CLAY: Want to talk about what I see and I think Buck sees and I know many of you see as well as the looming battle between identity politics, cancel culture, and sane society, the insane versus the sane. So I don’t know how many of you have actually watched the Netflix comedy special that Dave Chappelle did. It was not revolutionary in nature. It really wasn’t that wildly out of bounds in terms of comedic material. But it has turned into a cultural flashpoint as transgender people have argued that Netflix should not have distributed the Dave Chappelle special and that they should also not allow it to continue to remain on the platform because they believe that his jokes are potentially going to create violence against them.
And so what you really have is an identity politics victim culture which now has transgender people turning against a black comedian over who has the right to say what in America today. And yesterday while we were on the air, Netflix had a protest featuring some employees, and there was also a counterprotest. So, I want to start with the counterprotest because this is absolutely hysteria. And if you haven’t seen this video, some people showed up to the protest by transgender people against the Dave Chappelle comedy special to simply chant, “We like Dave”. “We like jokes”. Jokes are funny.”
BUCK: You are not allowed to say you like jokes in America today, Clay.
CLAY: “Jokes are funny” was what these people showed up to protest, okay? One of these guys had a “”We like Dave”” sign. The sign was ripped out of his hands, it was destroyed, and then the activists, the transgender activists screamed that he had a weapon because he still had the piece of wood that he had been holding a sign up, only now it had been stripped away of its sign.
And I believe we have a little bit of audio, and trust me on this, this is wildly, hysterically entertaining in some ways. It’s funnier than anything S&L has done probably in decades. But listen to this is a shortcut of the counterprotesters being confronted and them trying to be shouted down for saying, “We like jokes.”
VOICES: We like jokes. We like jokes. We like jokes.
CLAY: All right. Dave is funny, “We like jokes”,” if you could hear that. Now, this is unacceptable to the transgender activists. Now, I just to want play a couple of cuts from what they were saying at their rally. Let’s start with cut 7 and then we’ll follow it up with cut 8. This is from the Netflix protest.
PROTESTER: Today on the full moon in Aries it is time to make a change. It’s time to release the old and brake in new. What needs to happen if the CEO at Netflix wants to make it right with trans people, give your trans employees a raise right now. Give ’em a raise right now, for their hard work, for their hard labor and for putting their trauma out for the world to see.
BUCK: So this is just a shakedown. That’s what this turns into, right? This is if you don’t do what we say, we are mobilizing the woke mob so that some people get a payoff, Clay. That’s actually what this is about which is fascinating because they also use the rhetoric of this creates violence against us. So if you’re so worried about the violence that will be created by Dave Chappelle’s jokes, shouldn’t that be the thing that is addressed in someway, no. It’s okay, fine. Maybe you’re creating violence against us, which, by the way, is an outrageous intellectually indefensible lie and an absurd, but beyond that, okay, maybe we’ll look the other way, pay us off, give us money, give us special privileges.
CLAY: Can you imagine Netflix HR like walking around the office, knocking on the door, hey, sorry to ask, are you gender nonbinary? Which pronouns do you like? We’re trying to find who gets the rise for the transgender special that you didn’t like. But to your point, Buck, the other cut here is someone alleging that Dave Chappelle’s jokes puts their lives in danger. Listen to this.
PROTESTER: I’m here to let Ted know that if he won’t have stand up for their rights, we will. And that’s the reason why we’re here today. We are here today not because we don’t know how to take a joke. We’re here because we’re concerned that the jokes are taking lives, and that’s not a laughing matter.
CLAY: It’s not the jokes are taking lives.
BUCK: It’s not that we can’t wait a joke. It’s that your jokes are literally killing people. This is what they say, which is completely insane, but it also goes to show you that they’ll say whatever, they’ll use any tactic of exaggeration and emotional manipulation to get what they want out of this exchange, which, as we know, is cash, it’s power, it’s influence in Netflix. Which, let’s all remember this, folks, Netflix as a company — you know, we often talk about talk about Big Tech and — Netflix is more powerful today than any movie studio in America, is more influential in the culture than any cable channel you can think of, Netflix has massive, massive cultural implications all across the country.
And, oh, I don’t subscribe to Netflix. Okay, fine. But if you look at their subscription numbers and some of the growth rates that they’ve had in recent years, you know, if you’re 25 years old, are you watching, you know, are you watching some cable channel, I don’t know, like, you know, Classic Movie Channel or something? No. You’re watching Netflix. You’re watching Hulu. And so not only is the payoff demand here I think, Clay, transparent for what it is, but beyond that they just want to make sure that these companies that influence the culture and therefore politics so much are absolutely terrified of being insufficiently woke. This is about power in these institutions.
CLAY: It’s also about how much power transgender people have right now. You’re claiming we’re a minority that’s being discriminated against, yet don’t overlook what an outlandish power grab they are referencing that they have. They are demanding that somebody else not be able to make a joke at their expense and that no one and, by the way, it’s not even really at their expense. It’s just pointing out what I think many of you agree out there which is that it’s crazy to have transgender athletes competing against biological women, right? I mean, we’re just talking about basic human difference in biology and saying it’s not crazy to say, hey, men don’t have babies, like these are not outlandish comments to make.
BUCK: Whoa. Whoa. We might have to bleep that one, Clay Travis. Men don’t have babies? I don’t know what’s gonna happen to you now, but the protesters are gonna find you.
CLAY: Women get pregnant? Like, these are not outlandish things to say, right? These are what’s considered to be hateful language.
BUCK: You know, when you look at, you look at what happens in, you know, I’ve said that a true tyranny is capricious, right? It’s not that everyone —
CLAY: Totally arbitrary, yes.
Everyone knew that what the Soviet Union was saying on a regular basis about everything was a lie, including the people saying it, but the point was they had the brute force and power to make you bend the knee and go along. That’s why saying men can get pregnant is so problematic in America. That’s why saying that, you know, you have to use “they” for individuals is problematic, because it is forcing you to be complicit in lies, and we should live not by lies.
CLAY: Amen. And what we are seeing is, and I hope this is what we’re seeing, and I think we’re seeing it more and more, is, I want all of you to think about, I encourage you to go watch the videos of the protests that I shared at my Twitter feed @ClayTravis, and we played some cuts for you. But I want you to think about this. The people who are attacking the people who showed up at the protest to chant “We like jokes” think they’re the good people. Want you to think about that everyone wants to talk about how history’s going to view things how is history gonna view the people who were tearing down signs that said “We like Dave” and “We like jokes,” are they gonna look like the reasonable people in 20, 30, 40, 50 years, or are they gonna look like the tyrants that they are? I think we know.
Berenson on the RFK Jr. nomination and whether he'd sign up to join him in…
Another day, another Trump cabinet choice that's making Washington heads explode.
When and how did Democrats become the party of conspiracy crackpots?
Clay meets two legends -- Elon Musk and Sylvester Stallone.
Clay and Tammy Bruce discussed Trump's flurry of nominations.