Clay Admits His Obsession with the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard Trial

CLAY: Buck Sexton and I are in a bit of a tiff here over the incredible popularity of the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial. I admit that I got sucked in. I started paying attention. I started covertly and secretly reading articles about this trial. When I would finish sometimes our show, I would flip it on and watch the testimony. Sometimes in prep for this show, I would be sneaking a glance over my shoulder at the latest testimony from Johnny Depp or Amber Heard.

And the numbers reflect that an overwhelming majority of those who pay attention to news were also equally all-in on this trial. So 1-800-282-2882. I am offering absolution of a sense. If you were involved among those mass individuals who obsessed with this case or grew to care a great deal about this case, you can call in and offer your confession. Buck, I’m one of them, and I gotta tell you, if I want to make this into a big story, I think it represents the end of #MeToo and #BelieveAllWomen.

And we know that this was a crap argument in the first place. Four years ago, they used it to try to bludgeon Brett Kavanaugh and keep him from becoming a Supreme Court justice. It was all a lie. But Amber Heard being rejected this publicly by a jury in Northern Virginia, Fairfax County — not exactly an anti-woke community, right, Northern Virginia, liberal-leaning community — $15 million.

Now those numbers pulled back $10 million in compensatory, $5 million in punitive, those numbers pulled back based on state law in Virginia in punitive and Johnny Depp’s agent got hit with the $2 million defamation claim. But when this jury found that there was actual malice involved and clear and convincing evidence that a Washington Post editorial had constituted defamation against Johnny Depp, I think it was a clarion call signaling the end of #BelieveAllWomen and #MeToo.

Now, Buck, you basically have — and, by the way, the verdict surprised me ’cause yesterday on the show, Buck, when you and I were talking I thought we would see like minimum dollar damages, maybe a defamation finding. But effectively Johnny Depp has bankrupted Amber Heard, if she ends up having to pay out this estimate and may well have rescued his own career and provided a vindication in some way for him based on these allegations.

And I think anyone out there who was saying, Buck, #BelieveAllWomen or #MeToo, every woman’s telling the truth, I mean, it’s a fundamental miscarriage of justice to say believe all men, believe all women, believe all black men, black women, Asian men, Asian women, Hispanic, whatever, right? And so, I think this actually is a significant case. But I… You know, the tawdry details and everything else I was all-in on it. I secretly have been a big fan.

BUCK: Look, man, you’re an honest fellow. You like Bluetooth speaker music on the peaceful beach.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: You admit to things, and I appreciate that about you.

CLAY: Kicked out of a Little League game for God’s sakes and came on the radio and talked about it.

BUCK: By the way, you should put out a poll on your Twitter so I can just see, even in Clay Travis’ world, like, even your people, your followers on social media, how many of them are like, “Yeah, Clay, tell that umpire what’s up,” and how many of them disagree?

CLAY: I’m probably like 30% are on my side, 70% are against. A lot of them —

BUCK: I thought it’d be 50/50.

CLAY: Maybe it’s 50/50. A lot of people are just like, “Hey, why would you tell that story?” And the honest truth is, I try to be as honest with my audience, this audience, anybody who listens me, as I possibly can. Sometimes that means you share things that otherwise you’d be like, “Yeah, wasn’t…” Not like I was excited to get kicked out of a Little League game for disputing an awful call.

BUCK: I never got a yellow card as a soccer… That’s not true.

CLAY: Never got a yellow card?

BUCK: I got a few yellow cards as a high school soccer player. I cannot tell a lie. I got a couple. I never got a red card, though. I never got a red card. I got a yellow that was gonna be a red as a coach, though. So —

CLAY: For yelling at an official at a high school match?

BUCK: Can you imagine me? I’m the guy who sits there quietly at sporting events. Like, I just contemplate and watch. I don’t yell.

CLAY: What happened that got so you so fired up? Do you remember?

BUCK: Oh, yeah, one of my guys was getting manhandled by the other team, a bunch of thugs.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Somebody should have checked their IDs for the ages, this is high school soccer, not postgrad college circumstance there were kids on the other team that looked like they had five kids of their own and had a beard like one of the guys from ZZ Top. Anyway, yeah, I just yelled out. “If they’re not gonna call anything because the ref is blind, we still gotta play on,” something like that. There might have been a curse. I don’t know, Clay, it was a long time ago. I can get a little salty, too, sometimes.

CLAY: But so the ref stopped the match.

BUCK: Stopped the entire match, walked over… It was a playoff game; there were a lot of people on the sidelines. He walked over and said, “One more word from you and you’re gone,” and pulled out the yellow card. I was like, “Whoa,” and he said I was “deliberately disrespectful.” I’ll always remember that. That was the description — which, you know what? Fair. I was, actually.

CLAY: You were deliberately disrespecting his awful reffing of that match.

BUCK: Correct. So, I think I wouldn’t… I’m on Team Clay Travis on this one without even knowing the facts because a really bad ref can ruin your day. So on the Johnny Depp thing, though, which I know we are sitting here, you know, Captain Jack Sparrow. There were a lot of fun memes that Amber Heard almost captured Captain Jack Sparrow in court. I’d say this. You ever read — this maybe could be added to our books list — 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene?

CLAY: No. I don’t even know I’ve heard of it.

BUCK: Fantastic book. It’s essentially an updated Machiavelli for all times. Machiavelli The Prince is one of the most seminal and important works of political science that everybody, put it up… You know, Orwell’s 1984, Machiavelli The Prince, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill, I mean, there are just some things you gotta read. You know, some people would say Edmund Burke Reflections of the Revolution in France. Producer Ali, by the way, is like jotting all these ones down. We’re gonna have to put these up on ClayAndBuck.com.

CLAY: Those are ones, by the way, that are not gonna be beach reads. (laughing)

BUCK: Oh, those are nerd books. No, no. Let’s be clear. Those are nerd books.

CLAY: It’s not gonna be like, “Hey, I’m going down to… I’m getting away from the family for… You know, wife and I are getting away, I –”

BUCK: Totally accurate assessment. You’re correct. Those are… Like, you gave me this. I’m still reading. I’m getting to page 200 here on Undaunted Courage which is fabulous.

CLAY: You can read that on the beach.

BUCK: I was. It was a beach read, great book: 48 Laws of Power. It is actually 48 laws about human power and how it manifests, and it tells you story from history to illustrate it. But I remember — and I’m paraphrasing — one of the laws of power, and this is what makes me think of this. I’m telling you all, some people say it’s like a sociopath’s handbook. Whatever, it’s a really good…

It’s very good about strategy and it’s kind of like Sun Tzu with historical stories in it. But, anyway, one of the things is cut toxic people out of your life. You have to be absolutely ruthless about when someone — we’re not talking about family members, we’re talking about someone you’re choosing — whether it’s a coworker, romantic interest, when you realize someone is a toxic person can — if close enough to you — destroy anyone. One of the lessons of the book.

CLAY: How to Deal with Energy Vampires is another way to put that, like, if they are sucking all of your energy out, I mean, that is tremendous advice for anybody out there of any age.

BUCK: And when you see the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard thing, point of this was that was fascinating I will say to me from the outside — and I watched very little of it and I just sort of caught the end, ’cause we’re on air basically when it was going on, cover it live.

CLAY: I would have watched it every day if we aren’t on air. Six weeks I would have been like sitting down in front of me chair.

BUCK: You drink a froze by the pool.

CLAY: Me and the suburban moms in the pickup line at school, we would have been breaking down the… I had a friend. She said she’s in a book club. She said one of the women that’s in her book club said, “We’re not even gonna do a book this week. I’m hosting it. Everybody’s coming over. We’re just talking about the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial at the book club.”

BUCK: So, look, this became kind of a cultural phenomenon for a number of weeks here, and I just think that for anyone observing this we live in such a celebrity-obsessed culture to the point where for a lot of people it is really unhealthy, to the point where it becomes a waste of time. Like, your input… We all dabble in letting our brains go on rest.

I’ll watch random things on Netflix or something. You know, we all do. I get that. I’m not judging that I do it too. But there is a portion of our society that I think is celebrity obsessed to a degree where it’s harmful to their psyches, ’cause they elevate these people they think they’re amazing lives, everything’s so great. Johnny Depp married somebody who… Now, I’m not saying he’s an angel, by the way, at all.

CLAY: The number one takeaway is that both of these people have toxic aspects of their personality, and together they became even more toxic.

BUCK: It was… Did you ever see — it was a cartoon and a movie — The Toxic Avenger?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It was a toxic waste dump of a relationship. This was like the green ooze that turned the turtles into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Like, this was a really bad situation and I just think that for people to see Captain Jack Sparrow… Look, he’s been so many movies, but that’s really the iconic.

CLAY: The role that he made a multibillion-dollar franchise.

BUCK: Apparently personally made $600 million over the course of his career which even by Hollywood standards that’s a lot of money to make as an actor.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: He had somebody who was effectively making his life a living hell every day because he made bad personal choices and at the top of the bad personal choice list was who he was spending his time with. You have to protect — and this is just a lesson I take from it and other people can take from it what they will. You have to protect your psyche and protect your time no matter who you are, because toxic people can make you miserable, even if you’re worth hundreds of millions of dollars and are globally famous. That’s my biggest take. What’s your biggest takeaway from this trial?

CLAY: I mean, the big-picture takeaway to me is, again, I think it has changed the calculus of accusing a man of misconduct. Whether you believe or disbelieve, for #MeToo and the #BelieveAllWomen, Johnny Depp effectively has bankrupted Amber Heard. And so if you are a woman out there and the power dynamic had become so altered that as soon as you said this guy did to me something that was inappropriate, it could be criminal or it could be just.

You know, awkward social interaction, the guy was automatically guilty. Right? That’s what #BelieveAllWomen represented. And now in the back of any woman’s mind, if she is thinking about making allegations, she has to think, “Wait a minute. What if that guy decides to file a defamation case against me. He could bankrupt me.” Now, if women are telling the truth, I think they should still come forward but the idea that women don’t lie is just a fundamental… Everybody out there knows women who lie — and, by the way, men who lie too. And so we had spun so far outside of rational discourse to saying, “We believe you because of your gender.”

BUCK: Does lawyer Clay think that in the near future we will see a high-profile allegation of sexual misconduct or even a sexual assault that is false, as has happened with some of the very high-profile cases —

CLAY: Duke lacrosse, great example.

BUCK: — and then will result in a defamation claim by the accused? Do you think we could see that? Do you think the shift in mentality is that strong?

CLAY: Look, I think that Johnny Depp’s lawyers are probably sitting down right now saying, “We won $15 million. Do we want to push more chips in the table and sue the Washington Post for publishing this op-ed from Amber Heard?” which was the basis of the defamation case, and I think that you will see increasing skepticism that the media is willing to embrace…

Remember, talking about Hollywood, where Matt Damon got crushed early in the days of #MeToo for coming out and saying, “Hey, there’s a difference between grabbing somebody’s ass and rape, right?” which is a hundred billion percent true. And he was just saying, “Hey, we can’t treat everything as if it’s some sort of seminal violation of #MeToo,” and he got destroyed and had to apologize for that take.