BUCK: Let’s just start with this, ‘cause, Clay, there’s a legal component of this that I wanted to get to. First off, here’s what it sounds like. If you were to, say, over the weekend walk past… If you’re a neighbor of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Virginia, here’s what you were hearing.
BUCK: It’s interesting on so many levels. One, Clay, they’re not trying to make it a case. They’re not gonna convince Justice Kavanaugh of the constitutionality of abortion by shrieking like morons on his front lawn. It’s meant to be a threat. That’s one part of it. And the other part of this is it’s actually not legal to do this under Virginia law. There is a statutory you cannot gather and protest at someone’s home and essentially disrupt the peace, but the police aren’t doing anything.
CLAY: Yeah. This is one where I keep regardless of your politics — Democrat, Republican, independent, indifferent — the idea that you should be able to show up outside of someone’s house in a neighborhood and scream at them… And you talked about this last week, Buck, the fact that you lived in Washington, D.C., where people were doing this outside of your apartment building, not at you but at other people.
I just fundamentally reject this, and I think the overwhelming majority of the American public does, too, regardless of their politics, which is why we got this sort of awkward tweet. I thought Jen Psaki had already retired, by the way, as press secretary because she has introduced her heir apparent. But the White House this morning, early on Monday… I’ll read this; this came from Jen Psaki:
So to me this feels… They’re not directly saying, “Don’t protest,” but it feels like a fig leaf because, Buck, what I’m concerned about is what we started talking about being concerned about the moment this Justice Alito opinion leaked, which is violence ensuing. And one of the Supreme Court justices that is right now in a 5-4 majority being targeted for violence.
And if you watch those videos and you saw those protests over the weekend in the Washington, D.C., area outside of Supreme Court justice homes, you could easily see, Buck, how that could turn violent, how somebody could bring a Molotov cocktail like they did that got thrown, I believe it was in — was it in — Wisconsin where that thing got thrown over the weekend, Buck, into an antiabortion clinic?
BUCK: Yes. It was in Wisconsin because they weren’t doing a good… Yes, it was an anti-abortion group in Wisconsin. “If abortions aren’t safe, you aren’t, either,” is what they wrote on the walls. That is a threat. In legal terms, in moral terms, that is —
CLAY: A direct threat.
BUCK: — “We’re coming for you.”
CLAY: And I think they’re aware that this is a really bad look for them, and – look, the politics of this potential Supreme Court case are more complicated than most people want to acknowledge. But standing outside of elected officials’ homes and screaming at them — not to mention while carrying the signs that they were, the groups that were acting in that way — that doesn’t reflect well on Democrats. And I think, again, this is a little bit of a fig leaf.
‘Cause, remember, over last week they refused to condemn the idea when all these Supreme Court justices were having their home addresses circulated and it was being announced that there were going to be protests at their homes. And by the way, this goes across the board. If conservatives suddenly didn’t like a decision that the Supreme Court put out, I think that protesting in residential areas in front of justices’ homes is just flat-out wrong, period. And that is a content-neutral position that I believe the overwhelming majority of the American public agrees with.
BUCK: I’m sure you saw as well — a lot of people listening certainly saw — that there were these… To call them “protests” is actually to dignify them more than they deserve ’cause there was true lunacy on display at Catholic churches, including here in New York, on Mother’s Day where you had activists — you probably saw some of the video — I mean, there was one activist who was saying, “I want to kill babies!”
CLAY: I saw that.
BUCK: Screaming, “I want to kill babies!” in front of a Catholic church. And I just want to say to the left-wing pro-abortion base: “Keep it up. Keep showing up in churches, in Catholic churches, destroying the peace of that service, showing disrespect to the parishioners,” because a lot of people are watching, including Latino voters who, as we’ve all been talking about, those recent polls — 52% in the most recent polling that’s out there at the national level — 52% percent for the GOP among Latinos, 39% for Democrats.
CLAY: That’s NPR, by the way, Buck. That’s not, you know, some right-wing organization that’s doing that poll. That’s the NPR poll showed Hispanics plus 13. To put that in context, white voters were plus nine Republican. So if that is accurate, Hispanics have become more Republican in the past several years than white voters have.
BUCK: I am of two minds of this, Clay, because as we get closer and closer to the actual midterms, on the one hand there’s a part of me that is encouraged by the fact that the Democrats have not made a single adjustment, really, that shows me they’re serious about trying to limit the damage of these midterms to them. They have not made a pivot where I go, “Uh-oh. They’re gonna try to convince everybody they’re not as crazy. “
But then there’s also this part of me as things are getting crazy out there on this Roe issue with these activists and the threats and the going after Supreme Court justices and the leak of the Supreme Court draft decision, that they’ll cheat and they’ll intimidate and they’ll actually fight dirty, right? So on the one hand, I see they’re not making the intelligent political moves you’d need to win fair and square. On the other hand, I realize, “Oh, so is this gonna be some kind of a covid play going into the fall, mail-in balloting?”
CLAY: That’s what I was saying.
BUCK: They’re gonna try something, because policy-wise, they’re hitting the gas pedal as they’re getting close to the cliff.
CLAY: Yeah. (laughs) That’s a good description. On Friday they came out and said, “Hey, we may have a hundred million new covid cases in the fall and winter.” Now, they’re trying to make that argument if they don’t get still more dollars for covid. But I read that, and I thought, “They are laying the groundwork again, Buck, for unlimited mail-in voting, for unlimited absentee ballots, for abilities to get ballots into the election tally that otherwise would not have been allowed or considered to be appropriate just like they did in 2020.”
Now, we can talk about what the tally is whether it’s legitimate and whether 81 million people voted for Joe Biden or not, right? But the reality was the biggest part of the rigged election was Big Tech, to me, and the change in the voting rights, so that you could get all these mail drops so that everything was changed — and they did that predicated on covid.
A lot of people thought, “There’s no way they can make the argument for that again in November of 2022; we’re then two and a half years into covid,” and yet when they’re coming out and saying they may have a hundred million new cases in the fall and winter, it’s hard for me to not think that is laying the groundwork for this to happen all over again.
BUCK: This is the only thing that makes sense. What you’re discussing, what you’re describing here where there’s some strategy, there’s gonna be a dishonest strategy to try to at least limit the annihilation that seems to be coming from the Democrats. ‘Cause let’s just take a moment, a step back right now. Look at this Biden administration. You got record high inflation, all right, and there’s nothing…
Usually, Clay, as you and I know from doing this, there’s usually, “What is the Democrats say on the other side, right?” They’ll have their fusillade — good word: their fusillade — of talking points to support their side. We can sit here and talk about 8.5% inflation, highest in 40 years, worst war in year since World War II and the real prospect of a nuclear exchange if it keeps going in a certain direction, baby formula shortages, stock market absolutely tanking, people’s 401(k)s getting crushed, low labor market participation, any wage increases getting wiped out by inflation. What have I left out?
CLAY: Keep going! The murder rate skyrocketing, police under siege, border at its worst level maybe in the history of our southern border ever existing with Mexico, going almost all the way back to when we actually had a war with Mexico in 1846. Honestly, when you talk about the issues on either side of the border right now, it’s almost impossible to point to anything.
Which is why, Buck, they’ve already tried to move beyond the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade to say, “Gay marriage is at stake! Contraception is at stake! Your ability to have kids who are gay go to classrooms!” They’re trying to follow that down the slippery slope because really, I think, all they’re gonna have is arguing cultural issues. But I don’t know that that motivates people to get out and vote when we’re talking about an economy in the tank like it is right now.
CLAY: People are going to tune out in the summer. And honestly, Buck, there’s even an argument that three-week of this opinion in the event it comes out is actually going to spread out the reaction so you don’t get that massive immediate reaction, ‘cause imagine if the Supreme Court comes out at 10 a.m. on some random Wednesday and overturns Roe v. Wade and there was no real indication that might not legitimately happen beforehand it’s a five-alarm fire going off. Now even that anger is likely to, I think, recede and moderate in the six weeks.
Now, that’s presuming that we don’t get, which I hope we don’t, a true act of violence directed towards the court, which is my fear, particularly with these protests going on and everything else. But if we get the normal release, which would have happened, when, in late June right as we get ready for July 4th? If we get the normal release of this opinion, then I think even that is going to fade into the summer —
BUCK: Yes.
CLAY: — and then by the fall everything has fallen apart with the economy, it’s gonna be hard to argue anything matters. Like James Carville said back in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.” This is an economic election in 2022.
BUCK: I’m just worried. I think everything… All of that analysis, I think, is spot-on. I just think that my anxiety, my concern over them fighting — over the commies fighting — dirty is getting higher and higher, because that’s gonna be their only option.
CLAY: It’s their only option.
BUCK: That’s the only play. I don’t see another play for them it puts.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
CLAY: That of course Senator Chuck Schumer out in front of the White House. He later had to apologize for that language. But that is effectively what is being said as the intensity of the protest continues to grow around Supreme Court justices and even their home residences. We know they’ve put in fences around the Supreme Court to try to protect it. Also this is Marc Thiessen saying: Protests outside the homes of Supreme Court justices are actually illegal, and the protesters should be arrested. Listen to this.
THIESSEN: It is illegal to protest outside of a Supreme Court justice’s house. 18 U.S. Code 1507 says, “It is illegal to, quote, protest near a building or residence occupied or used by a juror, judge, witness, or court officer with the intent of influencing that judge, juror, witness, or court officer in the discharge of his duty.”
So these protests outside their homes which are meant to intimidate them, what they’re doing is they are tampering with a judge. You can’t tamper with a judge. You can’t tamper with a juror, and you can’t tamper with a Supreme Court justice. It is against the law! So the Biden administration ought to have — the justice has a responsibility to tell these protesters to disperse or they’ll be arrested.
BUCK: It’s a big deal, by the way. Judicial tampering is usually treated as a very serious thing, and judges in particular hate it. So that’s interesting, of course.
CLAY: Well, no doubt. And if we’re gonna talk about the Department of Justice under Merrick Garland that was sending notices that they were going to investigate parents for speaking out against their kids wearing masks, for speaking out against CRT at school board meetings, if they were going to call them domestic terrorists, this would seem to be a statement where there is clear violation of the law afoot.
And you would easily be able to — I think, Buck — pick and choose a few people who are organizing these protests and charge ’em with violating the law here. And look, I believe in the First Amendment. You do too. They can make their arguments as they see fit. But you’re not permitted, as you just heard, to do so outside of the private residential home of a judge.
CLAY: What do you think would be happening, Buck, if these were right-wing protesters? They would already have been arrested and it would be January 6th and an insurrection continuing.
BUCK: DHS guys with long guns and DOJ with long guns would be outside the homes protecting them right now.
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