Verdict with Ted Cruz - BONUS! Daily Review with Clay and Buck - May 15 2025

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.560 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.420 Welcome, everybody.

00:00:05.600 Thursday edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show kicks off right now.

00:00:11.140 And we have so much to discuss with you, as is always the case here.

00:00:15.200 We've got the Trump trip to the Middle East.

00:00:18.380 He spoke to U.S. troops in Qatar and talking about what we're doing for the military these days.

00:00:24.540 More on the border, more on what's going on with the Trump administration's efforts to secure the border.

00:00:34.960 And that includes interior enforcement of our laws.

00:00:38.920 The left is still very upset about the South African refugees, which is not a surprise.

00:00:47.560 But remember, 50 of them.

00:00:49.100 There's 50.

00:00:49.660 It's really just, if nothing else, they find it so outrageous and insulting.

00:00:55.580 And it goes to some broader and very important arguments that everybody should be aware of,

00:00:59.820 which is that Democrats have been trained to believe that you cannot be white and be oppressed anywhere.

00:01:06.520 That's a remarkable position, but that really is, in fact, their position.

00:01:10.480 White people are not oppressed anywhere in the world.

00:01:12.320 That is not a possibility.

00:01:13.940 They generally believe that about Christians, too.

00:01:15.920 You know, even in places like Pakistan, or it doesn't matter, Christians can't be oppressed.

00:01:20.280 Saudi Arabia, Christians aren't oppressed.

00:01:21.940 You know, it's all fine.

00:01:23.040 So we'll discuss some of those details with you.

00:01:26.400 You know, I find that to be a very important, important case study.

00:01:32.120 We've also got, I listened all morning, Clay, and it was very, I was in charge of the baby for a while.

00:01:39.200 I was taking care of baby, listening to Supreme Court arguments, trying to stay in the zone, you know, make sure baby's good,

00:01:45.460 make sure I'm hearing all the process and all the back and forth over the Supreme Court.

00:01:50.040 And it's about the birthright citizenship executive order.

00:01:54.340 Clay, you and I should talk about this a little bit.

00:01:55.640 I'll tell you what I heard, what I picked up, and you can tell me, you know, where you think this is all going

00:01:59.640 and what's really happening here.

00:02:00.860 It's a lot of process talk on a huge case that if it goes against the Trump administration eventually,

00:02:08.840 today was really just on the injunction, what should happen now.

00:02:14.060 It's not a final or it's not a final decision by any means.

00:02:18.280 They haven't even heard the merits of the case, but this case, state of New Jersey coming forward to say,

00:02:24.900 well, we are so harmed and this is so obviously outrageous that you have to do things right now

00:02:30.460 to stop this before you even hear the merits and it gets to universal injunctions, a lot of legally stuff.

00:02:35.760 We'll talk about it.

00:02:36.840 But wow, the Biden decline cover up is something that people, I think, are seeing now, Clay,

00:02:43.520 that we have more and more details about this that are coming out.

00:02:48.700 It's even I don't know if it's worse than we thought because we all knew and it was as bad as I think it could have been,

00:02:54.100 but it was as bad as we thought it was going to be.

00:02:57.400 And I also think that they're realizing that they're going to have to take their medicine on this.

00:03:02.840 People are not buying the arguments on it.

00:03:06.200 We've got a whole lot more information about like the incoherent mumblings of Biden, all of this kind of stuff.

00:03:13.740 What do you make of this?

00:03:15.240 Because it has really taken over the news cycle.

00:03:17.760 Um, yes.

00:03:20.080 So today's revelations are so so let me take a step back.

00:03:25.840 It is Thursday.

00:03:27.240 The book comes out on Tuesday.

00:03:29.520 It seems to me quite clear that they have decided, hey, we're going to have a new bad revelation every day between now and publication day.

00:03:39.900 And I sort of think that there must be something truly explosive that they are holding for Monday or Tuesday.

00:03:49.280 That's even worse than what we've seen already.

00:03:51.520 So just a refresher on what we've seen.

00:03:54.880 George Clooney says that Biden didn't recognize him.

00:03:58.560 They debated having to put him in a wheelchair.

00:04:01.540 Today's revelations are many of Biden's top advisers.

00:04:06.820 He couldn't remember their names.

00:04:08.720 This is pretty crazy stuff.

00:04:12.280 I mean, even for us to I thought, hey, you know, Biden's pretty bad.

00:04:18.940 I didn't think that he would be forgetting his top advisers names.

00:04:24.680 And this is where I think it's even getting worse than maybe anyone thought that it could be.

00:04:33.140 Does that make sense?

00:04:33.660 So much of what you how you react is expectations.

00:04:36.520 If your kid, generally speaking, is a C student and he gets a D, you might be like, ah, man, what are you doing?

00:04:47.440 You can do better than that.

00:04:48.860 If you're a student gets a D, you're like you're grounded.

00:04:53.860 You're not.

00:04:54.300 What are you doing in your life, right?

00:04:56.640 You react differently based on what you expect from people.

00:05:00.900 And this this is the story.

00:05:04.020 According to the New York Post.

00:05:06.520 Biden couldn't recall his top aides names when they were in front of him.

00:05:12.000 This is like, oh, man, this is staggering, including Donilon, the guy who was his advisor since the 1980s.

00:05:22.840 He forgot his name in 2019 during the 2020 presidential campaign.

00:05:28.660 Well, that's what's what's so important here is I assume that this is before you and I were teamed up on this show.

00:05:36.560 I'd said on my show during the Democrat primary many times on the air, it can't be Joe Biden, guys.

00:05:42.440 He has clear dementia.

00:05:44.520 Yeah.

00:05:45.000 2019.

00:05:46.160 OK, it was obvious to anybody who was paying attention that he had already declined substantially.

00:05:53.640 What they're trying to pull now, I think their only hope of escaping with any integrity at all, this sort of journalistic blob in D.C.

00:06:01.260 in particular is, oh, the decline was so rapid.

00:06:05.580 It happened so quickly.

00:06:07.000 He was fine until the election year or thereabouts.

00:06:10.380 But that's also not true.

00:06:12.740 Correct.

00:06:13.180 Called him dementia Joe for four years.

00:06:15.120 I used to sit here and, you know, in 2021 and 2022, I'd say, hey, Joe Biden should be out somewhere sitting on a park bench, feeding the ducks.

00:06:23.900 And yet he is commander in chief.

00:06:26.100 We all knew we all said it.

00:06:28.560 And now what comes out is everything that we it's this is a little bit like covid deja vu for those of us that are everything that we said and every joke we made and every snarky comment we dropped out of frustration that there were so many lies is 100 was 100 percent accurate.

00:06:44.900 It was the absolute truth.

00:06:46.200 And here are a couple of details.

00:06:48.860 Jake Sullivan was a longtime Biden aide multiple times in 2022 in public, meaning a lot of people knew Joe Biden called him Steve. 0.71

00:07:02.940 He does kind of look like a Steve, you know, and it is kind of funny and ridiculous. 0.64

00:07:08.240 But this is the president of the United States. 0.79

00:07:12.640 I'm not great with names.

00:07:14.100 I screw up names all the time.

00:07:16.160 I am not name guy.

00:07:18.000 Some of you may be out there that I have screwed up.

00:07:20.680 I am not good with names.

00:07:22.200 But if you don't know your top advisors names, he called him Steve, beckoned for him to come over and Jake Sullivan, who is out there publicly saying Biden is sharp as attack, by the way, someone someone's going to show up with a video where Biden in the oval is is looking right at Jake Sullivan.

00:07:44.200 But he's like, surely I told you not to burn the toast again.

00:07:47.800 He's just this is going to get really bad.

00:07:50.060 Imagine in that room.

00:07:51.140 He calls Steve, Steve, get over here.

00:07:53.960 And everybody's like looking around because there is no Steve.

00:07:57.120 And then he called him Steve again.

00:07:59.680 He also called his top assistant and current spokeswoman, Kate Bedingfield, press.

00:08:08.020 Like these are people that are close to Biden.

00:08:10.860 OK, and this is where I come back.

00:08:14.360 Sullivan, by the way, started to work for Biden in 2013.

00:08:18.240 So he had been with him for a decade at that point.

00:08:21.280 Kate Bedingfield started with the vice president in 2015.

00:08:24.760 So we're talking about decade long relationships of people in close proximity to you.

00:08:29.820 Of course, these are the these are the top people in the White House.

00:08:33.220 Clay, can you imagine, you know, if Trump was in his first term, if he had if he had like looked at Ivanka and called her, you know, Cheryl or Susie or whatever.

00:08:46.700 Right.

00:08:47.620 Yeah, it would have been it would have been a huge story.

00:08:50.180 And everybody would have been in.

00:08:51.040 Oh, my gosh, he's got the nuclear codes.

00:08:52.860 And what are we going to do?

00:08:53.760 And he's the commander in chief.

00:08:54.760 These people all knew they all knew what was going on and they hid this, even though we all knew what was going on.

00:09:03.480 And what's amazing is that you still had how many millions of people vote for Kamala and think that this was all fine and this was a better option.

00:09:11.960 And like when you actually look at it, it is terrifying that so many Democrats were like, you know what?

00:09:18.100 It's OK to try the dementia puppet thing.

00:09:20.460 Let's go with Kamala now. 1.00

00:09:21.720 Like, well, this was this is the biggest is it the biggest political?

00:09:26.540 I mean, I got to think now, I'm like, hmm, there's some Trump stuff with the prosecutions.

00:09:30.740 This is in some ways the most outrageous, though, because it is such an insult to our intelligence.

00:09:35.320 They were insulting the intelligence of the American people in a way that we've never really seen before.

00:09:39.600 The insult that the insult now is the press trying to cover up and say, how could we have possibly known?

00:09:46.640 And what the answer is somehow at least half of America watch these videos.

00:09:50.980 But it wasn't just that they said you were they knew.

00:09:55.580 But so they lied intentionally and attacked people like you and me.

00:09:59.200 I mean, there are headlines still out there of us pointing out Biden's physical and mental frailty.

00:10:04.820 And you had guys like Scarborough.

00:10:06.900 I mean, Sharp, you've known him for 50 years.

00:10:09.480 And this is the best version of Biden.

00:10:11.640 I mean, this is like this is where you realize your is somewhat criminal, I think, Buck, which I haven't heard very many people talk about.

00:10:18.200 But if you allow someone to be in a position of power who has dementia, it is, I think, criminal negligence on the part of the advisers to have permitted this to occur.

00:10:28.820 Well, what's the statute?

00:10:30.520 I mean, you've got to tell me what crime they committed.

00:10:32.360 I mean, I agree with you.

00:10:33.300 It's it's a betrayal of the country.

00:10:34.900 It's reckless beyond words. 1.00

00:10:36.220 But being being dishonest morons, unfortunately, that they've got to lock up a lot of D.C. 1.00

00:10:41.040 If that's well, you go under oath, as many of these people did and say Biden is fine. 1.00

00:10:47.240 He sharp is attack.

00:10:48.480 I mean, there's pretty ample evidence now that many of those people were saying that.

00:10:53.080 Yes.

00:10:53.340 I mean, if you're going to get people on perjury, that's the statute.

00:10:55.940 Yeah.

00:10:56.200 If that's the case.

00:10:57.040 I mean, at a minimum, you could get them on perjury.

00:10:59.940 But I mean, this would be a great question for a U.S. attorney if if there is a conspiracy to cover up the health of the president of the United States, who is unable to do the job.

00:11:13.200 And remember when Hillary said there was a vast right wing conspiracy and everybody kind of ridiculed it about Bill Clinton.

00:11:18.980 I think it is clear at this point that there was a vast left wing conspiracy to conceal Joe Biden's dementia.

00:11:27.920 And there were many people who knew about this and chose to lie publicly, sometimes under oath, about his fitness to be president of the United States.

00:11:39.840 I mean, the irony here, Buck, is all these people lectured us about being on the right side of history.

00:11:45.320 And I believe they engaged in the most indefensible act in the White House that any of us, by and large, have seen in any of our lives.

00:11:54.980 We could also just do we could do a supercut of and I mean, some of these exact individuals that you're talking about whose names were forgotten by.

00:12:03.980 And it's not, you know, when we're talking about Biden forgetting a name, it's not, you know, somebody saying something and then correcting themselves a second later.

00:12:13.500 It's he probably had a conversation with the person with that name, having no idea what the difference is because he has dementia.

00:12:18.200 OK, because his brain is not functioning the way that it used to.

00:12:21.560 And all of these people, though, Clay, were making the case when Trump was in office that we should invoke this one that his advisor should invoke the 25th Amendment on Donald Trump.

00:12:30.940 They all know what the 25th Amendment is.

00:12:33.840 If this was not the time to invoke the 25th Amendment, why do we have it?

00:12:38.180 Why is it even on the books?

00:12:41.820 Is there a more clear cut case in the history of this country while that amendment has been in force when it should have been used?

00:12:49.520 No.

00:12:50.440 And yet they they used it as a political weapon against Trump and not as a tool to help the country and do their duty by the American people.

00:13:00.060 This is this is catastrophic, man.

00:13:02.700 I mean, this the the amount of of credibility and integrity and decency that has been just lit on fire in front of everybody, not just you, me, the right wingers, anybody with a brain who's paying attention knows this is terrible.

00:13:17.320 What they tell you this.

00:13:19.640 Sorry to cut you off, Buck, but I'm the more I read about this, the more fired up I get.

00:13:24.720 We had congressional hearings about January 6th.

00:13:27.920 Why would Republicans not have hearings and an investigation into Joe Biden's dementia and the cover up that Democrats provided for it and call all of these people under oath and make them testify about what they saw based on some of the revelations that are coming out in this book?

00:13:45.460 Tell me why that wouldn't make sense.

00:13:47.820 Yeah, makes sense to me.

00:13:49.460 We have some people.

00:13:50.120 Have you heard anybody suggest it?

00:13:51.560 I haven't heard anybody suggest it.

00:13:52.980 But I mean, if you use Jan 6th as an argument, that's the worst day since the Civil War.

00:13:58.060 That's what Joe Biden, Kamala Harris tried to say.

00:14:00.580 Where does this rank covering up the president's dementia for years in incredible danger that our country faced?

00:14:08.120 Not to mention who was the actual president?

00:14:10.700 Well, we also need to know.

00:14:11.880 And there have been people raising the issue of the auto pen and its usage.

00:14:16.600 Now, a lot of people use auto pens.

00:14:18.260 It's not that there was an auto pen used by a president.

00:14:20.780 It's did the president actually know that his signature was going on these things?

00:14:25.340 Right.

00:14:25.860 You know, if your wife says, sign my check and she says, that's fine. 0.74

00:14:29.340 It's not forgery.

00:14:30.240 Like, you're not going to get in trouble for it.

00:14:31.600 Right.

00:14:32.400 If you're signing checks and you're giving yourself money and people don't know.

00:14:36.060 And that's that's not OK.

00:14:37.580 And the same thing would apply to the president.

00:14:40.220 I mean, you're so right here.

00:14:41.980 And I mean, there is significant examination, for instance, in contract rights.

00:14:47.300 Did someone understand?

00:14:49.280 Did they have the wherewithal to bind themselves or a corporation to a contract based on their signature if they were not of sound mind to be engaging in it?

00:14:59.860 In other words, if you are in this is an insane asylum, you can't sign away the property value of your house.

00:15:07.440 You lack the functional ability to do that.

00:15:10.720 It sounds to me like Biden did for most of his tenure.

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00:16:13.700 Making America great again isn't just one man, it's many.

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00:16:58.820 I know a lot of you are always saying to us, make sure we focus on what Trump is doing.

00:17:04.880 And we will continue to do that today.

00:17:07.260 We try to do it every day.

00:17:08.320 The good news is he's just got so much going that is in progress.

00:17:11.960 We're updating you on it in the Middle East and the deals he's trying to accomplish there.

00:17:16.880 We'll have more of the specifics when he gets back.

00:17:21.420 Obviously, while he's over there, some of these things are still being negotiated.

00:17:24.740 But we do know that there is reporting that Iran wants a deal on the nuclear program with Trump.

00:17:30.980 Can Trump figure out something with Iran that is, look, we want Iran not to have nukes,

00:17:39.500 and we want to not have to go to war or engage in an extended aerial campaign that could lead into war against Iran.

00:17:47.500 We're trying to accomplish both of those things if possible.

00:17:50.060 Well, that's what Trump is trying to accomplish.

00:17:51.800 No war in the Middle East, no nuclear Iran. 0.73

00:17:54.960 And be confident in that.

00:17:56.560 Be certain in that degree.

00:17:58.360 You can be certain in anything.

00:17:59.300 And we'll see if Trump is able to pull that off.

00:18:02.020 It's so funny, Clay.

00:18:02.760 He may, in fact, be worth, by the end of this administration, maybe by the end of this year,

00:18:09.480 the Nobel Peace Prize several times over.

00:18:12.240 They will never give it to him.

00:18:15.460 Never, ever.

00:18:16.820 Because that is just going right into the heart of the international elite.

00:18:22.000 They will never give him the Nobel Peace Prize, even though, well, that's why it's kind of become a joke.

00:18:26.420 But we are watching this closely.

00:18:29.360 You're also noticing we're not talking too much about the economy this week.

00:18:32.040 That's because, hey, how's your 401k looking?

00:18:35.780 Clay over there with his French cuff shirts with the monograms and the stock ticker behind him.

00:18:41.460 I can just see it right now.

00:18:42.780 We've got to get, like, a separate set for you on radio where Clay's like, all right, guys, we're talking stocks.

00:18:46.880 He said don't sell.

00:18:48.640 If anything, buy.

00:18:50.140 It was good advice.

00:18:51.520 It was good advice.

00:18:52.680 And I will tell you about it.

00:18:53.500 Great advice.

00:18:54.000 I actually did buy the dip, and it was a good move.

00:18:58.920 Stocks are up for the year.

00:19:00.800 That's the thing you need to know.

00:19:02.260 And you know things have gotten a lot better because they don't put the stock ticker up on CNN.

00:19:07.820 They don't put the stock ticker up on MSNBC.

00:19:10.420 It is such a dishonest thing that when the stocks were going down, that was the lead story.

00:19:15.980 Price of eggs.

00:19:16.800 Let me hit you with this buck. 1.00

00:19:18.720 Price of gas. 0.90

00:19:20.900 Nobody talking about it.

00:19:22.580 Last night, I went to an MLS game.

00:19:25.700 $2.65.

00:19:27.540 I drove past a Nashville-area gas station.

00:19:31.680 $2.65.

00:19:33.320 It is continuing to come down, even as we typically, gas prices go up in the summer.

00:19:38.460 People drive more.

00:19:39.340 That's a general rule.

00:19:40.820 It's down by half compared to what it was in the summer of 2022 with Joe Biden.

00:19:47.400 Virtually zero media discussion.

00:19:49.480 That's how most people recognize what the price of goods is.

00:19:54.520 That's the thing they see and adjust and see price changing constantly.

00:19:58.920 Gas prices, four-year lows.

00:20:01.700 You know, and part of this, I think, is whether you're – when you're reporting on the news,

00:20:05.820 you have to focus on what is important and you look for what is in conflict in those important areas, right?

00:20:11.840 So the economy, should we be spending more or how's the market going or where's unemployment

00:20:16.600 and what can be done to change this and what are the policies?

00:20:19.020 The opposition to Trump on these things right now is so weak as to be not even really worthy of time.

00:20:27.320 That's just the truth.

00:20:28.520 They're not mounting any real arguments against it.

00:20:31.780 So we're updating you on what he's doing at some level because that's the only show in town and it's going well, right?

00:20:38.300 If it was – and when things were rough, what did we say?

00:20:40.980 Okay, the market's down.

00:20:42.100 It's going to be choppy.

00:20:43.160 This is going to require a reset.

00:20:45.100 But we think he knows what he's doing, trust in this, and sure enough, here we are.

00:20:49.200 So I just give you all that because we're watching – trust me, all Clay and I do is read the news pretty much all day long

00:20:53.820 and set up stories to talk about because I know there can be a little bit of pushback on why are we talking about the Biden thing

00:20:59.620 because we're just finding out the full extent of how dishonest and disgraceful it was.

00:21:05.300 Yeah, and by the way, to people out there who say, well, we know he was bad.

00:21:08.700 Did we know – did you see what they did on January 6th?

00:21:12.800 They spent four years marinating in January 6th.

00:21:18.920 They had primetime hearings.

00:21:21.740 They came out and told all of us it was the worst day since the Civil War.

00:21:26.000 I would submit to you this is way worse and the media is going to cover it.

00:21:30.820 And the Democrat brand, it's a big left-wing conspiracy.

00:21:36.360 If Republicans do their job and they hold all these people's feet to the fire,

00:21:40.900 this will make January 6th look like a random BLM riot, which is basically what it was,

00:21:47.580 and we saw hundreds of those.

00:21:49.140 We've never seen this before in our lives.

00:21:51.640 I remember this.

00:21:52.560 Tapper publicly, Mr. Jake Tapper, who's co-authored this book that is rightly being –

00:21:57.360 unfortunately, they're going to sell a ton of copies.

00:21:58.920 So it is a smart financial decision, but the premise of it, which is we're the good guys for telling you the truth now,

00:22:05.500 is absurd and just an affront to our intelligence and to the dignity of public discourse.

00:22:14.460 But we're watching all –

00:22:16.320 But I do think that building on what you just said is important and why this is such a huge deal.

00:22:22.240 They have to cover it to make themselves cleansed from their complicity.

00:22:27.800 There's no way around this.

00:22:29.140 That's right.

00:22:29.720 That's why they want control of the narrative to the greatest possible degree. 0.77

00:22:33.440 And you've almost started to see some of them maybe with the beginnings of some contrition insofar as they would rather be thought dumb than dishonest. 0.80

00:22:43.160 Just remember that.

00:22:44.520 Because they know dishonesty means you're never listening to them again. 0.93

00:22:48.980 Dumb means, oh, I'll do better next time. 0.89

00:22:51.960 That's what they're going for here. 0.97

00:22:53.440 But it actually was not that.

00:22:55.540 It was that they were dishonest.

00:22:56.900 They are clever.

00:22:58.060 Tapper, I just wanted to point out, and you can go check on Twitter, public.

00:23:01.460 He was of the, oh, you said that people shouldn't attack cops on January 6th, and I mean on the day and right after.

00:23:08.120 You're all complicit.

00:23:09.460 You get no credit for it.

00:23:11.100 Everybody who was speaking out against violence that day, you know, blood is on your – he was one of those guys.

00:23:16.380 He was a blood is on all your hands, guys, and as we know, the only, like, substantial injury or rather the only fatal injury was to a woman who was shot by a police officer as a cop in the neck.

00:23:28.540 Anyway, Ashley Babbitt, which is still a stain on this country that that happened. 0.93

00:23:34.520 But okay, so here we are now, Clay, and they're going to have to try to explain this to their own side.

00:23:40.380 Wolf Blitzer, the most milk toast of the CNN – right?

00:23:47.280 I think I nailed that one.

00:23:48.300 Thank you.

00:23:48.560 I think that's perfect.

00:23:49.060 Clay gave me an affirmation.

00:23:50.580 Yes, the most milk toast of the CNN anchor stable over there.

00:23:55.560 He starts with Hakeem Jeffries on, okay, what do we know about this decline?

00:24:00.400 Let's walk through this together, friends.

00:24:01.980 This just happened in the last 24 hours.

00:24:04.180 Play two.

00:24:04.820 President Biden didn't even recognize George Clooney at a fundraiser.

00:24:08.820 Why should voters trust Democrats when it's clear so many in your party went to great lengths to keep Biden's condition hidden from the public?

00:24:17.760 I can't tell you what happened between George Clooney and President Biden that wasn't at that event.

00:24:22.820 What I can say is that we're not looking back, but we're going to continue to look forward because at this moment we've got real problems that need to be addressed on behalf of the American people,

00:24:31.280 including the Republican effort to snatch away health care, snatch away food assistance, and hurt veterans.

00:24:37.180 That's not going to work.

00:24:39.680 The old Potomac pivot, it's not going to work.

00:24:44.320 We're just looking forward now.

00:24:45.980 No, actually, this is in many ways, Clay, I think for the honor and integrity, such as it is, of a political party in America, I've never seen anything like this before.

00:25:00.920 I've never seen anything that is this, because it wasn't, and I don't want to get it all, the January 6th was a different thing.

00:25:07.400 You know, there was a whole lot of rigging that went on in that election.

00:25:11.800 There was a whole lot of reason for concern.

00:25:13.780 It was a mostly peaceful protest.

00:25:16.200 It was mostly a protest and everything else.

00:25:18.460 This was a all the king's horses and all the king's men multi-year conspiracy at the very top of the government day in and day out.

00:25:29.680 It wasn't a protest that got too rowdy and that then was treated like it was, you know, Pearl Harbor bombing.

00:25:36.460 And I think we need to see this for what it is.

00:25:39.400 Yeah, and that's why I think we need to have primetime congressional hearings. 0.99

00:25:44.240 I just, I don't, if Republicans do not do this, they are incompetent.

00:25:50.560 Because one, it's super important for the country.

00:25:53.500 We can never have this situation occur again.

00:25:56.280 Say whatever you want about Barack Obama.

00:25:59.300 Say whatever you want about Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush.

00:26:03.740 Did anybody doubt that they had the mental faculties to make whatever choices they wanted to make?

00:26:09.860 Of course not.

00:26:11.300 I think, heck, I'd like to see Obama under oath.

00:26:16.000 Why did Obama not pick Joe Biden in 2016?

00:26:20.800 It's a real question that Biden has never really answered.

00:26:24.700 I think it's because they could see already that he was in the early stages of dementia in 2016.

00:26:33.020 And that's why he went to Hillary. 0.80

00:26:35.100 Think about that.

00:26:36.100 He didn't let his VP that was there for eight years take over.

00:26:41.480 Now, I know they tried to say, well, Joe, you're just not doing well enough because your son died.

00:26:45.980 And I'm sure that was debilitating to Biden and probably did not help his descent into dementia.

00:26:53.800 But was the death of his son partly what they used as a cover to explain his descent into dementia?

00:27:03.740 Maybe it accelerated it.

00:27:05.440 In 2019, he didn't recognize the guy who had been his top advisor since the 1980s?

00:27:16.100 And I hate to say this, but you all know how dementia works.

00:27:21.420 Some days you can have good days and you can think, hey, maybe it's not so bad.

00:27:25.840 But I thought they, this is where you and I see this a little differently.

00:27:30.100 I think they thought they could thread the needle with a good day on debate night.

00:27:34.240 And I don't know how they thought that.

00:27:35.760 I don't know what the nap schedule was or whatever.

00:27:38.220 Or the drugs that they were likely shooting him up with right before he went out.

00:27:43.860 And, you know, you could look at his eyes.

00:27:46.100 Remember us talking about how he would wear the sunglasses?

00:27:48.280 But if you zoomed in on his eyes, the man looked hopped up on stuff like crazy when he was given some of these speeches.

00:27:57.240 Remember how angry he looked?

00:28:00.180 Remember how, I mean, there is zero doubt that they were shooting him up like crazy.

00:28:06.140 Remember when he finished the State of the Union and he read, go get him?

00:28:11.080 Do you remember that?

00:28:11.760 And remember when he went to Ukraine and at the end he ad-libbed and they were so angry at him about what he said at the end?

00:28:21.180 Like, we've got to tear down Putin or whatever it was.

00:28:24.720 They, the guy could barely read off a prompter.

00:28:28.220 But like an old ball player who's been doing something for a long time, he could be as good as he was for short periods of time, depending on day and time.

00:28:38.540 I'm going to tell you this right now.

00:28:39.680 If it was really about what was good for the country and going forward, being more accurate and doing a better job, where's your invitation?

00:28:49.400 Where's my invitation to go on Morning Joe and explain why we knew this the whole time?

00:28:54.900 Yeah.

00:28:54.980 When is the view going to say, hey Buck, I want you to come on and just walk us through why you and Clay, they can have both of us, it'd be fun, why you and Clay were right about this for years to the point where it was almost like the mockery felt hackneyed after a while.

00:29:12.020 It's like we've just done this joke day in and day out, day in and day out, because we're left with no choice.

00:29:17.020 Why did you guys get it right?

00:29:18.720 No, instead, we're still some, we were right, they were wrong, but somehow they still feel morally superior in the situation.

00:29:27.160 This is what you have to remember about Democrats. 1.00

00:29:29.080 It doesn't matter that they look like absolute, well, liars and buffoons. 0.99

00:29:35.260 It's they did this to stop the bad team, the bad people, we're the bad people, nothing else matters. 0.98

00:29:41.080 Which is, by the way, their entire ethos when it comes to dealing with Donald Trump.

00:29:46.040 So is it surprising, Clay, that they would do this, given that they say, you know, they have me on Laura's show last night just to kind of laugh.

00:29:56.020 There's these professors at Yale, as if that's supposed to impress anybody, it should not impress anybody.

00:30:00.480 There's these professors at Yale who are leaving the country because they're experts in fascism and they can't handle all the fascism that's going on. 1.00

00:30:07.700 So they're idiots and cowards because they're just abatting their country instead of standing, you know, no surprise there, right? 1.00

00:30:12.600 Got to go find a tenured position somewhere else. 1.00

00:30:15.140 But at what point do they just realize you guys are wrong, you're insane, grow up and calm down?

00:30:23.340 By the way, we got another bit of breaking news that's another conspiracy theory I think that we've shared on this show that now looks like it's true.

00:30:30.440 Jim Jordan is investigating and it appears he has found smoking gun evidence that Pfizer hid the results of their COVID shot to avoid it coming out before the 2020 election.

00:30:42.560 So in addition to all the other rigged jobs that were going on, the Wall Street Journal just published lawmakers investigating whether Pfizer waited to share results.

00:30:54.160 And Jim Jordan just shared some tweets and emails that suggest that Pfizer's top execs intentionally prevented that from occurring, which obviously, given how close that was.

00:31:05.860 And Jim Jordan now is going to come on the show with us tomorrow to be talking about that buck.

00:31:10.720 So conspiracy theorists are on a hell of a run.

00:31:14.240 You know, they're like a baseball team.

00:31:15.940 It's going like 162 and 0.

00:31:18.840 Everything they told you was a conspiracy.

00:31:21.080 You wait a few months and or in this case, a few years.

00:31:24.120 I want to remind you all about the great work that's being done day in and day out by Preborn, an incredible organization that has saved hundreds of thousands, in fact, 350,000 babies over the last two decades and counting.

00:31:39.440 And they can only do this because of donations from you, the pro-life community.

00:31:43.460 I understand Roe v. 0.90

00:31:44.360 Way is gone.

00:31:45.060 I understand you're voting your conscience and you're taking action and the ballot box to protect life.

00:31:50.680 But what are you doing day in and day out?

00:31:53.380 Yes, you have to live your principles, your ideals.

00:31:55.600 But there are organizations like this that are on the front lines.

00:31:58.700 Preborn is saving babies right now and they need your help.

00:32:02.920 This is where you can make a difference.

00:32:05.500 Preborn starts this whole process by welcoming a pregnant mom into their facility and giving a free ultrasound and letting that mom see the tiny heartbeat, the little baby growing inside her, 0.87

00:32:15.680 and then talking to her about the options for support and care and love that she will receive if she chooses to give this baby life.

00:32:23.880 And this works so often.

00:32:25.500 And they only need $28 per ultrasound. 0.82

00:32:28.460 You know, we have that wonderful VIP who wrote in and said that for Mother's Day, her husband gave her a 10 ultrasounds gift, essentially, in her name to Preborn.

00:32:37.660 So that was $280.

00:32:39.940 Think about that, 10 little babies that might be running around the world in the next, you know, the next year, years and years going forward because of that incredible gift.

00:32:50.060 To donate securely, dial pound 250, say the keyword baby.

00:32:55.600 That's pound 250, say baby, or visit preborn.com slash buck.

00:33:01.260 That's preborn.com slash B-U-C-K.

00:33:04.700 Sponsored by Preborn.

00:33:07.660 Sometimes, all you can do is laugh.

00:33:10.740 And they do a lot of it with the Sunday hang.

00:33:13.660 Join Clay and Buck as they laugh it up in the Clay and Buck podcast feed on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:33:21.580 We got a lot of you reacting.

00:33:24.120 We're going to get to some of those.

00:33:25.240 800-282-2882, obviously, is the phone line.

00:33:28.360 We'll try to take a couple of your calls.

00:33:29.500 No guests today, by the way.

00:33:30.620 We did mention we're going to talk to Jim Jordan tomorrow about explosive information that he has uncovered.

00:33:37.120 Which suggests that the COVID shot, which we now know is a limit and basically worthless.

00:33:42.580 But that top executives worked to keep news about what they thought was the success of the COVID shot.

00:33:50.320 From going public before the 2020 election, which Trump has said publicly he believed happened, which may well have swung the election by itself.

00:34:00.180 Because the race came down to 40,000 votes in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona.

00:34:08.500 So who knows?

00:34:10.040 I mean, if you had thought, hey, there's going to be a vaccine coming, would people have been more likely to vote differently?

00:34:17.000 I don't think that's a crazy idea.

00:34:18.460 Certainly, we know if Hunter Biden's business dealings, if Joe Biden's dementia.

00:34:22.920 I mean, the rig job in 2020 just continues to add different layers.

00:34:26.860 But there was a big Supreme Court case that I want to talk some about, Buck.

00:34:30.520 And you mentioned off the top of the show that you listened to a lot of it.

00:34:33.880 I was not.

00:34:34.600 I'll tell you where I was in a sec.

00:34:36.340 I was reading about it.

00:34:38.360 But I do want to play this because it ties in with the first hour.

00:34:42.260 Do you know what happened one year ago today?

00:34:45.540 Joe Biden publicly challenged Donald Trump to an early debate.

00:34:50.540 Do you remember this, Buck?

00:34:52.040 This is what it sounded like for those of you who had forgotten.

00:34:55.780 This was one year ago today.

00:34:57.500 Listen.

00:34:58.020 Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020.

00:35:00.560 Since then, he hadn't shown up for debates.

00:35:02.320 Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again.

00:35:04.680 Well, make my day, pal.

00:35:06.300 I'll even do it twice.

00:35:08.040 So let's pick the dates, Donald.

00:35:09.600 I hear you're free on Wednesdays.

00:35:12.560 So that was because Trump was going to criminal court on Wednesdays.

00:35:16.500 Ha, ha, ha, with the preposterous efforts to destroy Trump's ability to run.

00:35:22.960 Make my day, pal.

00:35:24.920 Buck, is that the most disastrous political taunt in history, given what happened one month later?

00:35:31.660 If they had just listened to me, they would have been in a much better spot.

00:35:36.780 Because their best option was Biden, but their best option was Biden with no, by the time he was making that taunt, with no debates.

00:35:43.860 That's what they should have done.

00:35:46.660 That was the fatal flaw in all of this, was they thought they could pull one over with the debates one more time.

00:35:54.800 And given that Trump hadn't debated in the primary, the Democrats could have very easily said, well, we won't.

00:36:00.180 You know, people have seen enough of these two.

00:36:01.540 Anyway, I know it's at some level water under the bridge, but they just misplayed this thing.

00:36:07.080 They just screwed it up the same way they misplayed running against Trump across the board.

00:36:12.460 Yeah, they totally did.

00:36:14.300 And I think as you break all of this down, again, that was one year ago, and Biden completely blown up.

00:36:23.260 And I still think, and I wonder if in the book they're going to kind of give us an idea of what they intended with the June 27th.

00:36:30.160 Because I had forgotten that he said he'd debate him twice.

00:36:33.300 Remember, they didn't even attempt the second debate because the first one went so disastrously.

00:36:38.040 But it was Biden making that video and taunting Trump about how much he wanted to debate that actually put this on the calendar.

00:36:47.480 And Buck's right.

00:36:48.260 If they had listened to him, they could have at least continued the vast left-wing conspiracy about his health until September or October when they did a debate.

00:36:58.700 And maybe then they could have shot up Biden with enough stuff to make him able to go out and debate.

00:37:05.100 I tend to think that it would have been even more of an implosion if they had been able to keep him in and not been able to make the change until September.

00:37:15.540 But he would have been able to run.

00:37:17.460 They wouldn't have been able to replace him like they did and switch to Kamala at the last possible minute.

00:37:23.660 But I did want to get into this.

00:37:25.840 You listened to a lot of the discussion.

00:37:28.280 Like an hour of it.

00:37:29.420 I was pretty deep into it.

00:37:31.180 Yeah.

00:37:31.900 For those of you who don't know, major debate, major oral argument at the Supreme Court today.

00:37:39.400 And it was actually a little bit complicated because there's kind of two different parts of what they were arguing.

00:37:44.840 And I'm going to try to lay out why I think it's significant.

00:37:48.380 And, Producer Ali, I sent you a cut of Clarence Thomas that I think gets to the essence of this really, really well.

00:37:55.440 So let me know when that cut is ready.

00:37:58.620 But it is ready.

00:38:00.000 Okay.

00:38:00.200 So, Buck, here is – so for those of you out there who were not following this, it is a little bit complicated.

00:38:06.020 And just the whole Trump era has been steeped in complicated legal arcana as we have been breaking it all down.

00:38:14.220 But really, this is kind of a two-parter that they were arguing today.

00:38:19.520 One is the big issue is, hey, is it possible for Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship to be legal

00:38:29.600 and for him to have the power to say that birthright citizenship has been misapplied effectively

00:38:36.220 and citizen and kids, children, babies born to illegal immigrants do not become automatic American citizens, right? 0.88

00:38:45.080 People who are here in this country illegally do not have the ability to come across our border, 1.00

00:38:50.800 have a baby, and then your baby automatically becomes an American citizen.

00:38:53.560 That's a big-picture question.

00:38:55.580 But structurally, this is impacting everything that Trump is trying to do.

00:39:01.540 The question is, should a federal district court judge be able to effectively enjoin a presidential action nationwide?

00:39:12.000 There are around 650-ish of these federal district court judges.

00:39:16.040 Right, and the only person who has that level of universal constitutional authority based on just what he thinks or she thinks,

00:39:28.140 it's always been a he, is the president.

00:39:30.260 So there's a problem here.

00:39:32.000 No one Supreme Court justice can say this is the deal for everybody all across the country.

00:39:38.220 But one federal judge, a lower and even lower than an appeals court judge, one circuit court judge could say,

00:39:45.480 this is where we're getting into the universal injunction issue.

00:39:50.960 And I think it's very interesting, Clay, because with the two sides arguing this morning,

00:39:57.640 the side that was arguing against, on behalf of, I guess, the state of New Jersey,

00:40:01.940 which is saying our welfare programs will be too burdened by not knowing if somebody is a citizen or, you know,

00:40:09.340 if they've been given citizenship, whether born in the state or outside the state.

00:40:13.000 I mean, it is a pretty complicated series of interlocking legal issues here.

00:40:18.960 But I can say this.

00:40:20.100 One of the things that kept coming up was they said, yeah, okay, sure,

00:40:23.820 it's a problem for a federal judge to just be able to do that unless it's, like, really important and they're really sure.

00:40:29.840 And that's more or less what the anti-Trump side of this kept saying, to which the judges, you know,

00:40:36.540 the justices had to say, you guys do this a lot, and I'm sure you always think that the people that you like are doing this

00:40:43.020 because it's so extreme and so necessary, but it can't just be on the whim of a lower circuit or a lower circuit court judge

00:40:50.800 what the policy for the whole country is.

00:40:53.580 Yeah, and it actually goes to me, and this is me nerding out a little bit legally,

00:40:58.620 it actually goes to the essence of separation of powers

00:41:02.140 because there are, in theory, three co-equal branches of the United States government, right?

00:41:06.660 Take you back to eighth grade history or whatever.

00:41:09.120 The executive, the congressional branch, and the judicial.

00:41:13.720 The judicial branch relies on the authority of the Supreme Court.

00:41:17.740 That's why it's called the Supreme Court.

00:41:19.320 In order for something to happen, five Supreme Court justices have to agree on it.

00:41:23.900 Circuit courts, Buck, in order for a circuit court ruling to be in effect,

00:41:29.580 at least two out of three circuit court judges have to agree on something.

00:41:34.420 What is happening with the federal district court is one judge is basically executing on a level

00:41:42.860 that circuit court judges who are above them and Supreme Court judges who are above those circuit court judges

00:41:50.340 do not have. In other words, the single authority of a district court judge

00:41:55.820 is actually higher on the flow chart than two of their superior court judges.

00:42:02.560 And that might sound a little complicated, but I'm trying to explain.

00:42:05.620 And Clarence Thomas pointed out that this has really only become an issue in the modern day.

00:42:11.720 And this is the cut I pulled because I think he does a good job of distilling how things have changed.

00:42:16.440 General, when were the first universal injunctions used?

00:42:27.820 We believe that the best reading of that is what you said in Trump against Hawaii,

00:42:31.920 which is that Wurtz in 1963 was really the first universal injunction.

00:42:35.840 There's a dispute about Perkins against Lukens Oil going back to 1940.

00:42:39.820 And of course, we point to the court's opinion that reversed that universal injunction issued by the D.C.

00:42:44.860 circuit and said it's profoundly wrong.

00:42:47.340 Now, if you look at the cases that the either party cite, you see a common theme.

00:42:53.100 The cases that we cite, like National Treasury's Employment Union,

00:42:57.060 Perkins against Lukens Oil, Frothingham in Massachusetts against Mellon,

00:43:01.340 going back to Scott against Donald, and all of those,

00:43:03.880 those are cases where the court considered and addressed the sort of universal,

00:43:07.700 in that case statewide, issue of provision of injunctive relief.

00:43:11.900 So when the court has considered and addressed this, it has consistently said,

00:43:15.180 you have to limit the remedy to the plaintiffs of appearing in court and complaining of that remedy.

00:43:19.260 So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions.

00:43:24.000 That's exactly correct.

00:43:25.000 And in fact, those are very limited, very rare, even in the 1960s.

00:43:28.460 It really exploded in 2007 in our cert-petition in Summers Against Earth Island Institute.

00:43:33.800 We pointed out that the Ninth Circuit had started doing this in a whole bunch of cases involving environmental claims.

00:43:38.140 Okay. Now, again, this is in the weeds, but I thought that Clarence Thomas did a really good job.

00:43:43.680 This is only something that's happened recently in our 250-ish year history.

00:43:49.680 And usually, Buck, and again, this is going into the weeds.

00:43:52.000 And it's also the Ninth Circuit is the most lunatic left-wing activist judicial circuit in the country,

00:43:56.840 so that's where they started doing this, no surprise.

00:43:59.140 Most Supreme Court cases come about because the circuit courts rule different directions.

00:44:08.880 That is, as Buck just mentioned, the Ninth Circuit is like the West Coast, California prominent.

00:44:14.180 Where I live, I am in the Sixth Circuit.

00:44:17.120 That's Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, I think, a couple of states like that.

00:44:21.600 The Fifth Circuit is traditionally seen as one of the most conservative.

00:44:26.000 That's Texas, Louisiana.

00:44:27.080 I don't have the circuits in front of me right now.

00:44:30.280 Usually, the Supreme Court is called on to address circuit splits.

00:44:34.320 That's where the Ninth Circuit and the Fifth Circuit may have had a different interpretation of the law.

00:44:39.140 Those are the most fertile, the most germane for the Supreme Court to step in on

00:44:43.060 because we need a nationwide decision, and there are two different circuit courts ruling differently.

00:44:49.720 Here, you have one random judge in, I don't know, Boston, Massachusetts,

00:44:54.240 it's deciding what the law should be for the whole nation, or it could be one random judge in middle-of-nowhere Texas.

00:45:00.940 It is a direct attack upon the entire legitimacy of the courts to give a district court judge more power than his superiors on the circuit and Supreme Court.

00:45:12.640 And they can effectively order the entire federal government as though they run the federal government.

00:45:21.560 I mean, yes, there will be appeals, and yes, it will go to the Supreme Court,

00:45:24.700 but for a period of time, they get to be the legal emperor, if you will, of America.

00:45:31.020 And this wasn't a problem really until they made it a problem, and they made it a problem by these left-wing judges.

00:45:39.340 We all know how this works.

00:45:41.000 You know, they don't feel bound by the constraints of language or law or tradition or anything else.

00:45:47.540 It's, this is so, so important that we have to smash the things that we used to rely on to keep us from doing this.

00:45:53.720 And that's, that's really a large part, I think, the, the, a lot of the argument today.

00:45:58.160 So, I mean, this is really, this wasn't even about the merits of whether birthright citizenship extends to those who are in the country illegally or not.

00:46:06.360 Although it could, if it went against the administration terribly, the Supreme Court, right, could come down and say,

00:46:12.340 you know what, we think even just taking a peek at the merits, this is so bad that we're actually going to uphold this universal injunction until we hear the merits on the case.

00:46:23.320 And that would be a huge win for the non-Trump side.

00:46:27.200 The other side of this, I think Clay's right, they could issue guidance on the scope of the injunction, specifically in this case.

00:46:33.900 That would probably be the best thing you could get from the Supreme Court on this.

00:46:39.220 But to me, I just sit here saying, okay, eventually we're going to have to look at whether you can steal citizenship or not.

00:46:45.780 Because if citizenship can be given to people who have broken the law to get it, you have debased and, and I know it's been going on and it has been wrong the whole time,

00:46:58.040 you have debased and devalued what it means to be an American in a way that I think, unfortunately, is irreparable.

00:47:02.860 I agree 100% with that.

00:47:04.860 Here's a question for you and we can debate it or discuss it when we come back because I think it's one of the challenges the court's going to be grappling with.

00:47:11.860 How do you address all of the people who had citizenship for decades based on the belief that birthright citizenship did convey American citizens?

00:47:22.380 Well, the EO makes this, the EO only affects those after the EO goes into effect.

00:47:27.700 I get that, but I think there's going to be an equal protection argument on behalf of everybody else because they're going to say this is an arbitrary thing for a president to be able to do under his executive authority.

00:47:39.220 I agree that it should happen.

00:47:40.640 Citizenship is inherently kind of arbitrary when you think about it.

00:47:42.840 The whole thing is a little bit of it.

00:47:43.920 Totally, totally is.

00:47:44.860 I mean, look, I think it's an interesting discussion because I think that's one of the challenges they're going to grapple with the most is that all of a sudden,

00:47:52.380 anyway, we'll talk about it when we come back.

00:47:55.420 Some opportunities are immediate.

00:47:57.360 Others take time to develop.

00:47:58.640 Consider this.

00:47:59.540 There are some very well-informed people who really believe that our nation has an asset that could be worth as much as $150 trillion,

00:48:06.440 and that asset has been buried under American soil and may well be the basis for creating such a fund.

00:48:11.780 Just to give you an idea of the impact of this resource, it could pay off our national debt four times over.

00:48:17.120 You might say this asset is hiding in plain sight.

00:48:19.340 Time will tell if the Trump administration releases it to the public.

00:48:23.180 But Jim Rickards, former advisor to the White House and Federal Reserve, says,

00:48:26.980 if you're over 50, this could be your best chance to build lasting wealth from a once-in-a-century event.

00:48:32.160 To hear more of Jim's thinking, go online to birthright2025.com.

00:48:36.360 If he's right, it could make President Trump the most popular president in history

00:48:39.500 and help millions of investors retire wealthy.

00:48:42.320 Go to birthright2025.com to get the details free of charge.

00:48:46.340 That's birthright2025.com, paid for by Paradigm Press.

00:48:52.180 Stories of freedom, stories of America, inspirational stories that unite us all.

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00:49:01.380 Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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00:49:35.560 As you know, President Trump is on a huge trip through the Middle East.

00:49:40.000 A lot going on there.

00:49:41.660 Offered a pathway to normalcy with Syria after a long and horrific civil war in that country

00:49:49.280 and U.S. military operations there against the Tadis.

00:49:53.280 All that stuff.

00:49:54.900 Now, perhaps, perhaps, no guarantees, there could be a better future for that country.

00:50:01.060 He's got deal-making happening with the Saudis, deal-making happening with the UAE, with Qatar,

00:50:07.820 and perhaps with Iran as well.

00:50:11.440 That remains to be seen.

00:50:13.040 Those details remain to be seen.

00:50:15.340 But there's also Trump speaking to the troops in Qatar.

00:50:21.880 We have a very large military base there.

00:50:24.820 And he decided that he was going to address them directly.

00:50:28.860 I wanted to let you hear from some of this.

00:50:30.480 We'll talk about how the military and recruitment and all that is going under the Trump administration as well.

00:50:36.500 But this has cut eight.

00:50:38.020 Trump saying some words to the troops.

00:50:41.020 The real strength of our military doesn't come from its fighter jets.

00:50:44.840 It really comes from our people.

00:50:47.260 That's you.

00:50:47.940 It comes from our people.

00:50:48.880 You're unbelievable people.

00:50:50.340 The aptitude and all of the things you have to do to do what you do.

00:50:54.460 You know, I look at some of those engines, and I'm a pretty smart cookie.

00:50:58.080 I would tell you, I'm a real smart.

00:51:00.380 And I look at you, and you take those engines apart and put them back together,

00:51:04.200 blindfolded, and fix them up. 0.95

00:51:05.840 It's amazing what you're able to do.

00:51:07.600 And then to fly them.

00:51:08.800 Just incredible.

00:51:09.720 You're incredible.

00:51:10.440 You're a very special group of people.

00:51:12.400 And that's why in my 2026 budget includes across the board.

00:51:18.500 Maybe you don't want it.

00:51:19.560 Look, for the good of the country, you don't have to take it.

00:51:22.180 Pay raises for each and every one of you.

00:51:24.360 Substantial pay raises.

00:51:26.880 Pay raise for the military, Clay.

00:51:28.460 You know, recruitment already up substantially under the Trump administration

00:51:33.340 and Secretary of Defense Hegseth's tenure.

00:51:37.260 It turns out that the people that you want fighting your wars

00:51:40.540 or preparing, rather, the defense of your nation in the event of war

00:51:43.980 want actually the business of the Pentagon to be warfighting

00:51:48.780 and the focus of it to be on warfighting

00:51:51.320 and not a big social justice experiment and a bureaucracy

00:51:54.980 where people just show up and it's not really clear what anybody's doing.

00:52:00.780 No doubt.

00:52:01.500 And I think, again, Trump's tour of the Middle East,

00:52:06.200 it has an incredible impact already in terms of what Iran is reportedly willing to do.

00:52:16.800 And also, this comes on the heels, Buck.

00:52:18.420 We got more data from April in the economy.

00:52:21.700 And I'm looking at this article from Axios.

00:52:25.120 Hard data.

00:52:25.840 This is the headline.

00:52:27.200 Hard data suggests tariff-driven inflation and recession fears may be overblown.

00:52:34.000 You mentioned earlier the S&P 500, back near 6,000 now, over 5,900.

00:52:41.260 And it says new data out Thursday showed steady retail sales

00:52:47.320 and a surprising drop in wholesale prices in April,

00:52:52.060 such that there is no evidence that the tariffs are leading to massive increases

00:53:02.220 in cost of goods.

00:53:04.540 In fact, the producer price index showed that prices actually fell in April

00:53:11.500 and the cost of goods overall is flat in many ways.

00:53:16.280 And I mentioned, Buck, the price of gas, which no one is talking about.

00:53:20.820 Isn't it kind of crazy that all of the headlines we saw about what eggs cost,

00:53:25.920 and I don't know what percentage of you buy eggs weekly.

00:53:29.900 Maybe all, I don't know.

00:53:32.600 But I know most of you buy gas weekly.

00:53:35.740 And I know most of you, when you gauge what things cost,

00:53:41.320 you don't look necessarily at one product when you go to the grocery store.

00:53:45.740 You buy whatever your usual groceries are,

00:53:48.900 and then the price comes up and you're like,

00:53:50.820 boy, that's been a lot more than I expected.

00:53:54.860 Gas is really easy.

00:53:56.260 Remember when people started putting the,

00:53:58.340 I did that picture of Joe Biden next to the gas gauges,

00:54:02.100 little stickers you would see all over the place.

00:54:04.180 I saw them all over my neighborhood.

00:54:05.800 Gas prices are down 50% since Joe Biden was in office.

00:54:10.200 They're approaching the lows that were set when Trump was in office.

00:54:14.860 And you just played that clip from the Middle East.

00:54:16.860 You know what happens when you have good relations with people in the Middle East?

00:54:22.240 They pump more oil and gas.

00:54:24.480 They actually want, instead of, they have a cartel,

00:54:28.260 they can control basically to a large extent what the price of gas is.

00:54:32.760 OPEC.

00:54:34.020 OPEC's pretty powerful.

00:54:36.760 And right now they're like,

00:54:38.320 hey, we have a good relationship with the United States.

00:54:41.380 We're fine with producing a lot of oil and gas.

00:54:44.120 It also is cutting the economic engine out of Russia.

00:54:50.580 When prices for oil and gas in Iran,

00:54:53.520 which they sell on the black market to a large extent,

00:54:56.720 when overall prices are low,

00:54:59.700 the fact that you can get cheaper oil and gas from Russia and Iran

00:55:03.820 because they're having to sell them on the black market

00:55:06.200 means that the money that is pouring into those countries is declining.

00:55:10.500 It should be a massive story.

00:55:12.620 What price we're getting for gallons of gas right now,

00:55:17.040 almost no one's writing or talking about it.

00:55:19.520 And if you really are concerned about the war in Ukraine,

00:55:23.680 do you know one of the best things we could do

00:55:25.580 to cut economic engine and the economic power of Russia away? 0.70

00:55:30.520 Lower gas prices.

00:55:31.860 Do you know the best thing we could do to delegitimize

00:55:34.400 the powers of the Ayatollah in Iran?

00:55:38.160 Lower gas prices.

00:55:39.520 It's a huge friggin' story.

00:55:41.720 Google it.

00:55:42.300 Hardly anybody's talking about it.

00:55:44.020 But the price of eggs, oh my goodness.

00:55:46.440 We've got to know how much your scrambled eggs cost. 0.59

00:55:50.240 It really goes to what stories are focused on.

00:55:55.800 And I'm telling you, yesterday when I saw 265 gallon of gas in South Nashville,

00:55:59.500 I bought over the weekend, I think it was 287.

00:56:04.460 Prices keep coming down, Buck.

00:56:05.860 This is where most people, normal people, judge the economy

00:56:09.900 based on what they have to pay to fill their gas tank up. 0.76

00:56:12.680 That's just the reality.

00:56:14.060 There's something else that I think Trump instinctively knows

00:56:18.340 and has known his whole life and has lived his whole life,

00:56:22.720 which is that the American economy is the single greatest wealth generation machine

00:56:29.560 ever devised in the history of existence.

00:56:33.480 Nothing has ever been anywhere near what America has been for, let's say,

00:56:41.760 certainly the last hundred and something years.

00:56:45.240 America has been an incredible wealth generation machine.

00:56:48.800 If it is allowed to continue to do what it does,

00:56:52.720 it will also continue to make all of us wealthier.

00:56:58.120 And I mean that every single one of us as a people.

00:57:00.360 It means, you know, this is when you start to look at what was the access to,

00:57:05.480 if you look at somebody in the 1950s who was really rich,

00:57:07.920 you look at somebody today, okay, I mean, your access to much better health care,

00:57:13.620 much better food, much better entertainment, much more comfortable everything.

00:57:17.180 I mean, we are all wealthier, actually.

00:57:19.440 This is what people get very much into, and Naval Ravikant,

00:57:23.200 who's a thinker that I sometimes cite on the show,

00:57:25.720 does a very good job of explaining this.

00:57:27.480 We get into status a lot of the time.

00:57:30.200 Wealth and status are not the same thing, right?

00:57:32.500 You can talk about everybody getting wealthier in a country,

00:57:36.160 and there may be people who still say, no, no, no,

00:57:38.980 and it's because they don't think that they have more

00:57:41.880 than the people they want to have more than.

00:57:44.480 But that's not the same thing.

00:57:45.820 I think Trump understands.

00:57:47.520 So that's the status versus wealth paradigm.

00:57:50.000 We all have actually gotten wealthier as a nation.

00:57:52.860 I'm talking about now over 100 years.

00:57:54.220 Yeah, recently there's been some, or, you know, there have been years.

00:57:57.320 You look at 2008, things have turned a bit.

00:58:00.080 But as long as we don't mess up this amazing thing called the American economy too badly,

00:58:06.980 it's going to continue to do what it does,

00:58:09.440 which is create a wealthier and a more prosperous America all the time.

00:58:14.240 Democrats are always so focused, Clay, on hyper-regulating it

00:58:18.920 and dividing the spoils within it and finding ways to carve up the pie,

00:58:24.020 they don't even stop to think, this pie is getting bigger every year.

00:58:29.660 Yes.

00:58:30.120 How do we keep this pie growing and getting bigger all the time? 0.92

00:58:34.480 Again, the Democrat mindset, because it's about equality in their minds,

00:58:40.200 it's about status.

00:58:41.960 And if I feel like there are too many people who have,

00:58:44.680 this is why Bernie Sanders goes around,

00:58:47.180 billionaires have no impact on 99.9% of Americans' day-to-day lives.

00:58:52.820 It doesn't matter that there are 1,000 billionaires or something like that in this country,

00:58:56.660 but it's a fun way to divert people from,

00:59:00.760 hey, what are you actually paying in taxes in your state?

00:59:03.580 How good is your health care that you're being forced to buy because of regulations?

00:59:08.460 What's actually happening with inflation chipping away at your savings?

00:59:12.380 Those are real things that affect you.

00:59:15.340 Your analogy on the pie is actually the way that I see the country.

00:59:19.960 I didn't like living on the East Coast because it felt to me like everybody was like,

00:59:26.000 there's only 12 slices, we're going to have to fight you to see who can get the most slices.

00:59:30.260 Like the East Coast, I would argue, of all the parts in the United States,

00:59:34.460 is the most focused and status conscious.

00:59:38.020 You getting something means somebody else loses something.

00:59:41.140 Best case scenario, West Coast, used to be before they destroyed it,

00:59:45.420 hey, let's build a brand new pie that's way bigger, right?

00:59:47.920 Like the brand new technology, it's not old school.

00:59:51.560 Europe is the worst with your pie analogy.

00:59:54.720 South is like, hey, do you want to share?

00:59:57.120 It's like people are just really friendly.

00:59:59.160 They're not necessarily as status obsessed.

01:00:03.420 But what you hit on is so important because we all live,

01:00:08.260 this is a great stat and I think it's still true.

01:00:10.560 The poorest 20% of Americans would be the richest people

01:00:16.200 in almost every country in the world.

01:00:19.020 And one of my favorite stats, I think you may have shared it for the first time,

01:00:22.080 England is poorer than Mississippi. 0.96

01:00:23.860 Yep.

01:00:24.260 Per capita.

01:00:25.040 Yeah. 0.97

01:00:26.140 And that's a holy crap moment if you've been to London. 0.67

01:00:29.120 I'm not saying there's not a lot of rich people, 0.98

01:00:31.160 but for a long time people dump on Mississippi.

01:00:33.940 It's a great state, by the way, a lot of great people.

01:00:35.920 But they would say, oh, and I think it's still Mississippi

01:00:38.680 as the poorest average per capita in the United States.

01:00:42.080 It's richer than Great Britain.

01:00:44.560 And that speaks to the wealth overall of the United States

01:00:48.420 that even our poorest state is wealthier than a huge European country on average.

01:00:56.960 Yes.

01:00:57.160 Well, this is also why we have,

01:00:59.280 and this maybe transitions a little bit to the RFK discussion,

01:01:02.140 we have become a society where the challenges and the diseases of abundance

01:01:09.580 are far more of a problem than diseases of scarcity,

01:01:14.780 whether it's eating way too much and obesity and the health challenges from that.

01:01:20.240 That's obviously an overabundance issue.

01:01:22.480 I mean, we were talking about the grocery store thing yesterday,

01:01:25.120 and maybe this just makes me sound like,

01:01:26.940 I don't know how many ever watch Perfect Strangers,

01:01:28.920 but I sound like Belky Bartokomis, who is the,

01:01:31.940 I think he's supposed to be like a Greek immigrant or something.

01:01:34.100 And he's like, oh, what the, you know, amazing country.

01:01:36.600 But I walk into the grocery stores right here,

01:01:38.700 Clay, it's just like a vast reservoir of food.

01:01:41.720 It's unbelievable how much produce and food Americans have access to,

01:01:47.520 and we don't even think twice.

01:01:48.740 And I've been, you know, you've been in places too.

01:01:50.800 I mean, you go to the Caribbean, Caribbean's poor.

01:01:52.840 A lot of parts in the Caribbean are poor.

01:01:54.600 I live there.

01:01:55.100 There are some, yeah, that's what I mean.

01:01:56.520 But I'm saying, you know, truly poor, right?

01:01:59.100 I mean, you know, Haiti's one of the poorest countries on the planet.

01:02:02.060 You go around here, you just take all of this stuff,

01:02:03.840 all this stuff for granted a lot of the time.

01:02:06.320 And I just think that with Trump,

01:02:08.300 what you have is somebody whose focus is

01:02:11.340 letting the greatest wealth generation machine in human history,

01:02:16.940 which there is no argument that America is that thing,

01:02:21.280 letting it just do its thing.

01:02:23.380 Like, ride this show horse all the way to the finish line.

01:02:28.380 With Democrats, they sit around and they have committees about, like,

01:02:31.560 well, what about the other horses?

01:02:32.680 Like, how are they going to feel?

01:02:33.760 Like, what about the, you know?

01:02:34.760 No.

01:02:36.060 Let's let the American economy, 0.99

01:02:37.800 and it's a little bit of a Calvin Coolidge thing,

01:02:39.100 let the business of the American people be business.

01:02:41.780 And I just think that you're seeing the early stages of that.

01:02:46.880 And it doesn't have,

01:02:48.260 we don't have to have the sclerotic bureaucracy

01:02:51.520 that is choking off so much wealth generation, creativity.

01:02:57.340 And when you start to think about this country versus other countries,

01:03:01.520 I mean, you just look at GDP per capita, wealth, Clay.

01:03:04.240 You know, China, we think of as our nearest competitor.

01:03:06.960 I think Chinese GDP per capita is like a third of ours.

01:03:09.520 It's, I'm going off the top of my head here,

01:03:11.260 but I mean, it's a fraction of what is.

01:03:13.580 And not only that, what they find is it's very hard

01:03:16.580 to take the proverbial next step to actually challenge us

01:03:19.820 because this goes back to historically Japan was going to pass us.

01:03:23.100 If you looked at all the projections, China's peaked.

01:03:25.800 I think China's already begun to decline.

01:03:28.360 And that's what can make them a little bit scary right now

01:03:31.220 because sometimes, as we know historically,

01:03:33.300 it's not when you peak that your power is at its most,

01:03:35.660 it's when you start to lose power that sometimes you overreach,

01:03:39.280 which could happen with Taiwan, things like that.

01:03:40.880 I just think everyone should always be very cautious

01:03:43.240 about listening to the catastrophists

01:03:47.240 and the high priests of resentment.

01:03:50.800 Because that, again, that gets you back into that status.

01:03:53.020 This is what Marxists do.

01:03:54.360 This is how communism gets going.

01:03:56.740 You know, it's as long as they're making the right people miserable,

01:04:01.600 they can make you miserable, too.

01:04:04.160 It's kind of the way that, you know, over-regulated,

01:04:08.400 over-controlled economies function.

01:04:10.880 And Trump takes the approach of how do we do what is going to be best

01:04:17.460 for the most every, you know, 100 times out of 100,

01:04:21.340 the way to do this is to try to actually grow the American economy

01:04:25.180 and we will all get richer.

01:04:28.340 And there are a lot of ways we can even look at this ourselves.

01:04:30.520 But I just think that the catastrophism stuff is,

01:04:33.920 it's so, yeah, we have to watch the debt.

01:04:35.640 That's what I mean.

01:04:35.940 We can't just let this machine get destroyed,

01:04:39.100 but it actually works.

01:04:40.400 That's my fundamental thing.

01:04:41.660 Trump knows that it works.

01:04:43.120 If you live in a house, you know it already.

01:04:46.720 Roof collects a lot of rain in a perfect world.

01:04:49.320 All that rain runs right out of the gutters,

01:04:51.540 but we don't live in a perfect world.

01:04:53.220 Your gutters get clogged.

01:04:54.340 Mine get clogged with wiffle balls, footballs even occasionally,

01:04:58.320 the little Nerf ones.

01:04:59.900 All different sorts of stuff can get stuck in your gutters.

01:05:03.540 And when rainstorms come, suddenly you find out

01:05:06.340 that you don't have the clean gutter that you thought to.

01:05:08.780 Maybe you start to get a little bit of flood in your roof.

01:05:12.040 Maybe you start to have all sorts of issues.

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01:05:54.200 News and politics, but also a little comic relief.

01:05:58.260 Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 15, 2025

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