The Return to American Exceptionalism Begins in 2022

CLAY: As we come up on the end of the 2021 year for Buck and I, want to just talk with you a little bit about what the experience of the first six months has been like for both Buck and I being able to be with you guys for 12 to 3 every single day, and this is kind of the way I wanted to close out the show.

Buck was on with you Monday and Tuesday. I’m with you today and yesterday. We’re gonna have Michael Berry in for Christmas Eve. I know a lot of you still have to work, a lot of you are still gonna be wanting to get a daily update of what’s going on. We’re gonna have a best-of  on Christmas for you guys and then next week Michael Berry will be in. Buck and I will be back soon.

Ali who does great work on our staff — and I wanted to keep all the staff because when Rush passed, people had an opportunity to leave and go do many other different things, and almost the entire behind-the-scenes staff that had been working with Rush for a long time, they all stayed with us. And we knew how important and how big the shoes were that we were trying to fill.

In fact, Buck said it well, I thought, in a recent profile that was done of us where he said, you know, there was a recognition from our boss, Julie Talbott, that any one person trying to fill Rush’s shoes was gonna be incredibly difficult to do, which is why each of us have tried to take one shoe. And I got — and Ali, if you want to send this to me again, I thought it was really well said. One of the VIPs reached out to us and sent a message about what the experience for her had been listening to this show. And it was incredibly, you thought, gratifying to kind of put into perspective what she was saying about the experience that she had with the show. And I put Ali on the spot now and I can see her rushing to her phone to see if she sent it. She sent it to me.

But what I want you guys to know is Buck and I consider it to be an incredible privilege to talk to you every single day. I started doing radio, local Nashville sports talk radio — in fact, some of you listening to us on our local Nashville affiliate, 1510 AM, 98.3 FM, started listening to me 10, 15 years ago on local sports talk radio and now you listen to me here. And people said when I decided to make the move, “What in the world are you thinking, leaving sports?”

And the reason that I wanted to be able to talk to you guys every day is I love sports. Rush loved sports. Many of you listening to me right now love sports. I’m excited, as I said earlier, to watch tonight’s Thursday night NFL game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Tennessee Titans.

Sports are always going to be a big part of my life. But they don’t really matter. They don’t matter in the grand scheme of the world very often at all. A team’s gonna win, a team’s gonna lose. You can be happy or sad based on what happens there. But what matters in our country right now for me as a dad of a 13- and 11-year-old and a 7-year-old is seismically, massively important. And what I’m so gratified by in the first six months that we’ve been able to talk to you guys is I really do believe that Buck and I, through the platform that Rush helped to establish, are winning a lot of battles for sanity on a day-to-day basis.

And I got this message from an EIB VIP that Ali forwarded to me, and I thought she summed it up really well. And I just want to read it to you guys as a way of saying thank you. Thank you to her, but also to you guys. And here’s the message that she just sent, I believe today, and Ali just forwarded it to me during the show and I read it during one of our commercial breaks, and I want to say thank you to her for sending this.

This is from Susan and Al:

“Clay and Buck,  I want to thank you and congratulate you for doing a fantastic time carrying on the EIB tradition of Rush Limbaugh. My husband and I have listened to Rush for the 33 years he was on the air. Needless to say, like millions of our Rush friends we were so sad and devastated when Rush passed away last February. He truly was the Greatest Of All Time, an encouragement and inspiration to us all and a friend we could listen to each day.

“You both have done an amazing job continuing Rush’s fight for all that’s good about the USA. I think it was brilliant to not have one person but two step into Rush’s shoes. And the fact that you are a younger generation is sheer brilliance because you are appealing to the younger generation of conservatives. Our son is 34 and has always been conservative, but he rarely listened to Rush because he had heard too much of the mainstream media disparage him. One day recently he said to me, have you heard Clay and Buck? They are fantastic and are perfect for my generation. He listens to your podcast so he can hear you when it’s convenient. He even set your podcast up on my phone. But I’m able to listen to you live so rarely, use it. LOL.

“We love everything about your show, from your commentary to your guests. You both make a great team and make your listeners feel like they’re right there with you, just like Rush did. And we love the fact that you both continue to give a daily salute to Rush. He will never be forgotten, and you are giving us all hope and encouragement. The best is yet to come in the USA. Thank you, and God bless you both. Susan and Al.”

Thank you to Susan and Al. I mean, I think that is just so perfectly well said. That’s what Buck and I are trying to do for all of you guys every single day, and so far in the first six months — I know I’m speaking for Buck as well — we couldn’t be happier to be able to speak to you guys every single day.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: It’s gonna be really interesting to see as we roll into 2022, that I know 2021 for so many of you out there listening has been an incredibly difficult year, with all that has gone on, for a variety of different reasons, both business-wise, personal, professional, so many different challenges. But I feel like we started to see sanity returning in a big way in November.

I feel like the story of 2021, in terms of moving into 2022, is what happened in Virginia. I believe — and I am a wild optimist — I really do believe that things are always going to get better. And I believe that if you look at American history, sanity typically prevails. Benjamin Franklin said, “Passions govern, and they never govern wisely. ” We have allowed social media passions to govern our country for much of the past several years. Then we combined it with a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic, and our response to it has been a disaster. But I believe every single day there are more people signing up for Team Logic, for Team Reality, and for Team Sanity. And I know that many of you out there listening to this show are fervent believers in all three of those things.

And I think the great masses of Americans are going to rise up in 2022 as we saw them rise up at the end of 2021. And I believe we are going to see a red tide the likes of which we may have never seen before in the history of this country. And I believe many of the people supporting that red tide are going to terrify Democrats ’cause I think what you’re going to see in 2022 across this country as a red tide sweeps is you are going to see white, black, Asian, and Hispanic people at levels that you have never seen before taking up arms to defend the traditional values of America by running to the ballot box and supporting the idea of American exceptionalism and excellence. And that is going to be the overriding story of the entirety of 2022.

And so while 2021 was an incredible challenge and it followed on the back of 2020, which was also an incredibly difficult year, I know that a lot of you feel like the last 18 months, 19, 20 months or so have lasted 10 or 15 years, but I believe we are seeing the dawn, we are seeing the emergence of a new bastion of American sanity. And if you think, as I do, that Joe Biden is Jimmy Carter 2.0, remember what followed Jimmy Carter. The Reagan revolution.

We are poised — and what did the Reagan revolution do? It restored American exceptionalism and excellence to this country. And Reagan was wildly popular because he believed that America was the greatest country that’s ever existed in the history of the world. Right now, the Democratic Party at its core believes that America is an evil, racist, sexist, awful place.

Americans don’t believe that. Americans know that if you study history, there has never been a freer and better country in the history of the world than the United States. Individual elections can be wrong. But the overall trajectory of American life is embracing our own exceptionalism and our own excellence and not running from the challenges before us. Which is why I believe that 2022 is poised to be one of the greatest years for those of you who value freedom and honesty and truth and justice that we have ever seen in the history of this country. And that is where we are headed.

And I think from 2022 it’s gonna head right into 2024 and another shellacking. And the Democratic Party founded on the idea of defunding the police and “everything is racist” and America is a fundamentally awful place is going to give up the ghost and be destroyed. That is where we are headed.

And that, my friends, is why I hope all of you will join us come January 3rd when we embark upon what I believe is gonna be one of the greatest years in the history of America, and we’ll be with you for three hours every single day along that ride.