Why Jussie Smollett Deserves Severe Punishment

CLAY: He tried to inflame racial tensions and further divide an incredibly divided country already entirely for his own benefit based on a lie.

BUCK: Somebody who is under a fair amount of scrutiny and loss of public support right now — oh, we could fill in so many names there: Biden, the Cuomos — but maybe have the worst week yet of his professional and public life would be none other than Mr. Jussie Smollett, who we can’t… Clay and I wanted to bring you audio of this because it would be amazing. He is currently testifying.

It is closed trial. The trial is closed to the media, which it should not be. But the judge, I’m sure, realized that this is gesture… I’s not only Jussie Smollett who’s humiliated by this, Clay. It’s the entire media apparatus, including the vice president of the United States, who was tweeting about a modern-day lynching and all this stuff. I never believed this story.

I had blue checks who were coming at me and saying they’re experts in criminal justice and why don’t I believe him. I’m like, you guys are just not very smart. This is obviously not true. Part of this was for me, Clay, that it was the most galling, I would actually say… You know, I’m a little squishy when it comes to nonviolent crimes.

I tend to be like, people should get another chance. I don’t know. I mean, I trying to be a fair-minded guy, except, you know, for nonviolent crime. Violent crimes, I’m always like, lock ’em up for a long time. Sorry. Jussie lectured the country after he had been caught. You remember this?

CLAY: Oh, yeah.

BUCK: He walked out of the courtroom when Kim Foxx, a progressive, Soros-backed prosecutor in Chicago — as the progressive prosecutors are ruining the country, as we all know, making a lot of people unsafe. People are dying because of their ideas. Kim Foxx tried to not just make this go easy on him, try to make the whole thing go away, shut down the case and shut it off forever. And Jussie came out and lectured us about how he was innocent and how people should have believed him after we caught him buying underlying. So I say the guy should go away for a few years. I say lock him up. I think he needs some time.

CLAY: I think he should go to prison for years, and to the extent that that we use our criminal justice system to send messages, sometimes people get prosecuted to the full extent of the law not only because of what they did but because of the importance of the message that needs to be sent. Look at what Jussie Smollett tried to do.

He tried to inflame racial tensions and further divide an incredibly divided country already entirely for his own benefit based on a lie that he knew would sell and travel, because of the media’s obsession with finding examples of anti-white racism and trying to magnify it and make it look like a larger contextual issue in the country.

And the reason why I think Jussie deserves a massive punishment is because he tried to trade on that antagonism to bolster his career and his own ability to make money — and, as a result, I think he should have to bear the consequences of being caught in his lie more severely than your usual nonviolent criminal would.

BUCK: I mean when people are obviously guilty and then they get away it, you generally don’t expect them… OJ didn’t come out after the verdict, at least not that I remember and right away start sneering at everybody about how, you know, how could anyone have…? I mean, he did later on —

CLAY: He said he was gonna find the killers, which he’s still pursuing, yes.

BUCK: Right. But I mean OJ, you know, obviously… You know what? That’s a bad example because he did say that about the real killer.

CLAY: Well, I think it’s interesting, Buck. Why is this trial not on television? Why is the Epstein-related Maxwell trial not to television? It seems to me that trials that can embarrass the left-wing intelligentsia in this country find their way onto the television dial quite a bit less than ones where they can be validated.

BUCK: To be fair, I was 10 when the OJ trial happened. So old man Travis remembers it better than I do.

CLAY: There’s a great book. Before Jeffrey Toobin became The Toobinator, he wrote a great book, The People vs. OJ Simpson that I actually really enjoyed.

BUCK: Actually that was made into a good TV series. I saw that. Are people calling him The Toobinator now? That’s rough.

CLAY: It’s better than I guess maybe, given there might be some kids out there who have to get a lesson from their parents about what exactly went on there. So I’m calling him “The Toobinator.