CLAY: Have you been paying a lot of attention to this craziness — I have — about, remember when they were saying early on, “Oh, nobody under the age of 18 is having these gender affirmation surgeries”? Nobody out there is making any sort of decisions that would lead to a 14- or 15-year-old actually getting surgery that could screw up their life potentially forever?

And I gotta give credit to Marjorie Taylor Greene, who went on Tucker Carlson last night and said that she is arguing — and I think she’s a right about this — that kids under the age of 18 should not be able to have surgery to change their gender. And she’s saying that a lot of people are not standing up and supporting her. She thinks it’s a referendum on the Republican Party. I agree with her on this particular issue. Let’s listen to cut 4.

GREENE: You know, I should have every single Republican cosponsor, but, unfortunately, I don’t yet. I only have five cosponsors. I’m talking to all of my colleagues and urging them. Because, Tucker, let me tell you something. This is a referendum on the Republican Party. When we take back the majority, if the American people elect us, we need — we have a lot of work today. Not only do we need to impeach Merrick Garland, we need to clean out the corrupt FBI, we need to hold the Democrats accountable and defund all of their climate garbage, 87,000 IRS army, but there’s one thing that we have got to do, and we’re not even a party worth deserving of the American people’s votes if we cannot protect children from this horrific child abuse and create this to be a felony. Because this practice has to end. It’s the kind of thing nightmares are made of.

#BREAKING @RepMTG Joins Tucker Carlson Tonight To Announce Her New Legislation Called The “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” Which Would Make It A Felony To Chemically Castrate & Perform “Gender Affirming” Surgeries On Children

Every Republican needs to support this legislation. pic.twitter.com/PQI6xogGWd

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) August 19, 2022

CLAY: 100% percent right here. And the way that I would contextualize this is, for those of you out there who have kids, we don’t let kids make significant life choices when they are minors because we know that they are not fully developed and sometimes make awful choices. In fact — think about this for a minute, now — we don’t allow kids to go out and buy beer because we don’t trust them to be able to make good choices when it comes to consuming alcohol until they are 21 years old. We don’t let people rent cars until basically they are 25 years old because we don’t even trust them to be able to rent a car. And we’re letting 14-year-olds decide that they want their genitals to be chopped off, and there are doctors that are doing this? This is absolutely indefensible.

And the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene only has a few sponsors is evidence of how crazy this has become, that it is considered transphobic to say you should wait ’til you’re 18 years old to make a decision about what gender you want to be. Now, look. I’m not claiming that after the age of 18 I think it’s necessarily a brilliant move for a 19-year-old to decide that they’re gonna change their gender. I think that’s a challenging decision to make. But I would rather a 19-year-old make that choice than a 14-year-old. And to me it is clear child abuse in order to be allowing these kids to have these surgeries, Buck. And that is why it is challenging in and of itself to have this going on in general in any way at all as it pertains to these kids having this surgery.

And so the fact that Republicans are afraid of doing this is an unbelievable failure of honesty, of truth, and of basically decency and understanding the larger context of choices that are being made. It is a failure of epic magnitude that every Republican is not lining up behind Marjorie Taylor Greene here. And I want these questions to be asked of every Democrat out there. I want for Joe Biden to have to explain whether he thinks 14 years old should be having genital mutilation surgery and whether that should be permissible to happen. I want that discussion to take place. Because I don’t believe there’s any parent out there at all that understands the importance of kids growing into adulthood — just think about it — we don’t let a 18-year-old, until they’re 18, make a choice about whether or not they can go join the military. We don’t let somebody make a choice until they’re 21 about whether or not they’re gonna drink beer. We don’t let somebody until they’re 25 make a choice about whether or not they can rent a car. And we’re letting a 14-year-old decide to have gender — genital mutilation surgery?

Boston Children’s Hospital (@BostonChildrens) says that toddlers can know they are transgender. Some signs are refusing a haircut or playing with the opposite gender toys. pic.twitter.com/bEoWt1wI1l

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 14, 2022

It’s just, to me, one of the biggest flaws when it comes to the Republican Party right now, that they have allowed transgender activists to so shame people into saying this — I remember recently when Mario Lopez, who’s a good dude, got in trouble — you guys remember this? — when he said that he didn’t believe a 6-year-old should be able to choose their gender. He didn’t think that made a lot of sense. And he got so castigated for that opinion that he walked back and apologized on it. And my thought was, how in the world is this something that anyone should have to apologize for? I was having that conversation with my wife. Said, what are you talking about, that you would let a kid pick their gender when they’re 6 years old. We don’t even let kids pick what they eat for meals when they are 6 years old. Because they would have birthday cake and sugary — at least at my house — birthday cake every day that they could, ice cream, and they would have that for every meal. And the parental responsibility here is not to allow that to occur. So all of this, I think, is a big deal.

Here also is Marjorie Taylor Greene announcing that she has proposed this bill. I told you she only had five cosponsors. Here’s what it would do. It would make it a felony to chemically castrate and perform gender ambling surgeries on kids. I agree with her a hundred percent here, and I think every parent out there with a functional brain should agree with her as well. Listen to this.

GREENE: If we are willing to stand up and stop horrific things, like child abuse and like so called gender affirming care, which is really genital mutilation, it’s puberty blockers that cause chemical castration, teenage girls actually having their breasts chopped off, teenage boys being castrated, this needs to be illegal. And I’m introducing a bill called Protect Children’s Innocence Act, and it would create a law that would cause it to be a class C felony for any person involved in so-called gender affirming care. That means genital mutilation surgery, that means hormones, that means puberty blockers, anything involving any youth under the age of 18 because these kids are too young to make these awful decisions that will affect them and will be permanent for the rest of their lives.

CLAY: So Marjorie Taylor Greene deserves credit here — and I understand some people get nervous ’cause Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t tiptoe up to her opinions. And everybody doesn’t agree with every opinion that anybody has. She’s a hundred percent right here. And I wonder — I want everybody out there to be thinking about this — why are there only five cosponsors on this bill? Shouldn’t anyone who really dives into these details agree that this genital mutilation, where you are taking a girl and chopping off her breasts when she is 14 years old, when you are taking a boy which you are chopping off his penis when he’s 14 years old? This is craziness. And it appears now as more and more evidence is coming out, that this is occurring everywhere. We need to have a national conversation about this. We need to have a national debate about at what age should you be able to make a choice like this. I just don’t see this as a remotely difficult decision to make at all. And I think Marjorie Taylor Greene deserves a lot of credit for speaking out on this issue.