Questioning Elections a Threat to Democracy? Not When Dems Do it.

BUCK: Misinformation is something we’ve been talking about here the last few days in particular, ’cause the White House wants social media to police it. And they also want to make sure you can’t say certain things about not only covid, but elections. That’s been a big part of this all along. So on the one hand Democrats are saying that we’re in the era of Jim Crow 2.0.

They’ll say the most outrageous things imaginable about election integrity, security measures from Republicans, and they’ll claim that this is all some racist plot or conspiracy to prevent minorities from voting. They’ll say whatever they want.

That’s never somehow considered misinformation. In fact, you have none other than Stacey Abrams — who is a national-level figure now in Democrat circles — going around saying that democracy is under attack. This is a favorite phrase of the left today: “Democracy is under attack!”

ABRAMS: Now is the urgent time for action. What happened in Texas, what’s happening right now — what will happen in Ohio, what will happen in North Carolina, what will happen in Pennsylvania — is not endemic to the South. It is endemic to authoritarians who doesn’t want to see inconvenient voters cast their ballots and speak their minds, and that has to be the call to arms.

This is not simply about one moment. This is about the foundations of our democracy. And they are in peril, and it’s time now for every single member of the U.S. Senate, Democrats and Republicans and independents, to declare their allegiance to our democracy as opposed to their party.

BUCK: The foundations, Clay, of our democracy are in peril because Republicans want voter ID for mail-in ballots, want mail-in ballots not to be sent to people who don’t request them, don’t want people going around collecting ballots with no chain of custody whatsoever (known as “ballot harvesting”) and dumping hundreds at a time of ballots in a box.

If that’s destroying the foundations of our democracy, I need to know what Stacey Abrams was doing, in a New York Times Magazine piece on April 28, 2019, the title is, “Why Stacey Abrams Is Still Saying She Won.” So why is…? She’s the big… She gives us lectures about the threat to our democracy. Meanwhile, she is an election denier.

CLAY: She’s never conceded! She lost in 2018 to Brian Kemp of Georgia by 50,000 votes, Buck. That is more than Donald Trump, under current numbers, lost the entire United States presidential election. Trump lost, based on the existing numbers right now, by 40,000 votes: Roughly 10,000 in Georgia, 10,000 in Arizona, and 20,000 in Wisconsin.

That’s on the current numbers that are out there right now. If you flip, as a result, 20,001-ish votes, Trump would have been reelected as president. So Trump fighting against that result undermines the very foundation of our Democracy. But Stacey Abrams losing by 50,000 votes in the state of Georgia alone somehow makes her a darling of the Democratic Party, such that people talk about her as a vice presidential candidate, as a presidential candidate. That goes to the very foundational hypocrisy of (chuckling) questioning the results in a close race.

BUCK: Can I just say that we all know there is what you would call “a compelling state interest” in elections being valid, fair, and open. We all should agree. I mean, I don’t think the left does, but we should agree on that, and they say things like there is no voter fraud or it doesn’t really matter and they’re hoping that people don’t pay attention to things like the Al Franken. Remember Senator Franken, before he got canceled for the photos?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Senator Gillibrand of New York threw him right under the bus on that one.

CLAY: Totally under the bus.

BUCK: He won a 312-vote victory in 2008. So just that was a Senate seat. And, as we know, one Senate seat mean the difference between legislation that has a huge impact on the country going through or not. And I would add right now, Clay, there is a very serious effort — and I have to hat tip to Margot Cleveland who’s a lawyer and writes for The Federalist — to look at Georgia ballots, and here’s what they have found.

It is almost certain that thousands… They don’t know how many, but thousands of people in Georgia voted outside the county of their residence. Wherever you live, whatever your actual residence county is, that’s the only place you’re allowed to vote, for obvious reasons. Now, people may have moved, they moved to other counties, and now they’ve actually checked to see the registrations have shifted. So they did vote in the wrong county.

And you know what Georgia found? I think Raffensperger is the guy. He’s actually Republican. They’re saying, “Yeah, but, you know, they tried to vote in the right place.” That’s not the law!

CLAY: (chuckling)

BUCK: These are illegal voters, and TheFederalist.com has been pushing this and try to get people to pay attention. But we’re at a point now where even when we find illegal votes, they’re saying, “Well, but I mean, it was like an accident.” Doesn’t matter!

CLAY: Well, and I think what’s really spurring what is, I believe, an unconstitutional attempt to federalize elections… We just had a major elections ruling from the Supreme Court from Arizona, 6-3 decision, that essentially gave massive authority to states. There should be deference paid to them under federal law.

And so this idea of having a federal law passed I don’t believe is constitutional. But what’s motivating it, Buck, is all of the precepts of normal elections were thrown out the window because of covid, and that led to ballot harvesting. It led to mail ballots that were in no way legitimate.

It led to an incredible onrush of votes that would not have counted in 2016 and probably will not count in 2024, and what happened? The Democrats barely dragged Joe Biden across the finish line. They looked at the poll results, they looked at the results, and they said, “Oh, my God. We’re gonna get crushed in ’22 and ’24 without covid,” and they’re trying to change the rules.

BUCK: And the great gaslighting in all of this that’s happening every day is that what they told us a year ago — whatever it is now, nine months ago. What they told us was temporary and for an emergency is now the expectation. What they told us we couldn’t talk about after the election, they were talking about before the election. And this is a great one. This is a bunch of Democrats — and hat tip Jack Posobiec on this one. This is a bunch of Democrats in 2018 talking about voting machines, Clay, which I’m pretty sure —

CLAY: It’s amazing.

BUCK: When you say, “Voting machines,” it’s like Voldemort for Harry Potter. Here you go.

Here are Democrats saying everything after 2016 that Republicans aren’t allowed to say after 2020. pic.twitter.com/q7S5Yogiiy

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 20, 2021

ADAM SCHIFF: I continue to think that our voting machines are too vulnerable.

SHEILA JACKSON LEE: Her research has repeatedly demonstrated that ballot-recording machines and other voting systems are susceptible to tampering.

VAL DEMINGS: Even hackers with limited prior knowledge, tools, and resources are able to breach voting machines in a matter of minutes!

JENNIFER WEXTON: In 2018, electronic voting machines in Georgia and Texas deleted votes for certain candidates or switched votes from one candidate to another.

RON WYDEN: The biggest seller of voting machines is doing something that violates Cyber Security 101: Directing that you install remote access software, which would make a machine like that, you know, a magnet for fraudsters and hackers.

TED LIEU: These voting machines can be hacked quite easily.

AMY KLOBUCHAR: You could easily hack into them. It makes it seem like all these states are doing different things, but in fact three companies are controlling that.

KAMALA HARRIS: There are a lot of states that are dealing with antiquated machines! Right? Which are vulnerable to being hacked.

TED LIEU: In a close presidential election, they just need to — to hack one swing state, one or two — or maybe just a few counties in one swing state.

BUCK: Oh, my gosh, Clay. I am literally shaking right now from the threat to our democracy!

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: You heard Kamala Harris’ voice now. Now I’m telling you — everyone knows this — if you say stuff about the election on Facebook, they will shut down your account.

CLAY: That’s right. That’s right. And that’s exactly why so much of this hypocrisy is complete and total BS when you actually break it down because every single thing those Democrats said in the wake of the 2016 election, Republicans are now saying, and it’s unacceptable.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Clay and I are about to break down for you this story. It’s up on BuckSexton.com. “‘Texas Dems Virus’: Pelosi’s Fully Vaccinated Staff Test Positive for Covid” is the headline. Here’s what we got, Clay. “Spokesperson to the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed on Tuesday that a staff member of speaker’s team has tested positive for Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated.

“‘This individual has had no contact with the speaker since exposure,'” et cetera, et cetera. Okay. We got two things here. One, these Texas Democrats, I think we’re up to five or six of them who are, after their unmasked photo — not that masks work, but I’m just saying — they’re getting covid. They were all vaccinated. They’ve gotten positive tests anyway. So are these guys…? Is this like an aerial super-spreader event in the making? ‘Cause if it were Republicans, you know that’s what they’d call it.

CLAY: Oh, there’s no doubt, and let me just be crystal clear here. If you are vaccinated and/or you’ve already had covid, I don’t understand why we’re still testing people, Buck. This has gotten a lot of attention. For instance, Boris Johnson right now is quarantining in Britain. He already had covid and he’s been vaccinated, and we’ve seen it happen in the world of sports.

They had to postpone the Yankees and the Red Sox game. Chris Paul had to sit out of a bunch of games. They had to just move a big fight between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder. Why are we still…? The NC State baseball team wasn’t able to compete for a championship.

This is just an easy question because I think it’s gonna impact a lot of kids out there, particularly as they return to school and college and high school and elementary school. Why are we testing all these people still, Buck? I understand if you are unvaccinated and you are incredibly ill, you should go see a doctor. That needs to be the treatment.

But why are we still testing all of these athletes and why are we still testing all of these double-vaccinated people such that they are having to quarantine all over again? It doesn’t make sense to me. It just prolongs the covid hysteria when the data doesn’t reflect that this is necessary.

Again, I understand people can have different opinions. But to me, they have to be rooted in some form or fashion in fact. And what you I try to do, Buck — and I think, uniquely frankly, oftentimes in the world of media — is actually let our opinions be driven in some form or fashion by what the facts on the ground say. This is all madness.

BUCK: Yeah. I mean, look. The easiest thing to do when it comes to the media is to just figure out what the apparatus of the Democrat elites wants and just ride that wave. You could call it pulling The Full Stelter. You know?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Whatever they want to hear, you feed it to them, you’ll get more opportunities, more exposure, more of everything. But, you know, the thing is, Clay — and this might sound a little trite or a little corny. It’s more gratifying — you sleep better at night, and you walk around feeling better about the world you’re in — when you actually decide you’re gonna speak the truth to people, whether it’s been voting rights or about covid or anything else.

And I just find that these Democrats, there’s so much here with the, “We’re saving democracy by basically cheating the system, bringing the statehouse in Texas, grinding it to a halt because we’re being babies.” This is Alinsky. You know, Saul Alinsky had this thing about just block the entrances or even block the bedrooms to a business to bring it to its knees. These are the kind of tactics you would expect from toddlers. Although, unfortunately, it’s effective, in this case, the toddlers with spreading covid, too.