BUCK: One of these stories that it’s hard to hear about because you start to think about what this actually meant, what happened here — and it does feel like, on some level, a stain on what we think of as the honor that this country has where a lot of people… We think of the American people as those who take action. We think of the American people as we’ve got each other’s backs.

That’s the country we want to live in. When you have the kind of bystanderism during a completely barbarous attack that has been reported on here, it makes you wonder what’s happening in the country. So there are multiple levels here that Clay and I want to get into with you, parts this conversation. Here’s the story. Many of you will know it already, but just for anyone who doesn’t.

A 35-year-old man on the SEPTA train in Philadelphia — their mass transit train system. A 35-year-old man raped a woman for 30 minutes while passengers who were present in the train car filmed it. They did not call police, did not do anything, did not try to assist at all, did nothing to step in and help this woman. There was a SEPTA employee who called police and there was an arrest made.

So the transit employee did something, called police, and there was an arrest made. The officer responding to the scene actually found this individual — this 35-year-old illegal immigrant from the Congo, Fiston Ngoy — still in the act of the assault. Now, there are a couple of different things here. Clay, first off, when you have a situation like this — and hat tip to Tucker Carlson’s show last night for doing the research on this assailant to find out that he had both a sex abuse and criminal drug charge from year years ago in 2015 that should have because of his illegal status in the country triggered a deportation of him.

When that doesn’t happen and you have an individual here who commits a heinous and brutal assault against a woman because the system — and we’ll get to the bystanderism and the just completely dishonorable actions of the people around who did not nothing in a moment. But when the system doesn’t take seriously laws about immigration and then someone suffers a horrible attack like this, how can that same system claim to have moral authority over all the rest of us?

CLAY: Well, it’s such a great question and such an unfortunate question to have to be discussing. But I think of everything in terms of ebbs and flows. And what happens is believing that you are over-punishing criminals is a luxury of a relatively low-crime society. So how does this happen? Let’s start there. We drove crime down to such an extent in this country that instead of like in the 1990s and certainly in the 1980s — and even in the early years of the 2000s when a lot of people out there would have been arguing, “We gotta make our streets safer,” that was a bipartisan process.

Remember, Bill Clinton ran on we need a hundred thousand more police officers on the streets. Joe Biden helped to push through the “three strikes and you’re out” law that would aid in criminalizing behavior and putting the criminal element behind bars for longer. As crime went down, partly as a result of the success of many of these anti-crime prohibitions that were put in place by our police stations — Democrats, Republicans, independents — then we start to have the luxury like where you live in New York City.

Suddenly people started to say, “Hey, you know what? Stop-and-frisk is racist,” right? It goes back to the Democratic mantra of “everything is racist.” Being concerned that stop-and-frisk is racist is a concern that is a luxury to have because crime has been driven down to such a level that many people don’t feel afraid. What is now happening, I believe, Buck — and it’s unfortunate that we end up in these same cycles over and over again.

After crime, murder in particular, went up almost 30%, many people out there listening to us right now — Democrats, Republicans, independents — are looking around and they’re saying, “I don’t feel safe on the streets anymore.” Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, everybody. I believe what has happened is we have so now attacked police, we’ve moved our target from, “Let’s put criminals behind bars” to, “Police are racist.” So we have created now a culture where crimes like these are far more likely to happen. Now, bigger picture here.

BUCK: We got the immigration angle. This guy shouldn’t have been in the country at all.

CLAY: He shouldn’t have been in the country at all, and if we were actually aggressive policing and if we were aggressively enforcing the laws, we’d be chasing these guys who have committed crimes and be kicking them out, right?

BUCK: Well, we had him in the system. He was convicted. He was convicted of offenses that should have triggered a deportation. But woke judges — let’s just be honest — social media warriors and rogues decide that they’re not going to send this individual out because increasingly the Democrat mind-set is, “If you deport anybody from America and they are a nonwhite immigrant to this country, that act of deportation is racist because we are a nation of immigrants.”

This is really what pushes so much of the belief system with Democrats when it comes to immigration, and you look at this instance and you say, “If you’re not going to deport someone who’s in the country illegally who’s convicted of a sex crime and a drug crime, who you are deporting? Do you have to be a mass murderer?” And remember, the same government that wants to be able to look into your bank account — although they’ve backed off that as of today, a little bit, a little bit.

The same government wants access to your accounts for over $600 so they can audit you and maybe throw you in prison for not paying your taxes the way you’re supposed to, is telling us that when they don’t deport somebody who is clearly a public safety risk, “Well, too bad,” even, though remember, there wasn’t a decision they should have made. It should have triggered a deportation. They decided to override that. There’s also, Clay, the bystander issue.

CLAY: Yeah, and I want to get into the bystander issue with you here in a sec, and I would just point out something. Before we go and start to talking about the bystander issue, I would say this, Buck. Let’s keep in mind that we have “insurrectionists” who took selfies inside of the Capitol that are in solitary confinement, and yet we can’t actually deport real criminals who aren’t even citizens in this country. So it’s not only being soft on crime. It’s being selectively, insanely difficult when the politics justifies going after someone aggressively. That’s the narrative trumping the crime.

Sickening: The media just reported that the jerk who raped a woman on a Philadelphia train last week was in the country ILLEGALLY.

In 2018, Philadelphia’s loser Mayor @JimFKenney celebrated that his city could remain a sanctuary city.

Keep voting for Democrats, America! pic.twitter.com/jbxzHi5dtL

— Nicole Malliotakis (@NMalliotakis) October 20, 2021

BUCK: The Soros-backed, Terry McAuliffe-tied prosecutor in Loudoun County who didn’t want to take a hard line against the transgender student who sexually assaulted a teen girl in the school made sure to show up to try to throw the dad of the assaulted teen in prison — and she, the prosecutor, ran on a “stop mass incarceration” platform, right? So stop putting people in prison for serious stuff.

But if you’re a dad who speaks out at a school board meeting because your daughter was raped by a transgender student in the bathroom and the school tried to cover it up, you need to be in a cell for a while. That’s the mentality of the left. We’re gonna come back and talk about this bystander issue because I think our audience needs to hear it. Just so everyone knows, this assault that happened on the SEPTA train.

There were people, numerous — we don’t know the exact number, numerous — people on the train. Not only did they do nothing, some of them filmed the assault. How is that possible? It’s so evil and just unthinkable. How could they do…? Well, we’re living in a very strange era of social media obsession and people who think that honor is something for other people.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We are breaking down a story that went viral: A sexual assault — an illegal immigrant assault — on a SEPTA train. I believe that stands for Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, if my East Coast knowledge is still accurate. I’ve been on some of those SEPTA trains over the years. Buck, your point — and I think it’s such an interesting one to discuss — is, “Why does nobody report this sexual assault, and worse than that, why do people start filming?” And my thought, my thought on a basic level —

BUCK: Can I just interrupt?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Why don’t people intervene, Clay?

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: The first thing —

CLAY: At a minimum you would think you would call police if you’re scared to intervene.

BUCK: And I know we’re talking to this audience. We’ve got particularly men but there are women too listening to this who all across the country who are concealed-carry permit holders — current or former military, current or former law enforcement or just concerned citizens — and they’d be right in there, and I know they would. So they hear about something like this and it’s just mind-blowing to them.

CLAY: I know. And so I’ve got a couple of theories. I’m curious what you think. One, we have created a bystander culture. We have created a culture where people’s first thought when something newsworthy, good or bad, happens in front of them, is not to be an agent in the story themselves. It’s to be the person who holds up their phone and takes video of it.

Fights in a sports bar, fights in a stadium, I see this all the time. Very few people actually take effort to try and break up the fight, but tons of people pull out their phones and make sure that they record the fight. Again, it may be an even fight. You might be nervous about catching a punch trying to break it up.

BUCK: This is very right. Two guys who have had too much to drink who are throwing punches at each other at the ballgame — I know you and I agree on this — this is a dramatically different situation.

CLAY: Different level. But most people’s response on that is to pull out their phones, and I think if you look at the way that culture evolves, people’s thought now is not to be a part of the story themselves. It’s very often to record the activity. So it’s unfortunate, but I think this kind of thing happens all the time. And, by the way, Buck, it can be where someone is. It’s not a fair fight between two guys I’m talking about.

Somebody is ganging up. Eight people are beating up one person. There’s still someone standing there filming it. It is a film first bystander culture. The other thing is I think we have, in downing the value of masculinity. Let me explain my theory here. In trying to make the sexes entirely equal, we have created a dynamic where a lot of men, especially young men, don’t feel like they should be behaving chivalrously and protecting those who are weaker. You and I, Buck, I feel like we’re near the tail end and I still raise my kids the same way. But I think it’s not as prominent in our culture as it was where men are expected to protect women.

BUCK: Absolutely.

CLAY: We are bigger and stronger than women, and so we are expected — we were raised — to protect women who are in danger. That’s what I was taught. That’s what I teach my kids. I think a smaller and smaller percentage of Americans are being taught the same thing because we’re teaching, “Oh, there’s no real difference between men and women —

BUCK: Right. Gender equality absolutism.

CLAY: “– and gender is not real,” and so even something simple like, “Hey, I’m gonna hold the door open for a woman,” I don’t see young men behaving in that same chivalrous fashion as would have occurred in the past. So I think that translates when there is someone in a position who is clearly being taken advantage of, there isn’t that same chivalrous reaction to defend a woman because young men have been taught, “Oh, there’s no difference.”

BUCK: In this case, it’s a woman who’s being brutally and viciously raped in front of a bunch of people and I’m assuming there was at least one man, although we don’t know how many and we don’t know what the genders were of the people that were watching. But you could just guess that if it’s a pretty crowded time of day to be on the train, I’m sure there were a number of people there.

There should have been. To your point — and I completely agree with you about, you know, that was just standard. My dad always told me growing up, “You’re not a man if you hit a woman.” There are things like that — and now, “Oh, why are you using this generated language? and all this.

CLAY: Or even raise your voice in an aggressive way with a woman, in many ways.

BUCK: Biological males can fight in the MMA against women and that’s okay, which is completely insane, by the way. I know you know the trans community wants to act like that’s not an insane thing. It is an insane thing. But in this instance, we as a society… Look, I know that people listening to this are saying, “Of course I would have done something,” and I believe it because the kind of people that believe in honor, integrity, and masculinity are often — I would even same overwhelmingly, these days — center right in a lot of their beliefs.

Not everybody, but a lot of them. It’s very common to believe in that would be considered, in some context, “toxic masculinity,” i.e., male aggression used for the defense of women in a situation like this. We should all know, we should all be thinking about how it is not possible to be a man of honor and to have sat by while this woman was being attacked on the train.

It is not possible to be a man of courage to sit by and do nothing. And I would even go so far as to say there was a duty to help. If there was an able-bodied man on that train, there was a duty to intervene physically at risk of injury and/or even death if you are a man of honor. That’s what needed to be done here. And, Clay, they videoed it. They did nothing.

CLAY: I think in addition to the bystander culture and the attack on masculinity, I think the attack on masculinity has also created a hyper-fear of danger. I think there are a lot of people that are afraid if they get involved. They’re going to end up being a victim of violence or they’re going to end up a target in some way. I think all of that’s conspired to make us worse humans, in general, right? If you’re not willing to stand up for the weakest among us, to me, you are an awful human being.