BUCK: Proud to be an American, which, of course, makes me think of the song, right? But —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — the question proud to be an American, there’s some data out there, this may not shock you, but there seems to be a correlation between being on your eighth vaccine shot, your sixth Ukraine flag in your Facebook profile, ownership of a lot of cats — no offense, Clay — and not necessarily being a big fan of being an American based on the data.

I’m just gonna put that out there. I have an inclination that there are a lot of people on the left that don’t like it.

CLAY: Yeah. Preview here. In 2003, 65% of Democrats were proud to be American. Now, this is during the George W. Bush administration. Sixty-five percent.

Recently — this is according to Gallup — just 26% of Democrats are proud to be American.

BUCK: I will say that is actually even lower… I thought it would be low, but I did think it would at least be in the thirties.

CLAY: So — and what’s wild about this, Buck, 2013 — now, this is during the Biden — during the Obama administration. But 56% of Democrats were proud to be Americans. Fifty-six percent.

So in the space of basically nine years — and they’re in control of both sides of government, right? They’re in control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. Usually, there is some correlation about looking at this chart over the last 20-some-odd years, when your party is in power, you feel better about America, which makes some sense, if you think about the White House and the president being somebody that you voted for and you’re happy.

But the numbers on Republicans are intriguing, too. As we get ready for July 4th, I think we could open up the phone calls in maybe the Thursday or Friday edition of the program and have a deeper discussion about this and where we’re going as a country when one political party, 26% of them, that means three out of four are not proud to be American if they are Democrat.

BUCK: I think as an ideology, Democrats embrace a degree of misery and victimhood and then it gets exacerbated, they magnify it because when people are already prone to think of themselves that way, that’s how you reach them, right?

It’s not just — you’re upset about things, you think everything’s unfair, you know, you gonna go cry about it? It’s even worse than you think. This country is even more oppressive, sexist, racist, imperialist, than you, the left, think it is. It’s a way of playing to people’s biases and also controlling them because you’re just leaning in even further with their delusion.

Clay, I’d be willing to argue — I’d be willing to bet — I don’t know if they have data on this — but to your point about party affiliation, party in power, and feelings about the country, I bet you conservatives, Republicans, conservatives are much more likely to still love America when their party’s not in power than Democrats are.

CLAY: That is a very strong argument based on this data from Gallup. When you get to 26% — and again I would just point out that as recently as seven, eight years ago a majority of Democrats were very proud to be Americans.

What has occurred that has led to that disaster? I think it’s a really interesting debate we should have and discussion we should have as we roll in to July 4th weekend.