BUCK: Howard Stern, who Clay used to listen to. I was never a listener. But Clay used to listener to, and obviously one of the biggest names in radio, no question about it, and built an empire for himself, on being certainly a free speech guy and a free thinker at some level. And now he’s an ultramask and vaccine forever kind of advocate guy, terrified of people who don’t wear masks, and also made a comparison between Will Smith and Trump that was… Here you go. Listen to this.
BUCK: I just… You know, he clearly agrees with us that the slap was wrong. How is Will Smith like Trump?
CLAY: The only argument you can make is celebrities definitely get held to a different standard than anyone else. So just think about, like, first of all, Trump has never, to my knowledge, done anything physically violent. So it’s a ridiculous argument. But think about what Will Smith did, Buck. He walked up on stage, attacked one of the performers in front of, whatever it is, 25-30 million people, probably, who were watching at that time, okay.
Turns around, goes back, sits down, nobody even says anything to him. He then wins an award, goes back up on stage and gets a standing ovation. Tell me somebody else anywhere who could walk up from the crowd onto the stage, attack someone who is performing, return to their chair, and nobody says anything to them, ever. Like a comedy show, a Broadway show, a musical performance of some sort. I’m not sure that’s ever occurred.
BUCK: What do you think would have happened if somebody — when, you know, I don’t know, the academies, did they even happen last year? I don’t even remember. But we’ve gone through a year now, Clay, where the everyday folks will be escorted off of a plane or out of a theater and humiliated for a mask refusal because that is dangerous and beyond the pale.
But to your point with millions and millions of people watching, Will Smith gets up and commits a violent assault upon another person, and it’s not even just like it’s allowed to happen. Then they’re celebrating the guy later on. There was no nothing. Did anyone even…? I didn’t watch all of it afterwards. I watched that and then I was just looking around on the internet to try to see, you know, looking at all the different angles to see whether or not it was a real slap. But did anyone come out and say, “Hey, man, that was really grotesque and you shouldn’t have done that”? Think about that.
BUCK: Yeah.
CLAY: Not that I saw.
BUCK: Not that I saw.
CLAY: I think they’re afraid. I think near afraid. I think, one, it’s a black guy, and so celebrities are all like, “Oh, my God. I’ll get called racist.” I mean, honestly, I think they probably thought that. But just think about what happens at a sporting event. If somebody runs on the field during a sporting event, the guy gets tackled, he gets immediately charged with trespassing.
He’s not hitting anyone, by and large. He’s not assaulting anyone. But he gets charged with a crime of a significant nature, and they pull the cameras away to not show whoever that nincompoop is that’s out there running around on the field. Will Smith went right back to his seat. That is a different caliber of privilege than exists anywhere else. We talk a lot about privilege, white male privilege. I’ll tell you what: Celebrity Will Smith privilege. They let him get away with a crime, and then he got an award.
BUCK: I mean, Alec Baldwin killed somebody and still hasn’t faced any legal jeopardy that we know of any kind quite yet.
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