Verdict with Ted Cruz - Bonus - Daily Review with Clay Travis and Buck Sexton

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.400 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.360 Welcome, everybody.

00:00:05.600 Tuesday edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show.

00:00:10.160 Gets going right now.

00:00:11.420 Election Day edition, in fact. 0.97

00:00:15.060 A day of votes and a day of balls.

00:00:18.780 Clay Travis's book goes officially on sale today. 0.51

00:00:23.540 The title, easy to remember, easy to spell.

00:00:27.320 B-A-L-L-S. 1.00

00:00:30.440 And there are, in fact, two balls of the basketball variety on the cover.

00:00:35.120 Author, Clay Travis.

00:00:37.320 Guys, if we want good books coming out from good people on the right,

00:00:41.000 we got to go buy them, okay?

00:00:43.180 I got to tell you, in the era of podcasting and TV and YouTube and all this stuff,

00:00:48.220 I've got my book coming out in February.

00:00:50.540 February 17th is the day Clay's book's out today.

00:00:52.900 I'm just bringing this up, though,

00:00:54.220 because the amount of work you do to actually write your book,

00:00:57.900 Clay writes his books, I have written my book,

00:01:00.620 meaning sat there at a computer, not paid somebody else to do it.

00:01:04.060 It's a whole other conversation.

00:01:05.400 Sat there at a computer and did the writing.

00:01:07.580 It is something that I hope people will appreciate on our side of things.

00:01:13.040 And the best way to show appreciation is by buying the copies.

00:01:16.140 Let's get Clay on the bestseller list.

00:01:17.920 Clay will be talking to you more about balls throughout the program.

00:01:19.860 But it is election day, and that is going to be, of course, our focus today.

00:01:25.620 And we have a whole bunch of things happening all at once.

00:01:29.400 The New York City race is the one that is getting by far the most attention.

00:01:33.600 New Jersey is going to be a squeaker.

00:01:35.420 I think it's going to be tight.

00:01:37.820 Virginia not looking so good for our gubernatorial candidate winsome series.

00:01:41.060 Not looking so good at this point.

00:01:42.500 But go out, vote.

00:01:43.780 Don't listen to me.

00:01:44.840 What do I know?

00:01:45.700 I'm some guy just squawking nonsense on the radio.

00:01:48.100 Go vote.

00:01:48.840 By the way, also, AG is going to come down potentially in Virginia to a pinpricks difference

00:01:56.680 based on everything we're seeing.

00:01:58.800 So it's important.

00:02:00.200 Yes, we may lose a governor's race.

00:02:02.360 We may lose different aspects.

00:02:04.940 But the down ballot can be hugely important, too.

00:02:08.260 So lieutenant governor is an important job in Virginia.

00:02:11.280 Attorney general.

00:02:12.180 Certainly, we want you to go vote for winsome seers, too.

00:02:14.800 But the attorney general race looks like it could be in Virginia.

00:02:18.800 One of the tightest out there.

00:02:20.620 To Bucks Point, New Jersey governor.

00:02:23.480 Republicans win if Republicans show up in big numbers today in New Jersey.

00:02:28.260 Everybody listening to us on WOR and other stations in New Jersey.

00:02:33.320 If you have not voted, go do it.

00:02:35.640 Go vote everywhere.

00:02:36.520 Because it really is likely to come down to a hair's breadth margin in many of these races.

00:02:44.080 We have the biggest last minute, I think, change in the voting situation or in the endorsements around that.

00:02:52.940 We have a Trump endorsement of, drumroll, Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayor's race.

00:03:01.060 This is something that, now, Clay, you've been telling our beloved audience that you think that this is the right move.

00:03:10.300 And there have been some New Yorkers who have been calling you from parts of South Brooklyn.

00:03:15.260 And we're very upset that I don't like this talk from Clay about voting for the commie or voting for Cuomo.

00:03:21.780 Only voting for Sliwa allowed.

00:03:23.900 Clay does not like the prospects of Sliwa winning this.

00:03:30.080 And so has made the Machiavellian decision to go in favor of a Cuomo as the lesser of two evils.

00:03:39.540 And I do think two evils is the right way to describe those candidates.

00:03:43.100 And we have a whole bunch of reaction to this.

00:03:47.860 Clay, I want you to react.

00:03:49.180 Well, first of all, Stephen Miller, who we know, another brilliant strategist and senior White House aide and friend of the show.

00:03:57.780 This is cut seven.

00:03:58.620 Here he is saying, anti-Mamdani vote.

00:04:01.320 Go vote Cuomo.

00:04:02.140 Play it.

00:04:02.820 As far as New York is concerned, as you've talked about, as we've said,

00:04:05.500 unfortunately, the anti-Mamdani vote is being split between Cuomo and Sliwa.

00:04:11.320 And President Trump tonight put out a statement being clear that if you vote for Sliwa,

00:04:16.360 who's polling at about a third of where Cuomo is, you're just throwing your vote away.

00:04:21.060 The anti-Mamdani vote, which is really the pro-New York City vote, the pro-America vote,

00:04:26.400 needs to unite behind the leading candidate.

00:04:28.160 And that's Andrew Cuomo.

00:04:30.820 Man, there you go.

00:04:32.440 Is everybody going to be as angry at Trump and Stephen Miller for telling you on the day before the election

00:04:42.460 what I have been telling you for weeks, which is Sliwa can't win. 0.89

00:04:47.140 And all he is doing is helping Mumdani.

00:04:50.780 And we had him on last week, and I asked him this directly.

00:04:53.980 I think Curtis Sliwa hates Andrew Cuomo.

00:04:56.820 And he has stayed in the race partly out of principle because it is true that Democrats have created this problem,

00:05:03.160 but also, as he told us, because he truly does not see a difference between Mumdani and Cuomo.

00:05:10.020 And so the idea that he would help either of those guys, particularly Cuomo,

00:05:14.380 who I think he probably hates more than he does Mumdani because they have history together,

00:05:18.260 is a decision that he made.

00:05:22.720 And my concern is that when we get these results start rolling in tonight,

00:05:27.260 that we will see Mumdani not win over 50% of the vote and win because the anti-Mumdani vote was split

00:05:34.540 between Sliwa and Cuomo, and that's what Trump is telling us.

00:05:37.280 Now, Buck, it may also be the case, based on this turnout, that Mumdani wins over 50%

00:05:44.240 and it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

00:05:46.580 And if that's going to end up happening, then all this was for naught no matter what.

00:05:51.140 And it would suggest that at least in New York City, being an avowed socialist candidate

00:05:56.040 doesn't put much of a rock on top of your head of expectations.

00:06:03.480 And so your ceiling is maybe higher than people would have anticipated.

00:06:07.600 So this is where we're going to start to see what the results of this race truly are.

00:06:13.980 And I'm up in New York City right now, and it's all everybody's talking about.

00:06:17.820 And it looks like the New York City mayor's race may set an all-time record for most votes.

00:06:23.280 I just want to let you know, New Yorkers, that I did encourage Clay to walk around

00:06:28.740 and offer to sign copies for anybody who buys balls of his book,

00:06:33.540 but not to hand out flyers about moving to Franklin, Tennessee.

00:06:39.020 That it's too soon.

00:06:40.680 We have to see how this shakes out.

00:06:42.460 But he's not allowed to recruit off the streets of New York while he's there

00:06:46.700 in our darkest hour of communists taking over.

00:06:51.040 So he has agreed.

00:06:52.140 He will sign the book, but he will not give you flyers on how to move,

00:06:55.400 how to get a U-Haul set up for Tennessee.

00:06:57.440 I will say, the numbers out there, did you see this report that a million people say

00:07:02.420 they're going to leave New York City?

00:07:03.700 Now, I think this is a little bit like people who say,

00:07:06.300 I'm going to move to Canada, Trump wins.

00:07:08.200 I doubt that most of them would move, but let's say that 100,000, 10% of the million,

00:07:16.400 I don't think that's crazy.

00:07:17.800 I think 100,000 New Yorkers, if Mom Donnie wins, might say, I'm out.

00:07:22.540 I'm going to Florida.

00:07:23.620 I'm going to Texas.

00:07:24.540 I'm going to Tennessee.

00:07:25.940 What did Davy Crockett say? 1.00

00:07:27.400 You can go to hell. 1.00

00:07:28.260 I'm going to Texas. 1.00

00:07:29.460 All-time great line.

00:07:31.720 CrockettCoffee.com's Davy Crockett, not Jasmine Crockett. 0.95

00:07:35.280 But I think there are some people who will just say, New York can go to hell.

00:07:38.480 I'm going to Texas, or I'm going to Tennessee, or I'm going to Florida.

00:07:41.580 There certainly will be some outflow, I think, into the tri-state.

00:07:46.980 So Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, outside of the urban bubble.

00:07:53.140 That will happen.

00:07:54.580 I don't know in what numbers.

00:07:55.640 There have been people snapping up real estate.

00:07:58.200 It's one thing to move to Putnam County.

00:08:01.800 It's another thing to move to Palm Beach, right?

00:08:05.300 Yeah.

00:08:05.560 It's another thing to decide.

00:08:06.620 You're going to Orlando or wherever.

00:08:10.100 So we'll see.

00:08:11.280 I agree, Clay.

00:08:12.160 I think people are frustrated.

00:08:14.080 I don't believe that you'll see a large outflow of New Yorkers, because I think that most of

00:08:17.360 the New Yorkers who are going to leave, like me, left during COVID.

00:08:21.440 I think that that pushed a lot further in this direction than anything we're seeing right now.

00:08:25.900 But we'll see.

00:08:27.380 We'll see.

00:08:27.980 The number of people that want to move versus who will move, that is an important distinction

00:08:34.380 as well.

00:08:34.840 I think a lot of people will want to move, but it's hard.

00:08:37.040 You've got family and everything else.

00:08:38.240 But tell me this.

00:08:38.860 Do you agree with this assessment of Van Jones over, this is cut 14, suggesting that the Cuomo

00:08:47.160 endorsement by Trump could, given the political realities of New York, actually hurt Cuomo?

00:08:55.080 Play 14.

00:08:56.120 Look, there must have been some kind of handshake deal between Mom Donnie and Trump for Trump

00:09:01.320 to come out and endorse in New York City.

00:09:03.800 A multi-faceted endorsement and non-endorsement.

00:09:07.040 I can't think of a worse thing to happen to Cuomo than for Donald Trump to come out last

00:09:14.120 night in this town and say what he said.

00:09:17.500 What do you think of that?

00:09:19.580 I think it's probably why they waited until now, candidly, because there's a lot of early

00:09:26.640 voting that's already taken place.

00:09:28.960 And I suspect that they said early voting, you may juice turnout.

00:09:33.740 I don't think most people on election day are going to be motivated to vote against Trump.

00:09:40.620 I think Trump's calculus is there might be some people out there that haven't decided

00:09:46.360 how they're going to vote.

00:09:47.640 And if it's a close race, that this could swing the difference.

00:09:51.440 My concern now is Mom Donnie seems to be rolling buck and that if he wins over 50 percent,

00:09:58.340 then all of this was for naught.

00:09:59.880 I mean, to be fair, it wouldn't have mattered if Curtis Lee was in.

00:10:03.200 And it wouldn't have mattered how many other candidates were there, because if he wins

00:10:07.940 over 50 percent, then the majority of New York voters and a majority of New York voters

00:10:13.660 with a huge turnout, potentially record, are saying Mom Donnie's our guy.

00:10:19.580 Now, Cuomo, I think, has run a poor campaign, but he's actually pointing out something that

00:10:24.360 is very important.

00:10:25.400 Cut 16.

00:10:26.740 He's saying what Mom Donnie is promising to people, he doesn't even have the power to

00:10:32.180 deliver on.

00:10:33.620 And I do think that that might be beneficial to New York City.

00:10:37.540 Cut 16.

00:10:38.540 I call them the TikTok promises that he put forth in the primary.

00:10:41.980 None of them are real.

00:10:43.880 The mayor is going to freeze the rent.

00:10:45.400 People think it means that he's going to freeze their rent.

00:10:47.620 No, no, no, no, no.

00:10:48.380 First of all, the mayor has no ability to freeze anybody's rent.

00:10:51.820 No legal ability.

00:10:53.220 It's done by an independent board that is term-appointed, and then it's only for about

00:10:57.580 25 percent of the housing units, called the rent-stabilized units.

00:11:01.040 So it will never happen.

00:11:02.920 We're going to have a government-owned grocery store, one in each borough.

00:11:06.840 We have 16,000 grocery stores.

00:11:08.900 Five grocery stores are not going to make a difference.

00:11:11.360 Free buses.

00:11:12.500 It's not up to the mayor.

00:11:13.460 It's up to the state.

00:11:14.320 State said they're not going to do it.

00:11:15.920 It's all BS.

00:11:17.960 It's all campaign rhetoric.

00:11:19.680 None of it will change anybody's life.

00:11:23.200 Where was this for the past several months, Cuomo finding an ability to make the case

00:11:28.580 against Momdani?

00:11:29.560 I get it.

00:11:30.480 Hey, this is the final day, the final hours.

00:11:33.520 But wouldn't this have been helpful back during the primary?

00:11:37.440 Wouldn't this have been helpful in the last several months?

00:11:40.680 I just think if Momdani wins, it's not only a credit to Momdani's personal charisma and

00:11:45.600 the fact that a lot of people want to believe in the tooth fairy, so to speak.

00:11:49.760 But it's also a function of how poor of a job Andrew Cuomo has done defining the absurdity

00:11:55.800 of the Momdani campaign.

00:11:58.060 Well, he has run a terrible campaign.

00:12:00.320 I think there's even been some admission of that from the Cuomo side that he has not

00:12:04.380 done. 0.99

00:12:05.220 He has been not just inept, but lazy, too. 0.99

00:12:08.900 Certainly in the primary, in the Democrat primary, he thought he was going to walk away 0.99

00:12:13.200 with this.

00:12:13.760 We've seen this happen before in New York.

00:12:15.160 Remember, AOC took out the number three Democrat in terms of House leadership.

00:12:21.820 I forget the guy's name.

00:12:23.080 That tells you something.

00:12:24.420 But he just figured, I'm going to win.

00:12:26.960 Didn't campaign.

00:12:27.920 Didn't show up.

00:12:28.600 Didn't care.

00:12:29.560 And now we've got AOC running around saying crazy stuff.

00:12:32.880 Momdani was also something of a sleeper candidate here, at least in the primary.

00:12:38.180 And when he took out Cuomo, it was because Cuomo was lazy and thought that he was kind

00:12:42.040 of entitled to represent the Democrats in the city of New York.

00:12:45.300 Uh, it's looking like it's going to be Mondani, but you know, Cuomo could pull something out

00:12:51.540 here at the very end.

00:12:52.520 Maybe that's my, that's my most hopeful note I can hit on this.

00:12:55.580 And I'm not even very hopeful, Clay.

00:12:57.480 Cuomo's awful.

00:12:58.520 I'm sorry.

00:12:59.240 I know people want to believe that this would be some huge, uh, metaphorical bullet dodged

00:13:04.400 by New York.

00:13:05.580 And no, I think Cuomo was pretty terrible too.

00:13:08.880 So even if he wins, we got problems, New York.

00:13:11.880 We got problems.

00:13:12.540 Also important to understand the way media is going to spin this.

00:13:15.680 I'm looking at CNN right now.

00:13:17.820 Their headline is voters deliver early report card on Trump presidency, even though it's

00:13:24.920 blue state, Virginia, even though it's blue state, New Jersey, even though it is deep blue

00:13:31.240 New York city, they are going to argue if the results are Democrats win as they are favored

00:13:37.380 to win many of these races.

00:13:38.760 They're going to argue that this is a massive repudiation of Trump and that Americans regret

00:13:43.220 the decision that they made a year ago.

00:13:45.340 Just prepare yourselves.

00:13:46.820 People vote.

00:13:49.160 Most people vote first and foremost, based on how it makes them feel to cast that vote

00:13:55.600 for that person, that party, that candidate.

00:13:58.100 So if you can tap into frustration, resentment, uh, some idea that this is a, an effort to

00:14:09.060 check or veto or slow down the Trump administration, as absurd as that is, it's again, the tooth

00:14:15.420 fairy syndrome, right?

00:14:16.560 Yes.

00:14:16.820 This does nothing.

00:14:18.320 Having a communist mayor in New York does nothing to stop the Trump administration, really.

00:14:22.940 But if people feel like it does, you get mom, Donnie.

00:14:26.940 We'll see.

00:14:27.480 We'll take your calls on this too.

00:14:28.660 W O R listeners, light us up.

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00:14:34.400 Uh, when you're not planning something as huge as bring another life into this world,

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00:14:44.680 sometimes even by their families or their own partner.

00:14:47.580 And it can be a very tough moment, but that's why there are organizations that are out there

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00:15:11.380 arms.

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00:15:36.040 There are hundreds of thousands of mothers to be in this situation. 1.00

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00:15:40.640 As you're closing out this year, think about a deductible, tax-deductible donation to

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00:15:49.740 Using your cell phone, dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby.

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00:16:07.240 Saving America, one thought at a time.

00:16:11.960 Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.

00:16:14.660 Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:16:19.520 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00

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00:16:25.720 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

00:16:29.440 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

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00:16:41.400 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

00:16:44.640 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:16:50.080 Election Day 2025.

00:16:52.780 I am in New York City where the mayoral decision is being made across the city.

00:16:58.840 Potential record high turnout there.

00:17:02.220 Across the river from New York City, New Jersey.

00:17:06.200 And here's the truth.

00:17:08.340 If Republicans show up in big numbers today in New Jersey, then Cittarelli is going to win.

00:17:15.420 If they do not, then he is going to lose.

00:17:18.180 Because there's pretty reliable data out there, Buck, that shows that Democrats banked, as they often do,

00:17:24.720 a substantial lead of around 250,000 votes, it appears, headed into Election Day.

00:17:31.200 So the question is, can Republicans in New Jersey get out to the polls and win Election Day

00:17:38.300 and flip control of the state of New Jersey?

00:17:42.180 In Virginia, when some seers open, no incumbent there, but also Lieutenant Governor

00:17:48.860 and Attorney General races that are all super competitive down the ballot.

00:17:55.140 As I mentioned, the mayor's race in New York City, mayor's races in Minneapolis, I believe Cincinnati,

00:18:01.020 I believe Detroit, many of you across the country.

00:18:04.420 The big Prop 50 decision on California.

00:18:09.260 And the headline is going to be, if Democrats do well tonight, that this is a repudiation of Donald Trump,

00:18:18.380 even though that is not fair because Trump lost Virginia by five and lost New Jersey by five.

00:18:25.440 And these are both blue states.

00:18:26.820 And certainly New York City is among the deepest blue cities anywhere in the country.

00:18:31.080 But this is going to be seen in some ways as a verdict on the first 10 months or so of Trump 2.0.

00:18:40.780 You and I are happy.

00:18:42.140 Most people out there listening to us right now are happy.

00:18:46.120 And this is not the battleground states that that will decide things in 2026 or 2028 necessarily.

00:18:53.840 But that is where we are.

00:18:55.300 They want to try to attack Trump and they will use these results if they can to do so.

00:18:59.800 Now, this is going to seem like a minor thing to some of you, but I'm telling you it's not.

00:19:06.400 When I go to New York, when I go to visit my family, I'll be up there for Thanksgiving to see my family.

00:19:12.260 The same thing I understand is true in New Jersey.

00:19:14.380 Clay, I go in there and I buy some things in the store, you know, in the grocery store,

00:19:20.620 and they give me a paper bag.

00:19:23.340 And there's no option for a plastic bag.

00:19:25.480 My understanding is that Jack Cittarelli is going to reverse the New Jersey ban on plastic grocery store bags.

00:19:34.760 That alone for me, I would be a single issue voter.

00:19:38.160 I'm here in Florida.

00:19:39.500 They don't even charge me.

00:19:40.900 They're giving out plastic bags left and right.

00:19:42.800 And let me tell you, I use them for all kinds of things.

00:19:44.860 And I can tell you, I wrap my tennis sneakers in one of those little plastic bags.

00:19:49.320 Probably pick up dog poop in the plastic bag would be a good guess.

00:19:52.080 Pick up dog poop in my plastic bag.

00:19:53.440 I am reusing and using the plastic bag all the time.

00:19:56.400 The environmental data on non-use of plastic bags is very clear.

00:20:01.680 It's actually worse for the environment for a whole bunch of reasons.

00:20:03.860 Mostly because of paper is much heavier, requires more fossil fuels to be expended in transport, cannot be reused, often breaks.

00:20:13.580 People want double and triple bags. 0.99

00:20:15.660 This is a point of idiocy. 0.99

00:20:18.880 And New Jerseyans, I know you've got housing costs and tax and crime and all these other issues. 0.99

00:20:24.200 But you fundamentally cannot trust a politician who is in favor of banning plastic grocery bags.

00:20:31.360 I'm in the land of plastic grocery bags here in Florida.

00:20:34.620 Thank you, Governor Ron DeSantis.

00:20:36.660 I'm in the land of plastic bags. 0.95

00:20:39.020 Paper bags are trash. 0.71

00:20:41.600 They are.

00:20:41.920 As in they end up in the trash when they break and my milk and my other things fall all over the sidewalk

00:20:47.840 because a bunch of libs want to believe they're somehow fighting climate change by using these things.

00:20:54.500 They're wrong on the merits.

00:20:55.880 They're wrong across the board.

00:20:57.200 And I'm just saying, I would be a single-issue voter for Jack Cittarelli on the plastic bag thing alone.

00:21:03.060 And then you add all the other stuff.

00:21:04.420 It's really straightforward.

00:21:05.880 The Democrat there, Mikey Sherrill, she thinks that the fact that there are all these municipalities, Clay, New Jersey,

00:21:12.180 that have to have affordable housing, they call it affordable housing creation,

00:21:17.220 this is not the way that the market should determine.

00:21:20.460 You know, developers should say, hey, here's where I'm going to make housing and here, you know,

00:21:25.880 here's the cost of land, here's the cost of labor in this area. 0.99

00:21:29.400 They have screwed up housing in New Jersey so much.

00:21:33.440 It's so expensive to make it because of politicians.

00:21:36.660 And the Democrat just wants to do more of that.

00:21:39.320 And you want Cittarelli wants a rewrite of it to say, look, 0.97

00:21:41.400 we've got to get rid of these stupid mandates and all of the intrusions into the housing market. 0.99

00:21:46.240 That's complicated. 1.00

00:21:47.680 Grocery bags, not complicated, though.

00:21:49.400 Vote Cittarelli.

00:21:50.400 It's also not complicated to say if you want to have lower cost for rent,

00:21:54.560 you need to have more rentable units.

00:21:57.400 I know sometimes we try to overcomplicate things,

00:22:00.460 but the number one way to drive down the price of something is to have more of it.

00:22:06.700 That is the basic laws of economics.

00:22:09.600 And so if you had way fewer illegal immigrants,

00:22:13.080 people would have to pay way less for housing in the New York City area.

00:22:17.600 And so the whole concept of freezing rent actually gets the incentive structure backwards,

00:22:24.400 because what you need to do is encourage building and create far more rentable units

00:22:31.400 and encourage the rehabilitation of some of these buildings that are otherwise not rentable right now.

00:22:38.060 And when you freeze rent, you actually create an economic disincentive to increase the amount of available housing in Manhattan and the New York City area.

00:22:49.780 So this is also basic that, you know, the laws of economics do apply across party and across city and across state,

00:22:58.960 whether they're blue or red, and the fact that we can't even have a real argument with Mom Donnie,

00:23:03.820 where people point out this is, first of all, as Cuomo said, he doesn't even have the authority to do it.

00:23:08.540 But if you truly desperately thought that rent was too high in New York City,

00:23:12.240 what you should do is figure out a way to build as many new housing units as possible,

00:23:18.620 which feels like very basic common sense to me, but it runs into, oh, well, then we've got climate issues,

00:23:26.280 or it's so hard to get building permits, and so many of you out there are just fed up with this.

00:23:30.860 Well, but who is going to do this?

00:23:32.460 This is a huge thing in New York as well.

00:23:34.300 So New York and New Jersey, this is the same problem played out in different locales.

00:23:38.800 California had that really embarrassing, even for California, embarrassing bureaucratic moment of the million-dollar port-a-potty.

00:23:47.080 You all remember that?

00:23:48.060 You know, how many of you live in a million-dollar home right now?

00:23:50.500 You know, a good amount of you, but, you know, the average American home right now is like 400 grand or something.

00:23:55.000 So a million-dollar home is a nice home.

00:23:57.880 I mean, that's an expensive, depends, you know, in Nebraska, it's a mansion.

00:24:01.740 In Manhattan, it's a one-bedroom apartment.

00:24:03.660 But a million dollars would get you some nice real estate.

00:24:06.340 Clay, they were going to build a solo port-a-potty, basically, like a glorified public bathroom for a million bucks.

00:24:14.140 I think this was in San Francisco, but it was California, the state of California involved.

00:24:18.040 And that should be the signal to everybody.

00:24:21.960 This state is not going to do good things when it comes to building housing or even involving itself in this housing process.

00:24:31.920 This plays out in so many ways.

00:24:33.900 And, you know, even in a place like, I know a friend of mine's a landlord, like a kind of a, you know, big multifamily landlord in D.C.

00:24:42.140 And he says that D.C., you know, one of the big problems is with building new construction in D.C. for people to live in?

00:24:48.320 You know you'll never be able to evict anyone.

00:24:50.340 Yeah.

00:24:51.000 Basically.

00:24:51.800 It's going to be impossible.

00:24:52.920 It'll cost you so much to evict people in Washington, D.C. that you end up paying them off to leave.

00:25:00.380 Who wants to go through the headache of, I'm going to build a new eight unit, you know, multifamily in Northeast D.C.

00:25:07.160 And I'm going to, when half your tenants can say, I'm not paying you anymore, and you end up paying them to leave after they've, you know, screwed you out of eight months of rent.

00:25:16.820 No doubt.

00:25:17.980 And, by the way, a couple of stories that are also out there.

00:25:21.680 Let me build on this for a minute, Buck.

00:25:23.440 L.A., a lot of you listening to us right now in L.A. are nodding along.

00:25:29.100 They still haven't gotten the ability to rebuild the areas that were burned down in Los Angeles because getting building permits in Democrat-run cities,

00:25:39.520 even for burned down homes, is virtually impossible.

00:25:44.580 And you know who knows this better than anybody.

00:25:47.260 Trump, who is a builder and is building a ballroom right now because he found out there weren't zoning restrictions in D.C.

00:25:53.160 Speaking of D.C., Buck, all flights at Reagan National have been halted following a reported bomb threat on an arriving aircraft.

00:26:03.900 And so the whole air traffic yesterday, we talked about Houston.

00:26:07.940 Houston, there's a report that just came out that starting next week they may have to restrict airspace because of the government shutdown,

00:26:16.260 meaning whole swaths of the country they're going to be restricting air travel.

00:26:21.700 I think Democrats are going to come to the negotiating table and get this thing done, as we have told you, as soon as the election is over.

00:26:28.840 They think it's beneficial to them to have the government shut down in these elections.

00:26:33.480 I think that has been clearly their calculus.

00:26:35.500 But I do think that this is a significant story that is building in intensity.

00:26:44.380 And some of you listening to us right now, and I was a part of this in Chicago on Friday because they shut down Nashville's airport for a while when I was trying to travel.

00:26:53.260 A lot of people right now are getting caught up in frustrated, trying to get through TSA, trying to get on planes. 0.67

00:27:01.960 This is absolutely ridiculous.

00:27:05.140 So that is all underway as we are speaking to you. 0.96

00:27:10.760 Let me also say this.

00:27:13.640 If you go buy my book, I will love you forever.

00:27:16.840 I think that is a simple way.

00:27:19.820 I want this book to be in as many hands as possible.

00:27:22.580 It should be in every bookstore.

00:27:23.900 So wherever you are in the country right now, balls is out there.

00:27:28.720 And the esteemed President Donald Trump is the only quote on the back, Buck. 0.59

00:27:33.920 It says, Clay Travis has a great new book.

00:27:36.560 Clay is a highly talented commentator.

00:27:38.460 Great taste, this Trump, who is tough, smart, and gifted with common sense.

00:27:42.880 He has studied our historic movement from the very beginning.

00:27:46.120 Truly gets MAGA.

00:27:47.160 MAGA loves him.

00:27:48.800 This is the only thing on the back of the book.

00:27:51.200 I thank President Trump for the endorsement.

00:27:53.720 I would really appreciate to get on the New York Times list.

00:27:57.300 They don't want to put me on, Buck.

00:27:58.740 They don't want to put you on.

00:27:59.760 Joe Concha, our friend, just texted me and he said, hey, I've written all my books.

00:28:04.440 They finally put me on the Times list.

00:28:06.780 I've been a bestseller before all the books.

00:28:09.760 This is my potentially last best chance.

00:28:12.380 But Concha's listening right now.

00:28:13.820 And he said, dude, they finally put me on the list.

00:28:16.500 Maybe they aren't as communist laden as they have been in the past.

00:28:20.240 So, but I need to blow through the numbers.

00:28:22.660 It's like Trump winning in an election in order to get on Joe Concha, though.

00:28:26.860 You know, Joe Concha, great guy, crazy, crazy to not put him on the list.

00:28:31.140 But, you know, this is like the election, right?

00:28:33.340 You're not going to win by a few thousand, right?

00:28:35.600 You have to be way over the finish line.

00:28:38.480 You have to win by thousands and thousands of votes.

00:28:41.240 You have to win a landslide.

00:28:42.780 And that's where I need all of you.

00:28:44.620 Amazon's got it right now.

00:28:46.360 Every bookstore in America.

00:28:48.200 I would seriously, deeply appreciate if you guys would go buy it.

00:28:51.880 As Buck said earlier, it's a lot of work to write a book.

00:28:54.740 We actually write books, finish the show, sit down in front of the computer, crank this thing out.

00:28:59.640 It's fun.

00:29:00.180 It's engaging.

00:29:00.960 Also, if you're not a reader, I read the entire thing on audiobook.

00:29:04.620 Are you scheduled to be in the audiobook chamber?

00:29:06.980 I say that because it is somewhat accurate.

00:29:09.440 Over the Christmas holiday, bah humbug, Ebeneezer Scrooge coming for my holiday.

00:29:15.360 I can't wait until you come back in January because I've recorded the last three of my books.

00:29:22.320 You guys know I mispronounce words all the time.

00:29:24.380 They have you there reading, and every time you mispronounce anything or you miss a word or whatever else, they stop you.

00:29:32.240 It is unbelievably challenging to just read an entire book, to say nothing of the fact that you think, oh, I should have put that paragraph there. 0.98

00:29:41.060 Why am I an idiot? 0.97

00:29:42.060 Why did I have that sentence here? 1.00

00:29:43.520 I could have written this better.

00:29:44.580 You just self-criticize the whole time you're doing it, but you can hear me read the entire thing.

00:29:51.120 I did the audiobook.

00:29:52.380 Buck will be doing his.

00:29:54.040 So if you're like my wife and you listen to books more than you read them because you're driving kids around or you're on the road a lot, you're a trucker, you got that option too.

00:30:03.220 I would seriously, deeply appreciate if you would go buy a copy of Balls today and drive me up the bestseller.

00:30:09.080 People are asking what charity you're going to donate the proceeds to, I might add.

00:30:12.760 Yeah, I'm going to try to.

00:30:13.500 Yeah, I'm going to try to send to a bunch.

00:30:16.100 I don't want to break news.

00:30:17.660 We're talking about doing something.

00:30:19.800 I'm going to break news.

00:30:21.520 Significant at Vanderbilt Law School about commitment to free speech principles for lawyers because I'm troubled by what I've seen so many law schools out there doing when they're not.

00:30:34.960 Basically, the whole idea of being a lawyer is you have to sometimes advocate for things that you might personally disagree with.

00:30:41.940 That's the job.

00:30:42.880 And I see a lot of law schools now saying, well, if it's not the right woke perspective, then we don't even feel like we should teach advocacy here.

00:30:51.340 And I deeply disagree with that, as does my wife.

00:30:54.760 So we're trying to work on something there that could be significant.

00:30:57.360 So in 20 years, is Uncle Clay going to be able to get a little Jimmy Speed into Vanderbilt Law School?

00:31:02.020 Let's get down to brass tacks here.

00:31:03.800 I should have good pull.

00:31:05.640 There we go.

00:31:06.220 I should have good pull.

00:31:06.940 That's what I'm talking about right there, everybody.

00:31:08.680 I should have good pull.

00:31:09.140 Right down to it.

00:31:09.860 But I was also on in Asheville, North Carolina.

00:31:12.280 I want to do something.

00:31:13.060 I know we've already done some stuff.

00:31:14.480 Western North Carolina, I did a tour this morning with a lot of our local affiliates.

00:31:19.240 I think there's still a lot of people struggling in the Asheville area, even though it's been a year since the hurricane hit there.

00:31:26.200 But a lot of people have forgotten.

00:31:27.640 My in-laws are still rebuilding.

00:31:29.540 Still rebuilding.

00:31:30.220 No, I think there are tons of people in that area that need help.

00:31:33.540 So I'm going to do a variety of things, but I'm excited about being able to hopefully make a little bit of difference out there.

00:31:41.700 And look, if you love steaks, burgers, chicken, pork, kind of all sound good.

00:31:46.640 I'll be honest.

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00:31:49.640 This is the company connected to us with American Ranchers doing the hard work.

00:31:52.700 They raise cattle, pigs, chickens the right way.

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00:32:04.700 They give you 100% American proteins delivered right to your door.

00:32:09.580 We're subscribers.

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00:32:19.180 You get $100 off your first three orders plus free meat for life.

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00:32:54.020 Code Clay.

00:32:55.700 Want to be in the know when you're on the go?

00:32:59.060 The Team 47 Podcast.

00:33:01.460 Trump highlights from the week, Sundays at noon Eastern in the Clay and Buck podcast feed.

00:33:06.540 Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:33:11.020 We are joined now by our friend, data guru, Ryan Gerdusky.

00:33:15.320 He's a part of the Clay and Buck podcast network.

00:33:18.360 And I know we're about halfway through the day right now, Ryan.

00:33:23.140 So I'm going to lay out some things.

00:33:25.080 You tell me if you would sign on to these and or what you are seeing.

00:33:28.860 If Cittarelli is going to win in New Jersey, Republicans have to turn out in huge numbers today because he's down around 250 or so thousand votes, it appears, based on early voting and the mail ballots, absentees.

00:33:44.380 Virginia is looking bad for winsome seers. 1.00

00:33:49.260 But Jason Meares, the attorney general, is in a tight race and has a decent chance.

00:33:55.420 Lieutenant Governor is going to be competitive there.

00:33:57.700 And it looks like Momdani is going to win and potentially win with more than 50 percent of the vote.

00:34:05.520 Do you sign on to any of those takes?

00:34:07.820 Am I wrong?

00:34:08.520 How would you assess where we are?

00:34:10.600 No, you're pretty on the money.

00:34:12.040 I mean, New Jersey is reporting county by county.

00:34:15.820 So it's very difficult for me to get a real estimate.

00:34:18.340 Remember, Cittarelli only lost by 80,000 votes in 2021.

00:34:22.220 He lost Election Day Republican versus Democrat turnout, right?

00:34:26.780 There were more Democrats turned on Election Day in 2021 than Republicans.

00:34:30.940 But he won independents by such a large margin, it overwhelmed whatever Democrat turnout looked like.

00:34:37.240 He won Election Day by a little over 200,000 votes.

00:34:40.340 Right now, it's looking like one thing that's pretty surprising is how many people in Mikey Sherrill's district are voting right now.

00:34:48.180 She has tremendous turnout out of her districts as of noon today.

00:34:52.840 Not all the counties are reporting.

00:34:54.380 A lot of the big Republican counties have yet to report.

00:34:57.080 Some of the other big Republican counties have reported.

00:35:00.900 But definitely Mikey Sherrill's district is definitely showing up in full force, presumably, for her.

00:35:06.900 It's a pretty safe Democratic district.

00:35:08.960 Over in Virginia, what I've sat there and seen right now is, you know, Republican counties are kind of in a mix right now.

00:35:17.420 There's counties like Caroline County, Greene County, Norton County, which are doing fairly well.

00:35:23.440 You know, they're coming up in pretty large numbers.

00:35:26.720 But also, at the same exact time, there's other super big Republican counties like Appomattox and Buchanan, which are having horrendous turnout.

00:35:33.780 So Republicans are making up some of the best turnout counties and some of the worst at the same exact time.

00:35:39.340 Places like Alexandria, Fairfax, they're about 50 percent of their 2024 election day as of right now, 55 to 60.

00:35:47.940 New York City is going to have the largest turnout in mayoral history.

00:35:51.640 We're easily going to blow past, I think, 2 million votes.

00:35:54.380 And it's pretty safe to say largest election ever was in 1991 for 1993, rather, for Giuliani.

00:36:02.680 That was 1.8 million.

00:36:03.980 This is going to be at least 2 million, tremendously high turnout.

00:36:09.100 And in places like the Bronx, which had not voted at all on before Election Day, horrendous voting before Election Day, had tremendously high turnout.

00:36:18.920 So, Ryan, in the New York race, the thing that you hear about constantly from the Mamdani camp is just variations on cost of living and how Mamdani says he's going to bring those costs down.

00:36:32.400 This is, as far as I'm concerned, like fairytale stuff.

00:36:37.220 But put that aside for a second.

00:36:38.800 Is it a similar situation in New Jersey?

00:36:42.020 What are the biggest things that are at issue that are actually moving, mobilizing voters and that could make the difference here in turnout when you look at the issues between Cheryl and Cittarelli?

00:36:53.340 Well, the biggest issue, and I cover this on the Numbers Game podcast for a whole episode, one of the biggest issues in both Virginia and New Jersey are electric prices.

00:37:02.180 Electric prices are through the roof.

00:37:04.040 Two-thirds of electric price increases, according to CNN, were because, not that that's a reliable source, but two-thirds of the increased cost was because of...

00:37:11.340 Dory, every time you mention CNN on our show, Ryan, we play a little boo in the podcast.

00:37:17.980 Well, I think the article was good, but a tremendous amount of the data centers and data centers that are popping up everywhere and how the increased costs are coming in states like that.

00:37:29.140 That's a big thing.

00:37:30.220 What happened in New Jersey and what happened in Virginia is that Democrats are going to nationalize it, right, make the whole election about Donald Trump and say,

00:37:37.260 a vote for me is a vote against Trump, even Jay Jones is doing that as an attorney in the general race.

00:37:41.960 It was Trump all day, all night.

00:37:44.260 Cittarelli's talked a lot about, you know, cost of living, how they'd be effective, an effective administrator.

00:37:51.320 That, I don't know what's moving on numbers.

00:37:55.120 Right now, Democrat numbers are fairly strong in a number of places, but numbers are strong, by the way, everywhere.

00:38:01.700 I'm looking at races across the country.

00:38:03.460 There's an election in Miami going on right now.

00:38:05.260 Democrat turnout is gigantic right now in Miami.

00:38:08.660 The race elections in Pennsylvania, there's lines around the corner in Pittsburgh to go vote.

00:38:14.300 This is a very, this is probably going to be the highest turnout election than off, off, non-primary, non-presidential, non-midterm years probably ever.

00:38:25.360 What's the impact, if anything, of Trump saying Cuomo should be your vote, Slewa can't win? 0.99

00:38:32.280 He waited until the night before the election.

00:38:35.540 There's been arguments that it actually helps Momdani.

00:38:38.320 At this point, does it have any impact and prediction from you?

00:38:43.540 Do you think that Momdani is likely to get over 50 percent?

00:38:47.420 In which case, all the talk about Slewa versus Cuomo versus Eric Adams may not end up having mattered because if he gets over half the vote,

00:38:55.280 then it doesn't matter how much split vote there was.

00:38:59.240 Yeah, it's not helpful for Trump to weigh in because he's so disliked by two-thirds of New Yorkers.

00:39:06.300 A 30 percent, 33 percent love him or like him, and two-thirds can't stand him in New York.

00:39:11.380 And I don't think that it's necessarily helpful to Cuomo.

00:39:13.440 I think Curtis Lewa could have done not only more for himself by Team Manpo Cuomo,

00:39:20.360 but also helping the Republicans running down ballot in New York City, which is going to be tremendously important if Momdani becomes mayor.

00:39:27.220 Can he win?

00:39:28.000 Listen, I can't remember 50 percent.

00:39:29.440 I don't know, and I don't like to predict that.

00:39:31.300 I don't like to make predictions that I know I can't come true on.

00:39:34.960 But here's what I'll sit there and say.

00:39:36.360 You know who's looking at this election more than anybody is AOC, 0.90

00:39:38.780 because everyone kind of sat there and said Mandani has a ceiling, Mandani has a ceiling.

00:39:43.200 He got so and so many votes in the primary.

00:39:45.360 He can't possibly get more than a million votes in a two-million-person election in the general.

00:39:51.280 If there's no ceiling on socialism, AOC is going to look at that and say,

00:39:55.300 OK, it's my time to shine.

00:39:56.560 I'm running for president.

00:39:57.720 And it's not a joke when you say – I mean, yes, New York City is not reflective of the entire country,

00:40:01.620 but there's a big chunk of that base in the Democratic primary that sits there and says,

00:40:05.640 no, there's no cap on socialism.

00:40:07.040 Let's go completely full-fledged on this.

00:40:10.380 And then it's just a race to the left of who can get there first, especially on economic issues.

00:40:15.440 Ryan, on the Virginia side of things, it's not looking good from everything that we've seen,

00:40:20.360 and we talked to you about this in the early voting stage a bit.

00:40:24.360 Winsome Sears, was this just not a race she could win because of the political realities of the state of Virginia right now

00:40:31.520 and the enormous weight that really the suburbs of D.C., which is what, like Fairfax County and Nova,

00:40:39.580 all those different areas of it, basically, was this not her fault?

00:40:43.900 I don't remember a single thing coming from her side of the campaign.

00:40:49.080 Plenty of things coming from the Spanberger that I didn't like but I was certainly hearing about. 1.00

00:40:54.100 But Winsome Sears, I didn't even hear what she was standing for.

00:40:57.220 She said one thing and one thing only.

00:40:59.180 I will stop transgender bathrooms from happening in Virginia. 1.00

00:41:01.980 She said it every single day.

00:41:03.200 That was the only issue she ran on.

00:41:04.360 Look, I'm not here to trash someone who's still – the votes are still yet to be counted.

00:41:08.200 But I'll say to Winsome Sears, she's doing significantly worse than both the candidate for lieutenant governor and AG. 0.99

00:41:14.680 And even before the scandal, she was doing worse than the AG candidates.

00:41:18.040 Not only she's an unknown person, she's a lieutenant governor currently. 0.98

00:41:21.560 She raised a ton of money. 0.66

00:41:23.680 She wasn't starving for cash.

00:41:26.440 She ran on only one issue, which was transgender stuff.

00:41:29.900 And I'm not saying it's not great for Republicans.

00:41:31.720 It is a winning issue.

00:41:33.460 But she needed more than that, it sounds like, assuming that the polls are accurate so far,

00:41:37.680 that that alone is not going to propel her to the governor's mansion.

00:41:40.720 It's just not the most important.

00:41:41.960 It was the only thing she talked about.

00:41:44.060 She didn't talk about anything.

00:41:46.180 And then when she was asked about specifically data centers because electricity prices are increasing throughout Virginia,

00:41:51.500 she sat there and said, well, they're here to stay, and I'm building more of them.

00:41:54.840 And it was very, very, very unpopular.

00:41:57.400 She just is – she ran – her original campaign team had a lot to be desired. 0.86

00:42:03.440 I talked to a lot of people running down ballot.

00:42:05.300 They did not like what she was doing.

00:42:08.620 And she's not just losing today like the lieutenant governor.

00:42:12.920 She's just a generic Republican. 1.00

00:42:14.440 No one really knows a lot about him.

00:42:15.680 He had no money.

00:42:16.740 She's losing worse than him.

00:42:18.300 And it says a lot more about her.

00:42:20.960 It's a bad year.

00:42:21.660 It's a bad year.

00:42:22.300 You lose, you lose.

00:42:23.360 But when you're losing worse than somebody with no money, no name ID, and that's just a generic Republican,

00:42:29.440 that's pretty much on you.

00:42:31.000 Okay, to what extent do you believe there is any predictive value in these elections as we look toward next year's elections,

00:42:40.440 which have far more consequential stakes?

00:42:43.780 I think that it looks like – listen, Democrats are voting like it's a presidential election.

00:42:48.380 I mean, that's just the truth of it.

00:42:49.860 They're voting in early elections and like presidentials.

00:42:52.180 Some of these counties I'm looking at in New Jersey, where it was five to one in 2020, like blue counties, five to one Democrat in 2021,

00:42:59.480 it's looking like eight or nine to one Democrat right now.

00:43:02.580 Just Democrat turnout is through the roof in some of these places, especially these white college-educated areas.

00:43:08.620 And they are voting like it's a presidential election.

00:43:11.120 Republicans really need to wake up if they think, even with all this gerrymandering that they're doing and things that are working in their favor,

00:43:17.580 if they think they can win on that alone, they cannot when it comes to this kind of turnout.

00:43:22.120 The turnout is immense, and Republicans need to match it in a significant way and really need to have answers on certain things in the economy,

00:43:29.540 which I think are really pressing people's questions on quality of life.

00:43:32.880 So, any last-minute thoughts for how you think New York is going to go, specifically, Ryan, as the votes are coming in right now?

00:43:43.160 Is a Cuomo, this is really what I'm leaning toward, is a last-minute Cuomo miracle in the cards, or have you already written this off?

00:43:51.680 I mean, listen, I'm not writing anything off.

00:43:54.400 I just sit there and sit there.

00:43:56.120 Cuomo needed to do one major thing.

00:43:58.520 Give Republicans a reason to vote for him.

00:44:00.920 And he never did.

00:44:02.880 And that is Cuomo's biggest mistake in this general election.

00:44:05.580 In the primary, he didn't do anything right.

00:44:07.560 But in the general, he needed the hundreds of thousands of Trump voters in the city of New York who could sit there and vote for an election to say,

00:44:15.560 I'm going to vote for Cuomo because he's going to do X, Y, and Z.

00:44:18.180 He's going to support the problem solvers, the common sense caucus, which is Republicans and Democrats in the city council.

00:44:23.840 I'm going to do this on crime.

00:44:25.400 I apologize for COVID.

00:44:26.840 I apologize for bail reform.

00:44:28.500 I'm going to be the guy for everybody now.

00:44:30.680 I'm going to rise above this.

00:44:32.500 And he never did.

00:44:33.900 He only stuck to Democratic politics.

00:44:36.500 And it makes me think. 0.97

00:44:37.380 Is he just kind of a buffoon? 0.99

00:44:39.080 I'm shocked at how inept he has been, Ryan, honestly. 1.00

00:44:42.240 Like, for a guy who was the governor, it's like he's like the – who's the little blonde-haired sort of idiot king in the beginning of Game of Thrones? 1.00

00:44:51.300 Game of Thrones. 1.00

00:44:52.300 Joffrey.

00:44:52.920 He's like a little Italian version of Joffrey.

00:44:56.280 Also, by the way –

00:44:57.720 Italian version of Joffrey.

00:44:59.160 But also, Mom Donnie has so many vulnerabilities.

00:45:03.580 Like, it's not as if he's got a, you know, like coat of armor on.

00:45:08.600 To Buck's point, it just feels like a super incompetent campaign. 0.86

00:45:12.880 It's super incompetent.

00:45:14.360 And, you know, I had a dinner with one of – I never said this to anybody before.

00:45:17.100 I had a dinner with one of Cuomo's advisors, and we're sitting there, and, you know, I run the 1776 Project PAC, and we're doing well.

00:45:22.780 We have got some money.

00:45:23.960 And he said, would your PAC donate $100,000 to the Cuomo campaign?

00:45:28.280 I go, you're not going to have a money problem.

00:45:30.760 You have a candidate problem.

00:45:32.380 All the money in the world is not going to fix that.

00:45:34.700 I give Republicans a reason to vote for you, and they just wouldn't.

00:45:38.780 And, you know, I looked at his entire electoral history.

00:45:41.340 He never had a competitive primary one time in his entire life.

00:45:44.040 He never had a competitive general one time in his entire life.

00:45:46.860 And I think that that probably speaks to a lot of life.

00:45:48.800 It's amazing.

00:45:49.380 He's just not a good – he's just not a good politician is actually what has been exposed in all this, meaning he's not even good at pretending to be good at things.

00:45:57.540 So that's disconcerting.

00:45:59.900 But, yeah.

00:46:01.000 All right, Ryan Gerdusky, everybody.

00:46:02.400 I feel like we're going to blow past the – I mean, we might hit 2024 general election numbers.

00:46:07.400 That's crazy, right?

00:46:08.320 It's crazy now.

00:46:09.520 It's nuts.

00:46:09.720 Wow.

00:46:10.120 Go check out, everybody.

00:46:12.100 It's a numbers game on the Klan Buck Podcast Network.

00:46:14.260 Great podcast.

00:46:15.360 Ryan breaks down all of the data.

00:46:17.840 He knows the players.

00:46:19.060 He knows the numbers.

00:46:20.560 You'll learn a lot.

00:46:21.320 He'll impress all your lib friends, all your Mom Donnie voters next door.

00:46:24.540 Be like, well, only 30% of 20% think that Mom Donnie's a communist 100% of the time.

00:46:30.480 Thanks for being with us, Ryan.

00:46:32.640 Thank you.

00:46:34.720 Anti-Semitism is on the rise.

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00:46:41.880 Jewish schools have been targeted.

00:46:43.420 Synagogues are threatened. 1.00

00:46:44.600 Silence is not an option.

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00:48:06.960 We've covered a lot.

00:48:08.020 We're going to keep covering a lot because we've got the New York City mayor's election,

00:48:11.700 the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey.

00:48:14.540 Go vote.

00:48:15.280 Go vote.

00:48:15.840 I voted for my Miami Beach mayor here and the commissioners.

00:48:20.560 Clay voted for the URGD council or the alderman or whatever it's called over there.

00:48:25.920 I'm not even sure exactly what the alderman does, but I went and voted.

00:48:28.740 But, yeah, you've got to make sure you've got the right alderman or else all hell's going to break loose.

00:48:34.240 And, you know, you might have some, I don't even know what, going on in the town of Franklin, you know.

00:48:41.520 You could have people.

00:48:42.740 You could have people.

00:48:43.640 A little bit of utopia where I live.

00:48:45.080 A little bit of utopia.

00:48:45.480 I was going to say, you could have people thinking they can just drive the golf cart all the way into town.

00:48:50.240 Like, what's going on, you know?

00:48:52.240 Civilization, friends.

00:48:53.100 We can't just let these things happen.

00:48:54.960 So, yeah, we are going to follow this up.

00:48:57.600 Also, I'll talk a little bit about California where Gavin Newsom, so much of this is, it's interesting.

00:49:03.320 It's just tapping into Democrat frustration, Clay.

00:49:06.340 I think that's true in all of these races.

00:49:09.300 It's certainly true of Virginia, New York, and California, and New Jersey, where Democrats feel like their party has been,

00:49:16.680 because it has been, outplayed by Trump and the Republicans.

00:49:21.180 They're losing and losing and losing again this year in their opposition to Trump.

00:49:27.600 And their opposition to his agenda.

00:49:29.680 So, this is just an opportunity to vent their spleen a bit with a vote against whatever the Republican option is.

00:49:38.940 I don't think it really even gets in.

00:49:40.480 For most people, I don't think it really even gets into what they think is going to happen here,

00:49:44.700 because cost of living is such a big thing in New York, in California, and Virginia, too,

00:49:51.700 especially if you get closer to D.C.

00:49:54.340 And Democrats will make it worse, guaranteed. 0.51

00:49:56.140 They will make it worse, because even what they do to make it seem like it might improve in the short term

00:50:03.040 is to just squeeze the balloon at one side, right, to redistribute the wealth, to find some way to subsist.

00:50:09.800 And we see this with Obamacare, which I still wish people would pay more attention to this, Clay.

00:50:15.460 We're still in a shutdown, everybody, which is going to end after the election.

00:50:18.420 All ties in, I might add, right, Democrats, government shutdown, getting people frustrated,

00:50:25.100 making people think, oh, the Democrats are standing up, they're fighting.

00:50:29.140 Well, what are they fighting for, exactly?

00:50:30.840 Like, how are they making anyone's life better?

00:50:32.380 Ah, forget about that.

00:50:33.420 They're fighting.

00:50:35.420 It's emotional manipulation in place of an argument.

00:50:38.220 It's very effective, unfortunately, in mass psychology and mass politics.

00:50:41.500 But the Democrat offerings on all this stuff, like Obamacare specifically,

00:50:48.900 is to ignore market reality and to make promises that they can't keep.

00:50:53.220 And you're going to see a lot more of that.

00:50:55.500 Gavin Newsom, meanwhile.

00:50:56.960 I didn't get to yesterday, Clay.

00:50:58.140 I meant this is a little bit of a pickup, because I'm about to talk about public safety.

00:51:01.860 We talked about D.C. and the crime situation there, and how, who was it?

00:51:06.600 It was, Nora O'Donnell was like, well, I just go to work, and I don't know if it's safer on the streets, 0.71

00:51:10.840 because she doesn't want to admit it on camera that Trump is right.

00:51:14.520 The murder rate since Trump has tried to do his security plan in D.C. is down 60%, okay?

00:51:22.080 Six zero percent drop in the murder rate.

00:51:25.520 And all crime is down substantially, almost 30%, I think, in D.C. year to date,

00:51:30.280 with a big chunk of that coming since Trump.

00:51:32.680 So it is working.

00:51:33.580 It's not perfect, but it's working.

00:51:34.920 No one thought it would be perfect, meaning that there would be no murders or no crime.

00:51:38.520 But it's substantially improving the situation.

00:51:41.520 Meanwhile, you know what Gavin Newsom is worried about?

00:51:43.560 Not whether people feel safe on the streets or they're going to be harassed by some maniac,

00:51:47.580 but, of course, immigration.

00:51:49.380 Play 19.

00:51:51.360 People are on edge.

00:51:52.800 Communities of color are on edge.

00:51:54.660 I mean, folks scared to death to go out trick-or-treating the other night.

00:51:58.240 Scared to walk their dogs, go to a playground, go to a park,

00:52:01.060 go to a loved one's funeral because they might be disappeared on the basis of what they look like,

00:52:07.040 where they congregate, the language they speak.

00:52:09.660 In the United States of America today, you've heard the notion of a private police force

00:52:14.420 that appears to have taken an oath to office to the President of the United States,

00:52:17.940 not to the United States Constitution.

00:52:20.580 All just hyperbolic, fear-mongering, blather.

00:52:26.520 Are they illegals? 0.93

00:52:27.960 And also this notion they're being disappeared.

00:52:30.180 They're not being disappeared.

00:52:31.300 They're being detained, processed, and returned to their country. 0.95

00:52:36.280 Free flight back to where they actually should be.

00:52:40.560 I think we just have to prepare for this.

00:52:42.940 I know it's still a year away from the midterms,

00:52:46.820 and I know we're not going to start the 2028 presidential cycle until January.

00:52:52.020 It's going to be Newsome.

00:52:53.200 It's going to be Newsome.

00:52:54.620 It's going to be Newsome.

00:52:55.880 And he's going to lie blatantly like this.

00:52:59.060 Do we still have Gavin Newsome?

00:53:01.080 I don't think we played it yesterday, but did we play Newsome saying the one?

00:53:05.780 Greg, you can grab that.

00:53:07.020 I think we had it yesterday.

00:53:07.880 But when Newsome said it went mega viral, I hate when politicians lie.

00:53:12.620 You know, and he's like moving his hands and moving his face awkwardly.

00:53:17.820 And it's just so diabolically sinister because I don't know that anybody lies more than Newsome.

00:53:26.640 And by the way, there's a difference between getting a fact or two wrong in sort of hyperbole

00:53:34.380 and blatantly lying. 0.99

00:53:36.380 And Gavin Newsome is just such a blatant liar. 0.98

00:53:41.100 And the reality is, I think you have to have a blatant liar on the ticket because Democrats are wrong about everything. 0.98

00:53:49.840 I mean, they really are.

00:53:51.660 By and large, it used to be you could be a reasonable person and you could look at the two parties and you could say,

00:53:57.960 hey, you know what, I disagree with my party on this perspective or this issue, even though I may vote the other way.

00:54:05.900 I can't even think of what Democrats are wrong.

00:54:09.220 It used to be Democrats would say, hey, we know health care. 0.97

00:54:11.640 They're destroying everything having to do with insurance.

00:54:14.940 Nobody can even afford health care anymore.

00:54:16.700 If you are looking for something that Republicans, and this is going to tie into another news item,

00:54:21.560 that Republicans, I think, look back on and say, okay, we actually got that one wrong.

00:54:27.100 I think it's the Iraq War as a party, which Trump, among others, have said that was the we were on the wrong side.

00:54:36.020 We weren't on the wrong side of Afghanistan post 9-11.

00:54:38.320 But the Iraq War thing.

00:54:39.320 But the thing about the Republicans there is Democrat establishment went along with it, too.

00:54:43.720 Yeah.

00:54:44.180 Right.

00:54:44.620 Hillary Clinton, all the, you know, the Schumer, all the Democrats were in favor of it as well.

00:54:48.800 Well, but it was the charge was led by a Republican administration, to be fair, and that included Dick Cheney, who just passed away.

00:54:56.380 And we haven't mentioned this, but Dick Cheney just, what is he, 84, I think?

00:55:01.000 He just died in the last 20.

00:55:03.280 Early this morning.

00:55:04.060 Early this morning.

00:55:04.600 Yeah, the last 24 hours.

00:55:06.380 He passed away.

00:55:07.620 I remember meeting the vice president on several occasions when he was the vice president in the Oval Office.

00:55:12.640 And I will tell you, Clay, it was, we had multiple wars going on, a very different Oval Office experience as a young CIA analyst briefing then Vice President Cheney than what we got when Clay and Buck show up to hang out with Trump in the Oval.

00:55:28.580 I mean, just night, and it didn't even feel like the same movie set, the same universe.

00:55:33.980 It's just a totally different feeling.

00:55:35.580 There was an intensity and a solemnity under those Bush years because of 9-11 and everything else.

00:55:41.880 And you walked in there, and you made sure your jacket and tie were crisp, and it was, yes, Mr. President, no, Mr. President.

00:55:46.680 You know, we went in there and saw Trump, and he's like, we got the owner of the Saints.

00:55:50.320 Come on in here.

00:55:51.220 We got JD.

00:55:52.220 We got, you know, it was like we were on a-

00:55:54.580 Go check out the new guilt that I put in the, you know, cabinet room.

00:55:57.880 Just showing us cool stuff.

00:55:58.820 He's like, isn't it beautiful?

00:55:59.840 Look at this painting.

00:56:00.580 Redid this painting.

00:56:01.440 Beautiful painting.

00:56:02.100 It was just a very different feeling.

00:56:03.940 But, yeah, Dick Cheney passed away.

00:56:06.260 He became very controversial.

00:56:07.280 I think more controversial, actually, in some ways, after he left office with the legacy of the Iraq War.

00:56:13.800 And also, to be fair, he and his daughter refused endorsing Kamala over Trump in the 2024 election.

00:56:22.200 I knew his daughter did.

00:56:23.080 I actually forgot that he did until you just mentioned that to me now, which is insane.

00:56:27.080 Yeah.

00:56:27.220 And that's personal bitterness overriding political.

00:56:31.220 Look, I think he just passed away, and I know we're not supposed to speak ill of the dead.

00:56:36.080 I'm not trying to speak ill of someone who just passed away.

00:56:39.420 I think Dick Cheney was a patriot.

00:56:41.140 I think he loved his country, and I think he did what he thought was best for the country.

00:56:45.040 And I think a lot of the stuff that was used to attack him about how it was like he was enriching himself, that actually wasn't true.

00:56:52.120 And even the unitary chief executive attacks on Dick Cheney, I mean, those are, he believed that the president had the authority to make important decisions.

00:57:00.040 I was in the Oval Office, and I could tell you that the vice president, watching them make decisions and discuss at various points, and the vice president was deferential to George W. Bush as president.

00:57:10.640 This notion that he was the puppet master in Bush, the media, because they could get away with this, Clay.

00:57:17.560 I'm not trying to get diverted.

00:57:18.720 I know we've got Election Day here, but I think the media lied to people so much about George W. Bush that they have this complete, they weren't, you know, because of Trump and the way he did things by going right to them and bypassing the media, people's conception of who George W. Bush is, a lot of just everyday America, is a complete caricature.

00:57:38.800 The guy was not dumb, the guy was not shy about leadership and making decisions, and was actually very, he wasn't a scholar of Middle Eastern history, you know, but guess what, neither is Kamala or Biden or any of them, right? 0.98

00:57:54.660 But the notion that he was some sort of buffoon and was bumbling and an idiot is absurd, not true at all. 0.97

00:58:00.740 Not only that, I mean, it's funny, remember early in Trump 2.0, it didn't work because it's Trump, you can't call somebody a dictator and then be like, they tried to say that Trump wasn't president. 0.98

00:58:13.840 Remember they tried to say President Elon, they tried to demean the person in the chief executive office, the president of the United States, and so the argument when Bush was there was, oh, Cheney's the actual president.

00:58:26.040 They tried to argue, oh, Trump's there, Elon's the president.

00:58:30.500 You ever hear anybody argue that Obama wasn't the president when Obama was in office?

00:58:36.060 You ever hear anybody argue Clinton wasn't the president when Clinton was in office?

00:58:40.200 Whatever you thought of their vice president.

00:58:42.320 Now, to be fair, during Biden, people may have accurately said it's actually Obama who's still president.

00:58:49.400 And to be fair, during Clinton, there may have been moments where he was busy otherwise, occupied, not really with the running of the country.

00:58:58.220 Indisposed would be one thing you could say about Bill Clinton.

00:59:02.400 But I think, so Cheney passed away.

00:59:05.840 The guy had a, he did have a remarkable career.

00:59:07.800 And I do think, I think the best thing that can be said for him, the things that can be said for him is he loved his country and he tried, but he was wrong on some big stuff.

00:59:17.000 And unfortunately, he got particularly wrong toward the end about, about Trump and the, and the, you know, the, the trajectory of the country.

00:59:23.440 I think, and I think it was personal because of the repudiation of Bush Cheney by Trump.

00:59:28.120 I think that's exactly right.

00:59:29.640 He was, I'm trying to be, people are going to get mad at me.

00:59:31.680 They're going to say he's a warmonger.

00:59:32.480 I'm trying to, the guy just died.

00:59:33.440 I'm trying to be charitable.

00:59:34.180 He served his country for many, many years.

00:59:35.760 And I, and I, I think he loved America.

00:59:37.860 He was willing to go to the mat against the jihadis.

00:59:40.340 I will tell you that.

00:59:41.120 And we needed people that were willing to go to the mat.

00:59:43.160 You can love your country and make awful decisions.

00:59:46.140 Correct.

00:59:46.420 Those aren't opposite things.

00:59:48.040 And I think that people always throw Neville Chamberlain under the bus.

00:59:51.720 Yeah.

00:59:52.180 Was he wrong about how things would go with the Nazis?

00:59:54.760 Sure.

00:59:55.520 But people forget that World War I had just destroyed an entire generation of Europe, including Englishmen and, and, and, uh, people from the United Kingdom.

01:00:03.560 And he was hoping we wouldn't have to do that again, right?

01:00:06.100 Yeah.

01:00:06.240 He may have had the wrong remedy, but he, he, he didn't want to go to war.

01:00:11.160 I mean, that is this reasonable thing to do.

01:00:14.400 And to be fair, I've read, uh, the oral history recently in the last year or so of nine 11, because I wanted to re, uh, uh, experience that.

01:00:23.120 And remember they thought the white house was going to get hit and Cheney was underground monitoring nine 11 while Bush was up in air force one.

01:00:33.680 And nobody could get in touch with him because they were trying to keep him safe.

01:00:37.240 People forget this because they always think now of KSM Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in his like, you know, pulled t-shirt and getting arrested and all this stuff.

01:00:45.820 They were planning multiple nine 11s and that's real.

01:00:48.740 That is fact.

01:00:49.660 They were going to keep coming at us with all kinds of stuff.

01:00:52.020 The war on terror was absolutely necessary. 0.98

01:00:54.280 And those of you who fought it should always remember that and always feel, uh, you know, honored in your service for the fact that they were coming for us.

01:01:01.040 It wasn't just nine 11.

01:01:02.000 And there was more after that and yeah, it was the, the fight against, it wasn't perfect.

01:01:06.700 No war. 0.70

01:01:07.240 The fight is never going to be perfect, but it was a necessary one.

01:01:10.740 It was Iraq. 0.68

01:01:11.780 That was the expansion of it that I think was a strategic miscalculation.

01:01:16.120 But I don't think the people that said, I mean, I got hit with this even, uh, a while back was on a podcast.

01:01:20.540 People said, Oh, it was also Cheney could make money through Halliburton.

01:01:23.600 That's actually not, that's actually not true.

01:01:25.800 Yeah.

01:01:26.240 You, you can say that he was a warmonger and he made the wrong decision and it was terrible, but, but he actually didn't do this.

01:01:31.740 It's to make money through Halliburton for himself.

01:01:33.360 And I, I just, I like the criticisms to be rooted in reality.

01:01:37.360 Um, one thing that stood out to me as I reread to experience the history of nine 11, that is really kind of crazy to think about is there was almost no communication to the president because air force one wasn't able to get telephone signals.

01:01:51.700 They weren't able, obviously the internet was not in place.

01:01:55.600 They've got spotty every now and then television.

01:01:58.580 So Cheney had to manage much of nine 11 because their president, they were afraid of where the next strike might be.

01:02:06.920 He was just up in the air.

01:02:08.180 They didn't have any idea.

01:02:09.220 And so I would encourage you to go back and do some reading about that day.

01:02:12.560 They could have had 50 planes hijacked given how easy it was to hijack the ones that they did.

01:02:19.380 They could have had 50 of those planes turned into essentially massive guided missiles with hundreds of innocents aboard.

01:02:28.060 We had, you know, I mean, it's crazy to think about the worst terrorist attack ever in history.

01:02:32.380 And it actually could have been a lot worse.

01:02:34.000 Yes.

01:02:35.560 Yes.

01:02:35.780 And it would, by the way, it would have been worse if not for, uh, those, those brave souls, Pennsylvania on United flight.

01:02:45.080 That's exactly right.

01:02:46.200 Let's roll.

01:02:47.140 If that, uh, Beamer, I believe was a Todd Beamer, I think, or is it Beamer or Beamer?

01:02:51.940 You may be right.

01:02:52.560 Uh, if, if it's not, if it's not for him and, and saying, let's roll that plane ends up, we, we have a smoldering United States Capitol or White House.

01:03:00.800 Everybody, that's how close we were.

01:03:03.200 United flight 93, I think, to, if I'm getting, remembering that.

01:03:07.560 But, but to be, you know, to be fair to Cheney's memory, we needed a wartime consigliere, so to speak, after 9-11.

01:03:15.780 I'm not saying that everything was good or right, but I mean, the guy, the guy did step up and, and a lot of bad guys needed to be taken off the battlefield.

01:03:22.820 All right.

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01:03:27.940 So let's just save you money with something that is just going to be better for you all around.

01:03:31.800 PureTalk, my friend, you can save hundreds of dollars a year.

01:03:34.500 In fact, the average family of four saves over $1,000 a year when they switch from their big wireless company to PureTalk,

01:03:42.120 because PureTalk gives you unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data for just $25 a month on PureTalk's, PureTalk's,

01:03:47.960 PureTalk's lightning-fast 5G network.

01:03:50.260 Plus, right now, they'll take an additional 50% off your first month.

01:03:52.880 That's immediate savings.

01:03:54.120 Immediate savings, 50% off your first month.

01:03:56.100 Keep your phone and your number if you want, and you can keep a lot of your own money, too.

01:04:00.520 Dial pound 250, say the keywords, Clay and Buck, and PureTalk's U.S. customer service team will switch in as little as 10 minutes,

01:04:07.920 plus, say, 50% off your first month.

01:04:10.280 Dial pound 250, say Clay and Buck to switch to America's wireless company, PureTalk.

01:04:15.840 Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.

01:04:19.380 Mic drops that never sounded so good.

01:04:23.240 Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:04:27.920 This is an iHeart Podcast.

01:04:30.440 Guaranteed human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - November 04, 2025

Bonus - Daily Review with Clay Travis and Buck Sexton

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