Boris Johnson to CNN: American Democracy Is Alive and Well

BUCK: Here was kind of a funny moment. CNN is sitting down with prime minister of the U.K., Boris Johnson, and I think in the Democrat media certainly, Clay, there’s this sense that you can never overplay or oversell (warbling), “What a danger to our democracy we’re in! We’re in this moment at any point in time… We’re in a dangerous democracy.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: All this stuff you hear, “the threat to our sacred democracy.” Not a lot of talk about that in response to some rioting and some rowdy protests over the weekend and some threats against Supreme Court justices and even a guy who tried to kill a Supreme Court justice. Not a lot of threat to our democracy talk about any of that just like there wasn’t a lot of threat to our democracy talk after months of deeply divisive and destructive riots in 2020 by Democrats, by Biden voters. But the prime minister had this moment where he’s talking to CNN and he’s kind of like, “I don’t know. Maybe you guys need to calm down a little bit.”

BUCK: Wow. CNN. Hold on a second. Wait! You’re supposed to be say, “Oh, your democracy is about to be destroyed, man! It’s all over, man.” Nope.

CLAY: How about the fact that Boris Johnson is more of a fan of American democracy than any Democrat now.

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: We have to bring in a ringer from England. Isn’t Boris Johnson also an American citizen, by the way? Wasn’t he…?

BUCK: Born here. He was born here. Yeah.

CLAY: Yeah. I think he maybe relinquished his American citizenship.

BUCK: I think you would have to, to be prime minister of U.K., you would think.

CLAY: I’m guessing.

BUCK: Probably not a dual passport holder if you’re gonna be the prime minister, but maybe.

CLAY: At some point he was an American citizen. It doesn’t sound like it, by the way, with that accent, but it is pretty fantastic that he goes on CNN and disabuses them of the notion that the world at large is concerned about the fate of American democracy. And that’s really the subtext, even though no one will discuss it, of January 6th. Agree or disagree with Trump, even inside of the Republican Party, when Trump was president, there were tons of people who were saying to him, “Hey, we think you are wrong,” including his own attorney general. Now, I know there are lots of people out there who are die-hards, Trump voters. Both Buck and I were Trump voters, right? But to me, I look at a lot of the January 6, which is old.

BUCK: Double Trump voters, my man. T squared.

CLAY: (chuckling) So you look at it in that respect, and again all the things they are uncovering are dated and already been written about and talked about for months. But there were a lot of Republicans… If our democracy were truly at stake, there were an awful lot of Republicans — Mike Pence, Bill Barr, certainly a lot of people — Raffensperger down in Georgia, Brian Kemp, lots of people — who said to Trump, “No, sir, even though you’re president, I disagree with your belief here.” And I think the election was rigged. I think that the Democrats stole 2020 based on using covid protocols and everything else. But there were a lot of people who stood up to Trump in the Republican Party.

BUCK: It’s not like the Republicans were saying, “Oh, man, if only QAnon Shaman had had a little more backup, he could have actually overthrown the government!”

CLAY: Yeah, right! (laughs) Yes.

BUCK: Nobody was saying this was something that we thought was gonna succeed or a good idea in the least. If anything, actually — to borrow from Talleyrand — “It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Meaning that they broke the law and they dramatically undermined the political right in the process, played right into the hands of the Democrats, which I said as it was actually happening.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I’m like, this is a nightmare for Republicans going forward ’cause it’s just gonna play right into the narrative of the Democrats use now all the time. And most Republicans, I think, saw that right away. Almost all saw that it was gonna be used against us. But the point here is, even Boris Johnson’s like (impression), “Calm down, man! It’s going to be okay.”

CLAY: I want to hear how these same Democrats who talk about our democracy at stake are going to respond when that Red Wave washes over them in November, because I bet a lot of them are gonna come out and say, “This was a rigging election,” right? You know they’re gonna say it! They said it when Trump won in 2016, they say it whenever they got their ass kicked.

BUCK: Basically, every time the Democrats lose, they cry. Some of them refuse to certify, they come up with some conspiracy theory, and then on the rare occasion — well, it’s not that rare, but whatever — when they win, cheating or not cheating, they say, “It’s criminal to even question how amazing our victory was!” Sore winners and sore losers, Clay. Maybe they’re just unhappy.

CLAY: They’re angry, angry, people and we’re gonna kick their ass in November.