BUCK: The main story on Fox News right now is about the DOJ saying that they have finished assessing the Trump docs seized from Mar-a-Lago and there are next steps in the legal process. Clay, I want us — before we dive into where the Democrats are, the latest Biden polls — I think we get to that in just a second — but a concern that we talked about last week I think is even growing for me now. I want to know what you think.

The longer we’re talking about the Mar-a-Lago raid at this point, the less we’re talking about the obvious failures of Democrat policy that the voters, independent voters, et cetera, need to know about. At this stage they’re either gonna not prosecute Trump, which means all of this is for what, exactly?

A political hit? A distraction tactic? Which I think it certainly is. An overreach? Yes. But if they don’t prosecute him, we aren’t gonna see anything come of this other than the news stories we’ve already had. And if they do, we’re in an entirely different political environment before the midterms, at least. It will just upend everything.

I think it is unlikely that they will do so. So, do you think we’re effectively in a place now where — I know they’re doing a damage assessment of the classified documents. Here’s the damage assessment, Clay. There was no damage, okay? We could all move on with our lives unless they’re gonna prosecute Trump for this. What do you think?

CLAY: I think that Trump is a huge, colossal distraction for midterm turnout. And let me explain what I mean by that. There’s no doubt that many people are ardent Donald Trump supporters. But, by and large, the most ardent Donald Trump supporter does not come out when Trump himself is not on the ballot.

2018 was the Democrats picked up 40-some-odd congressional seats. I know the Senate was not bad — Republicans actually picked up. But you look at what was going on in the Georgia race where we lost two Senate seats that has cost us trillions and trillions of dollars.

Frankly, if we just win one of those two Georgia Senate seats then there’s no way that Joe Biden is able to spend, I think a fraction of what he has managed to spend. And, Buck, this is my biggest issue with Republicans as we come closer to 2024. The analogy I would use is from the world of sports.

Republicans decided all we have to do is kneel on the football. Biden at the border, Biden with crime, Biden with inflation, Biden with overall — Afghanistan, Ukraine, everything Biden has touched has turned to crap. The Bidas Touch, as we call it. But you still have to stand for something.

And my concern is, what are Republicans standing for as we roll into the midterm? I don’t really think they’ve made a case. And if you’re not making a case, then you’re opening yourself up to attack from the other side. And I think it’s fair to say the Democrats have gone on attack. Now, it’s not necessarily an effective attack.

Semi-fascist is not the way that you would necessarily want to bring the country together. But if you break down where we are, Buck, I think the Dobbs decision has brought a lot of fervored enthusiasm out of particularly suburban women in the United States. I don’t think that Republicans have responded very well there.

And I think the Democrat base is super excited about the idea that they’re finally gonna get Donald Trump, and it’s distracting them. And let me just say this. I think the collapse in gas prices relatively speaking, from $5 down to whatever it is, 3.75 or so, I think for most people that tracks the overall Biden approval rate. And I think he’s gotten a bump. 3.75 is still way too high, but it’s not $5, and it makes people feel better.

BUCK: Been saying this from the beginning of the year because Republicans got used to there being so much damage politically to — there was self-inflicted right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I mean, the polls were horrible. Everything was coming apart.

CLAY: You said it. You said we hit bottom. I can’t imagine it getting worse. In about mid-June Biden hit bottom. He couldn’t go any further. He hit the rock soil of his support, 35% or so.

BUCK: And the problem that we face now is, when people feel like things are improving, they often forget about how bad they were beforehand, right? So, we saw a similar phenomenon when the Obama administration got started. It was always — they picked the worst month of the 2008 Great Recession and would compare everything they were doing to that.

Look where we are now, look where we are now. People would point out; this is the slowest recovery from a recession — under Obama it was the slowest recovery since World War II. Just a function of numbers. But they would say, look at the jobs then, look at the jobs now.

The Biden administration is benefiting from the fact that they bottomed early enough that they’re now transitioning into a phase where they can say, just give us more time. “See? We’ll get it right. We’re fixing it.”

Now, I think that’s total crap. I think the border and crime and the economy and the major issues that people care about are, you know, the very, very top issues are areas where Democrats really have no good answers. But this is also why I think Joe Biden’s gonna run again, everybody, because, as long as things are better than they were when Biden came in to office, the pitch will be, see?

We’re moving in the right direction, right? Remember — I think it was Obama’s — Obama’s phrase was, the car was in the ditch, and we took the car out of the ditch, and this was the whole thing in the 2012 election against Mitt Romney.

So, Republicans — your analogy about kneeling on the football is exactly right, and I was worried about this. I was worried about the complacency. And we see it all over the place. Republicans need to go on offense. Joe Biden, the uniter, is calling Trump voters semi-fascists, everybody.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: He’s just a step away from saying if you voted for Trump, you’re a Nazi. This is Mr. Grandpa the uniter. And Republicans are where? Who’s making the case?

CLAY: I think you’re a hundred percent right. And look. The case is relatively straightforward. The case is everything Biden has touched has turned to crap. At a minimum, Buck, at a minimum the Republican case is, we need to take back the House and the Senate so Biden can’t make things worse.

This was the pitch that should have worked if things hadn’t gone crazy in Georgia. Buck, I was just down in Atlanta this past weekend speaking to a lot of fired up people in the state of Georgia. I still believe if you had to put your finger on one state that is the most important for Republicans to win back, I think it’s Georgia.

Traditionally red state, Stacey Abrams against Brian Kemp, Herschel Walker against the Reverend Raphael Warnock. Gotta win both those seats, gotta win the governorship and keep it, and gotta take back the Senate. And, Buck, that is a powerful message. Biden has done an awful job.

They have rammed through whatever they can in a 50-50 Senate with a narrow margin in the House. They’ve been far left wing. They spent trillions of your dollars. This most recent — and I still think we need to talk about the trillion dollars, potentially, in costs over the student loan move.

Biden has governed recklessly, and he has governed poorly. And at a minimum there needs to be a check on his power, and then we can have a big debate about Biden or Trump or whoever it is in 2024. But this election is about keeping left-wing Democrats from running roughshod over American values.

And we’ve gotta win, and we’ve gotta win big. And I think we’ve really gotta do a better case of making the argument for why this has to happen. And it can’t be defending Trump at Mar-a-Lago. It just can’t be the focal point of the Republican midterm strategy.

BUCK: Yeah. If we circle the wagons from now until Election Day on the Mar-a-Lago issue, we’re gonna lose the Senate for sure, and we’re gonna maybe just squeak out a House victory. We have to be circling the wagons on, “Hey, guys, they were wrong about everything,” which we’ll get into in a second —

CLAY: How about covid?

BUCK: That’s right. That’s what I’m saying.

CLAY: I’m so angry about it that it’s kind of disappeared as a story all of a sudden.

BUCK: Yeah. Completely has evaporated from the news cycle even though, you know, and we’ll break this down. You think of a place like Washington, D.C. The mayor of D.C. decided that students would need vaccines to go to school this fall. I mean, that’s what Washington, D.C., is doing. They have now backtracked on that because, Clay, under the current rules 50% of black 12- to 15-year-olds in the public school system in D.C., half of them —

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: — would have had no educational opportunity. Not even remote learning because there is no remote learning setup now. It’s get the shot or you can’t go to school. Half the 12- to 15-year-old black population of D.C. school age students can’t even go to school under their rules because they won’t get a shot they don’t need that’s already —

CLAY: That doesn’t work.

BUCK: That doesn’t work, and it’s already on shot number — what is it for the kids? At least number three at this point, right? I mean, it has to be.

CLAY: The shots they’re demanding people get have zero impact now, Buck. Zero.

BUCK: And the fact — we’ll get into this in a second — they’re not even finishing human trials of the boosters now. They’re just saying, yeah, we think — looks good to us. No big deal.

CLAY: We’ll have human trials but they’ll just be on all of you —

BUCK: We are the human trials.

CLAY: — it will be after you get the shot. Yes.

BUCK: That is right. The experiment is in real time with all of us. I don’t know what it is. I mean, to the point, Clay — ’cause you’re right. I’ve seen the polls too. The issue for me always with post-Dobbs is that this is the first time there’s gonna be any sense of public referendum on the issue; so, I do believe the Democrats are deeply invested in, oh, you know, because of Dobbs.

But, yeah, in some places clearly there are some particularly suburban moms who are — I’m not sure suburban moms; suburban women — who are speaking out on the issue and perhaps that was in New York State, that congressional seat you talked about was an issue.

CLAY: Evidently, was the entire race.

BUCK: Yeah, he ran, you know, big on that issue. That was a tight congressional seat, though. Now we’re looking at people forgetting, I think, about what was done. Their kids have had — when I say they, I mean millions of parents across the country and in swing states, have had their parents irreparably harmed by covid policies that Democrats unilaterally imposed and continue to impose.

Millions of kids are in districts and in school zones where they now have effectively decided that parents can’t really know about transitioning kids, that they change their name. I mean, this is happening all over the country different places. Transitioning 12-year-olds?

I think parents need to know more about this. The issues that Glenn Youngkin focused in, in Virginia just a year ago will still have salience. But you know what Clay? They want us talking about Mar-a-Lago.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I really believe now, ’cause the other issue that motivates Democrat voters and I think is a problem for independents is that whole Trump circus. You know, they don’t want to deal with it right now. He’s not on the ballot, which is true. So, why are we all getting involved in this?

Tell people who can’t pay their mortgage Democrats are making this harder for you, not “Trump didn’t actually, you know, he did declassify, he didn’t break the Espionage Act.” I think the people that can’t pay their bills, that’s not gonna cut it.

CLAY: I think you’re right. And I think it squares — we need to talk — the timing is a little bit complicated because Biden hit his low right as gas prices peaked, which also simultaneously was as the Dobbs decision came out.

So, I wonder somewhat whether Democrat approval ratings increasing is pegged a lot to gas prices coming down, because, again, 3.75 stinks. But if you were paying 5, it feels better and inflation is so awful, I think a lot of people have gotten used to it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We agree that this Trump story is going to fade, probably, unless there’s an indictment that’s brought, which would be a whole different level of crazy. And I just don’t think Merrick Garland is going to do that, at minimum, before the midterms.

One thing I was thinking about a lot over the weekend, Buck, the Department of Justice, as you mentioned, says they’ve already reviewed all the documents, found some that were attorney-client privilege. This effectively appears to be over, to me. National Archives got whatever documents they need.

They’re filed correctly now. There’s nothing else hanging out there. Why did Trump keep these documents? Think it’s interesting conversation. What was the reason? ‘Cause this was a slow-moving, long-lasting demand and back and forth with the National Archives. I don’t think there’s any doubt, Buck, that he believed he was entitled to be able to keep them, and I think he got people told him that.

But above and beyond that the only real rationale I can come up with is he believes that he has documents which go to Russia collusion, Ukraine, something of that nature, and we wanted to have proof of it because he didn’t trust that the government would maintain these documents if he didn’t control them.

BUCK: I’ve been told that —

CLAY: Does that make any sense to you at all?

BUCK: I’ve been told that by people who worked in the Trump White House, that that is what this was about, that they believe that he wanted to keep his own record of this, which, for somebody who may run again, you can understand why that would be very useful, right?

You don’t want to be relying on the National Archives to give you evidence of a massive deep state federal government plot to undermine and destroy your presidency. That is the best possible explanation for it. I would also note that the 15 boxes — I mean, you gotta assume it’s probably thousands of pages of documents.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: So, there are thousands of pages, and they said, “Oh, there’s over a hundred that are classified,” to which you would want to point out, I think, okay. But did he declassify those?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Did he have a right to take them? If he did, what are we even talking about? It’s not like he just took everything classified he could for no good reason.

CLAY: I also wonder if he might have made copies of any of these things and how that could factor in.