C&B to Stephanie Miller: We’re Rooting for Freedom and Sanity

BUCK: Kamala Harris is the vice president. She was sent to Europe a few days ago in Berlin, Clay, to essentially be leading a diplomatic effort to box in Putin — which not gonna happen, by the way, which doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen anytime soon. Here she is, your vice president and possible future Democrat nominee for the president of the United States, Kamala Harris. Play 24.

HARRIS: We still sincerely hope that there is a diplomatic path at this moment — and within the context then of the fact that that window is still opening — open — although it is absolutely known but within the context of a diplomatic path still being open, the deterrence effect, we believe, has merit.

BUCK: “I mean, Clay, there’s totally, like, a diplomatic path that’s like sort of open, closing, a little open, maybe narrowing, but, like, it’s there and stuff.” What is this? What is it supposed to mean?

CLAY: Every time Kamala Harris talks, it feels like she has to fill an entire sheet of a book report and only has one sentence of opinion.

BUCK: Mmm-hmm.

CLAY: So she has all these crazy signifiers that she builds around this. And honestly, I want to play this cut because there’s an argument out there, Buck, that, oh, Republicans… You see this? Republicans are rooting for Joe Biden to do an awful job. The situation in Ukraine is why I don’t want the president or the vice president to do an awful job because regardless of your politics, if opposing dictatorial leaders are able to ridicule our leaders, then they take advantage of us, which is what I think is going on right now. Listen to Stephanie Miller. She’s trying to argue, “Oh, the GOP’s rooting for all these awful things to happen.” No. We just want there to be improvement. Listen to this cut. Play 18.

CLAY: Imagine starting off your argument by saying that they believe in lies — and then making up within the 30 seconds that you’re talking — your own lies. No one is rooting for covid, no one is rooting for supply chain issues, no one’s rooting for Russia. All of these things are failures of Joe Biden. We wish we had an accountable president who was able to handle these issues. But the idea that there is anybody out there who’s like, “Hey, I want covid to be more of an issue so we have to wear masks more so that there’s airplane mask mandates forever,” no, no, no, no. She’s got it exactly backwards.

BUCK: Clay, think of how lazy this argument is. It would be like if there’s a bad coach and you’re saying, “Look, this coach is making really bad plays for the team,” and then other people come out and said, “Clearly you want the team to fail because you’re criticizing the coach!” No, you criticize the coach when you want the team to win, when you’re upset the team is underperforming, right?

No one would ever say — well, I mean, not if they’re being honest — “Oh, how dare you criticize this coach! You clearly want them to fail,” and that’s effectively what they’re doing with Biden, and they know it. They have to always go on offense because if what we were saying about Biden weren’t true, they would be saying that’s not true. So instead, they focused on the insurrection or they focus on how Republicans are mean or racist or white nationalists or whatever because they got nothing else that they can really do. Just suck.

CLAY: It’s also the concept of a parent. My kids misbehave all the time —

BUCK: Not the Travis children. No way!

CLAY: — like everybody’s kids out there misbehave all the time. You’re not rooting for them to misbehave when you’re pointing out that they screw up. That’s basically the argument that she’s making. “No, I want my kids to be perfect. I want them not to make me and their mom angry.” Doesn’t always happen, though. Sometimes they’re a handful. And I bet the Sexton kids were the same way.