BUCK: We have a trial underway soon here for Jussie Smollett. That’s right, everybody. Remember Jussie Smollett? The trial starts today. Jury selection underway. Now, this is, of course, a much less serious issue — orders of magnitude less serious — than some of the recent trials that have gotten media attention. But there’s a reason that Clay and I want to take a moment to talk to you about this one.

The way that people on the left — the Democrats — get things so wrong over and over and don’t seem to care, it is fascinating. It’s almost like everybody who is in the corporate Democrat media and certainly all the members of the Democrat Party are lawyers for anybody on the left out there. It doesn’t matter — truth, lies, innocence, guilt, whatever — as long as we’re pushing for our team. I give you, as Jussie Smollett goes to trial…

Remember, Jussie Smollett is a laughable liar who faked a hate crime in such absurd fashion that people like me… Clay and I weren’t on the same show together then, but this is a few years back. I’m sure Clay was right there too. We we’re just saying, “If you believe this, you’re just honestly not very bright or you’re pretending to believe it because it suits the narrative.”

Kamala Harris tweeted this out: “Jussie Smollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. I’ll praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern-day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or the color of their skin. We must confront this hate.” Clay, this is now vice president of the United States. Then she was senator. How could anyone have heard this story not said, “Okay, so, this guy wants attention and he’s lying”?

CLAY: Well, just the idea that very many Trump people knew who Jussie Smollett was, at its most… When this story came out, I didn’t know who Jussie Smollett was. I didn’t watch Empire. But I’m way more plugged in than the average person would be when it comes to entertainment who was voting for Trump. The idea not only that you would know Jussie Smollett but that you would know him on sight, that you would know his sexuality? I have no earthly idea. All of this was so absurdly ridiculous.

BUCK: On sight at 2 a.m. —

CLAY: In a super nice neighborhood.

BUCK: — and it’s 35 degrees outside in Chicago, and you happen to find him with your MAGA hats on and you say, “This is MAGA country!”

CLAY: You’re just walking around in the street with nooses like in your MAGA hat. Yeah, I would say this for everybody. If a story seems too insanely perfect the narratively, question it. Be skeptical of initial media reports. I was one of the few people… So the Jussie Smollett around the same time — do you remember — that Michael Bennett came out said, ” I was profiled in a Las Vegas casino!”

He was a football player and everybody in sports covered it. “Oh, my God. Michael Bennett, poor example of racism,” and then the videos came out, and he was running. He was refusing to accept police responsibility. All these things, if everything in the narrative… If you’re checking every box so that your side wins in a story, oftentimes it’s too good to be true, meaning it’s manufactured and made up. And this is the vice president! That tweet’s still up, isn’t it?

BUCK: Oh, it is. It is indeed. I just remember, I learned a lesson years ago about media coverage with the liberal media, the lib media — maybe just call them “the Marxist Media.” That would be fun. That would upset them. But the way that they all jumped on the story of the UVA, fraternity rape story that was in Rolling Stone magazine. I remember this. Do you remember what year that was? It was earlier in my career.

CLAY: It was 2014 or something like that.

BUCK: It was much earlier in my career, but I remember my family. It came up and I was sitting at a family dinner, and I had just read the article before dinner ’cause it was everywhere, right? I remember I looked up my family and I just said, “Yeah, I don’t believe it.”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I was angry at myself because you know what my thought was when I read that story Rolling Stone? Because people say, “How’d you know?” Uh, the dialogue was absurd? It was like something out of some after-school special. “Oh, man, this will ruin your reputation!” I was in college. You were in college. They said that a young woman with glass in her back, bleeding, ran through a party shrieking.

No one called police? No one? The whole thing made no sense. But, Clay, you know what my thought process was? And this reminds me of Jussie Smollett. That’s why I’m mad at myself. I think, “They can’t lie that big. There must be something to this. They would know their credibility would be zero if they lied about something so big so egregiously,” and now I realize — I mean, I’ve known this for years — no, they’ll lie about everything as big they can see get away with and they could care less when they’re caught.

CLAY: Well, that for me was the Missouri hoax, all of the race hoaxes —

BUCK: At Mizzou?

CLAY: Yeah, at Mizzou. All of it was made up. They had a hungry striker, poop swastika, all that, and I was skeptical years before that. I hadn’t quite been red pilled yet but he was skeptical when the Duke lacrosse story came out the same way you were about the UVA case. All of the details in that case didn’t make sense to me as someone who had covered college athletics for a long time. I’m not saying people don’t hire strippers and throw crazy parties. That happens. But it doesn’t happen the way that it was reported in Duke lacrosse.

BUCK: In the Duke lacrosse case was interesting because in that, there was at least a framework of plausible fact, right? And then the story didn’t line up. And then, of course, the guys were all innocent. They were charging somebody who was at an ATM machine miles away, the whole thing. As we all know, Nifong, the prosecutor there, is an evil human being.

CLAY: He went to prison.

BUCK: Yeah. He was disbarred. The woman, by the way, in that case, the accuser went on to murder somebody. They didn’t charge her with essentially a fake report, false report she went on to kill somebody or manslaughter. So maybe they should have charged her — just as an aside — just like they’re charging Jussie Smollett right now for false report, which is what they should be to bring this all full circle. But in the Rolling Stone magazine piece about UVA, it was a complete fake. It was a top-to-bottom fabrication.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It was like a Russia collusion hoax.

CLAY: Kavanaugh gang rape allegations which got covered like they were real. All of this, I would just say in general, “Be skeptical of everything that you read. Be skeptical.” Just in the back of your mind be thinking, “Wait a minute. Is this really true?” Because so much of it is not.

BUCK: This is why I’m furious about — and I saw you tweeting about it (and I knew you would be) over the weekend — the way they’re talking about Waukesha, they’re writing the headlines for Waukesha, for the mass murder hate crime/domestic terror attack in Waukesha. The way they’re writing about it, it’s like a garbage truck came off the emergency brake and a tragedy ensued. No! A human being killed a lot of people.