You Won’t Believe this Navy Training Video on Pronoun Usage

BUCK: We often talk about sanity versus insanity, reality versus delusion. I think those are some of the fundamental challenges that we’re trying to tackle day in and day out, which is just separate not only fact from fiction, but just bizarre from, “Wait a second. I thought we all kind of understood some of the same things here. I thought we could operate from the same baseline foundational understanding of what we’re trying to achieve in this country.”

And perhaps even more to the point, what’s up, what’s down, what’s left, what’s right, what does 2 + 2 equal? And we are being forced increasingly by the Democrat left, by the cultural apparatus that we have, by the control of institutions, right? And remember, institutional control does not necessarily reflect sentiment within the institutions. So, all Disney employees, for example, do not share — and I’d be willing to bet probably less than half of them share the idea that there must be a dramatic increase in LGBTQIA. By the way, I believe that’s the full acronym.

CLAY: Every letter is where this is headed, Buck.

BUCK: I don’t want to leave one out, Clay.

CLAY: I know.

BUCK: To leave one out would be, you know, this is a high crime these days, to leave one of the letters out. And there may be a new letter added tomorrow, and if it is, Clay, I will make sure that I add this letter. This the longest acronym I’ve ever heard of. Put that aside for a second. People at Disney, people at these companies they don’t necessarily reflect at the very top what the sentiments of the individuals are in this far left, especially on the far left trans agenda stuff. And I’m talking to you about this right now because sometimes, Clay, and I have to…

We share something and we’re talking. We’re sharing stuff at night with the team. We’re waking up in the morning, this show… People ask what our show prep is and our show prep is we’re awake and we’re thinking and talking about the show, basically. And there’s this Navy pronoun education video that is making the rounds right now on social media. And I said, “Wait. Is this real? This is the United States Navy?”

We’ve had naval aviators on the show. Top Gun is a naval aviator program, for example. We’ve talked about my grandfather. He served on the USS Bataan in World War II in the Pacific. Our Navy is amazing, the envy of the world, the most powerful naval force in the history of the planet. And yet here is the Navy’s new instructional video on proper pronoun usage. Play clip 4.

BUCK: Clay —

CLAY: Makes me sick.

BUCK: Come on, man. Come on.

CLAY: We’re gonna get our ass kicked at some point, and when we get our ass kicked — and I don’t know when it’s gonna be, when we get our ass kicked everybody’s gonna turn around and say, instead of developing the biggest collection of ass kickers in American modern history, we were worried about developing the biggest collection of ass kissers in American history where all we do is sit around worrying about whether we’re going to offend people or not. Here is the hard-core reality.

You know this better than I do for sure, Buck, and there are many people who know it far better than both of us. When your life is in danger, you want the baddest ass on the planet helping to protect your lives. When your country’s future is at stake, you want the toughest dudes or the toughest girls that are available out there to be able to bring down the thunder. And when I sit around and I look at all this ridiculous showmanship — ’cause that’s really what it is, right?

When you look at all of the external, doesn’t impact the creation of the greatest fighting force on the planet, we are just wasting time, and we are enabling our enemies. China and Russia and Iran, they aren’t sitting around doing inclusive pronoun videos to encourage all of their people in the armed forces to think about avoiding saying, “Hey, guys” and say, “Hey, team” instead. All of this is misplaced priorities that is going to lead at some point — and I hope it’s not anytime soon.

But at some point, to us getting whipped because we aren’t developing the meanest, baddest fighting force on the planet when we are focusing on issues like these. We just aren’t. And you can say, “Well, the military needs to be a kinder, gentler place.” I would dispute that. I would say that the military needs to be razor’s edge tough and I don’t believe that behavior like this is creating more toughness in our military.

And I bet there’s almost not a single person listening to us right now who believes that.. Unfortunately, Buck, I guarantee you a lot of people in the Armed Services who are listening to us right now are rolling their eyes over this because they see it as clearly a way to deconstruct the elements of toughness and forcefulness that should be the hallmarks of a successful fighting force.

BUCK: It’s also not true. I mean, everything that you said is true. This notion — and of course I agree, the combat veterans and active-duty military listening to this show, I know a lot of them, right? I’ve slept in the same barracks with some of these folks overseas. And, you know, they’re rolling their eyes at this. They’re saying you’ve gotta be kidding. This is what I mean, though, when I started talking about the top.

The H.R. department and the C suite is not represented. This is what the left figured out. This is one of… I’ll say it: This is one of their strokes of tactical genius in the cultural wars. You don’t need to convince everybody. Just have the people that have the power to hire and fire, that are signing the paychecks and who want to be invited to the fancy cocktail parties so H.R. department all the way to C suite agree with the far left, and then that’s what the institutional powers used to do.

But that’s why you have the Navy here saying all this, doing this whole pronoun indoctrination stuff and how it’s about acceptance and respect. No. Pronouns are about whether you’re addressing a person who is male or female. There is not this… The demand in society now for the make-believe pronouns or even worse in so many cases, the plural pronouns. I saw this with Jennifer Lopez. She now has a daughter who has come out nonbinary I believe — nonbinary or trans, I can’t keep it all straight; no one can — and they’re being referred to… Sorry. The media is referring to this individual as “they.” When I read the news story, I go, “Wait, they? No.” Even the New York Times admits “they” is for plural, okay?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: We’re not changing all of our language because some people have an emotional need to dictate the speech of others.

CLAY: I don’t get to choose my adjectives. Imagine how cocky of that it would be if, Buck, I came on and I said, every time you refer to me I demand you say the incredibly handsome and the incredibly brilliant Clay Travis. There’s all of you people out there —

BUCK: Maybe we do refer to you that way, Clay.

CLAY: There’s lots of people out there that would like to use adjectives that are nowhere near as kind as those or as beneficial. And, by the way, you can read the comments on any Clay and Buck Boston and you can find the opposite. But you don’t get to dictate to other people how they describe you. That isn’t a part of American discourse. And so, what we’ve got here is, to use a ancient military analogy, this is the Trojan horse.

Our military is being destroyed from within by these kooks who are bringing in this diversity and inclusion language. And what they are doing is just like with the Trojan horse, for those of you who are fans of ancient military history, is being brought inside and then it is being unfurled, all of the things that are hidden — and, by the way, this is not just a military analogy. I think this is happening to many institutions across our country.

They bring in these diversity and inclusion people hidden inside the Trojan horse, right, and then when it takes over the interior of the company, everybody looks around and said, how did this happen? Well, you let them inside your doors, you brought them inside the gates of the fortress, and now they are going to run roughshod over all of your protocols because this is what they do. They attack, they are locusts you discussed, they watch and they destroy from the inside once you allow them to do so.

BUCK: And it always starts with, oh, it’s just about acceptance and being inclusive. That’s the way, to your analogy of the Trojan horse, that’s the way that they get it into the walls of ancient Troy. That’s the way the Greeks trick everybody, so to speak, because then it turns into, “Hold on a second. I’m sorry. Colonel, I know we’re in a combat zone, but you just said, ‘You men are gonna come under fire; I need you to be prepared.’ Can we not use the…”

Yes, every single Marine in the room right now is in fact a male and a hard-charging, door-kicking, you know, butt kicker, but can you not use the male pronoun? That’s what happens here, okay? You have one-offs, you have individuals who are in this extreme, fringe minority who are gonna make demands of everybody, which will be a distraction, which will hurt esprit de corps and there are penalties for this too for anybody who thinks this is an exaggeration look at what they’ve done in the school districts now.

“Dead naming,” which for anyone who doesn’t know say reference to a trans individual’s previous name. So, I go on the radio, I say, “Oh, Manning is out of prison now.” “It’s Chelsea Manning!” Even if it’s an honest mistake, it’s dead naming because of the trans identity that you have to now all accept. And they want people to be punished for this. Wrong pronoun usage for school children is to be punished now perhaps even with suspension. I’m sorry. A 6-year-old walking up to somebody with a beard and saying, “Yes, sir,” is normal. I don’t want to hear about how, “Oh, maybe the bearded man is actually a bearded lady.” No.

CLAY: And also on this same context, to use the sports analogy, those Tampa Bay Rays players who say, “Hey, I don’t want to wear the pride flag on my shoulder,” Buck, it moves from, “You have to tolerate my choices,” to, “You have to behave in a way that reinforces what I believe or you’re not being tolerant and exclusive!” That’s right. It moves from, “Hey, I’m happy. This is me. These are my life choices,” to, “You have to endorse my life choices and be proud of the choices that I am making.” That’s a big leap. That’s what ends up happening. That is what occurs when you let this Trojan horse in your company, when you let it into your military, and it is not making us a better fighting force by any stretch of the imagination.