BUCK: The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, will be with us at the top of the next hour, and there’s a lot, obviously, to discuss with the governor. But we’ll dive into all the politics going on, but also the security situation and the realities of our southern border, which brings me to this absolutely heartbreaking story of 50 migrants found dead in a tractor-trailer near San Antonio, Texas. There are others, as I speak to you now, who are — I believe — in very serious condition, not clear what the outcome will be in the hospital.

There are children who were a part of this human trafficking as well, and 50 dead in this tractor-trailer, died from heat and lack of oxygen and overheating inside the trailer. Horrible, horrible situation. Now, the whole country’s looking at this just saying, “How can this occur? What is happening here?” Now, Clay I think it’s always important that we’re very clear and very fair and very honest in these situations. We don’t do what the Democrats do where you just say, “I don’t like this person or this politician or whatever, so I’m gonna just blame everything that happens in the world that I don’t like on him.”

The cartels are first and foremost responsible for this. However, the Biden administration’s continued fostering of lawlessness at the border, refusal to crack down at the border, and refusal to do what is necessary to change the incentive structure for people to cross illegally does contribute to exactly what we are seeing with all the fentanyl flooding in, all the methamphetamine flooding in, and now this horrific tragedy of 50 dead in one incident of human trafficking.

CLAY: You know, it’s touching everywhere, Buck. I’m down in Panama City Beach and I was reading the local newspaper here. And they just busted a guy who had enough fentanyl in his home, they said, to kill every single person in Panama City Beach. That’s how much he had there. And where did that come from? It came across our undefended, effectively, southern border. And when I saw this news come out, my immediate thought was, this is what happens when you have put in an incentive structure that suggests that people can get across the border without major issues.

And we see this happen all the time, Buck. How long ago was it we were talking about the brave Border Patrol agent who died trying to save people crossing the river to get into Texas? It feels like that was like a month ago, and there are constant deaths taking place every single day. We know that many people in Latin America and in Mexico believe that the best route to get to America is through the southern border, to such an extent that Ukrainians have traveled to Mexico to be able to cross into the United States.

People are coming from all over the world because the message is out: Joe Biden doesn’t believe there should really be any border security at all, and the only time we ever even hear any discussion about the border at all is when a tragedy or crisis like this happens. It should be a moment of reflection, a moment of acknowledgment, and a recognition that everything is wrong among our political class. But what will happen is there will be a short-lived amount of attention on this and then everybody will move on, and the border will cease to be an issue like it generally is. We care more… You hit this, like, six months ago and I think it’s 100% true: Our media and our politicians care more about the border in Ukraine than they do the border in the United States.

BUCK: It’s absolutely true. The governor of Texas, as I said, will be joining us in the next hour. So we clearly want to ask him about this tragedy. But, Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick was not holding back at all. He’s furious about the situation, and he’s placing blame.

BUCK. Clay, he’s calling out the Biden administration straight up. There is policy blame here for what has been I think the southern border has been in certainly the last 20 or 30 years, the last 20 years to be sure. And the Biden administration doesn’t want to stop it. I speak to people down along the border who are Border Patrol members — and, by the way, they’re terrified to speak to — not terrified, but they are concerned about speaking to — the media because they’re not allowed to allowed to.

Somehow on the Trump administration it was, “Oh, you want ride-alongs? You want to see what’s going on? We got you. No problem.” Now only very specific people, very designated individuals who are part of the Border Patrol union can even do anything with the media because they don’t want people to see what’s going on. They tell us that the border is not open, but if you spend anytime down there as I have at multiple points along the border and just in the last couple of years you can see during the Biden administration, Clay, it’s wide open.

You have masses of people walking up and saying, “Here I am,” and they all believe they’re going to be let into the country, they all believe they’re going to be able to stay, and they say it’s because of the Biden administration. Until that belief changes, tragedies will continue, people will drown in the Rio Grande, people will be assaulted by the coyote cartel traffickers. T ;here will be horrific incidents like this where you have a lot of people dying all at once as part of the human smuggling operation.

And our communities, because Border Patrol is stretched so thin all across the country, not just along the border, in Chicago, in New York, in Los Angeles, you name it, will be filled with fentanyl and meth and cocaine because we can’t actually stop any considerable amount of those drugs when we have Border Patrol doing the humanitarian mission, which is all day, all the time.

CLAY: It wasn’t very long ago that AOC dressed in all white and went to the border and stood for those photo-ops alongside the chainlinked fence with her hands outstretched, crying. Where is any Democrat associated with this border disaster? Joe Biden could easily get on a plane and fly to the border and guarantee that this received coverage. He won’t do it, however, because, as bad as things are with inflation and as bad as things are with crime in this country, border security is one thing that unites a huge majority of the United States. And this is one that Biden has failed on from the moment he basically came into office, Buck, ’cause he’s gone downhill on a lot of things. He’s been a disaster on the border since we saw those people wearing Biden T-shirts a month after he got into the office saying, “He wants us to come in here and come into the country.”

BUCK: And this is where that 20 or 30% of the Democrat Party or maybe you could say 20 or 30% over all the voters, depending on how you want to gauge it, are the ones — same thing you see with energy. The Biden administration can’t be so stupid that they don’t understand why energy prices are high and what they could do to make it better, but they still have John Kerry going around blubbering about the Green New Deal effectively and solar and this is a great time to transition because a dedicated and very well-funded group within the Democrat Party…

Not a small group, but still, I’d say probably a minority of Democrats, care more about climate change than they do about gas prices. ‘Cause even Democrats care about gas prices. But they’re held hostage by that group. Same thing on the border, certainly true nationwide. But I think it’s even true in the Democrat Party. If you look at it now, enough Democrats would say, “I think we gotta tighten things up at the border.” But that 20% of the hard-core left, they’re open-border people. They actually want this to be wide open, and Biden will not cross them. Not going into this election, not going into any election.

CLAY: I’m curious how the political calculus changes if Hispanic voters continue to break in a big way for Republicans. Because right now Democrats in the back of their mind think, “The more Hispanic voters in the United States, the more likely our long-range ability is to win national election.” If all of a sudden as we are seeing Hispanic voters are breaking in favor of Republicans and those Hispanic voters are also saying, “We need a more secure border,” because, Buck, as you well know, they understand oftentimes the power of these cartels and a government that has been controlled by a cartel state more than anyone.

And what I have been hammering home for a long time is the people who come across our southern border are risking their lives to get here because they believe in American exceptionalism. So the message that Democrats are selling to people who are trying to come to America, of, “America’s an awful, racist place” is the exact opposite of what everyone coming here believes, and it’s why ultimately I think Hispanics are breaking in such massive numbers, we’re seeing it, of all places, at the southern border in Texas. We talked about Mayra Flores winning in the Texas 34, a hundred-year win. It’s happening everywhere.

BUCK: It’s interesting. Even Bill Maher on his show said that for Hispanics who are in this country, he says the government should be their lawyer, not the lawyer — these were his words, not the lawyer — for the illegals who just came across border yesterday. But it doesn’t feel that way, especially for all the members of the Hispanic community who came here illegally, the parents came here and they were born here. You know, there’s a real shift in perception. I’m starting to believe, though, that look.

Biden is not a leader. I know he’s the president, but he’s not a leader. He follows whatever the Democrat Party trend may be. The only way that this will actually get real on the border and secure it, even a little bit — not a lot, even a little bit — is if there’s a total annihilation of Democrats at the polls this midterm. And even then it will just be a little bit of a recalibration. But they’re on a freight train with no brakes right now, my friend. They do not care, within the party apparatus, how this looks, what the numbers are of people coming in illegally every month. The only thing that changes it is if they lose.

CLAY: And it’s going to be a beatdown of epic proportions, I really do believe. We’re almost four months out.

BUCK: We’re gonna stay focused on it.