CANDACE OWENS: This defendant should have actually pled insanity, and I would have bought it. Like, when you listen to the story and you really follow every element of this, like, Jussie Smollett is not a sane person. And what people are forgetting is that he’s asking you to believe… You know, there’s this thing called Occam’s Razor, right?

Usually, the simplest explanation is the best explanation. He is asking you to believe just an incredible set of circumstances took place here. I mean, you have to be an absolute fool to believe anything else than what is plainly in front of us. Jussie Smollett lied. It was actually the greatest racial hoax that has taken place at least in the last three decades.

BUCK: Welcome back to Clay and Buck. That’s Candace Owens lighting it up last night on Fox about the Jussie Smollett trial. I still feel like this is a great disservice both to justice and to transparency. I would even add to that a great disservice to comedy that we do not have access to what is being said. We’re getting reporting of it, but we don’t have the audio.

We don’t have the video from within the courtroom of Jussie Smollett. Just so everyone is clear on this, he is now claiming that there was, in fact, at this stage, he is still saying there was a hate crime attack against him and that the two Nigerian brothers committed this hate crime attack, I guess? Is that where he is? That’s the part of the —

CLAY: I think he’s also now arguing that there was a third person in addition to the two of them, and that this mystery third person might have been a white guy. It has spiraled into a series of unbelievable lies. But he’s still claiming, yes, that he was the victim of a hate crime.

BUCK: He’s saying it was hate crime attack. He’s also claiming that one of the Nigerian brothers and him had some kind of a sexual relationship at a bathhouse.

CLAY: Relationship.

BUCK: The Nigerian brother, I believe, claims there was no sexual relationship but there was a smoking of a blunt or a marijuana cigarette, for those out there, and the whole thing is absurd beyond words. And the reason that it’s so interesting is that when you see there are still people… This whole movement around diversity and inclusion and the race obsession of the mainstream and the Democrat corporate media is like a religious belief.

Because you have people that won’t even come out and say, “Yeah, he did it. This is a joke. This is absurd.” They’re still doing the “Oh, we gotta hear what Jussie Smollett says,” this neutral reporting thing. This is beyond farce. If you were writing this to be in an episode of a TV series, they’d say, “Well, this is too stupid.” They’ve got video of the guy and the guy is still claiming that he didn’t do it? It’s absurd, but it also goes to show you Jussie Smollett has gotten away with lying and with playing this game and playing this card for a very long time.

CLAY: Well, and not only that. There are a lot of famous people who have been in his corner, and one of the things that he testified to was that Don Lemon at CNN — who, by the way, credibly accused of sexual assault. Don Lemon, who has maintained his job at least so far at CNN, was texting Jussie Smollett to let him know that he was hearing the Chicago cops didn’t believe his story.

So for CNN, I think this is an intriguing angle to this story as well. You just had to fire Chris Cuomo. Is it not another awful look for a major CNN focal point of their coverage — a man with a primetime show in Don Lemon — to be texting with Jussie Smollett, who is a defendant in a case that Don Lemon is covering, to let him know what he’s hearing about the police in this case?

BUCK: Here’s the problem. The reason CNN is embarrassed is not that they have unethical anchors who do bad things and lie and all that. It’s because they still cling to this facade, right? It’s not believable… The same way that Jussie Smollett still clings to the notion that he was the victimized of a hate crime — which is just not credible to any person has a functioning brain — CNN still claims that it is an objective news entity, it is journalism at CNN.

And what you see is all of their hosts are effectively Democrat activists who are trying to stack the deck who are playing games behind closed doors, and texting people and using their influence and using their leverage to bring about not only a certain perception in their audience — they’re propagandists — but also outcomes politically — that’s why they’re activists — and they lie about it.

You know, Clay, when we have somebody on this show, I’ll say, “Oh, we’re having on Pete Hegseth,” right, or something like that. I’ll say, “Pete Hegseth, he’s a friend of mine. Pete’s a friend. We’ve known each other now for a decade.” I know we have a lot of people on that are friends of yours.

Pete’s one of them, a friend of yours too. I want to tell the audience that because we’re honest with people about where we’re coming from. Don Lemon’s coverage Jussie Smollett night after night as though he’s an objective news anchor, and he’s basically texting him about, “Oh, man the police don’t believe you! You better watch out.”

CLAY: Which goes to the very essence of whether these guys can be trusted and is further of a black eye for the journalism of CNN. I don’t know who’s gonna be left by the time all these stories continue to rear their ugly heads surrounding everyone at CNN. It sounds like Chris Cuomo is maybe gonna try to take Jeff Zucker down with him? Did you see to those quotes? Chris Cuomo, by the way, has lost his satellite radio now.

SiriusXM has pulled that show for him, too, so he has no media outlets right now. He’s gonna sue CNN, arguing that he’s owed remainder of his contract, and now he’s saying, “Hey, Jeff Zucker knew everything,” and so now Jeff Zucker might end up under the investigation before all is said and done. This is a pretty monstrous mess for CNN going forward, and it’s an ugly look for everyone who defended Jussie Smollett in any way.