BUCK: I’m Buck and he’s Clay — and he is Will with us now, our friend Will Cain, host of the Will Cain Podcast and, of course, co-host of Fox & Friends Weekends. Will, buddy, great to have you, man. Thanks for being here with us.

WILL: Fellas! I can’t tell you how surreal it is to sit here, and I think I told you this individually. But to sit here and talk to you, it’s like my worlds colliding. It’s like your high school friends and your college friends becoming friends independently of you. Because, Buck, you and I go back now well over a decade. And for the last five years, Clay and I have been playing in the same sandbox and getting to know each other. So to see you guys together, it’s really a beautiful thing.

BUCK: I agree. We have some big news to get your take on today, Will, but I have to lead into this for one second and say: When you and I were co-hosting Real News at TheBlaze ten years ago, did you ever think that fast-forward ten years, you’d be on the show that I would be co-hosting with someone that you had known from when you were hosting at ESPN, and now you would also be hosting Fox & Friends on the weekends with our friend Pete Hegseth while Clay and I have taken over for Rush on radio?

WILL: (laughing) No. You throw Pete into the equation, and it’s a fascinating evolution. But look, I think the world of both of you guys. You’re both smart and independent and the world needs to hear your opinions. I mean that sincerely. So, I consider all of this growth, all of this evolution, a good thing for America, and I feel the same thing about Hegseth. You know that, Buck.

BUCK: Yeah.

WILL: I think Hegseth is an awesome dude.

BUCK: Yeah.

WILL: So I love that I get to hang out with him on the weekends.

BUCK: He’s a great guy. The control room, by the way, is reminding me: We’re taking over a time slot. There’s never any replacing the greatest of all time, Rush Limbaugh.

WILL: Right.

BUCK: Let’s get into it, Will. Tell me this, man… Actually, no. I want to hand off to Clay. Clay, you get first crack, because I’ve been babbling.

CLAY: No. That was great. Will, I think you’re in Hawaii, first of all.

WILL: (chuckles)

BUCK: So thank you for taking some time off from the family vacation and hanging with us. How is Hawaii? What does it feel like out there? Are they back to normal?

WILL: No, Clay. I will tell you, Hawaii is always beautiful. I will contend, I think it’s the most beautiful place not just in the 50 states, but possibly in the world. I mean, the natural beauty that just exists here is unmatched. That being said, man, it feels like you’re flying into… I don’t know what. I had to go through so many different covid tests, protocols, paperwork.

And then once you get here, it’s nice. Don’t get me wrong. I’m having a great time. But yesterday, I watched a guy berate another guy — I’m telling you, berate, dog cuss another guy — for not wearing his mask indoors. And, look, Hawaii… One of the special things is Hawaii is so removed. Not just physically, but time zone wise.

You lose the news cycle. You lose the pressure of everything. That’s nice. But you can feel like a frog boiling in water. What’s happening over there, obviously is happening here. The rhetoric on the CDC and mask guidance and vaccine push, it’s all reaching a full boil, and you feel it here on vacation, no doubt.

BUCK: You know, Will, I have a friend who is firmly on the left who was in Hawaii recently, and we had a conversation about how he had his first experience… It was actually. I can say it was Marc Lamont Hill because we said it on a podcast, on-air. He had his first experience where somebody told him, that he could not order… This was in Hawaii. He was on vacation, same as you.

He couldn’t order a drink that was at a bar, that was outside, like by the beach bar. And he said, “But hold on a second. There are people sitting at the bar right now, ordering drinks without masks on. Why do I, standing, need to order with a mask on to get a drink to go back and sit down on my chair at the beach?” And they said, “Because that’s the rule.”

WILL: (groans)

BUCK: And he finally said to me, “I realize that this covid theater stuff does have limits,” and I was like —

CLAY: Thank you.

BUCK: — “Welcome to the party, pal.”

WILL: Yeah.

CLAY: Will, I know you’re out in Hawaii, so I don’t know how much you followed it. What do you make of this Simone Biles controversy? Big story to you? Not a story? Overreactive story? How did you break it down in your world?

WILL: All right. So I’m not totally removed. I have an addiction to the poison that is social media like everyone else. So I saw you all over this, Clay, yesterday, and here’s the honest truth: You’re telling the truth and nobody likes you for it. You lean into social media and you let everybody know your opinion, which I appreciate that you do.

The bottom line is, we are celebrating quitting, and that’s where we have gotten as a culture and as a nation. Now, first of all, I do think Simone Biles deserves her own individual criticism. But without me knowing all the details of whatever it is going on with her, my focus and my attention, Clay, is way more on the reaction.

There’s a headline. There’s a cover today, I believe, of the New Yorker praising her bravery for quitting. And look, you tweeted it, Clay; I feel exactly the same. I put my sons, 13 and six, into sports to learn the lesson that we are now saying the opposite is praiseworthy of. Meaning, I put my boys into sports to fail, to be resilient, to never quit.

They’re not going to be professional athletes. (chuckles) I know that very well. I put them in to learn life lessons — and look, this is reflected across all of our culture. “Words are violence. Protests and riots are ‘mostly peaceful.’ Boys are girls. Quitters have strength.” Everywhere you look, it’s not just the language that’s been turned on its head, but it’s the values that have been turned on their heads.

And somehow, if you tell that truth — maybe it’s a harsh truth — you’re the villain. Clay, you’re the villain. I’m the villain if I believe that, if I say that, and I don’t understand that. I don’t understand this deep cultural rot. To me, to be real to your audience listening right now, that deep cultural rot is a greater threat to our nation than whoever gets elected president.

This is what sets America apart: This resilience, this strength; this ability to honestly push West, run the risk of getting scalped, reach the Pacific Ocean, and build civilizations! And if we’re going to sit here and vilify every aspect that made this country great, that’s the cultural rot that takes us down.

BUCK: Will, how much of the response…? Because people were really fired up about this, at least in the blue check social media world that a lot of us have to live in. People listening right now say, “Uh, glad I don’t have to deal with that all the time,” but we do. And we saw what the journos, sports and just general commentary folks were saying about this, and they were fiercely defending Simone Biles.

Is there a part of this where they’re taking this position because she’s a woman, she’s a very prominent millionaire athlete, African-American female? Is this just, we have to assume that there’s going to be people on the left who view this as an opportunity to show their identity politics credentials? How much of that factors into it?

WILL: Definitely. A good amount. There’s no doubt that most sports pundits paint by numbers. They see, “Oh, my gosh, look! Woman. African-American. Therefore, I champion, whatever they do.” Here’s what’s more fascinating. I think there’s something else going on. I’m curious to get your guys’ feedback on this. Mental health.

This is all such a weird thing when we get pushed into far corners. Mental health is real thing, right? We have to focus on mental health. But it’s also become this total Get Out of Jail Free card. Like, if you invoke mental health, no matter what decision or behavior you then initiate? Eh, no one can question it. Listen to the language we’ve adopted. “I need to focus on me. I need to put myself first.”

No! That’s not what we preach or believe, and if you just say, “But it’s in pursuit of my mental health.” “Oh. Well! Get out of jail free. No more questions asked. Celebrate pushing that to the forefront.” I don’t know what that’s about, Buck. I don’t know about the general, societal, “I never want to have a moment of accountability. I want to have that Good Will Hunting, ‘it’s not your fault’ hug at all moments.” I don’t know. I can believe that at the same time saying, “People struggle with mental health,” but it can’t be an excuse for anything and everything.

CLAY: I talked about yesterday, Will, that my 10-year-old — I used this as an example — he hurt his finger playing basketball, jammed it. I’m one of his Little League coaches. He plays shortstop. He’s one of our pitchers. He told me when we wanted to put him in to pitch, “My finger hurts too much. I can’t pitch.” He could hit and he could play shortstop.

We put another kid in; we ended up losing the game. After the game — and this goes to the point of lessons — I set him down and I said, “Look, I’m never going to be upset at you, whether you succeed or fail. But I expect 100% effort on behalf of your team at all time. You could have pitched and you chose not to. You’re ten. You learned a lesson,” and we had that conversation about sports as an opportunity to give credence and credit, not to results, but to effort.

WILL: Yes.

CLAY: And I feel like we’re losing that a lot. You hinted about that, a lot, Will. That’s why my kids play sports is to teach them those lessons, because they’re not going to be pros. But hopefully they apply those lessons going forward.

WILL: Yeah! I really… I’m shocked, Clay. You ran a ton of analogies out there, all of which are apropos. If Tom Brady threw an interception in the first quarter, yanked himself out of a massive game, and said, “Look, fellas, I just don’t have it today — and by the way, it’s not a physical injury. I just don’t have it today. I’m stressed. I don’t feel good about myself.

“I don’t feel confident for the rest of the three-quarters I’m going to play well. So back up, step up; it’s your game.” We would — rightfully — crush him. Because look, your son. You just laid out a physical thing that he was debilitated, right? A jammed finger or whatever, and you want to overcome that, too, based on the severity. But “stress,” and “I don’t have it today”? That’s the whole point of getting over things in sports, right? That’s foundational.

BUCK: Not that we are professional voice athletes here, Will.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But I can take some degree of comparison, I think, where I’ve had to do radio shows with huge numbers of people listening when I’ve had traumatic things. I’ve had breakups in my life, emotional things. We’ve all had our stuff.

WILL: Yeah.

BUCK: Family member sick. Dog dies. Whatever it may be. And you don’t get… For our job, it wouldn’t be okay to say, “Well, I’m just not feeling like doing it today because of all the stress,” right?

WILL: Buck?

BUCK: No one is saying that Simone Biles can’t go get…

WILL: Buck, you and I have known each other —

BUCK: Sorry, Will. Go ahead.

WILL: I’m saying that you and I have known each other a long time, Buck. I think I probably know some things that happened in your life; you know some things that have happened in my life. Whether or not we have shared those publicly, if you did, your choice to be on the air that day — your choice to perform and do that duty in the face of that toughness — would be worthy of praise, right?

So, set aside whether or not we should be criticizing Simone Biles. The question is, “What kind of behavior and choices do we praise?” We praise the person that overcomes the difficulty. I thought that’s what we did. Now we’re saying, “We praise the person that gives in to the difficulty.” That is a very scary value to place at the top of our priority list going forward as a country, as a people.

BUCK: Check out the Will Cain Podcast, everybody, and obviously watch him on weekends where he is co-hosting Fox & Friends, also, with our good buddy, Pete Hegseth. By the way, Will, you gotta tell Pete he’s next up on deck here. We gotta get him on, okay?

WILL: Definitely I will.

BUCK: All right.

WILL: Yeah.

BUCK: Check out Will’s podcast. Thanks so much, Will.

WILL: See you, guys.

CLAY: Enjoy Hawaii.

BUCK: I don’t think we have to tell him that. I think he’s good there. I think he’s got that covered.