BUCK: NYC. My hometown. A lot of people are listening on 710 WOR NYC right now, and you are very much affected by, in the day-to-day, exactly what we’re about to talk about here. But across the country, let me just give you this quick pitch. This is… Los Angeles, New York, you see what happens in these places, and it’s what the Democrats want to do to the whole country if they can, if they could.

And it gives you a sense of their mind-set going forward into this midterm election year because we had been thinking for a while, I think, on the right, “Oh, my gosh. Biden is such a joke. These policies that are being implemented are so bad that the Democrats are gonna have to do what they usually do in an election year, which is pretend to be something other than that which they are.”

Do a little head fake toward the center. “Oh, yeah, we’re not a bunch of quasi-Marxists running around who want to undermine the very foundations of American society. No, no, no! Of course not, right? We’re not teaching critical race theory to your kids in school. No, we don’t do that — and if anyone was doing it, we’ll put a stop to it.” You would think they might do that.

But that’s not necessarily what’s actually happening, and New York is an example, I think, of, “Oh, wow, they might just be so ideologically committed that they’re gonna keep on ruining this place.” They’re gonna keep doing what they’ve done in San Francisco, in New York City, in Los Angeles, and destroy the largest cities in America, make them unlivable hellholes.

Eric Adams was the great hope to end this, and I can tell you that so far it looks like he may just be a continuation in many ways of the de Blasio decline. He might be a little bit better on police but let me start with this: He has backed allowing 800,000 noncitizens — and I just want to say this: “Noncitizens” is not a term we should use. We should use the actual federal legal code term, which is illegal alien, or, if you want to, illegal immigrant.

But it is a violation of U.S. law for people not the in this country legally to be here. That has not changed. That is still in the books. If the Democrats don’t think that’s fair, they should be advocating for the elimination of illegal status — which we know they will do, but it’s just of question of when they have the votes and the power to try to get it through.

But, in the meantime, Clay, 800,000 illegal aliens in New York City are now — because Eric Adams has allowed the legislation to automatically become law on Sunday; he did not veto it, 800,000 illegals are now — voting for city council, for the mayor. What does this say to people who, first of all, live here, second of all have to pay the outrageous taxes to live here and the people that came through system legally? It looks like Democrats don’t care, like they make a mockery of all of it.

CLAY: No one saw this news who is an American citizen and thought, “This solidifies my decision to live in New York.” That’s my number one takeaway, and this is significant because Eric Adams has publicly said a lot of the right things, which is one of the first things he’s gonna do is get on a plane and go down to Florida, he said, and try to persuade people who had left New York to move to Florida, had taken their tax dollars from New York to Florida and was going to try to persuade them to come back.

This is the exact opposite of that. My second thought is: There’s no way this is constitutional. So the idea — and again, I understand people out there, some are gonna say, “Well, this is just a local election. This is not a state or federal election.” But to me, the idea that you can allow… First of all, how are you going to distinguish, right? So we already know that New York City’s elections are a total mess. They’ve acknowledged it.

The mayor race itself was a mess. They put out wrong numbers. They had to correct them. How are you going to easily create a system where you are going to allow people to vote in local locations, but then not the allow them to vote in state or federal elections? It seems to me that this would be rampant fraud opportunities because you’re gonna have, what, two different registers of who exactly is legal to vote and who’s not and what are the rules and ramifications here? I just find it hard to believe that this is going to be upheld constitutionally.

BUCK: But it shows you the mentally here, folks.

CLAY: Certainly.

BUCK: This is a new era for New York. They’ve already done something like this in San Francisco. They are making moves to do things like this in Los Angeles and other places. But here’s Eric Adams when this was being talked about. Here’s how he responded.

JAKE TAPPER: Doesn’t the bill just make a mockery of the idea of American citizenship, though? I mean, this is just for local elections. But does that mean, like, next New York City is gonna want noncitizens to vote in federal elections? I mean — and what do you say to all the people who went through the process, the difficult process of becoming an American citizen, studying for the test, swearing an oath of allegiance to the United States of America, who now see this legislation just saying, “Well, anyone who’s here, you can go ahead and vote”?

ADAMS: Well, I’d say to them, “Keep doing it,” you know, “membership has its privileges.” Being a member of what we call United States of America is a great privilege, and I would tell them keep doing it. Don’t let anything daunt you or take you away from that mission. This legislation is not going to do that.

BUCK: That’s a laughable non-answer, by the way. Some actual questions being asked, in fairness, on CNN there.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: A laughable nonanswer. So what are people to make of this? We haven’t even talked about the fact yet (laughing) that this mayor’s gonna have to be working in a world are the district attorney, Bragg, is apparently saying, “What do you mean you guys are gonna be upset at me because I’m not gonna put armed robbers in prison at all?” There’s a lot of indicators here that Adams is not going to be the savior of New York City.

I think increasingly, to be a Democrat today in good standing, Clay, you have to embrace a level of derangement. I mean, you have to actually think that it’s not that the policies are failing; it’s that we haven’t done them enough. Whether it’s covid, criminal reform, illegal immigration, if we just get more of the thing that’s working out really poorly for America, eventually there will be a good thing.

CLAY: And here is what I think is gonna be one of the lasting impacts of covid, right? Eventually covid is going to go away. Covid politics are going to go away. It may take two or three years, may take longer than that before the entire cycle of the covid political arena is exhausted. But what is not gonna go away, Buck — and I’m curious how much you think this plays in big cities like New York have relied upon the “network effect.”

Even if they make poor decisions, people have said, “Oh, well, I have to be in New York because I’ve gotta do this job or that job. I’ve got a Wall Street job and I’ve gotta be in New York. I’ve got a media job and I’ve gotta be in New York.” I think what has happened with covid is many people have realized that the technology exists for them to do their jobs anywhere certainly in the country and in many cases all over the world.

And so you are creating new dynamic levels of competition that the big cities I’m not sure have recognized enough. I’ll use you as an example, Buck, when you and I started doing radio. Let’s say it’s 20 years ago, you’re doing radio, being in a studio was a requirement. In order to have the right technology, in order to have the right sound you went into a physical studio, and you had to be present in a particular location.

You and I have got the biggest radio show in the country — thanks to taking over for Rush who had built the biggest radio show in the country — and much like Rush, even back then, he could travel around. But covid has allowed radio in a way that never would have existed before to be taking place anywhere in the world. And you can do this show from anywhere. I think that translates not just for our job but for many jobs out there, and I’m not sure politicians are aware of how much competition exists now for the New York Citys of the world.

BUCK: And it needed for a lot of jobs presence was required.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: You had to actually be there if you were gonna work. Investment the banking was the big thing in New York City in the nineties and then in the 2000s it became being a hedge fund guy. Yeah, some of that could be done remote. But generally, you had been there in the meeting, in the room with people, and now in the digital era that’s certainly changing. I also just want to note, Clay, back to the Eric Adams as savior or not of New York City. By the way, if you’re asking me to place a bet I think that he’s gonna be… If de Blasio was an F, I think Eric Adams is gonna be like a C-, is my grade. So not good, but a little better than de Blasio.

CLAY: A few degrees.

BUCK: Yeah. So it’s not great. He’s made his brother, I think, it’s is a deputy commissioner level senior role in the NYPD, gets hired. Listen to how Eric Adams explains this.

ADAMS: Let me be clear on this. My brother is qualified for the position. Number one, he will be in charge of my security, which is extremely important to me in a time when we see an increase in white supremacy and hate crimes, I have to take my security in a very serious way, and I need someone that I trust around me during these times for my security, and I trust my brother deeply.

BUCK: I mean, come on. Give me a break. The rise in white supremacy? I live in New York City. There’s no rise in white supremacy here. There’s no rise in hate crimes here. Whenever like HuffPo or one of those crap left-wing sites does some “hate crimes are rising” story, it’s always about how it’s a Republican’s fault, A, and then, B, when you look at the data, because it’s about they start including a comment made somewhere by someone that was never verified in the data on hate crime. But, It feels like he’s playing the left-wing applicants game here to excuse nepotism — which I gotta say, some people on the right, the nepotism thing we let it slide a little bit. We shouldn’t. But nepotism is an issue.

CLAY: Well, remember when the #StopAsianHate went viral and everybody was suddenly, like, “Man, Asian people are really victims of hate crimes a lot. We’ve gotta stop this!” When they thought they could blame it and connect it to white supremacy, that was the narrative, and then they started looking at the all the hate crimes.

BUCK: We all started looking at the videos.

CLAY: Yeah. Yeah. And it was all primarily Asian people were victims of hate crimes being perpetrated — if you want to call ’em hate crimes — by black people. And then the Democrats are like, “Oh, well, maybe this Asian hate crime thing is not such a big deal,” and, Buck, it totally disappeared. There was like a month where people were, like, “Hey, man, we really gotta stop this Asian hate,” and then some of the videos started going viral and you saw who the suspects in the Asian hate attacks were and it turned out they were black, and they couldn’t tie it to white supremacy — and all of a sudden, the media didn’t care about Asian hate anymore.

BUCK: There was an amazing moment in all the time when… I don’t remember if you remember this, Clay. This was years and years ago, maybe five or six years ago. I’m just guessing. I can’t even remember it’s been so far back now. When you get to my age, you start to forget things. There was a woman — a visually appealing lady — who had a camera guy follow her all over New York City, and the idea was this is the amount of catcalling —

CLAY: Catcalls, yeah.

BUCK: — and harassment and everything that you would suffer from if you were again, visually appealing, “good on camera,” as they would say in the business lady walking around in New York City. And initially it was, “Oh, my gosh. The patriarchy, the misogyny,” and then the left had a freak-out because basically every single male who said something in this video in New York City was a male from a “community of color.” So they were trying to take down the patriarchy, but they actually started advancing stereotypes or whatever. They know they started to have these problems.

CLAY: When identity politics collides, right? Again, I think the Asian one is so fascinating because the idea was, a white supremacy is so encompassing that even Asian people aren’t safe in this country, and they did that based on the shooting took place in Georgia. They were trying to tie it all together into white supremacy. And then this all of the viral Asian attacks ended up having black perpetrators, and the story just disappeared. Literally. When’s the last time you saw a story about Asian hate?

BUCK: I don’t know. It’s been many, many months. Many months indeed.

CLAY: Just vanished.

BUCK: So I think New York, folks, it’s in trouble, and it’s showing you that even in a place that is suffering because of bad Democrat ideas, very hard to get them to turn around the Marxist ship, very hard to get them to shift gears.