Mar-a-Lago Raid Puts GOP on Defense, Distracts from Biden

CLAY: You mentioned the Trump tax investigation into his company and the decisions there. Major hearing today surrounding the Mar-a-Lago raid by the FBI. There is a hearing today on whether the affidavit, which was the underlying supportive evidence for why this warrant was granted in South Florida and why this raid happened is going to be heard today I believe at 1 Eastern; so in about 30 minutes from now, that will be ongoing. To update you a bit, way more intelligent than either Buck or I can do, we’ll be talking to Alan Dershowitz at the top of the third hour of this program. It should be an absolutely phenomenal discussion with him.

But, in the meantime, Buck, what’s intriguing here is it seems like we’ve got a little bit of a game of chicken being played from a legal process. You’ll remember that Merrick Garland came out last week, a week ago today, and said, oh, we want to unseal the warrant and allow you to know what exactly was seized from the Mar-a-Lago raid. And a lot of people said, “Well, there’s no way Donald Trump’s going to agree to that,” and Trump came out and said, okay, go ahead and do it. And, if anything, I would say the unsealing of that warrant has not really helped the Department of Justice in their argument, that this was an exigent circumstance and they a hundred percent had to run in, and we need to know, to have greater clarity about the rationale for this raid, what was in the affidavit.

The Department of Justice is saying, “No, no, no, you can’t release the affidavit.” Trump wants it released. Many different news organizations — New York Times, Wall Street Journal among them — are arguing, hey, we need to see the affidavit. The Wall Street Journal this morning, Buck, had one of their editorials in the newspaper saying it is imperative that this affidavit being released. I agree with them. What do you think about this battle?

BUCK: I think this all boils down to one question, the whole thing: Who is willing to believe the Russia collusion playbook all over again? Who is gonna go for this a the second time? Fool me once — remember what Bush said, fool me once, can’t get — can’t get fooled again? You know, he kind of got stuck on that one.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: The truth here is that you’re seeing a lot of similarities between the early days of Russia collusion, the big lie they told about Donald Trump, and one thing that was so important to recall, you have to see the left’s tactics, right? You and I are dissecting the tactics they use, whether it’s legal or a media propaganda, information warfare, whatever you want to call it, day in and day out, that’s what we’re doing here. They had these big allegations: “Trump stole the 2016 election with Russia’s help!” That’s what they said.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: And then it was, oh, there’s this really damaging leak. And then they get people to say, well, based on this really damaging leak that is always absent the full context, you don’t actually see the full documents, based on all this, don’t you condemn this? And they start changing people’s minds. What they tried to, in essence, is push people into a collective illusion as quickly as possible. Because once they get them to go to the collective illusion of, “I guess Trump did steal the election in 2016 with Russia’s help.” Then there’s the ideological allegiance of, “Well, I don’t want to be the dumb guy who’s wrong on this one.” So they’ve got you, right? But the more information that came out, the more we saw the — you know, the thing about the pee-pee tape and, you know, the —

CLAY: The Steele dossier.

BUCK: Steele dossier, yes, thank you. It’s more fun to call it the other thing.

CLAY: The golden shower lies.

BUCK: Yeah. And anybody — I mean, it’s crazy to even talk about. The biggest news organizations in the country — I have not forgotten. I remember you, CNN. I remember you, New York Times, Washington Post. They were running with all this stuff like of course it’s true. Anybody who knew Trump was like, there is zero chance this stuff actually went down, zero chance. I mean, this is bonkers. And yet you see that they tried to get the narrative in place before the information came out.

I think you can expect exactly the same thing to continue to occur here because you’ll see a trend. I’m gonna go — you know, you like to bet. I wish there’s a way to bet on this. The trend will be the more information — actual information, not leaks, not news stories — the more documentation we have about the Mar-a-Lago raid, the more obvious it will be that this was trumped up, that this was exaggerated, there weren’t nuclear secrets. I mean, stop — a fundamental question I asked for Russia collusion from the beginning was, Clay, it didn’t even make sense. It’s a crazy idea. You’re gonna be in Putin’s pocket for all four years? He could dump you at any point in time by exposing this? It’s the dumbest plan — and, by the way, Trump told me this later on —

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: — heard me say it. He said, “Russia collusion, it doesn’t even make any [bleeping] sense.” Totally true —

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: — actually, said that to me in the Oval Office a long time ago. And on this issue, why would Trump — why would Trump want to keep nuclear secrets, everybody in think about that. First of all, he has no idea what’s in the boxes. And second of all, why would he want that? It makes no sense. He’s not trying to sell nuclear secrets to the Chinese, libs. I’m sorry. Your stupid lies aren’t going to work on everybody. So that’s why I think this unsealing that’s gonna come, this hearing that’s gonna happen is so interesting. I think they’re gonna say no, and then I think there will be more pressure. I think eventually they’re gonna say yes. It will be redacted and we’ll say we need to see the redactions. What does that feel like? Russia, Russia, Russia all over again.

CLAY: — you can’t see the reactions because the state secrets are so important —

BUCK: Of course.

CLAY: — that if we reveal this, there will be major issues. And here is where this becomes a huge win for Democrats — I just gotta be honest with you.

BUCK: Ooh. Huge win for Democrats.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Oh, gosh.

CLAY: Listen. Because we’re talking about defending Trump instead of attacking Biden.

BUCK: Well, this is the point.

CLAY: That is their play.

BUCK: Distraction and defense. They get that no matter what —

CLAY: They —

BUCK: Turns into distraction for us and defense that we have to go on instead of, “Hey, you know the Democrats elected a guy who’s visibly senile, failed on covid, and has made the economy much worse than any of us anticipated?”

CLAY: If the story is Biden, Democrats have a Red Wave that sweeps over them. If the story is, was a Mar-a-Lago raid justified or not by the FBI, many people go back to their respective camps. Buck, you know one of the biggest challenges out there? Getting people to change their minds. That’s why we’ve had so much difficulty in getting people to believe that masks don’t work. The data is overwhelming. But it takes so long to get people to come off whatever their opinion is. And Trump, to a large extent, is a known quantity. And so the usual suspects run to their corners and say, “Trump is the worst human being ever. He’s gotta be in prison.”

And then people like you and me, who I believe are logical and many of our listeners sit and look, but when we’re defending Trump, we’re not attacking Biden. And so the raid on Trump — don’t miss what’s going on here — it’s an offensive attack by Democrats, which forces us to get distracted into the defense of Trump as opposed to the prosecution of Biden’s failures as president. And that is what we are dealing with right now. Doesn’t mean these are not legitimate discussions we should be having. We certainly should. But the Democrats are controlling the narrative cycle based on their raid.