CLAY: A lot of you are fired up about Mitt Romney as we were both fired up to start the show, talking about — well, what I think it’s fair to say is — a betrayal from Mitt Romney. Not any one particular incident, but this has been building, particularly related to me, to be the only Republican not to oppose masks on airplanes, being unwilling to show up to vote against the Biden vaccine mandate, and now you flip your vote on Ketanji Brown Jackson.

You didn’t think she was qualified earlier to be a judge at a lower-level court and now you suddenly think she’s qualified to be a judge at the Supreme Court? It doesn’t make any sense at all. By the way, Mitt Romney said, “Well, I thought she was outside of the mainstream. But then after meeting with her, I now think she’s in the mainstream.”

I’m paraphrasing his opinion. But all that says to me is, Buck, well, so you did a poor job the first time you considered her nomination and now you’re doing a better job? No. This is all transparent, this is ridiculous, and a lot of people from Utah want to weigh in. So, let’s go to Julie and Dave. They are fired up over Mitt.

BUCK: We got a lot of Utah right now coming. We got a Utah team coming in strong.

CLAY: Utah is showing up strong. Again, we’re number one in Salt Lake City. We appreciate all of you listening out there. Julie and Dave, what do you guys…? You both want to weigh in, I guess.

CALLER: (laughing) Hello. Well, I was told by your screener that I was to speak ,and my husband was to be a silent partner, which is the way it should be, you know?

CLAY: In all marriages, if you ask women, I think that’s certainly true. Certainly true at my house.

CALLER: No, I’m just kidding. No, he was going to have him on but the screener didn’t want us both to speak. We are live calling you from our residence. And we just wanted to weigh in that he is an embarrassment to us in Utah, and we just want everyone to know that. He does not represent the values here. We have so many children in this state, and the Ketanji Brown Jackson thing is just amazing to us, that he would side with that, given her record on sentencing regarding child porn. He is not responsive to his constituents.

We have emailed him on an issue, and it took him like six months to even reply to us, and it was a form letter that did not even address or make sense to the issue that we would email him about. We don’t know what his angle is. But we will actively campaign for and support any opponent that — conservative that — comes up against him. I know there is talk of our AG, Sean Reyes, throwing his hat into the ring against him. And we would be so excited for that to happen. I don’t know if it’s just spite or his ego regarding the Trump issue and that conservatives didn’t accept him as a president.

BUCK: Didn’t Trump endorse him?

CALLER: I think he did.

BUCK: I gotta check on that. I remember he met with him for secretary of state. I think Trump endorsed him.

CLAY: Yeah, I remember they had that awkward dinner.

CALLER: We didn’t vote for him.

BUCK: Yes.

CALLER: We did not vote for him this last go ’round, ’cause I could see the wolf in sheep’s clothing, if you want to put it that way.

BUCK: Can I just throw this out there? Trump did endorse him back in 2018.

CALLER: Did he?

BUCK: Yes.

CALLER: Well, regardless of that, we know his history. I don’t know if he’s playing a McCain and he just wants to be viewed well in the history books or like you guys are saying. You guys are spot-on with what you’re saying about him because he is just terrible.

BUCK: Well, thank you, Julie. You are an astute listener. We appreciate it.

CLAY: We appreciate everybody, and we got a lot of people who want to weigh in. And look. I think he should have a serious challenge in 2024, and I think what he is thinking he is going to do, Buck, is maybe he’s gonna run for president in 2024 and he’s gonna be the rebel. Look, Mitt Romney is… I mean, the best description I ever heard of Mitt Romney is the guy who’s in the fake photo that is in every frame that you buy in a department store. Right?

Like, Mitt Romney is the bland sort of well-kept, well-groomed white guy who’s in every photo in a picture frame, right? If you go into a department store, they have the fake photo that’s like the standard-bearer inside of the picture frame. That’s Mitt Romney. He stands for nothing. There’s no depth to him. He is a absolute, in my opinion, just wuss.

BUCK: I think you’re not alone here, given how every line has been lit up with callers from Utah on this issue specifically. Funny. We’ve just got Utah callers. People around the country are annoyed about what he’s done, too, but we got Brian in Layton, Utah. What’s up, Brian?

CALLER: Hello. Big fan, Buck. After the 2020 election, I would get annoyed when you kept talking about covid rather than a potential fraudulent election, but you were completely correct.

BUCK: Thank you.

CALLER: I’m a Utah voter and definitely didn’t vote for Romney in the primary and almost didn’t vote for him in the general, but I was lazy and filled the straight Republican ticket. I would definitely take that back and not make that mistake again. When I heard he voted to keep kids in masks, I was disgusted and I wrote him right away, and I got that same lame response that you mentioned earlier that he trusts the experts. That spineless response drives me crazy, because it is the leaders that we elected that are responsible to weigh all options —

CLAY: Amen.

CALLER: — like you’ve been talking on your show for years, for years. I recommend to everyone the book Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb, because we can’t trust experts. They have their bias, their skin is barely in the game, and we need leaders who have skin in the game that will weigh all options and be reasonable and smart like you guys. Thanks.

BUCK: Thank so much, Brian. Appreciate it. Although I think Nassim Taleb is a pro-mask guy, so we gotta check that one out. I’m pretty sure.

CLAY: But the stories do reflect, Buck, that experts get things wrong all the time. And the more of a limited expert you are the more likely you are to get things wrong in your chosen field. Take it outside of masking. Look at economists. Economists get everything wrong. They can tell you why something matters after it happens, but their forecasts are almost universally wrong.

BUCK: Well, this is also why the history of medical breakthroughs, scientific breakthroughs — really breakthroughs — comes athwart a consensus. Oh, there are people because they didn’t know something before. Usually when someone comes along with some great piece of new knowledge that is true, everyone around them, the system, the establishment, the apparatus doesn’t say, “Wow, you’re a genius.” They say, “Oh, that’s reckless. It’s terrible. What do you mean you want to sterilize instruments?”

CLAY: You want to wash your hands between surgeries? What are you, crazy!

BUCK: You want as much mucus and blood and stuff on your hands as possible when you go from one surgery to the next. That was the state of modern medicine, so to speak, until, what, the middle of the nineteenth century, give or take?

CLAY: Yeah, coming out of London they suddenly started saying, “Hey, maybe if we clean our medical equipment, maybe if we sterilize, maybe this could make sense,” and that was ridiculed by all the people in positions of power at the time.

CALLER: Hey, how you doing today?

BUCK: We’re good, Bob. What’s on your mind?

CALLER: Well, going back to when Romney ran for president back in 2012, I refused to vote for him for the simple fact that when Harry Reid accused him of not paying taxes for 10 years, Romney won’t even stand up and defend himself. And I figured if he’s not gonna defend himself, he’s not gonna defend the American people. So I wrote in Bill the Cat, a much more qualified individual.

BUCK: (laughing) All right. Thank you, Bob.

CLAY: You’re right. He doesn’t stand up for himself. Steve in Salt Lake City. Let’s get Steve in here as well.

CALLER: Hey, guys. Something happened to Romney between the first and second debate in 2012. I campaigned for him. Dennis Miller was right there ready to go to that second debate and keep going with him and something happened. He didn’t even go after Benghazi. He did have that good Russia comment, but something happened between that first and second debate back when he was running dependence Obama, and I’m still trying to figure out what that was.

BUCK: Steve, I remember those debates very well, and that first debate against Obama, Mitt Romney absolutely crushed him. It was not close. Even the Democrats spin room afterwards there was kind of a muttering, “Oh, that wasn’t good,” and then in the second debate when the Benghazi issue came up, Candy Crowley boxed out Mitt, so to speak, and decided to jump in in favor of Obama on the “did he call it a terrorist attack or not?” And that kind of turned some of the momentum ’cause CNN is a Democrat propaganda network so that’s not surprising.

CLAY: I also think historically there is a press… You’re right, he dominated in that first debate. Historically there is often the case… Trump was a disaster in the first debate against Joe Biden, and then just completely cleaned his clock the next time they went. The president often does a really bad job the first debate because he hasn’t been prepping as much as the contender has.

Because he’s the president of the United States so he’s worried about everything else. Man, I wish we could go back in time and change that first debate — now that I’m speaking about it — that Trump had with Biden, because if he had debated the second time in those situations like he did the first one, it would have been an utter destruction.