Why We Must Push Back on the Jan. 6th Lunacy

CLAY: We appreciate all of you hanging out with us on a day that will live in infamy, according to Kamala Harris. January 6th, you see, according to the vice president in her speech today at the Capitol. Buck, she said a lot of dumb things. In fact, even Dan Quayle sometimes looks around and thinks, “My God, what is this vice president saying?” By the way, also a vice president who got treated worse than Kamala Harris in the media.

Remember, Kamala Harris said, “If I were a white guy, I’d be treated a lot better”? I’m sure Dan Quayle was like, “Oh, really? I was a white guy back in the eighties. I didn’t get treated that well.” But Kamala Harris, Buck, said that this day is equivalent of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Of all the dumb things that she has said and frankly of all the dumb analogies that I have seen trotted out over the past few years — ’cause I think people are getting dumber in their analogy situation — this is one of the worst historical analogies I have ever seen.

I can’t even imagine that there are very many Democrats who see this and think, “Yeah, you know what? Those sound similar.” Thousands of people died in direct assaults upon the United States by foreign nations, that definitely sounds to me a bunch of selfie stick wearing and sharing people who decide to go into the Capitol because they’re angry about the election.

BUCK: Can I just add into this, Clay, that when they cite 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, think of what those events led to. A massive war in the Pacific. We lost thousands and thousands of soldiers, Marines, airmen. We dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You look 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan, the Global War on Terror, the invasion of Iraq. They are comparing the day of QAnon Shaman’s ascendance into the media lexicon to those other incidents.

Now just even vocalizing this you take a moment, you say, ‘Are we spending more time? Are we spending more breath? Is it so absurd that it is self-evident?” I worry, though, that there are people who if we don’t actually shoot down this lunacy will think that we’re running from it. No. This is actually the same people that think you should be wearing two masks on the beach alone. Joe Biden, by the way, thinks you should apparently wear a mask on the beach alone.

They are the ones who are making these kinds of outside comparisons, and notice how on the right we condemned right away everybody. They were reading off text messages from some of our esteemed colleagues in conservative media saying, “Where’s Trump? Shut this down! This is a mess. This is a disaster.” Have they ever said that BLM was a mess a disaster a disgrace and an ongoing insurrection in the summer of 2020 in this country in an election year meant to intimate voters? Have they ever said that? They still won’t say that.

CLAY: Of course not. And the only thing I will say is, I’d like to thank Kamala and Joe because if they hadn’t spoken out today and if we hadn’t started off the show talking about January 6th, I’m not sure — and I’ll accept responsibility partially for this — that I would have realized that there are still 83 people who are being held without due process inside of United States prisons in Washington, D.C.

And, to me, that should be a clarion call for many people out there. To your point earlier, Buck, there used to be legal organizations that would stand on principle over politics and say, “Hey, this is wrong. We support principle of the right to First Amendment.” We were using the ACLU defending neo-Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois, as a good example of somebody standing on principle even if they’re people who are advocating for a cause that you find reprehensible.

I’m thoroughly disgusted that there aren’t more lawyers willing to stand up and offer incredible legal representation — high-level legal representation — to these 83 people who are now stuck in prison facing minimal charges. I just made a donation to the legal defense fund, and in the days and weeks ahead, I hope we can give a little bit more attention to this ’cause I think it deserves it. This is all a total sham.

They’re gonna have a candlelight vigil in the Capitol today for January 6th. I have to think that that hyperbolic response is striking many of people in the middle of the country, right — middle of the road, not particularly political many nature — either they’re not paying attention, or they see the headline of Kamala Harris comparing January 6th to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor and they say, “Yeah, those aren’t remotely similar.”

BUCK: They’re doing this for a reason, folks. We should all be very clear about what that is. They want to either make sure Donald Trump does not run again — that’s part of this — or to make it essentially impossible based upon this narrative creation. I watched the speech; I’m sure you did too, Clay. I watched Biden’s speech and Kamala’s speech this morning. I read the transcript of Merrick Garland’s thing yesterday.

I couldn’t bring myself to sit there for the whole thing, but I watched Biden’s speech this morning. They blame it squarely on Trump. This is about politics. This is not about the sanctity of our democracy. This is not about protecting our sacred institutions for the leftists who are making comparisons like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor about this. It’s in order to use this to weaponize this as part of the narrative going forward.

It’s to embarrass, first, people who voted for Trump, to smear them all as insurrectionists and to try to prevent Donald Trump himself from feeling comfortable running again. That’s what they’re really hoping this will do — or, if he does run, he will be hamstrung by the realities of the insurrection narrative all around him because, remember, a lot of people vote based on just how it makes them feel to the cast that vote.

And so even with a failing covid policy and an open border and crime rate skyrocketing and an economy where now they’ve gotta take a page from Hugo Chavez’s book about the evil meat packers and all the rest of it — even with all that, Clay — there will be people in the swing states — they know this going forward, even in this midterm election — who go, “Ooh. I — I –I don’t know.

“We want normalcy, and anyone who supported Trump, they weren’t supporting normalcy and the insurrection,” and it starts to seep in their consciousness. That’s why the repetition and the exaggeration are so central to the propaganda, because people won’t even recognize how it affects their perception going forward.

CLAY: And here is one of the interesting things thinking about not only 2022 but 2024 as well that ties in with that. Right now, the Democrats have nothing to run on. Joe Biden has failed. Everything he has touched is much worse. You can just run through the list. Murders? Worse. Overall crime, which obviously ties into murders. The border, covid, which he claimed he was gonna shut down and which is continuing to set records every day so far this week.

What is Joe Biden actually going to run on? They have nothing. They are going to try to say, “Oh, 2022 is a rigged election,” okay. Before we even know what the results are? That’s really what this failed filibuster attempt is going to be, right, so they can immediately despite the fact they’re talking about they’re trying to save democracy. As soon as the 2022 election results my own when it’s a red tide, well, they’re going to say, “This happened…”

Wait for it, Buck. You know it’s gonna happen. “This happened because they changed the voting rules all over the country,” and they’re gonna continue this “democracy is under siege,” even though, let’s be clear: Stacey Abrams one of the patron saints of the Democrat Party right now; she never conceded. She lost by 50,000 votes in 2018. She’s running for election in 2022 as Georgia governor. She’s one of their patron saints of democracy and the importance. She’s never conceded that she lost.

BUCK: She’s a celebrated, fake governor on the left. They actually hold her up as some kind of a hero for refusing to accept the results of the election. And I think, Clay, we have to remind ourselves here for a moment as we’re going into this midterm that Democrats have a long and storied history of rejecting election results, and they also love to leverage a crisis or even the perception of one for an increase in their political powers in ways that have nothing to do with each other necessarily, right?

What’s the big push right now? It’s an attack on Trump. It’s meant to galvanize the whole January 6th insurrection narrative. It’s meant to galvanize the Democrat base. But really beyond that you can already see that they’re going to be using this to try to make Republicans aren’t able to annihilate them in the midterms and to push for this voting rights legislation. Voting rights legislation?

What does an insurrection have to do with voting rights legislation, I would ask anybody out there? And it’s, of course, the same thing. There’s a bad natural disaster somewhere? “Oh, we need the Green New Deal and to spend $5 trillion and child care for everybody and parental leave and all this,” and you say, “Well, hold on a second. What?” This is what they do? This is how they do the game.

CLAY: To your point, Buck — and I think it’s a good one — the Democratic campaign — I can already see it — in 2022 and 2024 is gonna be focused on shame. There are so many people in my industry who are public figures when I was in sports that were terrified to say they were voting for Donald Trump because they didn’t want to be shamed by others for saying they were a Trump supporter.

The Democrats, by branding everything racist, are trying to terrify suburban white voters who will decide this election, many of them white women. If they vote for Trump or the Republican Party in general, which they’re trying to tar and feather in conjunction with that, they are going to be considered racist. And that is the number one fear. The number one fear — you know this, Buck — of educated white people in this country, number one fear is that they’re gonna be called racist.

BUCK: Oh, if you went to a fancy school in America and you are running in elite circles, you would rather be called a traitor, a Russian spy — a murderer, probably — than being accused of being a racist, right? Someone accuses you of murder and you know you didn’t kill anybody, you’re like, “Yeah, whatever, that’s dumb.” Somebody accuses you of being racist, doesn’t matter if you are the most innocent and open-minded and wonderful person imaginable, that can stick to you in certain circles, at least, and that’s a problem.

CLAY: No doubt. Think about this, Buck. If you using your example, you have kids in an elite private school, right, let’s say New York City where you live. Is it better for you as a dad or a mom to get a DUI where you are 100% drunk as you can possibly be driving a car, or to be accused in the New York Times of having sent a racist email?

BUCK: Oh, 100% DUI.

CLAY: DUI.

BUCK: I’d go way beyond DUI!

CLAY: Multiple DUIs potentially. How high of a level of crime…? New York City public school parents, be ready. Certainly, any white-collar right, right, like embezzlement —

BUCK: Of course. Insider trading —

CLAY: — inside trading —

BUCK: — that’s what happenes on the tee times, insider trading.

CLAY: — gotten insider trading rap in —

BUCK: I think you go all the way up to violent felony and probably violent felony of a sexual nature. That’s worse than being called a racist publicly.

CLAY: Jon Gruden lost his job for homophobic emails and racist emails allegedly based on the release. He’s a former head coach of the Oakland Raiders. He would have been better off — I don’t think there’s any doubt — getting accused of major violent crime. Not up to murder, but if he had been accused of like three DUIs in three-straight months? He’s in Vegas? Way easier. I think he probably still keep his job.

BUCK: Probably true.