Verdict with Ted Cruz - Bonus： Daily Review with Clay and Buck - Apr 21 2026

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00:00:30.000 get started with a shipping discount at ups.com welcome in tuesday edition play travis buck

00:00:39.240 sexton show okay we got so many different stories as has been the case for some time

00:00:46.020 that we are all following uh beginning with president trump letting us all know that jd

00:00:53.260 vance is headed to pakistan for round two of the negotiations uh but president trump called in to

00:01:00.660 cnbc we'll get into all that uh let me also give you a little bit of a road map of where we're

00:01:04.540 headed our two molly hemingway has got a brand new book out about justice alito and also the

00:01:11.320 behind the scenes story of the supreme court over the past several years i think there's going to

00:01:16.780 be and already have been many bombshells coming out of her book buck molly is super talented

00:01:23.060 wrote all about the kavanaugh uh ridiculousness um i loved the reading uh of that story uh justice

00:01:30.820 on trial that's right great book rigged also a very very good book very talented writer i believe

00:01:38.280 if i remember correctly her mom big fan of the clay and buck show if i remember the last time

00:01:44.020 we had her on does this surprise anyone that her mom is also brilliant and loves clan buck of

00:01:48.800 course not zero surprise so if mom is listening now uh we are excited to have your daughter on

00:01:54.340 in the second hour of the program and congrats uh on having such a successful daughter who's got a

00:01:59.900 brand new book that is selling a lot of copies and we will discuss bottom of the second hour

00:02:04.400 michelle to foia running for senate in minnesota under the radar race there uh in a senate seat

00:02:11.600 that is currently held by Democrats but is one of many that New Hampshire, Michigan, Georgia,

00:02:20.300 Democrat-held seats, any one of those flips in the midterms,

00:02:25.280 and we are talking about 0% chance of Democrats taking back control of the Senate.

00:02:31.580 So we will dive into that with Michelle Tafoya.

00:02:33.980 Remember, it wasn't very long ago that everybody was saying,

00:02:36.320 oh, what's happening in Minneapolis is going to be the biggest story on the planet.

00:02:41.600 when it comes to the midterms.

00:02:45.400 And instead, it's like, yeah, what happened in Minneapolis kind of has vanished.

00:02:49.380 But let's go into the biggest story out there,

00:02:52.480 which is everything surrounding Iran as we gear up for negotiation in Pakistan 2.0.

00:02:59.680 President Trump called in to CNBC before the stock market opened this morning.

00:03:04.240 Stock market, by the way, roughly flat, has not moved much on Monday or Tuesday

00:03:09.460 after setting all-time record highs as recently as Friday.

00:03:16.280 But President Trump had a lot to say.

00:03:18.920 I'm going to pull some of these cuts.

00:03:20.260 We will react to them, Buck.

00:03:21.460 By the way, ton of talkbacks.

00:03:23.320 Lots of you want to react to everything that we have already been talking about this week,

00:03:27.040 and we look forward to those as well.

00:03:28.940 800-282-2882 if you would like to join us on this program.

00:03:34.240 As Buck has said, thesis statements as you're open.

00:03:37.640 the first 10 seconds defines your future as a caller own it that was actually a caller and i

00:03:44.900 just stole from the caller because if you're calling in i feel like we're allowed to use

00:03:48.320 your intellectual property um he said thesis in 10 seconds and that was the phrase uh and i think

00:03:54.780 that that's a very good by the way the people are saying but i want to know it's we need to know

00:03:59.420 what you're talking about and then we can help guide if things are getting a little long or we

00:04:04.120 to get into something but if you're talking to us and you're taking a preamble uh and it goes 30

00:04:10.480 seconds then then we get a little off the rails and we just want to get as many of you in as we

00:04:14.120 have a lot of guys who call in and the first thing they say is my city or my state or my name is a

00:04:20.000 little bit different nobody knows who you are make your argument and then maybe you can be one day

00:04:24.820 like linda uh and you can be driving american policy light him up linda oh wait that's a 0.99

00:04:31.900 differently different arizona linda coast-to-coast we got double lindas double lindas dominating the

00:04:37.340 uh the national political discourse by just calling this show uh okay uh trump uh saying

00:04:43.080 hey we totally control and by the way we should also mention as we discussed yesterday if you are

00:04:48.940 in virginia get out and vote no uh on whether they should redistrict and turn 11 seats in virginia

00:04:56.780 from a 6-5 Democrat lead, which roughly equates with the overall voting population in that state,

00:05:04.400 to 10-1, which is a radically gerrymandered congressional district,

00:05:10.820 the likes of which does not exist in any purple state in America.

00:05:15.580 This is the most aggressive redistricting attempt that we have seen anywhere.

00:05:20.300 Okay, with that in mind, Trump, we totally control the Strait of Hormuz.

00:05:25.840 This is the essence of the dispute at this point in time.

00:05:29.900 The rift with Iran cut three.

00:05:32.180 They killed 42,000 people over the last two months.

00:05:35.820 And, you know, you get to a point where people don't want to mention that.

00:05:39.580 They don't like mentioning that.

00:05:40.720 42,000 unarmed protesters, innocent unarmed protesters, many of them hung.

00:05:46.020 So we're not dealing with the nicest group of people, but we're dealing with them very successfully.

00:05:50.420 And the blockade has been a tremendous success.

00:05:52.300 They said two days ago, we will open the strait.

00:05:55.300 They said, no, we're not going to open the strait until we have a final deal.

00:05:58.420 No, no, we want to open the strait.

00:06:00.280 They said, we're not opening.

00:06:01.340 We totally control the strait, just so you understand, for all the fake news out there.

00:06:05.480 Yeah, and look, I give Trump credit here, Buck, for the use of the word control was used by some elements of the president's adversaries in some way to try to suggest Iran was winning the war.

00:06:17.200 Obviously, we have a blockade in place.

00:06:18.900 For those of you who have been following, and I understand it's kind of a confusing thing to be following legitimately minute to minute,

00:06:26.520 the dispute in the strait right now, so far as I can simplify it, Buck, is the U.S. says they will not fully end the blockade until Iran agrees to peace plans.

00:06:37.240 Iran is saying the strait should be open during the ceasefire, but if the United States insists on keeping its blockade in place,

00:06:44.720 then Iran is not going to allow the strait to be open either.

00:06:48.900 I think that gets to the essence of it.

00:06:51.300 But so this is one of the big disputes.

00:06:53.860 Your take, if at all, I think I sum that up pretty well as to where we are at this exact moment.

00:07:01.020 Yes, I think that we don't really know where we are at this exact moment in the sense that the end of the movie hasn't happened yet.

00:07:09.660 So it's very tough to say whether this is a great victory, brilliant strategic move.

00:07:16.680 we're not we can we can estimate it and we can analyze where it stands right now but i'm telling

00:07:24.080 you the the iranians the one thing that i know they're really good at meaning the people who

00:07:29.140 are in charge there is creating the grounds for endless talking where they just know they'll cheat

00:07:37.820 as soon as they can because they've had decades of practice at this and they know that it's very

00:07:42.460 hard to enforce things right it's very hard once you've started to get to the table it's a bad look 0.85

00:07:49.700 when you say we're in negotiations and then we're going to hit them we're going to hit them again

00:07:53.680 we're going to hit them again right then they start to look like they're the victims meaning 0.96

00:07:56.300 the regime are the victims so clay i i the one part of this uh that i should have known or rather

00:08:02.900 i should have uh tempered my enthusiasm a little bit was trump saying oh we're just going to

00:08:07.040 blockade them and the straight is open not really it's actually not really how it goes so that part

00:08:12.080 of it is is still to be now you could say no we do have the military power to project and we can

00:08:19.520 allow ships through but yeah if the ships don't buy it if the other ships that are going through

00:08:25.540 don't feel safe it doesn't matter and that's where we're in a little bit of a jam here that's where

00:08:32.560 things uh were a lot of bit of a jam in the straight of four moves so yeah i i think that

00:08:37.040 Trump is is incur rather Trump is doing what he always does, which is selling the the end state, you know, selling the glorious victory a little early in this process.

00:08:51.340 But there's still reason to believe that he can get us there.

00:08:54.000 That's that's where I would put it.

00:08:55.560 But I'm some of my hesitation about this, Clay, from the very beginning.

00:09:00.580 Yeah, this is this stuff is really hard.

00:09:02.700 Actually, this stuff is very difficult to get where you want it to go.

00:09:05.580 and the other side i mean trump said yeah they killed all these people i keep pointing out

00:09:10.080 we say hey what about all the people that should rise up in resistance they killed 40 000 people

00:09:16.020 yeah they weren't just killing protesters everybody when they're killing protesters in

00:09:21.260 the street they're sending the secret police they're sending assassination squads to go after

00:09:26.940 it's a police state they know who's talking they know who's a problem and they were liquidating

00:09:32.580 resistance members during this too of course because if you were an evil tyrant wouldn't you

00:09:38.440 do that the other part of this as jd vance travels to pakistan you by the way you want to talk about

00:09:48.300 a tough trip you mentioned traveling flying all the way to pakistan for like to work 21 straight

00:09:55.080 hours negotiating turn around leave and then fly back to pakistan this is he can sleep he can sleep

00:10:02.500 on the plain primary river it's not that i don't know this is this is not very fun um here is trump

00:10:08.600 saying the ceasefire ends tomorrow uh saying i do not want to extend the deadline he's threatening

00:10:15.300 that he's going to resume airstrikes uh here is trump on the negotiations with iran in pakistan

00:10:21.960 uh and the deadline cut for the deadline for the ceasefire is tomorrow if it looks like things are

00:10:29.080 progressing will you not necessarily extend it to a definitive amount of time but will you let

00:10:35.640 it keep going if there's uh progress in the talks before taking uh well i don't want to do that

00:10:41.840 we don't have that much time because by the time both parties get theirs you know they just got

00:10:46.480 the okay to go forward which i do they were going to do anyway i mean i don't think they had a choice

00:10:50.680 they have to negotiate uh play i said at the beginning of this process two weeks ago and i

00:10:57.480 said mark it down we're going to get to the end of the ceasefire and we're going to have an awesome

00:11:01.800 agreement to extend the ceasefire to talk about the agreement does anyone want to take the other

00:11:07.520 side of that bet right now i don't think so i think the likelihood is and i'll just say this

00:11:14.740 that we're going to see flare-ups here for the next few months um and well hold on by the way

00:11:23.280 CNN is reporting that J.D. Vance has not yet left for Pakistan.

00:11:29.620 I don't know to what extent or how long that flight is.

00:11:33.380 Not short.

00:11:34.620 But there has been some talk, Buck, that because it's a much.

00:11:39.380 Like 12 to 14 hours?

00:11:40.080 I'm trying to remember Afghanistan.

00:11:41.380 It's like a 12-hour, 13-hour flight, I think.

00:11:45.280 It's so much of a shorter flight for Iran to be able to get to Pakistan

00:11:49.940 that there is some jockeying over, well, when are your leaders going to leave?

00:11:56.320 Well, when are our leaders going to leave?

00:11:57.780 Because I think one thing you don't want to do, Buck,

00:12:00.340 is have J.D. Vance take off for Pakistan

00:12:02.420 and then just turn around and come back to the United States

00:12:05.620 before he even lands there, right?

00:12:07.720 Because Iran suddenly says, well, the talks are off.

00:12:10.800 We're kind of at a disadvantage.

00:12:12.220 Sounds ridiculous, I know, but we're kind of at a disadvantage

00:12:14.880 because our travel is such that when he boards the plane 0.95

00:12:18.900 and starts his transit, Iran actually has a little bit of leverage

00:12:23.800 to suddenly make us look bad, I'm just saying, 0.61

00:12:26.520 by saying, well, we're refusing to go,

00:12:28.580 and then J.D. Vance either has to go and potentially not meet,

00:12:32.080 or they just turn Air Force Two around,

00:12:35.400 and he lands back in the United States.

00:12:39.120 Are any of you feeling like, and I'm sorry, I'd love to sit here 0.98

00:12:43.640 and just chant USA, USA, and say that we've kicked ass 0.86

00:12:46.800 and everything is awesome. 0.93

00:12:47.760 we have kicked ass but everything is not awesome this is not done and there's a lot that remains 0.95

00:12:53.580 uh to be seen here do you feel like the iranians are acting like people who are cornered and when 0.97

00:13:00.080 i say the iranians we all know i'm talking about their their leadership does it look like they feel

00:13:04.940 defeated like they have no choice like they are desperate for a deal i i don't think so

00:13:13.280 are we being honest about this i don't think that it looks like they're desperate for a deal

00:13:17.740 so you know this is this is where things go i don't know some of the people that spent a lot

00:13:22.960 of time in this part of the world before this administration came along were concerned that

00:13:27.900 this is going to be a again i'm not saying we're not going to get there we might get there but just

00:13:32.940 want to want to level set expectations as they say it's not easy stuff it's not as easy as just

00:13:39.020 blow them up for a couple of weeks and then they'll do anything you want now trump knows that

00:13:43.220 I know that's an oversimplification, but we need to strap in here a little bit. 0.99

00:13:47.220 The idea that we're just going to go in there, kick their ass, and then they're going to say, fine, what do you want, is not what is happening. 0.99

00:13:55.100 That's not what is happening. 1.00

00:13:56.400 For whatever we want to say.

00:13:58.020 Now, maybe we bleed them out more, Clay, with the economic embargo or the blockade.

00:14:02.900 Fine.

00:14:03.660 That's going to take weeks, maybe months.

00:14:06.360 I think the challenge, and we'll get into this.

00:14:08.020 I think one of the biggest challenges we're facing right now is there is still a battle for who has actual power inside of Iran.

00:14:16.240 There is a bit of a power vacuum.

00:14:18.260 And if you are seen inside of Iran as bending the knee too much to the United States, then your political adversaries in the state, in the country, are likely to try to wipe you out.

00:14:30.980 right so one of the challenge biggest challenges i think we're dealing with right now is who is

00:14:36.460 actually in control in iran and who can make a deal who has the authority to actually make deals

00:14:43.480 remember we still haven't even seen the gayatola like we don't know where he is we don't know what

00:14:47.920 he's gonna what he's gonna do counterpoint captain optimism and by the way everyone's rooting for you

00:14:52.300 on this one so i'm having fun here i get to put on the on the heel in wrestling i get to but

00:14:56.900 counterpoint we haven't seen a single street protest we haven't seen any any uprising anywhere

00:15:02.520 in the country of any significance whatsoever since we bombed them just since we bombed the

00:15:07.360 regime to smithereens we have seen nothing on the streets we haven't even seen the beginnings

00:15:12.080 so they were willing to go out in the streets and be you know and face machine gun fire very

00:15:15.900 bravely before we did all this but now we've done all this where's our glorious uprising

00:15:21.440 Even the beginnings of it, where's the ember that will start the fire?

00:15:25.300 It's a great question.

00:15:26.440 It hasn't existed.

00:15:27.880 And early on, you could say it hasn't existed because we're bombing and there's nervousness and danger and fear from being outside.

00:15:35.720 Or a ceasefire, yeah.

00:15:36.400 But now, two weeks of ceasefire, and there has been zero, as you said, embers of internal revolt.

00:15:43.360 We'll take calls about this.

00:15:44.820 We'll continue to discuss.

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00:16:56.160 Looking for normal in a world of crazy?

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00:17:32.780 Welcome back in.

00:17:33.860 Hour number two, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show.

00:17:37.120 We continue to wait on news as to whether or not there will be any talks in Pakistan.

00:17:44.140 The ceasefire deadline tomorrow evening so far, no one has taken off yet.

00:17:51.200 And we will see whether there are, in fact, any meetings in Pakistan or not.

00:17:57.900 We are joined now by the editor-in-chief of The Federalist, great site run by my friend Sean Davis here out of the great state of Tennessee.

00:18:08.640 Molly Hemingway joins us now, and her book is called Alito,

00:18:12.020 The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution.

00:18:15.980 I actually can't wait to read this because, as we were talking about earlier,

00:18:20.140 I really loved your book on Kavanaugh and Rigged.

00:18:23.120 You have written some outstanding works.

00:18:25.420 If I remember correctly, as I was saying earlier,

00:18:28.220 you also have a fantastic mother who is a listener of this radio program,

00:18:32.900 so congratulations to her on the publication of your new book.

00:18:37.800 And let's dive in, Molly, right off the top, because I know moms are very excited when their daughters and sons publish books.

00:18:45.100 Let's dive right in off the top.

00:18:47.420 Lots of discussion, including on this program of late, about whether Justice Alito might be stepping down.

00:18:54.960 You've done more research on Justice Alito than anyone.

00:18:58.560 What do you think is going to happen?

00:18:59.820 How many more years do you think he has?

00:19:01.700 what is not only the past but the prologue that what is the prologue in the future look like for

00:19:07.960 justice alito well i agree with the reporting that came out a couple days ago that he's not

00:19:14.280 going to be stepping down this term that matches my understanding as well i thought it interesting

00:19:19.260 that thomas's chambers also reportedly you know they said he's not stepping down either i do think

00:19:26.040 that people should be open to the possibility that there still will be a retirement at the

00:19:31.780 end of this term. I'm not saying there will be, but I think there's a chance. There are three

00:19:36.600 Republican-appointed justices in their 70s. They've all served, you know, quite some time,

00:19:42.140 at least 20 years, and so would not be completely shocked if there were one. But as for Alito

00:19:48.420 himself, I think one of his big goals as a judge has been to protect religious liberty. Even before

00:19:54.920 he got on the Supreme Court, he cared about one bad Supreme Court decision in particular,

00:19:59.740 which was Employment Division v. Smith. They almost overturned it a couple years ago, but

00:20:05.220 Barrett and Kavanaugh weren't quite ready to, but they're taking another bite at that apple

00:20:10.760 this next term. And so I think maybe when that is done, he'll feel more comfortable about seeing

00:20:16.400 his work as having reached a point where he can be satisfied. But he also could serve for another,

00:20:21.520 you know 10 15 years for all we know okay you just dropped a little nugget there that i want

00:20:25.760 to come back to uh thomas and alito have both said there have been reports that they're not

00:20:30.300 stepping down john roberts is also over 70 do you think john roberts might be interested in

00:20:36.300 stepping down i just i i i can't you know i'm i it's pure speculation which is yeah totally

00:20:42.400 the most healthy thing when you're talking about the court but people always talk about thomas

00:20:48.100 and Alito, and they just leave out the guy who's been serving for the second longest time,

00:20:52.780 which is Roberts. And he has had a lengthy, very full career. He's also probably mildly frustrated

00:21:00.500 that some of his big goals on the court, which included collegiality and comedy and the court

00:21:06.140 speaking with one voice, it seems that some of the justices, and you've seen some reports about

00:21:11.240 this in the last week or so, they're just flagrantly violating those norms. And he's

00:21:17.680 probably you know he could be frustrated by that and so who knows it i just think it would it's

00:21:23.400 something worth considering if we're in the speculating business hey molly it's buck um and

00:21:29.040 congrats on the book among many great books i'm looking on my shelf right now at other

00:21:33.580 molly hemingway uh magnum opuses including uh rigged and of course justice on trial and clay

00:21:41.900 i had to actually call molly during the kavanaugh character assassination fiasco just so she could

00:21:48.300 talk me off the ledge like it was going to be okay i was like they're to tell me they're not

00:21:52.340 actually going to be able to do this to this guy and it was a close one but she she kept the faith

00:21:57.720 and certainly kavanaugh finally uh got through okay molly to that end on on the dirtiness sometimes

00:22:04.700 within the supreme court we wish it weren't so but there is dirtiness in the supreme court

00:22:09.200 Tell everybody about the timing of Dobbs, which was the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

00:22:16.540 Walk us through what you found on this and what the timeline tells us about the three libs on the court

00:22:23.580 and their lack of urgency, shall we say, to actually have that decision come forward.

00:22:30.320 So for Alito, I interviewed close to 100 people, many of them federal judges, many of them Supreme Court justices.

00:22:38.040 And I got a lot of interesting stories and information out of it. But far and away, the most interesting, explosive thing I learned was that after the Dobbs leak, when the lives of each of the Dobbs justices was under threat, assassination threat, security threats, people were wearing bulletproof vests.

00:22:57.160 they were being moved to secure locations, their children were being targeted. The three liberals

00:23:03.140 who co-authored the dissent in Dobbs, which would be Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor, basically conspired

00:23:09.720 to slow walk and delay their dissent to the very last minute, even though they knew their colleagues

00:23:16.600 weren't just dealing with these threats, but had asked them to please hurry. And even by the time

00:23:22.440 of the leak, which came months after the majority had distributed their opinion, they should have

00:23:28.780 had it done by then. They didn't. They were asked to speed it up and they declined. And to the extent

00:23:35.120 that the one justice who was open to speeding things up, who was Justice Breyer, was screamed

00:23:41.160 at, according to my sources, by Elena Kagan, who said, do not speed up for them. And they didn't

00:23:47.900 get it done until June. And then when they filed their dissent, it still couldn't come out for

00:23:54.020 another three plus weeks because they included a completely unnecessary and gratuitous reference

00:23:59.620 to a case that was still being worked on. And so the final Dobbs decision didn't come out until

00:24:06.460 June 23rd. And this was nearly two months of people dealing with unending security and death

00:24:13.780 threats and during that time i'll point out kavanaugh himself and his children and his wife

00:24:18.680 you know faced an assassin outside their home we talked about it on the program at the time

00:24:25.280 i i found it to be despicable um and we've continued to bring this up every now and then

00:24:29.980 we have guests like you did your reporting did you uncover any possible idea who the leaker was

00:24:36.900 in dobbs do you think inside of the supreme court there's any suggestion or idea of who this might

00:24:43.360 be because we just got another leak that was super uh anti the so-called conservative side

00:24:50.240 of the court which suggests this isn't over having to do with emergency dockets and whatnot

00:24:55.160 do you think they have any decent idea who did this what is the vibe inside of the white house

00:25:01.100 inside of the supreme court you mentioned the lack of collegiality justice roberts frustration

00:25:06.040 that to me is still a huge story that it's just like everybody pretends never happened

00:25:11.480 It was huge. And even though nobody suspected any of the justices of being directly involved in the leak, it did hamper the situation, given how those justices handled the aftermath of the leak.

00:25:24.560 But one of the things I really get into in the book is everything about the Dobbs leak, the Dobbs leak investigation, what went right, which was basically nothing, what went wrong, which was a ton of stuff.

00:25:37.320 and just exploring. Yes, it's a difficult thing to investigate, but they just did a horrible job

00:25:44.100 of it. Chief Justice John Roberts, you know, set the marshal on the task immediately, but it took

00:25:49.600 weeks before they really began investigating anything. They didn't even understand all the

00:25:54.460 different places that people can have copies of that draft opinion, including in their homes.

00:26:01.040 They didn't ask questions of the clerks that would in any way get to the heart of the answer.

00:26:05.520 So for instance, they would say, did you leak the document? And everybody said no. Well, imagine, if you will, that one of the clerks takes the decision or the draft opinion home and someone else in the house leaks it. That clerk could say, I didn't leak it, even if there were kind of a bigger plot to get that decision to the reporters in question.

00:26:29.620 They should have asked real questions like, do you know this reporter? Do you know this other reporter who were involved with the leak? Do you know any editors at Politico? Have you ever interacted with Politico? Tell us about the times that you did.

00:26:42.700 But, you know, they could have run it like they actually wanted to find out who did it.

00:26:46.920 Now, having said all that, I do think that a lot of the people inside the court definitely have their theory about who leaked it.

00:26:54.240 But until that person admits it himself or herself, it will be difficult to know for sure.

00:27:02.220 Let me ask you this, Molly, without putting you on too much of the hot seat, although we do enjoy putting people on the hot seat somewhat here.

00:27:10.340 Your new book is Alito, The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution.

00:27:15.540 I am going to buy a copy today because I believe in buying books from authors who write great books.

00:27:21.540 So I'm doing that. Clay's doing that.

00:27:23.420 And I hope a lot of people listening will do that, too, because your previous works have proven that your books are worth reading, worth buying and worth supporting.

00:27:31.900 That all said, do you have, in your mind, a certainty that it was a clerk and not a Supreme Court justice involved in getting that decision released early in the way that we all saw?

00:27:47.660 The leak, essentially.

00:27:49.340 To you, is it 100% that it was not actually a justice and that it had to be a clerk, or do you leave open that it could have been a justice?

00:27:57.020 I have not encountered a single knowledgeable person who thinks it's any of the justices.

00:28:03.800 Now, meaning particularly directly, I do think that the universe is larger than just clerks.

00:28:10.620 I do think it was likely it was a clerk, but there are permanent staff members also at the court.

00:28:15.700 And, you know, some people do think that maybe one of them did.

00:28:19.300 I don't for a variety of reasons, including that the original political article was speaking with their source.

00:28:25.300 and their source had information about how the deliberations had gone and how the decision had

00:28:30.740 gone in a way that a clerk would have access to. So I think that's likely. And it's not to say that

00:28:37.540 the most recent leak might not have a current or former justice at the heart of it. It very well

00:28:44.520 might. But as far as the Dobbs decision itself, I don't believe they were directly involved.

00:28:51.480 And I also think it's hard to have more than one person involved, frankly, for that kind of league.

00:28:55.720 We're talking to Molly Hemingway, great book out, Alito, that both Buck and I can't wait to read.

00:29:01.160 Molly, a lot of discussion about the upcoming decisions that are still waiting from the Supreme Court.

00:29:08.880 Birthright, citizenship, and expectation.

00:29:11.520 I'm curious if you would share it as well, from me at least, that Alito may well be writing the racial gerrymandering case that we are waiting on.

00:29:20.800 um where do you see this term going based on what your research has shown you i know this is

00:29:27.480 looking forward um and what do you think are justice alito's top focus points from a larger

00:29:34.640 judicial philosophy assuming that he's going to stay on the court what do you think he's looking

00:29:39.420 at and interested in addressing going forward so first off on that racial gerrymandering situation

00:29:46.200 case. It is widely understood that Alito is writing the majority opinion there just because

00:29:52.060 he hasn't yet written something from the October setting of the court. And so that would be the

00:29:57.560 obvious thing. Now, why has it not come out yet? This relates to what I just said about what

00:30:02.780 happened after the Dobbs leak. The liberal justices slow walked their dissent to achieve

00:30:09.320 political outcomes, either literally getting one of their colleagues killed or just persuading

00:30:14.540 one of their colleagues to move away from their decision. That was clearly what they were doing

00:30:19.540 by slow walking. Well, there was reporting last week that they're slow walking the racial 0.99

00:30:23.900 gerrymandering case. And the reason why would be probably related to the fact that if Alito is

00:30:29.880 writing that decision, it's going to come down in a way that affects the midterm elections

00:30:35.160 and that the liberal justices don't like that it's going to hurt the Democrat party.

00:30:40.260 And so if this is becoming a pattern, they're losing cases, they're throwing tantrums, they're yelling at their colleagues publicly, which has never – like, usually you just keep that to your opinions and your dissents and your concurrences, whatever mean things you want to say.

00:30:54.560 But they're doing it publicly to undermine the integrity of the court.

00:30:57.600 They're slow-walking decisions.

00:30:59.060 This is not good.

00:31:00.440 Now, as for what Alito's legacy and what he's thinking going forward, I think it's really interesting to compare.

00:31:08.380 He and Justice Thomas are frequently on the same side of things.

00:31:11.880 They're very consistent in their jurisprudence.

00:31:15.100 Thomas is more of a libertarian originalist, and Alito is more of a conservative originalist.

00:31:21.420 And I think going forward, one of the big lessons that Alito has to teach people is that you can be deeply principled and also incredibly effective.

00:31:32.220 Right now, the right has these extremes where like on the one side, they're like, here are my principles and I don't care what happens in terms of getting them to a point where they actually help people.

00:31:41.700 And then you also have people who say, who cares about principles?

00:31:44.220 We just have to win.

00:31:45.460 Alito is a model, not just for attorneys and judges, but really for the entire country.

00:31:51.420 in in how you can blend principle and pragmatism to make sure that the country benefits from those

00:31:59.700 principles i could talk to you all day about the interior we've got a quick uh got a quick turn

00:32:04.580 here but i want to ask you this you talk to a ton of people what's the vibe on katanji brown 1.00

00:32:09.060 jackson is she super unpopular with everyone on the court regardless of their politics based on

00:32:14.620 what you saw it feels that way sometimes reading the opinions it's it's clear from reading the

00:32:20.480 opinions that they don't have a lot of respect for her jurisprudence. She doesn't really try to tie

00:32:25.920 things, not just the constitutional law, but the law itself. One highly placed person at the court

00:32:32.080 had told me she makes Sonia Sotomayor look like a philosopher king. So that might tell you a little

00:32:38.640 bit about how she's viewed. Yep, sounds about right. Molly Hemingway, everybody, go get her book,

00:32:44.320 Alito, The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution. Molly,

00:32:48.340 congrats on the success of it so far and you're going to get a lot more book sales coming in

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00:33:46.140 insurance agency pre-sector pals clay and buck on the iHeart app welcome back in clay travis

00:33:52.880 buck sexton show we now head up to the state of minnesota to talk with our friend michelle

00:33:58.900 to foia it's nfl draft week you're running for the senate does any part of you miss just saying

00:34:06.240 who you think's gonna get drafted by whom and how the draft's gonna go or are you uh you know

00:34:13.340 Because sometimes when the actual events happen, you'll hear athletes say, I don't miss practice or I don't miss all of the work that goes in, but the actual event itself I miss.

00:34:23.720 Does any part of you miss the actual games or the actual events?

00:34:29.340 You know, sometimes I will tell you, I don't miss any cold weather games.

00:34:33.380 I do not.

00:34:34.100 I don't care how good the game is.

00:34:35.840 That is the most uncomfortable four, five, six hours of your life. 0.97

00:34:40.360 I don't care if you call me a wuss. 0.95

00:34:42.380 I just don't care.

00:34:43.340 um you know what there's i miss the people some of my friends al chris you know fred and drew the

00:34:50.320 producer and director but i am so into what i'm doing now although i will say it's a lot easier

00:34:56.000 to say you know what i think fernando mendoza is going to go with the number one overall pick

00:34:59.880 yes you don't you don't get nearly as much pushback on a take like that as you do in some

00:35:04.880 of the takes that i that i say these days well how is it going in the land of politics for you

00:35:11.540 give us an update what's it looking like well the update is actually very good you know we got in

00:35:17.060 the race january 21st so not not right at the beginning of the year and still in the first

00:35:22.180 quarter we raised 2.2 million dollars which is a record for a republican senatorial campaign in the

00:35:28.480 first quarter uh we beat out all of our republican candidates combined uh that they've raised in the

00:35:35.580 last year and we even beat out peggy flanagan the lieutenant governor who's running on the democrat

00:35:40.760 side so our fundraising tells me people are excited about this they want to be involved you

00:35:47.320 know we we went out and really guys we earned every cent of that and it's thrilling for me to

00:35:53.960 see people contribute five dollars because it tells me that it's what they have to give and

00:36:00.660 they are invested and i love that or people that come up to me at fundraisers or meet and greets

00:36:05.380 and they hand me a ten dollar bill i love that because it just shows they want to be in it they

00:36:11.500 may not have a ton of money but they want to be in it and those are the people i i can't wait to

00:36:16.520 represent so it's going very well what is as you travel the state of minnesota what is the top

00:36:24.600 storyline that you are picking up on um and i know there's a divide somewhat between more red

00:36:32.320 voters in the northern parts and obviously minneapolis which might characterize things

00:36:36.820 differently but as you travel what would you say is a unifying conversation that you're having with

00:36:42.440 people what does it feel like out around the state of minnesota people are still furious

00:36:49.480 about the fraud and it's not only because we were all stolen from and quite frankly a lot of this

00:36:56.900 was federal money, so you were stolen from, too, in this fraud. But they're angry that Tim Walls

00:37:03.280 and Peggy Flanagan and A.G. Keith Ellison have not been held accountable to the extent that

00:37:08.340 people would like. They're very curious about Ilhan Omar and her changing financial story.

00:37:15.280 The accountability thing is big here in Minnesota. People want to know that if someone does something

00:37:23.400 wrong in government, that they're going to pay a price for it, whatever that price is.

00:37:29.060 And you can say, oh, well, Tim Walls, he's no longer running for that third term. He's paying

00:37:32.880 his price. Well, no, he's actually not. And he started a new PAC. I don't know if you guys

00:37:37.140 heard called the Small Town PAC. He's continuing to pretend that he's a small town guy, even though

00:37:43.340 every small town in Minnesota despises him and his policies. He just announced this PAC yesterday.

00:37:49.460 so um people are furious and they're embarrassed too they're really embarrassed they're like

00:37:55.960 you know when we go out of town when we travel we don't want to say where we're from

00:38:00.040 and it's it's hard to blame them i was just going to say i think this is important um you've got

00:38:08.340 four democrat held seats new hampshire michigan minnesota georgia and i'm not ranking those in

00:38:14.800 any order but just off the top right there if you win michelle there is a zero percent chance

00:38:21.300 basically that there would be a democrat controlled senate do you feel people talking about that in

00:38:27.780 your state that you have the opportunity to swing a blue state uh seat back to a red state or do you

00:38:35.040 think it's hyper local how much of this race that you're seeing is nationalized versus how much is

00:38:41.280 minnesota specific i would say here in april uh it's minnesota specific and and i do try to

00:38:48.520 remind people we cannot we cannot allow uh you know both of our seats to be held by democrats

00:38:54.520 and as you know uh amy klobuchar is running for governor should she win the governorship 0.98

00:38:59.840 here in minnesota she would assign her seat to someone that she likes that's obviously going to

00:39:05.200 be a democrat so we really continue to push the importance of winning this seat and having

00:39:11.100 some representation. But I think at this moment in time, people want to know how we're going to

00:39:18.320 help Minnesota. And so I'm constantly driving those points home. And we've got a lot of ways

00:39:22.220 we can do it from the federal government. And I don't want people to lose sight of that. It's

00:39:26.860 really, really important. And I'm sure that we'll get here, but end of May, as we head into the

00:39:33.140 summertime, it'll become a lot more of a national story. But it is interesting, too, just talking to

00:39:39.680 people who do have that macro perspective, they want to do this. And I can't think of a better

00:39:48.100 time in Minnesota to flip a seat. Minnesotans want change. They're angry. We've got an open 0.99

00:39:53.900 seat. And here you've got a Republican, finally, who can fundraise and do this. And again,

00:40:00.560 the fundraising, I think, exemplifies how excited people are. And they're behind me.

00:40:08.400 how much does the women's sports issue given your background and also i think there's uh michelle 1.00

00:40:15.660 there's an awakening among people on the right after the 2024 election and trump's big win and

00:40:20.960 the republican party uh really on that trump wave democrats have not changed on this issue

00:40:26.440 they have not budged on this issue they have not uh become more reasonable or rational or science

00:40:31.380 based and given your background as a sports commentator as well as a woman and a mom and

00:40:38.320 all these things um is this is this a place where people are saying to you you know we still have to

00:40:44.800 stand strong on this issue or is it just really pushed to the side because of cost of living

00:40:49.740 uh fraud and accountability some of these other important issues no it has not been pushed aside

00:40:55.680 We had one of the best examples here in Minnesota of the unfairness of this when the girls softball championship last year was won by a team whose most dominant and most active pitcher was a biological boy.

00:41:09.940 And, you know, parents around Minnesota, they're not having it.

00:41:14.560 They have not forgotten.

00:41:16.020 They are still very much in the camp that this is totally unfair, unsafe, undesirable.

00:41:21.940 They don't want their girls' spaces shared with boys.

00:41:24.260 Look, and we just had our legislatures in session and every Democrat in the Minnesota House and Senate voted against splitting these, saying the boys can't compete in girls sports.

00:41:36.560 They all voted against it. It's astonishing to me.

00:41:41.640 And I run into parents and grandparents who say, I can't believe we're still talking about this.

00:41:48.180 This is insanity. And as you both know, it is insanity. It still exists.

00:41:54.260 Yeah, I don't know what it's going to take, but it's certainly at the top of my agenda.

00:42:00.300 We're talking to Michelle Tafoya.

00:42:02.380 We didn't talk about it much on the program, but Tim Walls, current governor of Minnesota, went overseas and ripped the United States positions on many different issues.

00:42:14.160 Traditionally, there has been the idea that you might say negative things when you're here in the country, but you typically don't go overseas and rip the country.

00:42:26.080 What were your thoughts on that, and what is Tim Walz's perspective now?

00:42:30.860 I mean, the guy was almost vice president of the United States, 240,000 votes away.

00:42:36.060 And now it seems like the proverbial, you know, chickens are coming home to roost here and that there's a total collapse of his support.

00:42:44.960 Are you feeling that as you travel around?

00:42:47.640 I do.

00:42:47.960 And when he announced his new PAC, small-town PAC, on the heels of this going abroad and ripping our country,

00:42:58.660 and then he comes home and he announces he's got this new super PAC or PAC called the small-town PAC.

00:43:03.560 And people all over the state are saying, hey, Tim, small-towns don't like you.

00:43:08.460 Small-towns don't agree with you.

00:43:10.460 Small-towns embrace conservative values.

00:43:13.640 Small-towns despise what you've done to Minnesota.

00:43:15.940 get rid of the name small town pack you do not represent us so you know it's really not enough

00:43:22.080 for people right now that he's still in office um so yeah this is he just continues to show

00:43:27.900 earlier today i was having a conversation with someone we've got now under tim walls he proposed

00:43:32.320 he had this this board of educators or education advisors and they got put into the school

00:43:39.860 curriculum, an ethnic studies program, which sounds fine enough, right? No, it's not. I'd

00:43:47.560 charge you guys. I'd encourage you to go read it. And basically, one of the guys who advised him

00:43:52.800 said, you know, the critical race theory thing is not just to talk about race. It's to dismantle

00:43:59.220 the United States as it is. And it is astonishing what's in this curriculum. And that's why it's so

00:44:06.440 important that we continue to get people in office statewide and federally who are going to say no

00:44:11.680 way enough of this in public schools our 50 of our kids guys can't read at grade level 50 of our kids

00:44:19.120 in minnesota can't do math at grade level education public education used to be one of the the bragging

00:44:26.040 uh points of minnesota it used to be something that we were top three in in the united states

00:44:31.400 and now we're way down in the bottom 10 and it's because we're spending too much time

00:44:36.860 talking about stuff that kids it doesn't benefit kids it separates them it makes them angry it

00:44:43.720 makes them depressed it makes them it puts them into camps oppressed versus oppressor

00:44:47.800 and and this is what this curriculum is teaching i'm not lying about it go take a look it's

00:44:54.220 disgusting you might throw up while you're reading it uh but it's important to know that that's there

00:44:59.700 And I hope and pray that this Minnesota state legislature changes enough to get rid of this thing. 0.84

00:45:06.900 One last question for you.

00:45:08.820 I don't know if you've been asked about this, but this is one of many things that's directly in your wheelhouse.

00:45:14.580 Mike Vrabel, who's the head coach of the New England Patriots, just had a press conference and acknowledged difficult conversations with his family.

00:45:23.680 For people out there who don't know, this has been a huge story.

00:45:27.200 I think it's cut across beyond sports as well.

00:45:30.480 Diana Russini, who is a reporter for The Athletic, which is owned by The New York Times,

00:45:35.700 and Mike Vrabel were photographed at a pool at an adult resort.

00:45:40.840 And initially she kept her job, then she resigned.

00:45:43.680 Now he said he's had difficult conversations.

00:45:46.320 You, as a woman who covered a lot of men in the NFL for decades,

00:45:51.740 what was your reaction when you saw that as someone who has been a reporter for,

00:45:55.660 like i said decades in the nfl yeah well you know what i when i first saw the photos i was like

00:46:01.220 that's not the way that i would have done the job um look i went to nfl owners meetings you're at

00:46:07.760 resorts you're at these kinds of occasions uh i wouldn't be caught dead in a swimsuit near a coach

00:46:14.820 or an owner or g you know a gm anyone now that's just me i tried to cover some slack and and and

00:46:21.700 we still don't know all the details, except that she did decide to resign. And Mike Vrabel did

00:46:25.960 finally make a statement. Look, when you're a journalist, integrity matters. Objectivity

00:46:32.000 matters. And you can have great relationships with a coach or a player or an owner, whatever.

00:46:38.320 But this one seemed to be just a little bit crossing the line. And again, I think her

00:46:46.360 resigning was probably the best thing for her. I think ultimately she may land on her feet.

00:46:51.700 There were people who were screaming for Mike Vrabel to say something.

00:46:56.260 Really, the breakdown here is in the journalistic integrity.

00:47:01.340 If you are a reporter covering anything, whether it's politics or sports or business,

00:47:07.260 you've got to manage those relationships.

00:47:10.180 And you can't help but wonder where that relationship was going

00:47:14.200 and what it might have done to her reporting.

00:47:16.960 So that's where the line gets crossed.

00:47:19.440 So I would have been very uncomfortable in that scenario.

00:47:22.500 Again, I'm trying really hard not to be judgy and not to be not to jump to conclusions.

00:47:28.780 But given both of their statements, it seems like there was this was a difficult conversation and variable is going to have to deal with it in his world as Diana is in hers.

00:47:38.520 Let me give you 30 seconds here.

00:47:40.840 a lot of people out there have daughters probably listening to us right now who dream of having a

00:47:46.180 job like you had who dream of having a job like Aaron Andrews has sideline reporter involved in

00:47:52.120 sports what advice would you give them be willing to work extremely hard outwork everyone I don't

00:48:01.260 care if they're male female I don't care if they're tall or short be willing to outwork

00:48:05.760 everybody take whatever assignments as you're starting out that that come your way do them

00:48:10.500 with a smile be a happy warrior uh work ethic to me uh is the number one thing in any job and it

00:48:17.280 certainly helped me i i know it was the difference maker for me so and being a team player uh it's

00:48:23.000 not about you it's about what you're covering it's about the story you're covering it cover it well

00:48:28.080 work hard be easy and good to work with and and have make sure that when you say something's off

00:48:34.080 the record it's off the record have integrity with the people that you're covering and speaking of

00:48:38.920 that you guys uh have reach i know you know your reach but i was talking to a delegate here in from

00:48:45.220 scott county clay laurie said uh you know what if she's good enough for clay and buck she's good

00:48:51.620 enough for me they love you here in minnesota we're on your team michelle you know that uh we're

00:48:57.500 going to have you on a lot during the campaign keep grinding keep fighting as hard as you can

00:49:01.620 and uh thank you thank you so much great to see you that's michelle to foia uh look i want to tell 1.00

00:49:08.700 you right now there's awful things happening in the middle east christians and jews are coming

00:49:13.240 together to try to help people in need uh whether it's turning a hospital into an underground

00:49:18.660 hospital in the parking garage whether it's building brand new bomb shelters whether it's

00:49:23.640 just getting food to people who are elderly and don't have the ability to get out they are doing

00:49:29.220 all of those things it's a bridge across uh so many different parts of our country and our distance

00:49:35.820 it's a bridge between christians and jews uh the ifcj is helping those in israel right now

00:49:42.160 they do selfless work excellent results i saw it they take care of everybody for 45 from you

00:49:49.000 they can rush life-saving essentials to vulnerable people under fire 888-488-IFCJ

00:49:56.740 that's 888-488-IFCJ keeping it real keeping it right clay and buck find them on the iheart app

00:50:05.800 or wherever you get your podcasts. 1.00

00:50:08.260 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00

00:50:10.300 More out of themselves, their businesses, 1.00

00:50:12.300 their elected leaders, and the world around them.

00:50:14.460 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce

00:50:16.080 the Honest Talk podcast.

00:50:18.160 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:50:19.380 And I'm Catherine Clark.

00:50:20.620 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.

00:50:24.340 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers.

00:50:27.660 All at different stages of their journey.

00:50:30.140 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

00:50:33.120 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:51:03.120 What is this breaking news?

00:51:05.480 Not that, Buck, but I do think this is fairly significant given how close the House majority and minority situation is.

00:51:15.740 Representative Sheila Sherfalis McCormick from Florida, a Democrat, has resigned from Congress.

00:51:23.660 She was found guilty of violating more than 20 House ethics rules and faces, this is Bill Malugin's update,

00:51:31.260 faces federal charges for stealing millions of dollars in fema money so this is the third

00:51:38.300 resignation from the house in the space of just a few days now um and this is a democrat seat

00:51:46.620 that is being uh relinquished we'll see what else is if there's anybody else that's going to drop

00:51:52.180 out but i thought that was pretty significant because she had faced a lot of calls to resign

00:51:57.820 Republican congressman from South Florida has resigned, and obviously Swalwell.

00:52:02.600 And one more thing before you dive in.

00:52:04.800 We're waiting.

00:52:05.700 We still don't know.

00:52:06.360 J.D. Vance has not left, and we don't know if he's going to leave for Pakistan for these talks,

00:52:12.800 whether or not that's going to happen.

00:52:14.740 Let me tell you, if I'm J.D. Vance, you know what I'm saying?

00:52:16.960 Can we do this via Zoom?

00:52:19.680 Can I speak to the Iranian negotiators with a Zoom call?

00:52:22.760 You know, I would do this.

00:52:23.800 You just made fun of me for saying this is an awful plane flight to have to take all the way to Pakistan.

00:52:30.100 I would be loathe to get on that flight.

00:52:33.240 There's a difference between it.

00:52:34.820 He's flying on Air Force Two or whatever.

00:52:38.140 He's going to have a nice layout bed.

00:52:39.940 It's going to be way fancier than any of us are going to be traveling to that part of the world. 1.00

00:52:45.700 that said i'd still rather do a zoom from the comfort of my own home with these iranian

00:52:51.620 negotiators who are just going to be playing games there's not going to be a deal okay trump

00:52:57.900 may say tomorrow we've reached a great deal and then it will be we're doing a follow-up on the

00:53:04.020 deal in six weeks which is another way of saying what i've told you all along it's going to be

00:53:08.940 a an agreement to talk more about what the agreement will be and that is where this is

00:53:14.960 heading so i think that jd should make the case for this should be a zoom because islamabad i'm

00:53:21.240 going to tell you uber eats islamabad probably not great i'd rather be in dc personally i would 0.91

00:53:28.400 i would agree with you that the uh the food i'm not and we're going to make enemies today

00:53:33.080 first new jersey now pakistan um i uh i am not sold that the food would be very good in pakistan

00:53:40.020 either and i would not want to get on a flight for 12 or 13 hours go negotiate for 21 here's the

00:53:46.480 other thing buck i think you're right i don't think we're going to get any actual resolution

00:53:50.460 and uh and so we'll see uh what transpires but that's the absolute latest there i'll say

00:53:57.160 pakistani food believe it or not quite similar to what we think of as indian food which they

00:54:03.840 would not want to hear but it's uh it is true and indian food is delicious so it depends you just

00:54:11.480 want to get a certain quality of it that said i think that your options beyond that cuisine

00:54:16.880 in islamabad probably not great there's a i think lahore is supposed to be um the most sophisticated

00:54:24.840 city in pakistan most international it's on the it's on the coast so i think lahore you'd probably

00:54:29.580 get some good stuff but islamabad islamabad is kind of the albany of pakistan and i love you

00:54:35.840 albany because we have a great station there but it's not new york you know it's a new york city

00:54:41.040 i mean it's not uh it's not the cosmopolitan you just came that was such a new yorker move of you

00:54:46.960 to just flying elbow albany out of nowhere just obliterated them i'm gonna move on to uh kamala

00:54:55.660 harris here for a second people in albany just driving around having a good day and then macho

00:55:01.500 man randy savage off the top rope just leg drops him flying elbow the capitals they're both the

00:55:07.960 capitals i'm just saying the capital of one capital of the other there there you go you know

00:55:12.840 you're lucky your state is a rarity in that most states wait actually i don't know if it's most

00:55:18.800 states a lot of states the main city is not the capital right clearly that's the case yeah everybody

00:55:25.560 wants to come to nashville uh but i do understand that nobody wants to leave manhattan for albany

00:55:31.700 like there is uh a lot of people that are not excited necessarily to uh to to departing

00:55:38.440 the center i've never been to sacramento i used to be a big fan of their basketball team actually

00:55:42.620 back in the uh chris weber vladi divas uh uh you know mike bibby days but when i used to watch the

00:55:48.980 nba that that team you'll well remember buck was robbed by the officiating yeah yeah by la by the

00:55:56.040 uh by los angeles lakers and an official was totally bought off the whole thing was a scam

00:56:00.600 you could tell watching it it was a scam was obvious that it's actually one of those times

00:56:04.480 you know the reps are paid off and they really were um but sacramento is not one of the primary

00:56:10.360 cities for california anyway you guys all know this you go a lot of different states this is

00:56:13.660 the situation um so with that all said let's not talk about the jd's heading to islamabad maybe

00:56:20.120 don't you think though that the zoom the zoom pitch would be they can do secure video just

00:56:24.580 you know that's not a hard thing to do they do this intelligence world all the time so don't

00:56:28.680 you think a secure video would be the move here i just think that there's they're they're making

00:56:33.840 jd go a long way to not come home with the prize um nonetheless all right kamala harris

00:56:40.280 she's probably running i'd give the uh very very long odds that she's not at this point which is

00:56:46.140 sad for me i don't know what i was thinking that day i was just like i was just trying to trying to

00:56:50.680 be feisty and clay completely suckered me into this bet that i mean yeah granted i threw out

00:56:58.340 the bad idea but you jumped on that right away you're like this guy's in this guy's in it this

00:57:02.200 guy's selling me amazon for five dollars like this is crazy and so that anyway i'll take my 0.98

00:57:07.160 lumps on this one kamala here though how is she going to be the democrat and that's that's an 1.00

00:57:15.260 interesting thing because you would you would talk about how incompetent she is and how she's

00:57:20.880 not a good politician all true but look at the rest of the field i still think gavin newsom is

00:57:26.080 going to beat her and that's really interesting to me because they're both california they're

00:57:29.660 kind of relying on the same donor base and the same um but here she is giving you a sense of i

00:57:34.820 think where some of the kamala campaign should it happen because it is not 100 yet it's like 99

00:57:41.580 here it is cut one i think it's okay for us to to be a bit transactional too and to say i'm gonna

00:57:52.140 get mine also and so don't count on me to be a voter and be the backbone of the democratic party

00:58:02.800 talking about black women there as the backbone of the democrat party and saying i'm i'm a i'm

00:58:09.980 all get mine uh addressing in in the in the urban vernacular if you will kamala harris 0.89

00:58:17.560 the pandering and the transformation that kamala is going to engage in to being um

00:58:24.600 how would you put it to be kamala is going to run in order to be the nominee

00:58:31.700 an identity-laden politics campaign 0.92

00:58:34.920 the likes of which you have never seen before.

00:58:37.040 And she's going to argue 1.00

00:58:38.460 to this audience of black women 1.00

00:58:40.740 as she is already starting to preview, 1.00

00:58:43.440 we have always been treated unfairly.

00:58:46.460 I am your voice.

00:58:48.700 And she's going to say,

00:58:50.280 if I'm not selected,

00:58:52.920 it is the Democrat Party

00:58:54.340 turning their back on you,

00:58:56.900 the backbone of the Democrat Party. 0.53

00:58:59.360 and that is going to be her entire campaign in the primary and buck i think it's going to work

00:59:07.100 and again i don't think she's just going to win run i think she's going to win the nomination

00:59:13.920 and i don't think she's going to win the nomination in a way that makes her a likable

00:59:18.980 candidate for the general election but she is going to uh lean on identity politics as the 0.95

00:59:26.940 reason why she's entitled to this nomination she's going to argue she's already started the

00:59:32.380 argument she's going to argue you and i think it's ridiculous you read the book she's going to

00:59:37.800 argue the reason she lost is because they threw her into an unwinnable situation after 107 days

00:59:44.760 wait for this clip it producer ali save it because you guys are going to say oh my god clay completely 1.00

00:59:50.340 called this she's going to say that she had to do what black women always have to do pick up the 1.00

00:59:59.280 mess that old white guys create she's going to turn herself into an avatar for black women across 0.57

01:00:08.620 america who are given difficult jobs because the leaders that gave them those jobs weren't up to 1.00

01:00:15.660 the challenge and she's gonna say joe biden left me a mess didn't give me time to clean it up i only

01:00:23.100 got 107 days the idea that she wrote that book called 107 days is not a coincidence and she's

01:00:31.180 gonna argue that she's the most qualified black women are the base of the democrat party and she

01:00:36.240 has to be the nominee or it's racist and sexist not to pick her now i think it's gonna be hard 1.00

01:00:42.200 for Democrats to get past her. 1.00

01:00:43.580 Here's how they do it.

01:00:44.320 I think, I don't think that you're on a,

01:00:46.440 I think that's a,

01:00:47.480 what you're laying out is accurate.

01:00:49.180 I think it's a given.

01:00:50.680 I think there's no question.

01:00:51.720 We already know if she gets far enough

01:00:53.900 what the narrative will be.

01:00:54.900 So you're correct,

01:00:56.060 but I don't think that that's a,

01:00:57.920 you're not out on a limb with that one.

01:00:59.580 Okay, so I think that she will,

01:01:01.740 that will be her argument.

01:01:02.660 How do you rebut it?

01:01:04.020 Okay, if the Democrat party wants to self-select

01:01:06.920 like they did for Bernie

01:01:08.240 when they took him out for Hillary

01:01:10.660 and like they did for everybody else when they rigged everything for Biden both in 20 and in 24 1.00

01:01:16.380 they need to find a minority candidate who can cut into Kamala's appeal with black women 1.00

01:01:23.640 is it AOC I don't know I think it's the reason she's in a good spot is there is no other black 0.99

01:01:31.640 female candidate that is able to tap into the audience that she already has gained the loyalty 0.96

01:01:37.760 of so one is there a way does AOC peel any of that away can Wes Moore Cory Booker can't like

01:01:45.000 it's just never going to happen for him but is there a minority candidate that can cut into her

01:01:50.500 minority appeal that's cut one for what they do two is Buck and I keep hammering this I'm the only

01:01:56.100 person in America who seems to say it which primary states are first if they make South 0.98

01:02:01.900 Carolina and Georgia and Tennessee early up in the primary process Kamala is going to be the nominee

01:02:07.260 if they suddenly go back and say we got to go back to new hampshire and we got to go back to

01:02:12.820 iowa it gives other people a chance to get their voices heard but if they go to states with large

01:02:19.920 black populations in the primary kamala is going to be the nominee i'm just telling you you can

01:02:24.820 think it's crazy uh but a lot of people would have said it was crazy when uh when in 2022 if

01:02:32.300 you had said hey donald trump's gonna win his best victory of all time in 2024 i think she believes

01:02:39.040 time is on her side i've also got something else that i've got to say the reporting on this would

01:02:48.120 indicate that clay was on to something which i hate to admit but i cannot tell a lie you see

01:02:53.700 this stuff about desantis you said supreme court i said i don't think he wants supreme court i think

01:03:00.440 he wants to stay in the game the reporting right now is well it's kind of both both are right now

01:03:07.160 in play in the sense that he either wants a top three cabinet job or which would be war

01:03:16.320 uh uh department of war department defense uh secretary of state or maybe treasury some people

01:03:23.400 ag that he's very interested in ag according to this no no axios is saying he's not interested

01:03:30.000 oh okay i see this headline right now sorry yes not interested in ag that's that's what was

01:03:34.080 surprising to me okay he is interested possibly in a supreme court opening that i did not see

01:03:42.340 i thought that he would so he it's not that he wants that as the top choice but apparently the

01:03:47.240 reporting is that desantis is open to the idea which i will admit is a surprise to me i thought

01:03:52.160 he would want to be in the political game no question no no uh no fuss no muss but turns out

01:03:58.620 At least if you believe this, and this doesn't, you can always, there's the things that the New York Times and Axios report where there's political advantage in lying and you have to be careful.

01:04:07.900 But there's some times where they probably just want to report what they're finding because why not?

01:04:13.260 Why not be, you know, there's no penalty for accuracy.

01:04:16.460 That's what you have to remember with the corporate media.

01:04:18.500 If there's no penalty for accuracy, sometimes they tell the truth.

01:04:21.760 Yeah. And also, if the reporting corresponds with some things that you or I have experienced, again, Ron DeSantis, and I say this favorably, is a law nerd. He loves reading Supreme Court opinions. He likes to analyze the law.

01:04:38.700 I think, I said this, what, a week or two weeks ago, as the Alito talk, Clarence Thomas, I thought that it was interesting that Molly Hemingway mentioned, you know, John Roberts also over 70 years old, that there would be deep interest potentially in a replacement there.

01:04:58.000 And this interesting part in the in the Axios story, Buck, is that there is a headline here that specifically references Clarence Thomas, DeSantis and conservative justice Clarence Thomas said, according to a source, almost have a father son relationship.

01:05:16.780 That would be a hell of a legacy for Trump.

01:05:20.160 Now, I told you, and I think you probably signed on this too as well, Buck.

01:05:24.760 It only takes about two more years for Clarence Thomas to be the longest serving justice of all time.

01:05:30.280 I think that matters to him.

01:05:31.800 I don't think he's going to leave before then, if he's healthy.

01:05:36.260 DeSantis would also be a super difficult target for Democrats to try to submarine.

01:05:44.480 He has the intellect.

01:05:45.940 He has the skills.

01:05:47.060 he has the back you know he has a background he's got a super clean you know everything would have

01:05:51.960 come out about him already there's nothing to hit yeah they can try to kavanaugh him but we would

01:05:56.960 see that coming the same way we you know now it'd be kavanaugh part two it's not going to work

01:06:01.000 um so yeah i i think that that's very that's very in clay i thought that you were off on that one

01:06:07.760 and i will give you uh i will i will give you the full credit for thinking that that is a possibility

01:06:13.200 Look, 40 years of DeSantis on the Supreme Court would be an absolute home run for Trump.

01:06:19.740 Yes.

01:06:19.900 We always talk about how would a guy.

01:06:21.740 It was always a good idea from that perspective.

01:06:23.820 I just didn't.

01:06:24.360 I thought Ron still wanted to be president.

01:06:26.480 Like, I'm telling you this right now.

01:06:27.480 Ted Cruz does not want Supreme Court.

01:06:29.540 Ted Cruz wants to run.

01:06:31.080 Different thing.

01:06:31.660 That, I think, is very clear to people in that orbit.

01:06:35.680 So, Ron, though, maybe wants that Supreme Court seat.

01:06:38.720 Look, we talk so much about what will people do

01:06:41.280 when they actually have lifetime tenure.

01:06:43.680 DeSantis would be Alito or Thomas.

01:06:46.120 He would have everybody's back for 40 years.

01:06:48.480 Just honestly, he would.

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01:08:03.560 Mental mugging with Clay and Buck.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - April 21, 2026

Bonus： Daily Review with Clay and Buck - Apr 21 2026

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