CLAY: If you missed the first hour, we talked a lot about the covid vaccine battles and the ridiculousness of the border we were just talking about in terms of how you cannot go into Canada because of covid, and it will be policed aggressively. But meanwhile on the southern border, it’s wide open.

People are coming across with covid all the time, which flies directly in the face of arguing that covid is a major issue. And, as you look around the country, one of the continuing biggest issues outside of the border and outside of covid is the massive increase of crime, which many of you, no matter what part of this country you live in, are experiencing and seeing on a level that, frankly, we have not seen in over a generation in American life.

The murder rate is up unlike ever before, and all of it is continuing to spiral. And the fact of the matter is, Buck Sexton, a lot of the people who would be traditional allies of the Democratic Party are completely repudiating and rejecting the demonization of police, which has become such a massive part of the overall Democratic brand. And it’s really wild to see when you actually look at the data of what’s going on.

BUCK: There’s data that shows what people want and then there’s also people in law enforcement that are speaking out and saying that enough is enough and there has been a sea change in the way that law enforcement is supposed to be interacting with, not just the general community, but suspects, people who are breaking laws. This is a result, as we all know, of the anti-cop, BLM narrative that went into effect 13 months ago after the killing of George Floyd, BLM 2.0. Here is the police chief in D.C. who’s making an argument about coddling violent criminals.

ROBERT CONTEE: But I’m gonna tell you the truth. The real issue is we have a vicious cycle of bad actors who do things, no accountability, and they end up back in communities, and the police officers… And I guarantee you when we lock up whoever did this, they will be no stranger to us. I promise that you. But it’s been happening in communities all across our city.

And I’m saying to you, “Enough is enough,” I’ve been a police officer in this city for over 30 years. I’ve been born and raised right here in this city, started my patrol career right here in this district. And the way that we’re going and the things we’re trying to go to? We want to help people. Yes, we should. But you cannot coddle violent criminals! You cannot! You cannot treat violent criminals who are out here making communities unsafe for you, for your loved ones, for me, for my loved ones.

BUCK: I mean, Clay, does he listen to the Clay & Buck show?

CLAY: Probably.

BUCK: We could just make him the feature guest. I completely agree with him, AND that’s one thing I’ll say about local law enforcement that gets overlooked. The libs love the FBI because they view the FBI now as the praetorian guard that they can send after the “white nationalist January 6 insurrectionists.” So you don’t hear a lot of FBI criticism.

They also spied on Trump. That’s another thing. Local law enforcement, Clay, it comes from the community they police. They are trying to keep their cities, their towns, their neighborhoods safe. And whenever you talk to them at the actual police level — whether we’re discussing New York, L.A., Baltimore, Chicago — they’re appalled by the narrative about cops at the national level, that Democrats completely pander to.

And the fact that you’re looking at another year here. We had a huge spike nationwide in murders in cities last year, and we’re looking to have another record level of murders nationwide and shootings this year. And they’re still talking about police “reform.” Democrats think that that’s the solution. “Oh, if only the cops were a little more polite, so many other people that aren’t cops would stop shooting each other?” This is madness.

CLAY: It is. And to your point, I know ’cause I hear from some of these guys on a regular basis. There are right now police officers in all 50 states listening to our show, nodding along because they see it on the ground day in and day out. How would it feel if you busted your ass as a police officer to catch and arrest someone who was a clear and present danger to your community, and then an idiot judge or an idiot DA puts them right back on the street.

And next thing you know they’ve committed another crime; they have another victim? It’s infuriating to these guys ’cause you’re telling them the job that they’re doing, “We’re not going to support your efforts to make your community safer.” And these guys see it all day long, every day, and then they hear it from the community that surrounds them. And then they turn on the news or they pick up a newspaper, and they are the most hated people. Remember, they canceled the television show Cops —

BUCK: Yep.

CLAY: — because it was too positive in its reflection of police officers?

BUCK: Shameful pandering to the anti-cop narrative that happened last year. It was awful, and there were some Republicans who went along with it.

CLAY: Oh yeah.

BUCK: Some people aren’t gonna want to hear this but there were some people in the Trump White House who also went along with it. Not Trump himself, but there were people around him who were saying, “Oh, yeah, let’s push that police reform bill,” just absolutely making the whole situation worse. But let’s get down to the actual at that time that we can use on this.

Okay so murders are up. Shootings are up. We all know that and it’s every major city across the country pretty much I’m sure we could find a couple outliers but pretty much. We really should be looking at where we are now versus where we are pre-pandemic to get a sense of what the numbers actually looked like then. But by a nine-to-one margin…

This was a USA Today/Suffolk University/Detroit Free Press poll that just came out over the weekend, Clay. Nine to one, the residents of Detroit say they will find feel safer with more cops on the street. Nine to one. Okay? You look at numbers. You can’t get nine to one to agree on a whole lot in this country.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And it’s worth noting that Detroit — which has unfortunately year in year out a pretty high per capita homicide rate — is a city that has also experienced bad numbers in that regard during covid. It’s about 80% African-American. So 90% of the city overall, which happens to be an 80% African-American majority city, are saying, “More cops are make us feel safer.” You know who pushes BLM, cowards who make millions of dollars a year to live in gated communities or on the Upper West Side of Manhattan or wherever who work at CNN. They love BLM narratives.

CLAY: I’m reading from the Wall Street Journal. Over the weekend, I believe, this article went up building on what we were just talking about. Again, this is the actual data. In 70 cities and counties that account for a fifth of the U.S. population, the murder rate rose there by 35%. That’s a monster number all right? But it’s gonna blow your mind, this data here.

The largest previous increase on record from one year to the next was 13% in 1968. Think about that for a minute. We have never seen the murder rate skyrocket like it did in 2020 — and, oh, by the way, it’s continued to grow in many places in 2021. A 35% increase, more by nearly triple than the largest previous increase on record, which was 13% in 1968.

I don’t know how you can hear that and in any way support (laughing) anything other than funding more police. We need, I think… What was the thing, back in the day? We need 100,000 more cops. Wasn’t that the number back in the nineties that they put on the streets — and, not surprisingly, crime decreased almost immediately.

BUCK: ‘Cause everybody got sick of it and we reached a point as a society where you’d get shouted down for the anti-cop garbage. Early nineties, God bless them, here in New York City a lot of black pastors spoke out in the early nineties in support of the Giuliani… I’m sorry, not the early nineties. When Giuliani took over, the mid-nineties, I can’t remember the exact year now. But in support of the Giuliani crime policies when he was mayor, bottom line. They actually were saying it.

CLAY: And Bloomberg.

BUCK: By the time Bloomberg came along it was kind of like, “Do we want a safe clean city in New York or do we want something else?”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: You know what I mean? “Do we want clean safe streets or do we want…?” So the miracle had already happened in a sense but there were leaders in the black community who spoke out in defense of what we all know. Everybody wants which is safer, better streets for all of us and, you know, communities for all of us to be living in. And it’s just so frustrating because, Clay, some things are complicated. We could open up the lines here and have really in-depth, multitier discussions about decisions made when it comes to the War on Terror, you know, Afghanistan, Iraq war.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: How do we deal with the illegal immigrant communities in this can you answer that’s been here for 20 years. There are things that could be really nuanced and there’s a lot of discussion. When you have an open border, by choice, and when you have an anti-police narrative, by choice, and have a disaster at the border and a disaster with crime increases?

This is right at the feet of the Democrat Party. These are decisions that they made. And we are suffering the obvious consequences of them. And everyone needs to know that because the only corrective here is for the Democrats to suffer when it comes to their power as a result.

CLAY: And let’s just go back into that number again for the increase: 35% murder rate, largest since 1968 when it went up 13% in a year over year basis. Who are the people that are bearing the brunt of the massive increase in murder? If BLM is true, then black lives are being sacrificed at the altar of Defund the Police.

Because over half of all murder victims in the United States are black, even though black people represent only around 12.5% of the overall population. So the unfortunate irony here is the people who bear the brunt of the increase in crime at the absolute worst level of crime you can have, which is murder, are black.

And that is the group overwhelm in Detroit that is saying, “We need more cops on our street to protect us,” and that is not a unique-to-Detroit perspective. Vast majorities of that Americans — white, black, Asian, and Hispanic — all over this country want more, not less, police.