BONUS： Daily Review With Clay and Buck - Jun 26 2025
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per minute
175.43745
Harmful content
Misogyny
23
sentences flagged
Toxicity
27
sentences flagged
Hate speech
9
sentences flagged
Summary
On today's show, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton discuss the leak of a classified assessment from the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) on the effectiveness of a recent strike on Iran, and the fallout from it.
Transcript
00:00:04.100
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show podcast.
00:00:09.320
Welcome in Thursday edition, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show.
00:00:13.800
Appreciate all of you rolling with us as we are diving into the biggest stories of the day
00:00:20.380
and beyond probably, but also going to have a lot of fun with you
00:00:25.800
as we break down everything going on in the larger universe.
00:00:29.500
And right off the top here, we had a big conversation about this yesterday.
00:00:33.880
The fact that there was a leak to CNN and the New York Times
00:00:38.680
that suggested the attack on Saturday evening here in the United States on Tehran
00:00:52.620
And it started really early this morning at 8 a.m. Eastern
00:00:57.340
when Pete Hegseth came out and just went to town on the press
00:01:05.020
Now, I want to play some of these cuts because it was a pretty intense press conference.
00:01:09.220
But I'll start with a conversation that we had yesterday,
00:01:12.660
which was about the challenge, the difficulty of finding out who leaked this information,
00:01:20.360
particularly as it appears that it may well not have been accurate.
00:01:25.320
So, Buck, you worked in the intelligence community.
00:01:29.380
When you saw this report was leaked, did you think initially, hey, this is kind of unheard of?
00:01:36.200
Did it totally seem maybe not a positive thing, but not an unexpected thing?
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And I know we talked about this some yesterday, but what are the difficulties that would be inherent
00:01:48.600
in figuring out who actually leaked to this because it is certainly classified information?
00:01:55.540
Well, the fact that somebody would take this to the press so early on in the process
00:02:00.700
and that it was already known to be a low-confidence assessment
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00:02:04.900
just means somebody wanted to blunt the narrative of Trump is just kicking ass
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00:02:10.560
and making excellent decisions as commander-in-chief and this war,
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00:02:16.020
those who said it's not even a war, it's a military strike, okay?
00:02:19.040
You know, think of all the countries that we have had military operations in
00:02:23.740
that we would not consider ourselves to be at war or in the midst of a war.
00:02:28.500
But, Clay, this was meant to have a political ramification
00:02:32.760
because if you wanted this to have U.S. national security in mind,
00:02:37.920
if you wanted to be somebody who said, hey, guys, hey, I'm worried about the reactors,
00:02:42.460
I'm worried that there could still be a lot more here, we didn't get enough,
00:02:47.280
what you would want is to wait until you pull together all of the best sources,
00:02:53.200
get it rock solid, and then work its way up the chain through the CIA director
00:02:58.480
or the DIA director in this case, and then at that point, you know,
00:03:06.020
This was somebody who decided, I'm going to be the one who reigns on Trump's parade here.
00:03:14.040
This was an individual. This was a deep stater.
00:03:16.400
This is someone who did not have the interests of the United States in mind,
00:03:20.440
but the interests of a very bitter and weak and feckless-looking Democrat machine in mind
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and hope to take away some of the sense of ebullience
00:03:33.880
and some of the congratulations that have been going around,
00:03:36.580
not just for Trump's decision but for the men and women who flew the airstrikes themselves,
00:03:40.960
for the Pentagon pulling this off, the intelligence community for having these sites mapped out.
00:03:46.940
But this would, to me, this is a bit like saying somebody from within the intelligence community
00:03:52.420
after the bin Laden raid is raising concerns that there was really, you know,
00:03:58.400
no document exploitation that came out of that raid,
00:04:07.080
You would only do that if you were trying to hurt.
00:04:09.400
Now, of course, that didn't happen because somehow our team doesn't do those kinds of leaks.
00:04:12.720
That's always a Democrat left-wing thing when there's a leak of classified to hurt a commander-in-chief.
00:04:19.540
There's no way that this person could have had the level of visibility necessary to,
00:04:25.460
with a, remember, it's a low-confidence assessment.
00:04:27.280
Clay, I was in the room many times with people from DIA, CIA, NSA, go down the list, all of them,
00:04:34.460
and there was squabbling over who's right about very important, and we were at a war, right?
00:04:41.260
We were in the midst of a war, and, you know, things like, hey, could a surge in Baghdad work to stabilize things?
00:04:49.640
A lot of fighting and dissenting voices over that.
00:04:52.560
The notion that one person has the keys to the kingdom on the damage assessment is absurd.
00:04:59.840
It's just a political hit, and that's why they should go after the leaker.
00:05:06.920
This was from the Pentagon earlier today, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
00:05:17.560
8 a.m. Eastern time start for this to dominate the news cycle for the day.
00:05:23.380
Here's Hegseth blasting the press in particular for these leaks.
00:05:30.460
Because you, and I mean specifically you, the press, specifically you, the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard, it's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump.
00:05:44.800
But because you want him not to be successful so bad, you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes.
00:05:55.360
Maybe the way the Trump administration has represented them isn't true.
00:05:57.940
So let's take half-truths, spun information, leaked information, and then spin it, spin it in every way we can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the public mind over whether or not our brave pilots were successful.
00:06:16.280
How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don't know, fly a plane for 36 hours?
00:06:30.240
So that American people understand how about how difficult it is to shoot a drone from an F-15 or F-16 or F-22 or F-35?
00:06:40.860
Giving the American people an understanding of how complex and sophisticated this mission really was.
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There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that, because of the hatred of this press corps, are undermined.
00:06:55.180
Because people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful.
00:07:03.040
This sounds a little bit like Fox and Friends or a hit that Pete Hegseth is doing on Fox News.
00:07:09.720
And it's one reason, I think, that Trump wanted him in this position, because he is a very talented communicator.
00:07:16.980
And that matters in this world where you are really having to lace on the gloves and go head-to-head with the press every single day.
00:07:26.540
Here's cut three more on Hegseth saying the classified information, as you said, Buck, is leaked to try and harm Trump.
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Time and time again, classified information is leaked or peddled for political purposes to try to make the president look bad.
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And what's really happening is you're undermining the success of incredible B-2 pilots and incredible F-35 pilots and incredible refuelers and incredible air defenders who accomplished their mission.
00:07:54.340
Set back a nuclear program in ways that other presidents would have dreamed.
00:08:01.200
How about we talk about how special America is, that only we have these capabilities?
00:08:06.060
I think it's too much to ask, unfortunately, for the fake news.
00:08:10.520
But we also have an opportunity to stand at the podium and read the truth of what's really happening.
00:08:15.640
And the reality is you want to call it destroyed.
00:08:26.940
And it gives us a chance to have peace, chance to have a deal, an opportunity to prevent a nuclear Iran, which is something President Trump talked about for 20 years.
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00:08:38.900
I don't think we mentioned the New York Times getting upset about the fact that Hegseth praised our boys.
00:08:46.440
And so he was actually asked, we have this cut, and I couldn't believe it.
00:08:51.620
He was actually asked, why not acknowledge female pilots that participated instead of congratulating the boys?
00:09:00.860
Why not acknowledge the female pilots that also participated in this mission?
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The early messages that you sent out only congratulated the boys.
00:09:08.740
So when I say something like our boys in bombers, see, this is the kind of thing the press does, right?
00:09:13.180
Of course, the chairman mentioned a female bomber pilot.
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I hope the men and women of our country sign up to do such brave and audacious things.
00:09:24.080
But when you spin it as, because I say our boys in bombers is a common phrase, I'll keep saying things like that.
00:09:29.720
Whether they're men or women, very proud of that female pilot, just like I'm very proud of those male pilots.
00:09:34.820
And I don't care if it's a male or a female in that cockpit, and the American people don't care.
00:09:39.700
But it's the obsession with race and gender in this department that's changed priorities.
00:09:49.900
I mean, I can't believe that's a real question he got asked.
00:09:52.380
But it's good that we see that this is what the press still pretends is their job, right?
00:10:04.380
No one thinks that Pete Hegseth was undermining any woman who...
00:10:07.700
This is a bit like saying, hey, when you were talking, you said, hey, you guys, great job.
00:10:19.900
But I also think that what this shows you, Clay, is in these, you know, the media, the non-Fox media, the Democrat media, the non-aligned leftist media,
00:10:31.640
they have been making a lot of jokes about how Fox News essentially has staffed this Trump administration.
00:10:40.060
Now you've got people who are both qualified to do the job, people like Dan Bongino and Hegseth and others,
00:10:46.800
who are also really good at media and comms themselves.
00:10:51.240
And so if you think back to other times, we've had people who are running, you know, Department of Defense,
00:10:57.020
and we've had people who were in these kinds of cabinet-level positions.
00:11:00.960
Secretary of State, look at Secretary of State Rubio.
00:11:02.940
I mean, that guy might as well have been a Fox contributor for the last decade.
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He's been on Fox, you know, as much as anybody.
00:11:10.860
And so the ability that the media has to attack them, trip them up, undermine them,
00:11:15.180
and then focus on that instead of what's actually happening is vastly diminished.
00:11:22.960
Can you imagine being a Pentagon news reporter and we just had the strike that we did on Iran
00:11:29.660
and you get a limited amount of time to ask questions and a limited amount of things that you can even ask about
00:11:37.000
because they're only going to be whatever it is, five, six, seven people called on,
00:11:40.740
that that would be the thing that you went in as a Pentagon reporter to focus on was the fact that one female was there
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and said when he said the boys in the planes or whatever the heck it used to be, that that would be your focus.
00:11:57.620
This all makes sense, though, because their job, if you work for the Washington Post and you're in the Pentagon briefing room
00:12:03.880
or if you work for the New York Times and you're in the White House,
00:12:07.200
the only way you're going to get any attention and that your readership, which is hyper-partisan,
00:12:12.600
is going to like your reporting is if you manage to attack successfully, get them to stumble, get to pull some soundbite.
00:12:22.520
They don't actually care about the information.
00:12:25.740
They're not there to ask relevant, reasonable questions
00:12:29.500
and get back objective data for the American people.
00:12:37.360
And so if they don't do that, they're not actually serving the purposes of their paper.
00:12:42.780
I get the partisan attack dog thing, but to think that your audience is obsessed because he used the word boys.
00:12:57.540
She's been wagging her finger at people for saying, you guys, for the last 20 years.
00:13:08.000
And by the way, the New York Times got savaged in their live chat because they had a male reporter who said in real time,
00:13:17.420
hey, well, actually, you know, there was a girl.
00:13:20.400
Well, first of all, when the idea that boys and girls or guys or we all understand the concept.
00:13:28.040
I mean, I imagine it comes from the boys in the bombers is also a phrase boys in the boat, which was one of the bestselling books.
00:13:37.780
But is there are there any women that were actually offended by that?
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I just the fact that that would be a question that's asked of the secretary of defense in a limited public availability situation where he doesn't answer a lot of questions is actually even for left wing media.
00:14:08.020
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00:16:04.060
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00:16:07.280
Mamadani mania sweeping the Democrats all across this land of ours.
00:16:13.580
And we all know from yesterday that this guy, Zoran Mamadani, is the Democrat nominee for the mayor of New York City.
00:16:27.280
There are some long bomb in the end zone hopes.
00:16:41.460
Although, I think Cuomo now is just considered a loser.
00:16:44.180
The comeback, Clay, the comeback has not worked out the way that Cuomo wanted.
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The spaghetti and meatballs was not as good as he was hoping for.
00:17:00.180
I mean, I really thought that they had rolled out the red carpet for him.
00:17:03.660
I thought he was going to win the mayoral race and would then use it as the jumping off point to be a candidate in 2028.
00:17:13.420
I think he gave up the political ghost, so to speak, in that loss and the way that he lost.
00:17:19.520
So now, here's, again, I bring this to your attention because so go with New York City, so go with a lot of other Democrat cities, I think.
00:17:31.700
So if you live in Texas, you're like, well, that's New York's problem.
00:17:36.000
Yeah, but, you know, you live in a city like Houston or Dallas, which is Democrat majority, unfortunately.
00:17:42.620
You know, obviously, if you live in California, you're in a Democrat enclave statewide.
00:17:45.860
You know, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that will filter out from this.
00:17:52.140
And I think it's an interesting test case because you already have national level them.
00:18:07.140
You know, Bill Clinton, all of a sudden, giving his congratulations.
00:18:12.980
Just kidding, Khomeini didn't congratulate him, but it would have been funny if he had.
00:18:17.120
Khomeini did say that they've won the war, though.
00:18:26.520
Well, yeah, yeah, nothing really interesting there.
00:18:31.700
There's really a decision that's being made within the Democrat Party.
00:18:38.700
There's the AOC-Bernie pathway, and then there's the, you know, somebody who's the Democrat in charge of Kentucky.
00:18:49.160
You know, there's like the Beshear or the governor of Maryland or the, you know, there's that, like, I'm a Democrat, but I'm not like one of those crazy Democrats.
00:18:58.800
They'll do whatever Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi tell them, but they pretend not to be, right?
00:19:04.000
Right now, you've just had a big win go up on the board for the crazy AOC wing of the Democrat Party.
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00:19:09.940
And I understand you might say, Buck, they'll never be able to win a national election.
00:19:14.500
Kamala lost by, in the Electoral College, which is what matters, a couple hundred thousand votes, really.
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I'm not taking away from Trump's enormous victory.
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But if you were able to shift a couple hundred thousand votes in half a dozen states, really less than half a dozen states, Kamala Harris would have been president.
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So don't, let's not get complacent about the fact that the worst presidential candidate in my lifetime is somebody who wasn't that far.
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It was not like a, you know, Mondale absolute thrashing.
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This was something that was closer than it should have been.
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Now, let's, just because of why, I don't want you to think, oh, this is just New York City's problem.
00:20:00.600
This is, that's like saying Soros prosecutors were New York's problem.
00:20:06.060
They were in every major city in the country for a while.
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There were Soros prosecutors in St. Louis and in Philly and in L.A. and in Atlanta.
00:20:22.080
Clay, let's get into some of the crazy stuff here.
00:20:31.600
This guy says he wants to 800% increase hate, hate crime prevention.
00:20:38.840
I know that Jewish New Yorkers, like Jewish Americans, are fearful in this moment of anti-Semitism.
00:20:44.480
And ultimately, it's through the conversations I've had with Jewish New Yorkers that I have developed a proposal for the Department of Community Safety that would include an 800% increase in funding for hate crime prevention programs.
00:20:58.640
Because ultimately, we cannot simply say that anti-Semitism has no home in this city or no place in this country.
00:21:06.920
And that's what we will do through this funding and through this commitment.
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We will root out bigotry across the five boroughs.
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This is going to absolutely not work at all to stop any bigotry.
00:21:18.060
But it will be a way to fund left-wing indoctrination programs in community centers, schools, and all the rest of it.
00:21:27.500
And look, I think what you're saying is so important because a lot of people think, oh, New York City, that doesn't really impact my life in a substantial way.
00:21:37.380
I think who the mayor of New York City is impacts all of our lives, even if you live in the smallest town in Alabama or the most remote part of Utah.
00:21:49.140
The decisions made in New York City, given its primacy as the financial capital of the world, have a major resonance.
00:21:57.320
And the idea that New York City is going to potentially elect a guy like Mom Donnie should be a clarion call for sanity to ring forth.
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00:22:09.940
And I think maybe some of these parents that are subsidizing all their kids to live in New York City.
00:22:15.000
Producer Allie made a good point yesterday, but I do think it's true that a lot of Mom Donnie's voters are young, under 30s, who otherwise wouldn't be living in New York City.
00:22:27.360
But for the fact that their parents are helping to pay their rent and they have decided they like socialism.
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The parents like capitalism because that's how they can afford to take care of their kids.
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But I do think that there's a generational divide here.
00:22:42.460
And I think as you break all of this down, unfortunately, look, I don't know that the Democrat Party, this is a good question for you, Buck, is still in a powerful enough position that they would be able to knock out a Bernie Sanders candidacy now, that they would be able to knock out an AOC candidacy now.
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I think the party is so fractured and so broken and you might say, OK, well, that's good.
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I don't think it's a crazy idea that Bernie Sanders could, if he weren't 83 or 84 or whatever the heck he is, that he could catch fire.
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Someone like him could catch fire and end up as the president.
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I don't think it's a crazy, ridiculous idea.
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I watched a lot of these Mom Donnie videos and the guy is the guy is very slick.
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And a guy who just wants to talk to people, he did this whole video.
00:23:55.020
It's now gone pretty viral, Clay, where he goes around talking to like, you know, people call them like halal carts, like the meat, meat and rice carts that are in New York City.
00:24:11.740
And he has these guys, he goes right in and they're saying, oh, it's because of city permitting.
00:24:17.820
The city permitting process is corrupt and takes too long and it's too expensive.
00:24:24.800
You know, say what you will about the fact that he, you know, freezing.
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There's a whole, Bill Ackman has a whole takedown of this guy.
00:24:31.680
Freezing rent prices is just going to make the housing shortage worse.
00:24:36.060
Because it means that, you know, there are expenses that are already baked in and people have to build more.
00:24:39.980
And they don't want to build more if they can't actually charge the market rate.
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Anyway, so he's an economic illiterate, but he understands.
00:24:49.740
And he understands social media and how to connect with an audience.
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I, you know, don't sleep on this guy, everybody.
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You know, we have this thing, you know, and I know we've done this with AOC, too.
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Oh, you know, she's, but this guy doesn't strike me as dumb.
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But this is the other, you know, the option the Democrats have is to say, we're not going to go toward the center and try to reform our crazy.
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Oh, I think AOC sees this and says, I'm running for president now in 2028.
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You asked me right after this election, who's going to be the leader of the Democrat Party?
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I said, well, I said AOC at one point, and then I've also mentioned Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland.
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And then you get the AOC policies, but you get somebody who pretends to be something else during the election cycle.
00:25:55.580
I'm not sure the Democrat Party has the ability to slap down someone like Bernie Sanders if he were running today, which if I'm looking at AOC, I'm saying Mom Donnie just ran through.
00:26:13.100
You may think, and I certainly think, that AOC is economically illiterate and a moron.
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One, there's a huge audience for what she puts out on social media, and she's skilled at that.
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Now, I hope that her overall policies are so crazy and she would do such a poor job even of defending those policies that she would not be capable of winning an election.
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But I think you're starting to see that the Democrat Party had two pathways.
00:26:42.180
They could wake up and be somewhat more sane, or at least pretend to be more sane, and take the more moderate path as they move towards 2026 and 2028.
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Or they could double, triple, and quadruple down on crazy.
00:26:58.620
And it seems to me that the early returns, based on what we saw in New York City, are that they're going to double, triple, quadruple down on crazy.
00:27:06.240
And you know, now we're in a situation where Eric Adams is the savior of New York City, and that's only if they can get Cuomo to officially drop out,
00:27:18.160
if they can find a way to kind of corral this strange coalition that potentially he would be able to bring to bear.
00:27:25.780
And that would require black voters, interestingly, deciding that they had to show up in a monster number for Eric Adams in order to offset a lot of these young white voters that have fallen in love with socialism.
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So you've got Mamdani talking about the 800% increase in the anti-bigotry forces.
00:27:50.520
Not police, like I don't know what they're going to be.
00:27:55.000
Also, as we know, in New York, if you're talking about anti-Semitic or anti-Asian bigotry, you're probably not going to, if you're a leftist,
00:28:04.440
you're not going to like the demographics that are disproportionately targeting those groups.
00:28:08.840
This is just a matter of fact, a matter of numbers and data.
00:28:14.000
Here is, really at the heart of it, Mamdani saying that our criminal justice system, this is Cut 8, is just straight up racist.
00:28:21.480
The alternatives are things that we must look to immediately, both with regards to neighborhood groups who do anti-violence work and are shown to be more effective than the police.
00:28:32.520
But also asking, you know, if we have an understanding that our criminal justice system is racist, which is quite a general understanding now, it seems to be shared by many, many people,
00:28:44.480
then how can we simultaneously be investing in it as the way we both judge and determine the futures of so many people in our state?
00:28:51.920
Now, that was 2020, granted, but the criminal justice system in this country is actually not racist.
00:28:59.940
I know that this is something Democrats love to say, but the laws are the laws.
00:29:03.740
And we have talked about this before, and to me, the way that this gets destroyed is if you just push back.
00:29:11.820
Anybody who says this, just nod and say, super sexist, too.
00:29:16.660
Why are men charged with crimes at such higher rates?
00:29:27.100
Because they have to admit, yeah, men commit more murders.
00:29:33.140
Does that mean we should change the murder laws?
00:29:41.200
It's a good one to use on your kids or grandkids if they bring that home with you sometime.
00:29:45.480
Instead of immediately combating them there, say, you know what?
00:29:49.560
Why are men in prison at such higher rates than women?
00:29:52.680
I think maybe we need to go back and look at all of our laws.
00:29:58.940
By the time this day ends, another American family farm is going to be forced to close.
00:30:03.800
Not because they stop working hard and doing their best,
00:30:05.960
but because a lot of grocery stores aren't buying their meat anymore.
00:30:09.680
Over 85% of the grass-fed beef sold in the U.S. is imported.
00:30:17.900
That's why Clay and I get our meat from GoodRanchers.com.
00:30:21.840
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00:30:45.940
Get an extra $40 off your first box when you use my name, Buck, as your promo code at checkout.
00:31:09.880
White House Press Secretary, our friend Caroline Levitt, taking questions right now on the intel leaks surrounding the Iran operation.
00:31:20.880
We have been talking about the big decision that New York City is going to have.
00:31:36.300
This is the one in the forget file, Clay, okay?
00:31:39.780
This one didn't quite work out as we thought, but it's okay.
00:31:44.560
Let's pretend that you were giving advice to Andrew Cuomo.
00:31:48.520
Is it to now get behind Momdani and just kind of step off to the side, or is it to try to run as an independent and maybe have a secret deal behind the scenes?
00:32:03.440
Because if he runs as an independent and Eric Adams runs, then Momdani's definitely going to win because they will split the Momdani opposition vote.
00:32:13.660
I think he's a two-time loser, and that means the best thing that he can do is to get an agent and find his way onto an episode of Law & Order where he plays a probably elderly mobster or something along those lines.
00:32:31.440
I do not think that he has a future in New York politics anymore after this.
00:32:36.180
I don't see it because you can't win the—he'll just be playing spoiler at that point.
00:32:41.760
I mean, if I'm a New Yorker, and I'm New York adjacent in my heart, right?
00:32:46.240
I mean, if I'm a New Yorker still, though, voting—you know, I talk to my family about this all the time, and I want what's best for New York, not just for all of our fantastic WOR listeners and podcast listeners in the New York area.
00:33:01.900
So when we talk about safe streets in New York, I'm thinking about my mom, my dad, my sister.
00:33:06.980
I'm thinking about people who I love and mean a lot to me.
00:33:12.740
Now, in what way is Andrew Cuomo an improvement over Eric Adams?
00:33:21.400
And so that's where the—you've got a guy who's already mayor, already in the job, not horrible, okay?
00:33:29.720
You know, I think Eric Adams—and let me know, WOR listeners, if you want, if you think this is a fair grade.
00:33:36.440
I think he's a—you know, if de Blasio was an F, I think Mayor Eric Adams is probably a C minus, maybe a C, you know?
00:33:45.140
I think that's a fair—you know, he's not intentionally, maliciously destroying New York.
00:33:54.460
He was good on the issue—let's take a few things.
00:33:57.340
He tried to help on the crime issue, brought in somebody good here with Jesse Tisch to run the NYPD as commissioner.
00:34:04.040
He spoke out in a way that I think was really important for the Trump campaign, actually.
00:34:09.560
He didn't speak on behalf of them, but when he said, guys, we're flooded with all these migrants, this is crazy.
0.98
00:34:14.660
He was honest about that and said he didn't want any more.
00:34:16.940
So he did do some things that are—there's nothing I can—de Blasio did nothing that is good.
00:34:21.880
Everything de Blasio did was, in my mind, every decision he made was against the interests of New Yorkers.
00:34:27.440
And we can just forget about him, but, you know—didn't he run for president, by the way?
00:34:32.640
Wasn't he one of those guys who was like, I'm also on the stage?
00:34:38.080
So, Clay, I think that Eric Adams is the non-Mom Downey hope of New York now.
00:34:45.400
And people who are going to tell me, Buck, you can get behind Curtis Lewa.
00:34:53.300
We've had him on the show several times, right?
00:35:05.800
But you just had the most radical leftist win the Democrat primary.
00:35:10.260
You're not about to win over a lot of Democrats to be a Republican.
00:35:16.340
A part of me wonders whether there might be such a panic setting in among the Wall Street universe
00:35:22.260
that somebody with hundreds of millions of dollars, a la a Bloomberg, decides—
00:35:29.200
Ackman is by saying he's going to spend huge money.
00:35:34.460
We need to get him on the show because I think that would be an interesting conversation.
00:35:37.700
But he has been tweeting that there are people out there that he thinks he could help to persuade.
00:35:44.220
The challenge is whoever is opposed to Mom Donnie, everybody else has to drop out.
00:35:50.440
And there has to be one focal point of, hey, this is the guy or the gal, as the case may be,
00:35:57.520
who is going to go head-to-head against Mom Donnie, and everybody has to get behind this person.
0.99
00:36:04.560
My concern is I think Cuomo's ego is involved here now.
00:36:09.920
Eric Adams, I don't think there's any way he's going to drop out.
00:36:12.720
And then Curtis Sliwa, you start getting all these different groups, and it's hard to get to 50% plus one
00:36:22.540
when you've got this many different splintered individuals running.
00:36:28.700
De Blasio's presidential campaign, by the way, good research by Ali,
00:36:31.960
he ran from May 16, 2019 to September 20, 2019, spent $1.4 million,
00:36:40.380
and everybody just kind of laughed him out of the arena.
00:36:45.100
Because even New Yorkers were like, this is one of the craziest things we've ever seen,
0.97
00:36:49.940
But didn't the guy this unpopular would decide to run—
00:36:52.860
Did it Bill de Blasio make news most recently, Buck,
00:36:56.700
because he and his wife announced that they were going to basically have an open marriage?
00:37:03.260
I think I know this and tried to forget it because I don't really need to know this stuff,
00:37:07.900
but I believe there's something like that that has occurred, yeah.
00:37:11.820
They made a public statement that they were staying married,
00:37:14.380
but they were going to be with other people.
0.99
00:37:16.460
I mean, what a ridiculous guy that dude was.
0.99
00:37:20.500
The fact that he could get elected actually makes me terrified
0.99
00:37:27.220
is actually a super articulate, smart, charismatic guy
00:37:35.220
But he's not an unlikable person, if that makes sense.
00:37:38.680
He's wrong about everything, but not unlikable,
00:37:41.460
and also smart and savvy when it comes to trying to understand
00:37:48.600
Yes, I think that he's more formidable than a lot of people looking from the outside
00:37:54.500
are assessing right now, and that's something to keep in mind as we go forward.
00:37:59.760
So look, I'm totally, I hope I'm wrong on this one,
00:38:03.180
and I hope that this is something that, you know, that does not come to pass.
00:38:08.340
But here is, let me see, we've got Tom Homan laying down the law here.
00:38:17.820
You know, there's this whole separation of powers thing,
00:38:24.540
look, you can't kick ice out of New York, buddy.
00:38:29.260
He's vowed to kick the, quote, fascist ice out of New York City, okay?
00:38:36.600
Because I would guess there are going to be a lot of criminals
00:38:38.920
and Iranian cells and whatnot in New York City.
00:38:45.220
Federal law jumps him every day, every hour, every minute.
00:38:51.400
Matter of fact, because this is a sanctuary city,
00:38:53.500
President Trump made it clear a week and a half ago.
00:38:56.300
We're going to double down and triple down in sanctuary cities.
00:39:02.680
they release him in the streets like New York does every day.
00:39:05.040
We've got to send a whole team to look at this guy.
00:39:09.500
Yeah, that's going to be a showdown that I don't think is going to go well
00:39:13.920
I don't think that he wants to be on the other side of Tom Homan
00:39:17.580
on the immigration issue because, first of all, legally, Homan's right.
00:39:21.760
And second of all, if there's anything that looks like a showdown,
00:39:26.500
this Momdani guy is going to shrink away from that fight very quickly.
0.60
00:39:29.680
I'm not sure anybody in the entire Trump team is working harder right now
00:39:38.460
Stephen Miller, I mean, when we saw him, Stephen Miller looks like,
00:39:40.860
he looks like he lives on a cot on the White House floor right now.
00:39:46.420
There are a lot of guys who are working unbelievable hours
00:39:50.020
because they see this as the 18 months when Trump is able to be
00:39:54.060
his most effective and efficient version of himself.
00:39:56.620
But the amount of media that is out there that Tom Homan is doing
00:40:02.820
on a day-to-day basis and the amount of success that he is having
00:40:09.120
And I know we talk about this on this program and try to make sure
00:40:15.120
I'm not sure in our lives that there has ever been anything
00:40:19.900
that government has fixed faster and more effectively
00:40:25.740
When you consider historic failure under Biden and it was as if
00:40:32.240
a light switch just got flipped or got turned off,
00:40:35.780
whichever direction you want to go, and overnight everything changed
00:40:42.000
And you know that's the case because it suddenly isn't talked about anywhere.
00:40:46.900
But my goodness, this is the number one thing Trump said he would fix,
00:40:51.660
and they don't want to give him any credit for it.
00:40:54.180
But Tom Homan and the team and Stephen Miller is a part of this too.
00:40:59.320
I also want to bring this to your attention again because I know we talk about this
00:41:03.880
and it's like, oh, we're so New York focused and Buck's from New York.
00:41:06.480
And maybe that's why a lot of people are focusing on this all over the country right now
00:41:10.620
because it's a playbook that I think you're going to see replicated elsewhere
00:41:15.280
and you could even see replicated in the 2028 election cycle,
00:41:18.980
which I know feels like an eternity away, but it's not.
00:41:22.660
And socialist Mamdani, Kami Mamdani, this is Cut10, is saying,
00:41:32.080
This absolutely will work in other cities, in other states across America.
00:41:38.740
Do you think that is a platform that would work for other candidates running
00:41:44.880
I think ultimately this is a campaign about inequality.
00:41:48.940
inequality and you don't have to live in the most expensive city in the country
00:41:52.120
to have experienced that inequality because it's a national issue.
00:41:55.840
And what Americans coast to coast are looking for are people who will fight for them.
00:42:00.700
And part of how we got to this point was through the endorsements of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
00:42:05.720
and Senator Bernie Sanders, who've been leading this fight against oligarchy across the country.
00:42:10.540
And I think that in focusing on working people and their struggles,
00:42:14.300
we also return back to what makes so many of us proud to be Democrats in the first place.
00:42:22.240
Clay, I think you will see more people try to play this.
00:42:27.520
Remember, the whole thing about socialism is that all you have to do,
00:42:30.420
you find as many people as possible who are unhappy with some aspect of their day-to-day life
00:42:35.520
and you tell them it's not your fault, there's nothing that you can do to change this,
00:42:42.000
I'm going to hurt those other people, usually financially, sometimes more than that,
00:42:46.000
but I'm going to hurt those other people and take their stuff and give it to you
00:42:58.800
On the right, we yell socialism and act like it's some kind of argument ender.
00:43:04.060
A lot of people, especially Gen X and Gen Z, they love their socialism.
00:43:09.280
They don't know what it is, but it sounds good to them.
00:43:11.480
The biggest flaw of capitalism is it provides the wealth and luxury
00:43:20.220
It's just the lesson out there is you have to have the freedom and the time
00:43:26.300
and the wealth in order to make these arguments.
00:43:28.540
And I look at those Mom Donnie celebration partners,
00:43:31.120
those aren't poor kids celebrating Mom Donnie winning.
00:43:34.680
That is not people struggling to put food in their mouths.
00:43:41.020
I used to socialize in New York with a lot of people
00:43:44.180
that would fall into the Mom Donnie category.
0.71
00:43:47.440
But, Clay, you know, I often mention Naval Ravikant.
00:43:51.120
I just thought this was a perfect one-liner on this whole situation.
00:44:03.960
If there are people that have more than me, people that are doing more than me,
00:44:08.420
people that are happier and enjoying more than me,
00:44:11.080
I want a system of power that will pull them down and promises to pull me up.
00:44:17.480
And even if it doesn't pull me up, as long as it pulls them down, I'll be happy.
00:44:23.420
This is why I thought sports was such an important battleground,
00:44:32.620
And as soon as they can start to create the idea that there's something wrong with that
00:44:37.960
or that a boy can be a girl's champ and all this other stuff,
00:44:40.720
they destroy the underbelly of much of success in the meritocracy in the country,
00:44:46.960
I made this argument, something fun for you guys to think about.
00:44:50.620
Is there anything more trusted in America today than the scoreboard?
00:44:58.640
And where everybody sits around and argues about everything,
00:45:04.740
if it's a little bit off, everybody's standing up like,
00:45:09.220
Now, you may be upset with officials every now and then,
00:45:11.700
but I would argue that the scoreboard might be the most trusted symbol in America today,
00:45:18.040
that we trust it to be able to tell us who's winning and who's losing.
00:45:21.720
And at the end of a game, everybody says, you know what?
00:45:30.300
He joined the United States Marine Corps after being inspired by his grandfather,
00:45:38.140
but his life would change forever during a training exercise.
00:45:44.540
The incident resulted in a brain injury that left James blind
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a specially adapted smart home to enable him to live more independently.
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the lives of America's heroes and their families are being improved.
00:46:07.340
James Carey and so many other service members and first responders
00:46:10.720
have paid a high price to keep our country and our community safe.
00:46:20.220
America's heroes need your help now more than ever.
00:46:25.720
Donate $11 a month to Tunnel to Towers at T2T.org.
00:46:47.260
And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:47:06.160
Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio
00:47:13.020
I've met a ton of you up here in Northern Michigan.
00:47:18.720
please don't say positive things about it up here because it's getting so crowded.
00:47:29.960
News Talk 580 has been taking care of us every single day here this week.
00:47:38.860
I'm sitting here in a jacket because it's only like 65 degrees today.
00:47:43.620
But new affiliate that we have up here in Traverse City, Michigan, WTCM 580.
00:47:52.400
A couple of cuts that I want to play for you because I think they kind of get at
00:47:56.700
the failures that CNN in general has been having.
00:48:03.620
every evening they just have sort of the Star Wars universe of crazy left
00:48:12.320
And Jamal Bowman, who lost his Democrat primary and no longer has a job, was on.
00:48:19.880
He is the guy who pulled the fire alarm and was defeated in the New York City area district,
00:48:27.380
Here he is saying, and I want to get Buck's reaction to this, that he was confronted on the street and heckled.
00:48:36.020
And this is what he has to deal with on a regular basis.
00:49:14.460
And it's one of these things you can never prove or disprove.
00:49:17.720
I don't believe that somebody went up to him in Yonkers.
00:49:22.240
the guy yelled like this is a MAGA country or whatever.
00:49:26.620
I just don't buy very often big dudes being confronted by probably small.
00:49:36.260
if the guy who confronted Jamal Bowman would have to be a heavyweight boxer or an NFL defensive lineman to be appreciably bigger than Jamal Bowman.
00:49:48.160
I don't think most people know who Jamal Bowman is.
00:49:53.440
I don't think most people in New York city have any idea who he is.
00:49:57.360
So the percentage of people that would hate him enough to taunt him face to face and know him is what?
00:50:12.640
And then they responded because you're supposed to think,
00:50:15.940
I guess that someone came after him because he's Jamal Bowman.
00:50:21.160
maybe he was having a loud speakerphone conversation or doing something that sets people off.
00:50:26.500
I gave somebody on my plane ride over to France clay,
00:51:01.340
And he kind of stared me down for a second and realized like,
00:51:10.580
So he gave them back to you at the end of the trip.
00:51:14.180
rolled them up nicely and gave them back to me at the end.
00:51:17.900
I'm going to carry an extra set of headphones in public places and offer
00:51:22.000
headphones to people who are on the side of barbarism and think that we want to hear
00:51:27.300
your cell phone conversation or your iPad noises or whatever it is.
00:51:31.680
This is funny because on my flight up to Michigan with the Travis boys,
00:51:36.640
my oldest son wanted to watch Trump's address about the bombing of Iran did not have wireless
00:51:49.160
And my wife who was in the row in front of us turned around and complained about
1.00
00:51:55.340
our oldest son making too much noise while he was watching Trump's address.
00:52:00.180
So she would have certainly appreciated if you would had an extra pair of
00:52:05.900
That is Jamal Bowman claiming that he's a victim.
00:52:08.500
This also always reminds me what there are people who behave awfully towards famous
00:52:16.460
people, but the idea that the Jussie Smollett, this is MAGA country, the number of Trump voters
00:52:24.320
who knew who Jussie Smollett is or was in that era was zero.
00:52:33.160
The number of Trump voters watching Empire frequently enough that they knew who Jussie
00:52:38.740
Smollett was, that they would feel compelled to not only know who he was, but know his
00:52:47.080
So one of the craziest stories on a freezing cold winter night to lie in wait with a noose.
00:52:54.060
And some kind of thing to spray on him because you're that angry about Jussie Smollett who
00:52:59.360
nobody who voted for Trump had any idea whom he was.
00:53:04.660
And you would think that the media might have actually questioned some of that, particularly
00:53:10.580
because our good friend Jake Tapper wants all of you to know what the role of the media
00:53:17.780
So you got CNN Jamal Bowman saying he's getting taunted because of who he is.
00:53:21.700
Here is Jake Tapper lecturing everyone about what it is the job of the media really is.
00:53:28.420
Asking questions is literally our job, demanding facts and answers instead of just taking a
00:53:38.180
No, that's actually that's actually not their job, though.
00:53:40.700
This is the this is where I have a really I have a big bone to pick with with all these
00:53:47.100
We have seen what their job is, depending on where they work.
00:53:50.240
The job of a CNN employee is to tell Democrats in the audience what they want to hear and
00:53:56.420
to hurt Republicans in terms of public perception in every way that they can.
00:54:07.480
This it's to ask questions and get the truth to the people.
00:54:11.220
That is a lie that is meant to cover for the actual job, which is to tell Democrats what
00:54:17.720
they want to hear and attack Republicans in every way you can.
00:54:22.340
Let's pretend that suddenly you or I were in charge of CNN and they said, hey, we've
00:54:40.500
If Megan Kelly, who obviously had a very successful show on Fox News, look at you, look at you.
0.95
00:54:48.120
She was always great to me in my career and everything else.
00:54:50.400
But she's always number one on your list for who's going to be the top of CNN.
0.59
00:54:53.380
I think she's the smartest, most talented person in digital space that I don't work with.
00:55:12.080
So but the question here is, let's pretend that I am running CNN and I say, hey, I want
00:55:22.240
We can't have this stenographer for the Democrat powerful anymore.
00:55:29.400
Could Megan Kelly, who I think I'm just telling you, I think is the most talented, independent
00:55:39.980
Would she be able to produce an audience or CNN's brand so broken that even if you put
00:55:46.620
somebody who's good at television and good at doing a show, people wouldn't respond to
00:55:53.800
In other words, how salvageable do you think it is?
00:55:56.520
You would have to accept that during the change process from being a Democrat propaganda outlet,
00:56:04.500
that you would lose a lot of audience and then have to rebuild audience.
00:56:11.060
The audience of CNN right now does not want anything to be told to them that is outside
00:56:19.440
of what the DNC would approve and send themselves.
00:56:25.080
And so you would have to accept that there would be that painful ratings transition period.
00:56:30.420
And then I think you could build into something else.
00:56:34.240
But that's, you know, that's a risk that executives at these places are very rarely willing to
00:56:44.420
I think CNN will exist in kind of the way that ABC News and some of these places.
00:56:50.840
They'll have some audience, but a shadow of their former.
00:56:54.240
Now, ABC News still has a pretty big TV audience, but it's a shadow of what it was 20 or 30 or 30
00:57:00.740
So I think that that's where I don't think CNN is going to be able to turn this thing
00:57:04.500
I just look at it purely from a business market perspective.
00:57:09.280
If Fox News has around 70 percent of the news audience on cable and it does and it's got
00:57:19.960
Because that leaves 30 percent MSNBC, whatever you think about them, has the left wing angle
00:57:32.860
And I was there and observed this when it happens.
00:57:35.520
CNN under Jeff Zucker's leadership, if you can call it that, ignominiously ended in scandal.
00:57:43.240
CNN decided to become MSNBC with different letters, anti-Trumpism, completely crazy, treat
0.97
00:57:52.760
all the actual conservatives who would have come on your air like trash.
0.96
00:58:00.180
And so that space that they were at least theoretically occupying of somewhere in between Fox and MSNBC
00:58:22.980
I mean, if you had told me if you had told me when the Tea Party was getting their thing
00:58:27.360
going, don't worry, one day not only will Trump call CNN fake news to their faces, but
00:58:31.680
he'll essentially destroy the death star of propaganda that is CNN.
00:58:41.980
And again, they only have about 10 or 15 percent of the overall news marketplace.
00:58:46.960
And you know what what it really comes through.
00:58:49.800
It used to be when big news happened, people would turn on CNN because they trusted them
00:58:58.020
I still think about CNN back in the day of Bernard Shaw and the Scud Stud, whatever that
00:59:02.860
guy's name was during the first Gulf War, when that really made CNN's brand as somebody
00:59:11.160
Now they don't even get turned on when big news happens.
00:59:14.200
Fox News, I think, had four point nine million viewers when the Iran attacks happened.
00:59:21.540
And it just feels like CNN is in a terminal decline.
00:59:25.640
And I wonder at this point if there's anything they could do to change the trajectory that
00:59:32.140
And I don't know that they could, but I would be trying to undertake radical change, I think,
00:59:39.300
Yeah, I mean, it would have to be, you know, when you're doing a you're doing some housing
00:59:44.020
construction stuff, but when you're doing a renovation and people say, I'm going to tear
00:59:48.500
it down to the studs, CNN really needs to be torn down to the studs.
1.00
00:59:52.980
You need to get all the way, you know, get all the way into the drywall and really pull
01:00:00.120
You can't just do a little coat of paint and call it a day.
01:00:03.320
That's totally what's, by the way, happening with the intelligence agencies right now, too.
01:00:10.860
If you consider yourself pro-life, and I certainly do, here's something to pay attention to.
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Wade, which was the correct Supreme Court decision three years ago, the number of abortions increased
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That translates to over 100,000 additional babies' lives lost in just one year.
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The team working at pre-born clinics are on the front lines advocating for these unborn babies
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Pre-born clinics are strategically located in the country's highest abortion areas, ready
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to support women making decisions about their babies' futures.
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Through compassionate, love, loving care, and free ultrasounds, pre-born helps women connect
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To donate, dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby.
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That's pound 250, say baby, or visit preborn.com slash buck, preborn.com slash B-U-C-K.