Guns: What The Left Really Wants

Buck Sexton, Welcome to Buck Sex this show. Everybody missed you for the last couple of days. Excited to get a chance to chat with you here in the Freedom Hut. As is our custom, we have a phone here that you can call in. Are actually many phones eight four four to eight to five, eight four four nine hundred buck. And we should definitely chat about whatever you've got on

your mind. Um, we have more information now too. Well, let me let me just give you a quick roadmap to the show before I get into that and try to talk about a whole array of issues today. I really want to mix it up because I feel like there's been a understandably but there's been a very singular focus to the news cycle in last week or so. I'd like to get to the possibility of a slapdown to public sector unions requiring people to pay dues whether

they want to or not. Spreme Courts, UH. Spreme Court heard oral arguments on that earlier today. We'll discuss that. Also, some stuff on sanctuary cities, including the mayor of Oakland who's warning people about impending ice raids. You know this, this gets interesting, folks, because sometimes law enforcement will even make arrests and they'll claim obstruction of either government administration or obstruction of law enforcement duties. And they've even done that.

There was a case a while back where a guy was flashing his lights to warn somebody of a speed trap. Now I think that's law enforcement overreach and arrest that guy, but they did. Um interesting to see a in an elected official in a in a major city like Oakland giving people, giving people their heads up. Hey, hey, people breaking the law. Federal government's gonna come in and I want to talk to some of you. So there's debt,

and then also the Democrat memo. We've got our buddy Andy McCarthy will be joining on that later on in the show. I'm not opening with it or getting into in the first hour because my predictions about it were essentially entirely spot on, as tends to be my tends to be my habit here, which is that it's there's

really no new information. All the good stuff is blocked out, and what's left is talking points from Adam Schiff, partisan whining and a repeat of what you'd see on MSNBC or or CNN or any given night with regard to FIS abuse, the targeting of the Trump administration, the targeting of those officials. Right. This is it was just Adam shift talking points, although they do admit that they oh yeah,

there was Papadopoulis and Carter and the dossier. Those are all things that are oh yeah, the stuff you know about that, that's that's a real thing that those names appear in the dossier. I mean those names appeared rather in the memo. The dossier was in fact used for the FIES warrant. This is all very important and very troubling stuff that we will get there in the third hour with our friend Andy McCarthy and then end up the show with some crazy left wing actually shutting down

speech by turning off the speakers. You're gonna have to stay with me for that one. We'll have some fun with that in the third hour. But the biggest story in the country still right now is the aftermath of a terrible shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the gun controlled debate and discussion has been moving forward, all moving forward. Despite all the uh bad arguments that we've heard in the past, it seems this time around

there there will in fact be some changes. There's already been changing state of Florida, and we need to look at what's coming right now. We also have more information or at least more soundbites from Sheriff Israel, Sheriff Scott Israel of Broward County, who is looking like such a disgraceful, distasteful o leagans fellow in all this just just slippery dissembling. I gotta stop using all the different words. But you know what I mean, the guys, the guys coming off

like a jerk and a liar. There we go, Buck use the good words jerk and liar. That's accurate. And look, Jake Tapper had that CNN town hall which as I told you what was It was a debacle and it was just people shouting and yelling and Dana lash looking at everybody saying, Okay, let's talk about policies. Oh burn her, she's terrible murderer, you know. No, let's talk about policies that will make everyone safe for the oh burn her. I mean, it's just crazy what was going on there.

I mean, see, I would say CNN should be ashamed. Let's see, Ann has no shape. Come on, I'm not ashamed about this. I'm sure the ratings are pretty good. I ended up watching it on replay, which was a painful experience, but it was a real thing that I had to do. And you had Tapper, Jake Tapper over at CNN who got the big interview, which what everybody wanted UH to hear this weekend, which was Sheriff Scott Israel.

And here is because this goes to the whole notion of law enforcement's role in this and I will say it. I mean, law enforcement in this case messed up big time. That's not new. You already know that, right, but we need to understand the degree, the scale, and the specifics of the mess up because we're gonna have any kind of a serious discussion about stopping the next one, or at least having a chance of stopping the next one.

We gotta know what happened this time around, right, You need to be very honest me to do an after action report, and that's what we are doing here on this show. What could have been different? What could have been done to avoid this? From a law enforcement perspective. I'll get into the gun stuff later, and I also want to talk about the Australia comparison, because I'm seeing

a lot of that right now. We even had some former Australian pms on TV, you know, talking about how they think that maybe maybe we should follow in their footsteps when it comes to guns. You know, look, we all know alls. These are great people. I've always wanted to go to Australia, never been, but I've met lot, I know lots of Australians. I love Aussies, um, But I don't need to hear from their Prime ministers on guns because not surprisingly, they don't know what the heck

they're talking about. So we'll get into that aspect of this as well. But first on law enforcements responsibility here, what happened. I mean dozens and dozens of calls to the house Nicolas Cruz, people saying that he was going to be a shooter. FBI got the most detailed tip, the most detailed information imaginable. You know, here's his name, Here's where he lives, Here's why I think he's a threat.

Here are people you can talk to about this. How that does not get moved up the chain of command, How that's not considered a a major issue is a problem. You see? This is This is I know, a tense play for some people to go, but I'm going to go there. I'm not saying that the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI has anything to do with the field office in Miami or Brower County, or whichever specific FBI office was handling this, or the FBI office that took the tip,

whatever it may be. Right, fbis field offices across the country. I'm not saying that, oh, well, one office was doing one thing, another office was doing another. At zero sum. So now I understand they handled thousands and thousands and thousands of cases, so it wasn't a resources went into the FISA dossier. Carter Paige surveillance situation and therefore did not go And I mean, that's a that's a nonsense argument. I understand that. Of course. I always love it as well.

And people who have never worked in intelligence or law enforcement to get all mad at me on Twitter, well maybe if you understood the different field office separation from the group. Thanks uh thanks, you know, women's in gender studies professor, like, I got this, Okay, I don't. I don't really need the the unnecessary lecture where you don't

know what you're saying and I do. Um. Here's why I will say, though there are protocols in place, there are rules so to speak, for how much attention and how rapid the escalation should be when law enforcement is

presented with different situations. Right if, for example, somebody called in an active shooter situation anywhere across the country, Right if somebody said, you know, there's an active shooting going on at X place, you would expect that there would be or you know, and aiven an active shooter situation even you would expect there would be a rapid response of what we call e SU here in New York

City Emergency Services units basically swat UM. But that's what you would expect and if that didn't happen, you'd want to know why. And if you called in a uh, you know, a lost cat up a tree, although I guess that is maybe a fire department issue, right, does in the fire department whatever, Let's say, let's say in

your locality, that's a police matter. A officer so and so has it the feeline has escalated the arboreal sanctuary in Yeah, but let's say that the officer has that one, right, you would expect that the officer to go help the cat in the tree. You know, I'm being a little facetious here, but you get what I'm saying. You expect that there would be a guy who or gal who would show up when they could as they could, in no particular hurry or rush. He has to do with priority, right,

It's not that one. There's resources for one, there's no resources for the other. It's just a question of what gets attention and movement at what speed? Right, serious crime, you know, felony in progress, cops sirens blazing, and I know that is the protocol, and the FBI has said the protocol was not followed with the active shooters with the tip about the would be active or in Florida.

But that still doesn't make me feel like it's it's it's out of line then to say, you know, Carter Page, still not convicted of a crime, still not accused of a crime, no evidence presented of a crime, and just you know, surveillance and you know FBI and all the stuff that's going on, and with all the different tips and all the different red flags we've have with Nicholas Cruz, somehow it was not I'm sorry, but it was not

prioritized the way that it should have been. So you see, that's the difference between it's it's not a resources it's not a zero sum resources argument. It's a what gets people in law enforcement, in the different agencies and departments involved to move to go to take something seriously, and a tip about an active shooter is a much more serious, much bigger deal than some clown who's hanging out with Russians and may or may not you know, want to help them set up some sock puppets to say mean

things about hill Alory. I'm that that's just the reality of the situation. People got very mad at me for saying it wrote something, you know, let something rip over the weekend on this one, Um, I should stay off social media the weekends because it's just you need to, I need to dial it down a little bit, but or dial it off. But that's one thing that really struck me here is that you see that we have

this vast law enforcement apparatus. We have the best police in the world, uh and dealing with incredibly difficult circumstances and policing communities and doing it so well. I mean, you know, New York City is almost as safe as Tokyo, our largest city, not just because I'm here and I know it the best of the various law enforcement challenges, but you know, cities and a lot of you are sitting around you're like, yeah, buck well, where I live,

where I'm listening to this show right now. You know, we average about in this county, you know, one murder year maybe, and it's generally a domestic dispute gone wrong, gone wrong. Right. I mean, there's we are. We are overall a very very safe country. In fact, once you start taking drug related violent crime out of the situation, which means that unless you generally speaking people I know get hitting the cross fire. And but unless you are around that in one way or another, UM, it's unlikely

to affect you. Um, we are actually a very very safe country and our law enforcement does an incredible job. Go spend some time in Mexico, talk to some journalists there or or just average every day Mexicans about what they think of their police and how their police are doing. And it's just known that in and there are whole counties, were states they would call them, but their whole states where you can't trust the local police. You can only

trust the federal police. The federalists, you can't trust the local police. So we have a debt of gratitude to law enforcement this country day in and day out. With that said, Sheriff Israel and his entire sheriff's department and the folks that showed up from his department on the scene immediately, including that one officer Peterson who did not go in, are a disgrace to the profession. A disgrace to the profession. And I mentioned Jake Tapper before he

he at least asked the relevant questions here. Do you think that the Broward Sheriff's office had done things differently, this shooting might not have happened. Listen, if ifs and butts were candy and nuts. Uh you know Uh O J. Simpson would still be in the record book. I don't know what that means. Dead people. And there's a whole long list of things your department could have done differently. How could listen? Uh, that's what that's what after action

reports are, that's for Lessons learned reports are for. Is this guy Israel? Is he an imbecile? If if ifs and butts were candy and nuts, what the heck is he talking about? This guy is in charge of one of the largest sheriff's departments in the country. You gotta be kidding me. The only way this is possible. Oh, that's right, he's elected. He's a politician. Okay. Oh, he's

in Debbie Wasserman Schultz's district. Oh. And there's some other stories about this district that have been bubbling up over the weekend. There's some other information about this that we should all know. Give us a better sense of how was it possible that there could be such incompetence and such cowardice in a sheriff's department in a major county in Florida. We'll get into all that a much more eight four to five eight four four nine. Buck will

be right back. Are you really not taking any responsibility for the multiple red flags that were brought to the attention of the Broward Sheriff's Office about this shooter before the incident, Jake, I could only take responsibility for what I knew about. I exercises my my due diligence. I've given amazing leadership to this agent. Amazing leaders I've worked, Yes, Jake, you don't measure a person's leadership by a deputy not

going into These deputies received the training they needed. Maybe you measue somebody's leadership, but whether or not they protect the community. Maybe. Like at Jake Tapper, I think that he knew that he had he had to come out swinging after that town hall fiasco or yeah, the town hall thing whatever they called it. Um, but he did a good job here. I I call it like I see it. And I think that Tapper pushed back in this interview amazing leadership. You know, my my leadership has

been amazing. This guy Scott Israel, He's what is amazing is how quickly he'll throw anybody else under the bus. There's that, right, So you know what this guy you don't have to worry about him getting tripped up in ethical questions because his first move is gonna be whatever is best for Sheriff Israel. That's that's how he's gonna roll. That's how he's gonna do things. As I said, I'm

the sheriff. My name's on the door. The people responsible are the ones who took the calls and didn't follow up on him, as it was with the FBI, as it was with with anyone, with any person. Leaders cannot. Leaders are responsible for the agency, but leaders are not responsible for a person. I gave him a gun, I gave him a badge, I gave him a training. If he didn't have the heart to go in, that's not my responsibility. Oh I, I I have to disagree Sheriff Israel.

You know, if you'd like a dump coward and like I don't do nothing about it. You know, I'm gonna keep my job, my my parks and my big pension, and that's how we're gonna do it. I disagree with Sheriff Israel here um. And I think that let many of you listening who are current or former military be saying, oh yeah, I'm from the officer and one of one of my men does something terrible under my command, I'm

in trouble. Actually. In fact, I had a friend many years ago who in combat and our hawk was wrongfully at one point associated with conduct that had nothing to do with him, but it was meant under his command, and he was in some real legal jeopardy for a short while there until it was all cleared up. But he no one ever thought he had done anything wrong. He just was the officer and it was in and it was in combat, it was in an intense firefight, and he was a buddy of mine. I remember we

had a long talk. We spent a whole night just drinking beers, back when I used to be able to drink beer, and he told me about everything. And that was after the legal jeopardy had passed. But that's how it's the military and law enforcement. Guess, you know, pardon the phrase, where does the buck stop? Early? Doesn't stop? A sheriff Israel? That that much he's clear about. You know, he's keeping his job. He's not stepping down. He's not resigning.

I think quite clearly, Sheriff, it's got Israel should resign if there is to be any accountability for this situation, it should be with first and foremost by many, many miles, in many orders of magnitude, the shooter h even though the press likes to pretend that number two on that list is the n r A, and this has led down to some corporate backlash that we'll get into in a moment. I think number two on the list should be the guy who stood outside didn't do anything, and

number three should be Sheriff Israel himself. That's how I see it. What do you think we'll be right back? You know, I got to watch some deputy sheriff's performing this weekend. They weren't exactly Medal of Honor winners, all right. The way they performed was frankly disgusting. They were listening to what was going on. The one in particularly he was then he was earlier than you had three others. You know, I really believe you don't know until you

test it. But I think I really believe I'd run into even if I didn't have a weapon, And I think most of the people in this room would have done that too, because I know most of you. But the way performed was was really a disgrace. I've got to agree with the president, and I've agreed with them all along. And I've seen a lot of people who have come forward who are current or former law enforcement, current or former military people who have run toward the gunfire.

I was gonna say before and in some cases, men, you men, you many times before those you listening to who you are and just saying that you know this is this is completely unacceptable. The government doesn't allow me right in New York City, in New York State even as well, doesn't allow me to carry around a firearm. I've had enough weapons training in my day that anyone around me would be safer from the prospect of violent

crime if I were armed. But I'm not allowed to be armed here, and I live in a state that that's not going to change anytime soon, right, So I can't walk around with a arm on my hip. And part of the contract here, if you will, is that the government will provide people, sworn law enforcement officers who will risk themselves to save the lives of those of us who are not allowed to carry. And I know in some places you are allowed to carry. Is different,

but it's it's particularly feels particularly egregious. You know, when you start to think about what this would mean nationwide and across the country. Oh now, oh well, you know, we can't. We can't expect law enforcement to to put themselves at risk. They're putting themselves at risk every day, put themselves at risk during traffic stops, when they go into domestic domestic disputes. I think, actually, just recently, an officer was killed in Baltimore, Maryland. He was off duty.

It was just intervening in a domestic dispute, which is the way of saying, you know, I think a husband and wife or a girlfriend and boy from her fighting, you got killed. The law enforcement was taking risks all the time. Why would we not in full? Was that expectation on people who are sworn law enforcement, who are armed in the circumstances where they have the most obligation, the most clear obligation to protect life out of school shooting?

What could be more obviously and more obvious and cut and driving that. I was very surprised at some of the pushback that I was initially hearing over this, but I think it is that has died down a bit, and so now we can just I I wanted to spend some time with you all on this law enforcements failures here are being pushed aside by the left because the narrative has to be about gun control, not about law enforcement. Failed at every level at every opportunity in

the Stoneman Douglas shooting, and they did. They failed that at every single juncture, at every opportunity. But also note and others have been pointing this out, it is strange to me. I look, I don't do the conspiracy thing here. You guys all know that, and gals, I don't mind a microaggression, um, but I don't do the thing where I just come up with some conspiracy that I think

will get people. Who is and I want to hear more about this crazy thing this guy is saying, right, because I try to give you objective truth as much as possible all the time. But it is hard not to notice that in the Las Vegas shooting, which killed a few dozen more people and hit five people I believe wounded all in how quickly the media moved on from that. I'm not saying there's a conspiracy. I'm just

saying it is strange. And perhaps it's because what's been so important to the media this time around is that they have young people that they are pushing forward. They're pushing them forward to be the kind of official spokespersons, if you will, of gun control. And they are victims.

There are those who had been in the past. There are those who had been at the at the shooting, right, So that's one difference here, so that maybe it it's just at this time around, there's a more effective mechanism for making the argument about gun control, which is you have traumatized kids push forward by the media really being used as political props. I'm sorry, but that is what

is happening. Because the kids that want to say thank you to the first responders who did risk themselves, who did run in, who did save lives, and and you know, and I do believe that armed teachers are a good idea, They're they're getting way less play. There are a few favorites. The media has picked some favorites here, some spokespersons for

the group hashtag never again. And that is a distinct change between what we're seeing here and what we have seen what we saw at Las Vegas, where we still don't know the motive, and there's and law enforcement just flat out said a bunch of stuff right after that that was not true. Um, isn't it amazing to see in the case of Florida, though the Democrats who are so quick to usually pick a very small incident or a very specific incident, I should say, not a small incident.

Scratch that from a very specific incident though, of local law enforcement in one place, and extrapolate from that a problem with law enforcement across the whole country. All law enforcement, to see what this one cop did. All law enforcements so racist. We'll see what this one cops said in these text messages. All law enforcements all racist, including non white law enforcement. They'll say that they're part of the racist system too, which is I mean, I I would

find just I find offensive on many levels. Right. But in Florida, though, with the bumbling and the mess ups and the miss missteps and all the stuff that we've seen, the media is no interest in talking really about the takeaways from the law enforce and failures they have to report them. Although I will know they held it. I don't care if anybody says they held it. There were four deputies on the scene until Friday, and they told

us at six pm Friday that was held. People had that information now wasn't just the Sheriff's verminent had it or was with other people, but it was held. It was also help ul after the town hall that there was a sheriff's deputy on the scene who was outside, who's now saying, oh, he didn't know. It's just so obvious, man. I've seen the the transcript of him trying to defend his actions here or his inactions, and it just couldn't

be anymore obvious to me. What's going on. He's like, oh, I didn't know if the gunfire was inside or outside, so I took a defensive position outside, because that's what we're trained to do. Trying very hard to come up with it, you know, and have a few days here

to think this one over. And look, if we have a a sheriff's deputy on the scene who's got a firearm, who doesn't know the difference between gunfire from inside of building and gunfire that is outside of a building, I think we got a whole of separate set of problems. Um you're canna tell me, is no ability to to differentiate that? I mean, does he ever hear? What? What's what are we to make of this? Um? Anyway? That's that's a non starter. I wanted to get into some

of the some of the policies here. I will say I was a little the gun control policies that are being but for I was a little surprised that the President said this today. I'm wondering if you all have thoughts on it. Don't worry about the n RA there on our side, you guys here, for you are so afraid of the n RA. There's nothing to be afraid of. And you know what I've done with you. We have to fight him every once in a while. That's okay. They're doing what they think is right. I will tell

you they are doing what they think is right. But sometimes we're gonna have to be very tough and we're gonna have to fight them. I don't see the place where there's any need to fight the n r A on this issue. I don't see where that the n r A is uh. And it's particularly clear for me. As many of you know, I used to work with Dana Lash who's the n r AS spokesperson when I

was at the Blaze. I know Dana well. I worked with Dana or the years, countless hours now and she's out there saying on behalf of the NRA A, yeah, we should do a better job with background checks, information from the states get to the federal level. Yeah, and yeah, you know, we should consider mental health legislation that might be, you know, the way ways we can get mental health, the mental health system to be able to deal with

this and an imminent threat. Um. I've been proposing or proposing trying to support the idea of temporary restraining orders for people that are believed to be imminent violent offenders with with guns. We've had David French on talk. I think that's also very worthwhile proposal. I haven't heard the n R A say boo hoo to that. So what do we have to fight the NR and raising the

age limit? I mean, come on, raising the age limit is penalizing many millions of people for their Second Amendment rights and it is not going to do anything to stop a determined school shooter. Um. But I suppose that's the one place maybe where there's some disconnect between the White House and the n RA on this, you know, at the age limits twenty one. I'm just I'm gonna be the one who says it right now. They they if they make the age limit twenty one for semi autos.

Not long before they're gonna say, you know, maybe it should be like renting a car. Maybe you should be like twenty five, you can get a semi auto. Let's let's make it and then there'll be another shooting. Let's make it thirty. As long as the focus is on the firearm and not the problems around it and problems surrounding it, and law enforcements obligation to at least have own semblance of competence in dealing with the issue, we will not get very far with lessening the probability of

a mass shooting event like this. UM. All right, well, let's take some calls on flip side of this break. I want to talk about the Australia model. I think we actually had a caller from Australia a minute ago who wanted to talk about that specifically. So I saw you drop off. If the hopefully the charge there's no like charges for calling in from Australia. UM. But we'll get into all this in more. Eight four to five.

We got a lot of lines lit. We have a spot I think open, so we got room for one more. If you want to jump in the conversation and the next hour we'll talk more about the gun control policies, maybe some Democrat memo stuff. Oh, public sector unions. We're gonna beat up on some public sector unions. That's gonna be fun. You're ready for that if you work for

like the you know, teachers unions or something. Might not be your favorite segment, but maybe you'll like it, you know, maybe you're maybe you're like the Ron Swanson of the teachers union and hope the whole thing comes crumbling down. We'll get into that more coming up. Stay with me. Welcome back, team. I know we've got a lot of lines, let people have. Everyone's got a lot to say on this issue, as you should, so let's get to it. Joy in Mississippi, Hey, Joy, hip up. Hello. I have

a simple question, Yes, ma'am. Uh. Why is it when a drunk driver runs into people, it's the driver's fault, And when hi hijackers fly a plane in the World Trade Center, it's the hijacker's fault. When a cop sheets an unarmed black man in the back, it's the cops fault. But when some jerk shoots up the school, it's the gun fault. Yeah, It's a very good question, and I think we know the answer is because of the gun

has a gun? Guns have become a cultural and political symbol much more than a tool that can be used for good or used for evil right in the in the eyes of the left, guns are symbolic of much more. They're symbolic of state power, or really the refusal to completely submit to state power. Guns are a little active personal revolution, each one of us willing to say there are lines you cannot cross. Uh. And for statuss and

for progressives, that's a that's just crazy thinking, Joy, that's unacceptable. Yes, could I add one thing? He asked about Trump's comments to the n R A UM. You know, there's a quote by Benjamin Franklin in seventeen fifty nine that said they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety. That's something people should keep in mind. I agree, Joy, Thank you

very much for the call. Appreciated. Charlie in Ocean City, Maryland. Hey, Charlie, Hey, glad to talk to you, you too, Yeah. Hey, on just sure of Israel. I think he's uh, he's completely missed everything. He's a lefty. We know that four of his deputy did not perform and he had to sign off on their training. He had to put the stamp of approval on their training, so he's accountable. Then then you go to these kids, and I'm a grandfather of ten and most of them are teenagers. And when they

do something wrong, I confronted with it. They when I go visit them, they love to sit down and talk to me. So these kids bully this other boy beyond belief. And I don't hear any reports about that. Why is that? You know, I can't give you much of a profile of his interactions with the other students because, as you're saying, I think it's true, I haven't read that much about that.

I think that people would be very hesitant to you know, nobody wants in any way excuse or downplay or try to mitigate the evil that Nicholas Cruz committed that day, And I think for some it might feel like a distraction from the real responsible party here to say that there were others who were bullying him. But he was clearly a kid that had problems, and I'm sure had all kinds of issues with his fellow students. And we've

seen some reporting about that. Um, but Charlie, you know, there are a lot of kids who are bullied who don't do thank thank heavens, don't do what this guy did. So bullying is not a as I know, you know, bullying is not an excuse. I haven't seen much of a much reporting on it, though, So I'd be curious to see some of these kids though, And thank you

for calling it, Charlie. Some of these uh, Trench Code mafia types which if you remember, the Columbine Shooters were in this group called the Trench Code Mafia, and there was a term the people in the late nineties and early two thousands, people would use. Some of these They actually have a when you go and you read about them, and uh, there's a a separation sure, and and maybe some signs of some signs of sociopathy or even psychopathy

being a psychopath. Although some a lot of school shooters were able to function pretty or at least come across as pretty normal when they wanted to right beforehand. Um, but these kids also separate themselves and to develop an aggressive arrogance as part of the profile. You know, they become disdainful. Now you could say, that's just a defense

mechanism to being rejected by their peers. May that may very well be the case, but they become aggressive, arrogant, and disdainful of their peers and choose to separate themselves and choose to look down on and want In the case the Columbine kids, it was well known. I mean they wanted to get they there was a want to get even with the with the popular kids aspect of that heinous crime. Mark in North Carolina. We got a little time here. Mark wanted to get you in. How

much is a little time? Mark? We've got about a minute and thirty seconds, which is which is a lifetime on radio, my friends. So go ahead, yes, yes, I've got a little thing and a big thing. Which would you rather have? Let's let's give me the little thing. Okay. We are told that this guy is the shooter, actually arrived at school with an uber driver, okay. And of course he owns ten guns and ammunition and lord knows

everything else he had at his house. But apparently this kid could never afford a car, which is also a kind of Bodi's nineteen And I don't know what you do in the United States if you're nineteen without a car. Well, he actually got a twenty five thar check I think from the insurance after his mother passed away, and he used that, from what I read, to buy some of his fires. But go ahead, grands enough money to get a car, as you know, and get a car for

twenty five thousand these days. But anyway, there's a report for one of the teachers who actually we saw him and was shot in the arm. The teacher was and she said that she saw the man in full metal guard with a helmet, face masks, bulletproof armor, shooting a rifle she'd never seen before. Okay, then if you go back to the official timeline, one of the Broward County sheriff, he was dropped off at two nineteen and at three three he's firing in the halls. Mark, I'm gonna have

to revisit this, my friend. I'm sorry we actually are at time. Welcome back to the Buck Section show. Everybody our two has already gotten going our tours here. We have much much to discuss, and I would note that over the weekend, the Sunday shows, the weekend shows, they try to set the political tone the conversation for the week, and as we knew, it was on me all about gun control. I'm gonna talk about the Australia problem in just a moment here, and I will I will not.

We're not the Australia problem, the Australia h car which is often played here. Oh, we should be like Australia, except Australia didn't work out the way they said it would. They're lying about it and we could never do it here even if we wanted to. But put that on hold for just a moment first. And also the public sector union thing, we're gonna take them to task in a few minutes. First year. It's something that's been going

on here. I've been mentioning to you that in the gun control vanguard you have children who are handpicked by the media teenagers. Really to call them children is a little you know, I think we should have some This would be more precise than the terminology here. Right, eighteen plus you're an adult, not a teenager. When you're eighteen, you're an adult. Okay, I mean technically you're a teenager,

but a lot of things are technical. Um, if you're you know, sixteen seventeen, you know you're you're an adolescent, you're a young adult whatever, call them children is I think a little I'll be honest with you, I think that's a little bit. That's a little disparaging. It's a little condescending. They're not tentent, they're not eight. But do you have these young people there? You go, these young people who are out there making the case, and some of them are very much pro gun control, some of

them are not. Some of them want to talking about law enforcement and the job they did and other issues here. But there's one in particular, this young man named Hog. David Hogg. Is that right? I think it's David Hogg. Yeah, And he has every right to say what he's saying, just as I have every right to say that I disagree with him. But it's more than just saying that he's wrong on the facts and ignorant of the Second

Amendment and gun control, which he is. This guy with the media as enablers, they are really handlers and enablers for some of these hashtag never again uh teenagers who are pushing this gun control narrative and who now you know, I think Hogg has like three thousand Twitter followers now right, I mean they're they're becoming let's be honest, they're becoming political celebrities in this process. That is what is happening here. Um.

They are also to be held to account for their words. Right, just because you have suffered a a very traumatic situation, I would know that. In In the case of a hog, I don't. I don't believe he was uh, And I could be wrong here. I don't. I don't believe he was wounded, although he's gone through the trauma of losing

of classmates and friends and teachers. Um. But there are limits to what we can excuse based upon age and based upon our desire to be understanding of what some of these young people are going through, even though they're now making themselves public figures and going on national television. And I think we've crossed some of those limits here. She wants Congress to take action, and she says that they won't. Are you kidding me? She owns these congressmen.

She can get them to do things. It's just she doesn't care about these children's lives. That is a slander. That's not okay to say. He was speaking about Dana lash, the n r A spokesman and also a former colleague and friend of mine. Um, that's not okay to say.

It's not true, and it's a gross thing to say, and it's not something that should be I don't care what this kid has been through or what what has You're not allowed to accuse people of terrible things with no evidence just because you don't like them or their political positions. And you're seeing this now where they say, oh, how how dare you look what he's been through? It's I'm not No one's commenting one way or the other on the the trauma of being a student at a

school that's just suffered this mass casualty incident. I'm going to comment on the fact that his knowledge of gun control and gun control policies is almost zero, and more importantly to me, he's going around and saying things about people that are disparaging, that are false, that are defamatory. That's not okay. You don't just get to do that. And this is the danger of using victims as political tools, which Democrats have been doing openly and shamelessly for as

long as I've been alive. Right, this is one of their favorite things to do. Find someone who has suffered a tragedy, put them forward, and then assume that they are inoculated from any criticism or any pushback of any kind. And with with Hog, they're saying that, you know, Dana she doesn't care about first of all, saying that she owns Congress. I mean, look, Dana is an influential lady and everything, but give me a break. She doesn't own

hasn't own Congress. There's an't own members of Congress. It's just a that's a foolish thing to say. And then to say she doesn't care about dead kids is an unfair thing to say. It's wrong. An anchor should if they were going to be journalists, say hold on a second, Mr Hog, you know that's do you have any evidence for that? That's that's going too far. You know, that's just using a national platform to smear someone. And I can tell you this. They you know, they wouldn't allow concerned,

They wouldn't allow a conservative point of view. Two, they wouldn't allow a conservative victim to go on TV and just slander somebody. You know, they wouldn't allow something to go on TV and say, you know, Nancy Pelosi doesn't care about dead children, right, And they shouldn't unless there's a real reason for her saying that. I mean, if they're talking about Nancy pelosi support for planned parenthood, well then yes, in fact, actually Nancy Pelosi doesn't really care

about that children. But that's a different discussion, and that's completely That's an argument I'm willing to have with anybody. It's not just Nancy Pelosi either, But I will get very much separated from the issue at hand if I don't go back to this gun control discussion that we're having right now. So, uh, the Australia case. I want

to talk to you about this. We will get into the Australia situation because this is what's used as the the favorite talking point now for see all the stuff that we've been discussing, all the different policy proposals that either the n r A is okay with or Republicans are putting forward or all that is, uh, not really what the left wants. What the left wants is something

more like Australia. In fact, what the left really wants is something more like Japan, where they truly are almost I mean not no guns, but very very very few guns in private hands. Um, But they stay away from Japan for a whole bunch of reasons. There are historical reasons why comparing the US to Japan and the Second Amendment would be less of a less of a compelling cell.

I think for them a whole, you know, allied with Nazi Germany thing and tyranny and imperialism and everything else, and the resistance against tyranny from people who are armed as something you can have a discussion about in the context of the Second World War pretty easily. Um. But back to Australia, which is a much there's a reason that he is Australia. It's a society that minds a lot of Americans, very much of our own, you know,

we speak the same language, shared shared cultural traditions. England was our you know, our our our granddaddy. And the Australian model does not work the way they say it does, and it would not work for us, and I will I will explain why after the break, and then I think we'll move on to some talk about public sector

unions because I don't want to skip that. That is, it's kind of like redistricting in that you bring it up and people are like, no, I want to hear more about Russia collusion or like, you know, whatever other things that get much more attention in the conservative media world. Um, but there are things that that actually do matter a lot. Redistricting matters to who's going to run the country, and public sector unions in much the same way, and their

power also matters. I think they gave a hundred million dollars in the last election cycle two candidates public so employees of the state are donating over a hundred billion dollars to campaign of people who are going to run the state. What could go wrong? Obviously a lot of things. So Australia public safe unions and more. Democrat files a memo by the way, which is not that exciting. One would open the show with it. But we've got some super some worthwhile stuff too to talk about on that Um,

that's all coming up. So we've got a show that's ready to rock and roll. Stay with me. One of the things that people don't talk about a lot of these schools, Sandy Hook had an all female faculty from principle to teachers. And for a woman, were you going to hide that gun during the day. You can't put it in your desk, Droyer, somebody might steal it, and you can't get to it. You're not going to have

it in a safe in the principal's office. You can't get to it on your person, hiding it if you wear a dress, if you wear a skirt, are you gonna have to wear a jacket every day with a belt and a holster the way a detective you know, I'm duty would do. Um, It's it's not a real practical solution. You have this guy Tom Fuente is over at CNN, who's used to in the FBI, who's just

I don't know. This is analysis Apparently because there are a lot of women in different schools, then it's impractical for some teachers one teacher, five teachers, who knows how many, depends on the size of school, to conceal carry because women who are wearing who wear, you know, a skirt, can't conceal carry. This is he really not familiar with how this stuff works. Career FBI official, I will say this, Uh, it's important to remember that government is think of government,

especially these government bureaucracies. True of the c I A, true of the FBI, true of all these large bacs. Think of it like a state's like a state school, right, just your your average state school, the very large state school. Though, you know, with tens of thousands of students, there are brilliant,

amazing people there, there are also morons. And as we see this uh now revolving door, it seems to people that working and you know, look, I'm I was a part of it, right of people that work in government, go to media, go back to government, go to media. Just understand that just because you work for a place for just because someone worked for a place for a long time that has a you know, a robust history. Right, just because somebody went to a reputable state school, doesn't

mean they're not a moron. I'm gonna want to tell you this. And so in this case, state schools think of it like CIA, FBI, d O J, all this stuff. Um, there are plenty of very very unimpressive dumb people at all of those places. I'm and I know, I'm not guessing, I'm not theorizing. I know, and they're also incredibly brilliant pople. People know way more about a whole lot of things than than me or anybody else I know in media. Right,

So it runs the gamut. I just feel that a lot of us have this impression, well a career law enforcement's career law enforcement. Any must really don't know his stuff. Maybe some of them do, some of them don't. And if Fuentes was actually I'll tell you a quick little little side note here went is I remember was one of the people who when I was at CNN and you will recall the redactions of the Pulse Nightclub shooters transcript and I'm on air in Fuentes is on air.

We're doing you know, our analysis. I'm you know, former analysts CI analyst box exid and he's like junior FBI like blah blah blah, and he's taking the position that the redactions in that transcript were not Remember this was Obama administration stuff. We're not about political correctness. We're not

mandated from the top. Nobody at d o J even knew about it that they were going to release redacted phone transcripts from the Pulse Nightclub shooters call and that it had nothing to do with politics and that this was just a call made by the by the FBI field agents that were there. And I'm like, dude, are you saying it because the people paying want you to or you are you not smart? It's one or the other.

I spoke to other FBI folks who are like, including people still in the FBI, who were like, uh, yeah, no, that's not how it's something at that level. Wouldn't just be something that an FBI guy did. Yeah, I'm just gonna redact. Remember what they were redacting? I pledge allegiance to redacted. And America is like, yeah, isis I'm doing this in the name of blank America. I'll right, I we we They were redacting things that everybody and then

they changed the decision, they went back on it. But I remember Fuentes was giving me, giving me a hard time. Decision being made by the people in the field. There's no politicization here as soon as not did you. Jay wouldn't even know. Laura Lynch wouldn't even know about this. I wouldn't even know. I know nothing to do with it. Oh really, really, Fuentes, why don't you explain to me how women can't conceal carry if they were a skirt dummy? Okay,

We're was that? Oh gosh, Australia. Gun control in Australia. Um well. The one thing is one of those sad things about punditry is that when you're on air and

you say things and you're right. They never bring you back and they're like, oh, by the way, when we were piling on you and saying you were wrong and you were right, we just wanted to apologize for being so weird and nasty to you on air during that because that actually that would have been great because I would have been on seen and all the time they're like, wow, Buck, you were right. How did you know? Oh that thing when you said it was the gee hottest terrorist, you

were right? How did you know? You know? That would have been a fun recurring segment. But they don't. They don't do that. How dare you? We found this. We found this person who was the assistant Deputy under Secretary of something or other who worked for Loretta Lynch for a few months and and he says, you know, oh my, um okay, So Australia, here's what you need to know. Here's here's here's the short version of my friends, or maybe actually even the long version. I'll give you the

short version. There are two ways to look at the gun control model of Australia. One is on the question of efficacy or effectiveness. Right, did it did it achieve the desired purpose in Australia, and the other is could we do it here? Is it realistic? So let me start with what Australia's gun control policy is was and what people say about it, and then what the reality is. So they had a mass shooting in Tasmania at a

resort I think over thirty people killed. I forget now, I was back in the seven and they instituted a mandatory gun buyback program, which is a gentle way of saying confiscation with confiscation, um with compensation. That's what that is. It's confiscation with compensation, gun buy back. But they're saying give me your weapon, I'll give you a hundred bucks,

are two hundred bucks or whatever it is. Whatever they're going great is they did that with about a million firearms and the murder rate went down and they haven't had another mass shoting. Sense. Okay, now people pointed this, they say, see Australia did it, we can do it too. That's just complete nonsense. Let me just start with what really happened in Australia. Australia's crime rate, to begin with, was very low. Australia's rate of mass shootings to begin with,

was basically non existent. That's why this shocked the country so much. Right, they had this one big mass shooting, but they hadn't had one before it for years, maybe even decades. So that one incident and then they said, well, we didn't have another one for a long time after it. There must be some correlation, but there's not enough of the data said, it's not like they were having three or four mass shootings like this. And then they did

this buyback program and it stopped. No, they just didn't have any mass shootings. They had one, they had a buyback program and they didn't have any mass shootings after and they said, we'll see, we solved it. But no, that's not that's not actually addressing whether or not at work. That's just much more to do with Australia and how

many mass shootings it has um. They also point to it though, for a violent crime and this is another place where if you look at the trend the trend line for violent crime in Australia, which was already very low, was going down, going down, going down in the eighties and the nineties, trending down each year. And you're really talking about I think a few hundred homicides max in the country. In the country, Okay, So you're talking to a very small sample set to begin with in Australia.

And then they institute this gun buyback program and guess what. It actually kind of trended up a little bit for a year or two after that in terms of violent crime and holeda, but it just continued. It's it's downward decline. And now Australia is at a point with uh, you know, about one in a hundred thousands a murder, a murder rate of one a hundred thousand, I think something like that. I mean, it's it's tiny, tiny, okay. So there's no way to look at this and say that the gun

buyback program did anything. And here's the part that they really don't tell you is that, in fact, gun ownership currently in Australia when it's at its lowest violent crime rate in I don't know, fifty years or something, and probably since they were keeping records of it, and Australia is very very safe. So good job Australians. Uh, the ownership of guns is actually greater than it was when they did the buyback program. So they've even got more

guns in circulation now in private hands. They did then because of some changes in the laws, and people actually got firearms. And so it can't be that less guns equals less crime because there are more guns now and less crime. And it can be the less guns equal less crime because the crime rate went down at about the same what you would with same trend that you would expect even if they didn't do a buy back program. It was already happening. So there's nothing to point to

here and say, oh yeah. And and also note that there's some European countries Belgium, France, uh all in Germany that have very restrictive gun laws. Actually Belgium doesn't really have very restrictive, but let's let's consider that an outlier. The Netherlands. Germany friends very restrictive gun laws, and they've still had mass shootings. Nonetheles and I haven't gotten into the part of this where we talk about how in the US you've got not a couple of million guns,

three million plus guns. And I've even gotten into discussion about the Second Amendment and its role in our civic life and in our founding and as part of our culture and our political heritage and the natural law reasons for protection of the south as well as a protection against tyranny. The Australia model could never work here, and it didn't even work the way they say it did in Australia. That's what you need to know about that. We'll be right back, we'll team. I've got some very

significant legal cases to talk to you about. I mean, the kind of stuff that affects your community wherever you are across the country, certainly affects national level of politics, um, and so matters to all of us. But I am not a lawyer, and I do not play one on radio. But I do know a lot of stuff about some things, including reading uh Supreme Court cases and knowing about how all the ins and outs goes. You know, there was a time when you could actually become a lawyer, true story,

without going to law school. If you pass the bar exam. Many states allowed you. Uh yeah, many states would allow you to practice law in that state without having to go to law school. But now law schools like a cartel, a three year, hundred and eighty thousand dollar plus cartel, and you have to just accept it. I did not. Maybe I should have, but I didn't. But Before I get to that, Brian Ohio wants to speak about the

Australian model for a second. Brian, go ahead, Hey, but first of all, that last guy clip you had on that was probably one of the most sexist things they ever heard in the first place. In the way stream it isn't that crazy by the guys on CNN, he's like career Mr Law Enforced and Scott He's like, he's like, yeah, women were skirts, they can't carry uns. Like wow, Yeah, I've seen a lot of very flattering ladies. You know, we're flattering clothing and they are packing and you would

know a moment about it. So um, I had, by the way, I had a buddy who was who was a world class firearms expert who always told me that he was of all the different ways to draw, he was faster out of any time that he was faster out of a Fannie Pack holster than anything else. Well yeah, well any more of these days, if you see somebody wearing a Fannie Pack, you know they're carrying. So let's just the way it is, uh, because you know, or maybe they're just like retro and it's you know, they

want to go with more of an eighties vibe. But you know who knows? Yeah right, Uh, Well, onto Australia real quick. Like you know, there's three points you're Australia. One is its population. The other one is its immigration population of twenty million instead of the US which has three million. That's another I wanted to get there. Your right to remind me of it. Yeah, yeah, well if

you look at it that right now. I did this the numbers the other day in a conversation like this, and the population of the US is one thousand, three hundred fifty greater than Australia. So if you assume that mental health illness is linear, that means the US is one thousand, three hundred fifty more likely to have an issue. Now you add in our various degregation of the family, Uh you're looking at other electronics influences, Hollywood influences, and

so forth. I would bet this more of like worth three thousand percent more likely to have a violent incident. Uh, just regarding population. Um. Also, they have a very strict immigration policy. They don't allow people in from countries that have a lot of violence in the country without just completely uh complete immigration check. Uh. They're very strict on their immigration. Yeah, and Brian, can I just add into this. I mean, everything everything you're saying is is correct. I

just want to add in that. Can you imagine if for some let's just say and Trump's not gonna do this, and the Congress is not gonna do this, but let's just say they said, you know what, Yeah, we've just decided that we are elected representatives are going to gut the Second Amendment and pass a band on all semi automatic firearms in the United States, which people have been talking about. Right, Rubio got booed when he said that that was impossible or unlikely or whatever at the CNN

town hall. If they did that, all they would do is make tens of millions of Americans criminals by FIAT. Uh. Never mind the whole Second Amendment violation, because people just aren't going to give up their guns. And then what are you gonna do? I mean, I've talked about this in californiaan not California. In Connecticut alone, there are I think it's around a hundred thousand people that they think have what are now banned semi automatic rifles and state

in Connecticut. But you know, they're not like going in kicking indoors and going after them because one that on the resources and too they realized none of those people are actually a threat exactly. And you know the other other side of the coin is just because somebody suffers from hopophobia, which is the fear of guns. Uh you know that is two in itself is a mental amalfillments that needs to have therapy in order to have a complete and healthy life. Yeah, so you look, but the

Australia is not gonna work here. Thank you for calling in, Brian from Ohio, going to talk to you. Australia thing, it's just they throw that in there because they you know, they want to say, well we do this another countryuis and no sorry, fun fact that Australia. I think it got more a greater inflow of millionaires immigrated to Australia than any other country in the world last year. I think that's I think that's true. I think the greatest

number left France. They now have a very high millionaire's tax. It's almost like people don't like it when the government takes too much of their money. Um or they just also like really like kangaroos and great barrier reef um I'll have to get to Australia one day. Alright, So into these big policy law things that I want to talk to about. Two of them DACCA and public sector unions. Both big news on both of these today, and i'll cover them in a we'll do kind of a twofer here,

hit them both too. Two birds, one segment of legal analysis. So the first one is the Supreme Court and they're saying, oh, look, the Spring Court. The Supreme Court has refused to hear the Trump administration challenge on DOCCA. All this means and people are running with this and Lebrons is that's a big deal. All this means is that the actual process that's in place which would mandate that this now go up to the Ninth Circuit, which is the Ninth the superliberal,

left wing circuit that gives all the terrible decisions. So we know how this is gonna go, right, We know some judge and California is gonna say DACCA is a constitutional right. The Founding Father sat around and all that cared about was DACA. That's what the fight against the British was started on. The Brits were unwilling to adhere to DACA principles anyway, Um, they're gonna completely make up some crap and then it will go to the Supreme Court, and then I think it will be reversed. I think

the Trump administration will be correct. But the problem in the short term is that one we know what the Ninth Circuit is gonna do, right, that's a given. Um, there is no question that they're gonna be in favor of It doesn't matter what iteration or what what specific judge you're gonna get out there, they're gonna say, yea DACA.

And in the meantime, you had a circuit court I mean a just a federal john, not an appeals court judge, but if a federal judge who had already yeah, circuit court judge, um, who had already decided that the Trump administration does not have in its discretion the right to undo a position of discretion taken by the Obama administration. Right.

So just just think about this for a second. If it is you know up to uh, you know, if you, for example, are the landlord of a property, I'm gonna try to put this in terms that we can all kind of Ye, I've had good landlords, I've had many more bad landlords. Unfortunate man landlords, especially in New York

or brutal. But if you were a landlord for property and you had an agreement with the tenant that you were going to let them, um, you know, pay a a tem percent reduction in the market rate because I don't know, you know, you feel you feel bad further in ethel or something, who knows. But if if you were getting that reduction and then somebody else came along and bought the property and they were a lawful owner of it, and they said, you know what, I'm not

gonna honor that previous agreement anymore. I'm the new owner. It's now up to me. It's up to my discretion. You think that would be a pretty straightforward thing, right the new owner says no. Or if the old owner let you smoke in the house and now the new owner says, no smoking in the house. I don't think a lot of people will be able to win a court case like well the old owner said that I could, right,

I mean, that's that's not how it works. Well, the the current occupant of the White House says one thing about DOCCA, and a circuit court judge was like, nah, because the Obama administration said something else, and I like what the Obama administration said. So I'm gonna take away the Trump administration's ability to fully execute the their Trump's authority, specifically as commander in chief and as as the president. I'm gonna take away his authority on this issue because

you know, I don't like it. It's a disgrace. I mean legally that they're gonna lose. But in the meantime, because the way our courts have been stacked in certain parts of the country with left it to just rewrite the laws they see fit. You're you have this already Circuit Court judge who said, yep, Trump can't undo what Obama did, even though it's Trump's right and prerogative to undo it if he wants to. And Supreme Court didn't step ahead of the Ninth Circuit. So it's gonna have

to go to the Ninth Circuit. How probably happens to spraining is gonna be delayed. In the meantime, you know, they've stopped the Trump administration um from winding down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. This look, this is hashtag resistance at work here, my friends. So that's what that is that's the one. We got one down, we got one more to go. Um and we get into this this situation about public sector unions and this, I know this sounds a little you're not super excited to

hear me talk about public section unions. I understand that, all right. I I think that it's easy to view some of these cases about organizing and unions and everything is you know, what's really the big deal? But this is a big deal. This is a big deal. But I can't tell you why until after the breaks. You have to stay with me, and then I'll tell you why. That's that is that that is the the deal that we have on the table right now, be right back.

So public sector unions are possibly going to be in a tight spot here or a different spot when it comes to their their fees, um when it comes to the money that they collect. Because here's what's going on. And you've got a case the Supreme Court just heard and it is Janice the f S A F S C M E. And here's what's going on. Uh, some of these public sector unions they force you to pay membership dues even if you don't want to um it. And it's a large it's a large part of what

funds them. And because of some previous Supreme Court decisions, this has been okay up to this point in time. But here's the here's the issue. Mark Jannis, hence Janice fee Offs asked me, Uh, Mark Jannis says, you know what, I don't want to do this. I don't want money going towards I don't want my money going toward a public sector union that is going to be advocating against what I want. And here's here's where this really comes

into play. A public sector union is different than a private sector union because public sector unions are inherently, inherently political in their actions. This is not like a private sector union where if you get a bunch of guys who all get together and you're gonna be demanding certain wages for carpenters or welders or you know, you name it, plumbers. Uh, then do they create prevailing wage and that affects state

and local law and so you benefit from that. Now, people can argue whether that's fair either that you can be forced together this right to work states now and this is a whole other, very complicated ball wax, but with public sector unions, the only payer is the taxpayer. That's where they get their money, and their actions there for their their efforts are effectively government lobbying because they are trying to get more money for the government and

they're trying to change government policy. So there's no way you have a public sector union, whether it's teachers or you know, you know, municipal employees, whatever it may be, there's no way you have a public sector union that is not inherently engaged in political activity, not just economic activity or economic lobbying, because they're going to the government. They are they they are the government right there involved

in government activity. So it seems pretty straightforward. People get very upset about this and they make it much more complicated than it should otherwise be. And here's why private private unions are. Private sector unions are way down in membership now. UM and there's a lot of right to work states that have popped up, and there's any number of UM. Well, you point to some of the large unions, you realize that they're losing members um and and the

unions don't have the power they used to. UH. Public sector unions have actually gotten to be a much bigger part of the union pie and as you may guess, they are financially pretty substantial when it comes to donations and political elections. In the last cycle, I think I said close to a hundred million. I overstated a little bit. It was more like sixty three million. But that's a lot of money. Sixty three million dollars into lot cycle, sixty three million dollars alone, and the number has been

ramping up to I see this. It was sixty three and then the election before that, it was fifty three before that, forty five before that before that, nineteen before that, seventeen. You know, every two years you're seeing jump, jump, jump, big jumps in these public sector unions and the money that they're giving for these different election cycles. And here's the other part of this that really matters now, I mean the free speech part of it or not. I

mean that's it's going down on free speech grounds. That's where I think the problem is, because you are taking money from somebody and forcing them to subsidize what is inherently a a form of compulsory first timement activity. Right, You're saying, I'm gonna take your money and give it to this group that wants more government, and you know is engaged in government big government lobbying activities, et cetera.

So there's that. But the part of this that gets the left so upset and the reason why they're gonna oh my gosh, I mean, almost as many people are going to die as a result of this change that I think the Supreme Court is going to visit upon public sector unions. Almost as many millions will die as died from the Republican tax cut, which I know left left mad Max like devastation in many parts of this country. Um,

sorry about that, guys. I know that tax cut, that that thousand dollar bonus you may have gotten from your company. You know that. That's just it's the reason why all the houses around you have burned down and then and there's now just you know, flame tornadoes everywhere, and mad Max Like I said, Ah, but they public sector unions, they give their money to Democrats. Ah, now we know why the media cares so much. This is a huge

source of big money for Democrat candidates. In fact of public sector unions donations and the last political cycle went to Democrat candidates. So that's sixty million dollars in cash that they're getting from people who are basically unfire able and work for the government. And you see this self licking ice cream cone of government employees who are trying

to do everything they can do. Elect representatives who will make sure the government employees get the most money and the most benefits they possibly can, and that means Democrats. This is how the part, this is how Democrats became the party of the state, and the state became full of statists, as in, people who work for the government tend to be not everybody, but tend to be pro government, right, thinking that government solved problems, then the government does good things.

And especially at the federal level, you've got a lot of this, a lot of that sentiment going on. But the Democrat Party is clearly the party that is most concerned with the expansion of the state, the expansion of the ranks of bureaucrats and government employees as much as it possibly can, because it has become an important, uh

an important way of getting support for Democrat politicians. All right, this is now a source of considerable power, and the Supreme Court isn't going to eliminate it or eradicate it, but may put quite a dent in it because a lot of people are gonna say no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. You know, maybe the folks who work for the government, who aren't Democrats, who aren't statuss will have a little more say in their affairs. Maybe we'll see that the donation numbers will

change too. And McCarthy's joinings in a few minutes here to talk about the Democrat memo short version, Adam Schiff is a punk and he's not telling the truth. We have more. Welcome to our three of the Buck Sexton Show. Everybody, Thank you very much. Great to have you here. We've got Anie McCarthy. We'll be with us in just a few more. Went to go into a bit of a deep dive on the Democrat fis memo. What he saw there? What I saw there? Well, we'll have an exchange on that,

but first lighten it up for a few minutes. Just get into a bit of a buck slap situation here. We're gonna come up with a cooler you know, I think we should do like a montage of you know, the old Kung Fu movies where all that's like, you know, all the different I didn't do a very good job, you know what I'm talking about, right we should do something like that, really lean into the bucks lap, because right now a solo slap is not enough. It needs to be more than just a solitary solitary slab um.

But I had two things. These don't really go together other than just giving a buck slap to the media. The first is you will recall that guy, Michael Wolfe, who wrote the book Fire and Fury, which my favorite part of that whole story, by the way, was that Fire and Fury, a book about the Second World War

and an aerial campaign. I think it was the bombing of Berlin, but I forget, but you know, aerial combat in the Second World War that was published like many years ago, went to the top of the New York

Times bestseller list because of Fire and Fury. The other book, Yes, the Amazon effect, but this guy wrote Fire and Fury, Michael Wolfe, and he had an interview recently where he pulled one of the great media things that you'll see people do, which is when you get a question that you don't like, just do the whole Well, I'm sorry, I can't what was that is that? Like you got he's trying to ask me. No, it's all fuzzy, Roy, it's fuzzy in me. He doesn't sound like that, but

I just want to do that voice. Go ahead and play it. You see during a TV interview just last month that you are absolutely sure that Donald Trump is currently having an affair while president behind the back of the First Lady, and I repeat, you said you were held Yeah, I can't. Last week, however, you beg flipped instead. I quote, I do not know if the president is having an affair? Do you over the president and the First Lady? An apology? Mr Wolf? I can't hear you.

I can't hear you. Hello. Last month, you said you were absolutely sure that the president was having an affair. I'm not getting I'm not getting anything. I'm not I'm not hearing him anymore. I'm not getting anything now. I'm not getting you know, we were hearing each other well just before. I'm not hearing me, Mr Wolf. Do you do you hear I'm not now. I'm just I'm not hearing anything. Wolf was hearing me before hearing me. I'm

not hearing anything. It looks all right. Can we stop this for a second because this is let me tell you something, he's hearing him. You know how I know. He keeps waiting from stop saying, excuse me, slimy, shifty, grotesque character named Michael Wolfe, can you answer the question please? I'm not He waits till he stops each time. If you couldn't hear him, he would just be sitting you, Guys, I got no thing, and there'd be cross dok, guys, I got nothing. I'm sorry, I can't you know, excuse me,

excuse me a pile of human refuse. You made unsubstantiated and grotesque allegations against the president. Could you please tell us if you owe him a retraction and apology. I don't know. I can't. I don't know. I can't hear um. If he couldn't hear, folks, and I want to play it for you. If if Michael wolf couldn't hear guess what, he wouldn't have waited until the question ended each time to say I can't hear you notice, And there are a couple of times there's a little cross talk, but

he kept waiting. You know. This would be this would be like me walking around saying I'm gonna hold my breath. I'm holding my breath. I'm holding it right now. And you're like, wait, but Buck, you're talking. How can you be holding your breath? Shut up? I'm holding my breath so that he gets a buck slap for that. Yeah, yeah, come on, John slap him, Yes, exactly. And then in some guy who looks like the mean fraternity brother from

an eighties movie. Uh, and that looks like that comes from somebody who looks like the nice fraternity brother from an eighties movie, namely me, it's some guy named Peter Alexander at the Today Show asked Ivanka the following question, do you believe your father's accusers? I think it's a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter if she believes um the accusers of her father when he's affirmatively stated that there's no truth to it. I don't think that's

a question you would ask many other daughters. I believe my father. I know my father, so I think I have that right as a daughter, um, to believe my father. Oh that's actually a buck slap courtesy of Ivanka too, the punk Peter Alexander, Papa, Ivanka just buck slapped him. She bucks slapped him. It was amazing because, by the way, completely true. Show me where some NBC glorified frat boy is asking Chelsea Clinton if her dad's a rapist on

on TV while he's president or at any time. I just want to know, Hey, Chelsea Clinton, sit down, talk to me for a second. Is your dad a rapist? That's not a question she's ever been asking. That would No, that's not a fair question to ask her, you know, that's not that's not a question. That's not a question that should be posed to anybody in that situation. But they'll pose it to Avanca because at NBC they are in the tank with the never Trump, anti Trump hashtag resistance.

So Buck slaps a plenty there, and we're gonna have Anny McCarthy joining in just a moment. Welcome back, everybody. So here we are our three of the Buck Sexton Show, and I've been promising you that we would have the one and only the McCarthy to weigh in on the memo that dropped over the weekend. It it dropped with a bit of a of a whimper. In my opinion, it did not exactly have the splash of the Republican memo. But we should get into why and whether that is

in fact even a fair assessment of it. We've got Andy with us now. He is a former Assistant U S Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He is also a senior writer at National Review and at the National View Institute. Andy, thanks so much for joining Buck. It's my pleasure. All right, Den memo, what were your thoughts? Well, you know, I think you're right that it landed with a whimper, although you know, to be fair to uh the the it was a Saturday, so we can start

with that. Well, yeah, it was a Saturday, and it was also in the midst of this uh hubbub of the shooting in Florida, which really hasn't died down, and that's I think taken a lot of the oxygen up. But I also think that UM for their own and they have they have a motive to kind of soft peddle this because, uh, despite everything that Representative shift is out there saying. His memo does concede the two main allegations in the majority memo that's known as the New

Neez Memo. Namely, they did use the Steel dossier, and secondly, they didn't disclose to the court that the Steel dossier was a Hillary Clinton campaign product. So you know how much they want to have all the back and forth when those two major allegations have actually been confirmed. I'm sure there's a lot of people who who aren't loving

that end of the argument. And the one part of it that really jumped out to me was that there was a place at which they said the Steel dossier and I'm paraphrasing here, but it was the Steel dossier was later verified. I buy blacked outline, blocked outline, etcetera, etcetera about you know, twenty blacked outlines in a row. I feel like that would be the thing that we really need to see and to know. Yeah, I agree

with you about that for a few reasons. Number one, um, you know the obvious, which which is that, um, you know, if there really was probable cause, then we should see what the basis of it was. And obviously they should preserve whatever they can of of methods and sources and sensitive intelligence secrets. And I understand they don't want to

blow things that we know about Russia. But at the same time, at the same time, you know, this is now enough of a thing where it certainly seems that the first memo, the first plies of warrant at the

very least was largely dependent on the dossier. Uh So you would think that if there's better justification for it out there, that would be a good thing to dough And I guess the second thing, Buck is that I don't really think I'm ready to take Adam Schiff's word that what he thinks is corroboration is what would satisfy me as corroboration, because he has an idea about corroboration

based on what else is in his memo that's pretty skewed. Um, So I'd like to see it for myself and make up my own mind about whether it really corroborates the idea that that page was an agent of a foreign power. And in one section, and everyone we're talking about this the Democrat response to the FISA abuse memo. This was the one that had been there's some back and forth over it in recent weeks, Um and Andy, Before I actually get in the specifics of this one subsection, do

we know where the blackdown lines in this? Who's to blame for them so to speak? Or who is the final say? I mean, essentially, why were some of the lines about sources blacked out? Was it Republicans demanding them because I've seen a lot of Democrats saying that or is it the FBI or do we not know? Well, we know, but that the Republican members of the Committee voted to release shifts memo from the from the start. They wanted it out there. Um, so I don't think

it's the Republicans on the committee who are doing this. Uh. Then there was a lot of negotiation between as I understand that the FBI on behalf of the intelligence community, the Justice Department, the White House, and Shift and the Democrats on the Committee trying to uh come to accommodations that would allow Shift to make the arguments that he wanted to make without exposing methods and sources of intelligence

and important intelligence secrets. And I think, you know, members of Congress, can they really do have immunity under the Constitution and they could go up on the on the floor of the House and say whatever is in the redaction. They don't do that because if it would harm the country, obviously it would be very politically damaging for them to

do that. So I think this is a matter of them accommodating or or deferring to the judgment of the FBI in particular that exposing what's blacked out would be bad for the country. All right, now, this part of the the memo says the following, FB this is under FBI's counterintelligence investigation. In its October fives application and subsequent renewals, d o J accurately informed the FBI. UH, the FBI initiated its counter intelligence investigation on julyeen after receiving information,

and then it's blocked out. George Papadopoulis revealed blocked out that individuals linked to Russia who took interest in Papadopolis as a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor informed him in late April that Russia it's blocked out. Okay, that's you know. I'm putting it out there just because what do you make of this? It seems to me like this it reads like what we already knew about Papadopolis based on that news report that's out there, that he was talking

some stuff to some people. But is this the best they can do on Papadopolis Because to me, the the inclusion of this guy in here makes the whole case seem kind of flimsy. Yeah, well, I think the case is flimsy, But let me um let me just and Buck, you probably have even more experience with this than I do.

But um let me say what I think is happening here in good faith, and that is you know, I remember years ago in the blind Shake case, I had to try to get in some information about what the CIA was doing in Afghanistan, including the fact that we

used Pakistan as kind of the cutout. And even though there had been books written about that, uh and it was a well known fact, I was not able are allowed to disclose it in formally as a representative of the government because the the intelligence community in our government

never acknowledges who gives us information. So I think what's going on there is that even though everybody knows the Australians gave us that information and everybody knows what the information was, because it's all right, this is this is the government pretending something is still not known, that that everybody that that is considered common knowledge, which they which they do everybody for you, those of you you are listening.

The government will still say things are classified that are literally what you would see if you googled it, but they still pretend that right, And I think that's done for good reason. That's done so that we can look Pakistan or Australia or anyone else in the eye and say, if you cooperate with us, we will always protect you, and we will always keep it confidential, no matter who

knows it. All right, So, what is the single biggest part of the memo Andy that that did or this thing the biggest question that remains un answered for you at this point. I think there are two questions. But the first is, um, was there any other information besides the Steel dossier, which was completely uncorroborated that made out the very demanding standard under five of when you want to get a warrant on an American citizen that he was acting as an active knowing agent of a foreign

power whose planned destined activities violated federal criminal law. I'd like to know if there's anything else, because it sure looks like the Steel DOSSI was the only thing they had along those lines. And secondly, whenever the government gets an eavesdropping warrant, whether it's in FISA National security stuff or Title three criminal stuff, you always have to demonstrate to the court that alternative uh investigative techniques, that is,

tactics other than surveillance, which is very intrusive. Um could not work to get you the information that you need. And the reason I think it's important, and this is something that really hasn't been addressed to this point, is that we now know that Paige had a relationship with the FBI that went back to two thousand thirteen. He was an informant for them in a case against Russian spies.

They used his information in a complaint, and they interviewed him again as late as March of So he's someone who's been very available to them, and that there's no reason to believe, at least based on what we know publicly, that he's ever been untruthful with them as a as an informant. So the question I'd have is why get a surveillance warrant on him when if you wanted to know whether he met with these two top Russian guys or not, you could bring him in an interview him

and ask them. Yeah, the whole carter page component of this Andy strike me as as such a such a stretch, the notion that this guy was at the heart of some international conspiracy and that therefore there had to be as you said, very intrusive and very high level surveillance

techniques used against him. It seems much more likely me at this point that some of the people who understand how this process works, and as you have pointed out, once you get somebody's calms and their communications, their previous stored stuff, stored email, stored text messanges are fair game too. They wanted to do some poking around Carter Page had these previous fuzzy, weird Russia contacts, and it looks like

it's it looks like a pretext. Andy. I know you can't say it was because we don't know yet, but to me, it looks like it was done as a pretext for surveillance. Yeah, and Buck, and I want to be clear because I agree with that, um, but I am not one of these people who says like I'm so like a fervently died in the world Trump person that it would have been outrageous for the Obama administration

to conduct this investigation. To the contrary, I've said, if they had real evidence here of collusion of a corrupt nature between the campaign, the Trump campaign, and the Russians, then it would have been irresponsible not to investigate that. And if it turns out that there are other bases for Carter Page to have been thought to be an agent of a foreign power, and they had real evidence of that. I'm all for it. I'm I'm like, you know, whatever,

whoever we need to surveil, we should all that too. Yeah. Yeah, So I'm not saying that this I'm not one of these people who was who was saying this was an illegitimate thing from the get go. I'm somebody who has reluctantly been dragged to the point of saying something really bad went on here. And this is after months of telling people. You know, look, the FBI and the Justice

Department don't do that kind of stuff. They don't go to a court with uncorroborated hearsay from unidentified sources that comes from political sources. They go out and do independ an investigation, and when they got in the fives the court, they make sure that what they've given the court is vetted and they make every proper disclosure they can make, because that's the Justice Department. I know, and I've told people for months that what it looks like happened here

couldn't happen here. All right, We'll have to see, We'll keep an eye on it, Andy McCarthy. Everybody read his latest at National Review dot com. They actually just updated the site. Looks great. Go check it out. Also follow Andy on Twitter. Mr riccarty. Always appreciate you making the time, sir, Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Thanks so much. Buck. See, we're gonna roll into a quick break here. When we come back, I'm going to have, oh,

some things to talk to you about. You're going to uh, you're gonna want to hear them because we have some some audio of them talk about diversity that oh guess what, it went off the rails that's coming up. Stay with me. You can be irritated by it. You could be irritated by the fact that women have to be the one suggest Tait and lacktate. You could be irritated by a lot of trip. But taking offense is a is a

response that is rejection of reality. So men and women are different on height, they're different on muscle mass, they're different on where fact is deposited on our bodies. Right, our brains are also different. So there's some fine areas security. This is this is what happens until they shut off

the violet. Can you hear, can can everybody here? So I gotta tell you, guys, this is at at at Portland's State University, and it is a it was a forum, a college form, and these things are great, a college form where you have people who are supposed to discuss ideological diversity, the diversity of ideas. And this may not u come as a shock to you. There are people at Portland State University who do not want to hear about this, who have no interest whatsoever in hearing about things.

And even to the point where a and you've got a few different individuals joining together here. You had ex Google engineer James Day Moore, um, he was part of this panel. And you had a few other scholars, you know, people that are from Portland State University. And you had evolutionary biologist Heather Heying there among others. So and Peter

Peter Brigoesian. Now you just heard some pretty straightforward stuff about how men and women are biologically physically different, different in terms of muscle mass, different in terms of fat deposits, different in terms of a whole bunch of things. And people in attendance weren't just content to go. They actually I mean, I wish you could see the video, but

I'm just playing the audio for you. They pulled the audio on the way out, like they pulled the plugs out of the speakers and throw a fit as they were leaving, so that they forced they forced the panel to come to a stop. And then what you had is these panelists who had to stand up and just do what acapella style, and they decided to just keep going with the rest of of their speech. But I don't want to stop it with just they pulled the plugs,

literally pull the plug on the speech. Okay, remember men and women are biologically different. That gets people upset. That's that's a microaggression. You're not allowed to say that. Every single one of you, sitting, listening, standing, running, wherever you are across the country knows men and women are different. You're not in your head like yeah, of course, Buck. That has now become a politically incorrect thing to say.

This has been going on for a few years now, but but it is now part of the leftist orthodoxy. It is dogma on the left that you are simply fundamentally not allowed to claim that there are any differences of any kind between men and women. Rooted in biology. How one makes that argument, don't this is this is the equivalent of saying, you know, an apple is a banana. To borrow from CNN, It's not, you know, I call this an apple. You call that an apple. No, no, an apple is a banana. It is the It is

forceful falsehood, right. It is so wrong that the purpose of it seems to be two force people to agree in the wrongness of it as a as a form of intellectual submission. But they they freaked out, and I know it's a brain now. They had a few of them, a bunch of you know, blue haired anarchists, and they they left, They pulled the all goodul the stuff, and then they continue to throw a bit of a fit outside. And I just want to share some of these are the These are the folks that are the future of

this country. This is the the campus elite, if you will, sharing their thoughts on a whole bunch of stuff. When it comes to diversity. Should not listen to fascism. I should not be tolerated in civil society. Nazis are not welcome in civil society. Alright, Well, we're gonna raise our voices.

The conversation is going to go on, all right, let's let that sort of behavior is unacceptable in civilized societies, and if that person is a student, they should be given a warning, and if they do it again, they should be expelled from the university. Expelled from the university. That's where this should be. Now, I would know that it's not an overreach at all. That consequences for violating the central goal of a college campus should be something

that colleges embrace. And to anyone who say that's so harsh, you can know they're they're creating a disturbance, They're just they're at least destroying public property, and they are shutting down the right of others to speak. If you were to hand in somebody else's term paper, you could get expelled, right, plagiarism get expelled. It's not a it's not a crime,

but it's still a violation of academic ethics. What could be a more clear violation of the ethics of the academy than trying to shut down a speech with people who are trying to engage in important ideas of the time in a respectful way. That is the definition of discourse and dialogue. But this is what we are up against. Now this is where the left has taken much of this country. You heard that guy talking about how this

is fascism, this is it's fascism. When you have college professors Heather Haying, Brett Weinstein, former Googler, James Daymore, and Peter Rogosian speaking to an audience about what diversity really is, that now has become fascism, It has become triggering, to borrow a term from the left. It triggers people, It forces their emotional outburst when somebody says that men and women are different xx chromosome x y chromosome. You know, I've heard people saying recently that on guns, on guns,

falsehood is excused, and that is true. If you were on the left and you are anti gun, you can say things that are untrue, and it's okay, it's fine as long as it serves the greater purpose. But in some ways it's even worse when you talk about gender and gender identity issues, because it's not that falsehood is excused. They're not saying, oh, it doesn't matter if you say clip or magazine. Ban the Second Amendment right, which, by the way, is the thing that I've seen and heard

people saying recently. It doesn't matter if you say Clipper magazine. It doesn't matter if you say auto or semi auto. Ban all autos. But wait, autos are banned. Oh, you don't care about the children with the gender identity issues. What you see is that falsehood is not excused. Falsehood is embraced. It's embraced. Yes, we are going to lie, Yes we're going to tell you things that are not true. The movement rests on lies. The movement rests on the

opposite of reality. And they just hope that the brainwashing and the political mobilization of the forces of the academy and the media and the Democrat Party and the American left will be enough. I we'll spend some time coming up in the weeks ahead. When I can. I'll just go on some some buck digressions here about how central

falsehood was to the Soviet system and to communism. And I'm not saying that we're about to have communist country, but it's just philosophically, it's important to understand that it wasn't It went from excuse making to the active embrace. In fact, the forced embraced embracing falsehood. At the end of a rifle or with a rifle pointed. Actually that was the Soviet Union. Yeah, you know, this is the quota for potatoes. We hit the potato quote. Uh no,

you didn't. Actually people are starving. Well, this is the quota actually, and yes we did hit it, or else you're going to be shot. Guess what A lot of people say, Okay, all the potatoes we need. That's what's going on ideologically on college campuses across the country. It's also reflected in the media, and it is soon to be reflected in our laws. In fact, I think already you can make the case that there are ways in which the left mentality about gender identity has manifested itself

in law. And while I can look at people screaming fascist because a couple of social sciencests are saying men and women are different, people who literally have PhDs in the subject matter are trying to tell an audience that men and women are different. And you have people screaming, disrupting, acting like children. These are adults that are people in their late twenties from what I can see, and they're upset by this. It bothers them. They don't want to

be told this. They have embraced some alternate reality. And it's not just on gender identity. Where this is the case, that's the problem. Once truth is a casualty, the casualty numbers just rise. Once it doesn't matter anymore what's true and what's false, then anything becomes possible and anything becomes permissible. And this is one of the reason why the left is so very, very dangerous. Um the momentum of progressivism or left leftism in this country always points towards always

results in tyranny. It can't help, but do that, and sure we can make fun of some shrieking, blue haired pseudo hippie hipster types who don't think they should have to hear any bad things, but understand the political ideology they represent is actually quite dangerous and does need to be confronted on the battlefield of ideas. We're gonna get into some roll call coming up. Stay with me. I want to tell you about some fun ahead over the weekend.

I like to share with you some of my adventures, and I'm going to tell you the truth about it as well. Because I thought I was pretty slick, pretty cool guy, you know, like I can make things happen. I was planning it for some time. Miss Molly and I we're gonna go to the Metropolitan Opera, which is very, very fancy. You know, it's a it's a fancy thing. It's a once a year thing for me. You know. I save up, I take the piggy bank, I break

the piggy bank. We go to the Metropolitan Opera and I get to go check out one of the most I don't know, revered cultural institutions of New York City. For for some look, I I love it. Opera is enchanting. It is pretty incredible. It is also very long for those of you who have not been exposed to it. I don't know if you've ever been, but sometimes it can run in the neighborhood of three and a half

hours ish, maybe four, which is a long time. I mean, Brave Heart is three hours plus, but it flies by in five minutes because it's the greatest movie of all time. But opera, you gotta be into it, and you also want to know what's going on because you've got a whole bunch of people seeing in a different language. So I make my plans with I'm making my plans with

Miss Molly. Two uh, to go to the opera, and and she's all excited because I've told her she's cooler than I am and more in touch with pop culture. But I've told her that that the opera we're going to see, La bo m is more or less the basis for the broad with the hit Broadway musical rent Um, which is true, it's sort of loosely based on or

loosely derived from. But and so we're talking, and we had dinner beforehand, and we're all excited, and we're going, I'm going over the characters from Labo M and and sure enough when we sit down, we managed to get we have great seats and the opera is just wherever you are across the country should go to the opera telling I'm telling you, don't knock it till you try. The operas is pretty cool. Let's saying go every weekend. That can be a lot, but it's a it's a

real experience. And if you love music, I mean the the pit, the orchestra that they have is philharmonic quality, right, so the orchestra is amazing, the music is incredible to set the set design um and if you want, if you're ever in New York City, you can actually go and get like standing room tickets for a lot of the operas, which, by the way, stay for half of it and you'll be plenty happy. You'll have been there for two hours, so you know, stay for an hour

and a half. And if you get standing room only the back, I think those tickets are twenty five or thirty bucks. Yea, So it's it's it's doable, uh, in a in a less expensive way instead of a few hundred bucks, which is what it can run to go to sit in a chair and actually sit for the whole thing. Anyway, So I'm there with Ms Molly, and I think I'm pretty cool. I think this is a it's a good date that I've set up. You know, I'm gonna get some some buck points here, you know,

for being a good guy, good boyfriend. And she's she's all excited. She looks very very pretty, you know, she's all dressed up. And I'm excited too. And we've been talking about Labom and I know some of the difference in arias from Labo M And I'm all excited. That's a very it's the most popular opera of all time. It's very accessible, shorter, and you know, if you're gonna go see one, by the way, go see marriage a figure. Oh, go see La bo m. Go see one of one

of the ten grades. You know, people love men and butterfly. I don't know that one for me wasn't really getting it done anyway. I think it's a lot that the curtain goes up and all of a sudden, I'm like, this isn't eighteen thirties Paris. What's going on here? Like, I don't understand. There are tombs like out of ancient Egypt. There dudes standing around with swords. There's like some kind

of high priest with a scepter. I'm like, whoa Limrae district in Paris just got freaky, Like this is not what I you know, I'm always looking at me like what the heck is this because we're sitting there. Have you ever had the thing where you walk into a movie and and it's actually not the movie you think it is, and but for the first minute you're like, well, I guess, like I thought it was a movie about

combat pilots. But maybe that movie starts out with like, uh, you know, a bunch of people, you know, at a bar doing shots, playing rock and roll I mean, you know, you know, you kind of convince yourself. So I have that going on with this opera. I'm sitting there and I'm like, well, somehow, maybe it's like a retro thing where it's Labo M but in eight hundred BC. Maybe. But no, no, I had actually book tickets to the

wrong opera. I had book tickets to go see and I didn't know this because the the matinee was Labo M. So I'm not crazy. I just assumed when I booked tickets for the later show, because I didn't read the fine print or the print that I was gonna go see Labo. I'm sure it was Semi Ramada, which is some people. I think we'd call it the last of

the great Baroque operas. EIGHTI is long, and it's one of those opera situations where it's like our Sace is vying for the queen's hand, but Azure wants the queen's daughter's hand, but it's pretending to want the queen's hand because Azure was part of getting rid of the king. But then Arsace is actually the son of the queen and the king and the uncle. And I'm sitting there and I'm trying to show Ms Molly the program. I'm not trying to disturb anybody. I'm shining my little light

on her. For a second, I realized I can't do that. She's looking at me like, what the heck am I watching? This? Is like King tut and I you know, I look. We leaned into it, and we fortunately were able to catch ourselves at the breakpoint. Um, we were able to catch ourselves at intermission. Breakpoint. Gosh, sounds like a savage at the intermission when I had a chocolate soufla. That's right, I felt bougie. I wanted to do it, so I had a chocolate soufla at intermission, because they can do

that sort of thing at the opera. Have it waiting for you even I know, I know I should just I should punch myself. But we were able to catch up a little bit with the plot afterwards, and sure enough, you know, the the dead king is avenged and the good guy beats the bad guy, but the girl dies, but the good guy. And opera plots, if you think that, like, uh, some of those telenovelas can get complicated. Opera plots put all that stuff to shame. Man, it was it was

a thing. So yeah, Semi Ramda based on the Voltaire based on Voltaire Voltaire's work semi Ramas, which was about a Babylonian Babylonian succession struggle with the Queen. Semi Ramda. Uh so yeah, we were in it. We're rocking out in ancient Babylon Saturday night. Didn't know it. I thought we're gonna be hanging out in eighteen thirties Paris with a bunch of bohemians. But you know, life's crazy, my friends, Things happen. You gotta adapt, gotta be ready for it.

So with that, I'll just tell you go check out the opera. It's worth it at some points wherever you are, if you can go, do it. And I'm sorry I've skipped over roll call, but I promise you will do it tomorrow and we'll hear from all of you until then. My friends, colleagues, patriots, fellow freed mut dwellers, Shields high