Left-Wing Comics Go After Biden

CLAY: We’ve been talking about how suddenly Saturday Night Live has become willing to make fun of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And, to a large extent, that feels like even comedians can no longer fail to acknowledge how unpopular Joe Biden and Kamala Harris actually are. I saw over the weekend, Buck, I was watching Bill Maher, and he had a good point, which we have made for basically a month now, that you have to ask the most central question about the Ukraine conflict, and that central question is:

“If Trump was such in cahoots with Russia,” which obviously he wasn’t, but, “why didn’t Vladimir Putin invade during the four years that Trump was in office? Why did he wait?” And that’s a question that the most anti-Trump people don’t have a good answer for. And building on that, even Trevor Noah — who I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him make fun of a Democratic politician, at least not in recent memory.

Even he was talking about how embarrassing it was for Joe Biden not to be able to get on the phone with the UAE or with Saudi Arabia, as he’s been attempting to negotiate for more oil so the price of oil wouldn’t be skyrocketing as much as it is. When people like Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, who took over for Jon Stewart… By the way, he took over for a legend. Trevor Noah taking over for Jon Stewart, is it fair to say that that’s been an unrequited disaster, Buck? In terms of influence, like, do you hardly even hear The Daily Show matter anymore?

BUCK: I think The Daily Show was probably the single most effective point of Bush criticism in the media during the Iraq war years for the Democrats, and I think that Trevor Noah isn’t able to get anywhere near, not even a fraction of the relevance. Although I do think he’s paid like $15 million.

CLAY: Yeah, of course he is.

BUCK: Corporate media, they can pay people whatever they want to pay him. But, yeah, no. He’s not.

CLAY: I just don’t remember him hardly making news, right, like in any way, negative or positive, since he’s taken over in any way.

BUCK: If he wanted to be relevant maybe he would follow more — and, you know, I’m sure his audience, oh, probably is, I don’t know, close to a million people maybe watch that show a night, something like that. But you see what Bill Maher’s done. Bill Maher is speaking to people on the right. Bill Maher is saying things that at least show a willingness to grapple with reality.

Although, as I said, don’t ask him about climate change ’cause he’s a lunatic on climate change. But on some issues — wokeness and covid stuff — he’s like, “Okay, enough is enough.” You know, there is a window here for people to actually speak to their own side, ’cause libs will never listen to you and me. By the way, centrist Democrats, I hope all of them listen to this show and give us a chance.

CLAY: I think we’ve got a lot of them, Buck.

BUCK: I think we got some.

CLAY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

BUCK: But I’m talking about the hard-core, Antifa supporting, announce my pronouns when there’s nobody even listening to me.

CLAY: If you’re a pronoun person, you’re probably not listening to our show.

BUCK: The pronoun announcers do not listen to this show. But there are Democrats who I think could speak to them and would be doing the country a service. By the way, we need to play the Trevor Noah.

CLAY: Yeah. That’s what I was gonna say. I want to play the Trevor Noah. This is one of the first times I remember even having a Trevor Noah clip that was circulating at all on social media. I saw he was trending, and I was like, “Oh, I wonder what he said,” and this is what he said.

BUCK: Now, he’s making fun of Trump, but there is some truth to what he’s saying, actually.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This is what it was, ’cause I remember when Trump was president I would always say whenever he was dealing with any of the tyrants on the world stage that you can name — whether it was Iran or North Korea or Putin or whomever — it was always, you don’t know how this guy is gonna react to you. You think about it this way. If you’re picking a fight, if you’re a bad guy, if you’re a bully, and you’re gonna pick a fight with someone in a bar, you don’t pick a fight with the guy that you don’t know what he’s gonna do in response. You pick a fight with the guy who is gonna say, “Oh, I’m sorry. Okay, oh, can I buy you a drink?” Trump wasn’t the “I’m gonna buy you a drink” guy, that’s for sure.

CLAY: No, and I think that’s underlying the essence of why Putin didn’t invade Ukraine. He was afraid of what Trump might do — he didn’t know — and there’s an element of value in having that uncertainty associated with it. Right now, Russia knows what… I guarantee you they can sit down and map out exactly what Joe Biden is going to do because the United States is trying to be very clear in creating expectations for Russia.

Trump would not have played that game, and while Trevor Noah is making a joke at the end there, the premise of his joke is accurate. The UAE and Saudi Arabia would not have refused to speak with Donald Trump on the phone — and, by the way, I think if Donald Trump were president, first of all, Ukraine, I don’t believe, would have been invaded by Vladimir Putin.

But if it had been, I think Trump would have had good enough relationships in the Middle East, Buck, that I believe Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries that are allied with Saudi Arabia would have produced more oil. I think they would have been willing to help to defray the cost of oil around the world by producing more, in order to curry favor with Trump and have and maintain good relationships with his administration. I really do believe that.

BUCK: Let’s be honest. (laughs) Trump’s advisers didn’t want to upset him.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: You can imagine if you’re one of these dictators that you think you’re gonna outplay chess on the Trump board, he might flip the… Sorry, outplay Trump on the chessboard. The Trump board would also be cool. He might try to flip the table.

CLAY: Surprised that’s not its own business with the Trump family right now.

BUCK: I may have stumbled on something there.