BUCK: If you have happened to stumble upon CNN at any point in the last 12 months or so, there’s a very good chance — doesn’t matter what’s going on, it doesn’t matter if space aliens have invaded and are shooting massive destruction lasers at major U.S. cities — they’re probably covering the January 6 insurrection. I mean, the chance of there being — quote, “insurrection.”

As I’ve said (and I stand behind this), anyone who believes this is an insurrection is either lying or not very smart. I was in the CIA. I know something about how coups go and don’t. And, Clay, by the way, I just want to say, I know something about coups, and here’s the situation. They’re holding this January 6 insurrection day. They’re holding this day every day.

They’re trying to make it seem like this is a constant for their audience, which is crazy, right? They’re also pushing this to try to make it really hostile and difficult for Donald Trump to run again — which he could well do, and people are expecting him to do — and they also want to try to smear, undermine, and defame as many people around Trump and his orbit like Donald Trump Jr.

Household names from Fox News and others, they’re trying to make them seem like they were all in on it and that’s why they’re subpoenaing your phone records. There are a couple of big takeaways from this, which is why we don’t spend a lot of time talking about the January 6 insurrection because they want us to give it airtime. But I think they’ve actually stumbled into something.

These crazy Democrats on the committee have stumbled into something that I believe is going to be contrary — or against — their purposes, is going to contradict their overall narrative. This is Liz Cheney. Yes, she is technically Republican. This is Liz Cheney out there. I want to note for everybody, she is reading private text messages from the floor of Congress as part of this January 6th committee to humiliate people, and I don’t think she actually…It doesn’t work. It doesn’t actually have the intended purpose but that’s why she’s doing it. You’re gonna listen to this for a second, you’re gonna hear, it and then Clay and I are gonna break it down for you. This is Liz Cheney.

CHENEY: “Mark [Meadows], the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy,” Laura Ingraham wrote. “Please, get him on TV destroying everything you have accomplished,” Brian Kilmeade texted. Quote, “can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol,” Sean Hannity urged.

As the violence continued, one of the president’s sons texted Mr. Meadows quote, “he’s got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.” Donald Trump Jr. Texted. Meadows responded quote, “I’m pushing it hard. I agree.” Still, President Trump did not immediately act!

CLAY: So, Buck, first of all, Liz Cheney is a fraud, and she is doing exactly what you said: Trying to embarrass people by reading their private text messages on the House Floor. But I actually think this makes Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, Sean Hannity, and Donald Trump Jr. who she also quoted from look better because the number one thing that they always try to say about Fox News and Trump supporters is, “They’re a cult.

“They never criticize anything Donald Trump says or does.” But what you’re seeing here with these texts to Mark Meadows is that all of these people that have been criticized for just being a member of a fascist cult — you and I, by the way, also would have been in that same criticism — are willing to say, when things are occurring that they disagree with, “The president needs to act here.”

Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, Donald Trump Jr., significantly, they’re not running and hiding and pretending that this didn’t happen. This is the exact opposite of what an insurrectionist would do. They’re asking the insurrection to be stopped. It’s not in any way some sort of hostile takeover of the government. Some of the strongest advocates and allies of the president are saying, “Hey, you need to rein this in.”

BUCK: It was also clearly not a concerted effort from Trump and all of his top voices and influencers around him to do this. This was exactly… You know how we are the defenders of reality here. We are the deputy mayors of Realityville. We are telling people the truth when we say this was a riot that got out of control, which I would have to note, there were riots getting out of control before this on a regular basis across the country for which Democrats not only did they not condemn it, but they also in many cases were saying, “This is the response of people when they’re oppressed or because of racial justice.”

CLAY: They raised money to bail ’em out, Buck.

BUCK: Kamala was helping publicize the bail fund in Minneapolis, and let’s be very clear” Minneapolis, which just refunded its police —

CLAY: Thank God.

BUCK: — because of such an enormous increase in crime. Austin, Texas, re-funded its police because of the all-time record for, I believe, homicides and shootings in that city. These are all aftereffects. We’ve seen now the results of them making excuses for those riots and for it. But there’s another component of this. Clay, you’re spot-on: As soon as this happened, I was tweeting. I rarely curse on Twitter. I try to rarely curse in public in general.

People who know me in private know I’m a little salty. But I try not to curse in my public stuff. I’ve never heard you curse anywhere, either, even when you’re allowing… Even on my podcast I don’t. Anyway, I did curse on Twitter that day because I was furious with what they were doing, ’cause they were hurting the movement — the MAGA movement — and honestly, and they were hurting law and order. It was a bad thing that happened that day, no question about it, at that time.

I thought so, you thought so, Sean thought so, Laura thought so. Go down the line. We’re all like, “What is this? Don’t do this!” Have a hundred thousand people protest because you’re concerned about not just the election result, but how the election was conducted, which is a completely legitimate concern rooted in facts and reality when you’re talking about all the covid changes they made and the mail-in ballots and all the rest of it.

Have that rally of a hundred thousand people. No question about it, that’s patriotic. Don’t do what happened that day. Everyone listening to this knows this. They’ve blown this up now on the left to make it a much bigger deal than it was, calling it a coup and insurrection. Really? You know, QAnon Shaman was going overrun a National Guard, the FBI?

CLAY: As you pointed out, none of these guys are getting… You wrote eloquently on this. None of these guys are getting charged with treason or insurrection or any of those things. If they really thought that was the case, they would have charged them.

BUCK: And the other part of this, though, is think about the precedent that’s being set here. Congress can decide with really… What is the oversight on this? Maybe the courts step in, but if you’re expecting the D.C. Circuit court to bail out your freedom, talk to the maligned patriot General Flynn about how much you can trust D.C. judges to do the right thing. General Flynn deserves an apology times a thousand, and what we see here, Clay, is Congress using its powers to subpoena and take private messages — these are private messages —

CLAY: I understand.

BUCK: — these are phone-to-phone private messages —

CLAY: A question for you, by the way, Buck —

BUCK: — to embarrass people.

CLAY: I’m curious on this, I don’t know the answer. Does the White House chief of staff have a cell phone bill that’s paid for by the federal government —

BUCK: I’m assuming this is —

CLAY: — or is it his private cell phone?

BUCK: I think this would have been his private cell. I should check to be sure, to be clear. I’m not a hundred percent. But I would assume that if a Fox News hosts, for example, are texting him, it’s probably his private phone. I have at private phone number of plenty of people in the White House. Why would I call them on their government device?

CLAY: No, the reason I’m asking is I understand the discoverable aspects for public emails that here sending to somebody that public email. But this seems like a pretty expansive thing to get every text message that Mark Meadows was sending and be reviewing them. That seems like an expansive overreach.

BUCK: My understanding of this — and we should dig into this a little bit more ’cause again, folks, I don’t want to give too much oxygen to the January 6th commission nonsense, right? So this is one of the rare occasions we’re stepping in and it’s really to tell you that what they’re telling you is a bunch of bullcrap, that this was an insurrection overthrow of the government and also their overall thesis that Trump was parts of conspiracy to overturn the results by storming the Capitol.

All a lie. That’s all a lie. But, Clay, I believe they’re using subpoena power here the same way when I used to write up subpoenas at the NYPD for terrorism cases. I think that they’re using subpoena power here so they could get anyone’s communication involved in any way. I mean, this is why… I mean, they’re bringing in people from all over the place, and they’re also running roughshod over privilege claims, too, which is —

CLAY: That’s what I’m kind of getting at. This is the chief of staff of the president. We’ll talk about this a little bit more, but to your point, I think this is clearly designed to embarrass people. And I don’t think it works as an embarrassment device, but it does raise a lot of questions to me about what text messages should and shouldn’t be considered privileged and private when you’re trying to run the country. Those are really interesting questions.

BUCK: Could they…? I’m just wondering, would it be appropriate if Liz Cheney from the same day started reading some, I don’t know, maybe some very friendly text messages between Melania and the president at the time? They’re husband and wife, right? Could they do that just ’cause they feel like it? Is that the country we live in now? That feels like secret police stuff.

CLAY: It does. It feels really uncomfortable to me, Buck, honestly.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We’re talking about Liz Cheney making herself believe that she’s making people look bad by going through their texts on January 6th, And I actually think it makes Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, and Donald Trump Jr. all look better. But the larger context here, Buck, that I’m troubled by is, you’re just allowed to go through private text messages and examine them and decide to share them?

Take away politics from this for a moment. Whatever you do, would you want every out there listening for someone to be able to go through the texts that you sent to close family and friends on any given week on the fishing expedition to see if there’s something that they could embarrass you from inside of your texts? This, to me, seems to be in many ways a total fishing expedition designed to embarrass people.

Now, I think that this particular aspect has blown up in Liz Cheney’s face ’cause I think a lot of you are like, yeah, that was good for Brian Kilmeade and Donald Trump Jr. and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham for saying the same thing that you and I were saying, Buck, on Twitter, which is do not… like, leave, right? We voted for Trump. We wanted him to win. But this is not helping anything going forward.

I had the exact same opinion on Capitol issues as I did for months of rioting that was going on around this country, which is you have a right to share your political opinions. As soon as you commit a crime, you should be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law no matter what your politics are.

CLAY: Submitted. The January 6th committee, just so he everybody knows — and this was as of about two weeks ago. They have submitted, I think, 45 individual subpoenas to individuals and organizations. They’ve got Mark Meadows, Kash Patel (who is a former defense department official; he’s a friend of mine, Steve Bannon. I know Steve. You go down this list of people.

If your name was listed on the permit paperwork for the legal rally… By the way, this is amazing. By this standard, Clay, let’s say there was a… There have been things. For example, there was the attack on the federal courthouse in Portland that Antifa did during June of 2020, summer 2020. It might have been July or August. You can subpoena the records of every person who was even involved, let’s say, in a nonviolent protest nearby that then spiraled into this? You can pull their phone records — anybody listed on a permit for the protest — and go through their personal messages? These are people’s personal text messages.

CLAY: Why couldn’t you go through…? Like, Kamala Harris helped to raise money for rioters. Why couldn’t you go through every text message she sent during the riots that took place in the summer?

BUCK: Steve Bannon was in no way working for the government at this time, and they’ve got his text messages. So I want to be very clear. There’s not… It’s intentionally a chilling effect here. There’s the smear aspect of it and trying to embarrass people, and really the embarrassment should actually be reserved for Congress here the Democrats on this January 6 committee and Liz Cheney.

It’s appalling. You know, one thing, Clay — I’ve told you this all the time. I don’t know how people do this, switch sides things because they want to be liked by fancy people and they want to get a better book deal. I would just go get a better job. How could you be an adult who has dedicated their life in politics to one cause and then all of a sudden you decide — it’s one thing to change your mind or your opinions — to just smear and attack? What is Liz Cheney doing? I know she’s not gonna be in Congress much longer, most likely, but what is the purpose?

CLAY: The Lincoln Project and everything else. I mean, this is where my wife says, Buck, that my superpower is I just don’t care what anybody else thinks.

BUCK: It is a superpower.

CLAY: It is, to a certain extent, a superpower, and when I say “nobody else thinks,” I mean I care about the people that I’m responsible for: My wife and my three boys inside of my house, right? That’s the people that I’m responsible for. Everything else is just noise. She also says the reason why I don’t need therapy is ’cause I get to tell everybody exactly what I think for three hours every day.

And at the end of this show, Buck — and I’m sure you feel the same way. It’s such an incredible privilege in an era when everybody is so afraid to say what they really think, for three hours we get to say everything we think — and then when I leave the studio when I’m finished with the show, I don’t have any weight on my shoulders ’cause I said exactly what I think.

BUCK: People seeing me after hours are like, “Aren’t you a radio show host? You don’t talk that much.” I’m like (laughing), “Yeah, exactly. I just want to hang out now. I just want to read books and be left alone.”