BUCK: Thanks for making the interview yesterday with former President Donald Trump such a hit. We had a lot of news stories, a lot of listenership, a lot of people, breaking news with that one yesterday — or rather we broke news and they reported on it, I suppose — the former president weighing in on crises like Ukraine and the border and the state of the Democrat Party, who the political opponents are that he suspects will be taking the reins of the party the next time around.

It was remarkable, though. You know, the president — we’re talking of President Trump, of course — upset the media tremendously, Clay, by calling them “fake news.” That was the insult, more than anything else, that really riled them up — which is, I think in and of itself quite telling, because if they were truly doing their jobs — if they were ethical, unbiased, impartial journos, speakers of truth — it wouldn’t upset them to be called fake news. They would say, “Well, we’re just doing our job.”

But it stung. It hit home. And if you paid attention yesterday to what happened, we had a fantastic example in real time — Clay and I did — of just what it means when the fake news decides to run with something. Because we had important questions for the president yesterday that he answered with regard to — number 45, former president Trump with regard to — Russia, Taiwan, and Ukraine, and the border, and go down the list, right? We talked about a whole… The Canadian truckers, covid, Fauci, 2024.

But somehow, the lib media ran with the “Trump Is Praising Putin” line. That was the single biggest takeaway they had about what Trump said… I saw this all over the media, and as the person who asked the question — and, Clay, we were sitting here together doing this interview yesterday. I gotta say, it’s like they’re pretending not to understand or even be able to read in context English, sarcasm, intent. They’re just being intentionally obtuse. Here’s just a quick montage of what they sounded like yesterday after “Trump praised Putin” during our interview. Play 5.

JOHN HEILEMANN: Donald Trump did an interview this morning on something called the (sarcastically) Buck Sexton, Clay Travis Show. (sic)

HALLIE JACKSON: Former president Trump, who was out on this right-wing radio show, and he was praising Vladimir Putin and what Putin’s doing in Ukraine.

ARI MELBER: Donald Trump poppin’ back up to say this.

PETER ALEXANDER: Former president Trump blasting President Biden while praising Putin.

WOLF BLITZER: Praising — praising — Vladimir Putin.

JOHN BERMAN: Praised Vladimir Putin.

CHRIS JANSING: Donald Trump, who you may remember tried to hold up aid to Ukraine.

BEN RHODES: This is something that is a propaganda gift to Putin.

JONATHAN ALTER: Former president Herbert Hoover was an isolationist, but he didn’t call Adolf Hitler a genius!

MALCOLM NANCE: Well, dictators gonna talk like dictators, right? Game knows game.

ALEX WAGNER: I think we should all have chills over the fact that Donald Trump called an invasion of a sovereign country “genius.”

ALI VELSHI: If Trump is reelected in 2024, Canada had better watch out.

TIM KAINE: He couldn’t get a Nobel Prize, so he’s maybe trying out for the Order of Lenin — or, even better, finally a Trump Tower in Moscow.

BUCK: So much fake news, Clay, these people out of their minds.

CLAY: It is pretty extraordinary. I mean, you and I set across the table from President Trump for a full hour, and all of you heard that interview. And his discussion of Ukraine (chuckles) primarily focused on the fact that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if he were still president. And I think that’s true. And so what you are seeing by the way that they reacted to a clip — not even a full couple of minutes of a discussion surrounding Ukraine, just a little clip — is a desperate attempt to try and make it look like it’s not Joe Biden’s fault.

Have you noticed the pivot already that’s going on, that Putin didn’t invade…? Did you see Rachel Maddow’s blog had this article up? Putin didn’t invade during Trump’s presidency because he was already getting everything that he wanted. That makes absolutely no sense.

BUCK: I have in front of me, Clay. “Why didn’t Russia…?” This is from the
Maddowblog at MSNBC. I guess she’s on extended vacation after signing some obscene contract for $30 million.

CLAY: Yeah, $30 million a year. Yeah, she doesn’t work anymore.

BUCK: “Why didn’t Russia invade Ukraine during Trump’s term? Perhaps because Putin was so pleased to see Trump pursuing goals in line with Moscow’s agenda.” Let me say, this is intellectually indefensible. This is moron stuff here.

CLAY: I think they need to give Biden cover. And they are desperate to provide Biden cover. And so look. The president used different words, Buck, but we had a big discussion on Monday about the maneuvers that Vladimir Putin was trying to underway in order — in order — to end up in a situation where he might be able to claim part of Ukraine but have sent the message that he’s going to invade and take over the whole country.

And so as a result, it’s not as bad as trying to take over Kiev or try to take over the entire country. So he’s able to add those eastern Ukraine regions to his overall footprint of Russia. Right? That was the discussion that we had on Monday. That’s essentially what the president was saying, but he said many times like, “Hey, I told him if you ever move into Ukraine there will be hell to pay,” effectively. I’m paraphrasing. He said that Putin was never willing to do that while he was president. And so the way that this was covered was just fundamentally dishonest. It was the essence of fake news.

BUCK: It’s up at ClayAndBuck.com, the transcript right now. “By the way…” This is Trump, now: “By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, ‘I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent … and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”

He was speaking to the efficacy of Putin’s tactics in the situation after already declaring or going on to elaborate and say that he would never have pulled this crap when I was president, because obviously Trump opposes this. You wouldn’t say, “This never would have happened on my watch” if you supported a thing, but the media can’t even read and commend honestly. Instead, they’re running around — I love this too — “It’s a right-wing radio show.” I mean, kind of the biggest radio show by audience in the country. Calm down.

CLAY: That’s the funniest part about this, is they are trying to denigrate this show when our audience is bigger than theirs is, right? Beyond a shadow of a doubt, more people are listening and consuming this show than consume virtually every MSNBC show all day long, certainly CNN as well, right, during the course of the entire show, three hours. And so the idea that they’re trying to dismiss it, to me, one, it just is evidence of how poorly they understand the larger media ecosystem.

The reason why Trump is talking to us and the reason why he wanted to talk to all of you, is because it’s one of the largest audiences he can reach anywhere in media. And it’s one of the few places where he can actually have the opportunity to speak in full, and what did they do? They went and clipped one minute of an hourlong did there ever and dishonestly tried to represent it as somehow “praising” Putin, which was not the context of the comment at all.

BUCK: Just imagine if you had military strategist — who said, “Rommel’s battlefield maneuvers in North Africa were the stuff of military genius.” You’d turn around and you’re just like, “Oh, my gosh! This guy loves Hitler!”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: That is exactly what they are doing, right? They’re actually acting like the specific commentary on one tactic and whether… You know, bad people are capable of doing very savvy things, obviously. But to say that something is a savvy tactic is not the same as deportation the whole program of what is behind it and who is doing it, but they just pretend. Clay, this was this is a recurring theme of the fake news — and we should bring that term back, by the way.

I actually think I miss it, and I think that we should start using it again because we see how fake… You and I sat there. We experienced fake news from the Democrat-aligned legacy media in real time, essentially, or within one hour of that interview because we didn’t sit there saying, “Oh, my gosh, Trump is praising Putin!” We’re seeing he’s calling out what an idiot Biden is and what a preposterous administration this is.

All they had to do was actually listen to or even read the transcript in context and they would get that. But these are the same individuals, Clay, who lie about Trump when it comes to saying there were “good people on both sides,” including the neo-Nazis, in Charlottesville. They pretend not to understand the English language so they can disingenuously bash Trump.

CLAY: Not only are they bash on the relationship with Ukraine and Putin, they also lied about what he said about the southern border. They said, “Oh, he must be thinking about invading Mexico!” No! He said that he would rather have our troops sent to Texas to help protect the southern border than he would send to Ukraine to help protect the Ukrainian border — which, by the way, I would bet…

What do you think, 85%, 90% of Americans, if they said, “Hey, do you want to send troops to Ukraine,” or, “Do you want to send troops to our southern border?” I think way more Americans would say, “Yeah, I’d rather protect our southern border right now given the millions of people that are coming over every year, than I would go try to get involved in eastern European borderland issues.”

BUCK: This is where you also see the Democrats pretend to be a party that cares so much about humanitarian issues, pretend to be a party that are pushed by principle. And yet in this moment you have to ask, “Well, what exactly is the principle that they’re invoking for this moment of heightened tension with Russia?” Are we supposed to do what, exactly? We’re already sending… We have been sending a lot of munitions. We have been giving diplomatic support.

And people get concerned here because you wonder. So we didn’t go into Syria because they recognized that was a horrible, messy civil war. Hopefully, we’ve learned enough lessons in the past 20 years of interventions in the Middle East and this country to know that this is not a fight that we should have or should get involved in. But a lot of really bellicose talk from people in the Democrat foreign policy establishment right now.

And Trump is the bad guy for saying we need to focus on our own border? He did run on the whole America First notion, and there’s no case to be made that U.S. military involving itself — and it hasn’t yet, and to be fair to that, I hope it doesn’t happen. But even thinking about involving U.S. military in a conflict with Russia over Ukraine, that’s the ant think this of what Donald Trump believes so of course he’s gonna be opposed to that and want to focus on to things here at home.

CLAY: No doubt, and this is a great example of why I would encourage you listen to full interviews yourself in context. You can listen to that interview by the first hour of the podcast. You can search it out. If you missed yesterday, Donald Trump spent the full hour with us at Mar-a-Lago, created some, I think, fake news headlines spun out by the media that is very threatened by Trump.

And, frankly, is trying to cover for Biden and his failures in virtually every arena, including foreign policy. You can also go to ClayAndBuck.com if you don’t have time to listen, and you can read the transcripts of the interview for yourself. I encourage you to do it. I started doing this not only when I was practicing law, because I wanted to be able to read the deposition transcripts and the trial transcripts to see what was actually said as opposed to what was being said was said.

But also, because the stories I found in the world of sports when I would go to press conferences oftentimes were not representative of what I had seen and heard myself; so I’d encourage you to check it out, either the audio version on the podcast, you can stream it at ClayAndBuck.com, and you can read the transcript yourself.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We’ll play this audio for you. This was yesterday with Buck and I at Mar-a-Lago. Let’s play cut 1.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. (sarcastic) So, Putin is now saying, “It’s independent,” a large section of Ukraine. I said, “How smart is that?” And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right.

No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy… I know him very well. Very, very well. By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, “I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,” he used the word “independent,” “and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.” You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad.

CLAY: So I don’t even understand, Buck. You listen to entire context, he’s, first of all, being sarcastic about the idea of peacekeepers but he’s saying it’s so sad that Biden has been played due to Putin’s savvy into such an uncomfortable chess position on the board, and he’s saying that would have never happened if I were president. I agree with everything that he said there! I don’t even understand… We’re sitting across the table as he said it, I was like, “Okay, I understand his argument.” It is so dishonest to even try and spin it the way that they did.

BUCK: Yeah, and this is a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome, for everybody. This is actually one of the primary symptoms. This is, you know, “Time to call your doctor if you have this symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” pretending that you are a journalist, not to understand the English language, not to understand context. They did this to Trump all the time.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: They say, “Well, he said, ‘When pigs fly,’ and pigs can’t actually fly so he’s a liar!” They would just act like… If he used a euphemism or hyperbole or whatever, they all the sudden were these obtuse literalists to try to attack him. And that’s what we saw yesterday. And it’s just pathetic, man, because, you know what? What he said about Joe Biden is right. He’s a buffoon. He’s always been a buffoon.

Everyone who knows foreign policy will tell you that, Clay. Everyone who understands this guy’s decision-making in the past agrees. But, you know, good old Grandpa Joe during the pandemic were able to, you know, roll him into the basement and hide him there until the media made him president and now we’re dealing with the consequences of that cynical decision-making.

CLAY: And let me say this. By far the biggest story I thought from Trump during the course of our interview — we talked about the Durham investigation, too, by the way, and that was a storyline that I thought deserved attention. But him saying that he thought China was gonna go into Taiwan? I mean, this is a monstrously huge story that would make a double-fronted war, right. Instead of just having to worry about Ukraine, you would have to worry about China — and there’s some evidence of that.