Is the Mar-a-Lago Raid Story Already Fizzling Out?

CLAY: So, Buck, the affidavit in the Mar-a-Lago raid, I wanted to kind of dive into where I think this story may be going. And it made for a short term Trump the overall number one story in the midterm elections. And I was talking with some people last night who do sort of polling analysis, and they said in the short term that has been official to Republicans because there’s lots of people out there, probably many of you listening right now, who said, “Well, I’m even more likely to go vote right now” to send a message about how much you disapprove of what’s going on with the FBI raid.

My concern is that is a little bit of a sugar rush because ultimately what it’s doing is distracting from Joe Biden being the centrality of the midterm election and all of his failures as president and making Donald Trump the focus, which can motivate Democrats as well on that side. But now that the judge yesterday, for those of you who did not hear us talking about it live in the third hour of the program, has essentially let it be known that he’s going to release some of the details of the affidavit, Buck, I think this story is going to disappear in a hurry.

Now, yesterday Alan Dershowitz told us that he ultimately thinks Merrick Garland will come out and have a Comey-like press conference where he castigates Donald Trump for what he believes are violations of the law but also says, much like happened with Hillary Clinton and her emails — but also says this shouldn’t be a criminal charge because you’re unlikely to be able to get a conviction. Now, we’ll see whether or not Dershowitz ends up being correct there.

But as I was thinking about this a lot yesterday in the wake of the show and reading about the affidavit — and certainly it’s gonna be redacted and we won’t know all the details — but presuming that that comes out next week, Buck, I think the fevered dream of Democrats that this was some sort of masterstroke by Merrick Garland and he’s finally got Donald Trump dead to rights is going to rapidly recede, much like we saw happen, frankly, with January 6th and in particular the Cassidy Hutchinson — Abbey? Cassidy Hutchinson? I can’t even remember her first name anymore, which I think makes my point even more clear here. Her testimony, remember it was such a bombshell, they scheduled a brand-new Jan 6 hearing and she said that Trump tried to choke a Secret Service agent and grabbed the wheel to be able to drive to the Capitol. And that story is completely gone and no one cares about it now. Buck, I think that this raid on Mar-a-Lago story, if we get even a redacted version of the affidavit released sometime next week, I think it’s gonna vanish.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: Just like this Hutchinson story did about Trump. It’s far less scandalous than that one. And it’s gonna be gone, and Democrats are gonna be left holding empty — empty-handed stories here one more time.

BUCK: Have to think about this as different audiences, right? There’s the CNN-watching, New York-Times subscribing, lib, Trump Derangement Syndrome core —

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: — right? I know that’s a lot of things, but everyone knows what I’m talking about. The double mask, five Ukraine flag, pronoun announcing, Hillary, Biden, Obama voting libs, right? They believe and I think they demand now a steady diet of this anti-Trump stuff. January 6th and now the Mar-a-Lago raid. And the prosecution of the former Trump Organization CFO, I mean, this is — it’s politically motivated, folks. This stuff is going on in this country. The guy, under normal circumstances, they would not have hounded him in this way. He may be would have paid a fine, but they want to get a felony charge or, you know, a felony plea from him. He’s gonna serving like two months in the seniors wing at Rikers Island. But Bragg, the DA in New York, wanted to serve this up for —

CLAY: He wants scalps.

BUCK: — the lib base. So those people, to your point, Clay, about how this stuff fades, they just — this is a business model now for the lib media. They have to feed, “Oh, Trump “– ’cause that’s the only thing that really moves the needle for them in a significant way. They don’t want to talk about the economy. They certainly don’t want to talk about the border. They don’t really want to talk about crime. All these areas that matter to people where the Democrats are failing. And then that brings us to, okay. So what about the voters who are gonna make the difference in the states we always talking about? You know, Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada for Senate purposes. And then other states, obviously, and other close races across the country. Do they care about this in and I think, to your point, the answer is very quickly gonna be, no.

This is a document dispute that is in the courts between a former president and possible future president and the current Department of Justice. If you’re a person who is capable of voting for either, let’s just say, Dr. Oz or Fetterman, are you gonna see this — if you’re putting yourself in that persuadable mind-set, are you gonna see the memo next week and say to yourself, oh, wow, those detractions look real scary about the things that no one got access to and that now are gonna be in the National Archives? I mean, I’m falling asleep even saying it.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: It’s not gonna be enough. So that also means that I think the fear of a prosecution of Trump is also dropping down substantially right now because how many times have they said, “Oh, we’ve got him!
Remember there was like a joke that CNN, the walls are closing in on Trump. The walls were closing in every two weeks. The walls never actually closed in. Do we think it’s gonna happen this time on this? No way, folks.

CLAY: And I actually think the warrants, the leaks, and now the affidavit becoming public is actually undercutting Merrick Garland a ton. Because everything that they’ve put out there, people immediately said, “Well, this must be a really serious deal if they decided to raid.” And then they tried to put out with the Department of Justice, this was the essence of we had to go in now, there were exigent circumstances, the country was in danger, and then you find out, wait. Merrick Garland debated about this for weeks, the warrant was signed off on on Friday, and then they didn’t go in until Monday.

And so I think what’s going on here is, there’s no more oxygen left in this story. And the sexy aspect of the story has basically all been utilized, and I think it’s gonna kind of vanish. And I want you think about it — the sugar high that came out of that explosive, unplanned January 6th hearing with Hutchinson, this girl sitting there talking all about the choking and the trying to drive the car and everybody, front-page news, pictures, “Oh, she’s a hero, can you believe what she said. Oh, it’s supported by or not supported by the Secret Service”– and it’s gone. That was six weeks ago. That story is completely dead and gone.

The entire January 6th hearings in general, Buck, dead and gone. It’s a disposable story that doesn’t really change the trajectory of anything. So my hope and thought now is, if we get that affidavit, even redacted next week, all of the sizzle of this story is gone and we’re gonna cycle back to okay. What is the story? Just in time for Labor Day. And that’s when Republicans need to start making the case against Joe Biden, the worst president of any of our lives.

BUCK: Does your gut tell you, though, that — remember, I say to everybody all the time, never underestimate the ability of unprincipled leftists to do absolutely anything because they have no principles to defend, right?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: So whatever works, they won’t do anything because it can be counterproductive. But whatever works they will do. Do you think they might have some kind of October Surprise planned, as in, in the context of what we’re talking about with the Mar-a-Lago raid, is this the precursor to something else that they’re planning? Are they trying to pile on? Or is it just an — are they gonna extend the Mar-a-Lago raid with something else? Or was this their best shot? I know this is just a, “What does your gut tell you,” but — ’cause it’s a little early, right? They could have waited until September, or October to do this.

CLAY: Yeah. So I tend to think that this raid, effectively, lets you know that there is nothing to January 6th in terms of charges that were gonna come for Trump. And my thought was that they would try to get him on some flimsy conspiracy charge. But if you’re signing off on this warrant and this raid, it feels like this is Merrick Garland, by doing this, saying I’m holding Trump accountable, but you are just grasping at straws because I really don’t believe this was connected to January 6th.

As we discussed — I mean, this could have been such an overbroad raid that they’re desperately hoping that they’re going to get some evidence associated with January 6th. We know that they effectively ran a massive hoovering fishing expedition because otherwise how do you end up with the president’s passports if you’re doing a targeted, directed proximate search where you have specific objects which you’re looking for. I think they were loping to get him. I think they have failed. I think that this story, by next week when the affidavit comes out, it’s not the fevered dream that Democrats hoped, that there was something so extreme —

BUCK: By the way, are we not gonna see Trump or Hunter Biden prosecuted, Clay? I can taste the steaks already, buddy.

CLAY: So my — this actually, to me — and I understand people out there who are like, oh, they’re gonna take Trump away in cuffs and this is the argument. I think this raid is so flimsy and so lacking in substance that it makes me believe that Merrick Garland is even weaker than I thought. And so he’s more likely to do nothing right now than he is to do something.

BUCK: I think it’s worth reminding everybody, don’t overestimate the Democrats’ ability to strategize. Don’t underestimate how insidious they can be. But don’t overestimate their genius, either. Remember, their belief was that when the Mueller Report dropped, it would have — it was gonna create this political tidal wave so then the 10 counts of “obstruction” were going to be used to remove Donald Trump from office. That was the — and then the Mueller Report came out, and Attorney General Barr did a very good job with this — I don’t think he gets enough credit — came forward and said, “This is what we know, this is what we don’t know” in the Mueller report, and the thing went down in flames, essentially. They didn’t have what they thought they had or they didn’t have the public sentiment and political pressure to get Republicans to go along. I think with this they may have miscalculated again, which makes sense because when you have a derangement syndrome — in this case, Trump derangement syndrome — maybe your judgment’s a little off.

CLAY: I also think, Buck, when you’re selling Donald Trump as the Antichrist, I mean, they really are, he’s the worst human being who’s ever existed —

BUCK: He’s actually so fun and nice. This is the thing that’s so crazy, right?

CLAY: That’s the challenge, right? They have set the expectation — you don’t take the Antichrist down on mishandling a confidential document because it doesn’t live up to the expectations of how awful he is. I think they have so oversold the extreme awfulness of Donald Trump to the American public that whatever minor miscues that they are trying to focus on now don’t rise up high enough to the expectation of awfulness that they’ve put in place, either with their base or with moderate voters, and certainly not with Trump supporters who are gonna say, “Wait. You told us this guy was, you know, paying prostitutes to give golden showers, and now you’re telling us that he may have accidentally misfiled a 4-year-old piece of paper?

BUCK: He didn’t even file, which I was pointing out from the beginning —

CLAY: — such a minor thing in the grand scheme of — you know, if you sell — here’s an easy analogy. If you were, like, hey, this Jeffrey Dahmer guy — remember Jeffrey Dahmer back in the day had a — serial killer, chopping people up, had ’em all in the refrigerators? If you told people that that was Jeffrey Dahmer, he was a serial killer and then you execute a search warrant at Jeffrey Dahmer’s house and you’re, like, it turns out that he’s been removing the labels off of his mattresses and we’re taking him down for this, you’d be like, okay, well, that might be a violation of some sort of minor law. But it ain’t chopping bodies up. They sold Trump as the serial killer and now they’re trying to get him for removing mattress tags.