BUCK: We have our friend Jesse Kelly with us. He is nationally syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks. I’m sure you are familiar with his show, his Twitter account. He’s also a source of amusement for many across the country. Mr. Jesse, good to have you on, sir.

KELLY: Well, it’s an honor to be on the biggest show in the country, and I know you’re honored to have me as well.

BUCK: As always, sir. As always.

KELLY: (laughing)

BUCK: So, Jesse, I want to start with the Biden White House for a second. Joe Biden’s supposed to be heading to Europe, they’re saying. Kamala’s already been over there. Joe Biden’s supposed to be heading to Europe — I believe next week is what’s being talked about right now — as if that is something that is supposed to make us feel better about the situation?

I mean, I see everything from Biden these days through this lens of I am angry but not surprised that they put this individual in a position where, when things really get tough and rough, we see it was reckless, it was insane to make this guy the president of the United States.

KELLY: Yeah, I’ll be honest. I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer. Buck, as soon as I heard that — I heard that this morning — I got legitimately worried, I mean, beyond the normal you and I get to laugh on the radio. Me and Clay and you will boo yuk it up over about what an idiot he is. It is legitimately a concern to have this president personally reveal how feeble and not doing well he is to other parts of the world.

It’s not a stretch to say all the bad guys are on the move right now ’cause they look at the half-functional human being in the White House. I do not want him presenting himself in person to other people. He is not doing well. His mouth hangs open. It looks like he’s half asleep. He does that stiff-armed walk — and everybody who’s looked into it knows exactly what that means. What are these guys gonna think when they meet that guy in person? They’re gonna think we are pathetic and not gonna do anything.

CLAY: Jesse, this is much less serious, but I saw this and I thought I bet you have a take on it. Buck and I were talking about it off air. Did you see where Elon Musk challenged Vladimir Putin to basically a trial by combat Game of Thrones style which I love?

KELLY: (laughing)

CLAY: But, one, like Putin is 69 years old but he’s only five seven. What percentage of Americans do you think Putin could defeat in a trial by combat —

KELLY: (laughing)

CLAY: — basically, you know, with his background, and who would be the best American to pick right now if we had a legitimate Game of Thrones trial by combat style? Like, who would you go with?

KELLY: Obviously we’d have to try to stay in the same age range, I would say, Clay, there’s no question about it. The thing about Putin is everyone talks about him, you know, with his KGB background and they’ll bring up the judo thing.

CLAY: Yeah.

KELLY: You don’t know how good the guy is at judo! Obviously if you didn’t give the guy a black belt, all of a sudden you’re gonna be found hanging from your belt in the shower. So of course he’s gonna be give a black belt! You don’t know that he knows anything. I don’t know that I buy into this Vladimir Putin is —

CLAY: You could beat Putin in a trial by combat, you yourself, you’re a big guy, you’re a Marine, or do you think he would beat you?

KELLY: I would pummel that tiny little tyrant into a bloody pulp and enjoy every single second. But again, I’m 40. That’s more of an age thing than anything else. You know what? I bet this would be a good match. I’d like to see Putin versus Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is a little chubby. He’s friend of mine, I can say it. He’s a little chubby, he’s a little younger.

But probably not what you’d consider some kind of martial arts master. Putin versus Cruz would be like a celebrity boxing match I’d show up for. If we’re talking about fight to the death, then we’d better pick one of the Democrats because, look. They’re more happy murdering people than people on the right.

BUCK: Speaking to Jesse Kelly, syndicated radio host, and apparently analyst of combatives and mixed martial arts on the side as well.

KELLY: (laughing)

BUCK: Jesse, how do you think we’re handling…? Sorry, I was gonna pivot back to a serious thing here for a second ’cause I’ve been worried all along that what’s gonna happen is in the early days of the conflict in Ukraine there would be everyone — well, not everybody, but a lot of people — would say, “Oh, you’re right. This is not our fight.

“We’ve been through too many wars already,” and then the videos would come out and then the pounding of the cities would occur with artillery and rockets, and now it sounds… You got Zelensky going around to Canada, to their Parliament and tomorrow speaking to the U.S. Congress, State Department saying:

“We want a no-fly zone, we want you guys in on this.” Are you confident that that’s not gonna happen? ‘Cause I’m starting to think that it’s just a matter of time before enough people say, “Oh, we have to do this,” without thinking about what “doing this” would really mean.

KELLY: No, I’m not confident it’s not gonna happen because the tale wags the dog now constantly. We’ve become a society — well, the world is, not just America. We’ve become a society that, honestly, it’s run by social media. And people can say, “Well, most people aren’t on Twitter,” and that’s true. Yeah, but the people who make the decisions are on Twitter.

And they live on Facebook and Instagram, and they do run foreign policy based on sad videos they see online. And that’s part of the reason we are so mixed up now is emotion governs everything. It doesn’t matter if you’re solid in the no no-fly zone camp right now. One video comes out tonight… It could happen 15 minutes from now; it could happen while we’re sitting here talking.

One video comes out of some bombed-out kids’ hospital or orphanage and they haul some dead kid out in Ukraine and you’d have 70% to 80% of U.S. soccer moms in this country beating down their congressman’s door to go invade Ukraine. That’s just how we run now, and it’s a very, very dangerous place to be.

And, back to what we talked about in the beginning, the stopgap for that is the doddering old fool currently masquerading as president of the United States. So he’s not gonna be able to withstand that kind of pressure if it comes down on him. Doesn’t have the strength for it.

CLAY: It is amazing you mentioned that, Jesse, because — and Buck and I were talking about this off the air, too — the number of people that are willing to withstand 24 hours of bad news in order to make the right decision is almost nonexistent. Everybody is so afraid of that social media mob coming after them. And I think you can draw a direct analogy.

Look, the George Floyd incident and its aftermath, we decided to have a legitimate debate in this country, we really did, over defund the police. Black Lives Matter basically became a sainted organization that had every major company in America genuflecting at their altar, and the natural result of that — and now people don’t even want to acknowledge it — was thousands of people died who would otherwise be alive of violent crime, because we took away police officers and their ability to implement the actual law and protect people. How do we get back to not allowing emotion on social media to dictate every response, or are we so far gone it’s impossible to hope that that could ever reverse itself?

KELLY: I actually… I’m known as a pessimist or maybe a bit of a cynic. I do have a hopeful take on that, Clay, ’cause everything you just said is correct. However, on a macro level, I think we have to acknowledge that social media is still fairly new, and so what we’re having a hard time doing as a society… Whole countries are having a hard time doing this.

We’re having a hard time adjusting to something I call the nuclear news cycle where the bad part about where we live now because of social media is it burns really, really, really hot, for 24 hours — and I’ve been under so many of these, more than I can possibly count. For 24 hours, it’s not just your enemies coming for you. Your mom read about it on Facebook.

“Oh, no, your sister saw something on Twitter! Did you hear what they’re saying?” Everyone. It’s your friends who are coming at you for a 24-hour it period you feel like the entire world is coming down on you. But there’s a good side to that: It only lasts 24 hours. Because there’s always a new story, always a new scandal. People just breeze right along from gigantic stories like they’re nothing.

If you can just withstand 24 hours, keep your head down, shut your freaking mouth, you’ll end up being fine. And I think societies haven’t adjusted that way yet. CEOs haven’t, politicians haven’t, regular people have not. We’ve not adjusted to the nuclear news cycle. But it is so new. I think we need time to adjust.

BUCK: Jesse, you probably have seen there is a lot of, whether it’s members of Congress — Democrats, obviously, although I think one or two Republicans actually as well, although they’re the Republicans who spend all their time bashing Republicans — referring to people that are trying to look at all aspects of either U.S. intervention or what led up to the invasion of Ukraine and throwing the word “treason” around.

Notably you have sitting senators saying Tucker Carlson’s guilty of treason. You had the idiots on The View saying that he should be investigated by the Department of Justice, which I think we have to take somewhat seriously insofar as the Biden regime will tell social media companies to shut people down for their “wrongthink.” So what are we to make of the fact that people who are now opposing military intervention in a country in which we are not at war and do not have a critical national security interest are being called traitors by the apparatus?

KELLY: Well, we’re to make of it that they’re telling us how they really feel. This is not… (laughs) Sometimes I get frustrated with people on the right because they still want to live in this pie-in-the-sky world where, “We can have a disagreement between the right and the left, and let’s sit down and have a discussion.” No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s 20 years ago.

The people on the left in this country are happy to have you dead right now. They’re happy to have you arrested. An uncomfortably high percentage of your fellow Americans would happily have you thrown in jail or shot for what you believe. I know people don’t want to talk about that. They don’t want to acknowledge that. That makes people uncomfortable. Why do you think the mask slips so often?

How often do you see a major media figure, let alone just the normal Joe on Facebook…? How often do you see a major media figure or political figure either celebrate the death of someone on the right or wish for the death or wish for their arrest? It’s all the time. It’s all the time, because that’s how they think! They’re not liberals now. They are full-blown communists, and communists believe in murdering as many people as they have to to accomplish their goals.

It is a sick, evil religion of destruction, and that that is hard for people to accept, ’cause you don’t want to look at your neighbor across the street that way. But if your neighbor across the street has a Biden sign in the yard and go green this and all that other stuff, I got news for you. Your neighbor across the street would turn you in to the DOJ to have you thrown in a dark hole without a moment of hesitation. That’s reality!

CLAY: We’re talking to Jesse Kelly. After that dark analogy, I’ve got a positive story here to close with, Jesse.

KELLY: Uh-huh?

CLAY: Your boy, Buck, my cohost here, has just filled out his first NCAA tournament bracket, ever.

KELLY: (laughing)

CLAY: Now, we were having dinner down in Houston when I told you this and you were in as much disbelief as I was — and, by the way, a couple other people who also work on the show had never filled out a bracket.

Big party tonight in Houston w/ @clayandbuck @ClayTravis @BuckSexton @JesseKellyDC & me is upon us. We had a little pre-party dinner & drinks last night to get ready. That’s Crockett in the skull cap (and Cheetos PJs — he was off to bed) & Michael T (after baseball practice). pic.twitter.com/oiLde4gGei

— Michael Berry (@MichaelBerrySho) March 4, 2022

KELLY: (laughing)

CLAY: This blew my mind. Does this blow your mind as much as it does mine?

KELLY: I don’t honestly… We tried to pick Buck’s brain about it that night when we were sitting down for dinner. I still didn’t get a good explanation how that’s possible. That is something that… Buck has been CIA, he’s been around the block, he’s been around the world. No one ever handed you a bracket, Buck, and said fill it out?

CLAY: They didn’t have a CIA bracket challenge like this was never one in the office, like nobody was doing this? Was it not involved?

BUCK: It involved which countries were gonna have governments that fell. You know, there was no…

CLAY: (laughing)

KELLY: (laughing)

BUCK: There was no sports.

CLAY: He picked Villanova, by the way, Jesse. Have you done a bracket? Do your kids do a bracket? I’ve got my kids filling them out. We have a family bracket challenge. You guys do this?

KELLY: We have a family bracket challenge, and on the line is somebody gets to pick all the entertainment options for that night which whoever in the family wins gets to pick the entertainment options, and I have a son who loves the worst board games in the world. We’re all just praying he doesn’t win, otherwise we’re toast.

CLAY: What is the worst board game in the world?

KELLY: There’s a Jaws board game. I can’t explain it on the radio.

CLAY: Jaws! (laughing)

KELLY: It’s the most atrocious, complicated thing. So you could say Jaws or you could say a classic like Monopoly or Risk. We play those all the time as a family, but they always end in a family fight. Every time.

CLAY: They also never end.

KELLY: Oh, they never end and when they finally end everyone hates each other. So those are probably the top ones.

CLAY: Outstanding stuff, Jesse Kelly, his show 6 to 9 p.m. on many of these same Premier stations. Appreciate you, my man.

KELLY: Be good, boys.

BUCK: Thanks, Jesse.