CLAY: Let’s start with this “Let’s go, Brandon” craziness, this absurdity with Southwest Airlines. I’ll mention this. Florida-Georgia game. I was down in Jacksonville over the weekend. I look up in the sky; there’s a plane trailing a banner that says, “Let’s go, Brandon.” Last night in Atlanta before Game 5 of the World Series, also a banner saying, “Let’s go, Brandon.”

But, Buck, when you saw the Southwest Airlines report — and we don’t know it’s true. It’s being investigated. There’s audio that suggests he might not have been saying, “Let’s go, Braves,” which could make sense because the flight originated in Houston and he could have been trying to have a little bit of fun with a Houston based flight crew when they landed in I think it was Albuquerque, New Mexico. But left-wing, Blue Checkmark Brigade members have absolutely lost their minds over this story.

BUCK: On every level. It’s amazing, because, first of all, let’s just assume… Clay, we have to play out the different possibilities here.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Let’s assume for a moment that it is as was initially reported and said, and now Southwest has put out a “We are investigating this,” right? “We do not want people sharing think private beliefs on work time.” Okay. Hold on a second. I would be so curious if all the Blue Check Brigade, as you have pointed out, who have insisted that the NFL not have a uniform policy on protests during the national anthem, are they supportive of a Southwest pilot? Why is it there’s a 99.9% correlation without even checking but you know it’s there, that people who supported Kaepernick and the knee — we’ll talk more about Kaepernick later, all these different players — on company time.

CLAY: Yes. In uniform, at work.

BUCK: In uniform, at work. Why is it that one set of rules but the other set…? We all know, of course. Intersectionality, oppression — we all know — historical injustice, whatever. But that’s actually not rules; that’s double standard. So that’s one aspect, rather, of this. Another perspective on this would be that we have to all show up and go to companies day in and day out.

Buy from them, interact with them, that show how much they love Black Lives Matter, that take very left-wing positions, that want preferred pronouns in the email signatures. I can’t tell you how many people in New York City — I mean, I really can’t tell you because they tell me, “Please don’t say this or I’ll get fired” — reach out to me from some of the most prestigious investment banks, law firms, places that you think might be kind of separate from this, ’cause they’re all about making money, right.

You see that they don’t actually feel comfortable not putting their email signature with their preferred pronouns because it has become just a mandate from H.R. to bend the knee. So we interact with extreme left-wing wokeness in the corporate world all the time, and are just supposed to stomach it.

But the moment that the libs are exposed to one person making a joke — let’s be very clear: It is a joke as well as a political rallying cry — they lose their minds. But also just throw this out there, Clay. If he said, “Let’s go, Braves,” they would still be kind of upset, not upset but kind of upset because of the cultural appropriation and the tomahawk chop and all rest of it.

CLAY: Some of the things that were put out about this Southwest investigation… First, I want to go back to what you said, ’cause I was talking about this on Fox News this morning. For five years, people have lectured me that Colin Kaepernick has the right — in uniform, at work — to endorse political opinions. My position has been pretty straightforward.

It is: In general, I don’t think it’s smart for people in uniform at work to endorse political causes. And I wrote about this a lot in my book, but the one I used as an example is if you went to McDonald’s to get a Big Mac, and when you walked up to the front desk and you ordered a Big Mac at the counter of McDonald’s — which, by the way, prices are up 6% thanks to Biden inflation at McDonald’s, by the way.

But if the person you were ordering the hamburger from said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t order that. Meat’s murder,” I would understand if McDonald’s didn’t want that person to be working inside of their establishment. You are entitled to believe that meat is murder, to be vegan, to be the biggest supporter of PETA out there on the planet. But you aren’t entitled in uniform, at work necessarily.

So it’s ironic to me that all of these who have been praising Colin Kaepernick for the five years — we need to talk, and we will, later in the show about the ridiculousness of his new Netflix special going to your point about major media corporations and corporations in general embracing left-wing agendas. That a pilot landing a plane — and I would consider myself to be an expert in Southwest Airlines flying, Buck. I fly Southwest everywhere and have for years, not to brag. This is a little bit of a brag.

BUCK: This might be why there’s so much trash-talking about Spirit from you, sir. Just gotta put that out there.

CLAY: I’ve got over a million Southwest Airlines miles. What was the up-in-the-air movie where like the George Clooney gets greeted…?

BUCK: Ultra-platinum, triple-diamond, whatever, yeah.

CLAY: I am the highest level of apex level of Southwest flier you can be, and the reason why this is significant is because the flight attendants and the pilots themselves on Southwest often makes jokes. In other words, when they’re on the PA making the announcement when they’re doing the, “Hey, the mask may drop down. Hey, make sure your belts are buckled,” all these things, there are many flight attendants and pilots who make jokes during that process.

So if he said it, it is a viral meme joke. It’s not as if it was a direct, calculated thing. He didn’t say, “Hey, welcome to Albuquerque. Abortion is murder.” You know? I mean — or, you know, whatever the contrary could be. It’s not that strong of a political comment even if he made it, and I think he probably made it as a joke, but there are reports that it was actually, “Let’s go, Braves.”

BUCK: So what’s also funny here is the pearl clutching from the libs under the Biden administration when they pretend that this is about “decorum,” as they’re saying. I can’t remember the NPR tweet offhand but it was something like, “Let’s go, Brandon” has become a chant that is in place of a vulgar anti-Biden slogan. And we sit here like, “Yeah, that’s right.”

They had four years of celebrities chanting, shouting, tweeting, meaning the most horrific stuff. They were putting out naked drawings of Trump where they were accentuating certain aspects of his and de-accentuating others. They were doing the grossest, most tasteless stuff, like The Atlantic. We’re talking about the top of the media heap. They were appalling in what they did and said about Trump. And now they’re gonna do the whole, “Oh, but it’s vulgar to say…” So this is why the more they chafe, the more they rage at “Let’s go, Brandon,” the more everybody needs to shouting this from the rooftops —

CLAY: From the rooftops.

BUCK: — which is what this shows us in the Southwest incident, it really bothers them, and why does it bother them? Because the Biden administration isn’t funny ha-ha. It’s actually the kind of ridicule where it cuts deeply because it is absurd, because they are inept, because that Joe Biden was ever going to unite country and bring us out of covid.

The economy is an unfunny joke in many ways, but it’s clearly — to other people — something that they to want avoid, a realization of, a recognition of at all costs. This is the emperor. The emperor’s walking around in a blue Oxford shirt without any pants on, and some of us are noticing.

CLAY: And the other thing is, liberals can’t handle being made fun of. They’re good at making fun, but suddenly when it gets pointed on them, they can’t handle it. This is Asha Rangappa. I’m not sure exactly —

BUCK: Asha Rangappa from CNN — I know her from back in the day —

CLAY: Did you see what she tweeted about this?

BUCK: — for the dumbest take you can ever find anywhere.

CLAY: “As an experiment, I’d love for a Southwest Airlines pilot to say, ‘Long live ISIS’ before taking off. My guess is the plane would be immediately grounded, the pilot fired, and a statement issued by the airline within a matter of hours.” I mean, yes, you’re probably right. If a pilot endorses a terrorist organization as he is preparing to fly an airplane — given the fact that airplanes have previously been hijacked by terrorist organizations — there would probably be an investigation into what the pilot was saying.

And, by the way, when we come back there are probable some people out there in our audience still, Buck, that aren’t that familiar with “Let’s go, Brandon,” we may need to give them a little bit of a tutorial on how this came to be. But I will point this out, too, about libs losing their minds — they are — did you see this? I couldn’t believe that this was going on. This is Tristan Snell tweeted. “‘Let’s Go Brandon’ has become the MAGA version of ‘Sieg Heil.'” This is a real thing that people are saying, that this is a Nazi statement.

As an experiment, I’d love for an @SouthwestAir pilot to say “Long live ISIS” before taking off. My guess is that 1) the plane would be immediately grounded; 2) the pilot fired; and 3) a statement issued by the airline within a matter of hours

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) October 31, 2021

BUCK: They are desperate to shut this down because they know implications of humiliation and ridicule for the Biden administration is the collapse not just of his agenda, but of their political prospects and the Democrat Party going into the midterms with repudiation, not just loss — we think loss is looking pretty likely — with repudiation of their agenda, and that is something that they cannot abide. So they will get very nasty with this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CROWD: (chanting) Let’s go, Brandon!

BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay and Buck show. This is Buck in NYC right in the center of the storm of vaccine mandate showdown Monday here in New York. We’ll bring you the latest and all that in a second. Clay brought up a great point before the break. Clay’s back out in Tennessee. I know he was in Florida on Friday. Clay brought up a great point, though.

For anyone listening, the “Let’s go, Brandon” thing, just a quick, quick review. At a NASCAR rally, there was a guy being interviewed by a journalist. People were chanting “[Bleep], Joe Biden,” in the background. The reporter, in a very funny way… We can play the sound bite for you later to remind everybody. “But the reporter said, “‘Let’s go, Brandon.’ They’re chanting ‘Let’s go, Brandon.'” Clay and I, I think, agree with this.

She might have actually thought that’s what they were saying. It was a little bit… She had headphones on. It wasn’t really that clear. But it was just hilarious to everybody, and then it became, instead of chanting — ’cause we don’t want to be vulgar, and we want to be able to say things on the air — “[Bleep], Joe Biden.” “Let’s go, Brandon” has become a stand-in for that.

So with that in mind, you can imagine the journos and the libs — who pretended that Joe Biden was going to fix America this year and everything would be amazing — are very sensitive not just to criticism. But now we’ve gone with his plummeting polls and all the broken promises of unity and economic prosperity and jobs, jobs, jobs, all this stuff.

Now we have ridicule, true ridicule, and it’s catching on in a cultural way. This was a very important thing, Clay, that we had from the Trump administration. Trump wasn’t just a political movement. He was also a cultural phenomenon — the MAGA hats, the people gathering together in towns and cities across the country who felt like Trump almost had a tribe.

There were memes online, people like my friend DC Drano and others who built these huge followings of MAGA memes. They’re terrified of what that means now for Biden. What are the memes going to be? Mr. Magoo? It’s not good. Not good for Biden at all.

CLAY: No, and what I like about “Let’s go, Brandon” — we had this conversation before — there are probably people out there who are like me, parents, who don’t feel comfortable doing an F-Joe Biden chant in front of their kids. If you’re at a college game or an NFL game — this where this came out of — that can feel vulgar. This feels funny and enjoyable.

But also, “Let’s go, Brandon” is inciting the media, too, right, because the media for so long tells us things that are fundamentally not true, and that interview crystallized it, ’cause you could clearly hear all of the fans at the NASCAR event chanting “F-Joe Biden”” and the media member, the woman there, she was interviewing Brandon, who had won the race.

And she said, “Oh, listen! They’re all chanting, ‘Let’s go, Brandon,'” and it’s just such a funny clip that it has gone viral. So if you’re out there and you hear this “Let’s go, Brandon” thing and wonder, “Where is it coming from?” that’s the background, because we know not everybody’s sitting around on their phones aware of social media memes that are going mainstream and taking off.

BUCK: And it was, in a sense, the fake news being made in real time. You could observe it. Now, I don’t think that reporter was —

CLAY: Earphones on. I don’t think she was trying. Yes.

BUCK: I think she made an error, but that’s just another example of how… Now, there might have been also been a, “Well, they can’t be yelling, ‘[Bleep], Joe Biden,'” ’cause who would do that, right? So there’s other factors that may be entered into it. But it clearly wasn’t what they were saying, and it’s become a very funny meme. And it’s biting for the Biden administration because of how badly they’re doing.