Verdict with Ted Cruz - BONUS! Daily Review with Clay Travis and Buck Sexton - Apr 22 2025

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.460 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.780 Welcome in.

00:00:05.900 Tuesday edition.

00:00:06.860 Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show.

00:00:09.020 Appreciate all of you out there listening and hanging out with us.

00:00:13.300 We have got a bevy of stories to dive in with all of you today.

00:00:17.880 Congressman Chip Roy, great state of Texas, will join us at 1.30 Eastern Time.

00:00:23.920 David Zweig, who I would say, Buck, of the left-leaning media, may have been the most honest person in the way that he covered COVID for New York Magazine, if I remember correctly, back in the day.

00:00:40.640 And he's got a book out that is just savaging the decision to shut down schools that he wrote about for some time, masking all of the chaos that came out of COVID.

00:00:51.820 And I think we will enjoy that conversation with him, and I hope that his book, which is designed to be an early version of the historical record of what we went through with COVID, will become a clarion call for those who are pursuing truth going forward on the historic record.

00:01:12.280 Because one thing you and I have been talking about for years now is not only we knew, you and I, early on that much of the COVID failures were inexcusable, but what is the lesson that will be drawn in the decades ahead for people who are studying this era of history?

00:01:29.560 And I hope we are starting to get some of that truth out into the public record.

00:01:35.180 As you know, you read the book, the great influenza book that everybody suddenly started buying up during COVID.

00:01:42.940 And much of the way that we responded to the influenza epidemic, the Spanish flu back in the 1919-ish era, unfortunately, was reflected 100 years later.

00:01:57.500 And one of the things that you saw, Buck, and we'll dive into this a little bit later with David Zweig, but just off the top here, one of the things that you saw was people just didn't want to talk about it.

00:02:07.160 They just kind of put it in the background and pretended that it hadn't happened at all.

00:02:11.780 Now, that was much more traumatic in general because the percentage of people who died was higher.

00:02:17.720 The people who died from the Spanish flu tended to be much younger, whereas the people who had COVID issues in this country, thankfully, tended to be on the older end of the spectrum.

00:02:28.760 I say thankfully because you didn't have otherwise fully healthy people dropping who otherwise would have had decades of life.

00:02:35.860 Thankfully, COVID did not have hardly any impact at all on the young because if you had reversed this and COVID had had the same impact on the super young that it did on the aged, I think the way that America and the world responded would have been very different.

00:02:50.440 But this book that he is writing, I've got a copy of it in my house and I've already started to read it a little bit, is, I think, an important historic record.

00:02:58.660 So we will talk with him at two.

00:03:01.100 Speaking of important historic records, all of the books are now being written that we told you would be written in the wake of the 2024 election.

00:03:12.140 Having to do with Joe Biden and the mental and physical lies about him being at the peak of his abilities are now being exposed.

00:03:22.300 You can go back in time.

00:03:23.700 We told you they would try to protect him as long as they could.

00:03:27.160 They would argue that he was sharp as attack.

00:03:29.520 Now, even Jake Tapper, who tried to argue that any attacks on Joe Biden for his mental and physical health were cheap fakes.

00:03:38.000 Now, even he has written a book that is going to be out, I think, in the next couple of weeks.

00:03:44.740 And even the left-leaning media are now holding their politicians' feet to the fire when they do interviews.

00:03:53.020 This interview that I want to play for you guys is of Elizabeth Warren.

00:03:58.280 Buck does a very good Elizabeth Warren impersonation, if I must say so myself.

00:04:03.860 Thank you.

00:04:04.280 This is – I want to make sure that I give credit because I got an email from these guys saying,

00:04:11.220 hey, we're an independent podcast, and can you – if you're going to share this, this is on the Talk Easy podcast.

00:04:17.620 This is Sam Gregoso interviewing Elizabeth Warren, and they have this exchange about Joe Biden's –

00:04:25.020 Did I mispronounce that?

00:04:27.320 Did you say Gregoso?

00:04:28.200 I think it's Fredoso, right?

00:04:29.400 The way I have it written here is Gregoso, but it's possible our team changed the – got the name wrong.

00:04:36.460 But Gregoso or Gregoso –

00:04:39.860 No, it's Gregoso.

00:04:40.920 You're right.

00:04:41.380 I should just shut my face. 0.94

00:04:42.500 Keep going. 0.62

00:04:43.760 This is the podcast that it's from.

00:04:47.260 I just wanted to give them credit.

00:04:48.620 Elizabeth Warren being held accountable for her lies and listen to how she responds to the questions about Joe Biden's physical and mental well-being.

00:04:59.460 This is cut one.

00:05:00.260 Do you regret saying that President Biden had a mental acuity?

00:05:03.980 He had a sharpness to him.

00:05:05.480 You said that up until July of last year.

00:05:08.180 I said what I believe to be true.

00:05:10.400 And you think he was as sharp as you?

00:05:11.940 I said I had not seen decline, and I hadn't at that point.

00:05:18.540 You did not see any decline from 2024 Joe Biden to 2021 Joe Biden?

00:05:22.920 Not when I said that.

00:05:24.760 You know, the thing is, look, he was sharp.

00:05:31.280 He was on his feet.

00:05:32.760 I saw him.

00:05:33.660 Live event.

00:05:34.680 I had meetings with him a couple of times.

00:05:37.020 Senator, on his feet is not praise.

00:05:41.940 He can speak in sentences, is not praise.

00:05:45.460 Fair enough.

00:05:46.280 Fair enough.

00:05:48.200 What you have to remember here is that was he an out-and-out vegetable?

00:05:54.280 No, he was not.

00:05:55.700 He was able to open his eyes and blink, and I did not see an SOS coming from him.

00:06:05.340 And so...

00:06:06.220 Clay.

00:06:06.940 Clay.

00:06:07.200 I saw him on his feet is an all-time line.

00:06:10.920 He was able to stand is an unbelievable defense by Elizabeth Warren.

00:06:16.180 This is like the conversation you would have about somebody who was declining and, like,

00:06:22.140 changed their will in the last days.

00:06:24.820 Were they of sound mind or not?

00:06:26.520 Well, he was on his feet.

00:06:28.460 We're talking about the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief.

00:06:34.800 And she is saying, essentially, he wasn't a full-blown vegetable, so don't blame me.

00:06:43.720 I just kept going with the rest of the crowd here.

00:06:46.940 She's not alone.

00:06:48.440 All the rest of them did this, too.

00:06:50.360 And I think that more than anything, what happened here, Clay, was that the anti-Trump media became so...

00:07:00.560 It was like a river that could only flow in one direction, and nobody was ever told what you're saying is too crazy. 0.95

00:07:09.100 And I mean nobody at MSNBC, nobody in the Democrat Party, New York Times, Washington Post, whatever you said about Trump, he's Hitler, he's worse than Hitler, he's a monster, he's a... 0.69

00:07:22.520 Whatever it was, was actually supported by the infrastructure of the Democrat Party. 0.75

00:07:29.640 The apparatus was cheering for it.

00:07:31.620 So all corrective mechanisms were gone, and so when you have that, you can have a situation like exactly what transpired, where they just knew there's no upside to speaking the truth about Biden.

00:07:45.680 Anything that is going to go against Trump is incentivized within our own ecosystem, and so they all just had their marching orders.

00:07:56.280 As crazy as, I was going to say, like lemmings, but as you will see in my new book, which has finally been cleared by the CIA, lemmings don't commit mass suicide, everybody.

00:08:05.160 That's a crazy story.

00:08:06.440 But there's other things that you talk about in the book that you will like as well.

00:08:10.280 Yes, Clay, this was something that they now have to take some degree of accountability for when there's really no pain politically for them,

00:08:21.740 because they can't move on without addressing it at some level, because people like you and me will just keep on dunking them under the water on this, as we should.

00:08:29.900 You know, I thought it was interesting, too.

00:08:32.300 I saw a graphic, I think it was from Axios this morning, that the coverage of misinformation and disinformation has basically ended on CNN and on MSNBC.

00:08:45.820 They're not trotting out their fact checkers anymore.

00:08:48.820 I would submit to you, Buck, that the Joe Biden cover-up ended the misinformation and disinformation era.

00:08:58.060 Now, Trump winning obviously had a substantial impact on that as well, but when the entire left-wing media, legacy media, lined up together,

00:09:09.700 and I think you're right that maybe the most devastating single statement that anybody made was Joe Scarborough basically lighting his entire career on fire

00:09:19.860 when he said this was the best version of Biden.

00:09:22.440 His show hasn't recovered, and those networks haven't recovered from this.

00:09:26.240 So here's the thing.

00:09:27.960 Elizabeth Warren is trying to rewrite history in real time here in this way. 0.76

00:09:33.740 It's not, Clay, that they said the narrative at the time, go back to exactly what you brought up with Joe Scarborough.

00:09:42.540 The narrative at the time wasn't Biden isn't as bad as they say, he's semi-coherent, and maybe we can push him across the finish line

00:09:52.780 and then have VP Kamala take over. 0.99

00:09:54.840 That would have been somewhat disingenuous or, you know, that would have been dishonest, but on a scale of 1 to 10, dishonesty level 6 or 7,

00:10:04.980 they went to dishonesty level 11, which was Biden is the best he has ever been.

00:10:13.160 Biden is, in fact, the sharpest version he has ever been, which just goes to show the desperation and the lie.

00:10:20.920 You know, that's what this really was.

00:10:23.620 It wouldn't be enough to try to just soft-pedal it and say, look, he's lost his fastball, but, you know, I think he can still get it done.

00:10:30.660 That's not what they were saying.

00:10:32.060 They're saying, Biden's fine.

00:10:33.040 How dare you bring anything up?

00:10:34.520 It was Stalinism-level propaganda.

00:10:38.780 It was this guy.

00:10:40.120 It's like Kim Jong-il and Un and Kim Il-sung, who can all hit holes in one every time they play golf, you know?

00:10:46.660 It was that level madness.

00:10:48.100 Let me, by the way, you were correct.

00:10:51.080 It is Sam Fergoso.

00:10:53.060 Oh, oh, look at the buckster.

00:10:55.520 He thought, you know, he's got a sharp ear.

00:10:57.580 I'm just trying to help.

00:10:58.800 So our staff, who I'm immediately going to throw under the bus, they wrote it as Sam Grugoso,

00:11:06.840 but it's Sam Fergoso, who had that interview.

00:11:09.400 And I do give him credit because anyone who said that Biden was able to serve as president,

00:11:16.880 in a fully honest media, they should have to answer for that.

00:11:22.600 They should have to explain why they said that.

00:11:25.940 And not only the politicians, have you ever heard Joe Scarborough be asked or pushed in any way on that viral clip

00:11:36.360 where he argued that this was the best version of Biden that had ever existed?

00:11:40.460 Has anybody held him accountable?

00:11:41.940 To be fair, I think that he is just trying to ride out things and wait and wait so that by the time anyone asks him about,

00:11:52.120 like, I don't think he's putting himself in a position where even Elizabeth Warren,

00:11:55.920 because she's not as bad based on the sound bites with this as some of the others,

00:12:00.480 she's trying to take the medicine now, I think Scarborough knows that it's brand annihilation that he faces

00:12:08.660 if the wrong person gets him on the hot seat and asks him this question.

00:12:13.600 You can't come back from that.

00:12:15.440 Why should someone listen to Joe Scarborough about anything? 0.99

00:12:18.420 If he's that dumb or that dishonest, why would you care what he thinks about a single thing in existence? 0.99

00:12:24.160 I don't care what ice cream flavor he thinks is best. 0.99

00:12:26.980 Yours' answer is pistachio, which is, by the way, maybe even worse than Joe Scarborough's answer would be, to be fair.

00:12:34.100 You see this incoming that us pistachio lovers get from Clay and his flute playing ways?

00:12:39.720 It's outrageous.

00:12:40.980 We'll take some of your calls on this.

00:12:42.560 I do think that these conversations that we're going to have with David Zweig are important.

00:12:47.640 And if you are out there and you argued that this was the best version of Biden,

00:12:53.000 the two-by-four is coming for you because these books are coming out

00:12:57.160 and everyone in the legacy media is trying to cover their backsides on this.

00:13:02.000 And so they're now covering the release of the books in every little detail.

00:13:06.600 For instance, I'm reading that Biden was supposed to do his prep work from Camp David

00:13:12.780 and he got too tired and he just went outside by the pool and fell asleep, which is...

00:13:18.780 But remember, they were telling everybody his prep has been amazing.

00:13:22.320 And then remember, they tried to say, well, he has a little bit of a cold after the debate performance.

00:13:27.480 Imagine you're trying to prepare the president for debate and he's like, I'm tired.

00:13:32.120 And he just goes outside by the pool and falls asleep.

00:13:35.580 That's a story that's out there right now.

00:13:37.540 You know, there's a movie, The Death of Stalin, that's actually pretty clever for what it is.

00:13:42.740 And it's a farce, right?

00:13:44.220 But it's what does everyone do when Stalin dies around him?

00:13:47.720 The fall of Biden movie that you could make, where you basically go weekend at Bernie's.

00:13:53.780 I mean, you just...

00:13:54.460 It would be...

00:13:55.640 If anyone in Hollywood wanted to take this idea, it would be utterly hilarious.

00:14:00.840 And I think everybody would want to go see it.

00:14:02.820 And you could base it off of the real stories.

00:14:05.860 Here, by the way, I will say as we go to break, imagine what Jill Biden saw.

00:14:13.380 Imagine what the wife of the president, the first lady, what she saw.

00:14:18.340 I still think she is maybe the biggest villain here. 0.71

00:14:21.240 Because she was willing to drag his basic corpse right across the finish line so she could keep living in the White House. 0.99

00:14:28.880 I mean, she is...

00:14:30.140 Imagine what she saw.

00:14:31.720 I have a...

00:14:32.440 I want to...

00:14:33.540 Just because I feel like fighting with Claire today.

00:14:35.000 I have a very different take on Jill Biden that I would like to share when we come back.

00:14:40.600 I have a very different take than you on this.

00:14:42.280 I did not expect.

00:14:43.620 She is, to me, the worst villain here.

00:14:46.160 Buck thinks she's a hero.

00:14:47.220 We'll talk about it when we come back.

00:14:48.100 No, no, no. 0.91

00:14:48.700 That's not the take, you naughty man. 0.79

00:14:51.700 We'll come back, though. 0.98

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00:16:02.480 Saving America.

00:16:04.620 One thought at a time.

00:16:06.360 Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.

00:16:09.380 Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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00:16:43.440 Welcome back in.

00:16:45.820 Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show.

00:16:47.880 Appreciate all of you hanging out with us, rolling through the Tuesday edition of the program.

00:16:52.560 And we are joined now by David Zweig, investigative journalist and author.

00:16:57.880 He's got a brand new book.

00:16:59.100 I think you guys are going to love it.

00:17:00.340 I've already started to check it out.

00:17:01.920 We've got it at the home.

00:17:02.720 Buck is holding it up right now.

00:17:04.080 An abundance of caution, American schools, the virus, and a story of bad decisions.

00:17:10.620 David, thanks for joining us in our New York City studio.

00:17:14.080 I know we've had you on before.

00:17:15.880 And I think it's fair to say that a lot of your reporting was not necessarily well received

00:17:22.640 by people on the left.

00:17:24.000 And that you are not some far right-wing conspiracy theorist.

00:17:30.280 You just did something wild.

00:17:31.820 You looked at the data, and you were willing to write about what the data showed.

00:17:36.780 And you were, as Buck and I have both been, profoundly angered and still angry over the

00:17:42.900 failures of American public policy as it pertains to COVID.

00:17:46.540 What pushed you to write this book, and what do you hope that people take from it?

00:17:51.500 That's a very good assessment.

00:17:54.520 Yeah, in the beginning, very early on, it seemed reasonable to me.

00:18:00.460 I wasn't knowledgeable about what was happening.

00:18:02.920 I live right outside New York City.

00:18:04.460 Okay, the schools are closed.

00:18:05.820 Everything's shut down.

00:18:06.920 But very quickly after that, I watched my kids just wilting away in the gray light of

00:18:13.700 their Chromebooks, sitting alone in their bedrooms.

00:18:16.780 And I was like, this isn't going to work for a long period of time.

00:18:20.980 How can this be?

00:18:22.520 And from there, I just started kind of researching and digging in.

00:18:27.740 I was in the middle of writing a book on a totally different topic at the time, but this

00:18:32.060 was just so crazy what was happening.

00:18:35.100 I wanted to learn more about what was going on.

00:18:38.040 And very quickly, I started to speak with experts in Europe and elsewhere, because you

00:18:44.040 couldn't speak to them in the United States.

00:18:45.640 And it was very obvious that there was no reason for the schools to remain closed.

00:18:51.700 And that kind of set me off on this path.

00:18:54.100 And as you noted, this very much was what was termed a contrarian view against the establishment.

00:19:02.360 And it was certainly a challenging position for me writing for mainstream publications to

00:19:09.700 get my reporting in there.

00:19:12.040 But I pulled it off.

00:19:13.960 And I think people kind of perceive me, I think it's true, as basically the only guy who's 1.00

00:19:19.700 really able to do that, to write a number of pieces.

00:19:22.480 They were all backed by evidence showing why the establishment view was so wrong.

00:19:28.000 David, you said something I want to return to, if I can.

00:19:31.280 You said that there was no reason for the schools to be closed.

00:19:37.220 There was no medical reason for the schools to be closed.

00:19:41.920 But I am sure in the course of your research, you found a whole slew of non-medical reasons

00:19:48.280 or rationales or horse trading that led to the continuation of public school closures.

00:19:56.340 While, you know, I grew up in New York City, so I know that system pretty well.

00:19:59.920 I went to Catholic school there.

00:20:01.700 There's private schools, parochial schools, public schools.

00:20:04.200 Parochial and private were open for business in that fall after the initial pandemic, and

00:20:10.920 yet public schools were remote.

00:20:12.380 Why?

00:20:13.700 Yeah.

00:20:14.160 I mean, one of the things that's so remarkable, and it's almost astonishing that this actually

00:20:21.380 happened in real time.

00:20:22.860 And it's kind of one of the main reasons of why I wrote this book was to make sure that

00:20:27.600 what happened isn't just memory hold.

00:20:29.300 And the idea, as you noted, kids were in school, in private schools.

00:20:34.500 They were in school in red districts and in red states, while at the same time, a kid

00:20:39.460 could be down the block in public school, and he was kept home, while his best friend in

00:20:45.400 a different area or went to private school was in school every day.

00:20:48.360 So the irony to me is that on the left, which traditionally perceives itself as being the heroes of the

00:20:58.280 underprivileged in our society, they championed the rules and the guidelines and the policies

00:21:05.720 that actually harmed underprivileged kids the most.

00:21:08.900 And it's like one of the most tragic ironies of the pandemic to me, that this was the result

00:21:15.400 that you had people vigorously, it wasn't just advocating, but as you know, anyone who

00:21:20.380 disagreed was immediately vilified.

00:21:22.620 You were some right-wing crank. 1.00

00:21:23.980 You were a piece of garbage if you disagreed with them. 1.00

00:21:26.960 Well, I mean, I am a right-wing crank, so I can imagine what it would be like for you 1.00

00:21:30.260 being called that if you're not one.

00:21:32.080 Yeah, I was Benedict Arnold here.

00:21:33.960 I was, you know, immediately cast aside.

00:21:36.480 I was called a murderer.

00:21:37.460 You know, how could you do this?

00:21:39.160 One of the things that's so important that, and this is kind of like the original sin that

00:21:44.500 I talk about in the book, at the end of April, in the beginning of May in 2020, schools began

00:21:51.360 to open in Europe.

00:21:52.880 And it's not just like some little school in Tibet somewhere with 12 kids.

00:21:56.920 We're talking about millions of kids were back in school.

00:22:00.560 And the European Union, the education ministers met in May.

00:22:06.660 And at that meeting, they said, we have observed no negative consequences of opening our schools.

00:22:14.120 They met a second time in June.

00:22:15.900 They had the same determination.

00:22:18.380 No one reported this.

00:22:20.480 I ultimately reported it myself in June.

00:22:24.400 But this is kind of an astonishing thing.

00:22:27.300 This wasn't, you know, a random blog.

00:22:29.120 This wasn't an obscure medical journal.

00:22:30.800 This is the European Union and their official announcement regarding opening schools where millions

00:22:37.740 of kids were in there was there was no negative consequence.

00:22:40.980 And as far as I'm aware, no one in the U.S. media reported on this meeting.

00:22:47.300 That sort of set things on the course, you know, where we were just kind of never to come

00:22:52.680 back from that.

00:22:54.280 OK, so I want that's an important point.

00:22:56.580 I want you to expound upon something that happened that a lot of people have forgotten

00:23:00.600 in June of 2020.

00:23:02.780 And I may get the official name wrong, but it was like the American Association of Pediatricians

00:23:08.180 or something like that said schools needed to open back up and we could do it safely.

00:23:13.600 That was a big story in June.

00:23:15.660 And then Randy Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers somehow kind of got into their

00:23:23.740 universe and they ended up you probably I'm sure it's in the book.

00:23:27.900 It is.

00:23:28.360 And they ended up reversing their guidance.

00:23:31.300 What do you think now when you see Randy Weingarten going around on show saying, oh, I never said

00:23:37.000 that I wanted schools to be shut down.

00:23:39.240 What is the evidence show us?

00:23:40.860 And how important was it from a science perspective for those pediatricians?

00:23:45.420 And I remember their argument being, David, correct me if I'm wrong, that while the virus

00:23:49.040 wasn't going to go away, kids had far more to gain by being in school than they did to

00:23:54.140 fear from the virus.

00:23:55.320 That was June of 2020.

00:23:57.160 And then they completely reversed themselves under political pressure.

00:24:00.700 So what happened was the American Academy of Pediatrics put out a guidance that was unambiguous.

00:24:06.200 It said, we've got to get kids in school.

00:24:08.360 Don't even worry about six feet of distancing.

00:24:10.560 If you can do it, great.

00:24:11.540 But if you can't, don't worry.

00:24:13.040 Just three feet is fine.

00:24:14.280 Whatever.

00:24:14.540 Just get the kids in the building. 0.77

00:24:17.080 Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump tweeted, we must open schools in the fall, all caps

00:24:22.120 with a bunch of exclamation points.

00:24:24.000 Within days, the American Academy of Pediatrics put out a new statement.

00:24:28.660 Gone was any mention of don't worry about distancing.

00:24:31.520 Gone was the idea of get kids in school no matter what.

00:24:34.500 And instead, they mentioned money.

00:24:37.320 It's really important for a lot of money to flow to schools.

00:24:40.600 And then the second important thing about that revised statement was who authored it.

00:24:45.180 And it wasn't just the American Academy of Pediatrics.

00:24:47.780 It was co-authored with the two largest teachers unions in the country.

00:24:51.940 It was so stark what happened that even NPR reported on this.

00:24:55.660 But I got to tell you, this is part of a larger thing.

00:24:58.060 And I talk about this a lot in the book where I show this behind the scenes thing that was going on.

00:25:02.740 And so as I started writing these articles, challenging the sort of dogma and the establishment view,

00:25:08.600 people started reaching out to me from around the country.

00:25:11.080 Parents, regular people, but also a lot of doctors.

00:25:13.940 And these are doctors, not just some suburban pediatrician, but people who are at elite institutions,

00:25:19.180 our top university hospitals in the country.

00:25:22.640 And they were saying, hey, thank you so much for writing this.

00:25:25.540 I just want you to know, I think it's terrible what's happening with kids.

00:25:29.740 I think these policies for keeping schools closed and these mask mandates,

00:25:33.420 there isn't good evidence behind this.

00:25:35.540 Schools are open in Europe, all these things.

00:25:37.300 And they said, but all of this has to be off the record.

00:25:40.440 Because they were afraid to be cast out by their peers.

00:25:43.380 Or in many instances, they were explicitly told.

00:25:46.640 And I have examples of this in the book.

00:25:48.340 They were explicitly told by their superiors, by the administrators at their hospitals,

00:25:53.220 do not say anything about this.

00:25:55.040 So I had this bizarre experience where I'm observing this narrative that's going on in

00:26:00.260 the culture, this sort of manufactured consensus that wasn't real.

00:26:04.240 And I had this very lonely, strange experience where I'm getting all these text messages and

00:26:09.920 emails, and I'm talking with all these doctors who are disagreeing with this.

00:26:13.860 But the dissent was silent.

00:26:16.220 I wasn't allowed to talk about it.

00:26:17.600 And they were too afraid or weren't allowed to speak about it themselves.

00:26:20.300 So my book gives what I hope is this deep behind the scenes account of what actually happened

00:26:27.680 during the pandemic, not the narrative that we were all fed.

00:26:31.180 And I'm hoping that when people finish reading this, that they're going to be armed with enough

00:26:36.520 information so they can actually understand and see how the gears turn within the legacy

00:26:41.640 media and how they turn where they were working in conjunction with different institutions of

00:26:46.800 power.

00:26:47.360 So it's not just for a pandemic, but for when any other crisis happens that your listeners

00:26:52.740 and they're like, oh, I read about that in Zweig's book.

00:26:55.800 I see exactly what's happening now.

00:26:57.900 We're speaking to David Zweig.

00:26:59.360 The book is An Abundance of Caution.

00:27:00.940 I have my copy in my hands here, American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions.

00:27:06.120 One reason we want to have you on, David, is we like to reward people who were right when

00:27:09.860 it mattered and did good work when it mattered on this issue.

00:27:12.240 So congrats on the book.

00:27:13.300 And we hope people will pick up a copy because I think that's very important, right?

00:27:18.380 It's a lot easier for people to jump on the bandwagon now.

00:27:22.060 But we know that you were early on this and you got heat to that end.

00:27:24.820 And just one, I mean, Clay might have a question for you in closing.

00:27:28.320 I don't know if you're a sports fan or you like the SEC or anything, but that's always

00:27:31.080 a possibility here at the end, too.

00:27:33.560 But if you were to walk around right now, you know, sort of tell us what it's like on

00:27:39.140 the other side of it because they'll still talk to you.

00:27:41.240 They won't talk to us that much.

00:27:42.420 Some of them listen to the show because it is so entertaining.

00:27:44.540 But generally speaking, we have a center-to-right audience.

00:27:47.900 If you walked around Park Slope or you walked around, I don't know, you know, Santa Monica

00:27:53.860 and just talked to people who watch, I don't know, CNN, read the New York Times or the

00:27:59.740 LA Times and said, hey, guys, the next time around, we're all clear that we don't shut

00:28:05.220 down the schools for this, right?

00:28:07.000 Are they clear on that?

00:28:08.540 I think there's been a softening.

00:28:10.860 So I think that's the good news.

00:28:13.000 The bad news is that there is this revisionist history.

00:28:16.660 There's this narrative that they've been pushing, which is in the beginning it was we have to

00:28:21.580 close schools, we have to do all this stuff.

00:28:23.020 Eventually, when it was so obvious that that wasn't beneficial, it was so obvious this was

00:28:26.860 only causing harm, then they shifted.

00:28:28.880 Then the narrative was, well, this is regrettable, but it was an understandable thing.

00:28:33.220 This was a fog of war decision.

00:28:34.900 It was chaos.

00:28:35.740 We did the best we could.

00:28:37.380 And what I show in the book over and over is that information was known in real time.

00:28:42.920 And that example about the European Union is just one of many.

00:28:46.000 They knew what was happening.

00:28:47.760 It was ignored or it was dismissed.

00:28:50.340 So when you asked me that question, my fear is that when the next crisis happens, and it

00:28:55.600 doesn't have to be a pandemic, that once again, that there's this excuse of we're building

00:28:59.960 the plane as we fly it.

00:29:01.340 We don't know.

00:29:02.100 Sorry, we're doing the best we can.

00:29:03.900 Don't accept it.

00:29:05.300 It's not true.

00:29:06.400 Demand evidence.

00:29:07.640 And that's what my book is about at its core, is you can't say stuff without providing evidence.

00:29:13.280 And over and over, and I cite these long examples in the New York Times and all these other media

00:29:17.700 outlets, they kept quoting all these experts saying things, but they didn't provide any

00:29:23.100 evidence.

00:29:23.540 They never challenged them.

00:29:24.840 Journalists shirked their core duty, which was to actually question the statements by

00:29:29.560 those in power.

00:29:30.460 So I'm hoping my book will act as a counter, as a corrective, as this is an actual real 0.86

00:29:35.580 history of what happened.

00:29:36.580 And it works as its own guidebook to help arm people to understand how the gears turn

00:29:42.260 behind the scenes so we can try to prevent something like this from happening again.

00:29:46.220 Last question.

00:29:47.440 You came from the left and Buck's right.

00:29:50.280 I'm just curious from your perspective.

00:29:52.140 We hope that the historic record 20, 40 years, 60 years from now is going to be a worthy lesson.

00:29:59.380 How much less faith do you personally have in the so-called legacy media than you did before

00:30:06.640 COVID happened?

00:30:07.700 So David Zweig 2019 compared to David Zweig 2025, how are you different?

00:30:14.240 I would say, if I may, not just the legacy media, but the entire left establishment, if

00:30:20.100 you will, my experience during the pandemic and what I observed and what I experienced as

00:30:26.760 a journalist actually chasing down the evidence and the facts has completely shattered my entire

00:30:32.740 worldview that I had.

00:30:34.820 I was a smug liberal.

00:30:36.080 I've always been an independent.

00:30:37.380 I was not like a staunch Democrat.

00:30:39.260 So I was an independent minded person, but I tended to believe in these institutions.

00:30:44.260 And what I observed and experienced was the absolute failure.

00:30:48.700 And these people who are the good guys, I recount some stuff in the book about I had evidence

00:30:53.220 from Arizona, the state itself, which differed from a study that the CDC put out.

00:30:58.440 And when I contacted the CDC, I said, hey, I have evidence that I have data that's differing

00:31:03.840 from what you have in your study.

00:31:05.120 And I knew what they had was wrong because I had the official data.

00:31:08.160 And their response to me was, we looked through it.

00:31:11.380 There are no errors.

00:31:13.460 When you can't come back from something like that.

00:31:16.480 And like, I remember just like kind of hunched over with like a migraine that night talking to

00:31:20.580 my wife. So to answer your question, I'm, I just feel entirely differently about how the world

00:31:28.100 works. And, um, and you just can't recover from something like that when, you know, you would

00:31:33.720 think something like the NSA or defense department might pull some type of BS on that. This was,

00:31:38.460 this was a health department and the CDC, they were lying through their teeth right to me,

00:31:44.000 um, in, in email saying there were no errors. When I knew we, they knew that I knew,

00:31:49.440 and I knew that they knew that I knew that this was complete BS and they didn't care.

00:31:53.620 You can't recover from something like that. So my book is filled with kind of that type of stuff

00:31:59.320 where I, this was, this was almost like a cathartic endeavor where I had to set the record

00:32:05.200 straight. So people, and hopefully not just your audience though, I know they're going to be

00:32:09.620 receptive, I think, but I'm hoping that I can persuade some independent minded people as well.

00:32:14.620 That's my real goal is like to help people see what's really going on.

00:32:20.040 David Zweig, everybody in abundance of caution, David, thank you so much.

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00:33:19.940 sponsored by pre-born clay. Travis and Buck Sexton. Mike drops that never sounded so good.

00:33:28.060 Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back in clay. Travis,

00:33:35.720 Buck Sexton show. There is now another legal dispute that is underway. Harvard is reportedly

00:33:44.200 going to sue Trump and the Trump administration over the withholding of billions of dollars in

00:33:51.760 taxpayer dollars that have otherwise been going to the, uh, uh, the university Harvard, but also a lot

00:34:01.000 of other universities. And I grabbed this stat and credit New York times where it was. And I shared it

00:34:09.060 on social media the other day. I don't know if you have seen this yet, Buck, but we are going to

00:34:15.780 spend, or we did spend in 2023, $60 billion in taxpayer money, more, uh, to colleges and universities,

00:34:26.140 $60 billion. Harvard is getting billions of that, but the money is being spent, uh, many different

00:34:32.880 universities across the country. And this was 30 times what they spent in 1953. If you account for

00:34:43.600 inflation. So there's a graphic. Um, and, uh, I, I shared the graphic and the New York times had it up

00:34:50.840 and you look at it and what we are spending on universities blew my mind. Here's a question

00:34:59.200 for you. Cause I would put this in the same category. Now the defense of this is going to be

00:35:04.840 saying, okay, well they're doing research and we want them doing research development, all these

00:35:11.020 different things. If it's such a great idea, why aren't the universities funding their own research

00:35:17.720 and development? Why is it the responsibility of you and me and so many of you out there listening

00:35:23.120 to us right now to not only potentially be paying tuition and room and board that is exorbitant for

00:35:29.680 many of these colleges and universities nationwide, but for us also to be funding with our dollars,

00:35:37.240 huge amounts of the bureaucracy that exist at these universities. I actually give Trump credit. I never

00:35:43.020 really thought about it before. I didn't know the dollars were this extensive. Did you know that

00:35:47.640 we were given $60 billion, uh, to colleges and universities and why should we be doing this?

00:35:54.620 Well, you know, one thing that you've heard a lot about is this is for research for R and D. Okay.

00:36:00.560 Like what? I want to know that if we're, if we're hearing this, because there's a lot that you can say

00:36:06.200 is research. I mean, is this the kind of research where we're spending money to find out the, uh,

00:36:11.920 mating habits of, you know, TTC flies or something like what exactly is this money being spent on that

00:36:17.600 these schools or, or even worse? Is it looking at, is it just a lot of, uh, people being hired

00:36:22.760 to do sociology research to forward the, the, uh, progress of DEI initiatives? I mean, we have no

00:36:29.420 idea, right? So your first point, Clay, do, did I know, or do I think the general public had any idea

00:36:35.160 how much money was going to the university? I knew the answer was that there was money and it was

00:36:39.500 considerable. I didn't know it was $60 billion. That's a lot. And the second part of it is, well,

00:36:43.480 this is where you get more into the doge piece. What, what exactly is this money being spent on?

00:36:49.380 And then you can add to that. Well, hold on a second. Why are we to fund these universities?

00:36:56.440 We've already decided that the government's going to backstop the loan. So now everyone can get a loan

00:37:01.720 to go. I'll just be honest to a worthless four year, a college degree at a place or, or whatever,

00:37:07.940 at a place that does not have any incentive, uh, really to make sure that it's graduates are

00:37:14.960 getting jobs that can help them pay back the loans because it doesn't matter to them. It's

00:37:18.340 not their problem, right? The colleges and universities have no incentive to address what

00:37:25.500 the job market actually looks like. Now I'm not saying they don't do any of this, but from the

00:37:29.600 macro view, it's just, there's no skin in the game for the colleges and universities. Uh, and this is

00:37:35.260 why the tuition keeps going up because why not? Because it's not their problem. The government

00:37:40.340 is backstopping this stuff, uh, and anybody can get these loans. So that's part one of it,

00:37:45.300 or rather that's part three of it. Uh, and I just think that then you add to this, the ideological

00:37:50.040 realization that we all have had for a long time, but just what factories of insanity, these places

00:37:56.100 are. And I think that the campus pro Hamas stuff was just the latest iteration of this. But I mean,

00:38:02.180 I had friends who were in law school clay during the George Floyd stuff and what was law school

00:38:06.920 and what was being sent around in law schools was nuts. Yeah. You know, you want to talk about

00:38:13.000 do you, do you think any of them thought that Derek Chauvin should get due process? This

00:38:17.000 is law schools. Yeah, of course not. I also think this ties in and I'm going to start hammering

00:38:23.560 this really aggressively. NPR said that Trump was going to fire Pete Hegseth. You can go read

00:38:30.980 NPR.org or NPR.com or whatever the heck their website is. It is full on left wing propaganda

00:38:37.940 daily. We compete with them. Why should regardless of what your politics are, why should NPR be getting

00:38:47.580 millions and millions of dollars in government funding? We don't get millions and millions of

00:38:53.300 dollars in government funding. We don't get favorable treatment when it comes to add dollars

00:38:59.140 being allocated basically from the federal government. If we're directly competing with

00:39:04.380 NPR, which we are now, you know, you guys have brains, so you probably don't listen to NPR

00:39:09.700 that often. But in many of the 550 some odd stations that we are on on a daily basis, there are a lot

00:39:17.760 of stations out there that will be top competing options with us will be NPR. There are lots of

00:39:24.760 places out there where you might live or you might not get this show and you get NPR. Why is that not

00:39:30.320 one of the first things that they would cut to your point on Doge Buck? And if NPR says, well,

00:39:36.320 we're not getting that much money and they make the argument that, okay, why are you getting any at all?

00:39:40.780 And you are because it's coming through local advertisements and everything else. I don't

00:39:45.560 think a single red cent of taxpayer money should go to subsidize NPR's coverage in any way of their

00:39:55.100 media outlet in the same way that I don't think we should be spending millions of dollars on Politico

00:39:58.980 subscriptions or anything else. We shouldn't be giving them a penny. Yeah. Well, why? I mean,

00:40:05.360 it's for the government. The government in general, you don't really want in the business of business.

00:40:09.660 You want to let the American people do that. Would we want the government to create a really bad

00:40:16.420 smartphone company? No, I think that there's plenty of people already in that space. There are plenty

00:40:21.980 of people in the media space. We don't need incumbents who are little piggies at the trough of 0.92

00:40:29.480 government funding to continue to do what they've been doing. So I completely, completely agree with

00:40:34.600 that. And on that colleges and universities side of things, it's very clear. I mean, Harvard is just the

00:40:39.140 most prominent example. Understand this, everyone. Harvard has been violating the Constitution for

00:40:43.520 years with its admissions policies. Now, you could say at the time Harvard thought they were operating

00:40:48.580 within. OK, fine. I'm not saying that we can hold them responsible after the fact in a legal sense.

00:40:55.400 But I do think it's worth noting that Harvard has engaged in a long practice of discrimination.

00:41:00.460 And when it comes to discrimination, just look at Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

00:41:05.580 Places end up being punished or being watched very closely for historical discrimination,

00:41:11.720 in some cases for decades or more. Right. I mean, this is the reality of discrimination law

00:41:18.180 is that once you find a place that has discriminated under the law, they are under a dark cloud of

00:41:24.600 suspicion for a very long time. Legally speaking, mind you, look at Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,

00:41:29.660 a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Although I think now that Supreme Court's even

00:41:34.360 looked at that and changed the formula, but put that aside. You know what I mean in general.

00:41:38.360 I think, Clay, on this issue, Harvard has shown everybody that the plan is to continue to get

00:41:45.220 the money, but to not have to abide by federal guidelines. So why should you have your cake and

00:41:51.780 eat it to Harvard? Amen. It's effectively a hedge fund that also has classes at this point. It's got

00:41:56.440 an, you know, what is it? 80 billion, 60 billion, 53 billion dollar endowment as most recently. We

00:42:02.300 don't know what it's been for like the last year and change. But to your point, when you take federal

00:42:07.420 dollars, you agree to be bound in some way by federal guidelines. And the most basic of federal

00:42:14.180 guidelines is don't discriminate on the basis of race and make sure that everybody has an equal

00:42:20.520 opportunity to be educated and they're not going to be discriminated against based on ethnicity,

00:42:25.640 religion, anything else. They failed during the protests surrounding the October 7th related

00:42:31.060 incidents and many other universities failed as well. I told our team to get Dr. Larry Arn. There

00:42:37.180 was a great article interviewing him in the Wall Street Journal weekend edition. He is the president

00:42:42.860 of Hillsdale College. Hillsdale made the decision. We want our educational mission to be completely

00:42:49.720 independent of the United States government. And so we are not going to take any of their dollars.

00:42:55.700 Hillsdale has way less money than Harvard does. And they have managed to run their university

00:43:01.240 independently without needing federal dollars. Why wouldn't that be the standard for Harvard

00:43:06.960 unless, Buck, they were feeding at the trough of special interest dollars? They've got a $53

00:43:13.320 billion endowment. They can't afford to run their university without taxpayer subsidies?

00:43:20.920 You would think. You would think. And, you know, Harvard, at one point, the reporting was that they

00:43:25.680 were planning to just batten down the hatches and do without the federal funds. But I think they've

00:43:31.040 realized, well, hold on. It would be for a number of years here. You start to do that math and there

00:43:36.080 was hundreds of millions of dollars feel like it actually adds up, even for Harvard. So this is

00:43:42.640 a moment that we've been waiting for on the right for a long time, which is just more accountability.

00:43:47.760 These universities have been given tremendous preferential treatment, tremendous preferential

00:43:53.280 treatment, right? I mean, whether it's about the tax policy, supporting the student loans with

00:43:59.000 government backstopping, which I think is a bad idea. Now, even the discussion, although, you know,

00:44:02.860 Trump is going to start Trump's Department of Education, not a Department of Education. Who's

00:44:07.620 behind the loans? Who does the loans? Student loans? They're going to start underwriting. Yeah,

00:44:12.060 it's a good question. I'm wondering who does the collection on that. I don't know. But anyway,

00:44:15.880 they're going to start collecting money again. Because I was like, DOE, that would actually mean

00:44:20.400 they do something that they're supposed to do. Yeah. So I think that you're going to see

00:44:24.820 more people paying attention to this issue than they have in a while because of that. And I also think

00:44:30.440 that the universities have betrayed the mandate that they've implicitly been given by the American

00:44:38.440 people, which is to educate future leadership and make our people as smart and competitive in a

00:44:43.080 global marketplace as possible. Instead, they're educating a ton of foreigners. Okay, start with 1.00

00:44:48.380 that because the foreigners pay full freight, no help with the tuition, whatever. You go to a lot of 1.00

00:44:53.180 elite universities and everybody's from Beijing and Dubai. This is just the truth. Not everybody,

00:44:57.960 but huge percentages of these classes. And they've become left wing indoctrination factories that are

00:45:04.320 churning out kids who don't know anything. That's not good. So they're getting slapped down. I like it. 1.00

00:45:09.680 I also would point out, I think there are massive lawsuits to be filed here. Some of these education

00:45:16.080 loans are indefensible. For instance, you shouldn't be able to take out a loan of $200,000 to get a

00:45:24.040 social work degree. You can never pay it back when your job. And look, I appreciate the people who

00:45:30.720 take jobs that don't pay that well. But the fact that these universities would loan somebody

00:45:35.880 about $200,000 to get a job where you're going to make $40,000 a year, it doesn't ever add up that

00:45:41.600 you can ever pay these things off. To me, they're predatory. Also, I think this is a function of,

00:45:46.940 hey, we should be teaching actual basic math and investment and understanding in schools,

00:45:52.420 because the people who agree to these loans, I don't think they have any concept of how impossible

00:45:57.640 it is to ever pay them back, right? If you're a lawyer or a doctor, someone getting a master's

00:46:02.980 degree in business or something like that, you could. I wouldn't even tell people to get it.

00:46:07.160 Look, I looked at getting an MBA from fancy places, and I didn't do it. Now I'm sitting here

00:46:10.860 with Clay because I went into media instead. I think advanced degrees, people need far more

00:46:16.960 honesty in this discussion. Most advanced degrees are not worth very much, and a lot of advanced

00:46:24.900 degrees are truly worthless. In fact, they put you deep in the hole. A perfect example of you, 1.00

00:46:30.860 journalism. Don't ever get a master's in journalism. It is a waste. I don't even know how journalism

00:46:37.160 schools still exist. Like, that's a whole, it is a waste of your time. And a lot of master's

00:46:43.080 degrees in the humanities, unless you are convinced you're going to get a teaching job, that is the

00:46:48.060 only thing that they are worthwhile to do. And those are very hard to come by, right, Clay? I mean,

00:46:53.220 you look at this stuff. Most advanced degrees are a waste. I don't think people do the math. And I

00:46:58.660 think, unfortunately, we have a lot of people who don't understand how loans work, and a lot of people

00:47:03.460 who don't understand how interest rates work. And you don't even sit back and think how you're going

00:47:08.140 to bankrupt yourself basically getting a degree that never pays for yourself. I actually, I qualified

00:47:11.680 for master's credit from Georgetown School of Foreign Service as an undergrad. So I got master's

00:47:17.860 credit as an undergrad. You know what the master's credit was for? A class, just like the classes I

00:47:23.340 was taking in undergrad. I remember thinking, so I would just go to school for two more years to do two

00:47:28.540 more years of reading books that I could read on my own. I don't think so.

00:47:33.740 Lessons in life from Clay and Buck. As hard as the Israelis have tried to return to a normal life, 0.99

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00:48:40.320 Keep up with the biggest political comeback in world history on the Team 47 podcast. Clay and Buck

00:48:47.320 highlight Trump replays from the week, Sundays at noon Eastern. Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever

00:48:53.520 you get your podcasts. Canadian women are looking for more. More out of themselves, their businesses, 1.00

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00:49:04.120 Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast,

00:49:09.400 we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians,

00:49:14.640 and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect,

00:49:19.300 then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen

00:49:24.340 to your podcasts. Welcome back into Clay and Buck. We got Congressman Chip Roy with us now. Sorry,

00:49:31.060 I got my guest time slots confused here. But he's fantastic. And we appreciate him being here with

00:49:35.880 us. Congressman Roy, appreciate you. And let's talk about this. Why are your colleagues all of a

00:49:43.620 sudden taking these taxpayer-funded boondoggles down to El Salvador? What do they think they're

00:49:49.840 going to prove with this? Well, I was kind of hoping we were going to talk about A&M and UT

00:49:55.060 baseball in Austin. But we'll get to that in a little bit. But look, we've got my Democratic

00:50:03.700 colleagues are doing what they do best right now. And what I mean by that is they very much believe,

00:50:10.500 and I believe they mean this. They believe that non-citizens should vote. They believe that

00:50:16.460 non-citizens should be able to flood into the United States, frankly, at whatever level they see fit, 0.99

00:50:23.060 regardless of the law. And they believe that they're in better standing to try to go defend

00:50:30.800 somebody who has very obvious ties to MS-13, with two courts having acknowledged that very strong

00:50:39.280 reality or likelihood. And they're fine going down to try to defend them, rather than standing up for

00:50:45.740 the Americans who were hurt. Now, I mean, a lot of people have been saying this. I mean, there's

00:50:48.860 nothing new about what I'm saying. But look, I've got to be very personal here. When I've gotten to

00:50:54.720 know Alexis Nungere, the wonderful 28-year-old woman whose daughter, Jocelyn, was murdered last summer

00:51:00.380 by Trende and Agua outside of Houston, that's a real person, a real individual who lost their life

00:51:07.640 directly as a consequence of the people released into our country. And now Democrats want to go to

00:51:12.640 El Salvador to hold up as the poster child an individual who has an order of removal, who was,

00:51:19.680 had his wife go, like, file charges against him, who was stopped transporting a carload of illegals in a

00:51:26.020 car, and who has known affiliation with MS-13. And that is the poster child for who Democrats would

00:51:32.640 have put front and center. Not Rachel Moran and her family. Not Jocelyn Nungere's family. Not Kayla

00:51:38.240 Hamilton's family. And that's how out-of-touch Democrats are. But the good news is President

00:51:42.280 Trump is trying to do the right thing. And Republicans in Congress, hopefully, are waking

00:51:46.820 up to try to support what President Trump is doing. How much of this is just a big structural

00:51:52.520 issue. We were talking earlier in the show, Congressman, about the fact that this is just

00:51:58.160 basically a math problem. If Biden is going to have, as he did, let in around 10 million illegals,

00:52:05.160 and if you look at the rate with which Trump is able to deport, let's say he's going to be able to

00:52:09.600 get 350,000 people from inside the country out, basic math would say it would take 30 years of that

00:52:17.640 to get the 10 million that just came in in the last four years to say nothing of all the people who've

00:52:22.260 come in before. How much of this is structural in that the president has to have the ability

00:52:28.220 to get people out of the country as easily as the prior president had to let people into the 0.99

00:52:35.400 country? That's the real battle here in essence, isn't it? Yeah, that's very well stated. And so

00:52:41.800 for those of us who in 2019, 2020, even under the Trump administration, who was dealing with the

00:52:48.400 complexities of the law to try to secure the border himself and ultimately COVID was a part of that as

00:52:54.140 well. But then all through the Biden administration, when we were all saying, guys, they're doing this

00:52:58.480 on purpose, they're violating and abusing parole and asylum in our country. We put in place these 1.00

00:53:04.940 laws to try to help people and they're abusing these to flood the zone. It's intentional because

00:53:10.920 they know how hard it will be to remove them. Right now, think about this. Democrats are doubling

00:53:16.180 down on this guy. Imagine what they'll do when it is the, you know, grandmother, you know, who is not

00:53:23.640 a criminal or doesn't have a criminal history, who came here illegally and was wrongfully paroled into

00:53:28.640 the United States, put ahead of other people, flooding our zone, burdening our systems and Medicaid and 0.91

00:53:33.520 hospital and all that, but isn't a criminal. You know how that will go. And to your point about the

00:53:39.360 numbers, okay, this is why the president and why his team are fighting this so hard. The president

00:53:45.400 needs to have significant authority, and I believe does, to push back and release people who were

00:53:51.920 wrongfully put into the United States who are citizens of other countries. It is the only way to 1.00

00:53:56.160 have a sovereign nation. I believe that the president, I believe the vice president, I believe

00:54:00.020 Stephen Miller, I believe Tom Homan, I believe they are all correct when they are trying to push back

00:54:05.060 on that notion. Speaking to Congressman Chip Roy out of Texas, a congressman, and what is it that

00:54:12.920 they, I asked Clay this yesterday, we tried to walk through this. So to make the Democrats who are

00:54:18.740 going down to El Salvador, not for vacation, but to meet with Abrego Garcia, to make them happy,

00:54:24.800 Trump would negotiate a, I guess, a deal or put in a request with Bukele, the president of El Salvador,

00:54:32.500 to bring this illegal back to America so that then we could say, hey, he's an illegal and send him 0.93

00:54:41.920 back to El Salvador? Or is it just that they want to bring him back and then try to jam up the process

00:54:47.900 so he gets to stay? Like, what is their preferred outcome? The goal of Democrats is to empower courts

00:54:56.480 to be able to process every single individual who was paroled into the United States or released into

00:55:04.240 the United States under asylum laws under Biden, which is millions of people, and to be able to say

00:55:09.000 that each one of them has an individual claim and due process right to get into court to adjudicate the

00:55:15.640 claim. And I don't believe that it's accurate, right? They had an administrative process for going through

00:55:22.060 and determining what their status is. But they do not, like, this is not due process in the sense for all your

00:55:27.760 listeners out there, right? These individuals aren't charged with a crime like murder. As a non-citizen, they come

00:55:33.100 in here and they murder somebody. I mean, some of them are, by the way. But in this question, it's not that as to

00:55:38.880 whether, okay, are they getting due process? Are they getting a lawyer? Are they getting a chance to go into court and

00:55:43.220 prove their guilt or innocence? This is literally a question of status. And it's an administrative

00:55:49.380 process. And they're trying to get into court. So, yeah, I mean, Stephen Miller outlined this pretty

00:55:54.500 well when you describe the situation with Garcia down in El Salvador. He's saying, well, okay, you want to

00:55:59.840 fly him back here? Well, we can release him to some other country, right? So even if you accept that we

00:56:05.680 can't send him to El Salvador because he's threatened by some other gang, which was his position five years

00:56:11.920 ago, he would still be deportable to another country because a judge has already issued a

00:56:17.460 order of removal. And that is not, to the best of my understanding, appealable other than in the

00:56:23.340 context of the administrative proceedings in question. It's not a due process claim. So this

00:56:28.060 is what Democrats are trying to do. They're trying to game the system in order to achieve the objective,

00:56:34.080 their objective of NGOs going into court and filing suit on every individual who is released into our

00:56:41.200 country. So the president cannot release or remove them by class as Joe Biden allowed them to come in

00:56:49.120 by class. Congressman Chip Roy with us right now. Earlier this show, we started off with a clip that

00:56:57.720 I bet you've seen that has gone viral of Elizabeth Warren trying to explain why she in any way backed the 0.93

00:57:05.800 mental and physical fitness of Joe Biden. I'm curious, what is the long-term fallout in your mind of the

00:57:15.500 biggest lie that's been told in a very, very long time when it comes to the legacy media? And also,

00:57:21.720 behind the scenes, were Democrats in Congress, were they acknowledging that they thought there were

00:57:29.760 issues with Biden, but they wouldn't say it publicly? How much discussion do you think there

00:57:34.500 was among Democrats about what all of us, and certainly we've been talking about on this show

00:57:39.280 for years, could clearly see? Well, to the second question, which relates to the first, for the most

00:57:48.080 part, my Democrat colleagues, you may have a handful of friends who would very honestly and openly

00:57:52.600 acknowledge their concerns when you'd have a private conversation, but they were very tight-lipped about it

00:57:58.520 publicly because the overwhelming motivating factor for Democrats for the last nine years has been

00:58:06.860 hostility to Donald Trump. That has literally been their entire motivating factor. So it did not matter

00:58:17.200 to them that Joe Biden was very clearly mentally not present. I don't know if you all remember,

00:58:23.540 but last July, after the debate... I think we lost it there for a sec. It broke up. See if we can get

00:58:36.360 him back here a sec to finish up the interview. The other thing that's floating around out there, Buck,

00:58:43.980 is all these books coming out, I wonder on some level whether the Abreu-Garcia conversation and

00:58:53.300 everything else is a desperate attempt to keep people from looking at all of these stories that

00:59:00.180 come out. I understand it's in the past, but it's such a miscalculation to me to focus on Abreu-Garcia

00:59:06.560 as the front-facing element of the Trump deportation policies that I just find it almost incomprehensibly

00:59:15.260 dumb that this could be as calculated of a decision as it appears to be. That you could 0.77

00:59:20.600 decide, hey, this is the ground upon which we want to fight. And I think we've got Congressman Chip

00:59:26.060 Roy back with us right now. Yeah, sorry about that, Clay. All I was saying was I introduced a resolution

00:59:31.260 calling on the Vice President to carry out the 25th Amendment, right? And why I did that was because

00:59:37.100 it was very clear. I wanted to call the question because it was important that the question get

00:59:40.960 called. But to your point, Democrats, let's get back to the core basis, which, by the way,

00:59:45.800 relates to the border issue and immigration. They don't care. It's all about political power.

00:59:51.600 It is literally all about political power. And I wish I didn't have to say that, right? I mean,

00:59:55.980 it oughtn't be that way. I oughtn't be able to sit down with some of my Democrat colleagues and figure

01:00:00.060 out, like, issues that are important for our people. But right now, it is animus towards Trump.

01:00:05.500 And it is about opening the floodgates to people to try to build a political base for themselves for

01:00:10.420 power. And that's it. That is driving everything they are doing. It's about political power.

01:00:16.940 Congressman Roy, I appreciate you being with us, sir. Thank you.

01:00:20.100 Thanks, guys.

01:00:22.940 We'll break down a little bit more of that when we come back. We'll take more of your talkbacks as well.

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