CLAY: This is not going to surprise any of you. The rapid, I would say, rats fleeing from the ship of the Biden administration continues to accelerate as Joe Biden’s floundering and trying to explain away what is going on with this economy continues to not land in any kind of significant way. Just moments ago, before we came on the air, Reuters — not exactly a Republican-favoring polling company — announced that Joe Biden has equaled his all-time low in support.
Thirty-six percent of Americans right now support Joe Biden. I actually believe that is likely too high. As a part of that 36% approval, the economy is overwhelmingly the number one issue in the country right now, as everyone is struggling with 8.6% inflation. And Joe Biden is floundering, trying to explain why his administration — despite everything that you see — has actually been a success.
I want to listen to what Biden said about how awful the economy was when he was elected. By the way, inflation was around 1.5% when Joe Biden came into office, but he says people couldn’t even find things to eat. That might be a surprise to moms out there who still can’t find baby formula. Here’s Joe Biden saying, “You couldn’t even find food when I got elected!”
BUCK: He is like a bullcrap conveyor belt. It just keeps on coming, Clay. It’s hard to even pick out the individual falsehoods. You’re overwhelmed by it. You can’t actually deal with all the incoming. It’s crazy this stuff that he’s trying to get people to believe now. But the only alternative, the only thing that he could do otherwise would be to pivot and admit that some of the things that have done were really dumb and really destructive and made things worse. And in doing so they would be implicitly — whether they say it or not — admitting that people on the other side who were saying, “Hey, lockdowns are terrible.
“You should get out of them as soon as possible. Hey, vaccine mandates are a bad idea. Hey, $1.9 trillion of spending when we’re already through the worst of the pandemic is crazy.” Those people were all right. The problem is they don’t want to give any credibility to that because that means there might be an even bigger shift in power. I do think, though, Clay, you know, ’cause we’ll be talking more about this today, every day now it just feels a little bit like the Democrat legions in the media are having more and more desertions from the field of muster, more and more people kind of going, “I’m putting down my sword and my shield here. I don’t really want to fight for Team Biden anymore.”
CLAY: I think that’s exactly the story as we move closer and closer to the midterms. And it’s important to note when Biden says, “Trump had the worst economy since…” No. In February of 2020 before covid hit, the United States had the strongest economy in the history of our country — lowest unemployment rate, virtually nonexistent inflation — and the places that have actually recovered, after the Democrat-enforced lockdowns that lasted for far longer have actually been red states. But Biden is lying about that.
He’s also claiming — and this is significant, because this is going to be one of his arguments now. He’s gonna say Republicans are the reason for the economic failures that are going on right now. They’re not letting Democrats pass the legislation which would change this, when the reality is — and I want all of you to listen closely here. Remember, if Build Back Better had passed, as bad as inflation is now (8.6%), we’re talking about inflation that could be 15%. And here’s Biden saying, “Republicans are obstructing us!” Thank God Republicans are obstructing Democrats because otherwise the worst inflation in most of our lives would be far worse.
Listen to Joe Biden talk about obstruction.
BUCK: I mean, Clay —
CLAY: It’s just laughable. First of all, his own party doesn’t support much of what he’s trying to push through because it’s all a scam. Do away with the federal gas tax? Okay. It might save you 10, 15 cents on a gallon of gas.
BUCK: This is him throwing pennies at the peasants and expecting them to be grateful, and everyone’s looking at him saying, “Look, old man, this is not okay. You need to stop just continuing with talking points.” There’s a level of believability that you need for even government propaganda, right? Democrats, there are things they can get away with. For example — and we’ve said this before — what he’s doing right now, what Biden is claiming, “They’re standing in my way! I do all these amazing things!” That is straight out of the Obama playbook. This is what Obama did going into that big midterm election in 2010.
CLAY: Shellacking in 2010.
BUCK: It’s, “Oh, they’re not…” Remember, they did have… They did have plenty. They had a supermajority, in fact, right? So, they were able to get through Obamacare, they were able to get through stuff. And then once the Obama administration didn’t have anything left that they were able to push. Once they got beaten down so badly in those midterms, it turned into obstruction. “Oh, they’re obstructing.”
That at least resonated because Republicans were saying we’re not going along with your crazy agenda. Thank God, by the way. With Biden, as you pointed out, the agenda is the problem, and everyone sees it, because the agenda is entirely based upon spending a whole heck of a lot more money and as you mentioned yesterday, probably taxing people a whole lot more too —
CLAY: That’s the fear right now.
BUCK: — a guaranteed way to push us not into a recession that kind of like an “ouch” recession but an “Oh, my gosh” recession. You raise taxes dramatically on corporations and individuals right now? Big problems ahead.
“Let’s just go ahead and pass whatever we can right now ’cause who knows when we’ll control the House, the Senate, and also the White House?” That is particularly cynical because it may take a long time for Republicans to control the House, the Senate, and the White House as well; so whatever tax increases pass, Buck, could last for years because there may not be able to be the votes to pass it and overturn whatever gets passed right now in July in advance of the midterms.
BUCK: And isn’t it interesting that — speaking of Obama for a second here — you don’t see him coming out all fired up in defense of the Biden administration, which, I think it would help with the Democrat base to be sure, right? Obama will put out some tweet about climate change. Right? He will use the megaphone sometimes, and I just wonder.
I just wonder if already there’s some understanding in the real Democrat Party power centers of, “Don’t waste your energy and don’t waste your political capital on this White House. We might need it for the next Democrat White House,” ‘cause to your earlier point, the media is already pulling away a little bit. But some of the big voices in the Democrat Party, they’re not all saying what a great job Biden’s done. Hillary Clinton, even, for whatever she brings to the table, she’s not saying Joe Biden’s done a great job. No one’s saying he’s done a great job.
CLAY: That matters. Obama’s smart, and I think Hillary Clinton is smart. You can agree or disagree with their political opinions.
BUCK: Yeah. Hillary is evil but smart. Sure.
CLAY: They are intelligent people. I think they don’t have respect for Joe Biden’s intellectual acumen. I always thought it was significant that Obama didn’t endorse Joe Biden at all in 2020 until he had already gathered and gained the nomination. So, he wasn’t willing, despite the fact that he served alongside of Joe Biden for eight years. Hillary Clinton’s not running then. There aren’t really that many people who were involved in the Biden administration at all who were throwing punches and viable candidates in the 2020 Democratic primaries. I think that Obama did not endorse Biden because he doesn’t respect his intellect, and the same reason that he picked Hillary as his would-be successor in 2015 and essentially kicked Biden to the curb ’cause he doesn’t respect him as an actual leader.
But we can make this guy something he’s not when everyone’s so scared that they just want that national father or grandfather figure, in essence — and everyone hates Trump so much ’cause he’s so scary and bad and the pandemic’s his fault! You go back and you think about the psychology of it, this was the only… We had a once-in-a-century pandemic that created a once in a century opportunity for Joe Biden to actually be the president. All the emails about their cheating and everything else, I get it, I know. But we’re dealing with the reality of what actually happened here in terms of he is the president right now, and it’s not going well.
CLAY: Well, he’s the president like Jimmy Carter was the president, and this is where I think the analogy historically makes a lot of sense. Jimmy Carter was an accidental president. He was president because Richard Nixon had Watergate happen, and whoever the Democrats put forward in 1976 was gonna win. The reason why Joe Biden won is because of covid. If covid doesn’t happen, Trump wins — I really do believe — a landslide election. The reason why suburban women turned on Donald Trump was because he was not empathetic enough in the midst of covid and they bought the argument that Joe Biden put forward which was, “I’ll solve covid.”
BUCK: Right. Now people that are walking around double masked with their N95 they’re doing it as either a show of what is honestly an anxiety disorder or political allegiance, but in 2020, I knew a lot of people who were, like, “Look better safe than sorry. I’m concerned.”
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: That’s a different thing. In the beginning, the first month of the pandemic, there are a couple of times in my building I put on rubber gloves. I was like, “They keep saying you touch anything, I don’t want to get this stuff in my eye or whatever. I don’t want to get it.” So I’m not pretending like we had all the answers then. People were scared. Joe Biden was America’s grandpa. And now we find out he’s actually a jerk, and he’s incompetent, and he’s not America’s grandpa, and the Democrats are realizing this too.
CLAY: Well, and we’ve got a huge number of people right now that are listening to us that I believe voted for Joe Biden. I really do believe, every single day —
BUCK: That’s quite a claim, Mr. Travis.
CLAY: I really believe it, because I think a lot of people bought into the fear, I think they bought into the hype, and I think now they’re seeing how much of a disaster Biden is, and they’re looking for rationality, they’re looking for reasonableness, they’re looking for sanity in an insane world, and where else are you gonna go?
BUCK: Look at some of the Republicans governors out there. Not just Ron DeSantis. We give him plenty of credit. Let’s just be honest. What we say about Ron DeSantis on this show is just reflecting the reality of the results in his state. Other states… We’ve got Governor Stitt coming on from Oklahoma. Oklahoma’s done very well. Your home state. We’ve had Governor Lee on.
BUCK: He’s done very well. So we’ve had these models of red governance, of Republican governance, things are great. And you got Biden at the top of the whole system, things are trash. I think people are figuring this out.
CLAY: Yeah. And white, black, Asian, Hispanic — some of whom who bought into the Biden hype or were just turned off by the cosmetic aspects of Trump. As you’ll see a lot of people say now, “Would you rather have 8.6% inflation or mean tweets? Would you rather have war in Europe or mean tweets?” A lot of people are saying, “Eh, mean tweets aren’t really that bad compared to every time I go to the grocery store.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
ANA CABRERA: His remarks come as members of his own party and key supporters are getting more frustrated. They are questioning if the White House can muster the urgency to deal with huge challenges from the economy to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. And the rattled confidence is wide-spread. The Monmouth poll just found 88% of Americans think the U.S. is on the wrong track. That’s an all-time low, and the respondents’ top concern? Inflation!
BUCK: Welcome back to Clay and Buck. That was the CNN prompter reader telling you what everyone’s feeling. And if you are seeing some of the polling, you know the data too: 88% think the country is on the wrong track. Now, look, we need to keep on speaking the truth here. This is what we do. We tell everybody what you’re not gonna be hearing from the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, et cetera, about this Biden administration and trying to actually hold them to account.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
CONWAY: Democrats are cutting loose Biden and Harris — and look, the vast right-wing conspiracy are not the source of these quotes, and all the usual bogeymen that the Democrats and liberals and Biden and Harris and the rest of them have always used as a stalking horse — blaming this one, that one — they can’t do it anymore. You know, Joe Biden won because he wasn’t Trump, but he needed Trump and he needed covid to continue the juice in his presidency. And without being able to talk about either one or blame either one day by day, he’s lost. He’s completely bereft.
BUCK: There you have Kellyanne Conway, who is an astute political observer, and I think she’s nailing it on this one. Carrie’s reading her memoir, by the way, and says it’s quite good. I know we had her on.
CLAY: She’s a hundred percent right on that take.
BUCK: Oh, she’s absolutely spot-on here. She really gets it, and the entire regime media has billed itself as, effectively, an oppositional weapon, and for four years of Trump that was their only speed, and now what we’ve seen is that could only work for a certain period after you take over. It does remind me also of the way that they tried… I’ll never forget this. You remember going into the midterms for Trump, they were referring to it as “the Obama economy”?
And everyone’s like, “Guys, come on. It’s the midterms!” You’re not allowed to pretend that the guy in charge isn’t really in charge because things are going so well and in fact that’s quite a vote of confidence, in a sense, or, rather, a clear proof of how excellent things were. But I do think that they are struggling right now to even come up with what they’re trying to sell, which I can’t remember the last time, ’cause they sold so much fear and panic over covid and Trump. And now what are they gonna do? Because those are things that don’t work for them the way they did even a year ago.
CLAY: My concern — and I hope he doesn’t do this — is that Trump is going to jump in and announce that he’s running for reelection in 2024 before the midterms are here, because then — you’re right, and Kellyanne Conway is right, and many of you out there listening to us right now are —
BUCK: Look, the Kellyanne Conway analysis is astute on this point and you’re going to see Democrats continue going forward to pretend that they’re something other than a Trump-opposition apparatus because people have real problems right now, and pointing it Trump and pointing to Putin, that is another reflexive thing that the Democrats are engaged in now. It’s always Putin’s fault, and that’s because they use this against Trump.
I’m sure they’re gonna roll something out after the August recess, and we’re gonna hear a lot more about class warfare and about “racism in America” and things, the usual stuff where Democrats are trying to manipulate people’s emotions. But we stay the course here, friends. We stick to the truth. We stay mobilized and motivated, and the repudiation that Democrats so richly deserve… Oh, my gosh, they all deserve — all these Democrats deserve — to lose their jobs. So, hopefully, a lot of them will.
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