BUCK: There was a controversy of sorts swirling around media and entertainment before even we got the Oscars. It’s one that actually has to do with the law and is, I think, very much heightened by the desire of the left to find whatever method of attack possible for the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. I’m currently in North Florida, and I could tell you a lot of people here are very proud of their governor and what he has done over the course of the pandemic in particular.

But also scoreboards don’t lie, as they say, and the hundreds of thousands of people who have moved to Florida from Democrat enclaves, like my own home state and city of New York. There’s a reason for that. We’re all aware of this. And it has to do with quality of life, taxation, regulation, covid policies, just general governance. Not being ruled by lunatics. That’s a good start. Not being ruled by people who live in an alternative universe. We will talk about Biden’s request in his budget for, one, a billionaires tax. We’ll probably get into that tomorrow.

But also a lot of funding for police. Oh. Oh, wait a second. You mean the people that were telling you that undermining the cops and cutting the police budgets on the right were right the whole time and these psycho-libs run around acting like cops are all racist and bad and killing unarmed black men and there’s no consequence and it’s awful and they do it all the time? The people that were running around in hysterics and then justifying not only, of course, a lot of large gatherings during the covid, early days of the covid pandemic.

But also the riots that came along with it, the destruction of property and the general lawlessness, they were all wrong. We’ll get into more of that tomorrow. But right now, there’s still the ongoing fight that the left is — they’re doubling down on this one — Clay, over the parent… We have to use the proper name of the bill, please. The left… One thing, Clay. One thing — and this is a little bit of a digression.

You and I both know this. They are better at control of language. They force us to use the terms they like. Perfect example of this is “undocumented” now, which I even hear conservatives use. I hear people who are pretty pro-border security and rule of law say, “Yeah, we’ve gotta say that. There’s too many undocumenteds coming in.” I’m like, “Wait a second. The federal criminal term is ‘illegal alien,’ right?”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This is… Even with the pronoun battle we see this. Once you’ve said someone’s a “he” when they’re a “she” or a “she” when they’re a “he” everything else is kind of just details.

CLAY: It gets complicated on the he-she thing, because we get that all the time. I try to say, “The Penn transgender swimmer,” just the transgender swimmer, somebody who’s not the biology that they are reflecting. But it is complicated, right? And they do a great job of continuing to hammer home until you start to accept whatever language that they want to use.

BUCK: I would say this — and this is fair and we’ll tell you the truth here — I know a couple of trans people in real life. Would I refuse to their face to use their…? This is where it gets difficult. Would I want to give them offense by using a pronoun in front of them that I…? Now we get to the everyone deserves courtesy and decency comment, right? But in news commentary when it’s about the facts and it’s about what is true?

Should you use the preferred pronoun of somebody who claims they’re a different pronoun from their actual biology? So I will say there are some layers of complexity there, and the same thing also with, to say someone’s an illegal alien is not supposed to be, it should not be thought of as a pejorative on that person as a person. It’s just their legal status in the country reminded, right? It doesn’t mean… So there’s a lot of ways we could have discussions about use of language.

But the left controls language, and in the case of the “don’t say gay” bill, that is just a fabrication, essentially, of the left to attack what a parental rights and education bill in Florida. So every time we say “don’t say gay” we are playing into the political narrative here which is that’s what the bill does when it clearly does not. Disney — and this is what we wanted to get to. Disney is even more strongly taking a stand on this than they had before.

Going into the Oscars there were stories about how there was, quote, “chaos” here, according — and there were some discussion, and we talked about it with some of the emcees of the event bringing it up. And so this was on the minds of a lot of people in the media. “Florida’s HB 1557, according to Disney’s official Twitter account, also known as the ‘don’t say gay’ bill…” Why not say the Parental Rights in Education bill? That’s the name of the bill. They give the HB 1575 and then don’t actually give the name of the bill.

Isn’t that so interesting? But say “the ‘Don’t Say Gay'” bill, which is what the activists say, “should never have been passed and should never have been signed into law. “Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that.

“We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country.” I have friends in “the community” who think that this is appalling that they’re making this claim, the pretend notion that adults from the LGBTQ community are outraged at the notion of not teaching gender identity to kindergarteners?

CLAY: This is a win. And I think what it reflects is the desperation in the wake of Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia and in the wake of parents, to their credit, all over the country getting involved in what their kids are being taught in public schools. And if you look at the actual polling data, Buck, the overwhelming majority of people out there, parents, support kids not being taught about sexuality in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade.

And it’s totally a ridiculous, desperate attempt to try and come up with a reason that they can try and put on to Ron DeSantis to beat him this November. Because did you see there was a column in the New York Times over the weekend that DeSantis is a scarier version of Donald Trump, because… That’s the argument. Charles Blow, I believe, in the New York Times over the weekend said that — and, you know, I kind of have to laugh as I’m reading through it ’cause I know what the arguments are gonna be.

But the argument was Trump was at times undisciplined in the way that he applied what he believes in, whereas DeSantis and other Southern governors — red state governors that they’re attacking — are more effective. That’s the argument of the New York Times, that they are more effective versions of Donald Trump in terms of implementing policy. Now, that is the attack that they’re going to try and tar and feather. Trump, I believe, is gonna run in 2024. But for years into the future, regardless of what happens with Trump, every Republican is going to get attacked as “the next version” of Donald Trump, a “scarier version” of Donald Trump.

BUCK: It will always be worse than Trump, Clay, and whoever the candidate really may be — and I think this is because they also recognize they got the mainstream of the Democrat Party. I wouldn’t say the mainstream nationally, but sort of center of the Democrat Party was fed a steady media diet for four years of Donald Trump is a fascist, a Russian puppet, a rapist.

They said he was a traitor, a white supremacist. There was almost nothing that they could say that’s truly defamatory that they didn’t say. There’s no lie that was too low, no lie that was too destructive for them. So they’re gonna have to find a way to make it seem like the next GOP standard-bearer — and again I agree, Trump is gonna run, but I mean even in the next, let’s say Trump wins.

CLAY: DeSantis may run against him, right? I mean, we don’t know what the actual competition is going to look like on either the Democratic Party on the Republican side. But make no mistake, Buck. I believe this is part and parcel of an attempt to try to attack and tar and feather Ron DeSantis —

BUCK: Of course!

CLAY: — as he is rising up because he’s a young guy and will be in politics for years.

BUCK: That’s why this bill has gotten so much attention and the reason why a state… I mean, think about this. All these people who live… I mean, the Hollywood folks, they live in California overwhelmingly. I know they have a lot of houses in a lot of places. But it’s a mostly L.A. and New York City audience out there at the Academy Awards.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And they’re concerned with a bill in the state of Florida, and so much so that they kind of take a swipe at all Floridians at the Oscars? There are Floridians who are I think wrongly goings is out and protesting the bill because they say it’s so awful. So the whole thing is really an absurdity, but it is getting after Ron DeSantis — and I think it is because, as I was saying, they made everyone so fearful and hateful toward Trump, that if they thought of they don’t say the next person’s worse than Trump, at some level, it may seem like the GOP is taking a more moderate and centrist path.

And they can’t allow that because power is all that matters to these commies. So they’ll come up with, “Oh, this person is even worse than Trump,” because, God forbid, someone thinks that the GOP just wants to elect somebody — put Trump aside for a second — who is good at governance and not actually the worst person since Stalin or whatever they were saying about Trump.