Verdict with Ted Cruz - Bonus： Daily Review with Clay and Buck - Apr 23 2026

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.620 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.460 Welcome, everybody, to the Thursday edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show.

00:00:10.860 Coming to you live from New York City, Clay out in Nashville area, Tennessee, New York,

00:00:17.340 New York.

00:00:17.760 Here I am.

00:00:18.580 Clay, it's it's still standing.

00:00:21.980 Still a thing here.

00:00:22.880 Actually, a lot of construction going on.

00:00:24.540 Big buildings going up here in midtown Manhattan.

00:00:26.520 we'll talk to you about the biggest news of the day

00:00:29.800 Virginia gerrymandering throwdown

00:00:32.360 circuit court judge in Virginia

00:00:35.480 has blocked certification

00:00:38.700 said it is unconstitutional what they have done

00:00:41.060 in that state

00:00:43.160 we do have to come to some kind of a

00:00:46.780 understanding I think about

00:00:49.820 what we're going to do with these gerrymandered states

00:00:52.600 because if they're going to do what they've done in Virginia

00:00:54.780 now it just means every time around you're going to have a flip-flop of basically all of the

00:01:02.820 districts for our side none of the districts for you and this is a huge huge issue a huge fight

00:01:07.940 florida redistricting that could be very interesting now there's a couple of approaches

00:01:13.020 to this one is the fight fire with fire which is what indiana did not do as we have talked about

00:01:20.080 Another one would be, I guess, hoping that this can be fixed within the system, within the court system.

00:01:26.520 I don't know about that.

00:01:28.240 We shall discuss all of this, though.

00:01:30.780 I've also got the White House, Caroline Leavitt, addressing a whole bunch of things on Iran.

00:01:35.900 Continued fallout from the Southern Poverty Law Center indictment.

00:01:42.260 Let's remember, they've been indicted.

00:01:43.600 This isn't just like an expose of journalism or something like that.

00:01:47.260 They have been indicted on this one.

00:01:50.440 Speaker Johnson, by the way, Clay, says we are on track to win in November.

00:01:54.520 So he's coming from the Clay Travis school of optimism.

00:01:58.580 Not going to be a sad face today.

00:02:00.900 But I actually want to start with this for a second, if I could, because we're still trying to get to a resolution on Iran, an agreement about what the future will look like.

00:02:12.720 This is what Trump put out on Truth Social.

00:02:14.880 Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is.

00:02:18.540 They just don't know.

00:02:20.280 The infighting is between the hardliners, who have been losing badly on the battlefield,

00:02:24.980 and the moderates, who are not crazy moderate at all, but gaining respect, is crazy.

00:02:31.480 We have total control over the Strait of Hormuz.

00:02:34.220 No ship can enter or leave without the approval of the United States Navy. 0.84

00:02:38.180 It is sealed up tight until such time as Iran is able to make a deal.

00:02:42.620 thank you for your attention this matter president donald j trump uh they're still

00:02:47.560 boarding ships and doing stuff so there's problems still in the straight clay how do we fix this fix

00:02:53.960 it clay well i think one of the biggest challenges is just what trump addressed there uh and this is

00:03:00.260 why earlier in the week i was saying you know if i were giving him advice maybe don't high step into

00:03:04.860 the end zone on negotiation on social media we don't know who's actually able to lead this country

00:03:12.100 right now and it seems to me that there is an element of the irgc that wants to be in control

00:03:18.800 and then there are more traditional political leadership that has been trying to negotiate

00:03:24.900 a deal and i think buck the reason why we didn't have an actual meeting so far and have not had one

00:03:32.380 is because iran is kind of in its own internecine power gravel power struggle right now and we're

00:03:41.320 not exactly sure who's going to emerge as the as the leader and in the meantime i think this is

00:03:46.500 super significant the military of iran has been utterly eviscerated right they don't have an air

00:03:53.040 force they don't have a navy they don't really have any sort of ability to fight back in any

00:03:58.660 kind of significant way but economically i think this deserves more discussion they are going to

00:04:06.220 lose the ability to store the oil that they pump within the next couple of days and a lot of you

00:04:13.600 big oil guys and gals out there will understand this but buck for people like me who have to do

00:04:20.120 research on this iran has the ability to store a limited amount of oil and gas in its country

00:04:28.460 because it's constantly flowing and shipping all of the oil and gas and some of you will remember

00:04:34.760 this during covid uh when suddenly the price of oil and gas went negative because there were no

00:04:41.360 facilities to store existing oil and gas and so you i think it went to like minus 20 a barrel if

00:04:48.660 i remember correctly buck back in the day in the early shutdown days of covid where people started

00:04:53.840 to panic and said oh my goodness there is nowhere to put the oil that is arriving because the amount

00:04:59.340 that's being used has collapsed, Iran is going to be in even more difficult economic straits

00:05:06.300 within a couple of days than they are in military straits.

00:05:10.640 And let me also, and I'd be curious, by the way, open phone lines on this,

00:05:14.140 because some of you are real oil and gas experts.

00:05:17.600 The other part of this buck that I think is significant is evidently when you stop pumping,

00:05:24.520 you can do significant damage to your oil and gas infrastructure.

00:05:29.340 In other words, it's not just that they have to stop pumping because they have whatever it is, 16 million barrels of oil that they can store without being able to ship it.

00:05:40.520 And then after that, they don't have anywhere to put it.

00:05:42.680 It's that when you stop the pumps, typically, and again, oil and gas guys, big, big Texas cowboys, y'all can call in and explain this better probably than I can. 0.58

00:05:53.820 But I don't think the media writ large is really doing a very good job of explaining exactly how destructive economically this blockade that we have put in place is for Iran. 0.63

00:06:07.000 Now, you can argue, as some will, well, Iran has got a high pressure point, a high degree that they are willing to take. 1.00

00:06:16.020 That might all be true. But the Iranian economy, in terms of export dollars coming in, remember, they had this initial protest in December and January, Buck, in Iran, where tens of thousands of protesters were killed.

00:06:31.000 It wasn't based on religious law. It was based on market based economics because inflation so out of control in the country. I can't even imagine that there really is hardly a functional economy in Iran right now.

00:06:44.220 and so i think the pressure point on iran economically is even more significant than

00:06:51.240 the pressure point militarily which is saying something so you're not phased by any of this

00:06:55.200 at all captain captain clay is like full steam ahead get the cannons ready whatever we got to do

00:07:02.520 we shall just go at the enemy uh i'm kind of you know mixing together some of my historical

00:07:08.260 favorites here but lord nelson you know what i mean oh yeah you're just like just go right at

00:07:12.840 them just uh don't even don't even wait the price of oil and gas has largely stabilized meaning the

00:07:19.800 marketplace writ large has gotten used to the Strait of Hormuz being closed it has not gone

00:07:26.100 to 200 a barrel there are lots of different conduits through which oil and gas is being

00:07:32.100 shipped President Trump has said and this is true the United States is actually bathing the oil and

00:07:38.400 gas guys are uh in money because suddenly other countries that typically don't um uh typically

00:07:46.000 don't do this uh are uh deciding to buy from the united states and so um i just think a lot of

00:07:54.840 people are not recognizing that economically this blockade if anything largely strengthens the

00:08:00.880 united states since we are in that exporting country and makes our assets more valuable

00:08:05.560 and the stock market's setting record highs so i don't think economically we're struggling at all

00:08:10.480 caroline levitt here this is cut 11 she is laying it down very similarly saying look they got this

00:08:18.120 that we we have all we need here all the cards play 11 obviously there's a lot of internal

00:08:23.520 fraction and internal division which again just proves the effectiveness of operation epic fury

00:08:28.480 in the first place their regime and many of its leaders for nearly five decades have been

00:08:33.200 wiped off for the face of planet Earth. So again, the president's offering them a little bit of

00:08:37.200 flexibility because we want to see a unified proposal to the president's very strong proposal.

00:08:42.420 And he's made his red lines very clear. Again, the United States maintains control over this

00:08:47.420 situation, leverage over the Iranian regime. Not only have they been significantly weakened and

00:08:52.160 obliterated militarily, but they are losing economically and financially every single

00:08:57.320 moment that passes with this blockade. So the president is going to continue to lead the free

00:09:01.820 world to run the united states of america as we await the iranian response she seems very confident

00:09:09.020 that this is all fully in hand for the united states clay so with that in mind i guess the

00:09:14.560 the status quo which is a straight that is not really open certainly not open for the iranians

00:09:21.260 but also not open because other people don't want to take the risks that continues until iran bleeds

00:09:27.040 out enough economically that they're going to come and have some kind of a deal trump is saying

00:09:31.820 the problem is the leadership is so fractured internally because we did decapitate their

00:09:36.460 leadership that it's tough to even understand who would make that deal so looks like this is going

00:09:42.340 to be the situation but i might just add now we're going to be in a game of waiting this is

00:09:48.280 going to take some time well look i mean the the challenge is when you decapitate an entire

00:09:55.460 country's leadership you lose the ability to know who exactly you're dealing with and we've talked

00:10:01.620 about this on the program i think it's very important if you negotiate with the united states

00:10:06.780 that is potentially going to get you killed in iran so this is why i i have looked at this

00:10:14.240 and read about it and just try to think about it from a game theory perspective a great deal 0.87

00:10:18.400 I don't see how this ends without us seizing the nuclear dust from Iran. 0.99

00:10:25.100 And I think we're going to have to go in. 0.99

00:10:27.500 I think we're going to have to do the cinematic scope scale taking of their nuclear dust. 0.82

00:10:34.360 And I think we're going to have to bring it back to the United States. 0.58

00:10:36.900 I don't see how it's going to end in any other way. 0.99

00:10:40.420 I don't think Iran has the ability militarily to come after us.

00:10:44.100 I understand people out there get nervous about this concept. 0.98

00:10:47.080 but once we have that then i think we could theoretically uh negotiate with them but again

00:10:54.200 look i understand it's frustrating that gas prices went from three dollars a gallon to four dollars a

00:10:59.800 gallon um and that is frustrating i get it but economically the stock market is hitting record

00:11:07.120 highs oil and gas guys in texas are now incentivized to produce even more oil and gas and here's where

00:11:13.480 i would say iran may be losing out long run buck now everybody in the middle east is saying let's

00:11:20.160 figure out other ways that don't rely on the strait of hormuz to get the oil and gas out of

00:11:26.520 the middle east and that's going to be more pipelines that's going to be more cross-country

00:11:31.380 cooperation i just think iran is running a game plan that would have made sense in 1985 and maybe

00:11:40.280 in 1995 but this is where the united states becoming a net oil and gas exporting country

00:11:47.220 why drill baby drill has been so effective the economics of this are just flipped on its head

00:11:52.500 and iran thinks it's still 1995 or 1985 and i think what you're seeing the markets react and

00:11:59.460 show us is it's really not that impactful honestly like uh they don't have the ability

00:12:07.000 to curtail global commerce as much as they thought they did.

00:12:11.540 And I think the markets are recognizing that's why we're seeing record highs 0.95

00:12:14.880 in the United States for the stock market, even as we're engaged in this with Iran. 0.61

00:12:19.480 And it's also why oil and gas prices have largely stabilized.

00:12:22.860 They've even come back a little bit as the shock to the system

00:12:27.300 is not as significant as maybe many anticipated.

00:12:32.060 Inflation just chips away at the value of the dollar.

00:12:36.480 Our dollar has lost 48% of its value in the past 25 years.

00:12:39.640 Now, compare that to the value of our other currency, gold.

00:12:42.280 It's up more than 700% in the same time period.

00:12:44.940 That's why purchasing gold with some portion of the dollars you've made makes a lot of sense.

00:12:49.700 Millions of Americans have already done it.

00:12:51.280 Over the last 20 years, gold has increased 700% in value.

00:12:55.900 So the long-term thesis for gold is strong.

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00:13:40.700 Laugh. Learn. Hang with the guys. Right there when you need them most.

00:13:45.420 Clay and Buck. Just preset them on the iHeart app.

00:13:48.600 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00

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00:13:54.620 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

00:13:58.640 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:13:59.740 And I'm Catherine Clark.

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00:14:19.320 Welcome in.

00:14:20.720 Hour number two, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show.

00:14:24.220 We've been talking about the latest in Iran.

00:14:27.580 We have been talking about the Virginia judge in the circuit court blocking the map

00:14:33.380 that would give 10 Democrat seats, one Republican seat,

00:14:37.100 how that might implicate Florida going forward.

00:14:39.840 All of that we are continuing to monitor as different stories continue to move out there.

00:14:48.020 We should mention stock market yet again setting record highs across much of the country this week,

00:14:56.280 whether it's the Nasdaq, whether it's the Dow, whether it's the S&P 500.

00:15:01.720 Oil prices remaining relatively constant, not moving very much,

00:15:06.560 although they're up a couple of percent today as we await news

00:15:10.560 about what might be happening in Iran.

00:15:12.740 Buck and I both talked a lot about the latest implications there

00:15:16.820 and where we might be headed.

00:15:19.240 But we were just talking about how judges have come to occupy, I think.

00:15:25.560 Would you sign on with this thesis, Buck?

00:15:28.480 Judges right now are more powerful maybe in terms of narrative cycle

00:15:35.160 than we have ever seen in the history, the modern history of the country.

00:15:39.660 I mean, if you think about the whole 2024 election,

00:15:42.880 the Trump criminal charges, the Trump civil charges,

00:15:47.400 what a state like Colorado could or could not do

00:15:50.480 when it came to Trump being on a ballot,

00:15:52.540 obviously the fallout of Dobbs

00:15:55.360 so many other cases out there

00:15:57.500 in general would you agree with me

00:15:59.940 and obviously everything that the judges were ruling

00:16:02.460 surrounding COVID

00:16:03.640 and now everything that they've been ruling

00:16:06.360 surrounding presidential powers

00:16:08.240 I don't know that there's ever been a time

00:16:10.920 where when I look down at my phone

00:16:12.880 at any given moment

00:16:14.520 a judge can issue a ruling

00:16:16.460 that completely redirects

00:16:18.800 our entire national political discourse

00:16:21.700 i'm not sure we've ever seen anything like this you sign on to that idea in general that the

00:16:27.140 power of judges to influence the direction of the country feels like it is ascendant in a level that

00:16:33.500 has traditionally not been the case well yeah it's become a standard joke in the trump era

00:16:37.800 that donald trump thought he was going to have a big mac and a diet coke for dinner but that a

00:16:43.340 ninth circuit judge put it put in an injunction right that this is become a a farce where the

00:16:50.580 way that you can stymie your political opponents or rather the way that an ideology in this country

00:16:55.440 can stymie political opponents is through any uh hashtag resist no one uses hashtags anymore i

00:17:03.120 guess any resistance remember when that was a thing i was never you were never a hashtag guy

00:17:08.760 were you not really i was always like that seems like not i did them for fun for fun like just kind

00:17:14.720 of make fun of the fact that hashtags existed you know like as kind of comedic elements but that was

00:17:19.540 really the sum total of it but the resistance judiciary in trump's first term and now in his

00:17:25.200 second term uh it is it is very much the case that they uh view themselves as a bulwark against

00:17:33.180 trumpism and and they specifically do things i think knowing they're going to be overturned but

00:17:40.660 they don't care and they have lifetime appointments and so they stop policy instead of interpreting

00:17:46.280 law and the actions of government with regard to the constitution so yeah that's that's a big thing

00:17:52.640 usually those federal judges that do all this stuff they they can get overturned and uh it's

00:17:58.480 a lot easier to stop it's i think it's harder for a federal judge to just create a new law out of

00:18:05.620 whole cloth the way the supreme court did with say uh the right to privacy and roe v wait um

00:18:10.460 fortunately we have a good court right now can you imagine this conversation if we had a six

00:18:15.680 Imagine if we had six Katanji Brown-Jackson, Sotomayors, and Kagan's for generations ahead of us.

00:18:25.440 I think the Constitution would be fully unrecognizable. 0.51

00:18:28.340 I should say the way that all this went would be we wouldn't know what country we were in.

00:18:35.300 I mean, it would feel entirely different from where we are now as a regime of law.

00:18:39.760 and we've got problems now but i think it would just any pretense that we still have a constitution

00:18:45.360 would just evaporate um yes okay so here is why i want to prelude this let's have some fun with

00:18:54.000 this and i hope that they're not soon to be a sponsor buck have you ever flown spirit airlines

00:19:00.580 in your entire life of course you know of course are you there the best flight when i was still

00:19:06.860 living in new york and i was coming out to visit you the best friday flight from nashville for my

00:19:12.100 schedule was spirit airlines and i have to tell you their fancy first seat on that plane was pretty

00:19:18.600 spacious it's like a uh it's like a lazy boy recliner i have been on spirit airlines as a

00:19:25.800 general rule i fly you know buck flies a lot too i've flown pretty much every airline if you ask

00:19:32.280 me to tell you what the worst airline i've ever flown was in the modern era i would say spirit

00:19:38.300 airlines um now they have like just basically a greyhound style model of the overall business

00:19:46.320 for those of you not flown it you pay 40 or something to get on the plane and then you end

00:19:50.920 up paying 250 for your flight by the time you actually are able to get bags checked and

00:19:56.820 everything else i mean i just don't like particularly that style of uh of of process

00:20:02.680 this just happened to me out uh recently with my son last year we were traveling spirit um because

00:20:10.340 to buck's point it was the best one to fly somewhere i think from california to denver

00:20:15.580 and when i got up to the check-in point we each had a backpack we were traveling very very light

00:20:22.720 And they said, I'm sorry, you're going to have to pay $100 to carry on each of your backpacks.

00:20:29.800 And I was just in disbelief.

00:20:31.740 They said, no, no, when you buy your ticket, in order to carry on a bag, you have to buy a ticket for the bag to carry on.

00:20:39.180 I'm not talking about check a bag.

00:20:40.480 And if you haven't bought your carry on ticket, then you have to you get charged.

00:20:46.340 I think it was $100 for two backpacks.

00:20:49.200 Well, but, you know, Clay, I know you do a little bit of at home boxing.

00:20:52.720 So at least think of the possibility that you might get to put your skills to use

00:20:57.300 on your next Spirit Airlines flight.

00:21:00.080 Things can get a little testy there sometimes.

00:21:02.240 Yeah, I boxed this morning, three days a week, nine rounds.

00:21:06.040 So with that in mind, Spirit Airlines had actually agreed.

00:21:11.160 I think this is a really significant story that should get way more attention.

00:21:15.680 Spirit Airlines, Buck, I don't know if you followed this case.

00:21:18.140 I was following it.

00:21:19.220 Spirit Airlines had agreed to be purchased by JetBlue, another low-cost, in theory, airline.

00:21:25.960 And I believe the purchase price team, you guys can correct me if I'm wrong on these details,

00:21:30.660 but my recollection is purchase price was around $3.8 billion.

00:21:34.560 The Biden administration sued and said, no, this will be ultimately less beneficial to the overall consumer

00:21:45.180 if we allow this merger to take place.

00:21:48.140 they sued and said that it was going to be an antitrust violation that it would be bad for

00:21:54.360 consumers if spirit and a jet blue merged spirit argued to their credit if we don't merge we're

00:22:02.460 going to go bankrupt a federal court judge who is over 80 years old had a trial ruled hey you know

00:22:12.220 what the biden administration is right we shouldn't allow this merger to happen it's going to

00:22:18.040 hurt consumers if it does within a few months spirit airlines filed for bankruptcy so if you

00:22:26.100 owned spirit airline stock you got completely wiped out it went into bankruptcy and now having

00:22:34.360 come out of bankruptcy it is preparing to go into bankruptcy again and they are talking about the

00:22:40.480 united states government taking a substantial ownership stake in spirit but to try to keep i

00:22:48.480 think they have around 10 000 employees to try to keep the entire airline from shutting down

00:22:53.420 but question for you and i tweeted about this earlier when a judge gets things this wrong

00:23:00.240 shouldn't he be fired like spirit's argument was if we don't do this merger we're gonna go

00:23:06.960 bankrupt joe biden's team said no americans are going to suffer spirit has to stay independent

00:23:12.980 the judge said i agree with joe biden's antitrust team issued his ruling and spirit immediately

00:23:19.760 filed for bankruptcy now they are preparing to file for bankruptcy again and the united states

00:23:25.480 government trump's team is talking about trying to bail out this airline from basically ceasing

00:23:31.640 to exist all of this comes back to yes biden was wrong of course he was wrong uh but this judge

00:23:38.140 his job is to analyze both arguments and he was 100 wrong because immediately upon issuing his

00:23:47.040 ruling virtually spirit actually went um actually went bankrupt this is and some of you may be

00:23:54.440 experts on this and you're welcome to call in some of you may be shareholders of spirit who lost

00:23:58.660 billions of dollars in this transaction my point on this is when judges are bad we need to do a

00:24:05.880 way better job of getting rid of them and this judge who was over 80 years old at the time that

00:24:12.000 he got this case 1 billion percent got it all wrong and now we're dealing with double bankruptcies

00:24:19.000 and the united states government is potentially going to have to bail out spirit airlines the

00:24:24.080 worst airline in my opinion in america and ensure that it still exists and so i just am kind of fed

00:24:30.780 up with this because even as a lawyer i look at this and i say how in the world have we ended up

00:24:38.520 in a situation where there are no consequences this is a business case but every one of these

00:24:45.520 judges now i know we've talked about it on the program before buck but all of these judges that

00:24:49.560 are letting violent predators back out onto our streets and there's no consequences for them and

00:24:55.240 they've got lifetime tenure and they've got incredible pensions we need to fire more judges

00:25:00.680 i'm sorry like i i just i i'm really kind of fed up with judges who objectively get rulings wrong

00:25:08.280 and there are consequences both business and criminal from their awful opinions well they're

00:25:15.020 a little bit like professors though right they're supposed to be able to do whatever and not be

00:25:19.020 subject to the pressures of opinion tenured professors uh the kind that can be complete

00:25:25.440 lunatics for decades on campus and there's no consequence for them uh that's the idea behind

00:25:31.440 lifetime appointments they're allowed to do what they want to do without really unless they i mean

00:25:36.360 we used to impeach we have impeached judges it used to be done more usually it's for drunkenness

00:25:40.980 on the bench if you go back and check that out so if you're a judge you had to be really poorly

00:25:45.620 behaved in order to lose your job you had to show up sloshed you know you had to show up after you

00:25:50.360 had finished off a couple of bottles of kentucky bourbon and then they would say you know maybe

00:25:56.400 this judge isn't so good uh also for corruption as in taking money i don't really know how much 0.98

00:26:02.580 i'd have to look and see removing somebody for being an idiot the problem with removing any 0.99

00:26:09.020 government employee for being an idiot is you won't have any government employees left 1.00

00:26:12.420 this is a big challenge it's rare you know look i understand sometimes trust me better than anyone 0.99

00:26:18.820 two lawyers make a really good argument but spirit to their credit said if we don't do this merger

00:26:23.960 we're going to go bankrupt and the judge looked at all the evidence and he said ah that's not true

00:26:28.220 and then a couple of months after his ruling they went bankrupt and now they're going to go bankrupt

00:26:32.060 again when you objectively get something wrong and remember biden's administration of course was

00:26:38.200 wrong about this and the end result may end up being that you and me and all the taxpayers out

00:26:43.960 there are going to now bail out spirit airlines because otherwise this whole uh company might 0.79

00:26:49.220 just cease to exist well it also reminds me of what a little coward john roberts is by keeping

00:26:53.860 obamacare alive by saying that a tax is a penalty and a penalty is a tax really the subtext of all

00:26:59.320 this was it's not and he actually this came out in the opinion too it's not the job of the supreme

00:27:04.660 court on obamacare to save people from the disastrous disastrous legislation that's clearly

00:27:11.500 not going to work and that's going to just further destroy the health care system and make it

00:27:16.300 unaffordable and incredibly expensive and all the waste and everything else so they won't step in

00:27:21.740 with a heavy hand to do smart things that's they won't step in to save our ass uh but they will

00:27:27.720 step in to mess things up that seems to be clear as well uh when it comes to it certainly this uh

00:27:32.920 spirit airlines merger um so i also i just feel like you know you're just you're just a southwest

00:27:38.840 guy i didn't have a bad experience on spirit spirit i was like look i'm not a diva i fly

00:27:44.000 southwest airlines everywhere i mean i legitimately this is not i'm not kidding i actually get a

00:27:50.640 handshake i do get a let me say this a lot of southwest airlines pilots and staff are big fans

00:27:56.240 of this show it's like every time i get on a southwest airlines flight now they come out so

00:27:59.920 We index super high with pilots, not just because my father-in-law is one,

00:28:04.240 but this show, a lot of pilots.

00:28:07.100 Pilots, cops, truckers, who else is, in terms of career pathways,

00:28:13.380 are at the very – we've got a lot of military.

00:28:16.780 Oh, yeah.

00:28:17.280 I mean, but that's –

00:28:18.500 A lot of coaches.

00:28:19.840 Coaches, sports, athletic coaches, for sure.

00:28:22.820 I think that's definitely the case.

00:28:23.700 So I fly Southwest everywhere.

00:28:24.840 I think they have a very good business.

00:28:26.780 but I just I get frustrated when I wasn't a spirit airline shareholder but when they had

00:28:33.120 merged with the JetBlue the spirit shareholders out there were going to get paid now they're

00:28:38.080 going to they lost billions of dollars and now we're on the hook as a government potentially

00:28:42.080 to bail them out when they did the Obama bailout of GM they just decided to screw over the bond

00:28:49.560 holders they just said you know you oh you have a contract that says that you're first in line for

00:28:54.640 sorry judge says no better for the obama administration and the unions if we just

00:29:01.100 wipe you guys out and restructure it as we see fit they just broke contract law because they

00:29:05.580 felt like it yeah so yeah this is what happens folks all right let's talk about something that's

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00:30:47.300 Preset Clay and Buck on the iHeart app.

00:30:50.060 For an hour of Clay and Buck kicks off now, everybody.

00:30:52.720 I'm here in New York City.

00:30:53.700 Joining me in studio for a conversation with our man Clay is Rafael Mangual,

00:30:59.480 head of research for the Manhattan Institute's Policing and Public Safety Initiative.

00:31:04.880 Rafael, great to have you.

00:31:06.020 You always do so much great stuff on crime, criminal justice. 0.99

00:31:09.780 I feel like we should have had the, Clay, the law and order, you know, the dun-dun that they play. 1.00

00:31:14.300 Yes, yes.

00:31:15.120 Great audio all-timer there.

00:31:18.860 So good.

00:31:19.200 That should be Raphael's intro music here, but he knows the crime scene.

00:31:22.740 He knows what's going on.

00:31:24.460 Let's start.

00:31:25.440 Actually, I'll start you on the happy side for a second before we get into some of these recent incidents that show where the system is still massively failing.

00:31:32.940 Just give us the top line hits of how much some of these Trump federal initiatives in places like Memphis, D.C., we've talked about.

00:31:40.700 And by the way, anywhere else, where are we seeing, in addition to D.C. and Memphis, if anywhere, really serious decreases in violent crime?

00:31:50.840 We're seeing lots of decreases across the country in serious violent crime, particularly homicides, shootings.

00:31:56.400 Those are going down in cities across the country.

00:31:59.240 Memphis and D.C. are standouts because they were targeted by the federal government with these task forces.

00:32:03.180 So you have, you know, a multi-agency task force that has been deployed in all these cities, along with the National Guard, aimed at really keeping public order in streets and, you know, addressing warrant backlogs, as in the case in Memphis, making arrests, just doing good old-fashioned policing in places that need help.

00:32:20.120 And when that happens, what you see is the crime goes through the floor.

00:32:22.800 So Memphis is seeing more than a 40 percent decline in crime since the Memphis Safe Task Force kicked off last September.

00:32:28.560 Really outstanding.

00:32:29.460 I actually did two days of ride alongs with them a few weeks ago.

00:32:32.600 And it was just incredible to watch them operate.

00:32:34.220 What were they saying to you about?

00:32:35.920 I mean, these are the people truly on the front lines of public safety in Memphis.

00:32:40.100 Clay and I have talked about the numbers.

00:32:41.700 We have our friend Ben Ferguson.

00:32:42.780 He got shot at in Memphis on his front porch.

00:32:46.100 Yeah.

00:32:46.300 So it's a rough town.

00:32:47.340 Memphis has long been one of the most dangerous cities in America.

00:32:50.880 I mean, for 20 years straight, it has consistently been one of the most dangerous cities in America.

00:32:55.480 What these guys are telling me, I mean, these agents are doing two-week stints in Memphis, right?

00:32:59.020 They're getting rotated from around the country, coming in and doing two-week stints.

00:33:02.480 The most fascinating thing that they all told me, and a lot of them did service in Minneapolis, was that there was just – it was night and day in terms of what the public's response were.

00:33:12.540 They were getting thanked everywhere they went.

00:33:15.040 They were getting stopped in the street.

00:33:16.340 people were saying how grateful they were to have them and it just it makes you understand just how

00:33:20.920 bad the crime what was the deal in minneapolis for them they were just people in minneapolis

00:33:24.960 people were yelling at them throwing things at them spitting at them you know standing outside

00:33:29.200 their hotels and banging drums and flashing lights into the rooms i mean just basically trying to

00:33:33.560 make their lives miserable if they got you know caught while off duty out at a restaurant they

00:33:37.760 would get heckled and screamed at unbelievable i mean it was it was wild actually uh there was

00:33:41.840 one agent who actually got kidnapped in minneapolis uh you know uh during trying to make a car stop

00:33:47.540 the guy took off with him in the car um and he was just like you know it's a much more dangerous

00:33:52.020 city in memphis but the fact that we have public support makes this an exponentially more desirable

00:33:57.680 um assignment was it a huge deal to you thank you for coming on with us that we set a theoretically

00:34:04.540 125 year low on murders last year and i assume we're hopefully trending down even a little bit

00:34:12.200 more i know in memphis and dc for example the numbers have collapsed even more compared to last

00:34:17.000 year if we really i'm just kind of curious you're a you look at this you follow it all the time

00:34:21.660 if we had a true commitment to a goal of driving down murders how low do you think we could drive

00:34:28.820 them down and what would that policy need to look like in order to drive them down oh i think

00:34:34.520 We could probably get them down another 50 percent if we really committed to it.

00:34:37.820 And I think the policy that we would have to enact is really sorry to cut you off.

00:34:41.920 That would mean that around 10,000 people, which is a pretty big number, would continue to live if we could drive this down to kind of contextualize for people.

00:34:50.900 There's around 20,000 murders a year. So you think we basically could save 10,000 lives?

00:34:56.040 Sorry to cut you off, but what would that look like?

00:34:57.860 Yeah, yeah. No, I think we can. And the reason I say that is because when you look at the homicide problem that still exists in this country,

00:35:03.080 it is consistently characterized by repeat offenders, meaning that the people who are

00:35:07.660 committing these offenses are individuals who are running through the system time and again,

00:35:11.180 and they're getting turned right back out into the street. That's a policy choice, right? We

00:35:14.740 don't have to continue to release these people. So when you see stories of individuals who committed

00:35:19.260 some heinous crime, and he's got 10, 20, 30 prior arrests, what that tells you is that the system is

00:35:24.040 doing a pretty good job of identifying who the problems are, but the rest of the system isn't

00:35:28.420 operating as a backstop to keep that individual off the street if we committed to some kind of

00:35:33.240 sort of habitual offender uh enhancement system where you know whether it's three strikes or five

00:35:38.460 strikes or ten strikes and you're out and we consistently kept these people off the street

00:35:41.780 for a long time that would pay massive dividends you just mentioned that most people who commit

00:35:47.320 murders have been arrested many different times do we have a sense for what the profile of a typical

00:35:53.240 murderer would look like he i mean no it's a he it's almost typically been arrest how many times

00:35:58.640 how old he is i'm gonna let you actually address this we probably my guess would be he's black

00:36:03.920 right based on the statistic who is the typical person who commits a murder in the united states

00:36:09.400 today because to your point it's not as if we need to be worried about 75 year old asian guys 0.83

00:36:14.340 right like the window of who commits crimes is what and looks like what right so it's it's normal

00:36:20.260 The median homicide offender in the United States is going to be someone who's a black male, mid 20s, maybe late 20s, who's going to have somewhere between 10 and 12 prior arrests in their criminal history. 0.67

00:36:31.140 Likely multiple convictions and a good chunk of them are going to have an active criminal justice status, meaning that they are currently out on bail, probation or parole or pretrial release of some other kind, if not bail.

00:36:42.840 So, again, these are I want to make it clear.

00:36:46.260 These are people whose profiles match also the profiles of the homicide victims.

00:36:50.360 Right. The homicide victims are coming from these exact same demographic.

00:36:54.960 Memphis, it's a lot of young black men. Exactly. Right.

00:36:57.180 Been saved. Exactly right. So, you know, it's it's funny because when conservatives talk about, you know, the demographic profiles of criminal offenders, you know, liberals always jump on them and say, well, hey, you're being racist.

00:37:06.180 You're playing the race card. You're, you know, playing up these stereotypes or these tropes.

00:37:10.520 But the reality is, is that these same profiles are the people who are absorbing the bulk of the crime problem. Right. I mean, if you look at New York City, for example, where we are right now, consistently every single year that we have data for going back to 2008, 95 plus percent of all shooting victims are black or Hispanic. Almost all of them.

00:37:27.120 wasn't there recent data that of the shootings in new york as well 300 and something of them

00:37:32.260 in the last year uh there were two white or three white shooters over yeah it's a it's a it's a it's

00:37:38.080 a super minuscule number right it's like it's it's almost non-existent when you look at the

00:37:42.700 perpetrators for for shootings it's like 96 97 98 and rikers island is 90 something percent i know

00:37:49.040 that's when i was when i was in the i think by the way this buck what he just building on

00:37:53.060 sorry to jump in but if black lives truly did matter to build on your point if we cut the

00:37:59.480 murder rate by 50 percent we would actually be saving overwhelming numbers of black lives

00:38:06.200 that's something we hit i mean he totally agrees rafael saying this but uh and and that is that

00:38:10.900 can i blow your mind with the statistic on you because we've actually already cut the homicide

00:38:14.540 rate 50 percent in our recent history right from 1990 to 2014 the homicide rate in this country

00:38:19.720 was reduced by 50%. There's a great study looking at the effect of that decline on life expectancy

00:38:25.780 broken down by race. That decline added 0.14 years of life expectancy to the average white

00:38:31.720 male's life, but it added a full year of life expectancy to the average black male's life. 0.99

00:38:36.400 So you are exactly right, Clay, to suggest that if we reduce homicide 50%, the beneficiaries are 0.99

00:38:41.980 overwhelmingly going to be black males who are currently dying from gun homicide at a rate that 0.80

00:38:46.820 is 10x that of white males now talk to me about shifting a little bit but still in the criminal

00:38:50.700 justice uh zone here the this situation in we have turnstile jumping in new york it's been a

00:38:57.620 big problem for a long time bart which is the san francisco light rail their their mass transit

00:39:03.860 trains set up i've never actually taken it but i've read about it they decided that enough was

00:39:08.420 enough in san francisco and they put up plexiglass so that you had to pay to get in what did this

00:39:14.940 resulted because i think it's an incredible story actually it's it's wild i mean it is resulting in

00:39:19.680 an estimated additional 10 million dollars in annual income for the system which is important

00:39:24.160 because more people are going to be paying their fare if they want to get in but the most important

00:39:27.660 thing that it has resulted is in a 41 percent decrease in crime within the bart system last

00:39:32.660 year um that that is amazing and it's enormous and what that tells you is that there's a massive

00:39:38.180 overlap between the sort of people who jump the turnstile to break into the system without paying

00:39:42.880 and the kind of people who cause and wreak havoc within that system after they hop that turnstack.

00:39:47.620 Well, Clay, and this is just, you know, it's also, by the way, I read in that analysis

00:39:50.700 that the amount of time spent cleaning up graffiti, cleaning up just, you know, people leaving, like, you know, stuff everywhere,

00:39:58.180 you know, human waste, you know, needles, exactly, like, not, you know, not leaving a sandwich wrapper,

00:40:02.720 but leaving, like, real, you know, biohazard stuff, all of that results in less city man hours spent.

00:40:10.820 So you're saving money on that and you're getting more money and you're having less assault.

00:40:14.220 And yet Mom Donnie here in New York, his big thing, Clay, addresses Raphael, wants to make the buses free.

00:40:20.220 Everybody can get on the bus.

00:40:21.540 And everyone says this is going to be mobile homeless shelters, Mom Donnie.

00:40:24.340 He wants to make the buses free, but his rationale is actually kind of wild.

00:40:27.780 He thinks that making the buses free is going to reduce crime on the buses by, according to his calculations, 35%.

00:40:35.440 Now, of course, it's the exact opposite of what reality is, right?

00:40:40.460 I mean, he obviously doesn't understand how these things work.

00:40:43.840 Actually, I think he does.

00:40:44.680 He's just cynical.

00:40:45.640 Ideologically.

00:40:46.100 Yeah.

00:40:46.740 You know, and he knows what he's doing.

00:40:48.980 But the reality is, is like, I mean, we learned this in the 1990s in the New York City subway system.

00:40:53.220 You start enforcing the law.

00:40:55.060 You raise the transaction costs of coming into the system without paying.

00:40:58.320 You make it less likely.

00:40:59.660 The system gets safer.

00:41:00.960 It becomes more attractive to law abiding people who will then flood into the system and use it more.

00:41:05.260 And that makes the city more attractive.

00:41:06.600 If you take the central public transit system that is the lifeblood of a city like New York and you allow it to fall into the hands of vagrants, of open-air drug users, of homeless encampments, of criminals, then it's going to be less attractive.

00:41:21.820 That's going to make the city less attractive, and it doesn't work that way.

00:41:24.780 You need to get that part right, and it's just simply a matter of political willpower.

00:41:30.400 Sheridan Gorman, we talked about this yesterday on the program.

00:41:33.520 We could point to a bunch, Lake and Riley.

00:41:35.860 What does the data reflect about illegal immigrant crime?

00:41:40.020 Because we always hear, oh, you know, the illegal immigrants commit crimes at a much lower rate. 1.00

00:41:44.000 That might well be true. 0.99

00:41:45.400 But if we had no illegal immigration at all, we would have a zero crime rate from illegal immigration, which seems ideal.

00:41:51.840 What does the data reflect from your perspective on cases such as these?

00:41:55.260 Yeah, I mean, there's just not enough data.

00:41:56.780 That's the real problem.

00:41:57.700 I mean, the people who make this claim confidently about illegal immigrants committing crime at a lower rate,

00:42:02.280 I mean, it's not that they necessarily shouldn't be believed, but we have to understand that those analyses are based on only a handful of jurisdictions that make that data available.

00:42:11.240 Most of the country is not tracking the immigration status of the people that come into contact with the criminal justice system.

00:42:16.220 So we don't have systematic data to suggest this. 0.86

00:42:19.020 Moreover, it's kind of silly to aggregate a group as broad and diverse as illegal immigrants together and suggest that they have one crime rate and they all have the same likelihood of committing a criminal offense.

00:42:31.400 Right. Those that group has different subgroups that will offend criminally at wildly different rates. Right. So maybe illegal immigrants as a whole don't commit crime at a higher rate than Native Americans do. 0.94

00:42:43.540 But maybe illegal immigrant males between the ages of 18 and 25 who cross the southern border illegally as opposed to overstaying a visa from South Central America or Mexico.

00:42:54.880 Maybe they have a higher criminal offending rate than most other Native American subgroups.

00:43:00.400 Last question for you. I love this. Buck, we could maybe do an entire deep dive on this because I think the data matters. You mentioned earlier, and it's so true, that any time you talk about crime and you point out the truth, which is young black men both commit and are victims of crime at statistically infinitely higher rates than their per capita population would be, there's big discussions about racism and, oh my goodness, how dare you have this conversation.

00:43:26.120 Is that conversation actually occurring more frequently now or are the so-called censors or racism screamers, are they still diluting our ability to have honest discussion about where crime is and who the victims are?

00:43:39.100 Yeah, I do think that there is some sort of fatigue on the part of the public with regard to this debate. I mean, we were all treated to firsthand examples of what happens when the other side of this debate gets to make policy. And that was the massive crime spike that we saw in 2020 and persist through 2021 and 2022.

00:43:57.280 And two, we're finally starting to get things on the right track, in part because the political posture of the country has changed on this issue.

00:44:03.520 You have seen a lot of state legislatures rolling back some of their prior criminal justice reforms in places like Louisiana and Tennessee, adopting new tougher laws in places like even Colorado with truth and sentencing or California with Prop 36.

00:44:17.320 You're seeing a lot of progressive prosecutors around the country over the last several years lose their races, lose their reelection bids.

00:44:24.000 So I do think that there's less tolerance for that line of argument within the American public.

00:44:30.300 And that, I also think, explains, at least in part, why we are enjoying some success on the crime front.

00:44:35.580 We need to get you back on, because I think the idea of driving down murders to 10,000 in a year is one that should be universally embraced.

00:44:43.960 And we have the ability to do it.

00:44:45.540 And Clay is very anti-murder.

00:44:47.100 Yeah, we're very anti-murder.

00:44:48.800 Clay is he's not afraid who hears it.

00:44:50.840 He doesn't like the murders, wants them very low, very low murders.

00:44:54.180 Nobody hates murder more than me.

00:44:55.300 Thank you for the time.

00:44:56.380 This was awesome.

00:44:57.240 Thank you.

00:44:57.660 Rafael Manguel, great stuff, man, as always.

00:44:59.600 Appreciate you being here with us, and I love reading your stuff at the Manhattan Institute,

00:45:03.580 so thank you.

00:45:03.780 Thank you.

00:45:04.120 It means the world.

00:45:04.600 Appreciate it.

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00:46:51.860 Welcome back in to Clay and Buck.

00:46:54.200 We've got a lot of talkbacks, a lot of calls that we want to get to.

00:46:58.280 Oh, boy.

00:46:59.300 A lot of people wanting to speak about weed.

00:47:03.580 What is with, you know, it's just amazing to me.

00:47:07.760 Guys, it's not good for you, okay?

00:47:09.260 You can keep doing this thing of, oh, I have a friend who's so successful.

00:47:12.960 with the it's not a good thing it's not the terror it's not the worst thing i know people who have

00:47:18.540 smoked weed and led relatively when i say i'm sorry not smoked like everybody has not everybody

00:47:24.420 but a large percentage of the population has at least tried i've tried marijuana um gosh sounds

00:47:30.560 so weird saying it out loud uh but i've tried marijuana we're talking about people who use

00:47:35.660 marijuana daily yes i'm talking about the people that i see in line at the cannabis shop on the

00:47:41.180 corner here at you know thursday morning 9 30 in the morning going into the cannabis shop to get

00:47:47.200 their weed like this is not good it's not good for them it's not good for anybody else but people

00:47:51.760 get very uh very prickly over over the weed situation and by the way we would say the same

00:47:57.400 thing look i like alcohol more than you do i think if you are drinking alcohol every day it is not a

00:48:05.600 good decision to make period and i think the data is going to show that and certainly if you're

00:48:10.880 having three or four drinks a day that is not a good choice to make health wise similarly

00:48:17.440 smoking marijuana every day is not a good thing to do i'm a big moderation guy in in general with

00:48:24.040 life right um it is good to uh in my opinion it's okay you shouldn't eat birthday cake every day

00:48:30.720 birthday cake when your kids have a birthday or you have a birthday it's really good but if you

00:48:35.040 ate it every day you'd probably be in a pretty rough health position there are lots of things

00:48:39.280 that are enjoyable that if done every single day would not leave you in a very good position i think

00:48:45.700 people get offended when you tell them that but that's certainly true about marijuana alcohol

00:48:49.540 birthday cake all sorts of things yeah i would also say don't compare yourself to people who are

00:48:55.880 ultra elite in one way and particularly in like entertainment and say well they yeah they can do

00:49:03.880 a lot of things and get away with it because they have a particularly mark and whether you're talking

00:49:09.260 about athletes now or you're talking about people who are you know comedians who are very successful

00:49:15.580 or whatever a lot of people can get away with things it still doesn't mean it's a good idea

00:49:19.060 to do it it still doesn't mean it's going to help you because most people don't have extreme talent

00:49:24.140 in one area we have an array of talents and we try to make the best of them and making better

00:49:28.920 decisions day to day you know we're all just a collection of our decisions ultimately so making

00:49:33.780 better decisions day to day for yourself is going to also have ramifications for your family and

00:49:37.900 everything else so just encouraging smart behavior i like the the cake point by the way the chocolate

00:49:42.900 cake i love a good piece of chocolate cake sometimes but you shouldn't build your diet

00:49:47.940 around chocolate cake and you shouldn't have chocolate cake twice a day and you definitely

00:49:53.100 shouldn't think that the key to your happiness is eating as much chocolate cake as possible

00:49:57.600 okay this is it's it's about moderation it's about understanding and and all these things

00:50:01.720 factor in so so that's something all right so i'm in new york like tell me about this uh because

00:50:06.720 you're up on this one yeah mom donnie mom donnie the commie likes to do the class warfare thing

00:50:13.160 we've all seen that but now it may be biting oh here we go ken griffin pushes back after mom

00:50:20.100 donnie features his 238 million dollar penthouse in a tax the rich video so now ken griffin read

00:50:27.220 you some of these quotes go ahead yep uh because this is ken griffin we didn't really talk about

00:50:31.860 the video in specific but but just can i just one thing ken griffin is is like mr south florida now

00:50:37.900 by the way doing a ton of investment in miami so we love bring all that ken griffin money down to

00:50:44.280 south florida it's going great and by the way he's in south florida because he was in chicago

00:50:49.320 and so many people at his chicago area business he felt were living unsafely that he re or re uh

00:50:56.720 redirected his uh his location to south florida which is far safer so mom donnie you and i were

00:51:02.760 talking about this off air is now talking about taxing people who have second homes in new york

00:51:07.000 city and he did a video taunting ken griffin outside of his uh of his new york city home

00:51:15.320 doxed him in many ways as to where he was living this is an email that just came out today uh the

00:51:21.460 Wall Street Journal reporting we're about to commence the redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue

00:51:26.860 creating 6,000 highly paid construction jobs supporting the creation of more than 15,000

00:51:34.060 permanent jobs in Midtown New York the project if we move forward will entail more than six

00:51:42.900 billion dollars of spending it continues Buck uh it's shameful he used Ken's name talking about

00:51:50.460 Mamdani as an example of those who supposedly aren't carrying their fair share of burdens

00:51:56.020 associated with New York City's often costly and wasteful spending.

00:52:01.660 This is an email sent by Citadel.

00:52:03.360 In doing so, the mayor has once again manifested the ignorance and disdain of the elite political

00:52:10.240 class toward those who have been consistently committed to building one of the greatest

00:52:15.220 cities in the world.

00:52:16.260 He said over the past few years, Citadel principals and team members, including non-residents, have paid $2.3 billion in city and state taxes.

00:52:30.560 And he said Griffin himself, Buck, has personally donated $650 million in charitable gifts to support New York City.

00:52:41.760 We have 2,500 colleagues who have chosen to build their careers.

00:52:46.060 here we understand our hard work and success will on occasion make us targets but it should not

00:52:52.380 diminish what we are doing we should be applauding ken for spending millions in new york city not

00:52:59.060 attacking him said bill ackman uh this is a big deal buck because when you are targeting people

00:53:05.100 for the what they're doing in the city i'll be honest with you if i was ken griffin i'd be like

00:53:10.900 peace out bye mom donnie you handled all this five billion dollar shortfall that you have

00:53:17.000 you put my family in a more dangerous situation by taunting me outside of my building after a

00:53:23.540 health care ceo was executed on the streets of new york city i'm sorry i would be like i'm out

00:53:30.320 you were talking about this off air if where i live if a local politician showed up in front

00:53:35.800 of my house and said clay travis lives behind here he's not paying his fair share i would i would

00:53:42.140 find a new place to live i wouldn't want to own property there we have that uh we have the clip

00:53:46.560 actually of mom donnie's little class warfare video taking a swipe at ken griffin play it

00:53:51.040 when i ran for mayor i said i was going to tax the rich well today we're taxing i'm thrilled to

00:53:56.940 announce we've secured a pied-a-terre tax the first in new york's history this is an annual

00:54:01.400 fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million, whose owners do not live full-time

00:54:06.120 in the city. Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238

00:54:11.120 million. This peer-to-tear tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich, those

00:54:15.600 who store their wealth in New York City real estate, but who don't actually live here.

00:54:18.940 Most of the time, these units are sitting empty, since again, they don't actually live

00:54:23.000 here. This is a fundamentally unfair system that hurts working New Yorkers. Now, it's

00:54:28.200 coming to an end i believe everyone has a role to play in contributing to our city and some

00:54:32.700 a little bit more than others clay he's it's tough to know you know we just had rafael monguel on who

00:54:39.880 is a brilliant guy we really enjoy talking about crime i i wanted to keep going too this is when i

00:54:44.080 wish we had like a three-hour podcast instead of having a break for uh for commercials just to be

00:54:48.520 able to go through we'll have him back again because there's so much more to talk about um 0.71

00:54:52.400 But the Mamdani, is he ignorant of economics or is he malignant and just lies or pretends not to know more? 0.95

00:55:01.780 I think it's the latter, which is actually worse. 1.00

00:55:03.940 I agree with you because I don't think it's possible to be as dumb about these things as he is. 0.99

00:55:09.460 It's his preferred state. 0.97

00:55:11.980 He would rather just push through things that hurt everyone as long as they are rhetorically focused on his class warfare targets, people like Ken Griffin.

00:55:24.520 Let me just say, his whole premise here that storing money in New York City but not living there is bad, that is exactly what you would want if you were trying to deal with a high city budget.

00:55:36.960 You want people that have a minimum of services and put a tremendous amount of money into the local economy.

00:55:45.120 They're not even there. Great, because they're still having to pay taxes on the residents.

00:55:51.200 They're still putting that money into real estate here, which has an effect on all the other real estate in that building, in that neighborhood.

00:55:59.080 Investment, development, growth. These are good things.

00:56:03.080 This is why we are now a country of people who have so much entertainment that we don't even know what to do for entertainment, who have so much food that our biggest problem is keeping our mouths closed and not shoveling in more delicious food, that have so much clothing that fast fashion or casual fashion, as in buy it, wear it once, is a huge multi-billion dollar industry unto itself.

00:56:26.320 that have so much money in the automotive industry

00:56:29.160 that now we're getting to a place

00:56:30.960 where we're going to be competing over whose car self-drives,

00:56:34.080 gives them a massage, and reads them a bedtime story first.

00:56:37.040 We are so rich in this country, actually, on the whole,

00:56:41.840 and people are like, no, gas is expensive.

00:56:44.000 Yeah, I'm talking about compared to 50 years ago or 100 years ago.

00:56:47.800 Because of capitalism and because of mechanisms

00:56:50.780 that allow people to put money into things,

00:56:54.860 get a return create growth and put capital to work in ways that are efficient effective and and

00:57:02.500 grow things and mom donnie just sits there and he's just he just wants everyone to be a be an

00:57:09.660 unhappy malcontent leech on the system that was incredibly well said let me also build on it a

00:57:17.060 little bit ken griffin i think what is significant here is ken griffin there are tens of thousands

00:57:25.180 of people both employed directly by citadel and that make money at citadel and therefore employ

00:57:33.500 way more people if they just decide you know what we're out buck think about this and it doesn't

00:57:40.300 get enough discussion every person who is worth let's say and a lot of these citadel guys and

00:57:45.480 gals are let's say each of them is worth 10 million dollars on average right 10 million

00:57:50.100 dollars in assets every 10 million dollar asset guy or gal who leaves the city probably takes 20

00:57:58.080 jobs with them i'm just saying when you think about what they're doing with their lawn services

00:58:04.140 what they're doing with their health care what they're doing with their kids schooling what

00:58:08.320 they're doing with uh restaurants and bars in the area it the penumbra the periphery of spending

00:58:15.420 that is directly connected to these guys and gals of high income it is devastating to a city when

00:58:22.400 they leave and if i were ken griffin i would just say i'm done with you guys all right i'm taking

00:58:27.940 all my assets to a state and a city where i'm not going to have to worry about whether people come

00:58:33.000 after me buck i was just telling you in real life this has consequences i would never base a company

00:58:38.020 outside of my home state of Tennessee now I wouldn't because I don't want to see happen to

00:58:43.600 me what happened to Trump where somebody decides they don't like my politics and they're going to

00:58:48.100 try and bankrupt one of my companies because it happens to be located in a blue state or what

00:58:53.460 happened to this guy in California who's a lawyer and they decided they didn't like the fact that

00:58:58.160 he repped Trump and so they're going to try to take his law degree I got a law degree here in

00:59:02.320 Tennessee I don't have to worry about it I'm in a red state I think you're going to see more and

00:59:06.500 more people with resources say screw you guys in blue cities blue states i'm not risking my

00:59:12.260 financial future with the leaders that you're picking and the culture that you're creating

00:59:16.780 i'm out and the people who are going to lose out are the people that think that taxing the rich is

00:59:22.060 going to save them there are there are secretaries i guess we call them executive assistants now

00:59:27.200 there are secretaries at citadel who make 200 grand a year clay oh yeah this is what people

00:59:32.620 also don't think about in this stuff talk to some of the local um you know even here in manhattan

00:59:38.620 in midtown the the guys who operate the uh like the shwerma carts like the kind of halal meat

00:59:44.020 carts these different things do they like the finance bros or not well yeah because they'll

00:59:47.980 pay 15 or 20 bucks for some uh some some rice and some quickly uh you know seared chicken or

00:59:54.200 beef or whatever there are so many things that are tied in to the elements of the economy that

01:00:00.220 mom donnie is is and he's really stigmatizing it too and that's the that's the thing he's you're

01:00:06.120 the bad guy you know yeah it's not that they can't take the financial hit on the streets where a ceo

01:00:12.580 was murdered for being wealthy he's not saying yeah by the way like right right where we are

01:00:18.000 here in midtown um the the attitude isn't hey ken griffin you're super successful we really

01:00:25.660 appreciate this we really think we need to get you to pay a little more because you can afford it 0.96

01:00:29.640 but we're thankful and we appreciate it it's you greedy fat cat with your pied-a-terre and your 0.95

01:00:36.660 private jets and everything else we're taking more from you because you're the reason that we don't 0.97

01:00:42.460 have better schools you're the reason that we don't and it's actually the opposite he's funding

01:00:49.340 all of that he's funding the schools he's funding the police department without him without the top

01:00:54.520 one percent of earners in new york city and really the top point one percent of earners clay this

01:00:59.420 place collapses in a year and mom donnie's got problems with those people anyway it's it's it's

01:01:05.500 madness uh right now there are so many voices in our culture that are loud and that are pushing

01:01:09.780 women in one direction one they can never come back from and they're pushing toward abortion

01:01:13.940 and there's only so much that you can do wherever you are across the country right now yourself you

01:01:19.620 can of course try to spread the gospel you can try to support life you can do what you can

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - April 23, 2026

Bonus： Daily Review with Clay and Buck - Apr 23 2026

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