Bonus： Daily Review with Clay and Buck - Dec 2 2025
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Words per minute
175.25165
Harmful content
Misogyny
6
sentences flagged
Toxicity
9
sentences flagged
Hate speech
14
sentences flagged
Summary
On today's show, Clay and Buck discuss the special election in the 7th Congressional District of Tennessee, the drug boat crisis in the Caribbean and Venezuela, and much more. Also, a special guest joins the show to talk about how to get out and vote on Tuesday.
Transcript
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Welcome, everybody, to the Tuesday, December 2nd edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton
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First order of business, got to get to it right away just to get it on your radar, because
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we do have, thanks to one of us being a born and raised Tennessean, in fact, a Nashvillian,
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Very important, 7th Congressional District in Tennessee, Afton Bain, trying to get sneaky
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and take this seat away from the Republican, Mr. Van Epps, and I think that we need to
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This is important, because if nothing else, they will make fun of and antagonize our good
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friend Clay every day if he has basically the most left-wing member of Congress in the
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You got a whole, basically the whole Daily Wire, Shapiro doesn't live there, but the rest
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Matt Walsh is there, Michael Knowles, our friend Riley Gaines, Tommy Lahren, Candace Owens.
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This is a hometown fight here for the 7th Congressional, and all of you who are listening
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Let's not give the Democrats something early to celebrate going into this midterm election
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I dropped my son off at school, and then I walked right into the precinct there, and I
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So I'm asking everybody in from the border of Kentucky to the border of Alabama, the 7th
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I even had a friend text me and say, hey, I thought that that was my district.
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Okay, you did your part, because this is a new district in many ways, and a lot of people
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We've been talking about it like crazy on this program.
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I feel like I have done everything I can to help make people aware this race is happening,
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I'm just going to be giving you reminders today during the show, because, of course,
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It's a great time to be listening to Clay and Buck on your way to go vote in that district.
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The drug boat controversy and Venezuela, the Caribbean, unusual for it to be quite the scene
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of action that it is now, but the Caribbean and Venezuela and the drug trade are all very
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Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, getting a lot of heat, a lot of criticism, no surprise,
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And there's been some reporting that is now contested about a a double tap, if you will,
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Actually, we're going to discuss some of that and also the implications for Venezuela, where
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it is now being said the president has given Maduro.
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Trump went on a truth posting bonanza last night, posting truths to truth social.
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Caroline Leavitt also had a fiery press conference yesterday.
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We'll bring you some of the best moments from that.
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Tom Homan is saying the Biden administration, it wasn't bad enough for them to let 10 million
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They also said, you know what, let's just take in all these Afghans and not vet them at
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Basically, you raise your hand and say, hey, I did great things for America.
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But let's talk first about the the drug boat situation here, Clay.
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They really have wanted to take Secretary Hegseth off of the chessboard from the very
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Would you cosign this one in term to Pete has been target number two after Trump.
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I think Kash Patel has moved to the number three spot on the attack list.
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And I think we've kind of stayed in that range.
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I think there would be probably a big drop off.
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I mean, Elon obviously was not in the cabinet, but he was probably the most attacked in the
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I don't even know who the third biggest target would be.
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It's been like just kind of alternating between Hegseth and and with cash.
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They have been trying to go after David Sachs as well.
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Lately, the crypto and AI czar, who we would like to get on this program soon to talk about
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But he's a very savvy cat and has been not only able to defend himself very effectively
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without having to do very much, because a lot of the stuff that they're saying is just
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Other people have been coming to his defense as well, saying he's in this position of he
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He actually thinks that he's helping the country.
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And that's why he's in this special advisory role, special employee to the administration.
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They want to be able to show the Democrat base, hey, we can still call the shots in the
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And so this is where we're talking about not just the boat strikes, which I'm going to
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tell you right now, Clay, they're going to impeach Trump over this if they win the House.
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I don't know that it'll be over this specifically.
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They're going to impeach him probably over whatever.
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I mean, they're going to find something to impeach him over.
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We agree 100 percent that they will impeach him for a third time for something if they
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I think this is I think this is top of the list, and that's why they're so dug in on
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I believe that they're going to try to make the case that that these are war crimes.
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But they also want to use it to have it as a cudgel to force Secretary of War Hegseth out
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Here is, I mean, for example, here is former Deputy Assistant AG, this is cut eight, John,
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wait, before we play the cut, so the claim, Clay, so we're clear on this, is that Pete,
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we'll just call him Pete sometimes because we know him, oversaw and was watching in real
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time a strike on the first of these boats, and that they hit the boat, you know, JSOC,
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blew this boat up, and then there was wreckage, there was, you know, pieces of it, and there
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were a couple of guys who were clinging to the wreckage, and then the order, the affirmative
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order was given to send a second missile strike to kill the guys who were clinging to the wreckage.
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Here is, though, what's being said by people in the media now about this play eight.
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If you look at the U.S. law of war manual, which is the definitive interpretation of the
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way we fight the laws of armed conflict for the United States, it says clearly that you
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are not allowed to give orders that say no survivors.
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Commanders are not allowed to give orders that say no quarter, and so Hagsaf can't give
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Also, again, there are gray areas, but one gray area, one area that's not gray, that's
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You can't kill survivors who can no longer fight.
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So the admiral should not have obeyed the order that Secretary Hagsaf gave, and even
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the soldiers who carried out the admiral's orders should not have obeyed.
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Okay, so lawyer Clay, let me first say I obviously don't have firsthand knowledge, but if I were
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making a case here, there are several angles that I think would be in play.
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Let me start with defending the decision, if this were what happened, from them.
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I think they can say, this wasn't a second strike to kill survivors, the boat was still
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operable, and we were concerned that we hadn't fulfilled the original mission, right?
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You can hit a boat or a vehicle multiple times if you do not believe you have actually rendered
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In other words, I think there's probably a defense that, hey, the first strike did not
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I also think that there is potentially an issue here where if there are prisoners taken, then
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there is going to be a legal challenge to whether the president has the authority to undertake
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these actions, and do we then have an obligation to go rescue the survivors, all these other
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Remember, there are all sorts of issues out there where we have an attack that is ordered
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We talked about this on the program before in Afghanistan.
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That obviously got a decent amount of attention.
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So there are errors of interpretation that occur on these strikes, too.
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And I would say one thing that has been established for a long time by the Obama administration,
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among others, but the Obama administration really accelerated it, was the signature drone
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strikes where they would hit a target based upon a series of factors that were not 100 percent
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and clearly not because they did blow up women and children sometimes.
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And this was going on in Pakistan, a country with which we were not actually at war and
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a country that we were pretending publicly, at least, for a long time in the Obama years.
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The New York Times was writing front page stories about it.
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But the Obama administration, Clay, to avoid dealing with it in public, would just say that
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That was accepted by all of the people who currently are sitting around angry at the
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Trump administration or supposedly angry, the Trump administration for what's going
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So we do know that there are civilian casualties from strikes that are based on presidential
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It would be to the point made by John, you know, John, you.
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Why do they have John, you making the rounds, everybody?
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A little bit of history, if we all recall, 20 years back or so.
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He was the so-called torture memo guy under the Bush administration.
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So he was tied to enhanced interrogation techniques.
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So what you have now is the media having former deputy attorney general John, you under Bush,
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a Republican, saying, if you give an order for no survivors, that's a war crime.
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And this is from the guy who was like, we got to waterboard people.
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Um, and again, all of this comes in rising tension with Venezuela.
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Again, we should mention also there's a cabinet meeting going on right now.
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As you said off the top, the biggest part of this story is there is a report that Trump
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has given Maduro and his family until Friday to vacate the country.
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Or potentially we are going to take him out, uh, and, uh, install a more democratic government
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in Venezuela, which tons of people have a lot of opinions on.
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Uh, I said yesterday on the program, I stand by it.
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Um, I think that this can be akin to the strikes that happened in Iran in that they are very strategic
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and ultimately beneficial for the overall country.
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Um, and we have tons of you out there that are Venezuelan.
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I mean, Buck lives in Miami, which is filled with tons of Venezuelan refugees.
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As we said yesterday on the program, Venezuela has the largest deposit of oil, certainly in
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the Western hemisphere, uh, and used to be a thriving country that was very, very successful
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before the Maduro and, uh, that regime came into power.
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Third richest country in the world, uh, after the United States and Canada per capita at
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Turns out that communism ruins everything guys who could have known.
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Well, anybody who pays attention to history, we'll talk more about this though, because
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On the other hand, we also hate regime change and rebuilding operations for other countries.
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And there are people that are concerned that that may be something that we face here sooner
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Also, if we have any Venezuelan refugees or Venezuelan Americans, Clay, listening right
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now, if you want to weigh in on this one, uh, I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts
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Uh, if you believe in the life of a child, uh, as a rather, if you believe the life of
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an unborn child is precious and all of you in the pro-life community certainly do, you
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know that we have to do everything we can to save the lives of tiny babies in the womb
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right now, one in four pregnancies ends in abortion.
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That's, that's just a horrific fact, but it's true.
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Thousands of lives, lives lost every single day.
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This Christmas season, how do you go to bed at night knowing that you helped to save the
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life of a tiny baby and changed the mother to be's life with it as well?
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Pre-born clinics have saved over 350,000 babies with their life given, giving work.
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What they do is they welcome in mothers to their clinics.
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They give them a free ultrasound because when mom meets that baby, the moment of mom and
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child meeting via ultrasound, the heart beating, that changes everything.
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That ultrasound costs just $28 and that's where you come in.
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So as the year comes to a close, please, please consider a holiday season tax deductible
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donation, which could save the life of a tiny baby.
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That donation could be the difference between life and death for a baby this week, next week.
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To donate, dial pound 250, say the keyword baby.
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Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:16:03.320
Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected
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00:16:10.020
And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
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And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:16:19.900
Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their
00:16:25.640
So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:16:28.640
Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:16:37.080
We're going to take a bunch of calls on this because a lot of you have a variety of takes.
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Bobby in Maine up first says he was in military intelligence.
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What's your take on the Venezuelan boat strike story?
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I was in charge of all counter-narcotics in 03-04-05 as the Assistant Secretary of State.
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Also 10 years Naval Intelligence and an attorney.
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The bottom line is what they are doing is well within the law.
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Number one, and I think, Clay, you probably or both of you know this.
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There is a legal opinion somewhere justifying exactly what they're doing.
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Number two, there would be no finish-off order.
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The United States government has long supported shoot-down policies by foreign countries, including Peru, in which we shot down any plane that we had cued intelligence for or we allowed them to shoot down the plane if it was known to be carrying counter-narcotics and avoiding interception.
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The second thing is in our littoral waters, legally, we have Coast Guard Blackhawks up there, Jayhawks, that are fully armed, and they have a sniper with a sling in the open door in order to shoot out the engines of these boats.
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So point number one, the law, they are well within the law when they take an enemy combatant designated as a foreign terrorist organization that does not stop.
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They would be outside the law if they did a finish-off order for survivors.
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Can I just say, I think that you're saying, sir, you have deep expertise in this.
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We think it's lawful to do the strikes, but it wouldn't be lawful to do a finish-off order if the guys were floating in the water.
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So, again, I think we're all, keep him, keep him.
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While we're spending time with family this holiday season and Buck is stuck in a sound booth recording his new book,
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Just fire up the iHeartRadio app and kick back with the Sunday hang.
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Or check out any of our other great hosts in the Clay and Buck podcast network.
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There's so much content, you won't even miss us.
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But we'll miss you and look forward to speaking with you again in the new year.
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As we finished off the last hour, we were talking about the boat strikes off Venezuela.
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And I was saying, again, this is me behaving as a lawyer, finish them off can mean multiple things.
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It can mean, to me, finishing off the boat so that it's no longer able to do what it was intended to do.
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So that the drugs are not there still floating that could be picked up by another boat.
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And so what is and is not intended by the orders is likely to be an issue.
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Right now, I don't think the communication has been clear, Buck, as to exactly what the story is.
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Just that the White House has said, hey, we support the admiral here.
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The secretary of war supports the admiral and his ability to make decisions on the ground there.
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We had a call from an individual who was still with us.
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And that is I want to make sure that I get his name right.
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Not a bad not a bad way to get people to know about the primary here, Bobby.
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I feel like you guys invited this one, so I'm just going to pick it up.
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So, Bobby, when I say what finish them off means, this is me being a lawyer.
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Finish them off can mean a lot of different things.
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If I were advising Secretary of War Hegseth, if I were advising President Trump, if I were
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advising the admiral in this case as an attorney representing them, I would say go ahead and
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We wanted to end the threat that this boat brought to bear.
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There was the possibility the drugs could be picked up.
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And so we ordered a second strike to take out that boat.
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Is that a valid argument from your perspective based on your knowledge of the rules of engagement?
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I was a U.S. Court of Appeals clerk after Columbia Law School long before being Assistant
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Secretary managing counter-narcotics programs around the world, among which were shoot-down
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programs in Peru and Columbia in which we gave orders.
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We didn't give them, I worked with the heads of Southcom who gave them, but those field
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commanders gave orders to finish off planes that were in the sky carrying drugs.
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The same way if you were in World War II on a battlefield and a tank is coming at you
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and you've disabled the gun, but the tank keeps rolling, you have every right to stop
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So I am believing, and I think they should ask for this, and I think everything else is a
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As a former Navy intelligence guy for 10 years and an assistant secretary doing counter-narcotics,
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there is a legal opinion in the file that says something like this.
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It is a foreign terrorist organization trafficking drugs.
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Because it is an FTO, it is by definition engaging in premeditated, politically motivated acts
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Because it is doing that, you have every right to hit and destroy the drugs and to hit and
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destroy the boat, and there is no, under the rules of law in the UCMJ, there is no requirement
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that you warn the combatant that you're going to do that.
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If you hit half the boat, and we currently have policies that the U.S. Coast Guard uses
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in our littoral waters with snipers, they don't call them snipers, but they're snipers.
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They have big firearms in a sling dedicated to taking out the engines of a boat, of a go-fast
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If we feel that we have not hit and disabled and finished the task of a combatant coming
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You do not have a right to then shoot folks in the water.
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But I will guarantee you that there is no legal opinion in the file in the Defense Department
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There is not going to be a legal opinion that says you can finish off people in the water.
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It will say just what I said here, and that is what they're doing.
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And so it is completely lawful, and it's protecting the national security of the United States
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and every single American, including in states like Maine, where we had 10,000 overdoses last
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Why isn't the Trump administration making that argument right now?
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I'm guessing that as much as I'm a lawyer, I hate lawyers.
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You know, if you're Irish, you get to say words about the Irish, and I am that too.
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There's lawyers in the Pentagon going, hey, we can't release that.
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We can't get the legal argument involved in politics.
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Yeah, what I think Hegseth should do is just say, look, I have every legal right to be
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Hegseth is not, we know him, he's not an attorney, but what I'm saying is I would, if
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I were Secretary of War Hegseth or I was advising him, I would be telling him to say exactly what
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you just told us right now at the press conference, because I think it would end this story
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Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, Clay, and so now they have the back and forth of
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different versions of what happened, and what was this, and what was that.
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Well, because they've screwed up the comms, just like they screwed up the comms.
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I mean, I'm going to jump in and just say, because they messed up, because this is where
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You know, the truth is, your point is well taken.
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What has transpired up to this moment in time has, the future is for us to define.
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They should do the press conference, take it verbatim what I said.
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I don't know the exact wording of the legal memo, but I guarantee before they took one
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They should say, we have every right to have done what we did.
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I just want to be clear, Bobby, because there are people out there who are saying, oh,
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no, when I say people, I mean online, you'll see people who don't know anything who are
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But what you've laid out is the legal justification for what we believe happened here, which we're
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But I just want to be very clear, because I have seen the argument made by people with
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followings and by people who are part of this conversation, if we have to finish off people
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No, that's actually not how this goes, and that's not what was going on here.
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And in World War II, there were bad mistakes made on both sides.
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This is one where we don't have to make a mistake.
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I'm going to tell you, though, as a guy running for governor in Maine, and I'm up by double
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digits on everybody, but the reality is right now, people throw crap at you that is untrue
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every day, and you just have to keep responding.
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And that's what Trump does every day, and that's what you've got to do.
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You beat, you know, it's like the old Supreme Court case said, right?
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Bobby, we're leveraging your expertise here a lot, but I actually want to transition you
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You said you oversaw or were involved in overseeing narco programs in the Caribbean.
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One, how effective do you think taking out these boats is actually, and two, talk to
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You would have a very important perspective on what's going on there with Maduro, the
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narco trafficking, the possibility of the overthrow.
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So I have had multiple hats in life, blessed a thousand ways from Sunday.
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But the reality is, yes, I did oversight for five years for Gingrich.
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I was his top oversight investigator looking at counter-narcotics, but also the Pentagon
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So at the end of the day, our counter-narcotics policy in the Caribbean was effective when
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So when we could cover 25 percent of the Caribbean at a time, incidentally, when there was no land
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bridge, as in there was no coming up through the Mexico Pan-American Highway, what we did
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By shutting down 25 percent, creating enough uncertainty that the traffickers thought they
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would get more losses than it was worth, they shifted to the land bridge.
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What they will do right now, it is relatively effective because it's creating that one thing.
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Everything is about deterrence versus appeasement.
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Same thing with people coming into this country.
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You do nothing, you appease the behavior, appease bad behavior.
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You deter it, all of a sudden they're going to stop coming.
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All of a sudden they're going to stop shipping drugs through the EPAC, Eastern Pacific, which
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is where some of this is happening, or through the Caribbean.
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But you always have to remember, it's like trying to block a water that is being pulled
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The bad guys always look for another way around.
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You know, we don't ever win anything finally and decisively.
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You know, what you do is you manage the process so that you're always one step ahead.
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What I love that he's doing, what Trump is doing, is he's calling a spade a spade.
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He's saying, we lose more people every year to this foreign drug infusion, this chemical
00:28:44.020
weapon brought into this country, than we lost in all of Vietnam.
00:28:46.760
We lose 100,000 more or less every year to this.
00:28:57.140
And so ultimately what you do is you start to destroy the industrial strength of the cartel.
00:29:06.560
And you want, you're never going to get rid of all crime.
00:29:08.920
But what you want to do is drive it down to a level that's so low that most people don't
00:29:13.860
And here in the state of Maine, I will tell you, I am going to thoroughly support law enforcement.
00:29:18.260
I am going to thoroughly stop these foreign drug traffickers from getting in here.
1.00
00:29:21.500
And then, having created deterrence, I'm going to put the rest of the population that's
00:29:25.780
addicted on a get well, stay well plan, get real treatment programs in here and solve
00:29:29.400
That is what Trump is doing in all the places that he's been allowed to do it.
00:29:33.100
And by the way, I will mobilize the National Guard, too, if needed, to support law enforcement.
00:29:41.540
You got to be the next governor of Maine, buddy.
00:29:43.140
So you got to come back and talk to us more about this.
00:29:53.240
So you have good taste in radio and radio producers.
00:29:58.160
But Clay, I just want to say, our legal analysis was all spot on.
00:30:03.960
And also, again, I think we hit on this correctly.
00:30:11.360
And he pointed out lawyers can sometimes say, well, we can't talk about this publicly yet,
00:30:17.380
I would talk about it publicly if I were Pete Hegg, Seth.
00:30:24.940
And it vanishes if you tell the story the way that he just did.
00:30:35.140
But if you have differing narratives about what happened, even if it's in good faith,
00:30:40.740
but there's daylight between what the, you know, Trump White House says and what Secretary
00:30:46.180
Hegg says or whatever, then that becomes the story.
00:30:52.040
So you just it's a comms issue to be very clear on this so that everybody understands,
00:30:57.540
because what the Democrats did, their biggest story this week is the, you know, the war crimes
00:31:01.980
What they don't want to be talking about is the Biden Afghan withdrawal slash importing
00:31:08.460
people with no vetting whatsoever, including the terrorists who just killed two national
00:31:12.400
or killed one and grievously wounded another National Guard member.
00:31:15.540
That's what they don't want to be talking about this week.
00:31:18.160
And you can limit their ability to drive the narrative by telling your story in the best,
00:31:27.820
But I think if they said what Bobby said, what I said, what you have said, I think it
00:31:31.960
would go a long way towards putting this story to rest.
00:31:39.480
Right now are meetings going on in Russia to try to end the war in Ukraine.
00:31:43.840
Both sides, Russia and Ukraine, are acknowledging loss of lives.
00:31:50.520
Far from the front lines, life can feel very difficult, different sort of way for people
00:31:54.960
like Maria, 85 year old woman of Jewish faith living in Ukraine.
00:32:00.120
She's one of the many Ukrainian citizens in need of food, medicine and assistance with
00:32:05.280
And when war first broke out in Ukraine, many nonprofit organizations made the needs of
00:32:11.660
There was and still is a great need for humanitarian effort.
00:32:16.020
Today, many of the nonprofit organizations have moved on, but not the International Fellowship
00:32:21.400
of Christians and Jews, the IFCJ, they're still there continuing to do what they can to help
00:32:27.600
the Jewish faith in Ukraine, particularly the elderly through the International Fellowship
00:32:33.200
With your donations, you can bring hope to those in need.
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Your gift of twenty five dollars will help provide a food box packed full of life saving
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essentials that will help feed families and individuals feeling them especially ignored
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You can also give online at fellowshipgift.org.
00:33:07.940
Trump highlights from the week, Sundays at noon Eastern in the Clay and Buck podcast feed.
00:33:13.020
Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:33:16.680
Welcome back in, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show.
00:33:27.040
If I'm not mistaken, the White House cabinet meeting has now been going on, Buck, for the
00:33:35.720
We are competing with the Trump show head to head.
00:33:41.900
Trump has been doing over two hours straight, along with his cabinet, taking questions.
00:33:48.280
It does feel to some extent, Buck, like this is a response to the New York Times saying
00:33:55.320
that he doesn't have the vitality and the vigor that he used to.
00:33:59.400
Maybe I'm wrong on this, but then a couple of days later, he's like, all right, let's just
00:34:04.160
do a three hour potentially press conference that Fox News has been carrying straight through
00:34:11.760
and even CNN now has elected to go live to Trump.
00:34:19.820
I just sent a couple of clips to producer Greg as Hegseth has weighed in more on the on the
00:34:28.980
boat strike off Venezuela, which evidently, Buck, happened September 2nd.
00:34:34.840
So this was one of the earliest strikes that occurred on the boats.
00:34:41.340
I don't know that we've given a date, but he did in his answer, which we will have soon.
00:34:50.020
If you are in the seventh congressional district in the state of Tennessee, it is election day.
00:35:00.480
I dropped him off and then I went into the polling place right there at his school.
00:35:05.980
My wife is working all day at, uh, as a volunteer at this local, uh, polling center.
00:35:12.980
Um, I think I mentioned this before, Buck, but you know, Laura quite well, she was really
00:35:17.660
fired up at the, uh, at the overall, um, security issues associated with elections.
00:35:25.420
And so she said, well, heck, I want to see this for myself.
00:35:29.080
So she decided that she would volunteer and watch as the election is taking place here locally.
00:35:35.780
By the way, president Trump standing up right now, we are no longer competing with the Trump
00:35:41.260
He has just walked out after a marathon two plus hour, uh, session with his cabinet.
00:35:48.280
Uh, and it is just now breaking up, uh, in real time.
00:35:55.420
Marco Rubio, uh, secretary of state, Buck, there are many different super serious stories that
00:36:02.180
are going on, but you know, I trust college football fans implicitly.
00:36:08.440
In addition to everything else that was discussed, Marco Rubio came out and said, if the Miami
00:36:15.780
hurricanes, your new hometown team, Buck, if they're not in the playoff, he's furious and
00:36:22.360
he's going to put president Trump in charge of next year's playoff.
00:36:26.400
This did just happen among many other things in the, uh, in the, uh, cabinet meeting.
00:36:34.000
And I know I'm last, so I wanted to be fast, but there was a lot to cover.
00:36:37.000
I do want to say this is the most wonderful, magical time of the year by that.
00:36:41.440
Of course, I'm referring to the college football playoffs.
00:36:44.000
And, um, I just want to say this as a point of personal privilege, if, if, and I'm a Florida
00:36:49.280
Gator, but if the university of Miami gets screwed out of the college football playoffs,
00:36:52.940
after going 10 and 2 and beating Notre Dame, the whole thing should be scrapped and you're
00:37:02.260
Maybe he becomes like SEC commissioner or something.
00:37:05.640
In addition to, I think he's secretary of state, national security advisor, USAID director.
00:37:11.760
The Marco portfolio is a remarkable thing to behold.
00:37:15.340
Um, your wife is a Florida Gator grad, uh, Marco Rubio's son, um, is a football player,
00:37:26.080
So I was actually texting with him over the weekend, nothing at all to do with serious things,
00:37:31.420
just about the college football coaching, uh, searches going on.
00:37:41.980
I did think it was funny that he decided that he wanted to weigh in on that because
00:37:45.860
Marco Rubio is a Miami guy, big, uh, college football fan, which is one reason we get along
00:37:53.280
The clip that I sent in, uh, of Hegseth, uh, giving more details.
00:38:02.040
Now for people out there who are saying, what are you doing here?
00:38:06.260
We want to make sure that we're addressing it well, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox news, basically
00:38:13.000
all covering this as the top news story of the day.
00:38:19.060
Well, because the implications of this, first of all, aren't just about the attempts to
00:38:24.040
undermine and attack Hegseth and with him, this administration.
00:38:26.640
There's also this issue of what this does to Venezuela and increasingly we have what seems
00:38:35.820
to be a de facto regime change policy in place.
00:38:41.520
Now, regime change and nation building are not necessarily things that go hand in hand,
00:38:49.440
And so this is going to start to bring up some very important and difficult conversations,
00:38:55.520
But here we have Secretary Hegseth, just moments ago, getting into the details of this strike
00:39:05.640
I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site
00:39:14.040
A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the, which he had the complete
00:39:19.700
And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate
00:39:25.520
He sunk the boat, sunk the boat and eliminated the threat.
00:39:33.300
And the American people are safer because narco-terrorists know you can't bring drugs through the water and
00:39:40.740
eventually on land if necessary to the American people.
00:39:44.300
We will eliminate that threat and we're proud to do it.
00:39:46.960
So you didn't see any survivors, to be clear, after that first strike?
00:39:52.600
Survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire.
00:40:01.140
This is what you and the press don't understand.
00:40:04.080
You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick and you plant
00:40:09.060
fake stories in the Washington Post about kill everybody, phrases on anonymous sources not
00:40:14.480
based in anything, not based in any truth at all.
00:40:17.500
And then you want to throw out really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment
00:40:23.840
I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press does to war
00:40:29.200
President Trump has empowered commanders, commanders to do what is necessary, which is dark and
00:40:34.500
difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people.
00:40:37.940
We support them and we will stop the poisoning of the American people.
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00:40:43.300
I still think, and this is the lawyer in me, Buck, I want a clear, concise, direct description
00:40:53.600
And it may be the case that they haven't talked in detail about this decision, but that would
00:40:58.580
help to end this story, I believe, once and for all.
00:41:01.900
It's hard to sound objective talking about Pete because you and I both know Pete and we're
00:41:11.520
Uh, so I just, I, I say that because I think we need to be honest about where we come from,
00:41:19.040
uh, especially talking to some of these public figures who we know on a personal level.
00:41:23.080
And I know Pete loves the country and I know he loves, uh, the war fighters, uh, in the United
00:41:30.780
And so I bring all of that to this discussion too.
00:41:35.920
That said, um, I think that the problem that he's running into here a little bit, Clay,
00:41:41.800
is when you start to say things again, I'm looking at this, like the enemy here in the
00:41:46.900
media, which he's addressing very clearly.
1.00
00:41:48.780
He's saying, you guys are a bunch of jerks.
1.00
00:41:51.220
But when he says things like fog of war, that they're going to take that now and say, so
00:42:02.680
Now, I think in this process, it went from the order to kill survivors to now you're saying
00:42:12.900
So you don't need to call in and say, what he did is totally lawful.
00:42:14.900
I believe that Pete Hegseth, uh, and the, and the JSOC here joined special operations
00:42:22.920
I am just saying the way this is turning into a story is leaving bits of daylight here with
00:42:30.780
the facts as presented, the narrative as constructed from the top of the, of the Pentagon hierarchy.
00:42:38.240
And when you say things like, you know, fog of war, I get it.
00:42:41.520
I know what he's saying, but they're going to say, so you don't even know if there were,
00:42:46.600
you know, there was smoke, you know, there could have been survivors.
00:42:48.920
You know, this is the next, this is the next phase of it.
00:42:53.220
And this is why I say, and this is me speaking as a former criminal defense attorney, your
00:43:00.160
story has to be consistent and you have to stick to it and you have to put it out there.
00:43:05.300
And it has to be ironclad in terms of you being able to prove what exactly it is.
00:43:11.900
Um, and I just think the story of we had to hit the boat a second time because it had
00:43:19.460
not been completely obliterated and there were still drugs there and they could have brought
00:43:25.100
another boat in and gotten those drugs off and they could have still come to the United
00:43:29.220
The purpose of the mission was to ensure that that boat is completely obliterated and
00:43:41.540
I don't know anything about the people that were on the boat.
00:43:43.920
Frankly, I don't care about them because they were terrorists trying to kill people in the
0.89
00:43:49.800
They may not have, but I know that boat didn't and the drugs are gone.
00:43:59.220
This is a threat that's identified, a threat that we can lawfully use the United States
0.59
00:44:03.020
military to address and secretary of war, Hegseth and his, uh, those below him in the
00:44:09.000
chain of command who were directly involved in the strike, they were operating to stop
00:44:14.640
And if two missiles is what are required to stop the threat, then that is what it required.
00:44:19.320
But this is why, again, you know, uh, the specificity of is it be the same thing in a
00:44:25.740
If somebody came at me, Clay, in my own home, which would be a very bad idea because I do
00:44:30.680
have a lot of guns here and I am pretty trained up these days, but if somebody came at me
00:44:34.040
in my own home and I, and I put one in them and then they say, well, why did you, why did
00:44:38.620
you actually, uh, unload your whole magazine into this person who was coming at you, let's
00:44:44.400
Like I would say, because in the moment that's what I believe to stop the threat against
00:44:50.960
It doesn't, whether it's one bullet or 10 bullets, I acted to stop the threat against
00:44:58.440
I hit him five times, but then I thought, you know what?
00:45:01.340
I got to get some headshots in here to make sure he's not moving anymore.
00:45:04.360
You don't want to, in a self-defense situation, say anything like that.
00:45:10.220
This is those you, you don't have to know law of war necessarily to understand how this,
00:45:15.200
when you're talking about use of force, you've got to be very specific about why you're using
00:45:24.380
We had to have conversations about lethal force, right?
00:45:26.700
This is, you have to understand what the framework is for using violence against another human
00:45:33.960
being always the threat wasn't eliminated with the first strike.
00:45:38.600
So we had to have a second strike to eliminate the threat.
00:45:41.560
This is not very complicated, but again, when they start nitpicking at you, I appreciate
00:45:46.920
the fact that Pete recognizes he's the target here.
00:45:50.160
Somebody, I think this is important, leaked probably very classified information to a large
00:45:56.120
extent to the Washington post, which may or may not be accurate, but somebody obviously
00:46:04.940
They're attempting to come after him, uh, the admiral and the president.
00:46:11.360
And so, um, again, um, I, I think you have to eliminate this story to the best of your
00:46:27.640
She had, there was a cozy earth blanket on the couch.
00:46:32.700
She got the cozy earth blanket, a little bit chilly in Florida.
00:46:42.500
The blanket was so comfortable and she ordered one for my mom and for her.
00:46:53.880
I love this story, except we don't get credit for the blanket, but that's okay.
00:46:57.480
We're going to sell a lot more blankets now because that's how amazing they are.
00:47:05.600
Uh, but that's how comfortable this blanket was.
00:47:09.620
She sat down on the couch, a little bit chilly.
00:47:12.860
She puts the blanket over her within 20 minutes.
00:47:17.080
She was like, she asked my wife, like, what, where is this cozy earth?
00:47:29.820
They're the perfect combination of luxury, comfort, relaxation.
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Watching stranger things season five with my boys.
00:47:47.140
And I was like, if I'm going to be watching stranger things five, I need these awesome covers,
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these blankets that feel so phenomenal to have them on.
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Make sure to order by December 12th for guaranteed Christmas delivery.
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Most comfortable sheets, blankets, you name it.
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She then went back and bought more and she used code clay, by the way.
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Find them on the free I heart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:48:52.720
Canadian women are looking for more, more of themselves, their businesses, their elected
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And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the honest talk podcast.
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And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists,
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So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
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Listen to the honest talk podcast on I heart radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:49:24.520
Clay Travis with the clay and Buck show, wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas
00:49:37.760
Senator Blackburn, always appreciate you being with us.
00:49:45.420
First up, can you just speak to some politics going on in your home state, the 7th Congressional
00:49:52.540
You got a loony leftist trying to sneak a congressional seat in what is not just a red area of the
00:49:58.920
wonderful state of Tennessee, Senator Blackburn, but also Clay's backyard.
00:50:03.180
Like, I think his yard is, in fact, considered part of the district.
00:50:15.120
And these off-year special elections, sometimes they get a little funky on you.
00:50:22.080
And what you have are Democrats that are very excited.
00:50:28.080
They saw what they thought were big victories in blue areas.
00:50:33.360
And so now they're trying to California, Tennessee, and are putting a lot of energy in that today.
00:50:50.500
He is going to be an outstanding member of the U.S. House.
00:50:55.160
He has wonderful experience and a record of service, a good, solid record of service for
00:51:05.020
His military service, his business expertise, the way he served Governor Lee in his cabinet.
00:51:12.540
And I know that Matt is going to bring that fighting spirit to work on the issues of cost
00:51:18.420
of living and access to affordable health care and really getting the country back on track.
00:51:26.460
You know, Joe Biden and the Democrats raised taxes.
00:51:38.220
And President Trump and Republicans are trying to get everything back on track.
00:51:42.440
Matt Van Epps is going to do a good job doing that.
00:51:45.180
And the people of Tennessee support President Trump and his agenda.
00:51:54.440
She's telling all of you to get out in the 7th Congressional District, all the way from
00:51:58.820
Fort Campbell, up on the border with Kentucky, all the way down south with Alabama, Nashville
00:52:04.880
included, part of Davidson County, Franklin, Williamson County, Brentwood, all points in between.
00:52:10.920
You also are a mom and a grandma, and you have a USA Today editorial piece up about the lack
00:52:23.680
And I know in social media era, there's a lot of moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas out there
00:52:39.680
And this is work that we have done on the Kids Online Safety Act.
00:52:43.980
And I was just on the phone talking with a house colleague, Kat Kamek, out of Florida.
00:52:52.120
And she and I have several of these bills together.
00:52:54.920
Look, big tech uses our children as a cash cow.
1.00
00:52:59.140
And when kids are online, they are the product.
00:53:02.940
And we've been trying to pass legislation that would protect children in the virtual space,
00:53:09.800
just as we have laws in the physical space that says you can't sell alcohol and tobacco
00:53:33.080
But it happens in the virtual space 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
00:53:38.600
And when you look at these apps that are catering to children, when you look at these platforms
00:53:44.360
catering to children, and you know that big tech is trying to get these kids on their site,
00:53:52.780
and they want them to doom scroll for hours on end.
00:53:56.620
And then you talk to parents and teachers and preachers and pediatricians, and you hear
00:54:02.820
that addiction to these screens is one of the biggest problems they have when it comes
00:54:10.100
to cyberbullying and behavioral issues in schools.
00:54:17.920
When kids meet a drug dealer, a pedophile, a trafficker, a groomer, generally, it is in
00:54:28.460
And we need to put these protections in place for our children in the virtual space, just
00:54:39.580
We're speaking to Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
00:54:42.320
Senator, the terrible terrorist attack that occurred just before the Thanksgiving holiday took the
00:54:49.140
life of a National Guard, member of the National Guard, and almost took another life, has got
00:54:56.200
people focused in here on how could something like this happen?
00:55:00.960
How was the vetting, or really what was the lack of vetting like, to bring in many of these
00:55:07.400
Afghans during the Biden withdrawal, I wanted you to speak to that and give us a sense as
00:55:12.700
to what do you think the Trump administration is going to be able to or should do now that
00:55:18.160
there's a recognition that there was insufficient vetting for many, perhaps most, of the Afghans
00:55:24.620
who were brought here during the Biden withdrawal?
00:55:27.460
And actually, the Inspector General's report from 2022 with the Department of Homeland Security
00:55:37.260
And the response from the Biden administration was that they were going to go back and do
00:55:47.260
And now what the Trump administration is discussing doing is halting immigration while they catch
00:55:55.860
up and make certain that they have vetted all these individuals, whether they came in through
00:56:02.040
the Afghan welcome program that Biden had put in place, or it is people that are in the system
00:56:09.300
that illegally were in the country or people that were here legally on a visa and have overstayed
00:56:18.540
You're going to see this administration and this Department of Homeland Security and the Department
00:56:25.800
of State, circle back and actually clean up some of these.
00:56:32.260
And if someone needs to go, they will be issued an order of deportation and then deported and
00:56:41.740
I don't think we've asked you about this, but I asked you about it in person the last time
00:56:48.700
I think it's a pretty extraordinary, unbelievable story that at least eight United States senators,
00:56:54.580
including you, had your phones tapped as part of an investigation.
00:56:59.580
I know that you guys are continuing to follow up on that.
00:57:04.160
Can you tell our audience what happened there, why obviously it's significant and should never
00:57:09.540
happen again, and what is going to happen as a result?
00:57:13.780
Where is that story for people who don't know very much about it or haven't been paying attention?
00:57:19.740
Yes, and the story is continuing to unfold as we're getting more documents.
00:57:27.100
And I think it's tomorrow we have Judge Boesberg who is going to come before us.
00:57:32.700
He is the one who issued as many as 197 subpoenas for information on our phones.
00:57:43.780
And on top of those subpoenas, he put a nondisclosure order, which meant that the wireless companies
00:57:51.960
could not tell us that they had a subpoena for our phone records.
00:57:57.980
Now, we were targeted from what we have learned because we were all Republicans.
00:58:09.580
And we, each of us, had questions about the 2020 election.
00:58:15.020
Now, the reason we're continuing to dig on this and to get information is because if they
00:58:24.000
were going after phone records, there is no doubt, and we have reason to believe, that
00:58:32.580
Were they going after the content of those contacts?
00:58:38.240
Because what they did was to get every phone call I made or received and the location where
00:58:48.500
I was when I made or received that call and who that call was made to or received from.
00:59:08.500
But we also want to know, did they get the content of emails?
00:59:16.420
Was there any wiretapping in real time that they did?
00:59:23.300
Did they surveil and investigate people that we were in contact with?
00:59:33.420
Did they go after financial documents and other information about us?
00:59:44.940
That, I think, each of the eight of us want to know the extent of this.
00:59:51.400
We want to know what they've done to other conservatives.
00:59:54.420
They know there were 197 subpoenas issued against 430 individuals, conservatives.
01:00:03.980
And it was organizations and individuals in that mix.
01:00:10.600
Citizens United, Turning Point USA, different organizations.
01:00:16.200
What they were after, we know they got financial documents on some of those.
01:00:24.760
We want to make certain this never happens again.
01:00:34.180
And, of course, in this case, because you have some whistleblowers over at DOJ that were aware of this, they brought the information to Senator Grassley.
01:00:47.680
And that is how we've been able to find out, as much as we have gotten so far, about what they did to conservatives and the extent of it.
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Jack Smith, who ran Arctic Frost, needs to be held to account.
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I have written a letter that calls for the Office of Professional Conduct at the Department of Justice to look into his actions.
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We also have written a letter to the D.C. Bar about his conduct and what the actions that he took.
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And the email chain that we got last week, you know, the interesting thing is the attorney, the counsel that was advising Jack Smith and Arctic Frost,
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told them this is a constitutional violation, and pointed out to them what we had said early on.
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It's a violation of the speech and debate clause.
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It is a violation of the Stored Communications Act.
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And to think they did this knowing it was outside of the law.
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But they hate Donald Trump and people that support Donald Trump.
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I think we're going to continue to follow it on this program.
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And one more time, tell everybody to go vote, Senator.
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Let's send a message that the Democrats are not going to take this seat.
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That's Senator Marsha Blackburn, great state of Tennessee, soon to be governor.
0.99
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He's actually turned into one of the greatest receivers in the NFL right now.
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I appreciate your mom and dad saying that they'll lie for you and claim that you were watching college football.
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To try to keep you from having to be reprimanded by me for not spending time watching football.
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Here is a pick, however, that you can play that everybody in California, Texas, Georgia, 40 states, 13 million people signed up.
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George Pickles, according to Buck Sexton, more than 77.5 receiving yards.
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And Jamar Chase, more than 90.5 receiving yards.
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But I'm optimistic that success will soon garland our achievements here.
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George Pickens, Jameer Gibbs, Josh Allen, Jamar Chase, all more.
01:04:32.040
Keep up with the biggest political comeback in world history on the Team 47 Podcast.
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Clay and Buck highlight Trump replays from the week, Sundays at noon Eastern.
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Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.