BUCK: If we had a central premise here on the show, I think to tell the truth would probably be number one — to tell you the truth, to see what’s really going on — which brings me to what’s happening in New York City right now.
CLAY: Your hometown, Buck, is a mess.
BUCK: NYC. Anybody who follows — and I follow it pretty closely because I grew up there — New York City politics knows the Board of Elections is a disaster. It really is. It’s a disaster. And right now, you have what you’d have to call a massive election irregularity playing out in the mayor’s race in the largest city in America. And for everyone out there, I understand this is about one city.
But you have a bunch of national narratives that are playing out in this contest, one of which we’ve already talked about here, which is, of course, defund the police and how you have a candidate who is explicitly opposed to that, a former police officer himself. And you can already see the tipping point.
Now, you can already see Democrats moving away from defund, as crazy as it was all along, and some of us were willing to say it all along. But then there’s also, are you allowed to wonder about election processes? Are you allowed to be a person who asks questions about the sanctity of an election?
I mean, if you question election process in the last few months, the media wanted you to know that you’re an insurrectionist who is suppressing minority votes while threatening our democracy. Except this election, Clay.
CLAY: (chuckles)
BUCK: All of a sudden, it’s fine. Let’s just give the folks the quick background here on what happened. In New York City they’ve got ranked voting, which is a process by which you put one through five who you want, and then they do these rounds, and they get rid of the seventh-tier candidate and the sixth tier and the fifth tier and the fourth.
And they go down until you’re left. And that’s if no one gets more than 50% of number one votes the first time out. So if you don’t get a majority, you go into this ranked system. Other places have this, but other places are not the, you know, Democrat kleptocracy that is New York City.
You know, there’s so much corruption and nonsense going on in New York politics all the time. So here’s what happened. You had 135,000 test ballots that were included in a count that was initially put online that showed a tremendous narrowing between Eric Adams, who is the… Remember, these are all Democrats we’re talking about. There is Curtis Sliwa.
There is a Republican who’s running, but he doesn’t get a lot of attention right now. He’s a good guy. So 135,000 ballots added into this that shouldn’t have been at all, but it shows Maya Wiley and Garcia gaining, gaining substantially on Eric Adams. So, you know, as we see Kathryn Garcia gaining on Eric Adams, that’s a moment now where you say, “Okay.”
They then had to pull the tally down and say, “We’ll come back with more here. Don’t worry,” and today, I believe, they’ve released updated numbers. But, Clay, if they could erroneously count 135,000 ballots, put it online as an officially tally, and then pull it down, aren’t people allowed to say, “Maybe we do need to look at some of these election processes in some places,” maybe not just New York, either?
CLAY: Well, let’s consider what the candidates themselves are saying. Sounds eerily similar to a lot of people who questioned the 2020 election which we were told was racist and was unacceptable, an insurrection that threatened the foundations of our democracy. Here’s Maya Wiley, who is considered to be the most left-leaning of the candidates. Here’s the official statement that she put out, Buck.
“This error is not just a failure to count votes properly today. It is the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed.” This is the far-left-wing New York City Democratic candidate in her official statement, Buck. Imagine if Donald Trump comes out and says, “This failure to count votes properly is the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed.”
This is the farthest left-wing candidate, and then she says — listen — “Sadly, it’s impossible to be surprised. Last summer, the Board of Elections mishandled tens of thousands of mail-in ballots during the June 2020 primary. It’s also been prone to complaints of patronage.”
This is her official statement, Buck! “Today we have once again seen the mismanagement that has resulted in a lack of confidence in results, not because there is a flaw in our election laws,” just thrown in there, “but because those who have implemented have failed too many times.”
By the way, I would suggest that if the people in charge of it have “failed too many times,” that’s maybe a sign that the election law itself is flawed. “The BOE must now count the votes transparently to ensure integrity.” Okay. This is, Buck, the farthest left-wing candidate in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary who has basically said more aggressively, what Rudy Giuliani lost his law license in New York for saying — saying, “Hey, we need some transparency here. We don’t need voters going on. There are decades, generations of failures.”
This is a pretty big statement.
BUCK: I gotta tell you, I’m concerned right now, Clay. You brought up mail-in ballots being mishandled, and I’m wondering if during the show as we are live here Biden’s storm troops may come and grab us —
CLAY: (chuckling)
BUCK: — because that is the center of the insurrectionist mindset. “How dare you think that mail-in ballots may be subject to irregularities or mishandling or perhaps even tampering!” You cannot say that, Clay, unless you’re a Democrat who’s upset about being behind and your for defund police, and then the media is gonna give you a pass. Isn’t that fascinating?
CLAY: She said explicitly (I’m reading directly from her statement), “Last summer, the Board of Elections mishandled tens of thousands of mail-in ballots during the June 2020 primary.” Buck, am I wrong or was the 2020 election decided by roughly 40,000 votes?
BUCK: It’s amazing to see how quickly the standards change, because I’m old enough to remember, because I’m at least a few months old —
CLAY: (laughs)
BUCK: — when recounts, when official recounts were essentially a sign that you were ready to commit treason, where asking questions about tabulations and software would get you not only, of course, shrieking hysteria from CNN (while there is still a CNN, given how things are going), but shrieking hysteria.
Beyond that, you would have social media giants — who have more control over communication in this country than any other entities in the world, much more so than cable news, much more so than anywhere else. They would shut you down. You could get banned for saying the wrong thing about that election, but here we are.
How is the tabulation error that will be fixed…? I mean, they’re putting the new numbers out today.
CLAY: Who knows.
BUCK: I mean, when I say “fixed,” I guess, yeah, we’ll take that on faith. That’s the New York City political machine. Good luck with that. But there’s a willingness to say, “Oh. Well, they’re gonna do it the right way with this one,” but if you had any questions before, you were terrible person. You were destroying our democracy by wanting to verify as well as trust.
CLAY: Let’s also have this conversation. What’s the New York Times headline right now? The New York Times, which says all the time any question for Trump — for the last six months, whatever the heck it is, eight months, any question — of electoral integrity is a lie. It is a lie; it is unacceptable. Here is the headline. I’m looking right now. there’s your evidence.
I’m flashing my phone to Buck so he can see it too. New York Times top headline, live at the top, big headline: “Confusion Engulfs New York Mayor’s Race After Elections Board Debacle,” and then, underneath it a couple of tabs, “After erroneously counting 135,000 test ballots, the New York City Board of Elections said it would release new results Wednesday afternoon.”
And then another tab, “The tabulations that will be released will still not factor in more than 124,000 Democratic absentee ballots that were returned. Here’s the latest on the race,” and the next headline is: “Here’s a Look Inside Decades of Nepotism and Bungling at the New York City Elections Board.” That sounds like the New York Times to me, Buck, might be questioning the integrity of our elections, which they’ve told us is totally unacceptable in a democracy.
BUCK: I guess they should be banned from Facebook, kicked off of Twitter.
CLAY: It’s the only solution.
BUCK: I mean, there should be at least some preliminary FBI investigation of this incitement to undermining our democracy. I know that’s not really a crime, but you get what I’m saying. We all know, right, that no matter how this shakes out from here going forward, there is very likely — I know this is a prediction, very likely — to be some candidates, at least one or two I can think of, who will say, “There’s something wrong here;” that may demand some form of recount.
CLAY: They’ve already had it!
BUCK: Right. They’ve said had it.
CLAY: Maya Wileys has already said it — and we’ll get lawsuits, too, by the way.
BUCK: But we don’t even have the end result yet.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: You can imagine. Right now, it’s just people that are saying this to muddy up the waters.
CLAY: They’re angling for position.
BUCK: But when someone loses, I have a feeling that Maya Wiley in particular, if we’re really gonna take a guess here — although, you know, we could see Kathryn Garcia may decide to say some stuff, too. They’re gonna say that they don’t really think this was conducted in a way that we can all have full faith in the process.
And I assure you that people that have thought you’re never allowed to question an election ’cause they are Democrats, of course — and who tell you that this election in 2020 was truly beyond criticism because it was so perfect. We had a very special kind of election with all sorts of tricks and changes the last minute.
Enormous expansions of mail-in voting, changes in states like Pennsylvania to even how long you could vote and the requirements and signature match issues, all of this. If you even want to know a little more about that, Clay, you’re un-American. That’s what they believe — except in this election; then it’s gonna be fine.