BUCK: The Florida Parental Rights in Education Bill — and it’s important that we say that because they got so ahead of it, the activists got so ahead of it with the “don’t say gay” bill that I hear even with conservatives… Once or twice, I’ve slipped too. Conservatives will call it that, which is you’re already conceding — not even conceding far too much. It’s a lie.

It doesn’t actually say in the bill anything about that. But, Clay, the left is really upset right now. The Democrat Party is really upset about the usage of the term by some in the right — and a lot of people are throwing this out there, or even asking the question about “grooming” or ideological indoctrination of children. Here is last night on MSNBC, Chris Hayes, who I suppose… Is Rachel Maddow still even doing her show? She’s not doing her show, right?

CLAY: They paid her $30 million, Buck, and she basically just doesn’t have to do the show anymore, so they kept her from leaving. Good work if you can get it, and she’s evidently working on larger projects now, but she really doesn’t have to host her show that often.

BUCK: I have too much fun here; so even if they paid me $30 million, I might take off some Fridays, Clay, but I’ll be here hanging out with you every day.

CLAY: It’s gratifying. I honestly… I’ve got enough money now for the first time in my life, and I wake up excited to do this show every day.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: So it’s a good place to be when you choose to go to work. But she’s choosing not to go work.

BUCK: So anyway. We had a nice little happy moment there. High five. Let’s get back into this, though, for a second where we have the left is really… I mean, it’s all over the social media. “How dare they!” First of all, they call us white nationalists, Nazis, white supremacists — all this stuff that they throw at the right all the time.

“Traitor,” you know, if you don’t want to go to war with Russia. The stuff they’re saying is crazy every day, and I’m talking about the apparatus of the Democrat Party media. But here’s Chris Hayes really showing exactly how upset they get over the usage of this term “groomer” and the context of the debate over the Florida law.

BUCK: Okay. So, first of all, some of what he says is just a lie which is not a surprise. The notion that this is about all Democrats is clearly untrue. No one said it’s about all Democrats. Clay, as we’ve said here, a majority of Democrats in the state of Florida support the bill. So they’re trying to make this about all Democrats is clearly just political mobilization and a misrepresentation of the discussion.

But it is I think worth asking, “Why does the left bring things into this conversation that the right hasn’t even done?” I mean, they say it’s the “don’t say gay” bill. The word “gay” doesn’t even appear in this. It’s about ideological indoctrination of children, which a majority of the American people are in line with them on it. So why is this so upsetting to the Democrat Party? What do you think’s really going on?

CLAY: They’re picking bad battles. Let’s start here, Buck. Politics is about finding things that not only you agree with, but that you can win on. And I think what’s happened is, the Democrat Party has become so wildly polluted by what happens on social media that they think if something is popular on social media, it also translates in the larger world.

And this is a great example, and that’s why I like you pointing out: Democrats in the state of Florida actually agree with this bill when they understand what it means. The overwhelming number of parents out there of kindergarteners, first graders, second graders, and third graders — and I’m one of them — doesn’t believe that their kids should be instructed in sex-related issues.

Let me tell you this, Buck. In my neighborhood, I was just having a conversation this morning with one of the moms in my neighborhood. She said, “Hey, have you seen the books that are on…?” All the kids get tablets now in our public elementary school in the neighborhood. She said, “Have you seen the books that are available for kindergarteners to look at? You know, they can click through and look at whatever books.”

Buck, there’s something called The GayBCs in there. It’s how to learn your ABCs but from a gay perspective. For kindergarteners? And my kids go to school in Tennessee. And so I’m looking at that and I’m thinking, “How in the world did kindergarteners go from, ‘Hey, let’s learn the ABC’s,” to there are books embedded on your tablet called The GayBCs teaching kids about gay people while they’re learning their ABCs? How is that remotely appropriate? Whatever you think.

BUCK: I have a friend in my own —

CLAY: Parents want to have those conversations with their kids they can, but they don’t want any kindergarten teacher teaching — no matter who they are — The GayBCs to my kids. Are you kidding?

BUCK: I have a friend in the neighborhood who has a small child, right in the neighborhood where I live, who sent me a photo just yesterday of, “Hey, did you see this down the street? They’re doing a drag queen story hour,” I think it’s at a local public library branch, for kindergarteners.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: What is the idea here? I’m just wondering. Drag queen story hour for kindergarteners, this is a thing that I talked about before and they push this. The activists push this. Why? Why is it that they want this…? It’s so important to them, and I think that’s what you’re seeing, and this is one of the reasons I believe there’s a little bit of panic.

You’re right, Clay. It’s a combination of the Democrat media which thinks that everything is based on the perception on social media, right? Democrat media — and I mean news media — the activist class, and then realizing that there is actually a separation with the Democrat voter on this issue. It’s not just that Republicans are against them.

I think they’ve seen and they’ve overreached. They’ve said the “don’t say gay” bill, which is a lie, and now people find out about it. What the Disney chief of content, president of content said (we played the audio last week) about she has a… What was it, a pansexual child? I remember I said — I just pointed out on Twitter just to give everyone a sense — basically nobody even knows what pansexual means.

CLAY: I had no idea.

BUCK: And it’s amazing all of the blue checks, “Maybe you shouldn’t be so ignorant.”

CLAY: I had no idea.

BUCK: Maybe you guys shouldn’t be making up sexualities every five minutes and telling us that we’re idiots if we don’t know what they are, right?

CLAY: I had no earthly idea. She said she had a transsexual and —

BUCK: A pansexual child.

CLAY: — a pansexual sexual child, and I had no idea what “pansexual” meant. I’m not making it up. No earthly idea.

BUCK: I still… I looked up the definition. I know what pan means, what the prefix pan- means, “everything.” So I’m sitting here like, “How is it different from a bisexual, which is a term that we’ve all known a long time.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Pansexual is somebody who’s open to somebody even if they’re gender…” So it’s trying to create this, like, extra category of even for people who are gender fluid. So if you’re a male you are a sexually attracted… I know the audience is like, “Come on.”

CLAY: This is real.

BUCK: This is what the head of Disney says and they push this stuff and we’re sitting here. We’re adults, Clay, pretty well-read dudes who lead interesting lives. We’re like, “Wait, what is this?” Clearly there is a part of the left activist class that wants to teach 5-year-olds about this. Did you even know when you were in the first grade, were you talking… ‘Cause I’ve seen these videos. Were you talking to your teachers about what dates they’re going on or who their life partner is? No.

CLAY: I don’t remember.

BUCK: Mr. So-and-So and you’re learning your ABCs?

CLAY: Yeah, and maybe in the context of if they have kids of their own, sometimes the kids might have come into the classroom when you’re in kindergarten or first grade but even that’s not allowed now, right? Have you tried to get into a school recently? (chuckles) I’ve got two kids in a public school. I mean, I have to push a button outside ’cause of security concerns; you have to flash your ID and then you have to go in and go through the process of proving who you are inside of the office and everything else.

That security may well be necessary. But it’s not like there’s just drop-in people. You know, when I was a kid, elementary school, people would come into the classroom all the time. It was easy for moms and dads to walk into schools. And this idea that the kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade kids need to be learning about sex-related issues in school…

If you’re a parent and you want to talk to your kids about these issues, first of all, most parents I know are not looking forward to having those conversations. I’ve got a teenage boy now. It’s not like I’m sitting around, like, “Boy, I’m really excited to talk to him about birds and the bees.”

It’s something that I would prefer not to have a conversation on and probably everybody out there who’s listening to me right now is kind of nodding your head. You don’t want to talk to your son or daughter about sex-related issues any earlier than necessary.

BUCK: And this is clearly about indoctrination not education, because what upsets them, what upsets the left-wing activists that are really… They are really pushing on this. I think there’s a little bit of panic from the left-wing activist ranks because they’re actually not… They thought they had Ron DeSantis. Remember we got —

CLAY: Right, they thought they had him dead to rights.

BUCK: They had Ron DeSantis in a corner, they had a huge win here for the left against the state of Florida, all these corporations, and now the tide has turned in the other direction, and people are saying, “Wait a second. What’s the big problem with this bill, exactly?” And for those listening in not just, you know, all across the country, for those listening in red states, you may be thinking, “Oh, well, this stuff isn’t…”

Oh, no. My friends who focus on education from the right, they’ll tell you this is all over the place. I don’t know if this is being taught in, you know, Nashville area public schools, Clay. I would assume it is. Here is, at a parent-teacher conference in Kansas — this has just gone all flying all over the internet the last 24 hours — a Kansas teacher saying, “We have to teach kindergarteners about being trans and nonbinary.”

Kansas teacher says we have to teach kindergartners about LGBTQ because there are already kindergartners who are trans, non-binary, etc. Trans 5 year olds. pic.twitter.com/SYbbPx9SNM

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) April 5, 2022

BUCK: Can I just say, do we really believe that kindergarteners are trans or are kindergarteners are being told by ideologically motivated leftists in the public school system, “You know, maybe you’re trans,” ’cause they’re kindergarteners.

CLAY: o any of you who have kindergarteners not hear this and think that this is absolutely crazy? I mean, kindergarteners dress up, one of my kids dressed up as a Jedi for basically his entire 5-year-old life. Then he dressed up as a Ghostbuster. Kids who are 4 and 5 years old are constantly trying on new identities. They might think that they’re a dinosaur one day. They certainly think a lot of times they have imaginary friends. This idea that we are treating… You know, Buck when I was a kid —

BUCK: I believed in Santa Claus for a while. Did you believe in Santa Claus? I believed in Santa Claus. Our kids are very subject to persuasion.

CLAY: I still believe in Santa Claus, Buck.

BUCK: Sorry.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I love him. Santa Claus is great. He’s gonna bring you presents at the end of the year.

CLAY: Santa comes to my house every year. You don’t have kids; you don’t understand that. But large context here, Buck, 5-year-olds believe all sorts of things, right? And the idea that we treat those things as being 100% serious is crazy. I think any parent out there listening to us right now, if you took every single thing that your 4- or 5-year-old told you as a serious thing, you would be convinced that your kid was going to grow up and be a magician or — like I said — a dinosaur. This is madness, Buck. It is absolute and utter madness.