CLAY: I wanted to hit a couple of different stories that are out there, which are basically lies, and this is DNC adviser Cedric Richmond. Inflation is at 8.6%, a 40-plus-year high, and really Democrats don’t have any explanations for it at all. And we’re gonna have some fun clips for you of them potentially trying to explain it on Morning Joe on MSNBC in a moment. But first, this is a legitimate argument that they’re making. The reason why inflation is an issue is because they blocked Joe Biden’s agenda. Now, keep in mind, the only reason inflation is not 15 or 20% right now is because Republicans actually blocked Biden’s agenda. So this is a lie, but I just want you to be able to hear it.

BUCK: Democrats blocked it.

CLAY: What did I say?

BUCK: You said Republicans blocked Biden’s agenda. True, but —

CLAY: Also, you got Manchin and you got Sinema involved.

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: But yes, without unanimous Republican opposition, this would have been even worse. I just want you to hear this argument, so you’re prepared for it if someone tries to use it on you. Here is that argument. Cut 8.

CEDRIC RICHMOND: Republicans purposely obstructing it and keeping it from happening then at the same time saying inflation is high and we know we have work to do there. But the Republican opposition, just for the sake of opposition to legislation that would bring household costs down, is what’s continuing to spark it. But the president also laid out his plan to continue to deal with inflation and continue to deal with rising gas prices. He wants to continue to pay down the debt. And the question becomes, why won’t the Republicans really seriously take up the end of the president’s agenda, which would allow him to tax the rich so that we can continue to pay down the debt, reduce the deficit, which would also reduce inflation.

BUCK: There’s so much wrong there that it’s not even right to call it wrong. That was going off the rails in many directions at the same time. I don’t even know what he thinks he’s saying there, really. Clay, anytime any Democrat tells you, “We have work to do from now until Election Day,” I want everyone to hear, “We still have work to do” is a Democrat subconsciously saying, “Wow we messed up and we’re bad at our jobs.”

CLAY: Yeah, and look, we played earlier some cuts from CNN about Joe Biden being incompetent. I think this is interesting. Harry Enten on CNN absolutely shreds Joe Biden on inflation saying he’s doing worse than Jimmy Carter in the minds of the voters. Listen to this, CNN now taking shots on the Joe Biden.

The gloves are OFF: CNN ENDS Biden Presidency:

“AWFUL— Biden is doing WORSE than Jimmy Carter”

pic.twitter.com/kXBuh1AZpH

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 15, 2022

BUCK: It is an insult to compare Biden to Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter way smarter than Joe Biden.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay and Buck show. (laughing) When the late-night comedians feel like they could start poking fun at the absurdity and unfortunately the economic pain induced by the Biden regime, you know they’ve got problems. There are two points of connectivity that we have to maintain here all the time. Because on the one hand we’re telling you about a lot of stuff that you’re feeling and seeing every day. Price of gas, inflation. What’s your grocery bill like these days? I gotta tell you every time I…

If I go to a restaurant now or if I get into the grocery store and I look at the receipt, I’m like, “Wow, everything is getting more expensive.” Producer inflation. I just spoke to a friend who told me that cost of the eggs for his baking goods company at wholesale is now up — from 12 months ago — over five times. If you’re a baked goods company and you’re paying 5X for eggs…? By the way, cost of flour also important for a baked goods company, that is up dramatically in the last year as well, all across the board.

And what’s gonna happen is, they’re gonna change the prices in the stores. That’s still coming your way. So you — that’s real. Those are numbers. Those are cold, hard realities. And the Democrat really religious zeal for their redistribution, their socialism, their “defund police will make us safer,” all these ideas are now crashing against the shoals of the reality of what we’re actually seeing day to day all across the country. And that, then, brings me to thorough part of this, which is: This is happening because — what you are seeing is happening because — of decisions that were made, because of decisions that Democrats made. And a perfect example of how they’re just gonna be so dishonest on this is, I don’t even know what Joe Scarborough over at MSNBC considers himself politically. Probably a “suave independent.”

CLAY: That’s a pretty good Scarborough interpretation. That’s not bad at all.

BUCK: Clay, I’m a man of many voices, a lot of tricks up the sleeve. So he’s out there. I just want to remind you that right now, “Oh, man, would have been so bad if Build Back Better had gotten through,” ’cause everyone realizes who’s not completely brain-dead, if you would spend another $5 trillion, $6 trillion depending on the estimate, things would be worse. But let’s just take a little trip back down. When Clay and I were saying in January on this show Joe Manchin may have saved the Democrats from themselves and from the economic — and therefore political — annihilation were courting with the Build Back Better agenda. Here’s what MSNBC’s favorite fake Republican had to say about Joe Manchin back in January.

Here’s MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough ripping Joe Manchin in January for not spending trillions on Biden’s build back better plan and then praising him now for not spending trillions. Perfect: pic.twitter.com/i6yMSe5XMq

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) June 14, 2022

BUCK: So basically, we throw Joe Manchin under the bus.

CLAY: Completely and utterly.

BUCK: Make Joe Manchin the scapegoat for the entire failure of the Democrat agenda. That was “pundit on TV,” Joe Scarborough, in January. Here he is after as of Monday.

BUCK: I just feel… Clay, you know, these people are wrong all the time and somehow their audiences still listen to them. Sometimes I do want to step back and say, “We’ve been right about a lot and a lot of other conservatives, too,” and it’s like we’re supposed to ignore that the people who are always wrong still want to tell us what to do today.

CLAY: Six months. We’re not talking about six years. We’re talking about in January throwing Joe Manchin under the bus and arguing that he is destroying Joe Biden’s agenda, and six months later — on the same program, not even a different program, six months later! By the way, we should give credit to Dave Rubin who does a fantastic job pointing out some of these absurdities on his show @RubinReport, you can follow him on Twitter. That’s who put these two clips together. I watched this right after I landed in New York City.

Buck, as I was riding in to the city, into Manhattan, and I just… I was in the back of the Uber just laughing as I watched this, because this is a perfect distillation of, one, how many people in media just really aren’t that smart. Right? Joe Scarborough on MSNBC — that’s where this aired — he’s going to follow whichever way the winds blow. Buck mention, if you go back… I think we played this yesterday or the day before on the program.

We were arguing for months Joe Manchin cannot support Build Back Better because of the danger of inflation. You might not agree with a lot of the opinions that we have here. There’s almost never going to be a time on this program — I say “almost never” ’cause who knows what might happen — where we argue one thing six months ago and the exact opposite later and don’t at least acknowledge, “Hey, here’s what’s changed so that we have changed our opinion.” Scarborough was 100% wrong, but he was celebrating and sharing the Democrat orthodoxy in January.

Now he suddenly has got independence, which to me, Buck, you played that cut from Jimmy Fallon and where he played earlier cuts from Van Jones and also from Don Lemon. What’s happening is suddenly even people in Democrat media are willing to acknowledge that Joe Biden is incompetent, and why I think he’s gonna get kicked to the curb after the midterms is, all these guys are not worried about having to interact with the Biden administration for four more years. They think he’s done, and all of a sudden, the story is gonna change by December and January of 2023 to, “Who’s the new Democrat nominee gonna be?”

BUCK: There is an inescapable political reality here as well that the Biden White House has no idea how to handle or how to message because when Obama — and of course, Biden was the vice president for eight years under Obama. In the Obama administration, they rammed through Obamacare without a single Republican vote. But Republicans, where they could, held the line against Obama’s agenda. And so even though I thought the Obama agenda was very destructive and bad, he could say, and you heard this all the time, “Obstruction!

“They’re obstructing me. Things would be great if they weren’t standing in my way.” Now I didn’t believe that, conservatives didn’t believe that, but the point was, okay, you could at least make that argument, right? The problem that Joe Biden faces is that instead of being able to argue that obstruction from Republicans is what’s preventing him from bringing down prices and making everything great. The obstruction of Republicans is clearly a gift to the country when people can’t afford gas and food because of inflation and Biden wanted to spend more, right? The usual talking point of, “If they would only go along, things would be so much better,” anyone who’s paying attention sees this and says, “If Republicans and Joe Manchin had gone along, people would be talking about Venezuela-style inflation.”

CLAY: We would be in infinitely worse shape if that has happened. And, by the way, to your point on, “Hey, if they had gone along, things would have gotten far worse,” I hate to say it, but what if Democrats had never had a majority at all? If we had won just one of those two seats in Georgia, Buck — just one of the two Senate seats — how much lower do you think inflation would be? We’re saying it would be way higher if Democrats had had enough of a majority that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema had gone along ’cause they wouldn’t have passed it at $1.9 trillion that immediately Biden passed.

BUCK: So this is the unintended consequences. This is the old adage about the Zen master who gets a horse given to him as a gift and someone says, “Isn’t that amazing? and he says, “We’ll see.”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: And then, you know, a member of his family dies in an accident, and they say, “Isn’t that horrible,” and he says, “Well, we’ll see. “ Everything is, we don’t really know yet how it turns out. If Democrats had not won those two Senate seats, I actually think Joe Biden would be right now in a much better place —

CLAY: I think you’re right.

BUCK: — we’ve seen, because then the old Obama argument of, “They stood in my way.

CLAY: Would actually work.

BUCK: “I was amazing things,” would have some resonance whereas now people look at the primary problem they face is the one thing that would have clearly been exacerbated, made worse by exactly what Joe Biden wanted to do. So in a weird way, as much as it felt like a disaster to lose both those Senate seats at the time, you can make an argument — you can’t prove a historical negative, but you can make an argument that Biden with gridlock in Congress instead of spending that two trillion would actually be in a better position, the Democrat Party would be in a better position.

CLAY: I think you’re right. The red tsunami wouldn’t be as powerful. The flip side is as a country we also wouldn’t be dealing, probably, with 8.6% inflation. It might be 4.5% or 5% and be way more reasonable than it is right now.

BUCK: Absolutely the case.