Verdict with Ted Cruz - CHECK OUT THE CLAY TRAVIS AND BUCK SEXTON SHOW

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.340 Guaranteed Human.

00:00:04.680 Welcome in Thursday edition Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show.

00:00:10.080 Let me hit you with where we are.

00:00:12.560 Iran potentially going to respond to the U.S. proposal

00:00:16.500 on some form of peace agreement in the short term.

00:00:21.700 Marco Rubio is in the Vatican meeting with the Pope.

00:00:25.360 We have continued fallout from the Supreme Court decision

00:00:29.640 ending racial gerrymandering as the state of tennessee alabama south carolina georgia

00:00:36.920 many different southern states with racial gerrymanders uh are on the clock deciding what

00:00:43.460 to do in fact tennessee has turned the entire state red we will see what happens there as a

00:00:49.160 vote is expected imminently uh which would make the state of tennessee a 9-0 republican state

00:00:55.940 ending the Democrat seat, and Memphis lawsuits will also ensue, undoubtedly.

00:01:03.960 We have got a lot of different stories that we are tracking,

00:01:08.780 but Buck, a couple of different things jumped out to me

00:01:12.340 as California has kind of become the center of the primary season

00:01:18.920 as we speak right now.

00:01:21.020 First of all, we've got the debate that happened over everything surrounding the governor's race,

00:01:28.700 but also we have an L.A.-based debate that's going on for who's going to be the mayor.

00:01:35.080 And I thought we could dive into both of those because in many ways,

00:01:40.100 and by the way, Buck is in D.C. on a top-secret mission,

00:01:43.260 but as part of all of this, Buck, really the question is,

00:01:49.440 have things gotten ridiculous enough in California for some form of sanity to return?

00:01:56.080 And let me play a couple of these cuts.

00:01:58.260 I know this sounds crazy that this could still be an issue,

00:02:02.080 but at the end of the debate in California,

00:02:06.000 there was a quick question that I was going to play for all of you,

00:02:09.800 which goes to just how left-wing California Democrats are.

00:02:14.040 the question was should men be able to play in women's sports or not near the end of the debate

00:02:21.720 this is cut to listen under a california education code you perform in an athletic event k through

00:02:27.460 12 based on your identification by gender would you change that law to match the ioc that you

00:02:34.220 identify based on your uh your birth agenda yes or no very quickly we have 30 seconds left mr

00:02:40.120 mayhans yeah but at higher levels i would let the leagues decide okay mr becerra enforce the law

00:02:45.840 okay mr steyer allow trans athletes to participate mr hilton i have a wristband that says save girl

00:02:52.560 sport katie porter yes enforce the existing law okay it was fast there at the end buck but let

00:03:00.120 me hit you with this i don't know if you saw this story but i thought it was kind of interesting

00:03:03.280 and this to me is a great cultural signifier of sanity should men that was a little bit of a

00:03:09.700 confusing way that question was uh was uh phrased should men that is men who identify as women be

00:03:16.320 able to compete in women's sports and every democrat said yes i don't know if you saw this

00:03:21.780 story buck can i can i just one thing they didn't really say yes they i mean they they did answer

00:03:26.960 yes but the way they answered clay is intentionally meant to say something else which is i'll enforce

00:03:34.600 the existing law right that's a way of dancing around it they're not saying yeah i want big

00:03:40.300 dudes to be able to smash uh you know smash the volleyball into little 15 year old girls faces

00:03:45.540 without any consequence they're saying well the law is the law and i'm enforcing the law so so

00:03:51.300 it's a dodge is what i'm trying to say the way that they phrased it and the whole question was

00:03:55.840 was kind of was was poorly i think put as well well even the question the guy's worried about

00:04:01.060 offending trans people so he didn't just say should boys be able to compete in girls sports

00:04:05.200 now did you see this university of washington women's soccer team is one of the eight best

00:04:12.620 women's soccer teams in the entirety of the ncaa that is they are very talented they nearly won a

00:04:18.860 championship they went to the final eight as part of their training they played a 14 u boys team

00:04:26.240 and got smoked let me let me repeat that because i do think facts and biology matters

00:04:34.140 the university of women's uh university of washington women's soccer team which is among

00:04:39.140 the best women's college soccer teams in the country had a scrimmage to get ready for the

00:04:45.140 season against a 14u boys team and they got beaten i i mean that is we're not talking about

00:04:54.180 This is Seattle area 14-year-old boys, 14U, which means a lot of 13-year-olds primarily.

00:05:01.780 This is crazy.

00:05:04.040 Again, remember I put a million dollars on the table for the WNBA,

00:05:08.020 and I said, hey, WNBA women's champions, I'll give you a million dollars

00:05:12.160 if you can beat a boys' state champion team of my choosing.

00:05:16.900 This is when the WNBA players were all saying we're not being paid enough,

00:05:20.020 we're not being compensated fairly.

00:05:22.420 None of them responded.

00:05:23.520 Okay, so I do think that kind of radical answer.

00:05:26.900 Here's another one.

00:05:27.720 We're in the middle of talking about oil and gas prices.

00:05:30.500 California pays the highest oil and gas prices in the nation,

00:05:33.620 and they do that because they actually produce, as California does,

00:05:37.660 less oil and gas.

00:05:38.920 They refine less oil and gas than they did in the 1970s

00:05:42.160 because they decided that it was the opposite of safety for the climate

00:05:47.640 and the environment.

00:05:48.380 And the result, Buck, is that they actually import 39% of California oil and gas,

00:05:54.780 actually I believe is the number, comes through the state straight of Hormuz.

00:05:58.940 So instead of producing it themselves, they bring it in from the Middle East,

00:06:02.880 which costs a ton.

00:06:04.100 Here's Katie Porter saying no increased oil production in California at all.

00:06:09.120 Cut three.

00:06:09.860 Would you advocate for an increase in oil production in the state?

00:06:13.540 Western states point the –

00:06:14.900 No.

00:06:15.880 All right.

00:06:16.060 No.

00:06:16.280 no that's it just shoots it down it's ludicrous how could you do it okay so this is california

00:06:23.460 governor so california is a largely unfortunately because of the dominance of the left there it's a

00:06:32.120 godless state so they've replaced god with gaia which is like the mother earth all the all the

00:06:40.080 different uh places around the world all together in one in some kind of harmony you know the whole

00:06:46.080 thing is absurd the environmentalism is the religion of the california coastal elite it's

00:06:52.700 not true of people who live in the interior it's not true of people who are in the very

00:06:56.240 shrinking and financially precarious california middle class people who work a job for a living

00:07:05.100 for a wage but it is true of people who have extremely expensive homes either on or close to

00:07:10.800 the water uh and so that's why katie porter has to say that because the and among the others

00:07:15.320 because the people who are writing the big checks for their campaigns they want to have a 10 000

00:07:21.560 square foot house on a cliff in you know over in malibu or in bel air or wherever uh and they want

00:07:28.580 to use they want to have a carbon footprint that is 20 times the american average while thinking

00:07:33.520 that they're saving the world and they're the good people this has been around for decades now uh

00:07:39.000 it's a game that unfortunately never gets old for them they refuse to see reality it's rooted in

00:07:45.800 some kind of bizarre narcissism that is really widespread and rampant among the democrat elite

00:07:51.260 and so that's that's why you get these answers uh on things like producing more oil clay but

00:07:56.280 for me the craziest stuff was the discussion of of the homeless problem that came well this was

00:08:03.820 the la mayor's mayor so then we flipped because so there's two real big battles going on in

00:08:09.460 california and the question is is sanity going to come for either and uh here was the uh that

00:08:16.080 mayor debate here uh spencer pratt this is homeless uh spencer pratt i did you watch that

00:08:23.160 show back in the day the hills that he was on one time i've never one episode i don't i've heard of

00:08:28.280 it i've never seen a single episode i can say so it's spiraled this is a background story it was

00:08:33.120 an mtv reality show he was a villain 20 some odd years ago his girlfriend was friends with one of

00:08:40.520 the main characters i i bet 10 of this audience watched the hills at some point but it was a huge

00:08:46.980 show way way higher than that way high that's that's a one that's a one one to five percent

00:08:51.980 chance or one to five percent chunk of this audience no it depends on if you are a woman

00:08:57.240 between the ages of 25 and 45 you 100 percent maybe 35 and 50 you 100 percent watch this show

00:09:07.020 anyway it was the most popular show for young women uh back in the day and spencer pratt was

00:09:12.320 a villain but here he is calling out one of the other contenders there were three of them on the

00:09:19.040 stage karen bass the mayor uh another woman and spencer pratt here he is calling her out cut six

00:09:25.660 downtown is so unsafe now that they have to serve the food all the employees have to eat inside they

00:09:33.200 they can't risk going out that's why all these beautiful restaurants are closing because it's

00:09:37.580 so unsafe so before we require city workers to go back into any buildings we need to enforce the

00:09:43.960 laws on the street councilman raman is talking about safety yet when animal rescue activist

00:09:49.200 rebecca cory came in and said the dogs are being tortured and abused on the streets of downtown

00:09:53.920 she walked out of the hearing she doesn't care about safety she doesn't care about anything

00:09:59.140 she's talking about at least mayor bass pretends to care that's by the way that's a very critical

00:10:04.760 point he makes about the pretending to care yeah almost all democrat urban politicians go through

00:10:10.920 this whole thing about the homeless but they never look at the data they never look at the reality

00:10:15.140 and do things that would make life better for their community overall and specifically for

00:10:20.700 the homeless people because democrats still have this like circa 1990 view of homelessness in

00:10:26.340 america which is oh my gosh someone there was a car accident and they they're they hurt their back

00:10:32.920 and they lost their job and that is less than one percent of people who are homeless and by the way

00:10:37.480 that's generally never a chronically homeless situation that might be a temporarily unhoused

00:10:43.080 or lacking you know adequate housing during a period of time but clay this came up during the

00:10:48.340 during the debate the mayor's debate it's drug addicts you're talking about fentanyl and meth

00:10:54.760 addicts that is what you are dealing with on people living in the street i just sent this

00:11:01.300 to producer greg because there's a even more uh intense discussion about homelessness where

00:11:07.800 spencer pratt basically says hey if you go down there you'll get stabbed in the throat they don't

00:11:12.620 want to bed they want meth uh which really kind of cut through the noise we'll play that here for

00:11:17.520 you in a sec but let me play the other one this is uh spencer pratt got into this because his house

00:11:23.500 burned down in the palisades and so many people including many of you that are listening to us

00:11:28.620 right now had uh issues friends family with issues there they haven't been able to rebuild

00:11:33.740 here he is calling out karen bass for the failure to put out the fires cut five first of all there

00:11:40.840 was one reservoir that was out of commission he is correct a million years ago it was for wildfires

00:11:46.960 but over the last 30 40 years it's been for drinking water he talked about the winds that

00:11:52.580 is just completely inaccurate if that were accurate then the planes would have been able to

00:11:57.600 fly and so the winds reached close to 100 miles an hour and the planes were unable to fly yes she

00:12:04.760 she mentioned me so this is she's an incredible liar everyone on their phones google it 40 weather

00:12:12.360 stations in the pacific palisades it never went above 40 miles per hour she is referencing the

00:12:18.020 i have to interrupt you um no name calling please yeah but no name calling by the way that's that's

00:12:26.640 a that's a candy crowley move right there the jump wouldn't say no name calling politicians

00:12:31.460 call each other liar every every three seconds also if you lie name calling someone for lying

00:12:37.360 is not name-calling uh so that that to me was was very obvious what's going on there but clay

00:12:43.280 for have you seen these videos of him with the hummingbirds maybe you're not it's amazing

00:12:48.320 yeah i think you sent one of them to me i totally thought it was ai i did too it's real he has

00:12:53.660 hummingbirds that eat out of his hands that take the nectar out of his hands and he's been doing

00:12:58.960 this for a long time and now a lot of his social media is they killed his hummingbirds and now he's

00:13:04.120 coming back for vengeance you know you see that that he has this narrative tale because

00:13:09.460 his house burned down yes this is this is why this is i think yes he's being he's very good

00:13:16.260 on the social media stuff yes he's making great viral videos yes he on he understands that content

00:13:20.840 is politics and politics is content now he gets all of that but his narrative of i'm a guy who

00:13:28.280 is living in this city and they and because of the idiocy of the people in charge and by the way

00:13:34.560 a leftist arsonist which still doesn't get talked about enough my house was burned down my hummingbirds

00:13:40.260 are gone people lost their homes thousands and thousands of people lost their homes and you're

00:13:45.000 going to keep the same person in charge yeah the people of los angeles insane that is the

00:13:50.960 fundamental question that he poses to what is i think by uh population the largest county in the

00:13:57.060 whole country yeah and so again we'll come back i know a lot of you listen in the la area listen

00:14:03.200 in california to me both the governor's race uh and this la mayor's race it's a real question

00:14:11.200 have things gotten so frustratingly bad that outsider candidates whether it's republicans

00:14:17.260 like steve hilton chad bianco uh or spencer pratt who i don't even know that spencer pratt is running

00:14:23.000 as a Republican.

00:14:24.660 I just think he's not a crazy left-wing lunatic.

00:14:29.280 Will there be outsider candidates?

00:14:31.780 I watched a lot of that debate.

00:14:33.540 I thought Spencer Pratt did a great job,

00:14:36.140 and he just is a voice for sanity in L.A.,

00:14:40.200 which has spent so much money to get awful results.

00:14:43.400 You see the viral clip?

00:14:44.400 Maybe we can grab this, too, of Gavin Newsom saying he's going to solve

00:14:47.520 homelessness for 20 straight years, and every year,

00:14:51.360 basically homelessness in california has gotten worse even as they've spent huge money uh let me

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00:16:09.960 clay and buck just preset them on the iHeart app canadian women are looking for more more

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00:16:42.600 welcome in everybody to the second hour of clay and buck and we gotta talk about it for a couple

00:16:50.920 minutes here okay people are freaking out a little bit and i'm here to tell you maybe for a change

00:16:57.700 it's all gonna be okay don't freak out about the hanta virus do we say hanta or hanta i don't know

00:17:06.840 I hear it both ways.

00:17:08.120 I think it's a tomato-tomato situation.

00:17:10.860 But there is certainly some concern out there because of what has happened on a cruise ship.

00:17:20.260 Let me bring you up to speed on what's going on.

00:17:24.980 People are being monitored now, and there's contact tracing underway.

00:17:29.460 Oh, I know.

00:17:30.340 You're having all these flashbacks.

00:17:32.060 contact tracing on my I may point out was an absolutely absurd waste of time and money

00:17:40.560 very early on in the COVID clay now I'm having flashbacks to like May of 2020 uh yeah what yes

00:17:49.720 no no I was just gonna say uh since you're having flashbacks to COVID May 11th is the deadline to

00:17:55.980 charge fauci with anything uh according to statute of limitations i've seen ran paul say

00:18:02.220 he's got a big hearing coming on may 13th but i've seen senator paul and maybe we need to get

00:18:07.760 him on next week to uh ali to to talk about that hearing but may 11th i'm seeing everywhere is the

00:18:14.620 date now yes fauci was pardoned by uh biden there could be questions about the validity of those

00:18:20.420 pardons this is one where i'm going to sign with you buck the process is the punishment

00:18:25.040 I don't even care if Fauci were convicted.

00:18:28.600 I think there is ample evidence to indict him and then just make him pay and fight in the court of public opinion and the court of law over whether these indictments are legitimate or not.

00:18:40.200 His number two assistant has been indicted for lying and hiding different emails.

00:18:45.800 And that seems like a very clear cut case.

00:18:47.920 I would love to see Fauci.

00:18:49.500 Just wanted to jump in there.

00:18:50.900 I would love to see Fauci charged by May 11.

00:18:53.040 for being science clay for for for pushing forward the numbers and the data so that i could make sure

00:19:03.240 that we made all of the worst possible judgments about these mitigation measures you guys all

00:19:12.520 remember that mitigation measures uh flashbacks very uh very negative ones by the way they

00:19:18.560 mitigated nothing except your enjoyment of your life and your freedom to go about your day-to-day

00:19:22.500 to which i might add there was a whole debate about contact tracing i remember filling out

00:19:29.500 and i was the one who tweeted clay as i came i i visited my brothers who now are floridians like

00:19:36.060 me they were just visiting too but they were staying for months at a time visited my brothers

00:19:40.220 in florida in miami while new york was in full lockdown mode basically and came back and said

00:19:47.000 that this is the closest thing you can experience in 2020 to being somebody who would have left

00:19:52.180 east germany got across the wall and gotten to west germany you know that's what it felt like

00:19:56.440 florida and new york is very very real but i remember the contact tracing this is all going

00:20:01.060 to tie into hantavirus in a second contact tracing uh debate and people kept saying but it works

00:20:07.800 and i kept saying for stds do you need me to draw you a chart dr fauci and co you tend to breathe

00:20:19.140 in the same airspace a lot more than you tend to have intimate partners that can be tracked for

00:20:26.960 stds or stis as they also call them that was really the argument people were saying but it

00:20:32.080 You know, it works for syphilis cases.

00:20:35.760 Yeah, because, you know, you can ask somebody, who do we need to call here?

00:20:41.000 I don't think you can tell everybody that you've breathed near in the last week

00:20:44.820 that they have to go get themselves checked.

00:20:46.920 Point being, it was absurd then.

00:20:48.740 It was a complete waste of time, and it should have been obvious to people,

00:20:51.360 but they were playing this game.

00:20:52.920 A highly contagious respiratory virus, you're going to contact trace that?

00:20:56.720 Hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions of cases?

00:20:59.720 I mean, the whole thing was absurd.

00:21:01.020 okay hantavirus why is everyone all freaked out about this now a person aboard a cruise ship died

00:21:07.660 of hantavirus um last this happened last month six americans disembarked in saint helena which

00:21:14.740 is a remote island in the atlantic a very remote island in the atlantic ocean americans are now

00:21:19.500 back on u.s soil three states are monitoring them none have shown symptoms basically cdc said there

00:21:26.160 was a hantavirus outbreak aboard a ship people are freaking out now there's been some concerns

00:21:32.640 understand that usually clay it is zoonotic transmission so it's animal to human basically

00:21:38.060 from aerosolized rodent feces and urine just saying this is what happens and it's often when

00:21:46.020 people are cleaning it's a very rare disease that's the first thing it's a very rare disease

00:21:50.760 dozens of cases max a year i think in the united states like 20 cases 10 cases something like that

00:21:58.160 unfortunately it has a fatality rate of about 30 percent which is like a hundred times the

00:22:04.340 fatality rate of covet actually in in reality so that's why people are so freaked out but

00:22:09.460 there is no reason to believe that it is highly transmissible and even if there has been human

00:22:14.240 to human contact they believe it would only be for people who are uh in in very close confined

00:22:19.820 settings for long periods of time so as long as it stays there we're all going to be fine what say

00:22:25.240 you sir other than it's another strike for the cruise industry for me i gotta tell you i'm not

00:22:30.080 a cruise guy not a cruise guy i can do a boat for a few hours that's about it i actually said this

00:22:36.060 i think off air yesterday because there's been some talk about us doing a cruise and i said i

00:22:41.480 would be you know if we went around and we had we did the show from a boat but i didn't when i saw

00:22:48.620 this story i was just thinking can you imagine if the hanta virus outbreak happened on our cruise

00:22:53.820 and we we just had to stay keep doing the show for weeks trapped on a cruise ship because we

00:22:59.640 have to quarantine it would be i would go bonkers um here's my big concern about this story buck

00:23:06.420 i don't think there's anything the government could tell me after covid that i would believe

00:23:14.700 having to do with a virus that is spreading

00:23:19.160 and what the experts are telling me that I need to do

00:23:22.700 and what I need to be aware of.

00:23:25.460 I think we have so broken public trust.

00:23:29.260 This is why I want Fauci charged.

00:23:32.060 We have so broken public trust in the wake of COVID

00:23:35.640 that many of you out there reflexively, and I understand it,

00:23:40.840 don't trust the government on anything.

00:23:44.700 The government could say, hey, it's it's better for you if you get eight hours of sleep and eat healthy.

00:23:53.700 And there's some of you out there that would say, what?

00:23:56.220 I don't know that I but they just broke public trust.

00:23:59.900 And so my fear has been for some time.

00:24:02.500 You just said, what, 30 percent fatality rate.

00:24:05.660 What if actually there was a deadly pandemic that truly broke out?

00:24:11.800 Would you trust the government on what to do?

00:24:14.180 I just wouldn't, and I don't think anybody would, really.

00:24:16.640 This is a huge problem that we have now because there are very few institutions that people still trusted in this country pre-COVID.

00:24:27.140 And the health industry, I should say, the health bureaucracy was generally one of them.

00:24:32.160 Yeah, there was some gun violence tracking that they would do at CDC that was clearly partisan, and there were some things.

00:24:37.340 But usually it was like, we don't want you getting AIDS, herpes, or the flu.

00:24:41.640 so here's information for you to avoid these things and you know it was it was pretty we

00:24:47.100 could all be on the same team about we don't want people getting nasty diseases fatal diseases or

00:24:51.420 even just things that are going to put them in the hospital so that all went by the wayside

00:24:56.280 during covid when they betrayed us over and over again and to your point about you're talking about

00:25:01.640 hantavirus which fortunately is highly while it is highly lethal which is very unfortunate it's

00:25:07.080 It's very difficult for it to be transmitted.

00:25:10.800 Whereas you think about something like this is why I knew that masks people like, how did you know that masks were a total joke?

00:25:16.320 First of all, because they were coming on and coming off people's faces all the time, which, you know, if you wear a raincoat, half the time you're going for a walk in a downpour, you're getting wet.

00:25:27.080 It's not like, well, I wore a raincoat half the time.

00:25:29.260 So, no, you're getting wet.

00:25:31.320 It's done.

00:25:31.960 so it was very obvious but also if you look at the data clay the cdc had very clear data on measles

00:25:38.020 and if you're in a room with somebody who has active measles and you do not have measles

00:25:42.740 immunity even with an n95 mask on your chance of getting measles is after like 15 minutes

00:25:48.120 is like 85 percent you're getting measles if you're in the room with somebody who who has it

00:25:53.820 that's it's hyper transmissible hanta is kind of the other end of the spectrum so that's a much

00:25:58.960 better thing but when you talk about fatality rates spanish influenza which wasn't even really

00:26:03.920 from spain but that's a whole other conversation i believe it really started actually an american

00:26:07.580 military base was the latest uh science on this i think in nebraska i forget where exactly somewhere

00:26:14.780 an american military base um but it's a really bad flu essentially fatality rate i think on that

00:26:19.760 clay was something like three to five percent and it was and it was overwhelmingly devastating to

00:26:26.020 young people which was the scariest second the second wave of it was killing people who were

00:26:31.420 in their absolute prime of both life vitality and you would think immune system function so that's

00:26:37.600 why it was particularly devastating and so many people died from it but if we had a i mean the

00:26:43.180 real um fatality rate it's funny because they can't you know funny is not really the right uh

00:26:48.360 you know uh hold on a second uh contact tracing i'm getting some some things from people um

00:26:55.900 But I'm hearing, Clay, people are freaked out about this now.

00:26:59.800 I think we're all going to be fine.

00:27:01.000 That's the bottom line.

00:27:01.840 We're all going to be fine.

00:27:04.160 I think so, too.

00:27:06.300 But, again, the thing that I would say is, so this is, take a big step back.

00:27:13.540 One of the things, and I've got a story here that I was going to share with you in the third hour because it kind of was wild.

00:27:20.220 One of the things that the AI is going to do so much,

00:27:22.860 it's going to create opportunities for people who are really trying to make the world better

00:27:28.860 i think on a level that has never occurred before it's also going to create opportunities for people

00:27:34.320 who want to just make the world burn down and the ability to create new viruses i think without

00:27:43.400 huge investments is going to skyrocket and instead of the wuhan laboratory where this and uh i believe

00:27:51.720 covid came from we're going to have a lot more of people doing this and my concern is no one

00:27:58.420 trusts the cdc now no one trusts basic health information in the wake of fauci and what they

00:28:04.600 did to us during covid if we actually had to your point a true pandemic that was utterly destructive

00:28:12.980 on a level that covid was nowhere near my concern is a lot of people will not trust any guidance

00:28:19.920 that they well and i think you'd have this is where i was going to go with this you would have

00:28:23.660 full like societal breakdown very quickly because the covid and i'm going based off of the uh

00:28:31.280 gemini ai overview on this right now so this is just the first thing that comes up you know what

00:28:36.000 they say the fatality rate for uh for covid is 0.23 but then they say highly variable depending

00:28:44.800 on age vaccination status it said well vaccination status yeah nice work nice work gemini on age

00:28:51.040 and health condition if you control for age and health condition the act the fatality rate of

00:28:56.880 covet 19 for a 40 year old a 30 year old uh you know man or woman who isn't morbidly obese and

00:29:05.160 doesn't have like severe uh you know like asthmatic issues or something is 0.0001 it was

00:29:13.540 basically you were more likely to die in a traffic accident by far than you were to die of covid if

00:29:20.580 you were somewhat healthy um and again people who died with covid you had like eight different

00:29:26.720 illnesses that were all going simultaneously so it wasn't as if the number of people who died with

00:29:32.200 only covid i think is infinitely lower on how many people did you actually know personally who were

00:29:38.200 claimed to have or who were were said to have died from covid zero i knew one and he was a um

00:29:47.320 he was a spouse of a frontline health care worker in new york who is a chronic smoker with a history

00:29:55.320 of of lung uh issues and they put them on ventilators they which was died because they

00:30:01.940 and in retrospect for people who didn't you know when we built millions of the hospital actually

00:30:07.020 killed him is the truth if they had let him stay at home and given him steroids to help him breathe

00:30:10.520 i think he would have been fine yes so they actually did awful treatment of so many people

00:30:15.800 in the early days of this but by the way the other part of this too buck is can you imagine if we had

00:30:20.720 another pandemic during trump whatever trump said even people who were on the left and were saying

00:30:27.800 oh you can't even go play tennis you're gonna die shut down all the parks they wouldn't trust

00:30:32.420 anything trump said either so we would just have a complete i think your argument complete societal

00:30:37.580 breakdown if we had another outbreak pandemic style in the next few years because i don't think

00:30:44.480 we've worked through the uh the ptsd frankly of the covet era for many never forget never forget

00:30:52.000 this either going into the the biden trump election battle the democrat party line was

00:30:58.620 We can't trust this vaccine because Trump oversaw it.

00:31:02.100 I think that's 100% right, yes.

00:31:03.180 And then when Biden won, it was get the vaccine or you'll lose your job.

00:31:07.140 Like that, overnight, totally switched.

00:31:09.640 That's how partisan these people are.

00:31:11.620 They are insane, and they're just as crazy now.

00:31:14.720 So let's hope that the rat poop virus does not become highly transmissible

00:31:20.240 because it's going to turn into Mad Max out there real fast.

00:31:22.680 I think the chance of that is extremely, extremely small.

00:31:25.760 So I don't think we're going to have a return of Fauci-ism over Hanta.

00:31:31.620 But wash your hands.

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00:32:52.760 Clay and Buck on the iHeart

00:32:54.780 app. Welcome back in to Clay and

00:32:56.860 Buck. We've got Jack Carr

00:32:58.680 with us right now, the best

00:33:00.840 selling author, the creator of the

00:33:02.780 Incredible Terminalist series

00:33:04.360 with, of course, with

00:33:06.620 James Reese as the main character. He's got

00:33:08.780 a new book out,

00:33:10.780 The Fourth Option, which has just

00:33:12.820 come out now. He's got a new character,

00:33:14.760 Chris Walker, Clay, apparently Clay Travis was the second choice for the protagonist name,

00:33:21.140 but they went with Chris Walker.

00:33:22.360 So you were close, buddy.

00:33:23.660 Next time.

00:33:24.440 Next time.

00:33:25.360 Exactly.

00:33:26.000 Next time.

00:33:26.600 I keep telling Jack that he's got to have a character who's a smug CIA analyst with poofy hair,

00:33:32.860 because we'll all know what's going on.

00:33:34.760 Poofy hair is going to be a dead giveaway.

00:33:36.540 That's right.

00:33:37.720 Hey, man, Jack, we're so glad to have you on.

00:33:39.860 We've got a lot of things to talk to you about, including I'm not trying to break any sacred cows here.

00:33:46.100 I love the Terminalist series.

00:33:47.640 I actually think I like Dark Wolf even more.

00:33:49.660 I watched the whole thing on Amazon.

00:33:51.100 We'll get to that.

00:33:51.780 You also wrote and created that, which is great.

00:33:54.020 I'm a Taylor Kitsch superfan as well as a Jack Carr superfan, so there's a lot going on here.

00:33:59.020 But tell us first about the fourth option, if you will, which just came out now, this new series, new book.

00:34:04.280 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:34:04.960 But first off, hey, I'm in New York.

00:34:05.960 I can't see you guys, but this is a nice setup here.

00:34:08.340 So we've got the audio rolling.

00:34:09.520 You've got this nice pen right here.

00:34:11.800 We've got the Clay and Buck pen and microphone.

00:34:14.180 I mean, this is amazing.

00:34:15.180 This is fantastic.

00:34:15.960 Got the news going right here.

00:34:17.200 Can catch up on things.

00:34:18.540 But fourth option, yeah, it's my take.

00:34:20.220 It's my modern take on the old West narrative of the stranger comes to town.

00:34:25.560 So inspired by Have Gun, Will Travel, which was a radio show first in the 50s, then a TV show in the late 50s into the 60s.

00:34:32.640 And I used to watch that with my dad when I was growing up.

00:34:35.040 And I always wanted to write something that had a touch point with that old Western mythology that is so American in nature.

00:34:43.900 So that Pale Rider, for those who remember Pale Rider, Shane, High Plains Drifter, a little Magnificent Seven thrown in there.

00:34:50.240 And because I'm a child of the 80s and this focuses on police force in New Orleans, there's a little bit of a lethal weapon in there.

00:34:57.880 Maybe a little drop of Airwolf, A-Team, a little Magnum, and the Equalizer from the 80s for those who remember that show back then.

00:35:03.820 And so all of those things became part of my experience and really I think imprinted on me at a time when I was between, let's say, 8 and 18, 10 and 20.

00:35:13.180 And I think what you do in those years really imprints on you in a different way than something that you would do at age 30 or 40 when you have a spouse and kids and have to get to soccer practice and pay a mortgage and a car payment and all those sorts of things, have a job.

00:35:26.840 So all of those things became part of my experience.

00:35:28.980 And this is Chris Walker, and instead of jumping on that horse and riding into town as that stranger, he gets in his Volkswagen Westie pop-top camper with his Belgian Malinois dog.

00:35:37.740 He's a former SEAL and CIA paramilitary operator and heads to New Orleans to dish out some Old West brand of lethal outlaw justice.

00:35:48.220 So I wanted to set up Novel in New Orleans for a long time, was trained in Louisiana in the SEAL teams a little bit, and then on the weekends we went to Bourbon Street out there in New Orleans.

00:35:57.660 And so there's just a lot of color to that city.

00:36:00.380 And that's the backdrop for the fourth option.

00:36:03.280 So how do you decide to go and create new characters?

00:36:06.380 You've obviously got the two shows that are thriving.

00:36:09.480 You've already sold a ton of different copies with existing characters.

00:36:13.960 How do you decide, hey, I'm going to go in a new direction?

00:36:17.640 Yeah, it's a risk, obviously, to do these sorts of things.

00:36:21.240 And Simon & Schuster, my publisher, has been with me for everything,

00:36:24.460 just like the targeted Beirut series, so nonfiction.

00:36:27.360 That's a risk as well. Even some of the things that I do in the Terminalist series are very risky, meaning True Believer, my second novel.

00:36:36.260 I think most editors would have taken out the first third of that book, but I really wanted James Reese to go on this journey, learn to live again on this journey as he goes across the Atlantic and then ends up in Mozambique and then uses the skills that he acquired in Iraq and Afghanistan to focus on the anti-poaching team in Mozambique there.

00:36:54.240 So looking at this from the fan perspective, being a fan of Tom Clancy as a kid, he started out with Hunt for Red October.

00:37:02.660 Then it was into Red Storm Rising and Patriot Games and Cardinal of the Kremlin and Clear and Present Danger.

00:37:07.600 In the early 90s, he branches off into the nonfiction side of the house with a guided tour series and a study and command series.

00:37:14.340 And then he does some co-written thrillers as well to expand that universe.

00:37:17.780 So looking at that model, but applying it to obviously a 2026 type of a time frame, it was just something I could do to explore other characters outside the James Reese Terminalist universe.

00:37:30.440 And this is the first one in what will hopefully be many different characters and universes that I create over the years.

00:37:38.180 But this is the first one.

00:37:39.640 And if pre-orders are any indication, it's looking pretty good.

00:37:43.800 Yeah, well, absolutely.

00:37:44.680 We're speaking of Jack Carr.

00:37:45.720 The fourth option is his latest, and we're excited for it.

00:37:50.780 I've got it at home, and I've got a whole bunch of – I've basically got a Jack Carr shelf.

00:37:55.580 You're awesome.

00:37:56.280 It's funny, too, because if I did it alphabetically, you'd be near all my old Tom Clancy books.

00:38:00.020 You mentioned Tom Clancy.

00:38:01.560 Jack, he's the reason I joined the CIA.

00:38:03.860 The whole Jack Ryan character, 9-11 happens.

00:38:06.280 I'm like, I could be an analyst.

00:38:07.340 That guy was an analyst.

00:38:08.380 So these books can have profound effect on people.

00:38:11.540 But, you know, one thing I remember one of my other childhood author favorites saying, Michael Crichton, was one of the great things about the success he had had, which is similar to you, just a whole series of books that people, that the readership loves, is that it creates the space and the access for him to do what he wants to, like, create what he wants to create and get made what he wants to get made.

00:38:32.720 You're in that space right now, which I think is just a dream, like getting published is a dream for so many people, but then getting to the place where you get to make the projects you want to make.

00:38:40.440 Like, is that what led you to Dark Wolf?

00:38:42.780 Like, where are you now in that creative process?

00:38:45.580 Yeah, I mean, on the book side of the house, it's so great because never, and I didn't

00:38:49.920 know how it was going to be when I stepped into publishing.

00:38:51.300 I thought my only kind of expectation was that an agent might be like somebody from

00:38:56.880 Californication or Entourage or Jerry Maguire.

00:38:59.560 That's my, because I had no experience in Hollywood or in publishing.

00:39:02.720 And I didn't know how a publisher or agents would be.

00:39:05.100 And if they try to guide your quote unquote career or give you suggestions on what to

00:39:09.160 go next based on their experience and i get nothing like that it's uh it's complete creative

00:39:14.160 control when it comes to the books and i have 100 support from the publisher so that's fantastic

00:39:18.940 so if someone hates the book or loves the book doesn't matter uh it's either it's my fault or

00:39:24.280 anyway it's like it's it's all on my shoulders but then we go to hollywood and in that space

00:39:31.160 it is a team sport 100 a team sport there's 350 people on set uh there's probably a thousand

00:39:36.720 and people, uh, uh, attached in various ways. And then there are notes that come from scripts and

00:39:42.480 then cuts of the show all the way to the top of Amazon and back down. So, and all those notes need

00:39:46.620 to be addressed. And there are so many places that those projects can totally go off the rails.

00:39:50.920 Uh, it's a miracle that anything that's made in Hollywood, uh, it's even more of a miracle than

00:39:54.620 anything good gets made in Hollywood. So, uh, cause there's just so many opportunities for

00:39:58.460 things to, to go off the rails, but it is also so much fun to be able to create something like

00:40:04.580 a dark wolf because of the success of the terminal list so that uh opens doors because obviously

00:40:09.140 amazon has the the data they know who's watching uh they can look at the reviews in the case of

00:40:13.400 the terminal list that was uh audience reviews the critics weren't uh weren't too fond of it

00:40:17.860 but uh dark wolf both critics and the audience score was uh was up there so uh as long as you

00:40:23.560 keep hitting uh you know keep hitting hitting it not not out of the park maybe you don't have to

00:40:29.080 but we did within the case of the terminal list and that opened a lot of doors allowed us to do

00:40:32.880 dark wolf which was really cool um focus make make a espionage thriller rather than like a

00:40:38.420 military conspiracy type of a thriller and then now we have true believer second book that's coming

00:40:43.360 out i think i can announce this it might slip up a little bit here but in the fall how about that

00:40:47.580 should be coming in the fall i think uh pratt or somebody is going to uh announce it very soon

00:40:51.980 and uh it's looking great so we filmed that in toronto in south africa and morocco and it is

00:40:58.020 an awesome looking show so fired up to get that out there too when you write the books

00:41:02.260 do you have an idea of who might play them in a television or movie adaptation in the back of your

00:41:08.480 mind as you're writing it um you got chris pratt who most people know taylor kitsch you mentioned

00:41:14.500 texas forever i don't know if buck signs off on this but on air meaning broadcast television drama

00:41:21.360 i'm not sure that friday night lights has any competitor i think it's the greatest on-air

00:41:27.460 drama that's ever been made i'm a little bit biased because i love sports and football but

00:41:32.380 the tim riggins character that taylor kitch played is one of the greatest certainly in television

00:41:37.360 history are you envisioning that at all as you work through the process oh these guys could make

00:41:42.440 sense and how do you go about finding these guys do you recruit them do you uh do they reach out

00:41:48.620 to you how do you end up with such big time stars and what are these dudes like i'm just kind of

00:41:53.540 fascinated by how this all comes together yeah i think i don't think there's a model for it but

00:41:57.700 now people are reaching out to us because they're hearing about what our sets are like

00:42:01.640 and how different it is from a lot of other hollywood sets meaning we have chris pratt at

00:42:06.780 the top we have antoine fuqua up there director we have dave digilio is the showrunner and it's

00:42:11.580 such a positive environment and they're so encouraging and they want to see everybody

00:42:16.560 no matter what department they're working in make it to that next level so people are now

00:42:20.260 hearing about that and wanting to be part of the show so that's that's pretty cool and also it has

00:42:24.180 the track record of success so there's that piece of it but for chris pratt uh being a child of the

00:42:29.080 80s i wrote my first line for the terminal list in december of 2014 and of course i wrote that

00:42:33.520 first line and then i stopped put my put my pen down and thought who's going to star in this

00:42:37.120 masterpiece uh oh chris pratt he uh was just in this movie called zero dark 30 so i got to see

00:42:43.240 him change from uh andy dwyer on parks and rec into this navy seal ah this guy needs to do this

00:42:49.360 for his career will be very helpful for him if he does this and then i continued writing and then

00:42:53.200 of course he does guardians of the galaxy and jurassic world and all these things become an

00:42:56.200 a-list star but uh my friend who uh from the seal teams he calls me out of the blue in november of

00:43:03.920 2017 so six or seven months before the book comes out and uh i look at my phone and and pick it up

00:43:09.620 and he says hey this is jared shaw do you remember me and i said of course jared and he said you

00:43:14.120 remember what you did for me in the seal teams and i said uh no uh and he said you're the only

00:43:17.780 person that sat me down in your office talked to me about getting out of the military introduced

00:43:21.320 me to people in the private sector you followed up with me no one else did that i sincerely

00:43:25.000 appreciated it i've always wanted to thank you and i said no no problem uh and he said i heard

00:43:29.040 you have a book coming out and uh i said yeah it's coming out in a few months and he says well

00:43:32.920 i'd like to give one to a friend of mine if that's okay and i said sure who's who's that

00:43:35.760 and he said chris pratt so i was like well this is very convenient for me and i sent it to chris

00:43:41.700 pratt he read it and wanted to option it the next week so i don't think that's the normal way that

00:43:46.200 these things go down but it's uh it certainly was uh what was handy that uh that uh that jared

00:43:51.520 that's awesome can i ask that that's amazing by the way can i ask you it's funny too clay and i

00:43:55.420 think also agree if i was writing like a thriller navy seal cia thing of course starring the analyst

00:44:01.940 who writes really good papers about what's going on in the scary places um but if i were doing that

00:44:07.320 chris pratt and taylor kitch would be like two of the first guys who would come to mind so clay and

00:44:11.400 i we both co-sign on that that's just so cool that that you managed to pull that off and it's

00:44:15.480 been such a success um i have a nerdy question that i ask you guys go get the fourth option i

00:44:20.220 know every time we have jack on jack car with this now people like i love his stuff i'm like

00:44:24.500 yeah that's why we have him on so go buy his go buy the latest the fourth option get ready for

00:44:28.600 the one in the fall if you haven't seen dark wolf on amazon prime go check that out i've seen the

00:44:33.000 whole thing it's awesome i loved it beginning stuff by the way in iraq reminded me of mosul

00:44:37.100 2007 in a big way uh so that's a whole other thing like i was like oh my gosh this is this

00:44:42.380 you know because you have people that really know this stuff like you jack who are writing it

00:44:45.400 Sorry, I almost lost my train of thought, but I was going to say my nerdy question for you is video game.

00:44:52.080 Has that been something you've considered as an expansion of the franchise, kind of like a Tom Clancy, Splinter Cell, Seal Team 6, or Rainbow Six, rather?

00:45:01.100 Is that in the conversation at all?

00:45:02.540 It is, let's say.

00:45:03.360 It's in the conversation.

00:45:04.300 Of course, from the fan perspective, I was very aware that Tom Clancy did these things as he continued to expand his readership and his audience.

00:45:10.780 so actually right now there are some

00:45:13.140 talks going on but of course

00:45:15.260 I don't want to ruin it or jinx it but

00:45:17.120 you know the odds are something like who knows

00:45:19.240 but yes it's in the conversation

00:45:21.380 how about that?

00:45:22.880 Clay you know some of those first shooter franchises

00:45:25.440 are multi-billion dollar franchises

00:45:27.580 so it's a big

00:45:28.780 business it would be amazing to see a terminal

00:45:31.340 alright I had a feeling it might be in there

00:45:33.180 I don't want to get ahead of us Clay but that would be

00:45:35.220 really cool too. That would be fun

00:45:36.940 and my kids play those games all the time Buck

00:45:38.980 the crazy things are the updates the skins you know the outfits that you can wear the guns that

00:45:44.060 you can have all that different stuff jack uh one more time book title when's it going to be out

00:45:48.880 where can people find it yeah yeah the fourth option and it comes out may 12th in audio and

00:45:53.480 that's read by ray porter who's an incredible narrator uh ebook also and then there's book

00:45:58.440 tour it's coming out if anybody wants to stop by and say hi and i love book tour because you get

00:46:01.740 to shake somebody's hand look them in the eye and thank them for uh their support really and uh a

00:46:07.320 lot of times people come through and they say that i haven't read a book since it was assigned

00:46:10.800 to me in high school i found these i love them and and here's my son who's reading it too and

00:46:15.880 he's in junior high or high school uh and it's just so cool to try to create new readers because

00:46:20.860 uh there's very few places where you can actually develop empathy and compassion and one of those

00:46:25.180 ways is by putting yourself in someone else's shoes so in the pages of a thriller in the pages

00:46:30.660 of a novel so through fiction you get to do that and really scrolling on social media and looking

00:46:35.780 at those comments or making those comments does the opposite it seems to develop the opposite

00:46:39.800 attribute so i try to encourage people to read as much as they possibly can if someone wants to

00:46:43.580 improve their life put down that phone pick up a book dive into the pages particularly a fiction

00:46:47.660 to develop that empathy and compassion that seems to be uh missing in a lot of today's world

00:46:52.260 especially in online discourse amen look we were both big readers here we appreciate the time

00:46:57.480 congrats on all the success and we look forward to uh hearing more different awesome things as you

00:47:02.920 continue to expand your horizon oh thanks so much i love talking to you guys appreciate all you do

00:47:07.400 and hopefully i'll see you both in person soon amen jack thank you take care check out all of

00:47:12.820 the success in the books that he's got out there um and i want to tell you look as it's coming into

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00:48:42.520 Miss the show while you're on the go? Wind down your day with the Daily Review Podcast.

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00:49:00.040 the Honest Talk podcast

00:49:01.540 I'm Jennifer Stewart and I'm Catherine Clark

00:49:04.300 and in this podcast we interview

00:49:06.180 Canada's most inspiring women

00:49:07.980 entrepreneurs, artists, athletes

00:49:10.100 politicians and newsmakers

00:49:11.620 all at different stages of their journey

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00:49:15.620 and we hope you'll join us listen to the honest talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen

00:49:20.660 to your podcasts welcome back in clay travis buck sexton show mehek cook with us now senior

00:49:29.100 national security and legal analyst for the daily signal she's done a ton of work in the u.s

00:49:34.980 attorney's office for the southern district of ohio you probably have seen her on television

00:49:39.880 a decent amount and let's kind of dive right in uh off the top here the ohio fraud story

00:49:48.020 you you worked on this some of the numbers coming out on it are unbelievable what should we know

00:49:55.380 uh about that investigation and how commonplace at this point should we consider health care fraud

00:50:01.860 like this to be if it's taking place in a red state like ohio too clay thank you so much for

00:50:08.380 having me on look this was the tip of the sphere when you saw in minnesota what was happening i

00:50:13.560 immediately knew anytime you have a welfare program there's going to be fraud because

00:50:17.940 government is so complacent let me tell you in ohio back in december i started knocking on doors and

00:50:23.620 asking home health care questions the same place that the daily wire went and i uncovered millions

00:50:29.620 of dollars of fraud whistleblowers were coming to me these are people in the industry doctors that

00:50:34.980 were being forced to rubber stamp paperwork for the Somalian, Bhutanese, and Nepali community,

00:50:40.740 all saying, we want home health care services. So it's hidden, right? It's behind a door. You

00:50:45.900 don't really know what's happening, but most of these patients never needed home health care.

00:50:50.380 So the doctor said no. So they started threatening them. They started pushing

00:50:54.380 for other doctors to rubber stamp it. I'm going to give you a statistic that's going to shock

00:50:59.500 you right now. Ohio has spent $1.6 billion in home health care. Franklin County alone, Columbus,

00:51:05.920 Ohio, largest Somalian population next to Minnesota where I live, alone accounts for 38% of that,

00:51:12.000 which is about $6.8 million. Two zip codes, again, where I live, two zip codes account for out of

00:51:18.540 that $608 million, 40% of that. So it's about $283 million. At some point, the state of Ohio

00:51:26.020 has to say, what's going on in these two zip codes, mostly owned by the Somali, Bhutanese,

00:51:31.420 and Nepalese community, but they didn't. Our governor came out and said it's the cost of

00:51:35.520 doing business. So we're going to see people like J.D. Vance actually coming in to save our tax

00:51:40.960 dollars because our government refuses to do that. Hey, Mike, it's Buck, and thank you for

00:51:46.920 joining us here. You're talking about the scale of what seems to be a very broad, apparent fraud

00:51:53.980 going on a system systematic fraud systemic and systematic um enforcement against this jd vance

00:52:00.640 has been tasked to do this but that's going to take some time financial crimes in particular

00:52:04.760 on the federal side can be somewhat uh long in terms of the start of the investigation to the

00:52:11.360 actual bringing of charges why haven't we seen more deterrence prosecution of this in oh in ohio

00:52:18.220 It would feel like this is pretty easy.

00:52:20.720 This would be low-hanging fruit for some AUSA to say,

00:52:25.100 you're completely ripping off the taxpayer,

00:52:27.660 you're defrauding the American government,

00:52:31.320 and this has got to stop.

00:52:32.880 Why aren't they doing that?

00:52:35.440 Buck, it's such an easy question, but this is a loaded question.

00:52:39.500 It's because a U.S. attorney's office or any prosecutor actually needs the evidence.

00:52:44.500 I've spoken to the U.S. attorney's office.

00:52:45.880 I used to work down the street, and they're looking for evidence of fraud.

00:52:49.740 So that lands squarely with the governor's office and the attorney general,

00:52:53.380 the same places that whistleblowers have gone and said there is fraud happening.

00:52:57.900 The governor's office, since January 15th, his agency has refused to give us the amount of dollars

00:53:03.460 that we're even giving to these home health care systems.

00:53:06.920 So when you knock on doors, most of these people are in the Somalian community.

00:53:10.780 They don't speak English, so I'm wondering how they're even providing services.

00:53:13.880 but the governor's office is not giving information. The only state official in Ohio

00:53:19.280 that's actually looking into this is our auditor, Keith Faber. Let me tell you something. He has

00:53:24.200 also asked for information and the governor's office and his agency is slowly trickling

00:53:29.200 that information. So audits take a lot of time. It's hard to understand what type of fraud is

00:53:34.860 actually happening and how much, but all you need is to knock on a door to realize they're not

00:53:40.020 providing home health care services. They don't even speak English. People are complacent in the

00:53:45.080 state of Ohio and so many other agencies because this isn't their tax dollars. I mean, it's ours.

00:53:50.820 They're just rubber stamping it. They don't care about Ohioans. They don't care about Americans.

00:53:55.080 They want to just continue to funnel money out the door as long as they're paid.

00:53:59.280 That's the problem in America today. Primary in Ohio just happened on Tuesday.

00:54:04.680 an open governor's race and a Senate seat that is up for grabs as well,

00:54:10.400 featuring a 30-year Democrat trying to come back into power,

00:54:15.000 Sherrod Brown, going up against Husted,

00:54:17.340 who is someone that a lot of people don't know that well.

00:54:20.620 Ohio has been moved very much in the direction of the Republican Party

00:54:24.360 over the last generation.

00:54:26.200 How nervous? You're in Ohio.

00:54:27.500 How nervous should people be who are looking at Ohio

00:54:30.880 as sort of a canary in a coal mine, so to speak,

00:54:33.640 for what might happen in the midterms and how competitive do you think those governor and

00:54:38.520 senate races will be in the end i'm glad you asked i am terrified in ohio yes we're a red state but

00:54:46.340 we could easily shift back to purple vivek ramaswamy won every single corner in our state

00:54:53.000 but guess who got the most votes it was sherrod brown the democrats are amped up this cycle they

00:55:00.480 want to make sure that they take the Senate back, that they take the House back, and they

00:55:04.400 eviscerate President Trump's policies. So when I was voting in Franklin County, every single

00:55:09.680 individual around me, Democrat ballots. And this is a problem. Again, we have a complacency problem

00:55:15.560 in America. Republicans think Ohio is just a red state and we're going to win. Sherrod Brown brought

00:55:20.460 over $100 million the last time against our state Senator Bernie Moreno. This time it's going to be

00:55:28.760 much worse against john houston and i think ohioans really need to understand that this

00:55:34.200 is an election of a lifetime for us and democrats are going to be pushing strong and then we have

00:55:39.500 many dr dr fauci running you guys saw amy acton and what she did she locked down our state

00:55:44.180 yeah she was uh like a little a little fauci disciple which is very disappointing hopefully

00:55:50.680 she's not going to lock it down in the future for some kind of a hantavirus outbreak so um talk to

00:55:56.000 us about national security if you would for a minute i know you have a national security

00:55:58.800 background as of today the iranian regime has not accepted the trump administration's

00:56:05.940 offer for a full reopening of the strait of hormuz there's reporting from axios that

00:56:10.960 we may have some kind of an outline of a deal to be figured out in specifics later what do you

00:56:16.880 think about where we stand right now with uh bringing iran to heal and getting this situation

00:56:22.740 solve so that gas prices can start to come back down? I think we're going to need a maximum

00:56:28.420 pressure campaign. Look, I think Iran should understand the scoreboard that President Trump

00:56:32.860 holds all the cards. We have control of the Strait of Hormuz, which is 90 percent of the oil supply.

00:56:38.200 But Iran really doesn't have their act together. There are so many different factions that are

00:56:43.040 trying to negotiate. And when you have death to America as your bottom line, they're going to

00:56:48.760 continue to stall. But the problem today is for Americans to realize is we have to start pushing

00:56:54.160 for all of our Gulf states. We have Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that's actually opened up the airbase.

00:56:58.760 All of the other Gulf states need to get on board. And then China, Japan, India, the fact that India

00:57:05.000 is sitting on the fence when they need oil just as much as some of these other countries. But I

00:57:09.200 think President Trump has put a lot of pressure and this is not going to end well for Iran. I

00:57:14.580 don't think that they're going to negotiate in good faith. I don't see this MOU really happening.

00:57:19.560 I think they're stalling and they're hoping that at some point when Trump is gone, a new president

00:57:23.180 comes in and they can continue to build nukes and continue to work on their death to America

00:57:29.580 strategy. So I'm hoping that President Trump just uses the nuclear option because that's what's

00:57:35.400 needed today. Take out their electric grid. Look, let's look at the Strait of Hormuth in terms of

00:57:42.560 putting a plan in place where other countries start to shepherd and to own that area and then

00:57:49.060 we also need to look at karg island uh that would be aggressive that would be stepping things up

00:57:54.720 uh in a significant way how concerned are you about the impact in the midterms of high gas

00:58:02.200 prices and are you concerned that if you step it up as you suggested we need to do that that could

00:58:08.600 lead to more significant consequences economically, since a lot of people do judge the state of the

00:58:15.140 economy based on what it costs them to fill up their car. Well, Clay, you posted yesterday on

00:58:20.720 Acts that gas prices are lower today than they were a year ago. And if you look at the Obama

00:58:24.760 administration, I mean, we are on par, if not doing better. President Trump was able to turn

00:58:30.700 around a 40 year inflation within months after Joe Biden got the heck out of office. So I know

00:58:36.460 that we have an American energy independence here and we need to start getting creative about gas

00:58:41.680 prices because you're right most Americans don't think about what was happening under Biden or even

00:58:46.580 Obama but those are the facts so I think where we need to be is not only accelerating what we're

00:58:51.980 doing in Iran instead of continuing to give them a grace period but also figure out what else we

00:58:57.300 can do in terms of energy independence drilling right here in America uh okay two-parter here I

00:59:04.440 I don't know if you watched any of the California-LA mayor debate

00:59:07.920 featuring the candidates that are really kind of going at it

00:59:13.840 with Spencer being the sane one out there.

00:59:17.520 And then also we had the California governor's race going on.

00:59:20.660 So first part, did you ever watch the Hills?

00:59:23.700 Did you see Spencer Pratt back in the day?

00:59:25.760 This is a question.

00:59:26.500 You're in that ballpark age where I think you may have watched the Hills.

00:59:29.460 Did you know Spencer Pratt before this?

00:59:31.540 What did you think of the LA debate?

00:59:33.080 What did you think of the California debate? Is sanity possible in terms of voting results in that state?

00:59:39.700 So I did watch the hills. I watched his wife, Heidi, very closely.

00:59:44.720 And to see Spencer Pratt run from where he was on the hills to where he is today just tells you that the younger generation can be saved, especially when we're fighting against Democrats.

00:59:55.240 I mean, he came out with an epic ad.

00:59:58.280 It's what everybody wants.

00:59:59.540 What Republicans talk about today is somebody who'll come in with options, that superhero

01:00:04.520 mentality.

01:00:05.520 And what Democrats want to do is just burn everything down and assassinate us.

01:00:08.600 But you see that bifurcation.

01:00:10.360 So I think where Spencer Pratt is going is genius.

01:00:13.620 And the fact that Democrats today continue to act like they're not in control for the

01:00:19.360 last 16 years as they're burning down California just made me laugh.

01:00:23.260 But my favorite moment, I got to talk about the gubernatorial, was Katie Porter. Everybody's saying she said the quiet part out loud, and we know that. But I think what Democrats continue to do is redefine English, like boys or girls. Now it's everybody's a Californian, even if you're an illegal alien, which is technically legally the right word for these people that are here.

01:00:44.720 But they're doing this replacement theory where they're trying to get rid of Americans.

01:00:49.460 And you both know this.

01:00:50.700 So many people in California have left between I've looked at stats between the last couple of years, over 400,000 individuals, but they're just replacing them with illegals.

01:01:00.080 So the real question you have to ask is, what are they doing with those voter rolls?

01:01:04.380 Because there is a replacement strategy where they want illegals to vote.

01:01:08.260 I don't think Hermit Dillard has been able to get those voter rolls out of California.

01:01:11.620 I'll have to check that.

01:01:12.640 But I think that's where Democrats are trying to win every single election by replacing us.

01:01:18.800 And I think Californians have a clear choice.

01:01:21.460 Steve Helton knows what it means to work hard.

01:01:24.400 He knows what it means to deliver change.

01:01:27.440 I really hope that sanity comes back to California.

01:01:30.560 I'm praying, but I also worry about illegal voters.

01:01:34.260 Amen.

01:01:34.920 Mehek Cook, we appreciate the time.

01:01:36.780 First time on the show.

01:01:38.020 Keep up the good work.

01:01:39.620 Thank you so much.

01:01:41.340 Look, we had Frank Siller on the show yesterday talking about the fact that the 25th anniversary of 9-11 is rapidly approaching.

01:01:48.980 And we also posted that segment up at the YouTube page for those of you who want to take a look and hear the story of how Frank came to found Tunnel to Towers after losing his brother, firefighter Stephen Siller.

01:02:01.400 But that's not the end of all the people that have made great sacrifices for sure.

01:02:06.220 And Tunnel to Towers continues to find and honor people, heroes like United States Navy Chief Technician Shannon Kent.

01:02:13.660 Her service was inspired by the 9-11 attacks.

01:02:16.380 A decorated warrior and a mom, Shannon served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

01:02:22.200 She lost her life in a suicide bomb attack in Syria.

01:02:25.740 In this 25th year of 9-11, her sacrifice reminds us of the cost and lasting impact of that day.

01:02:32.120 Shannon left behind her husband, Joseph, and two young boys.

01:02:35.780 Tunnel to Towers paid off the Kent family's mortgage,

01:02:38.060 giving the family the security of knowing their home is theirs forever.

01:02:41.980 Help even more families like the Kents.

01:02:44.080 We owe a debt of gratitude to brave first responders

01:02:46.460 and those defending our freedoms.

01:02:48.580 Your donation to Tunnel to Towers can make a world of difference.

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 07, 2026

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