BUCK: Democrats — sure, they’ve been telling this — pushing this narrative of, you know, the big Biden summer and the comeback and all this stuff. If you really look… You have to look at people that care about the economy as a function of their money and whether things are getting better or getting worse, when they’re making money for clients, whether their business will function well in the months ahead or whether we will be in for some rough times. The storyline is not good right now, folks, economically.

We are in what would be a recession by all accepted — previously accepted — definitions, but we know they changed the definition of recession when the actual data came out. We feel like we’re on the edge right now of what will be a recession that is unavoidable in its impact, right? We’re gonna feel like things are getting more expensive, jobs will be lost, all of that. This could very well happen. And so, they want everyone talking about everything else. And one thing I will say for Democrats is, you almost have to admire, Clay, the shamelessness.

They’ve done a horrible job. They were awful on covid. They are terrible on crime. The border is — and this is without exaggeration — the worst it has ever been in the history of this country. The U.S.-Mexico border when it comes to lawlessness and fentanyl and illegal immigration and everything. And inflation is terrible, the economy’s on the brink of not just like a little recession but maybe a really bad one. And they’re going on offense. Here is Joe Biden, who’s just straight up saying, MAGA Republicans, I guess which means that Republican who voted for Trump, no respect for them.

POLITICS: President Biden: “I don’t respect these MAGA Republicans.” pic.twitter.com/sWCdZReY6j

— Forbes (@Forbes) August 26, 2022

BUCK: Doesn’t respect the MAGA Republicans. Clay, he referred to MAGA Republicans as semifascists, which we discussed earlier. Democrats going on offense. It’s the talking points, it’s the attacks. Republicans have gotta start swinging back a bit, have gotta start making some noise, have gotta start running some aggressive ads. I think there’s a little bit of a complacency that we’ve been warning everybody about that’s crept into the GOP. Old man Biden’s taking swings. He doesn’t know who he’s swinging at, and he’s unsteady and he’s gonna fall down doing it, but he’s taking swings.

CLAY: He just had a two-week vacation, and he decided to have a rally. You know where that rally was? Rockville, Maryland. They basically flew him… I don’t know if he was in a helicopter. I would presume they flew him out in a helicopter there. Maryland, obviously, is one of the strong points of the Democrat coalition right now, even though Larry Hogan is the Republican governor he was talking about.

But they barely even took him outside of the Beltway. In fact, I think Rockville still inside the Beltway. They didn’t put people out there — 20 minutes outside of where the White House is, basically. And the swings that he’s taking are not just in trying to, again, equate everything to Donald Trump, which, to your point earlier, political calculation-wise, yes, it has rallied Trump supporters, the raid at Mar-a-Lago has.

But what has been shown pretty consistently, Buck, is, Trump supporters show up to support Donald Trump. They don’t necessarily show up in 2018. They don’t necessarily show up in the special elections in Georgia. And it remains to be seen whether they’ll show up in aggressive numbers in 2022. And the reason why I bring that up is, Biden is — you’re a hundred percent right — on offense. The Penn Wharton review of his potential student debt overrule — I don’t want say “cancellation” because, I mean, basically taking it on taxpayers —

BUCK: We could say bribe. I like bribe.

CLAY: Bribe is good. Bribe’s a good word. It may cost a trillion dollars, a trillion dollars. And he did it without passing it legislatively. Because what they’re trying to do now, Buck, speaking of being on offensive is, they’ve come out and said, well, what about the PPP loans? Well, first of all, that passed the legislature, whether you agreed with it or not. Secondly, the reason why PPP loans existed was because the federal government and many state governments were mandating that you couldn’t run your business, and they wanted to try to keep everybody on payroll as opposed to the unemployment rate skyrocketing even higher than it did.

BUCK: Is anyone really, in public life…? Pundits, news people, are they really so stupid that they don’t know the difference between the situation of PPP and the student debt, you know, bribe issue? This would be like saying if the government tells you you’re not allowed to leave your home for food, why does the government have to bring food to you? Well, because they’re not letting you go get food, right?

They’re not letting you go earn a living; so, that’s why people… Now, that was a horrifically stupid decision, but it is understandable why the government didn’t just let people all go under, go bankrupt, right? The loan issue here, it’s just amazing. I don’t know. I honestly feel like some of the dumbest people you could find in America have some of the voices that the libs listen to the most. It’s astonishing.

CLAY: And if you’re out there saying a trillion, well, I thought initially it was 300 billion, and then I thought it was 500 billion. And we’re talking about the Penn Wharton — this is University of Pennsylvania study. Karine Jean-Pierre was pressed on this. And this is pretty amazing because this is basically how my wife answers questions every time she goes out and buys a lot of stuff. How much did you spend? Well, listen to this and then I’ll build on it. Listen.

Q: “If you don’t know how much [Biden’s student loan bailout is] going to cost, how can you guarantee it’s going to be paid for?”

Jean-Pierre: “We have done the work to make sure this is done in a fiscal, responsible way” pic.twitter.com/uQmcCVuvu2

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 25, 2022

CLAY: If you don’t know how much it cost, how do you know it’s paid for? That was the question that I think Jacqui Heinrich was pressing KGP on there. And you may not have heard that opening question, but let me just reiterate again. She asked a very simple question. If you don’t know how much it costs, how do you know that it’s paid for? It reminds me of a lot of conversations with my wife comes back shopping with all these bags and everything, “How much did this cost?”

“I saved you a lot of money. It was on sale.” “What was the total cost?” “Don’t worry. It’s all paid for.” This is what happens when someone is spending a lot of money and they don’t want to tell you how much they spent. Buck, you’re getting married. There’s a lot of men out there who have had the conversation, “How much did this cost?” “Well, it’s all paid for.” It’s just one big circle, and it doesn’t end well.

BUCK: It’s remarkable that there’s no shame at all from this White House for the statements that they make about all this stuff. I mean, here is Biden, for example, despite all of the analyses, all of the assessments out at this rally in Maryland? Yeah, I guess they gotta keep him close to home in case it’s nap time.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: Here he is saying that the Inflation Act will reduce the deficit by 300 billion dollars. Play 19.

BIDEN: Guess what? You hear Republicans always talk about the deficit, right, about big spending Democrats? Well, guess what. When the last guy was president, he increased the debt by $2 trillion in tax cuts. Not a penny of it paid for, okay? Well, guess what we did? We reduced the deficit. The Inflation Reduction Act lowers the deficit by 300 billion over the next 10 years. And that’s on top of the $350 billion I reduced the deficit last year and the $1.5 trillion reducing it this year.

BUCK: Remember when he kind of just started screaming? You can tell it’s almost gonna come out, it’s almost babble.

CLAY: It’s such a lie. It’s such a lie.

BUCK: The comparison of where the debt is — or, rather, what the deficit is — to what it was under covid is so transparently dishonest, right? Shutting down the country and then having emergency spending almost like we’re in a war, essentially, they created this war against the virus paradigm. Doing better than that is not something to be… It’s like what he said about the jobs, though.

“To our credit, not a joke, not a joke, you know, we created 70 million jobs!” All their numbers are bullcrap, folks. And if it was true, the part of this that drives even crazier is everything in that bill falls into one of two categories, essentially. I mean, they’ll say, oh, better negotiated prices, you know, bringing your prescription drugs down. Not gonna happen, not gonna work. But it’s all… Giving money to things that Democrats like, and taxing you more.

And a lot of the tax burden is actually gonna fall on small business owners. That analysis has already been done. The notion this is all gonna be paid for by the rich fat cats. No. You and I have talked about this with everybody so many times. That’s not how it goes. But what else are they gonna say, “We suck at this, and all our ideas and decisions are terrible”? No. Instead, like I said, they’re going on offense. I just wish Republicans would get there.

I am not seeing fire in the belly, man. I am not seeing people come forward and say, this administration is a disaster. Joe Biden is a nincompoop 30 years ago. Now he’s a dementia addled nincompoop. He’s in charge of the country? This guy is a joke. He’s a clown. Look at the people around him. It’s like the social justice warrior Department of Wellesley College is running the White House. What are we even talking about here, folks? The fact that there are Democrats in close races in these purple states, it’s insane. Independents, what are you seeing here? What could you possibly be in favor of?

CLAY: I think a big part of it is Republicans basically decided they had this race won and started kneeling on the football, to use a sports analogy.

BUCK: Running out the clock. Totally.

CLAY: Did not keep making cases. I think there was a big surprise that Biden suddenly got his, whatever it was, the Inflation Reduction Act. That’s gonna spend more money, that that got shoved through at the last possible moment. And I think Mitch McConnell candidly has mismanaged much of the Senate strategy. And the Senate strategy has been Biden’s a disaster. Just let him light himself on fire and kind of stay back and watch the Democrat plans burn. Problem is, they’re throwing punches.

And a lot of Republicans are standing there getting hit, and those punches are landing, and there’s not a lot of punches coming back the other way despite the fact you’re not going up against a heavyweight champ. In fact, you’re taking punches from one of the weakest fighters of all time. Based on his record Joe Biden has an unmitigated disaster, but somehow Republicans have allowed him to start to define the playing field.

And I mean, he just spent a trillion dollars, potentially, with the stroke of a pen. He doesn’t have the constitutional authority to do it. And that adds on to, to your point, Buck, the border, the massive increase in murders, the fact that we’re dealing with the highest inflation in 40 years, and that he just keeps throwing more fuel on the inflation fire. And yet Republicans can’t seem to get out of their own way.