MALLIOTAKIS: It’s gonna be another legal battle because myself — the new borough president, Vito Fossella — and my colleagues on city council, we’re going to sue to push back on this. Voting is a right reserved for American citizens. It is a slap in the face to my parents who came as immigrants and all immigrants who came here and followed the rules. They have to wait ’til they become citizens to vote — that’s the bottom line — and we will continue to work toward this to preserve the integrity of our election system.
BUCK: Welcome back to Clay and Buck show. There you’re hearing Congresswoman Malliotakis of Staten Island here in New York City, one of our boroughs, one of the very few… She might be the only Republican member of Congress in the five boroughs. I think she is. Talking about the city council today voting — and, Clay, could you just put a pin in this.
I’m seeing right now the Pfizer CEO saying, “I think we’re gonna need a fourth dose.” If people are wondering why I was struggling with the math yesterday, it is because the numbers change by the day. We’ll come back to that, though. (That just flashed on the screen from CNN.) Back to New York City’s council — and we’ve got our WOR listeners all over the Tri-State right now who know all about this, I’m sure.
New York City’s council is super left-wing, okay. So even if you have Eric Adams, the new mayor, not a full-on Marxist trying to destroy New York as de Blasio, his predecessor, still is, you’re gonna have big problems. You have a very radical left, AOC-style city council, and they’re voting today to give 800,000 legal aliens — I mean, sorry — voting rights.
Not citizenship, voting rights. They can’t do that! Voting rights for city officeholders. So they’ll be able to pick the mayor, city council members, other municipal officeholders. They will not be able to vote for president, members of Congress, state elections. So obviously they can’t vote at the federal level. They can’t vote for state officeholders, either, ’cause this is only a city ordinance.
But, Clay, the Democrat embrace of lawlessness in the service of their political interests is something that everyone needs to really see for what it is because it’s only gonna get worse. We have sanctuary city jurisdictions all across the country where local law enforcement is told by mayors — and New York is the largest sanctuary jurisdiction in the United States. They say it’s 800,000. Most people say it’s more like a million illegal immigrants in New York City alone. A million! Bigger than most U.S. cities.
CLAY: A lot of states.
BUCK: Bigger than a lot of states, and here we have not just the “we won’t work with federal authorities to help two or three federal laws with local law enforcement,” which only happens really on the immigration issue. That’s one part of it. The other part of it is the Democrat Party celebrates and is in favor of illegal immigration. They explicitly rewarded — they want to reward — people who come here illegally.
And here you’re seeing it. They want to get them voting as quickly as possible. They still want an amnesty at the federal level. The Biden administration would sign it and ram it through in a heartbeat if they could — and to people in New York who are paying outrageous taxes, city tax on top of high New York State tax? What if I don’t want to pay?
CLAY: Several things here. One, I’m not sure this is legal. Okay, it’s a far expanse — and as you said, it’s local elections, not federal elections. But you know how this argument goes, right? If you are allowed to have them vote in local elections, soon the argument will become, “Well, if it’s legal to them to vote for mayor, why shouldn’t they be able to vote for congressperson? Why shouldn’t they be able to vote for governor?”
That’s the logical extension of this argument. Make no mistake what’s going on here. This is a clear attempt to get an opportunity — a land grab of sorts –and then be able to expand it. It’s a beachhead that could lead to something larger, okay? It’s wild. It’s crazy. I’m even trying to work through it in my head. I can’t remember even debating this in any point of law school whether or not a city could decide to allow non-legal residents to vote in a citywide election. It’s really a case, to my knowledge, without precedent. Second part of this —
BUCK: San Francisco has done this.
CLAY: They’ve done this too?
BUCK: San Francisco did this for… But hold on. Just to be clear, ’cause you’re right about the level and degree of this. They did it for school board elections in San Francisco.
CLAY: Okay, with the argument being, “The kids are in school anyway and so they should have a voice in their school board,” right?
BUCK: That was the argument.
CLAY: That was the argument.
BUCK: Right.
CLAY: But they have not yet done it for mayor or city council. They haven’t expanded it. Again, it’s a pretty expansive argument. I don’t know what the natural outcome here would be. Here’s the second part of this, to try to be a little bit optimistic. ‘Cause I think you’re right about the desire for illegals to be given increasingly more rights.
What if in 2024, the beachhead — to use my beachhead analogy — which we clearly saw established in the state of Florida down in Miami and South Florida where we got a ton of listeners — when the Venezuelans and the Cubans and all of those Hispanic voters came out and overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump because they hate socialism and they don’t want America to turn into the countries that they left behind.
We saw that in south Texas, too, in a big way. What if that beachhead is expanding — ’cause I think it is — into the Hispanic vote? How quickly would Democrats alter their calculus if all of a sudden this dreamed-for massive advantage that they were gonna have with Hispanic voters — with the “Latinx voters,” as they like to call them? What if that doesn’t come to reality, Buck?
BUCK: The only people who like to call them that are MSNBC votes, as you know. The Hispanic community is like, “Please stop the Latinx thing. It’s really annoying.”
CLAY: They hate it. What if it doesn’t come to fruition?
BUCK: Remember, the Hispanic… As I understand it the polling is showing legal immigrants and the Hispanic community — people born here obviously within the Hispanic community — in America is who is being polled. So, the Democrats hope to change this dynamic you’re seeing playing out of a not-good economy that the Hispanic community recognizes is the Biden administration not delivering.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: But also, legal immigrants? Talk to a Cuban in Florida right now about how they feel when they hear that 15,000-20,000 at a time in these caravans are coming across the U.S.-Mexico border and being allowed to stay in the country. They do not like that. But also, beyond that, the possibility of amnesty. And then you always get into this discussion about, people say it’s 12 million now officially. It’s 11.7 or something like that. It’s basically 12 million officially.
CLAY: The budget reconciliation bill.
BUCK: That’s right. Budget reconciliation to create — outside of existing law — 15 million, 12 million, whatever it is, new voters
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