CLAY: I spend a lot of time watching Marvel movies ’cause I got young kids who love superheroes and everybody out there who has watched the Marvel movies knows that they have embraced a concept called the multiverse where there’s so many different versions of reality. There is a multiverse out there, maybe it’s a 10% chance, that the presidential election in 2024 is going to be Florida Governor Ron DeSantis against California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Gavin Newsom, Buck, as soon as Joe Biden left for Israel, showed up at the White House, literally rolled up his sleeves, took his jacket off, he may have kicked his feet up on the desk, he might have been posing for photos. It was so disrespectful of Joe Biden that I couldn’t help but respect it. He also, when I was just down in Florida over July 4th, Gavin Newsom, bought television commercials airing on Fox News saying that California was actually a place for freedom and that Floridians were actually unfree because of Ron DeSantis’ leadership, which is backwards to most people, Buck.

Gavin Newsom showing up to visit the White House the day after Joe Biden leaves for Israel is so next level diabolical I can’t help but respect it. pic.twitter.com/Pq2jmUpkSv

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 13, 2022

BUCK: California under covid became East Germany with more sunshine.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: California was a dystopia. Not only were the things they made people do there — same thing in New York — stupid, but they were stupid, arbitrary, and unfair, meaning that it didn’t help. Why they were picking some things, what should be locked down… Remember when they were… I try to tell people this. It’s like they’ve all treated it like a nightmare they’ve woken up from but this really happened.

Remember when we were at 25% restaurant capacity, 50% restaurant capacity, 75%. They did that in New York City after their own numbers showed that less than 1% of covid was traced to the spread in restaurants. Less than 1% of the spread and they’re like, well, let’s have 25%, let’s have 50%. The people who did all of this are not very smart. And the people who went along with all of it had no ability to stand up for themselves, and it’s pathetic. And California’s about to do this again?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And he’s talking about freedom? I’m going to California for Labor Day weekend — I’ve gotta go to a wedding out there — and I’m wondering, am I gonna have to double mask? Are people gonna give me weird looks?

CLAY: Buck, all Ron DeSantis has to say in response to this — and we’re gonna play you a couple audio clips here in a little bit. All Ron DeSantis has to say is, “Am I crazy, or did Gavin Newsom’s California arrest a dude who was on a paddleboard in the ocean for violating covid restrictions? Am I crazy or did they fill in skate parks with sand to keep kids from being able to skateboard there?” These are just two examples of how crazy they were.

I know, Buck, ’cause I did a radio show that all my crew was out in L.A., the sports talk show. The state of California put out rules about what sports you could play. You could play singles tennis as long as you were changing tennis balls. You couldn’t play doubles tennis because you were gonna be too close to someone else. You could play one-on-one voleyball, but he couldn’t play more than one on one. These are real guidelines and regulations that they put out.

BUCK: The fact that Newsom is picking a fight with Ron DeSantis just goes to show you that libs are living in an alternate universe.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Because here’s how this would make sense. If California didn’t have a massive net loss of people… It’s a big deal to move in America, right? I mean, I may be going through this soon. It’s a big deal to move your state entirely. I’ve done it before. People do it. I’m not saying that but if you have a family and kids, job. So, a lot of states people wish they didn’t have to get stuck in, they are stuck in. When you see the outflow from California, people are voting with their feet — which is even more profound in a lot of ways than voting at the ballot box, right?

It’s a much bigger decision they’re making for themselves. California is the place everyone flees from. Florida is a place everyone flees to. And Gavin Newsom wants to pick a fight? I mean, the ladies of The View, for example, know that Ron DeSantis is a threat because here’s the problem. Not only is Ron DeSantis a better governor than Gavin Newsom, Ron DeSantis is doing things at the state level that Joe Biden as president was always trashing. And we’ve seen that he was wrong too. This is what they’re saying about the DeSantis situation.

Faux GOPer Alyssa Farah Griffin accuses FL Gov. Ron DeSantis of scamming his supporters of donations. “It is so unfair. It is a gift. It is terrible,” she says.
“Who are these people giving money to these people?” Sunny Hostin exclaims, suggesting “people are losing their homes.” pic.twitter.com/9hHv0gfPsc

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) July 15, 2022

CLAY: They’re so dumb.

BUCK: He’s actually… I forget that guy. He’s actually pretty smart and he just had to throw that at the end, he’s like, “The people that are giving money, guys, are not the ones that are bankrupt right now.”

CLAY: Look, the amount of stupidity that comes out of New York and L.A. on a regular basis — and I know when you move out of New York City, Buck, you’re gonna be like, “Oh, my goodness. It’s so good to live in the real world.” But this is why I’m so thankful that I came out of talking about college football. ‘Cause I’m used to being in crowds of a hundred thousand people who are totally freaking normal, and it’s wild to me.

BUCK: In my first month as a Florida resident, I’m going to have a home-based arsenal that would make Schwarzenegger in the Commando movies cry, okay? It’s gonna be amazing, the freedom that I will feel.

CLAY: You’re are leaving New York, and you’re not gonna be like, “Oh, my God. I’m in Florida. I have no freedoms here.” I think it’s important to recognize. I talked this when I sort of it’s like going Through the Looking-Glass into Alice in Wonderland or if you’re a Stranger Things person, it’s like going into the upside down. This mirrored reality that isn’t reflective of the real world is so omnipresent in social media.

I talked about this when Senator Josh Hawley had seen discussion with the Cal Berkeley law professor and the woman was refusing to say that — she continued to argue that men could get pregnant. And I went on social media, and all the blue checks, Buck, are like, “She slayed him! Oh, look, Josh Hawley got destroyed,” and Gavin Newsom is buying directly into this absurd worldview. In fact, I believe we have audio of him. He was asked, “Hey, what would you say to Ron DeSantis if you were asked about him?”

BUCK: Wait. Can we play that?

CLAY: Play that when we come back?

BUCK: Let’s do that ’cause we want to continue this one, because I do think that the country, irrespective of the presidential election, politics in America is turning into a California versus Florida throwdown. So, we can come back to that in a moment.

CLAY: I think that’s right. We’ll play that audio for you if you haven’t already heard it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Now, we promised the Gavin Newsom audio here where he’s going after Ron DeSantis.

Exclusive: @GavinNewsom told me he’s never met @RonDeSantisFL.

I asked him what he would say to him if he did?

“Stop being a bully. Stop belittling people who look differently, act differently love different. Who the hell are you? Stop!”

Full interview on @TheIssueIsShow pic.twitter.com/drDFG4kZZP

— Elex Michaelson (@Elex_Michaelson) July 15, 2022

BUCK: Can I just say it will be fascinating to listen to Gavin Newsom explain to the residents of Florida including the very substantial Hispanic population of Florida —

CLAY: And Texas.

BUCK: — that is, with each passing month, even more supportive of Ron DeSantis.

CLAY: Including Mayra Flores, who we’re gonna talk to next hour.

BUCK: Just how racist Ron DeSantis is? Really? Look at the actual numbers there, Gavin. Good luck with that.

CLAY: That whole clip from him is indicative of a total disconnection with the vast majority of the country because DeSantis and Abbott and Governor Bill Lee and Kevin Stitt from Oklahoma and Brian Kemp from Georgia. I could run through a bunch of different red state governors, but that criticism rings so hollow. In fact, everybody out there driving around right now listening to us in red states is saying, “Boy, he’s not only attacking the governors, he’s attacking us.”

I hope that Ron DeSantis gets to go against somebody like Gavin Newsom, because I think Gavin Newsom has a fundamental misunderstanding of what the country wants, needs, desires, and reflects and represents. I think he would get destroyed ’cause he’s running like the country agrees with California with no idea of how much everybody hates California in many parts of the country right now.

So, I just… I don’t know exactly how all of this will end up shaking out. Again, I was talking about there’s a multiverse universe where we end up in DeSantis versus Newsom, but it’s clear based on the White House visit and the pressure, the running the ads in Florida, Newsom is trying to step in and become one of the candidates for Democrats in the very high level for 2024.

BUCK: Let’s be honest. If we’re just looking at this objectively, even if you’re a Democrat, Gavin Newsom — as much as I don’t like a lot of things about Gavin Newsom, Gavin Newsom — is a person who is at least physically and mentally capable of doing the job.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Joe Biden is not. So, you start there. Right? This isn’t a crazy idea. And every time Kamala now appears in the news, it’s just another version of people going, “Oh, my God. This woman is the vice president?”

CLAY: I do think Newsom is completely untested in the way that California has become a one-party state, and I think he would get… The Mike Tyson line: “Everybody’s got a plan ’til they get punched in the face.” I think Newsom is not used to getting punched in the face, really, and I think he would get wrecked on a national scale.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: The crime situation, if you look at state and local places like New York, for example, we’re gonna have our friend Lee Zeldin squaring off against the unelected governor Kathy Hochul. And you’re gonna see this playing out I think in a number of gubernatorial races. I’d be very interested — Clay, we should probably dig in a little bit to see — what it’s been like in Atlanta last few years in terms of crime.

CLAY: Massive increases.

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: Massive increases, I know. Yeah.

BUCK: Progressive prosecutor, I’m sure, or someone close to a progressive prosecutor running the show there. So the people of Georgia should really know that in the major cities and even, as we say, smaller cities, crime has gotten out of control.

CLAY: Crime is so out of control in Atlanta, Buck, and I know we got a lot of listeners down in Atlanta. The Buckhead area of Atlanta, which is one of the wealthier areas of the community, has been talking about seceding for some time from the city of Atlanta’s government because the people there feel like they’re totally unprotected, given the massive increase in crime that has taken place there.

BUCK: I would just note that Clay and I have been doing the show together for a year, we’ve been talking about the crime issue, we’ve been saying now for over a year, look at the numbers around the country: A 30% increase in homicides in 2021 over the previous year, the biggest increase in one year since they have been nationally tracking homicides, okay? So we had… It’s not like it was just a little bit of a blip on the radar. This was a massive move in the wrong direction, and it coincided with a perfect storm of the BLM movement, the defund-police movement, the progressive prosecutors, and the ending of mass incarceration.

All of those pieces together, people say, “Well, why’d this happen?” like we don’t have the answers. We do have the answers. Now you see that even Democrats, while they won’t say “Clay and Buck were right” — they should — but they’re making decisions that show that what we have been talking about on this show, which is rooted in the data, which is rooted in the reality, is true. We already had Chesa Boudin knocked out of the office, district attorney’s office in San Francisco.

And now the effort to get rid of DA George Gascon, the district attorney of Los Angeles, “has cleared its first hurdle as the registrar prepares a full check of signatures.” That’s the headline up on FoxNews.com right now. So it’s moving all along. Clay, if we get the one-two here, this would be a seismic shock to the progressive judicial and criminal justice philosophy. But here’s what happens when they asked Gavin Newsom — this is such a Newsom moment — what do you think about the job that Gascon’s doing?

I ask @GavinNewsom if he thinks @GeorgeGascon is doing a good job?

“I don’t know enough about the job he’s done…I’m deeply concerned about the criticism.”

“I’ll leave the more objective analysis of his job to locals.”

Full interview on @TheIssueIsShow pic.twitter.com/ZaZifvM5ld

— Elex Michaelson (@Elex_Michaelson) July 15, 2022

BUCK: Can you…? Look at how slippery he is, Clay. You are the governor of California. You are asked about the biggest city in your state, whether the DA is doing a good job. You are technically the chief executive branch official of your state. Clay, he has no feelings on the matter, apparently.

CLAY: Well, it’s so funny to me because exactly. Your number one job, probably, if you are the governor of California is to know what? How highly elected officials in the biggest cities in your state are doing their jobs. That’s your job. That’s like the owner of an NFL franchise being asked about how his coach is doing and saying, “Well, I really haven’t looked at it that closely.” No, no, no! That’s your job, to look at it closely, and he’s trying to dodge it there.

But ultimately, he just decides, “Screw it, I’m gonna cut his legs out from underneath him,” and this is… I said it, Buck. Think about what Gavin Newsom is doing here. He showed up at the White House — I’ve never seen this happen before, have you? — The day after the president left and walked around the White House in his shirt sleeves not even wearing a jacket, who goes to the White House as an elected governor of the biggest stately in the country when Joe Biden isn’t there? It feels like he showed up basically to run a one-man coup. It’s so disrespectful to pull off to even think of doing it.

BUCK: They got a photo of him wearing a robe and some fuzzy slippers that said POTUS on them in the residence?

CLAY: He might as well have had a toothbrush in his front lapel.

BUCK: “I like this place.”

CLAY: It’s clear that he’s trying to force Joe Biden out, and we know Joe Biden’s over in Saudi Arabia. I thought it was strange — I don’t know if you did, Buck — why isn’t Jill Biden on the trip with him?

BUCK: I think Jill Biden’s laying low for a few days, my friend. I think she doesn’t want to show up in Saudi Arabia and say (impression), “I love your falafels.”

CLAY: (laughs) But the reason why she was speaking at the Latinx conference is ’cause they made a calculated decision not to send her with Joe to the Middle East, which means who’s getting him dressed? Who’s putting him to bed at night? Who’s making the Metamucil? Like, who’s actually taking care of Joe Biden on the road when he’s in Israel and in Saudi Arabia?

BUCK: On your point about Gavin Newsom trying to really push —

CLAY: Elbow him out.

BUCK: — the issue a little bit with Joe Biden, I feel… I don’t like saying this, but he’s right. This is the other thing. Gavin Newsom is right. This is outrageous. This guy shouldn’t be the president for anyone at any time. So, in a sense, as gross and grasping as Newsom is here, he’s actually doing… This would be better for our purposes. It…

CLAY: That’s a good question for you.

BUCK: I was almost gonna say, “It’s better for the country,” but I can’t bring myself to say that. (laughing)

CLAY: I mean, who is a worse candidate than Joe Biden? You could make the argument that the only person worse than Joe Biden right now for the Democrats would be Kamala Harris. Joe Biden, all the poor chases he’s made, imagine if he actually had a competent vice president? Democrats would be kicked him to the curb and allowing that competent vice president to run as the incumbent in a heartbeat. But instead, Kamala has been so bad, she may be the only person who would be more incompetent than Joe.

BUCK: There’s a broader lesson, too, from the Kamala situation, which is that picking individuals for the vice presidency or for any job because of the optics of diversity is not something that has results that we are going to like when it’s a really important job, right? It should be the best person for the job regardless of the diversity optics of the situation. That should not be a consideration for the president, the secretary of defense, the Treasury secretary, you name it, any job.

It shouldn’t be for the guy or gal who’s gonna be running a company that’s down the street from you, but the point here is they pushed this because of on you it looked to have the first minority female vice president alongside Joe Biden, and no one really ever stopped to think, “Well, hold on. What if we actually need to have a vice president who’s ready to take over? Is Kamala ready for that?” Even Democrats know the answer is no. She is not.

CLAY: Well, that’s the problem in general with the entire cabinet. It’s not even just Kamala Harris. It’s every single person that Joe Biden picked. It is a cabinet of incompetence. And it’s a cabinet only based on cosmetic diversity. Diversity of opinion is key when you have any cabinet because you want rigorous debate about so many different challenging issues in the country. All Joe Biden cared about was, “Does this person check a box so that I can argue, ‘I’ve got the requisite Hispanic, I’ve got the requisite black, I’ve got the requisite gay, I’ve got the requisite…’?

Every little identity politics coalition that exists inside of the very fractious Democrat Party right now, Joe Biden made a calculated decision that he was gonna check the box. It’s all cosmetic diversity — and as a result, Buck, I don’t even know who you could point to in the Biden administration, the entire administration and say, “Hey, you know what? This person hasn’t done an awful job.” Think about it. “This person hasn’t been a disaster.” They all have.

BUCK: Can we bring it back to Newsom and Gascon for a second. You know that Democrats, they will back another Democrat until it is truly politically disastrous for them to say so. And that’s where you are with these district attorneys in places like Los Angeles. Of course, what’s the easy thing for Gavin Newsom speaking…? Gascon is Latino, and he’s very much a man of the left, and Gavin Newsom, this is the DA in the biggest city in his state.

You’d think you back him up. He’s a member of his party. Back him up all the way when he says, “I don’t know. I don’t have the insight into whether he’s doing a good job.” It’s so disingenuous. What is Gavin Newsom really saying here? I don’t have access to the internet, and I can’t read a newspaper? Never mind all the staff briefings and everything else that he’s getting. He shows… But this is kind of like when he showed up. Remember when the railyards…?

He actually mentioned in that sound bite the rail yards were just scenes of constant systematic theft, a lot of Amazon packages and other things, and it looked like a massive trash site from a Third World hellhole. And Gavin Newsom shows up, he’s like, “Wow. I cannot believe this kind of thing is happening in the great state of California.” It’s like, “What do you mean! There is an app in San Francisco that helps people avoid stepping in human poop in the most commonly walked through areas of that city. You don’t know what’s going on?” This is what they’re reduced to.

CLAY: And also speaking of the upside down, the mirror crazy world that we’re living in: The reason why Gavin Newsom was ostensibly in Washington, D.C., was to accept an award for how good California has managed education — when anyone who has a functional brain and has paid attention at all to the covid shutdown situation knows that of every state out there, California did the least for the most disadvantaged kids of almost any state in the entire country in terms of not allowing them to get a great education because of covid without providing them any protection whatsoever.

BUCK: I would just tell anybody who’s wondering, if you had been to, let’s say, Santa Monica or Venice Beach in the late nineties or the early 2000s, you would think that this is one of the most beautiful, naturally gifted places, a perfect climate, a gorgeous coastline, amazing beach. We’ve said this. California is like paradise as a place.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Amazing climate, amazing food, all this stuff, and it was very Republican. People say, “Well, why are all the great rich states blue?” No. Because libs are an invasive species. They come in; they take over from the top.

CLAY: Reagan and Nixon came out of Southern California.

BUCK: Yeah. Reagan country was California, and what you see is that they have — just go walk around Venice Beach or Santa Monica, spend some time there — homeless encampments everywhere, people rolling around in the dirt literally ’cause they’ve had too much fentanyl, maybe they’re even ODing. There’s crime happening all the time, they don’t want to talk about it. It’s a mess. And for what? Because a bunch of libs feel good about themselves telling the police, “Hey, hey! Let’s not enforce the laws against shoplifting.”

CLAY: Here’s an easy way to think about it. This is a fun parlor debate, fun dinner table conversation. If the United States had been settled from west to east, no one would live in the Northeast. Everyone would have been like —

BUCK: Whoa, whoa hey, hey, hey!

CLAY: I’m telling you —

BUCK: Settle down there, Tennessee man.

CLAY: The Northeast is not great. They would have stayed on the West Coast.

BUCK: You have not spent time in the Hudson Valley or in Vermont in the late spring.

CLAY: I have. I have. I’ve been all these places. They would have never been anywhere near as popular if we’d started out west and moved east. Northeast would have been the least settled part of the United States.

BUCK: Our large audiences in the Northeast, it’s @ClayTravis on Twitter, by the way. @ClayTravis.

CLAY: Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, all jewels of this country destroyed by Democrat policies.

BUCK: Well, that’s totally true. Yeah, that’s totally true.

CLAY: Disgraceful what they’ve done.