BUCK: I think Joe Biden’s having… Clay, is this the worst week of his presidency?
CLAY: (chuckles)
BUCK: I think that has to be the worst week of his presidency. This may be the worst week of any president’s presidency in 20 years.
CLAY: I was trying to think. I mean, obviously 9/11 was on a different level.
BUCK: Right, 9/11.
CLAY: And since then what week would you point to as somebody having a worse week than this?
BUCK: Even the rise of ISIS under the Obama administration, because it was —
CLAY: Gradual.
BUCK: — fazed, exactly, didn’t have the same impact. There was a blitzkrieg and there were some similarities. I tell you, the Islamic State, — which they called “ISIL,” of course, all the time, and everyone else was like, “Just call it ‘ISIS,’ you weirdos.”
CLAY: (laughs)
BUCK: But they had a blitzkrieg into Mosul, a city that I know better than I would care to, and the Iraqi army abandoned things. Anyway, it’s the worst week the Biden administration has had in a while. But on the issue of covid, they’re just doubling, tripling down on everything. They’re not saying, “Oh, we have to give everybody boosters now? Maybe we should rethink.”
Unh-uh. They just turn the screws tighter all the time. And as you know, everybody — I’ve been telling you — I think they’re gonna come after people in different ways here for vaccination that live outside of the blue cities. Here is Biden just yesterday during this press conference that he gave. No questions about Afghanistan in the press conference.
CLAY: Didn’t take any.
BUCK: Right. Yes.
CLAY: Didn’t take a single question.
BUCK: The Taliban is taking more questions about their policy by American media in Afghanistan than Joe Biden is. But here is what he said on vaccinations, ’cause I want to drill down to that. Play 4.
BIDEN: So let’s be clear. Vaccination requirements have been around for decades. Students, health care professionals, our troops are typically required to receive vaccines to prevent everything from polio to smallpox to measles to mumps to rubella. In fact, the reason most people in America don’t worry about polio, smallpox, measle, mumps, and rubella today, is because of vaccines!
BUCK: “Nice job you got there. Be shame if you lost it ’cause you didn’t get vaccinated.” That’s what the president of the United States, Clay, is telling the private sector that often operates at the mercy of the federal government to do right now.
CLAY: Yeah. It’s default state action. But the bigger issue here, I think, Buck, is 100% vaccination rate would not end covid, and this is the biggest lie associated with the “you need to get vaccinated” aspect of this Joe Biden pitch right now. I was talking about this this a little bit earlier, and the data is out there. Iceland is one of the most vaccinated countries in the entirety of the world, Buck.
They have done an incredible job of getting their people vaccinated. Iceland has had… Let me give you these numbers: 91.2% of the adult population in Iceland is at least partially vaccinated. Nearly 87% are fully vaccinated. We now in Iceland have got the highest number of cases of covid anywhere in that country that has ever existed. This surge is higher than ever before.
If vaccination were going to solve this as an issue, then being 87% vaccinated would end it — and remember, Buck, initially we were told if 70% of people would get vaccinated, this thing would be over in the United States. Guess what? We’re over 70% of adults vaccinated, and it hasn’t.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
CLAY: I wanted to hit you with some numbers. Yesterday, we teased this. And a lot of the discussion, Buck, we’ve had, obviously the focal point right now is get as many people home from Afghanistan — American citizens — safely as we possibly can. We want them all to get to the airport and to safely return to this country, but one of the big points of discussion has been — and you heard us just ask Senator Hagerty, who was with us at the top of the hour — what sort of impact is this foreign policy failure potentially going to have on the larger Joe Biden domestic agenda with its record of futility here?
A couple of stats that I think are significant, Buck — and I don’t know if you’ve seen these, but I want to hit you with them and get your reaction. First of all, FiveThirtyEight website, Nate Silver’s website, and Real Clear Politics both early this week on Wednesday: For the first time in Joe Biden’s tenure as president, his approval rating has dropped below 50%.
Now, this is significant because it really doesn’t factor in much of what’s gone on with Afghanistan yet, and we know all of the favorable media attention that Joe Biden has gotten. For him to drop below 50% approval, we talked about how many people who voted for Biden wished they could have a do-over and vote for Trump, does it surprise you, Buck Sexton that even with the biased polls that we know exist, they’re not even able to keep Joe Biden above water now and say, “Over half the American public supports him”?
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: He was gonna be good for the country.
CLAY: There were millions of people who believed what you’re saying.
BUCK: Yes, he would do a good job with fill in the blank. And, by the way, that’s really what… You look at people who are independents, undecideds, you get into the polls and it’s usually, oh, well the economy or immigration or something, and it’s whoever they believe will be better on.
CLAY: That’s right.
BUCK: Anyone who thought normalcy or competence was coming with this administration, already realizes this was a massive mistake. They regret the vote, and realize that the country is not in a better place in those ways for those reasons. The loony libs who are triple masking while they’re riding around outside on their tricycles and talking about how Dr. Fauci is a sex god and he’s amazing?
They are never going to turn their backs on Joe Biden because they’ve been convinced. They’ve been brainwashed into thinking… Let’s have a little fun game here for a second, Clay. The first year of the Trump presidency, what was the big problem? We had a booming economy, a booming stock market, peace, no terrorist attacks, tax cuts, and the media was in a frenzy. They were at DEFCON 2 because of a lie of issue collusion. If you compare up to this point the first year of Trump in his term and the first year of Biden, it’s not even close. It’s not even the same universe.
CLAY: That’s right.
BUCK: It’s an A student and a D student.
CLAY: And Trump, other than covid, would have dominated Biden in 2020. Okay? So those numbers, Joe Biden now under 50%. So far I’ve only seen one poll that has begun to factor in Afghanistan. Reuters has dropped Joe Biden’s approval rating by seven points. This came out on Tuesday from 53% approval all the way down to 46%. There’s some people out there, okay, may not trust polls.
But to kind of put it into context, we know the Trump polls were always a mess. But George W. Bush seven months in, 56% approval rating; Barack Obama seven months in, 59% approval rating according to these same polls. All right? Under 50%, this is significant. For going into the midterms, the average president under 50%, loses 37 House seats in the first midterm. I can’t imagine Joe Biden being able to go up, right? I’m curious; I imagine you would, too It’s only going to continue to go down between now and 2022.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: You never want to be… To borrow from your world, Mr. Travis, you never want to be the guy who’s high stepping in the end zone —
CLAY: In the first quarter.
BUCK: — and then gets nailed at the two-yard line, you don’t want to be that guy.
CLAY: You don’t want to drop the ball too early either which is what a lot of people do now.
BUCK: Yeah. But I gotta say, right now we’re on track… Some people say, “Don’t say it! You’re gonna jinx it!” We’re on track for something along the lines of the 2010 Tea Party wave.
CLAY: Just based on the incompetence.
BUCK: Yeah, just based on the incompetence of the Biden administration. And look, I know it’s a long way off and a lot can change between now and then. But when you see when the problems are of the Biden administration, usually year one of a presidency, they can get away with, “Oh, we don’t know yet. We don’t know what the real results of our decisions are. You know, we’re gonna either raise taxes or lower taxes.”
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: We’re gonna have some kind of an agreement, we’re gonna try something on health care, it’s gonna take time,” and the media can run a lot of interference for the Democrats as they do, convincing people that it’s all gonna work out. So even if it doesn’t look that great, Biden has managed to — in the areas where he has asserted the most control and made the most clear decisions — created catastrophes, create really negative, obvious negative outcomes in the first eight months.
CLAY: Calamitous.
BUCK: I mean, this is kind of unprecedented in that way.
CLAY: It’s calamitous. Here’s an idea for you, Buck. I think you could make the strong argument, the only good thing for Joe Biden right now is, as bad all of job as he has done, Kamala Harris is less popular than he is. So there’s nobody trying to raise up behind him, ’cause that was the big fear was Kamala’s there; she’s gonna sweep in and take over for Joe Biden.
Northam was able to stay governor not because of his competence, but because everybody was even arguably more incompetent beneath him. I think that might be the only saving grace (laughing) for Joe Biden right now, ’cause otherwise I think people would be saying, “Hey, this guy’s…” Democrats would be saying, “Hey, we need to elevate Kamala. He’s not up to this.”
BUCK: And Kamala, the Democrat apparatus, I do think, knows that in the same way that they didn’t want to put Bernie Sanders socialism — which is really largely the ideology of the Democrat Party now. They just won’t call it that. They didn’t want to put that to a vote. I still think it should have been Trump versus Sanders in this last election.
CLAY: Right.
BUCK: That would have been a more honest Democrat Party for where it actually is.
CLAY: If the DNC had been honest, and it might have been the case in 2016, too, if they had been honest.
BUCK: Right. Okay. But they didn’t want to actually pose that to voters. I think they also know that if you’re talking about Kamala as the standard-bearer for the Democrat Party, it’s one thing for the Democrat, the DNC apparatus to elevate here and there’s all the optics of this. But they don’t want to put it to a vote to the American people ’cause she’ll lose.
CLAY: Get crushed.
BUCK: So they know that that’s a bad idea, and you got Joe Biden who is their guy. It was supposed to be a pretty easygoing, “Joe Biden’s the guy you know” approach, and that then gives cover to sociologists within the party — The Squad and the rest of them — to push for their crazy ideas, ’cause, “Oh, don’t worry! Good old Grandpa Joe’s holding it all together, right?
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: “We can trust the Democrats with Grandpa Joe at the helm.” Now it looks like Grandpa Joe has taken the sailboat and run it right into the rocks which means the rest of the socialists in the Democrat Party don’t have that cover from people who are saying, “Oh, but we know we can trust Joe.” No, you can’t, actually. You can’t.
BUCK: And just real quick, what do they have to offer up as great thing they’re going to do?
CLAY: Nothing.
BUCK: They can’t get the rest of their agenda. They’re gonna pass this massive budget. Fine. But they’re not going to be able to get through, in an election year, legislation with these razor thin margins? Oh, gee, maybe they never had a mandate in the first place and now that reality is starting to set in because the American people see what a clown show we’re dealing with here with the Democrats, and that’s a problem.
CLAY: And I’m not even sure they get through the budget now with all of the mess in Afghanistan, covid continuing to rise as an issue.
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