So the VP candidate — I think one lesson we take from the Biden fiasco is you’ve got to actually think of the VP as somebody who might have to step up and step in. You’ve got to think of this not just as, oh, you know, it’s an afterthought.

CLAY: And so everybody out there knows, Buck and I are not endorsing anybody ever until the Republican primaries are over.

BUCK: We’re just war gaming it.

CLAY: Yes. So I’ll be speaking at DeSantis’s event down in Florida this weekend. Then I’m going to Bedminster to hang out at the Trump LIV golf event and be perhaps the worst Pro-Am player in the history of Pro-Ams because I’ve not played very much golf, really, at all. We’ll have some fun talking about that next week, Buck, because I think some of the shots I’m going to hit on the Pro-Am course on Thursday next week up in New Jersey, outside New York City, at Bedminster, they’re going to be unbelievably bad.

Charles Barkley is also playing. If you’ve ever seen Charles Barkley’s golf swing, he and I side by side would maybe be the worst tandem in Pro-Am history.

BUCK: (Imitating “Caddyshack”) Clay Travis, Cinderella story at Bedminster. Oh, he’s at the tee. Oh, it’s on the green. There you go.

CLAY: It is not going to be pretty. They ask you at the Pro-Am, here’s an example, Buck, you’ll appreciate this. They say, hey, are you going to be bringing your own clubs or are you okay just using the clubs at the course? I’m using the clubs at the course. I don’t want to have to travel and worry about carrying my golf clubs around because I’m headed to upstate northern Michigan with my wife in early August.

So I’m going straight from New York City to Michigan. And the last thing I want to do is have to worry about carrying those clubs everywhere. So I’m using the course clubs; and no matter what clubs I was going to be using, it wasn’t going to be a pretty picture.

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After Biden Catches Covid, the WH Concedes Everyone Will Get It

22 Jul 2022

CLAY: Joe Biden finally testing positive for covid, despite the fact that he’s had both covid shots and both boosters. What is interesting about this, Buck, is — and I know the timing is different in that the fall of 2020 covid was still somewhat new, but you remember well because you were in the middle of the covid fray then, and certainly I was, too, that there was an obsession with Trump testing positive for covid and how dare he come back to the White House when he still had covid and how dare he even get covid. It was his fault that he got covid. And everybody wanted to know where it came from.

And they had a White House press briefing yesterday, Buck, where suddenly how you get covid doesn’t matter at all — and you will remember this because we talked about it on this show — but contract tracing was going to be the way they ended covid forever.

BUCK: There are some things I can go back and people can listen to my shows then or just Twitter and — I know not a lot of people on Twitter — but I go back, in June of 2020, I was just talking about — so this is now over two years ago — how the contact tracing program in New York City was so stupid that only either a person who was racked with anxiety, so they couldn’t think or was truly a moron could ever think that this was going to work.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: They were calling people like me — they would call you ten days after you had covid and be, like, hey, who did you hang out with? And then maybe they would call those people ten days after that or maybe they wouldn’t. The initial public health officials who were talking about the success of contact tracing — I want everyone to understand this because this is true, this is real. Some of these things, Clay, they were so dumb. The Fauciites are such idiots that it sounds like we’re making this up. Public health officials, the commissar for New York or LA, when she’s not out at a Dodgers game hanging out without a mask.

CLAY: And all these people also look super unhealthy, don’t they? The more obsessed you are with covid —

BUCK: Could you imagine a job pre-covid than being the No. 2 in the public health department in most cities, the most useless job in so many ways, too.

CLAY: No kidding.

BUCK: The initial push for contract tracing, they would say things — I mean the Walenskys and the Faucis, they would say, we have had a lot of success with contact tracing in the past. For STDs! I’m just going to put this out there. Most of us have far more people we may have breathed on than we would be worried about for a close-and-continuing-contact situation.

CLAY: Unless you’re Matthew McConaughey or Brad Pitt, the number of people that you have slept with over time, or a porn star, probably way less than the number of people you have breathed on.

BUCK: There were programs here in New York, Clay, where they would not open up gyms. They wouldn’t open up restaurants until we had a certain number of contact tracers who were doing the most pointless job on the planet. But this was listed as a requisite for opening up businesses that were getting crushed. We didn’t have enough contact tracers? Couldn’t open up our businesses. That was put in place by de Blasio and backed up by Cuomo. Those people are morons. They’re incapable of thinking through.

We were at tens of thousands of cases a day just at one point in New York City. You’re going to trace tens of thousands of people and all of their — what are you going to do when you trace them? But, Clay, they’re still obsessed with mass testing. What is mass testing going to do? What does it tell you when you do all the testing all the time? Nothing.

CLAY: Yeah. I’ve never been tested for the flu and I don’t think I’ve ever been tested for a cold. Kind of have a sense when I have it. And Buck for those of us who live in red states, I remember getting off airplanes. They had the contact tracing set up, so you’d get notifications on your phone even if you hadn’t signed up for it. Like, if I remember correctly, in LA or New York, they would say, hey, covid is spreading, do you want your phone to help trace — you know what I’m talking about?

BUCK: I would go to Miami for visits to see my brothers who were brilliant enough to move there at the beginning of the pandemic, and I would come back to New York. There were National Guard soldiers standing there. I guess as if to frighten away the virus with their M4s without magazines in them. They were standing there to try to go through our contact tracing app or something. The people that pushed this are so stupid and they’ve destroyed the faith that anybody could and rightly would have in public health officials.

People don’t talk about it anymore. The things they did, it’s not that they didn’t work super well. They were abjectly pointless and actually worse than that because they harassed us, they added to anxiety. And like Rochelle Walensky still goes around giving speeches and people practically tear up because they think she’s so amazing.

CLAY: Yes to all of that. I wanted to make sure we played these clips because many of you out there will remember when the Fauciites were all arguing, “Hey, contact tracing is the way out of covid. This will save everybody.” So not surprisingly, there are still a lot of left-wing loons who believe this contact tracing reality is still something that should be happening. So they grilled the White House about where Biden got covid.

And so here is Karine Jean-Pierre saying, it doesn’t matter. We’ve been told forever — remember how they lectured Trump? Where did he get it? Was he wearing a mask? Did he make the right decisions? Remember, they have protected Biden from interacting with people pretty much as much as someone could be protected. They even sit him at a table a long way from anybody else. They put him in masks outdoors. And now, how did he get covid? Well, Karine Jean-Pierre says, hey, guys, it doesn’t matter.

“Where exactly was the president infected?”

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: “I don’t think that matters” pic.twitter.com/m9kPfVoNEk

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 21, 2022

REPORTER: Where was he infected? I don’t think we know. I certainly don’t know if you have any thoughts on that.

JEAN-PIERRE: I don’t think that matters.

CLAY: Okay. So it doesn’t matter. She’s saying now on the record it doesn’t matter. Well, then, she gets challenged by probably the Corona Bros in the White House press corps saying, how can it not matter in an age of contact tracing? This is CNN anchor or reporter here. Listen.

REPORTER: How can it not matter where he got it if that is something that of course is involved in contact tracing? This administration is taking it very seriously. How can it not matter?

JEAN-PIERRE: I think what I was trying to say is that what’s important now is that he has mild symptoms, and that he is working from the residence on behalf of the American people. Look, we knew that was going to happen, as Dr. Jha said when he joined me at the briefing room not too long ago, he said — at some point everyone is going to get covid. What is important is to make sure that you get the treatment that we have provided for folks.

CLAY: That’s actually a big statement, Buck. If you had said, like we did, everyone is going to get covid — did you hear the White House just said everyone is going to get covid? If everyone is going to get covid how can they justify virtually every covid policy that they’re trying to put in place — kids in masks, not letting somebody like Djokovic come into the country to play in the U.S. Open, because he hasn’t gotten the covid shot. The fact that anyone should get the covid shot in the first place.

If we’re all going to get covid, and that’s something that Jean-Pierre said that I actually agree with, I think you probably agree with, Buck. The problem is she’s probably about a year and a half behind the reality of recognizing this was going to happen. Why is there any covid restriction anywhere in the United States right now if we’re all going to get covid like she just said?

BUCK: It transferred, Clay. It transformed from a policy meant to achieve a goal to a belief that gave people psychological comfort. That’s what’s really happened with all the covid policies. It has been for a long time no longer ultimately about this will limit or stop or end covid. It’s we do this because it makes us feel better and it separates us from the unclean bad people who don’t do this. This is religious in nature now. Just as Democrats often replace traditional religion as in a spiritual relationship with God with a relationship with the state, this has now become a ritual for them. This is a rite.

CLAY: I just think that clip of acknowledging that everybody is going to get covid, it makes it impossible to me.

BUCK: I’ve been saying that for two years; you’ve been saying it for two years. When we were saying it, we were monsters who wanted grandma to die.

CLAY: That’s right. How about we were right and they admit that? How about the Great Barrington Declaration all being correct, too? But that statement from Karine Jean-Pierre — everybody is going to get covid? If that’s true, then why should there be any covid restrictions whatsoever?

I mean, everybody out there listening, think about this, because, Buck, the way that they tried to convince us all that we had to take action was because they said, well, even if you’re going to be okay, you may give it to your grandma. Remember, they were obsessed with the fact that we were all going to kill everybody’s grandma. Well, if everybody’s going to get it, then you’re responsible for your own health, but you’re not responsible for everybody else’s health. All of the justifications for covid actions have been predicated on you and me and everybody else being responsible for the larger universe.

If everybody’s going to get it, then we’re all individually responsible with taking care of ourselves, which is kind of the history of mankind. Like, ultimately, you’re responsible for yourself. If you’ve got kids, you’re responsible for them.

BUCK: One of the biggest, most important lessons of covid is that your health is actually in your hands and you have to take action if you want to be the healthiest, best version of yourself. And if you listen to the state, you’re going to be, you know, suckling on soy milk and miserable.

GOTTLEIB: This is an endemic virus, but an endemic virus can cause a pandemic. We have a flu pandemic every year. It meets the definition of being a pandemic. You have global spread of pathogen, uncontrollable spread of pathogen. But at this point it’s an endemic virus. We won’t be able to extinguish it.

REPOTER: Are we still in a pandemic?

GOTTLIEB: We’re still in a pandemic with covid, yes. This is probably going to be a seasonal pandemic. Even if it settles into a seasonal pattern, it’s going to meet the definition of being a endemic even if it’s an endemic virus. I think the reality is most people now see the pandemic as part of a fabric of modern life rather than a public health emergency.

BUCK: Pandemic, endemic, all this stuff, folks. This is actually important, this definition back and forth. Pandemic on all people, epidemic within the people. Epidemic virus means it exists within the population and with seasonality it comes back. Pandemic is it’s all over the place and spreading globally. But notice they’re now saying, well, the flu is a pandemic and we have flu every year. So we’re still in a pandemic.

Actually by the definition that they’re shifting to, we’re going to be in a covid pandemic forever and it’s also endemic meaning within the population. Will continue to exist with the population. So we are exactly where some of us were saying we would be two years ago. Two full years ago it was, look, guys, everyone’s going to get it. It’s going to be here. This is now a fact of life. We should treat it like the flu. It’s like another flu on top of the flu. And just go forward with our lives.

Clay, I feel like they’re slowly inching toward this because they want to get to where we knew we were all going. But they just never want to admit that we did all this horrible stuff to the American people that was unnecessary and we were wrong about everything. Or they were wrong about everything.

CLAY: Last year, we had Alex Berenson on. And even people who are on our side, Buck, reached out to us and they were, like, hey, you’re being a little aggressive in saying that these covid shots are not going to cure covid.

BUCK: I had right-wingers tell me, Buck, I love what you and Clay do, but you’ve got to keep Alex Berenson off the air on the vaccines; he’s gone to crazy town. People were telling me that. They were wrong.

CLAY: Same people told to me. And you and I were competent enough to look at the data and say what he’s saying are very valid comments. Now he’s been proven 100 percent true. The thing that I look and think about next year, what will we be saying next year?

My concern, Buck, is that by next year, it’s going to be impossible to argue that these covid shots were not actually harmful to us in trying to get through covid. In fact, my concern, data arguments out there, this is what science is, it’s unclear, but there are increasing data points that are suggesting that the more covid shots you are getting, the more likely you are to get covid. And so a year from now, just like now, you can say oh the covid shot doesn’t stop you from getting or spreading covid. A year ago you couldn’t say that. My concern is a year from now we’re going to be saying, “Man, all the data is reflecting the covid shots actually made everybody worse.”

BUCK: Last summer you were a danger, a clear and present danger to the public for bringing up the dangers of vaccines, even in the future, that we could hit. And eventually I think we’ll be at a place where, “Oh, well, maybe we shouldn’t have silenced those voices that wanted honest discussion. ”

CLAY: No doubt. That’s my concern a year from now, where we’re going to be.

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Why New York Times Columnists Are Admitting They Were Wrong

22 Jul 2022

BUCK: Clay and I talk about this off-line, because we’re always texting and discussing the show. And this is a constant — people say, what’s your show prep. I’m like, it never stops. We’re sending ideas and stories and concepts and quotes and clips to each other at all hours. Apologies to Mrs. Travis, Clay, if I ever wake you up with the 3.00 a.m., “Look at this story. This will be great tomorrow!” Just make sure you have the phone on silent.

But here we are looking at a lot of issues where, if you see the narrative thread of this program for the last year on crime: What are the causes of the increase in it, why is it getting so bad and what needs to be done to change it? You look at covid. We were having, in July — maybe we should pull some of it — we were having Berenson on among others. We’ve also been an early adopter of the Truth Train courtesy of Dr. Marty Makary. We’ve had the truth serum that he delivers on air. We’ve been willing to look at people or to have people on who look at the numbers and say this doesn’t add up with what we’re being told. Essentially, on some of the biggest things, we’ve been right. And those who listen to us, you vote for that every time you listen. Every day you’re tuning into us you’re saying, yeah, being right on stuff — and I know all we agree on this, too — but being right on this stuff should matter. It’s interesting.

I bring this up — by the way, if we were wrong, you know, we got a little ahead of our skis, we had a little too much fun yesterday with the Trump statement because it was so hilarious. Turns out it was a parody. Nobody is perfect. But if we’re wrong it’s like breaking news, tiny issue factual. It’s not broad-sweeping narrative that shows dramatic misunderstanding of fundamental concepts, principles and reality. And the elite, we get that stuff right all the time, I’m just going to say. We’re right all the time. The elite media over at New York Times and CNN — although, have you seen CNN’s ratings recently? There are like Season 6, DIY Cabins of Manitoba shows that are getting more viewers than CNN. I do love those DIY shows.

CLAY: To your point on CNN, they need Donald Trump so desperately. And MSNBC, too. They don’t exist. He is the one-man stimulus package for their ratings. If he doesn’t exist, there’s nothing for them. It’s wild.

BUCK: They also made a decision, which is, you know, you know A Man for All Seasons? There’s the argument, would you get rid of all the laws if it meant you could get the devil. And he turns around and he says, I’m paraphrasing and some of you know the quote better than me, once you’ve cut down all the laws of England to get the devil himself, what are you going to do when the devil turns on you? What are you going to do once you’ve done this? And the media, the Democrat media abandoned the pretense of — I think it always was a pretense — but they at least abandoned the make-believe framework of neutrality, journalism, news gathering against Trump.

So it’s entirely understandable that now, to your point, without Trump, what do they exist to do? They already told us their propaganda organ. They already told us that they aren’t actually unbiased. And it’s interesting because also now that they ran with some of these narratives as long as they did, you’re seeing some of these big-named journos coming out and saying, a number of them, yeah, I was really wrong. Because the game is up. They can’t play it anymore. Perfect example, Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Laureate in economics who is a smug, delusional leftist, who is more consistently wrong on economic policy questions than any human being I can think of off the top of my head. Clay, he just said, yeah, turns out I was wrong about inflation. And I know we’re all supposed to clap for him and say oh, okay. But, yes, spending trillions of dollars when you’re already 27, 28 trillion in debt is going to make inflation worse.

CLAY: Not only was he wrong about inflation, he was wrong about the entire Trump economy, too. To your point, if you’re an expert in one thing and you get consistently everything wrong in the field of which you are considered to be an expert, how do you still have a job? How were there not consequences for being immensely wrong?

When your job is to be an opinionist for the New York Times on economics, and everything you say about economics is wrong, in any other job you would lose it, right? If you are a football coach and you lose every game, even if you’re considered to be an expert in football coaching, you get fired. Our industry, when it comes to media opinionists and being an expert in something and being wrong all the time, there don’t appear to be real consequences. Paul Krugman is a great example at the New York Times, wrong about everything. And not only wrong, but wrong in a way if he had been right, he would have been more wrong.

BUCK: If economists were as smart as they want people to believe, they wouldn’t be teaching undergrad. They’d be running multibillion dollar hedge funds. I’m just telling you the truth, that’s reality.

CLAY: That’s right. The best, the smartest people in the field of finance either run hedge funds or are in private equity because that’s where they make money based on having to put the principles to the test.

BUCK: Tenured Ph.D.s in economics, look, teaching is a very valuable thing in itself, but this notion that somebody who has a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton or is teaching at Princeton with a Ph.D. has a better understanding of the economy than say, you know, the guy who starts a massively successful chain of national restaurants or something — who was it recently, was it Andy Puzder who came out recently and said the Biden Administration has no one who understands business, has no one who understands actual market forces? I think it was.

CLAY: It was also us.

BUCK: Yeah, that’s true, too. By the way, there’s a whole list here. And hats off to the New York Post for compiling this. But it’s all starting to happen. I don’t think it’s happening because of inherent honesty or sense of honor that these individuals have. I think they just realized that the game is up and they have to pivot in some way.

Bret Stephens, somebody used to write for Wall Street Journal, left to go to the New York Times, has admitted that effectively he —

CLAY: I read this —

BUCK: — that he was dripping with condescension for Trump voters. And this is a guy who was supposed to be a conservative, was writing at the Wall Street Journal. A lot of what the Trump voters were feeling about how the apparatus and the elites thought of them and treated them was confirmed by people like Bret Stephens, who abandoned his post to speak the truth to them and defend them at the same time. He decided to do it for the amusement for smarmy libs, and he’s now coming out to say, yeah, it was nasty what I said about Trump supporters. He said they were appalling. He said Trump supporters were appalling. And that was another example of this.

I still to this day, one of my prouder moments professionally, I did not even have a job lined up of any kind. And CNN was offering me money to stay on in 2016, after Trump won. And I was, like, under no circumstances am I ever working for your network again. Like, I’m out of here. I want no part of this. I would rather have to go get a normal job-job, than to continue to work in media for CNN. Clay, there are a lot of these people formerly on the right who went to these places and they made, speaking of the devil, they made a deal with the devil, they made a Faustian bargain to go do things for the amusement of libs.

CLAY: One of the conversations — and maybe we can talk about this for a minute when we come back — one of the conversations I’ve been having is to what extent was Trump an exception in terms of the way CNN and MSNBC behaved and to what extent is, even if Trump is not the nominee, the new reality is every single Republican candidate for national office is an awful human being who is the devil incarnate? I’m genuinely curious to think about that going forward. I had some conversations about it.

BUCK: There are two more columnists who said, yeah, I was really wrong. We’ll get to those, two of four.

CLAY: We’ll tie all those together. By the way, we’re not perfect but we’re not generally —

BUCK: We’re like 98 percent of the time right, though.

CLAY: Yeah, right. Yesterday’s quote was on me, but it was funny.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: You mentioned there were a couple other — where we got things wrong from the New York Times, Where they’re trying — I think they have eight of them — eight different columnists wrote on the things they had most gotten wrong, if I’m not mistaken, total. And they’re still rolling them out as we continue through the week here.

“I could have thought a little harder about the fact that, in my dripping condescension toward his supporters, I was also confirming their suspicions about people like me,” Bret Stephens writes about Donald Trump. https://t.co/7lY3ZanpAb

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) July 21, 2022

BUCK: The Bret Stephens one, I think he’s realized he made a Faustian bargain. I don’t know him. I just know his work. I know he’s one of these guys who became a Never Trumper who then seized with disdain of all Trump voters and then thought that getting a pat on the head from the New York Times was — no, it was not a good idea. They have disdain for him. That’s probably what he’s figured out.
Now he’s a man with no party essentially and is doing the bidding of libs, pretending to be a conservative. So that’s what happens there.

Paul Krugman is a joke. If you invest based on Paul Krugman pronouncements you’re going to lose all your money. So Paul Krugman is not somebody that anybody who cares about being right listens to. He’s also a loon. He hates guns. He knows nothing.

Michelle Goldberg, this is interesting, also New York Times, she said she got it wrong when she called for Al Franken’s resignation from the Senate without an investigation. I want to know is that something, a rule we can extend to Republicans as well? Or is it, man, we just shouldn’t have thrown Franken under the bus because he’s a Democrat and what do we really get out of that?

CLAY: Look, I understand she said I got that wrong. She’s not the reason that Al Franken had to resign. The reason Al Franken had to resign was because of his own Senate colleagues.

BUCK: Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, yes.

CLAY: She was the one who was leading the pitch fork brigade.

In the grand scheme of things, let’s be honest. What Al Franken was accused of was, I think, one of the many things that — he lost his job over #MeToo, and now there’s an irony because certainly Democrats were all about Me Too and everything else until the chickens came home to roost. And there’s an incredible irony I think that Johnny Depp has basically ended Me Too because he bankrupted Amber Heard and she’s appealing that ruling right now, by the way. But, look, Al Franken being photographed 15 years ago making a joke which may have been inappropriate with somebody on a military jet is just basically him pretending to make out with her.

BUCK: I think the bigger problem was the forced making out with other women, if I remember, which is not good.

CLAY: I’m not claiming that Al Franken was an incredible guy. But the standard of, if you have ever had any woman who is upset about anything that you’ve ever done, therefore you are ineligible, like noncriminal behavior, you’re ineligible to ever be a politician, I think is a crazy standard whether you’re Democrat, Republican or independent.

BUCK: I think the bigger trend right now that these “what I got wrong columns” from New York Times columnists is about the Democrat media doesn’t have anything to champion and doesn’t have anything, the Biden administration, they can’t be cheerleaders because it’s too depressing and, too, incompetent. And they don’t have Trump to attack. So what are they really doing? What do they really represent on a day-to-day basis for their readers? This is true at CNN. This is true at the New York Times. They have to pivot. They have to shift because this all-in against the right, all in for the left, it doesn’t really work for these outlets when you have an administration that’s — the Obama administration they can get away with it. But the Biden administration, not so much.

CLAY: The Pew Research came out — or maybe it was Gallup — came out with research in the last ten days or so, showing that newspapers and television news had reached lowest levels of respect and support and trust basically in any of our lives. And so what they are recognizing is the Trump administration, for the Washington Times, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC was a sugar high; it existed, but it was not sustainable because even if Trump had won in 2020 and was still in office right now, Trump eventually is no longer going to be able to be in office.

So they sold this idea of the Great Satan, as they were pivoting to a subscription model. It’s actually kind of a fascinating business analysis story, and I think they’re trying to pull now blood out of a stone because everybody who hated Trump has already subscribed to the New York Times, right? If you hate Trump, you’re already a Washington Post subscriber. And now they’re looking around saying, wait a minute, where are the rest of our subscribers? And the people they’re trying to be persuadable, are done with them.

BUCK: I can’t believe that they would be in a position to really rub it in the faces of the mask opponents, vaccine mandate opponents. I think they were expecting going into the midterm to say, “Oh, look at those stupid red states. Look at Florida with its super high death rate and everyone is fleeing.” I think they believed that, and now the reality has sunk in that that is the opposite of reality, that the red states are putting out no vacancies signs because they’re so full because they’ve handled the economy better, handled covid better, they’re pushing back on vaccine mandates was the right move. All of it. So basically the left is in free fall now, Clay.

CLAY: They got everything wrong. And the more it mattered, the more egregiously wrong they were. And I don’t know how they pull themselves out. And I think you’re right. I think this is why the New York Times is trying to have all these mea culpas, saying we got all these things wrong because no one trusts them at all anymore.

BUCK: They should have a new columnist called Captain Obvious, we got everything wrong.

Clay and Buck

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