YouTube Bans C&B for Interviewing a U.S. Senator

CLAY: Our interview with Rand Paul — a sitting United States senator, who is a medical doctor — is not allowed to be posted on YouTube because they say it is misinformation. And I’m trying to wrack my brain. I don’t remember Rand Paul saying anything remotely controversial. But think about where we are right now, that one of 100 United States senators… How many United States senators are doctors, Buck? Four or five, probably, at most? And a doctor is not allowed on one of the most — if not the most — popular radio shows? I think we’re the most popular listened to radio show in the country. Our interview with him is not allowed to be shared?

BUCK: But it goes to show you the extreme ideas that the left is openly now instituting about censorship. It used to be, “Oh, we all agree it’s wrong or we all agree it’s harmful.” Now it’s, if it is a 50-50 split in America today on an issue, the 50% get kicked off of the most powerful media platforms in the country, and they’re okay with that. They think that actually makes sense. About issues of public policy, things that affect literally every single one of us. These are totalitarian nutsos running these places.

CLAY: It’s the fundamental antithesis of a democracy to not allow people to hear what elected officials think about major public policy issues.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We are enemies of the state here, at least the state of YouTube. (chuckles) Our interview with Rand Paul, Doctor Senator Rand Paul — I think this is gonna get a lot of play, Buck, throughout the course of… ’cause, I mean, look. You might hate us, us. Believe it or not — my mom finds it hard to believe — there are people who hate you and there are people who hate me. Clearly, they have awful taste. But there are people out there.

Even if you hate us, we are in the media business. We conduct interviews on a regular basis with a lot of people who are democratically elected in this country. The entire basis of the marketplace of ideas is predicated on the idea that you should be able to hear the opinions of your elected officials and make decisions about whether to support them or not based on what they believe about public policy issues of the day.

YouTube is more powerful right now than CBS or NBC or Fox or ABC ever were as broadcast networks. My kids, Buck, they wake up; they don’t even watch television. They wake up every day and they watch YouTube. Now, they’re not watching interviews that you and I would be doing, but they’re watching Minecraft videos. They’re watching their favorite YouTube personalities.

The idea that YouTube is going to determine what a doctor and a senator is allowed to say on the largest radio show in the country and whether people are able to hear it or not is fundamentally anti-American. It is communistic in nature. It is anti the marketplace of ideas, and it’s a tremendous embarrassment, in my opinion, to YouTube.

BUCK: They couldn’t even defend it. Could you imagine if they tried to put forward some person from the world of YouTube communications and public relations and try to defend it.

CLAY: They’re welcome on here.

BUCK: Yeah. I would love to have somebody from YouTube come on and try to explain why Scott Gottlieb can say on CBS, “Masks don’t work,” and CBS doesn’t get dinged for that. But we have Dr. Rand Paul/Senator Rand Paul on this show, and of course he’s shut down. We know it’s just tribalism at this point. It’s obvious. The shock to the First Amendment, the sneak attack, really, against the First Amendment that occurred when they booted Donald Trump — a sitting president — off social media platforms? Folks, what else do you have to know? That was the nuclear option, in essence. That is exactly what we’ve been worried about.

CLAY: Senator Rand Paul has retweeted, if you want to hear that interview. Maybe you missed it. Maybe you just want to hear it now ’cause you’re fired up about the fact that YouTube pulled it. You can go Rumble and that video is up. You can go to my Twitter handle @ClayTravis. That video is up. You can go to Senator Rand Paul’s Twitter account. He has retweeted it.

I would encourage all of you to check it out. These are the kind of people, by the way, we’re dealing with that are insanely stupid. I wanted to hit this audio ’cause I mentioned it. The new New York governor, Kathy Hochul, was trying to defend masks, and she said that it reminded her about having to put sneakers on her kids’ feet in order to go to kindergarten and they’ll just get over it. Listen to Kathy Hochul defending masks by comparing them to tennis shoes.

HOCHUL: I’ll say one thing about the kids. My daughter had a meltdown over having to put sneakers on to go to kindergarten. She got used wearing sneakers in school. They just… (sputtering) They adapt better than adults do, and I really proud of the parents who made sure that their kids understood this is for their safety and got it done. But we’re looking forward to the day we can lift the school as well as the, uh, business requirements. I truly am. That will be very fabulous day. It means that we turned the corner in a way that we feel we’re not gonna be sliding backwards anytime soon.

BUCK: There’s no turning the corner. She’s out of her mind. She’s actually an idiot. I’m sorry She’s actually stupid.

CLAY: Tennis shoes are not similar to masks, all right! It’s not a similar analogy! I’m so sick of hearing idiots out there saying, “Well, kids adapt better than adults do. ” No. Kids are just used to having to do what adults tell them to do. The psychological scarring… you’re seeing the stories out now, Buck, about kids. When you were a kid, you had speech issues.

Learning how to see others speak… They’re now saying, the CDC is, “Hey, for young kids who are learning to read or learning a new language or might have speech issues, they need to be wearing masks that are clear so they can see the lips and enunciation that is occurring.” This… I am so angry about this. We have taken from young children so much of their lives for no benefit over this masking and remote schooling BS.

And this is one of the times that I wish we didn’t have restrictions on the language that we could use, ’cause there are a lot of choice words I would love to speckle in here and go full bore on how insanely infuriating this is to me when somebody as dumb as Governor Kathy Hochul of New York says, “Oh, kids get used to it. They adapt. It’s just like wearing shoes.” No, you imbecile, it is not.

BUCK: It is not at all, and you remember last week we played that young British female pundit who broke down in tears talking about how they just canceled… In the U.K. it’s a different system, but the exams you take have huge implications for when you’re in high school for where you go within the university system and often very big implications for where you’re gonna go professionally.

It’s a little different here and fewer and fewer people, by the way, are even choosing to go to college who could go to college these days. That’s a whole other conversation we could and should have. But she broke down in tears, Clay, because she’s like, “They’re ruining our lives for what?”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I’ve had covid twice, which is another way of saying, everything that I had to do, all this other crap was insane. It did nothing. It didn’t protect me. It didn’t change anything.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Every person listening to this who’s had covid once or twice has been through the same thing. This idea of masking and mitigation is only sensible if you’re talking about a finite period of time that this thing is going to go away.

CLAY: And if it worked! (laughing)

BUCK: And if it worked. It does neither of those things. It is not going away, and the mitigation measures do not work, and so we sit here and we say to ourselves, “What is it going to take for these people…?” I mean, Clay, they make kids eat their lunch outside in freezing weather! These people are abusing children in the name of science while then the teachers themselves and the teachers union officials go out and take selfies drinking margaritas in crowded restaurants. That happened in New York over the weekend, by the way.

CLAY: Of course it did. We’ve kept bars open and shut down schools.

BUCK: This is just disgusting, and Fauci is to blame along with all the others. They should all be fired. They should all be repudiated. And, yeah, I want more people to join the freedom revolution here in America.