Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to another episode of The Buck Sexton Show.
I have my friend David Marcus joining us now. David
Marcus is a columnist for a whole bunch of places.
You probably get The News, Daily Mail, New York Post, Spectator.
He's a writer and he has a lot of thoughts
and a lot of things. He's with us now, David,
great to have you back. Thanks for having me. Man.
(00:23):
So how are we? How are we doing with this
whole saving the country thing these days? On the right?
How's the whole conservative project chugging along at this point?
You know, I have a lot of optimism for it, honestly,
maybe more than a lot of people do on the right.
(00:44):
Part of what I do, a big part of what
I do is try to look at try to analyze
and look at what's happening on the right. I don't
really take a lot of sides. I just want to know, like,
where are we? And I do think that when you
look gets some of the things that for example, Governors
de Santists and young Ken are doing with education in
(01:06):
Florida and Virginia. When you look at I think Kevin
McCarthy sort of proving some of his critics, if not wrong,
at least reassuring them that he was going to be
a different kind of leader for Republicans. I do think
there's a lot to be optimistic about. Well, that's good news.
(01:31):
That's I don't get sorry to be the best. Sorry
to be good news, No, I was gonna say. And
I feel like that's that's encouraging. Obviously, everyone's gearing up
for some kind of a Hulk versus the Thing throw
down between Trump and desantists. And I keep telling everybody,
you know, we we have all these expectations that don't
(01:52):
end up coming true. In politics, maybe it'd be best
to one be humble about what we can and cannot predict,
and to just watch events as they as they play out,
instead of assuming that everything is is set long before
it actually happens. And you know, I think the midterm
elections were an exercise in that at some level. But
(02:14):
I also feel like on the right, you know, we
look at polls, for example, we look at so many
people are dissatisfied with Joe Biden, with the economy right now,
and you know the state of the Union that Biden
has has done this week, but yet they still vote
for him. Right. I mean, this is this is where
(02:35):
I think, and I know people say, oh, eighty million
people didn't vote for Biden. Just there are a lot
of really really devoted Democrats out there who are lunatics
who will vote for Joe Biden. Folks, Okay, there are
a lot of them. I don't I don't know how
many exactly, but there are a lot of them. Yeah,
let's say. You know, it was interesting a couple days
after the mid terms when it seemed like once again,
(02:56):
the entire National Review right, and I love National of you.
I've written for them. I think, I think they do
a really good job. But this whole crowd was like, okay,
this is the end of Trump, right. I thought they
were going to do another one of these like never Trump. Okay,
now we all have to get behind desantists. And this
is what I said, slow your role, guys, like like,
(03:16):
this is this is not how this works. And I
spoke to a couple of guys at a bar pub
restaurant in Brooklyn's a place called the Salty Dog, which
if you're ever in Bay Ridge, it's great, And they
were both Trump voters who do exist in Brooklyn, And
I asked them very specifically, I said, what do you
(03:39):
want to see? You do you want to see the
establishment and the donors and the elite sort of put
their thumb on the scale for desantist because we don't
think Trump is electable? Or do you want to just
have the fair fight? And these guys were open to DeSantis,
but they said they want the fair fight, right. That's
(04:00):
the key. Everyone's worried, like, oh, Trump's voters are you know,
He's going to run third party and they're going to
go away. I think that's far less likely if the
voters understand that we just get to make a choice,
as opposed to, as The New York Times reported this week,
the Koch brothers saying we're gonna consolidate behind an alternative.
And I also think it's I think it's strange, you know,
(04:22):
because there definitely is a I think it's probably a
small but loud minority within the right, but there are
definitely people who take this position of you're supposed to
know now who you want to be the presidential nominee
and this, and they think it's it's being a you know,
(04:42):
a whimp or a fencitter or something like this. And
I sit here and say, well, I knew in twenty
sixteen that the nominee was supposed to be Ted Cruz
or Marco Rubio or Ben Carson or you know, right,
I mean what you know ain't so over the course
of a primary, I realized over the course of that
(05:04):
primary was like, oh my gosh, it is gonna be Trump.
He's got something special, He's saying something special. There's something
different here, and I don't understand. Well, maybe understanding isn't
really the right question a right way to approach it.
But I think that there are a lot of people
that want want us all to forget that there's a
nomination process for a reason. That the fight, that the battle,
(05:26):
that the back and forth, the conversation, the debate in
front of the American people between people that want the
most powerful job in the world is part of the
process and a good thing. And it is okay to
say I want to see this play out. Yeah, absolutely,
And and and I think that you know, when you
get off of Twitter, and when you get you know,
(05:47):
as I have, notwithstanding my background recently, you know, gotten
out of New York City, right, But when you get
out of like the places where the pundents stomp the terror.
One of the things that you realize is that electability
is a big deal on Twitter, It's not a big
deal in the minds of American voters even in primaries, right.
(06:11):
Voters don't say, well, I'm going to make you know,
I'm playing monopoly here and I'm going to make the
smartest choice and try to you know, game the system. No,
they like somebody. They say, oh, this guy says stuff
that I like. I want this guy. And even if
they were trying to game the system and say, well,
(06:32):
what's the electability game, they're likely to land on other
people are going to like what I like. Right, So
we can all tweet about, like, you know, the polls
and this and that, But at the end of the day,
voters really say, does this guy or woman you know
means something to me? It? Is it? Yogi berra? Who
is credit with it? And over to the fat lady sings,
(06:53):
is that right? I don't know who? Or is that
just a phrase that everybody us. I know, he's deja
vu all over again, which of course is a pretty
funny little Yes he was that. Yeah, yeah, he was
definitely that. I don't know if it's it. Over to
the fat ladies sings. Um. This is also something that
I think in politics is pretty funny that we keep
having to relearn this, And I just wouldn't mean this
(07:14):
even in general. It goes beyond party. We have to
relearn the same lessons because we talk about things like electability.
And you know, this is going to sound so ridiculous,
but I do think it's an important reminder. You know,
who's electable. The person who wins right, never always goes, oh, well,
this guy or that girl is or is not. Donald
Trump was not electable until he beat the whole system. Um,
(07:37):
you know, Ronda Santis was not electable as even the
governor of Florida, barely was electable as a governor of Florida,
and now he just won the biggest landslide re election
in the history of the state. Right. So I just
think it's interesting because the whole concept of electability has
in it that the people that are using that word
(07:58):
know what's actually going to happen in the future. And
one thing that we all know for sure is, you know,
economists got got a lot of heat for a while
for being wrong about everything. Political prognosticators, they've had a
pretty rough, pretty rough decade, I will say, no, it's true.
And and look, the media is somewhat complicit in this.
I remember back in about August of twenty twenty two,
(08:23):
I started feeling like Lee Zelden maybe had a chance.
And I mean he was down twenty in the polls.
I mean, you know, And I started going to my editors,
right because I'm not staffed up, I'm independent. I write
for all these different places. I was going to everybody saying, hey,
you know, I'd like to I'd like to write something
(08:44):
about this Zelden campaign. Can I spend a couple of
days on the Zelden campaign, do a sort of Selina
Zito style, you know type thing, who, by the way,
I think is the best columnist in the country. But
you know, can I do that? And everybody, and this
is not to throw anybody under the bus, but everybody said, Dave,
that's it. It's a twenty point race, like this is
not a story, you know, lo and behold. By early October,
(09:09):
Zelden starts catching up a little bit right, the message
starts landing he damn there won that race. I did
something that I never knew. I wrote a piece for
the Daily Wire saying he will win, and I was wrong.
I was almost right. But the reason I wrote it
that way was to really just throw water in the
(09:30):
face of people and say, like, listen, these races aren't unwinnable.
We treat them that way, and we have a responsibility
as journalists to cover them. Is Chuck Schumer going to
win by twenty points, maybe you still got to cover
the Senate race, right. And by the way, I think
Joe Pinion actually did much better against Chuck Schumer. Joseph
(09:51):
jose a friend of mine, much better against Chuck Schumer
than anybody anticipated. And still people don't really give him
credit for it. I mean, he actually, you know, closed
the gap pretty considerably. Now, obviously it wasn't a close race.
But and but what happens if the New York Times
and the New York Post and the Washington Post and
everybody else were paying attention to that race, right, it
(10:16):
changes the dynamic when when journalists and when the media say, oh, well,
this is a foregone conclusion, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. Well,
I think one part of politics that we can never
get around is it is based on perception, and there
is a multi billion dollar endless perception manipulation machinery that
(10:39):
is at work in this country, the likes of which
has never existed in all of human history before it too,
you know, there I think back to you know, I
like to read historical historical biographies and you know presidents,
US presidents. Obviously I'll go back and I'll read and
you'll be reminded that, you know, presidents would go on
steam trained tool or they would shake hands. They would
(11:03):
be a couple of local papers and writes of stuff
about that. But I mean, now I can go back
and I can find you video of Joe Biden looking
like a jackass from nineteen eighty five, right, I mean
in my phone instantaneously, I mean, just the way, and
that's what I that's me looking for it. They can
also make it appear on my phone. They can also
decide what shows up in search results. So the perception
(11:25):
management and manipulation operation that has underwear in this country
blows out of the water anything that we've ever seen
before in human history, with the exception of maybe totalitarian states,
but you know, ours is actually much more effective, right,
because they convince people of things that yeah, you know,
in totalitarian state. It's we're lying to you. Accept a
(11:46):
liar will shoot you, right, I mean, that's that's one
way to do propaganda. I mean, everyone kind of knows
they're lying, but they don't want to get shot. In
this country, they convince people of things that are quite
plainly not so. And I think it's much more of
an epidemic on the left. I do think occasionally it
happens for people on the right as well, which is
a concern. I want to talk about the cultural component
of this and actually get a little bit into David
(12:08):
Marcus's past a bit, because you were a Thespian, sir,
you're a man who is You're a man of the arts,
a creative even I am not, and yeah or I was,
you know, yeah, well you still are away. There's a
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six nine. All right. So you know, you can talk
about how we've got some good columnists on the right,
and I think that the I think that in the
(13:33):
realm of political philosophy, and look, I'm just gonna say it,
I think our pundits are much smarter than their pundits.
I really believe that just pound for pound, person for person,
you know they're always going to be you know, standouts,
exceptions and all that on either side. Why they go
overall because people on the right have had to fight
for it, because speaking of you know, going through the
(13:55):
gauntlet and having to hone your skills. If you're taking
an opinion on the right and you're person who works
in any kind of communications, you've had to deal with
opposition in a meaningful way. I think a lot of
people on the left are just products of an echo
chamber in the cultural realm. Right, you were an actor.
I want to ask you a few more questions about that.
Why don't we have more? I understand what the movies
(14:18):
and Netflix and all that, it's big money. They shut
us down. The wokeness terrifies the executives, or the executives
or true believers in walkenesses can be either one. Why
don't we have Tom Wolfe these days? Bonfire the vanities?
Why don't we have great novels that aren't explicitly politically conservative,
but espouse truth without a view to political correctness, and
(14:42):
have traditional values as a bedrock of the story of
who the good guys are, who the bad guys are?
That kind of thing. For me, The answer to that
question has always been the fact that the became a
nonprofit pursuit. My first foray into conservative journalism was my
(15:08):
very first article at The Federalist, which was in twenty thirteen.
It was called taking Back the Arts and it was
about why we need to get rid of the NIA.
And my argument wasn't the traditional Jesse helms like we
don't want to fund piss Christ or this is a
waste of money. My argument was this is really bad
for the art form. This is this is really making
(15:33):
people less likely to engage in the art form. Because
what happens when an art form moves into the non
for profit model is the incentives change completely. Right. The
incentive in a capitalist model is let's get audience in
(15:55):
what does the audience want. Once you move to an
onprofit model, whether it's in theater companies or universities or
foundations that are giving grants or whatever, the incentive becomes
what are these rich people want and how do I
get their money? And that'll behalf my operating money. It
(16:16):
absolutely destroys art because art needs to be about what
the audience wants, and it's not anymore now now it
really is about what a bunch of woke, rich people want.
And it's awful book. It's it's it's and we don't
(16:40):
have to There's some really there's some really interesting and
I've actually reached out to a couple of them and
I'm trying to arrange times to get them on to
come on onto this show. There are some people who
are doing uh, the Twitter accounts and you know Instagram
and you know TikTok Chinese spying on TikTok whatever. They
still exist on TikTok. They do accounts where they look
(17:02):
at the modern esthetic of things like let's say, architecture, buildings,
um everything, sports arenas, government buildings, things like this, and
and how it seems like there's that things are getting
uglier and more depressing, and that there may be a
(17:22):
desire to do this on purpose at some level. That no, no,
there is that that that the left and the forces
that want collectives control believe that in suppressing beauty and
the aspirational, they create a sameness of misery that makes
people easier to control because they don't even care anymore.
(17:43):
I mean to me, the most pressing example is the
English language itself, Right, Narry a week goes by that
we don't see one of these lists that says, you know,
stop saying you know, um, kill two birds with one
stone and instead say, you know, eat two scones with
one you know, whatever it is that this foolishness. Here's
(18:06):
why that's so incredibly insidious and such a big problem.
No English speaking country in the world has ever fallen
to fascism and totalitarianism. And I would posit that the
English language itself is a big reason for that. Why
(18:26):
Because the English language is so expansive, It has many
more words than any other language. I think German is second.
It's so flexible, right, there's no genders. You can turn
a noun into a verb. I don't want to get
too into the weeds, but you can do things with
the English language that you just can't do with other languages.
(18:46):
And I do think that it protects us from totalitarianism
because there's always some other way to say. But wait
a minute, what if we look at it this way.
What the wokesters and the pressives are trying to do
to the English language is saying no, you have to
use the English language in this very specific way, and
(19:08):
that's the only way that the Anglisphere will ever fall
to fascism, and we have to resist it. Well to
the point about the scale of what I call the apparatus,
which is the machinery of ideological, social, political, and and
(19:28):
just total control that is exerted by an ideology that
it is honestly so broad and expensive that it can
be hard to define. We call it the left. The
Democrat Party is clearly an instrument of it and an
embodiment of it in America. But what we saw during
COVID is that it is also much broader, and it
is actually a global impulse. I mean, I think it
goes it ties in with the same reason that communism
(19:52):
is a global ideology rooted in energizing the malcontents of society,
with the promise that if only you give complete power
to people, making the promise of absolute equality for all,
everything will be better. Of course, as you now, everything
gets worse. But this is this has been appealing to people,
or at least some people, in countries all over the
(20:13):
world because I think at a basic level of human nature,
envy is an incredibly powerful element in politics and human psychology.
That's one part of it. But as as all of
this is unfolding right now, Oh wait, pause for a second,
because I need to tell you I have a violent
language list to your point from last week that I'm
(20:34):
meant to mention that just was making the rounds. I
don't know if you saw this. So if anyone's wondering,
if anyone's wondering, what are some of the evolving from
violent language requests. They don't want you to say what's
the deadline anymore? They want you to say what's the
do date. They don't want you to say we have
to pick our battles. They want you to say we
(20:57):
have to choose our opportunities. They don't want you to
say that was overkill. You can only say a bit excessive.
And of course you can't say we're going to pull
the trigger, say we're going to launch. And it goes
on and on and on, and I think part of
this is it's control. It's also demoralization. David, My my
(21:21):
job right like like basically, my whole job is to
use the English language in an interesting way. That was
my job when I produced and and wrote and acted
and directed in theater right was to use the language
and to try right to use the language and in
some new way that that would you know, have an
(21:44):
impact on people somehow. You know, this idea that like
we have to be so careful with our language or
oh my goodness, like somebody's going to be offended, or
we're gonna, you know, induce somebody to do some bad thing.
It is so deeply anathema to my soul because I
(22:04):
love the English language. I've spent my entire life trying
to figure out it's it's it's mystery and majesty and
and you know, reading Shakespeare over and over and over again,
because he really invented it. I mean, I mean he
gave us as English speakers this incredible gift that has
(22:27):
led to I believe the greatest country on earth, you know,
in the UK is not bad either. And it kills
me to see that the same people, these are the
same people who say, oh, they're they're banning books in Florida. Well,
first of all, they're not. And second of all, if
you have a problem with banning books, then why are
(22:48):
you banning phrases? Very good question, very good point. I
want to ask you more about about this and also
New York. David, you you left New York. I left
New York. Got two of us here. We should discuss
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of your own line. David, before we get to the
New York conversation, I also think that that there are
there are very few. If I ask somebody this, I've
had this thought experiment with friends. If you try to
come up with a way that you can call someone
(24:37):
a coward other than a coward, for example, you find
yourself all of a sudden running into the word police
very quickly. It's interesting how few words we have to
describe disdain for weakness, disdain for people who are duplicitous
(25:00):
people who are just bad people. You know. Yes, I'm
not just saying on the profane side, but but there
are words, you know that you cannot use because there
could considered you know, sexist or misogynist or whatever, I
don't know, ablest or something. You know. I mean there
are people who even tell you shouldn't call anyone dumb
or you shouldn't call anyone stupid. Okay, well, how do
(25:21):
I explain who? How do I explain how some of
these Democrats are unable to you know, members of Congress
who are Democrat like if I want to say, Eric
Swalwell is not an intellectually acceptable level fellow for a
member of Congress if you listen to the left. There
are very few ways you can describe this that don't
sound like you're reading from a dissertation without them claiming that,
(25:44):
you know, you've offended somebody. They are destroying our ability
to describe circumstances with language, and they're doing so by
appealing to either our sense of decency or our fear
of cancelation. Well, yeah, I mean exactly. I mean, that's
the whole concept of equity, right, that that as opposed
to equality right, equality is the equality of opportunities. Equity
(26:07):
means we all have the same outcome, which means that
for some reason, Eric Swalwell has to be considered just
as you know bright as I don't know new Gangridge
or you know who whoever you want to whatever, right
person on the right, you you want to say, Um, yeah,
it it destroys discourse in many ways. And I look,
(26:31):
I don't I don't run around calling people dumb. I
don't have any you know, desire to like, you know,
use slurs or whatever. But you make a good point
in that, Wow, everything can't be completely relative or everything
just goes completely to hell. And and that's where we
(26:52):
are right now. I think that that's what you're really saying,
is like, you know, this this idea, like you can't
criticize AOC or whoever it is, or George Santos for
that matter, right, Like I'm happy to make some George
Santos jokes. Um. Well, it's interesting you mentioned you mentioned
(27:15):
jokes because I also think it has been an intentional
and this is this is enormously um I think important
political and cultural implications. The destruction of comedy is something
that the left has really focused on and I'd say, oh,
we have all these comedians. Yeah, they're all making the
same jokes about first of all, late night comedians. It
(27:37):
all turned into bad Donald Trump jokes, which is why
there shows basically all destroyed, right, And that's why Red
Eye at Fox became the most power and the most
well watched late night show without decades of platform building
handed to it like someone like a cold bearhead um.
But I think it's an intentional program. Go ahead, I'll
(27:59):
tell you the secret of this. There's a reason that
stand up comedy is the only place left in the
performing arts where you even sort of like remotely have
conservative ideas. I'm not calling Chappelle or Burr or Sandler
like you know, movement conservatives or whatever, but they've all
bristled right, Seinfeld. They've all bristled the left and gotten
(28:21):
the left upset. Here's why this is the last performing
art form where you don't go to college for it,
you don't go to studio for it. You don't you know,
show up at some not for profit theater company. You
go to the comedy club, you sign your name on
(28:41):
the list and say I want to get up there
for five minutes and you know what happens, buck, Either
people laugh or they don't. And that's it. It's testable.
If nobody laughs, you're not invited back. If everybody laughs,
well okay, yeah, come back please. That autocracy still exists
(29:01):
in stand up comedy. It exists almost nowhere else in
the arts and and and that's why Gutfeld's able to
do this. That's why, you know, you see this difference here.
And it used to be that way in theater. It
used to be that way in novels and poetry and everything.
I know, there aren't that many people who are listening
(29:23):
who are big Broadway buffs. Probably some, but not very many,
not not that big on the right. I lived in
New York, adjoining like my I basically my building shared
a wall with a Broadway theater. I think I have
been to in my life half a dozen Broadway shows
in my life, and some of those were, you know,
(29:43):
school mandated. But I do know that of the plays
I had seen in let's say the last ten years,
the wokeness of Broadway makes the wokeness of Netflix seem
like Fox News. I mean it is, how did that happen?
How did live theater? I want to say Broadway. Also
off Broadway live live theater became it is the the
(30:08):
Wesleyan Gender Studies Department, doing live performance all over the country. Somehow.
What happened? You come from this world? No, I mean
I I've watched it happen. You know, I'll tell you
it's Funnyum. So, my theater company in New York was
called Blue Box Productions. That's if people are curious about
my Twitter handle, that's why on blue Box Dave. Yeah,
(30:34):
you know, it's interesting. We had a signature show. My
co producer was Libby Evans, who's now the editor in
chief of Post Millennial. We both kind of in a
roundabout way, wound up making this journey. But we invented
this show called Sticky and it was a night of
(30:55):
ten minute plays in a bar lounge space and it
didn't take place on a stage. Took place sort of
around the bar, and it would happen environmentally. It was
a really fun show. We ran it for about fifteen
years and I was the host of it, and I
was starting in about two thousand and eight to two
thousand and nine, sort of openly republican and conservative, and
(31:20):
it was a joke right like like I would. I
would sort of make jokes about political correctness or Obama
or whatever it was. The audience would boo. We went
back and forth. But it was friendly, right, it was.
It was this sort of like and and afterwards I
would talk to people and they say, oh, well, why
do you know I like Condoleeza, Rice or you know whatever.
(31:41):
It was right, you could do this in two and twelve.
You can't anymore. Now. It's like I have to hate
you if I disagree with you politically. And I watched
this happen. I remember the first time anyone ever told
me that they were triggered by something. I said. It
(32:04):
was this playwright, this young woman, you know, and we
were talking about the trans issue and I said something
and she said, well, I have to stop this conversation
now because I'm feeling triggered. I remember thinking, like, are
you saying that? In real life? We're goddamn New York artists,
(32:25):
Like we're supposed to be doing drugs and talking about
whatever the hell we want to, Like, what is this?
What is this? Like, Oh, I'm triggered, so you have
to shut up. No, it's as though and that's what happened. Yeah,
the New York theater scene turned into all of the
quote artists who are doing the bidding of the Stazi
(32:49):
and the Communist Party in East Germany from the lives
of others. The Great movie that sort of shows, you know,
there's an artist who's actually trying to write, actually trying
to create. But there were plays, there were things that
went on, same, the same thing that you know, and
the rest of the Soviet Union it was you did
what they told you to do, though, right, you did
what you were told to do, and and it feels
(33:12):
like they don't recognize, you know, even when all the
all these morons in Hollywood. And I do think social
media is a big part of this because we have
this window into the thoughts of people who would honestly
be better off and we would be better off if
nobody knew their thoughts, right. I mean, Mark Ruffalo is
a moron, right, very rich, very famous, He's a moron.
(33:35):
I don't want to hear what he has to say
about anything, or re would it say about anything, but
it will appear in my Twitter feed because he has Twitter. Now,
social media has shown people one I think it's pushed
more people to be more political in the arts but
also it is shown what a budge. I mean. Look,
some people were in the arts just because they won
the genetics lottery. You know, they're either super good looking,
(33:55):
or they have a super good voice, or there's you know,
or they just have god given talentum in one way
or another. That that's important buck, right, because because here's
where Look, I write for Daily Wire. I love Daily Wire.
I love what they do on their entertainment wing right.
I love what all sort of conservative. But but when
(34:15):
conservatives say, well, why don't we just start a movie studio, Okay,
here's your problem, the talented people. I went to Tish
School of the Arts at NYU, which I think accepted
about seven percent of its acting applicants. Right, I'm not
tuning my own horn here. I was just for what
it's like. It's like the Harvard Business School for actors.
(34:37):
It's the place that people. It's a famous place for actors. Yes,
I just happened to be good at this, and that
really is all it is, right, Like I didn't. There
was nothing special I did to be good at it.
I just I've never met anybody who became a good actor.
They always started that way, right. The problem that the
(34:59):
right has is that the only way to learn those skills,
to hone those skills as an actor, as a director,
as a playwright, as a screenwriter, is through institutions that
are completely and utterly captured by the left. And this
relates back again to the whole not for profit sort
of system. Right, Like we had conservative great actors in
(35:23):
the fifties, sixties, seventies, right, John Wayne was a great actor.
The problem is we don't we don't have We're not
training people. We're not in the places where these people
are being trained, Like nobody drops out of the sky
into being the showrunner of a Disney Plus show. They're
(35:45):
coming through theater companies, they're coming through universities. So Daily
Wire and all these other places can do all they want,
but if you're not developing the talent, you're not going
to have the talent. Well, this sounds a little bit
like whenever I talk to Americans who really into sports
about why a country of three hundred and forty million people,
with so many of the best athletes in the world
can't put together a soccer team worth a damn and
(36:08):
and by that that the conversation is because if you
grow up in Europe or Latin America or a handful
of other places, but really those are the two major ones.
You have access to sub professional leagues or sort of
junior professional leagues where people start playing for the you know,
(36:28):
the club team, junior team at like age twelve. I
think in the case of lion Le Messi, he was
basically like training to be a professional soccer player at
age eight or age nine. And it's true of professional
tennis players too. I mean they have to be going
at that and so if you had no access, if
you have no access to those pipelines, you can't compete,
and I did. But it's also cultural. I remember being
(36:50):
a teenager and I'm I'm wearing a Glasgow Celtics start
jersey at the moment. But I love Argentina. There there there, my,
oh my god, and they I cry. I buck when
they won the World Cup and I was watching it
with my twelve year old son and he was like you,
I don't know if you watch that match, but it
was like I did. It was the most insane match ever.
(37:11):
And when when that final PK went in, I literally
cried and Charlie's like, you know, are you okay? Dad?
I was like, yeah, no, these are these are good,
these are you know, tears of joy. Um. But but
the other thing, Yeah, I remember being in Mexico when
I was a teenager, and I remember seeing like this
(37:31):
little kid was carrying a balloon and he dropped the
balloon and what he did was he kicked it up
back into his hands, right, just a little flick with
his foot back into his hands. And thought, any American
kid is reaching down and picking that ballot up. So yeah, yeah,
I mean there there is this cultural thing of like,
you know, you have this or you don't have this.
(37:54):
And and for artists, for anyone who like I did,
got seduced by theater or by writing or by you know, playwriting,
whatever it is, everywhere that you're getting shunted into is
going to be constantly preaching wokeness to you. You just
can't escape it. Yeah. The communists have infiltrated all of
(38:16):
these pipelines and all these institutions of culture and of art,
and they completely dominate them in a way that people
that have never even been exposed to that world at all,
I think are shocked at the way. You know that
the things, By the way, increasingly it's true of law
schools too. I mean, it's it's through of a lot
of places that people wouldn't even expect it. It's true
of medicine, as we saw during COVID. I want to
(38:37):
talk to you about New York actually here David in
just a second. So yeah, before we get to that,
just if I can make just one last point point
about this. When I was openly conservative in the New
York theater seeing there was an interesting thing that would happen.
Somebody would come up to me and say, hey, you know,
my boyfriend's a conservative, or you know, hey, I'm a libertarian.
I don't really feel comfortable talking about this, but and
(38:59):
it was like a champagne bottle being uncorked. Once these
people felt like they were safe having this conversation, you
couldn't stop it. Right. That's the energy of the Trump rally. Really.
It's one of these people who can't say at work,
I think Trump is Maybe they get to a Trump
(39:20):
rally and they're like, oh my god, I can actually
say what I think. Well, this is like when I
lived in DC during the Trump presidency and I would
go to the Trump Hotel. I also went to the
you know, the White House, for interviews and things like
that on occasion. But I would go to the Trump
Hotel and you'd walk in there and it was like
you had entered an alternate universe where everybody was friendly
(39:43):
and able to speak about their conservatism and be like, oh,
isn't it great what you just saw? And you know, oh,
we could all laugh about CNN. And you would leave
and it was as though, yeah, it was this big,
grandiose hotel and everybody knew that Trump was the owner
and everything else. But you would leave and you walk
around DC and you didn't talk about I mean, DC
is ninety six percent Democrat or ninety seven percent Democrat.
(40:04):
You do not if you were a right winger and
you let on in DC in the wrong circles that
that's who you are, it gets really uncomfortable and and
uh and really tense very quickly. Um, there's a dance.
There was a dance that I would do with people
in Brooklyn when I was living in Brooklyn. Right Like,
you know, you'd meet one of your neighbors, you'd be
talking to somebody at the you know, at the restaurant
(40:25):
or the bar or whatever, and you kind of got
this sense of like, wait, a minute. Maybe you're a conservative.
And I was talking to this about I was talking
about this to one of my editors once and they
made a great point. They said, it's almost like and
this was a gay there's like a gay man. He said,
it's almost like the dance that gay men would have
(40:48):
to go through of like, wait a minute, are you
you know, like is this right? And and you go, oh,
you are at Trump support? Oh well, you know, we
could talk about this now. There was this sort of
like feeling out period of like, am I willing to
tell you that this is what my politics are the
(41:08):
same way as am I willing to tell you you
know what my sort of sexual situation is. Sorry if
that was weird, but I think the analogy is actually
somewhat app I want to ask about New York, but
first we're gonna talk about New York as in what's
happening to it, what has happened to it, and how
it's happening in other cities also all across America. But
(41:29):
you need to add one of American giants incredibly comfortable
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I'm sitting here right now in a t shirt, so
you know that. And David's over there in some soccer
hoodie smoking a cigarette. So we're two guys who like
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(42:13):
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(42:35):
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Trust me on this. I'll have to send David some now.
I can't. I can't just you know, make these promises
enough follow through, David. I don't know where I'm gonna
send it though, because you don't live in New York anymore.
What happened? No, I've moved to West Virginia, which you
(42:55):
know a lot of people who who know me found strange. Um. Look,
it wasn't you know. I love New York City, I
really do, and I always will. It was mostly about
my kid, who's about to be a teenager. And I
was thinking about this because I've been you know, asked
this question a lot. And when he was born twelve
(43:15):
years ago. If you had said to me, your fifteen
year old son and some of his buddies want to
like take the subway to Manhattan, you know, go to
the movies, go see a concert, whatever it is. They'll
be back by eleven on the subway, I thought, okay,
that's fine. I can't think that anymore. And so, you know,
(43:42):
talking to my son's mom and and you know, both
of us sort of realizing this. It's just not a
good place for a teenager to be. If I didn't
have a kid, I'd probably still be in New York.
But you know, and the schools, I mean, every day
buck was like Pridday or bln or something. You know,
(44:03):
it just became untenable. What happened? Why? How did how
did how did it turn into this? I think, you
know it's funny. I my first month in college in
New York City was in nineteen ninety four, no, I'm sorry,
(44:26):
nineteen ninety three, and I remember sitting at Cafe Reggio,
which if anybody goes to New York, you have to
go to Cafe Reggio in McDougall Street. It's the best
place in the city. I remember. I love that whole
area of Greenwich Village, but right around there in particular,
there's like a romance. I just remember so many nights
going out there, drinks and restaurants and chase in life. There.
There is something about New York City at its peak
(44:49):
that you are living your life in a film or
a novel. It's a special it look at is a
special place. I felt that way my whole life growing
up there. Yeah, and you know, so I'm at Reggio
and we find out Giuliani one and it was like
whoa right again, no cell phones there was I think
(45:10):
the owner just walked in. He goes with Giuliani one.
He had beaten David Dinkins, and within two or three
years Giuliani had really turned the city around in remarkable ways.
And New York City is, of course, you know, deep blue.
But let's not forget from ninety three until was it
(45:31):
twenty thirteen when de Blasio was elected, there was no
Democrat elected mayor. What a huge difference and how impactful
that was. There. There was stuff that I didn't love
about Bloomberg, and unfortunately Bloomberg became an independent and that
really I think that really hurt the city when he
did that in a lot of ways. But the city
(45:54):
was growing, it was safe, the police department was, I
mean the best in the world. And that was the
city that I moved to, and that was the city
that I loved, and de Blasio destroyed it. You know,
I want to believe that Eric Adams is trying to
(46:14):
get it back, but the man doesn't seem to have
a whole lot of backbone. Yeah, what is it that
you think would be the single most important focus in
New York City to bring it back? I mean, yeah,
obviously crime, But how is it enforcing the law across
(46:38):
the board? Is it even possible to have a single focus.
Is it just that the system has so deteriorated that
you have to have a menu of fifteen things you
have to do differently. You have to prosecute everybody who
breaks the law, you have to actually enforce sentences, you
have to get away from no cash bail. You have
to clean up the streets, I mean literally clean up
the streets, right, I mean, it just felt like there
was an all across the board apps of what New Yorkers,
(47:02):
irrespective of how they felt about national gun policy or
abortion or foreign policy or whatever. I grew up with
this belief that New Yorkers, because of the change the
city had, they realized, Hey, we can actually just all agree.
We want safety, clean streets, functioning local services, and bureaucracy,
(47:23):
you know, improving schools at best. But you know, there
are some amazing public schools in New York City. For example.
People always trashed the public school system. They are world
class public schools in New York City. They're just also
a lot of bad ones in New York City. But
that we all could agree on those things, and so
let's just focus on that as a city. We can
argue about the national political stuff you know later. But
(47:44):
I feel like that went away. I feel like in
the era of Trump in particular, and Deblasio got all
this going, it just turned into, you know, if I
can virtue signal from my four million dollars duplex on
the Upper West Side about how much I care about BLM,
So what if some oldly these get bludgeoned by lunatics
with hatchets in Midtown? That's pretty much what it felt
(48:05):
like the city turned into. I think a great example
is stop Question in Frisk. Right, So, stop Question in
Frisk was just enormously successful in lowering gun violence in
New York City. And pardon me, an interesting thing happened,
right de Blasio ends Stop Question in Frisk, And there
(48:29):
may have been excesses, like like maybe the police went
a little too far sometimes with this. De Blasio ends it,
and a year, two years, three years into it, everybody goes, oh, look,
no big difference in gun violence. See like the thing
didn't work, then gun violence starts to spike. Why because
what stop question in Frisk did was it said to
(48:53):
gang members and career criminals, you can't walk around just
holding a gun on your body, because if you do,
you might get stopped, you might get frisked, and you
might end up at Riker's Island for having this illegal gun.
So they would leave the illegal gun either at home
or in a stashbox or wherever it went. Now, the
(49:15):
difference between gang incitement or criminal incitement when someone has
a gun on their person versus when they have to
take twenty minutes to go get the gun, think about it,
and come back. That's a cultural change. And sure enough,
five six years later, these gun death rates are back,
(49:39):
not to where they were in the eighties, but but
getting there right because we're not disincentivizing that kind of behavior.
It's it's everything is permissive, and you know, I don't
know it meant people. Can I tell you one thing
that I was experiencing before I moved to Florida that
it wasn't a thing that was rare. It was a
(50:00):
thing that would happen every few weeks. People would follow
me in the streets and every New York right, I know.
And one of the things that really pisses me off
to is, you know, if you ever share this stuff
publicly or if I tweet about it or something, you'll
always have some little beta mail who looks like he
hasn't gotten, you know, any sunlight or eating any red
meat in the last fifteen years. Who'd be like ny
(50:21):
that you had to deal with problems. It's like, this
is everybody, Okay, this is happening to people all the time.
Everyone I know. You would have not a panhandler sitting
there with a cup saying, hey, can you help me out?
You know, I get it and give him, you know,
as you have every New York as we give money
to people even though a lot of times it's just
gonna go to drug use and we actually shouldn't and
then should get into the shelter system. And that's the
(50:42):
reality of it. But that's all other conversation. But you
have guys who walk after you, who are able bodied,
maybe mid late twenties, who are saying, hey, man, I
need some money. I need some money to take the subway.
And if you just keep walking, they keep walking with you,
and then they start screaming profanity at you. They'll call
you names, they'll curse at you, they'll try to instigate
(51:03):
some kind of an incident with you, or intimidate you
in giving them money. I must have had that happen
five or six times in my last year in New
York City, really ugly, because you know, I'm quiet, I'm quiet,
and I keep walking. I had to turn around on
two separate occasions be like, you're going to back away
or this is going to actually be a problem and
I'm not, you know, oh and so tough guy or something.
(51:26):
Or you could let somebody keep, you know, shouting in
your face that they're gonna beat the crap out of
you and you know, kill your whole family unless you
give them five dollars. Like this is what you were
dealing with the New York City. All of those people
are criminals. All of the people doing this have committed
all kinds of felonies in their past. It is never
a surprise when they finally get arrested for stabbing grandma
(51:47):
with an ice pick. And yet the libs are all, oh,
we incarcerate too many people. No, we don't. Actually I'm sorry,
but we don't. I'll tell you a funny story. So
it's like two weeks ago or something like the one
place I still like to walk right, Like West Virginia
is not a big walking place, but I can walk
to seven to eleven. Takes me about twelve minutes to
(52:08):
get there, at twelve minutes to get back, and so
I often sort of walk over to seven to eleven.
And I'm walking to seven to eleven and this big,
you know, sort of like you know, black pickup truck
is slowing down behind me and like coming to a
stop next to me, and all of my Brooklyn instincts
(52:30):
kick in and I'm like, oh my god, like what
is this? Like what am I going to deal with here?
So I get the face on like I'm ready to
go right and the guy lowers his window and he's
sitting there with his wife and he says, you know, hey,
I'm Jake. I'm new to the neighborhood. You know, I'm
new here, but I'm a pastor and we're starting a
(52:51):
new church if you're interested. And he hands me a
flyer and I felt so dirty buck. I just I
just I felt like I felt like, oh I got you,
horrible person, your your first instinct. Here was somebody wants
something from you, somebody's you know, trying to take advantage
(53:13):
of you. And here was a guy who was like, Hey,
I'm starting at church, do you want to come? You know?
And I'm a Catholic and it was Presbyterian or something,
so I can't. But still, yeah, you were like, come
back to me when you got the real thing. I'm kidding.
I'm kidding, no, but but you understand what I'm saying
right like, like that was just a moment where I
was like, Okay, I'm not in Brooklyn anymore. Yeah. I mean, look,
(53:35):
I'm as I'm talking to you right now, David, as
we're sitting down having this chat that I'm not kidding.
The next place I am going as soon as we
are done, I'm going to pick up my brand new
Daniel Defense AAR fifteen. And I'm excited because you know
what else I'm probably gonna do. I'm probably gonna get
myself a saccato. I might actually also get a Bretta
(53:58):
shotgun so I can go Clay pigeon shooting and maybe
you know, if I want. I don't like hunting, but
I like to Clay pigeon shoot. Um but I'm gonna
go do that. And it's so weird because I was
trained by the government to use pistols. I am four
fully automatic, sort of like the Air fifteen. I was
trained by the government to do these things. I came
back home, lived in New York, and they disarmed me.
(54:19):
You're not allowed to have it. Now I have any
of these things. And I live in the Free State
of Florida, and they're like, yeah, you're a citizen, you're
an American, you have second radment rights, You're allowed to
go buy guns. It's actually hard to process that. I mean,
I love it, but there's this there's I almost feel
like I'm going to go into the gun store here
in Florida and there's gonna be like FBI guys waiting like, hey,
(54:41):
we you know you're not allowed to buy We fooled
them again, like you're not allowed to buy guns, like
you're a you're a New Yorker. It's like, well, actually,
I'm a Floridian now. I live in Florida, and driver's
license is Florida. I live in Florida, and well pick
your poison. You know, you can go. You can go
buy a gun wherever you want. In New York, you
could have you know, well, we'd are a joint in
(55:01):
nanny bodega. Right. Well. I also I think, look, this
is a whole other thing too, you know, and I
need to have you back because we're even going over time.
But like I enjoy just David and I are friends
in real life. I enjoy just talking about all this
stuff because I think I'm somebody who will admit that
I think I was fooled by the libertarian case for
we extending into even more and more permissive laws about
(55:24):
not just marijuana, but you know, these drug programs and
everything it is that it is. Unfortunately, the degradation of society, Fennel,
is more dangerous than anything else we have ever seen
by far. And we all have this idea of like
we just need to treat, we just need to treat
the drugs. I don't think we'll ever be able to
stop this stuff as long as people want it. I'm
not naive, but as a society, I do think we
(55:45):
have to say you just can't do this stuff. You
can't sell it. If you sell it, you have to
be in you know, held to sub I'll tell you though,
buck on the gun on the gun thing. Um, I'm
really on the fence because you know, I feel safe
in my community and stuff. But um, I don't. I've
never felt responsible enough to be a gun owner, Like
(56:07):
I feel like I'm the person who would lose it.
But see, here's you started out this conversation. You started
out by saying, you know, obviously you're in West Virginia,
plenty of guns. Um, you started out by saying, you know,
I don't think I A lot of people in my
community though, do have it. Yeah, but that makes the
whole community safer. I mean, you go to a state,
for example, that has concealed carry, and the bad guys
(56:28):
have to think about if I go into this place
and I just want to rob, I want to take
the watch and wallet of every person in this in
this restaurant of forty people, it's probably somebody in there
in Texas and Florida and West Virginia who's armed up.
In New York's a city, it's a different now, it's free,
it's a free for all. You got no Philly. I
grew up in Philly. I spent most of my adulthood
(56:50):
in New York. And the obvious answer there is give
them your watch give them your wallet, right, I mean,
that's it, like like that's just that's what we're all
taught to do. That's that's that's what you're supposed to do.
Um No, I mean the notion of like maybe I
have a gun on me and I can tell this
guy not to that's very that's honestly very foreign to me. Buck. Yeah, well,
(57:11):
I've been trained. So the good news is, David, when
we go out to dinner in Florida, UM, I'll probably
be strapped and if anything bad happens, I'll take care
of you. Well, I gotta leave it got into trouble.
It's funny the Florida guy taking care of the West
Virginia guys. Hey man, David, Where should people go to
follow you? Follow your work? And I really will come back.
I want to talk drugs with you. I want to
talk illegal immigration, cartels, all kinds of stuff. So we'll
(57:33):
do that next month. But where should people go to
follow your work? I'm at blue Box Dave, on Twitter
and on pretty much most of the platforms that you
know you can read me at Daily Mail, Daily Wire,
Fox News, Spectator, human Events. Um. You know, I try
to try to uh, you know, what I like to do,
Buck is is I want to write for everybody who's
(57:54):
on the right, because I think we have these factions now.
I think sometimes there's in fighting. I like everybody. I
think everybody's fighting the good fight, and so I like
to be out there. I actually agree with you. That's
why I don't take shots at right wing people on
the very large radio show that I do every day.
I don't do it. I mean politicians, yes, but people
in the media. We're all in the same team. David.
(58:15):
Great to see you, my man, talk next time. Okay,
thanks for having me man. Okay.