Buck Sexton, True Believer, on Current Issues and Vital History

BUCK: I was very agitated yesterday, because I’m a… You might know this about me. I’m a true believer. I come here to do this show every day as a true believer, as a conservative since I was 13 or 14 years old, as somebody who was reading National Review and reading Milton Friedman and Buckley when I was a junior and senior in high school.

I went off to college and I studied under professor — conservative professor — of political science Hadley Arkes from Amherst College. He was my thesis adviser. This is just… It’s who I am. It’s who I’ve always been. So you do have a true believer here every day. So, yes, I do get fired up because I think of these things really matter and I care.

And I think we are in a fight for the soul of this country, for the future of this country. I think the forces of the organized, activist left are tearing apart some of the foundational elements of America. In ways that really do distress me. And I think there’s so much lying in the media, and one of the things that I seek to do here every day is to be an antidote to those lies.

I seek to be somebody who will take them on and hold them to account. And that’s why when I heard all this stuff about that the horse deworming medicine known as ivermectin… I took ivermectin when I had covid, because an M.D. that I trust very much, said, “It won’t hurt you and it may help you, so it’s worth a shot.” That was it.

There was no one promising me a miracle cure or anything else. But it was either taking ivermectin, and just take Tylenol and hope the pain goes down and suffer in silence, and hope that the covid goes away — which, of course, it did, and I was fortunate in that regard. But I hear stuff like this. This was actually the former Obama chairman of economic advisers guy, Goolsbee.

Look, I’m sure he’s a nice enough guy. I’ve heard he’s a nice enough guy. I don’t know him. I’ve never met him. I like to tell you when I know people and don’t know them because I have a rule that I don’t trash my friends on-air, even when I disagree with them, even if I think they’re wrong on something. I won’t agree with them because they’re my friend, but I won’t trash my friend.

I believe in personal loyalty to friends and family, but being honest about it, being up front about it all the time. Anyway, Goolsbee really annoyed me about this one. Here he is trying to help me spin the disastrous, uh, jobs report. (chuckling) I keep waning to say, “the bad Obama jobs report,” but that’s just because we got so used to talk about the Obama bad jobs report for eight years of the Democrats in charge, and the lowering of expectations about the economy.

And the furious spin cycle of the media trying to tell you that what you know, you don’t really know. And we’re seeing the same thing with Biden. Gosh, it’s almost like the philosophy of big government hyper regulation and social justice above the Constitution doesn’t work out well for us. You always get that feeling, based on the results that we’re seeing day in and day out. But here’s Goolsbee, play 23.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: But the thing to remember is that last month, we had more than a million jobs got added! And over the course of this year, we were booming and the thing that has changed in the last month is the virus has got out of control. We need to stop taking horse dewormers. We need to stop telling people that they can’t have mask mandates. We need to get people vaccinated and we need to get the spread of the virus down. The economy wants to come back.

BUCK: Well, the economy is being held back by Biden’s stupid policies. And you can now see this at some level just because anybody who refers to ivermectin as “horse dewormer medicine” is a propagandist fool and a buffoon. It’s an excusably dishonest thing to say, all right?

It’s a medicine, that, as I said to you, the discoverer of ivermectin — I believe it was a Japanese individual — got the Nobel Prize for medicine as a result of this, because particularly for river blindness — for human beings, preventing it — incredibly effective treatment, as well as other parasitic infections. So this would be like someone saying if you’ve taken Lariam or Mefloquine — for any of you who have been to some pretty sketchy parts of the Third World, know what I’m talking about.

It’s a pretty heavy. It’s a malaria medicine. I had to take it when I was in sub–Saharan Africa years ago. And you take it, and it gives you crazy dreams. Sometimes crazy good dreams. Hey-ho! Sometimes not good dreams at all. But you go on these medicines because they prevent malaria, right? So that’s really important. That saves a lot of lives.

Ivermectin also saves a lot of lives — and using it off label in the hopes that it maybe has some effect on a virus like covid is not some crazy idea. But that’s what they’ve been saying. That’s what the left’s talking points are, and there are people now who might actually refuse or not want to take ivermectin, because they’ve heard from (impression) “the really smart science people.

“The people who believe in the science. Men can get pregnant! I believe in science!” That’s Democrats, in case you didn’t know how they sound. At least that’s how they sound to me. They have said things like Ivermectin is a horse dewormer, which is just absurd. You know, there’s plenty of antibiotics and treatment that human beings take that you can also give to animals.

I’m sure there are, right now, some veterinarians who are nodding their head going, “Yep. We use a lot of the same stuff. Same stuff I use for people, you can use for animals.” Anyway, speaking of science, if you want a really good take on the Green New Deal and the importance of it, you have to go with AOC.

You got to remember, these are the people that want you to believe that they are so well-informed on the science, and you are not, because you don’t believe them. You don’t agree with them. Or maybe there’s a couple of libs listening to this and I’m trying to convince them not to agree. But 99.9% percent or you know this is crazy. And here is just a moment of this with AOC saying, you know what, I don’t want to get ahead of it. I want you to hear it. Play 17.

AOC: The fossil fuel industry and the future of humanity are fundamentally inhabitable. They just are! I mean, that’s not a political opinion. That is the science. We continue to burn fossil fuels, our planet will become inhabitable, especially what’s happening with Hurricane Ida. I mean, this is climate change.

I don’t know what more people need to see. Um, and I’m very sad to say they’re going to see a lot more, uh, in our lifetime to understand that this is this is human-caused. We are at the brink. The U.N. IPCC report was released this year saying we are a culprit for humanity.

BUCK: (impression) “Yeah, we’re totally at the brink. I remember freshman biology, when I was at high school and I got, like, a B+. So, like, I’m like super good into science. The world will end unless you pass my Green New Deal!” That’s pretty much what you’re being told. Remember, if there’s anyone in the Democrat Party who can move the national conversation in the news media, it is Ms. AOC.

Which tells you a lot about the intellectual worth and merit of the Democratic Party platform these days. Isn’t that remarkable? The future of humanity, she says, is fundamentally incompatible with fossil fuels. Fossil fuels give us so much. (chuckles) Fossil fuels are truly the lifeblood of a modern economy.

And why does this matter so much right now? Because they’re going to try to super charge the Green New Deal madness with the $3.5 trillion of spending the Democrats are trying to ram through without anyone really understanding what is in it. The stakes, my friends, are very, very high on this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: I appreciate you hanging out with me today here as I get to sit in the EIB chair and address you about all the things going on here. You know, Labor Day… I’m sure some of you have some fun Labor Day plans. For me, fun plans involve not a whole lot of plans, just trying to relax, read. I’m in the middle of a book right now I’m sure a lot of you have read.

It’s With the Old Breed about the Marines in World War II and the Pacific theater. It’s such a… It’s a memoir. It’s such a great book. Almost done with it. I believe it’s the basis for the The Pacific series on HBO, or somehow tied into that. But irrespective of that, it’s just a great book. With the Old Breed is a great book. (chuckles) That’s my beach read.

That’s my version of long weekend time. I like to read history books. As some of you know, I’ve even done whole history podcasts on the Battle of Lepanto 1571, the Siege of Malta 1565. I actually own the Siege of Malta part two podcast in the Buck Sexton podcast feed. So if you haven’t heard it, you can look up Buck Sexton Siege of Malta. The first part of it kind of gives you the preamble to the actual siege.

I’m still trying to finish up the second part. I like to do history things, which is my way of telling you I’m diving into the history of Labor Day. It was assigned as a federal holiday — or Congress, rather, passed an act, making Labor Day a legal holiday — on June 28, 1894. President Grover Cleveland signed it into law. So there you go.

It’s been around for quite a while, a time when there was quite a lot of strife between those working particularly for the railroads but also just industry in general. Railroads really were the first major industry that allowed for true industrialization in this country. I’m reading another book, Iron Empires, about the railroad industry in this country.

I read multiple books at once. That’s another great beach read. That one is about basically building the transcontinental railroad and it’s fascinating. If you’ve ever seen the show — which I do really recommend — Hell on Wheels, I really enjoyed that show a whole lot. I think you will do. It’s not for kids. It has a lot of violence and stuff like that.

But it’s a great series on AMC, and the book I’m reading goes along with it quite well. So you have Iron Empires. These are the Buck beach reads of the weekend: Iron Empires and then With the Old Breed. I bet a huge portion of you listening have already read With the Old Breed and you’re going, “Yeah. Buck, you’re a little late to the party.” But glad you’re enjoying it. It’s a really, really good book. Really excelling, amazingly well-written.