BUCK: This is quite a headline: “Goldman Sachs Predicts $140 Oil as Gas Prices Spike Near $5 a Gallon.” I think just in the last 24 hours — I looked it up — nationally it’s up 5 cents a gallon. It’s tough to keep up with how many records. You’ve got to give credit to the Biden administration, Clay. They set a lot of records for inflation and the price of gas and general awfulness and incompetence.

CLAY: And murders and illegal people streaming across the border. Basically, whatever number you don’t want to be setting a record in, the Biden administration is setting records there.

BUCK: And there’s something that’s going on that I just wanted to highlight before maybe we transition a little bit to a border discussion coming up here, because there are things happening at the border that people don’t know and need to know about. I’ve been talking to the contacts down there and researching this one some more. But first off, Clay, while we have the price of gas obviously spiking, and this does really… Talk about things that move the needle. Price of gas. People get upset. They don’t like it.

And Democrats know this is a problem for their power; so, this does matter to them, too. They know this could be a huge vulnerability going into the midterms. Okay. They also want us to believe that this has nothing to do with Biden canceling Keystone XL or just the general regulatory environment from the federal government for new exploration, for leases, for oil.

The hostility of the Democrat Party, they promise you — they’re lying, by the way — has nothing to do with the price of gas with domestic production, et cetera. The willingness to even buy it from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, anything other than make it ourselves, “because of the climate!” Meanwhile, you see Biden has called for the Defense Production Act to be invoked for solar panels.

CLAY: Yes, it’s strange.

BUCK: So they clearly think that they can really handle this situation, the energy crisis — the Jimmy Carter-style, heading for not just shortages but maybe gas lines, who knows? They think they can handle this by invoking… This is supposed to be either wartime or pandemic-time essentially, federal government all hands on deck. They’re doing it with solar panels. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, was asked about it. Here is how she responded.

Karine Jean-Pierre can’t point to a reason Biden invoked the Defense Production Act for solar panel manufacturing:

“What’s the real emergency in the solar industry?” pic.twitter.com/RmZeUpshvh

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 6, 2022

BUCK: If I recall, that was a great question from the reporter.

CLAY: What’s the emergency?

BUCK: There is none when it comes to solar. There’s a gas and fossil fuel emergency. Notice how quickly they go to the Defense Production Act for solar panels, Clay. Not so fast to pull that trigger for baby formula.

CLAY: In fact, Buck, they tried to avoid having to do it for baby formula, and I think it’s probably for an optics-related reason, because when you are trying and admitting that you need this act to be enacted, it’s because there’s a crisis. Right? And a lot of people discuss this surrounding the early days of covid, when, Buck, you remember this.

Every question that Donald Trump got, it felt like, in early March was, “Are we going to have enough ventilators? Can you guarantee that we’ll have enough ventilators?” Because remember early on the idea was people who were covid hospitalized should be treated with ventilators. Since then, it’s later emerged that ventilators are not the appropriate treatment for most people.

I don’t even know what happened to all those ventilators that we produced — the vast majority of which, as Donald Trump predicted, we would not need — and I think we just got basically warehouses full of ventilators now, which are mostly unnecessary. Now, the baby formula, we are going to need. Now, these climate people, they have lost their minds, Buck, and they’re tweeting all this week about whether they should have kids or not because of the climate impact that kids have.

I’ve got to be honest with you. If you’re deciding not to have children because you’re worried about climate change, you are next-level crazy. Did you see, Buck, the woman who tied herself to the French Open net and said, “We only have like a 1,083 days,” or whatever? They keep giving us these dates into the future, and they keep saying, “Oh, it’s going to be impossible to live 15 years from now, 20 years from now.”

AOC said, basically, the country’s going to be done. Yet these same rich people are not selling their colossal beachside mansions for losses in Malibu, which is probably as close to L.A. climate change activism central as we have in this country. You know what mansions on the beach in Malibu are going for right now? They ain’t goin’ down; they’re going for record all-time rates. They’re not putting any actual credence — any of these supposed left-wing climate change obsessives are not living their own lives to reflect they’re in any way concerned about rising fees or their own property.

BUCK: Wasn’t it awful to see global eco-preachers, the truly sanctimonious and utterly worthless Harry and Meghan? They took a $200,000 private jet flight back from the Jubilee to L.A., in what the Daily Mail described as “a Russian-oligarch style private jet for people who don’t care about the planet.” (laughing) Not even a small — they took a big private jet all the way from the U.K. to L.A.

CLAY: Is it crazy to me, by the way? That doesn’t even seem like… Seems like it should cost more. If you’ve got a big jet. Think about what you have to pay.

BUCK: It’s not my area.

CLAY: Think about what you have to pay to be in first class to fly to Europe; $200,000 doesn’t even seem… First of all, of course it’s crazy. What I’m saying is, I think they got a deal on that $200,000. I think it’s probably a $500,000 flight.

BUCK: Nonetheless, to leave the Jubilee as the great eco warriors, Meghan and Harry.

CLAY: They got booed, too, did you see that? When they were making public appearances.

BUCK: They’re like a less classy version of the Kardashian phenomenon. It’s horrible. I don’t understand why anybody like this.

CLAY: Do you think they’ll get divorced?

BUCK: Probably. I don’t like the Kardashian thing either. I’m just trying to find a comparison.

CLAY: I wonder on some level. Obviously, you, I think, detest the royal family in general.

BUCK: I’m an American, so yeah.

CLAY: I’m kind of fascinated by the royal family. It seems to me like Harry was a fairly normal dude and he’s gone completely off the rails since he got married, which is emblematic. Everybody out there listening, knows someone who did this. You’ve been doing a lot of weddings over the years, everybody out there, just like I have, knows people who have gotten married and gone off the rails in their marriage, and it feels Harry is emblematic of that which happens to a lot of people.

BUCK: Marrying the wrong person can ruin you, no matter who you are. That is reality. Unfortunately, I’ve seen it.

CLAY: Amber Heard! Johnny Depp is like the most successful actor in his generation, in terms of beloved nature. He marries Amber Heard — now ends up winning the defamation trial, but — his whole life it appears completely fell apart in that marriage.

BUCK: I’ll bring it full circle to the Defense Production Act. (laughing) I don’t want to… I was talking Johnny Depp trial here. Defense Production Act, Rick Perry, Energy Secretary under the Trump administration, pointed out that you’re invoking the Defense Production Act. The Biden regime is doing that for something that is, at maximum 20 percent of our energy needs in the first place.

BUCK: He’s 100% right, by the way —

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: — d one of the parts of the enviro-wacko theology that doesn’t ever get enough attention is that this Green New Deal stuff that’s pushed… That’s sort of now a catch-all for these climate-change activist mentality, all of the rest of it, which runs the Democrat Party on the environment now, it’s really damaging for developing countries. It’s really damaging for countries that need to increase their ability to produce energy, which is why it then transitions to, “We should subsidize them,” right? “We should subsidize them.” That’s just now global. Socialism using energy as the excuse.

CLAY: Rick Perry, good dude, his family, big, I think we’re about to be in on College Station, Texas A&M Aggie fans. I’ve gotten to hang out with them in the sports context, really good group. But what he’s hitting on is a big issue that doesn’t get enough discussion, which is you can be in favor of Green New Deal energy — and as you said, it’s a catch-all.

But let’s say you’re in favor of wind power and you’re in favor of solar power and in favor of electric vehicles and all those things. We don’t have the capacity to utilize that form of energy to replace the energy that we are producing now using traditional methods of energy, whether it’s gas, whether it’s coal, whether it’s nuclear. We don’t have the ability to do that.

And, Buck, they’re talking about rolling blackouts all over the country this summer as a result of not having the energy infrastructure to be able to cool down people’s homes. And I don’t think this is getting enough discussion. If you were sketching out apocalyptic scenarios in the United States that seem like they would never actually occur, having to have Australia and Europe bring us baby formula is an apocalyptic scenario, right?

That things have gone so bad here that we are the country that needs the largess of other countries in order to feed our babies? And that we are a country where we’re going to tell people, “Hey, you may not have the electricity that you need and so we’re going to ask people to turn up the temperature gauges and everything else so that we can monitor the electricity needs in this country”?

That is something that occurs, Buck… I’ve lived in the Caribbean for a while. Every now and then their electric circuit would just get overloaded, and it would just get shut down. You would just get used to the fact that you’re working, you’re working, and if you don’t have a generator, boom! You lose electricity in your house. We’re going to do that all over the United States?

This is a third world country in the Caribbean where it’s become commonplace. I’ve never heard of it happening in the United States on a regular basis. Boom! That’s where we’re headed, and I think a lot of it is because we’re trying to make this transition to the Green New Deal ideals while not having the infrastructure to support our electric and energy needs.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We’re going to dive into some of the big decisions having to be made in California as it is primary day on the left coast there. Also in New Jersey, all over the country. John Phillips will join us next; I think that will be an interesting discussion as L.A. is potentially picking a mayor, and San Francisco deciding what kind of policing they want to embrace through their district attorney recall votes.

All those things will be pretty fascinating, and we will discuss that in a moment. We were just talking about energy, and we got fired about it. A lot of the Democrats right now, their strategy, as it pertains to high gas prices, is tell people you should go buy an electric vehicle. I can’t… (laughing) By the way, average electric vehicle nearly $60,000 a year.

So if you are concerned about $5 a gallon gas — and I’ve told this story before — but it’s incredibly emblematic to me of where we are. The person in front of me could only afford to buy one gallon of gas recently, as we’re getting close to $5. There are a lot of people out there struggling to be able to get to work, to be able to drive around and make the trips that they need to on a day-to-day basis.

And thousands of dollars is being added, basically a gas tax, on their purchase. Well, when you’re the Democrat senator in Michigan — which is going to be a big battleground state, one of them — Debbie Stabenow, and your decision here is, “Hey, I want to let everybody know I bought a brand new electric vehicle and I didn’t even have to worry, as I was driving past all the gas stations and how expensive they are.” This ain’t exactly the message that’s going to resonate with swing voters. Listen.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI):

“On the issue of gas prices, I drove my electric vehicle from Michigan to here last weekend and went by every gas station and it didn’t matter how high it was.”
pic.twitter.com/VWSd9BJ3kk

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 7, 2022

BUCK: This is great. This is the Democrats encapsulated all in one moment: “Vote Democrat 2022 because gas is for peasants.”

CLAY: It really is a Marie Antoinette moment. When you are wealthy enough to be able to buy a $60,000 brand new vehicle and you brag in open forum, in the Senate, about the fact that you don’t even have to be concerned about the price of gas, that is not something that the average Michigander…

My wife is from Michigan. I have quite a bit of family up there now through marriage. That’s not something that’s going to play very well all over the state of Michigan when one of your senators is bragging about being able to buy an electric vehicle, so the price of gas doesn’t matter.