Clay: Charge Will Smith with Assault

CLAY: The fallout continues of the Will Smith slap heard round the world, Buck, and Will Smith finally officially apologized to Chris Rock on Instagram yesterday afternoon as this story was not going away. There continue to be discussions about whether or not he should lose his Oscar. The Academy has put out a statement saying his behavior is totally unacceptable.

I don’t think personally that you should ever take away somebody’s award, whether it’s the Heisman Trophy — I thought it was crazy when they took that away from Reggie Bush — or whether it’s the best-actor Oscar or whatever else. I do think… I don’t know what you think about this, Buck. I do think that Chris Rock… I don’t think Chris Rock himself should press charges.

I wouldn’t if I were Chris Rock. But I think L.A. should charge Will Smith with assault — and let me explain why I think that. One, it’s on camera. Everybody can see it. Two, regardless of what someone says, you can’t — in my opinion — walk up on the stage. Whether it’s a comedian, whether it is an actor in a play, whether it is a politician speaking on a stage, whether it is someone who’s performing music — a musician — you can’t walk up on the stage and hit someone because of what they said on the stage.

That is a crime, and Will Smith, to me, should be charged with that crime because there is no doubt that he did it. And I understand there’s some people out there who are like, “Well, he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith and so that’s what men should do. They should stand up for their wife.” Look, I speak redneck. I was raised redneck. I understand SEC football fans and the culture probably better than anyone.

I understand that idea. In my opinion, it’s totally wrong. You can’t hit someone over what they say. Now, if you’re under threat of physical violence, if your family’s in danger… I always say, Buck, if I get in a fight — and I’m 42. If I get in a fight, either somebody is paying me millions of dollars to get in a fight and I’m in some sort of boxing match or myself, or my family is in danger.

Otherwise, I’m too old to be in a fight. Will Smith is 53. You can’t throw a punch or a slap at someone over what they say, and I think there should be, frankly, consequences because of the precedent being set that if somebody makes a joke you don’t like you just walk up on the stage and hit him. I think that’s crazy.

BUCK: Well, I think that in some jurisdictions, at least — and obviously I’m not a lawyer, but — they wouldn’t press charges unless the person — they won’t bring charges unless the person who has been assaulted — is a cooperating witness in it, right? And this is just… This is pretty standard. It’s also a law-enforcement resources thing. They’re not gonna want to spend the time and the effort to bring charges, ’cause what also…

Think about it this way. What would be then? Are you gonna send Will Smith — if Chris Rock won’t even file a police report on this — the assault is against him. It’s not against the State of California, right? So if he doesn’t even to want file a police report, you’re gonna send him to jail, you’re gonna send him to prison? Not really. So you’re —

CLAY: He’s gonna have to plea down. I just think a lot of times charges send messages about what’s acceptable behavior. And to me there are people who will watch Will Smith and they’re saying, “Oh, good for him,” and I think it sets the precedent that if somebody says something you don’t like, you can smack ’em.

BUCK: Well, I think they’re talking about revoking his Oscar. I agree with you, by the way. I don’t think that your professional achievements in some way should be pulled because of completely unrelated activity. I guess… There’s always extremes. People say, “What about if it turned out Will Smith was a mass murderer?” Okay, yeah, I mean, I understand, but —

CLAY: I would still give him the Oscar. I mean, it doesn’t mean he’s not a good actor, right? I mean, they didn’t take OJ’s Heisman Trophy, even though… You know, but I think most people… No, he still got the Heisman.

BUCK: Well, he got convicted of the other stuff. But I guess they didn’t care enough.

CLAY: Well, he was civilly liable. I mean, I think they took —

BUCK: No, no, no. He got convicted of the armed robbery. He went to prison.

CLAY: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah right. Later criminal. I think they took his Heisman to sell it to help pay for the civil responsibilities of his lawsuit. But they didn’t take it. Like, he’s still… If you go look at HeismanTrophy.com or whatever, he’s still has it, whereas they took Reggie Bush’s Heisman away. I don’t like taking away awards — I think that’s crazy — even if people do awful things.

BUCK: There wasn’t really… I mean, there was some polling done on this, and we had a lot of people who I would say are rarely — in the media I’m talking about, rarely — in agreement with us, were like, “Yeah, you actually can’t hit somebody over something like this.” Interestingly enough, younger people… I remember I sent you this polling data.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Younger people tended to be more supportive of this, and you and I were talking about this. When you’re young, I think you see all these movies and, you know, your boss gives you too much lip you just, you know, crack him in the jaw. It’s like… I mean, you punch a middle-aged man in the face and you actually have some strength and know what you’re doing, you could shatter his jaw. You could do real damage. Somebody might end up going blind in an eye. I mean, bad things can actually happen.

CLAY: You can fall and hit your head. I mean, like —

BUCK: This is true. This stuff happens. I knew somebody who was called to a case in New York over a parking spot where a man said that a woman tried to attack him by scratching his face. He punched her one time. There were witnesses. She fell, hit her head on the curb, died, right there. So you can actually kill somebody by doing that.

Now, obviously every time you throw a punch it’s not attempted murder, but I’m just saying. You know, this is something that… But if you’ve seen people — Clay and I talked about this offline. I’ve seen people who got hit in the face when they weren’t expecting it, and the noise that it makes and the damage it does is something that stays with you. It is really…

It’s ugly. It’s really bad. So I think most people were clear on this as not the way that you… When I say “most,” it’s not a huge majority, just to be clear. It’s like, it’s kind of… You know, it’s kind of a 60-40 proposition from the polling that I saw in terms of… I mean, unless I’m… Yeah, overall… I’m sorry. No, no: 52-47 was the polling that I saw, 52-47.

Which side are you on in the Oscars slap over a joke? Chris Rock or Will Smith? (Easy call for me, but curious what you guys think).

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 28, 2022

CLAY: My audience… I put it up on Twitter and like 86% of them were in favor of what Chris Rock’s perspective, the joke, as opposed to Will Smith. But it doesn’t surprise me. Like, I grew up in, you know, what I would say is Redneck Universe Culture, and I still love going to, you know, southern sporting events and everything else. It doesn’t surprise me that there’s a large percentage of men in particular that believe that if something is said that insults your wife that you should hit ’em.

I mean, there is a huge percentage of people out there that agree with Will Smith for that reason. And my position is, if somebody says something that makes you throw a punch at them, you are the loser, ’cause you lose control of your… Psychologically, you break, and the other thing I would point out here is, Buck, Will Smith’s 53 years old. It’s not like he’s 18, right?

Everybody does stupid stuff when they’re 18. You’ve been punched before. I’ve been punched before. Like we’re not claiming that we’re, you know, like perfect human beings in any stretch of the imagination. But the idea that you at 53 years old would open-hand slap another man on a stage for a joke that they made? And this has been going on for, what, 80, 90 years at the Oscars?

They hire comedians to come out and make jokes. And, by the way, the more offensive joke that was made, if you want to define offense, about Will and Jada was made by women. I mean, he wouldn’t have hit a woman for the Job, if I didn’t think… If it hadn’t been Chris Rock, if Amy Schumer had made the joke, like, he wouldn’t have hit her. The whole thing is strange.

BUCK: The day after now, when we see what all the fallout is, this was not a staged thing, folks, a lot of people, “Oh, this is staged.” I thought this was actually not a staged thing because there’s nothing but loss and downside. Even us talking about it, this is brand damaging for Will Smith, who’s somebody who doesn’t need more publicity. He’s about to win the Oscar for being in the movie that was among the most celebrated at the Oscars. Doesn’t need more publicity. So this was… I had all these people, “Oh, that slap was fake.”

CLAY: People love to say it’s fake.

BUCK: It’s not fake, actually.

CLAY: I will say that early… Look, we do television. The minute that they cut away and cut out all of the audio was a strong sign that there was no idea than that like this might happen, among the Oscar broadcasters. And you know how this works, Buck. When you do television there’s a layout of what the shots are, what the clips are. Like, the Oscars is highly programmed.

They know exactly who’s coming out, they know exactly what they’re gonna read off of the teleprompter. They may not know who’s gonna win, but they know where everybody’s seated. It’s a very orchestrated process, and so when they cut the audio like they did on the American version, that’s an unexpected outcome. So immediately my ears perked up when I saw that going on. And then when you see the Australian and the Japanese versions that are circulating. Plus, look, Chris Rock, people were like, “Oh, he didn’t even try to protect himself.” He didn’t think he was gonna get punched on the stage!

BUCK: If I told a joke on the radio studio, Clay, and somebody walked over to me they would have a free and open shot because told never occur to me that they would just punch me in the face while I was doing my job. So that’s just reality. This is not in a bar. This is not on the street. You’re at the Oscars. It would never occur to him in a million years.

CLAY: You’re in tuxedos.

BUCK: And he slapped him. It was an open hand, which made a huge difference. Will Smith is a big guy. If that has been a closed-fist punch, you would have been picking up some of Chris Rock’s teeth off the stage. It would have gotten ugly. It wasn’t a closed fist.