Guest Clay Travis talks Politics & Rebellion

Medal of Honor Monday. We take a medal of honor, citation, we read it. That's it. We honor the hero, we honor the deeds, we remember them as we should. I again, as I always do, want to encourage you to do this in your own life. I didn't do any of these deeds. I don't know any of this. These are available for everybody. If you're a teacher, do it with your class, If you're an employer, do it in the office, do with your sports team. People love this stuff. It's

important and people love it all right. This one is one we've actually never done. In fact, I'm gonna give you a little bit of history around this one before we move on to the rest of the show. But this is the Medal of Honor citation for Teddy Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt. That's right, one and the same. There's all kinds of things around this we'll discuss in a moment, but before we do that, we might as well honor the man. He was born in New York, New York.

Don't know if you knew that Teddy Roosevelt was a New Yorker. He was an old and he was from a wealthy family in New York City. Very much a self made though human being wealthy but self made. I'll explain in a few but without further ado. There it is hey honoring those who went above and beyond. It's Medal of Honor Monday for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life, above and beyond the call

of duty. Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt distinguished himself by acts of bravery on the first of July eighteen ninety eight, near Santiago de Cuba, Republic of Cuba, while leading a daring charge up San Juan Hill. Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt, in total disregard for his personal safety, and accompanied by only four or five men, led a desperate and gallant charge up San Juan Hill, encouraging his troops to continue the

assault through withering enemy fire over open countryside. Facing the enemy's fire, he displayed extraordinary bravery throughout the charge and was first to reach the enemy trenches, where he quickly killed one of the enemy with his pistol, allowing his men to continue the assault. His leadership and valor turned

the tide in the Battle for San Juan Hill. Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt's extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit in the United States Army. Now I'm going to give you a little bit of history, little background on the Spanish American War and on Teddy Roosevelt. So you know how we had that discussion a couple weeks ago. I think it was about how I feel

that we should conquer more of the Western hemisphere. Now this whole thing kind of makes me agree, because Cuba is one of those things we should have never given up. The Spanish had control of Cuba, we launched the Spanish American War against them. Now you probably already know this story. In case you don't, we had a warship parked off of the coast of Cuba. We were having obviously some tensions with the Spanish. This warship was called the Main, as in the state the Main. It blew up one night.

Nobody knows, and now we're at the point where nobody will ever know why it blew up. Did the Spanish do it? We don't know. Did someone was someone smoking a cigarette in the magazine of the ship and drop some ashes on it. We don't know. We'll never know. But what we do know is what came next. In what is known as yellow journalism, America's media, major media outlets, major newspapers whipped the American people up into a frenzy, saying the Spanish blew up our warship. The rallying cry

across the country was, remember the Main. Remember the Main. If I remember right, I think there are even stupid old salt and stuff like that they wrote about it. Remember the Main, Remember the Main. So we decide we've had enough of these dirty Spaniards and we are going to go down there and we're going to beat the Spanish up in Cuba, but we didn't have much of an army. America was made to not have much of a standing army. Our founders oneed a very minimal standing army.

We just didn't have many guys. The President of the United States of America starts getting legislation passed that not only beefs up the army for the coming expedition. He's fled out asking for volunteers, and he finds somebody who is more than willing to volunteer. That man's name was Teddy Roosevelt. Now let's pause for just a moment. Why would Teddy Roosevelt volunteer? There is this there's this thing. I don't want to speak for women, but I know

this thing exists in men. Where you have a father, or maybe you didn't, but your father, oftentimes you will become what he is, and oftentimes you will try very hard and succeed in making sure you're not what he is. It just totally depends Teddy Roosevelt's father. I don't want to make him sound like a bad guy at all, at all. There's no I haven't read anything to indicate that that Teddy Roosevelt's father sat out the Civil War. Did not fight in the Civil War. Teddy Roosevelt was

a very sickly young boy, very very sickly. Teddy Roosevelt, through what appears to be will I don't even know. I still don't understand fully what happened, decides that he's going to make himself a tough guy. He's just going to become one. He is sickly, he is weak, he gets picked on by the other kids. That he just

starts training, training his body. He's just boxing, wrestling. He was physically, by far, the toughest president we've ever had, maybe Abe Lincoln, who was an accomplished wrestler, but physically, I mean, one on one, they're all in the ring, Teddy Roosevelt would probably beat the living daylights out of any of them. Just became that way. He was so interested in being the ultimate American and a tough guy that before all this, before the Spanish American War, he'd

lost his wife, things like that. I won't go into details. He moves out to the Dakotas, which are brutal, especially back then in the winter time, and he just becomes a cowboy. This is a New York socialite and he's a no I want to be a wider. I'm gonna go out, and he did it. There's toughest nails and got very good on a horse, very good with weapons. Fast forward. Part of this volunteer thing for the Spanish American War was, Hey, Teddy, why don't you take some guys.

He raises about eleven one hundred men, and they were known as the rough Riders. Many of them were ranchers, because he wanted guys. This was going to be a cavalry unit all horseback. Many of them were ranchers. Many of them were polo players or cross country riders. Many of them were Indian tribesmen who were experienced on horses, Cherokees and things like that. It sounds like a motley crew that it was. They were selected for their horsemanship,

and Teddy Roosevelt himself was a very accomplished horseman. They ended up down in Cuba, really really crappy. Fighting. Disease was a terrible problem, malaria and yellow fever. We're talking about a lot of tropical environment, a lot of tropical fighting. It was killing the Spanish, it was killing us, and Teddy Roosevelt again, he just decided he was going to be brave by force of will. He just goes charging up this hill. It is disputed whether or not he

was the first. Teddy Roosevelt says he was the first. There are men who served with him who say he was the first. He likely was the first. There are other accounts that say, ah, there were other people. And no matter what, it was a very very brave thing to do, to just go charging up and open hill when people are shooting down on you. Is that's brave.

That's very very brave. And so our American president on Mount Rushmore goes charging up the hill, runs into some guy trying to kill him, pulls out a pistol and guns him down like the wiaterp he decided he was going to be Teddy Roosevelt. I actually politically have a lot of disagreements with him. He's much more big government than I am. But as a man, as a human being, I'm a huge admirer, a huge admirer. He is somebody that is fascinating. I only said all this because I

wanted to encourage you. If this kind of stuff interests you, Teddy Roosevelt would be a fascinating person to read about. You're a kid listening, maybe you have a school project coming up. If you did one on Teddy Roosevelt, you would enjoy the homework. I'll put it that way. He's he's like an action hero. He's that way, just a wild man. He used to box visiting dignitaries. He'd make them box or wrestle. He finally had to stop because he got hit so hard that he went like blind

in one eye. And so I'll just move on to wrestling. He's just one of the dude's amazing dudes. Wold, all right, before we get back to politics, I'm gonna get to some emails. I do want to address something that's odd. I ran into something odd on Friday night. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful Monday. Remember you can email the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. I'm gonna get to those here in a few Also,

we have Clay Travis. Of course, if the Clay Travis buck Sexton Show coming up about ten minutes from now, we'll be riffing with Clay for a few Oh, that's so much more still to come the Jesse Kelly's Show. We did get this one though, Jesse. We have a grandchild that is a first grader. The teacher and staff preach about peanut allergies. He've afraid, he's afraid to touch

the stuff. It's worse than their climate propaganda. And I've brought the climate propaganda is actually about to come into play here on the show in a few But so I need to set stage for you. Friday night was Halloween. I told you on Friday the Kellys have finally upgraded to full sized candy bars. Right, we went full size. Now I need to set it all. I need to set stage.

You know how the secretary has a candy bull up there. What's the last thing? Always in the little candy bull Three Musketeers because it sucks and nobody likes it, and you can yell all you want that it's great. I'm sorry, but people don't lie. They pick around the Three Musketeers. With a selection like this of so many of the basics, I was fascinated. What was gonna go first? What wasn't gonna go first? Now? First thing off the board, Skittles

the skittle That's not surprising. Everybody takes a handful of Skittles, tosses them all in the mouth, chews them up until it's just one ball of delicious sugary crack, and then you swallow it down. Skittles are amazing, No surprise skills. Second, now I thought this was a little surprising. Twis I like Twigs. This is not an anti Twix rand. But second, off the board, Yeah, there's butterfingers there, there's the Reese's Peanut butter cups are right there, Twigs. Third, straight up,

Hrshley's chocolate Bar. That's exactly what I said. Jewish producer Chris just said, why now I like it? If someone offers me a square, I'm not a huge candy person, I admit I like it. I would never if I was buying a candy bar in the gas station with all those selections, go Hershey's chocolate bar. But the kids did. Okay, you can defend all this. But before the Reeses and the Snickers, I did mention Snickers, right, I hope I did. If I didn't mention Snickers, I should have because that's

important to the story. Full size Snickers. We couldn't give them away, nobody wanted them. The Snickers did not go until everything else had been wiped off the tray, absolutely everything else, and we had to go get the spare packs of Hershees, spare packs of Skills. The skills were gone in the first twenty minutes, just wiped out. Everything else had to be gone. At the end of the night, the only thing left on the tray were Snickers bars

and butterfinger bars. No butterfinger and so I put this out on social media, how weird this was, and I got a lot of responses like this, is this a peanut allergy thing? I'm not trying to be little anybody. I don't know. I know peanut allergies are real. Is this so prevalent and dangerous in the next generation that now kids are afraid of buying Reese's Peanut or g Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Chris says, no way. Yeah, but your kids are young. You're your baby's young, Corey's baby's young.

My sons don't have this. I've never heard of this before. This was news to me, and I know this is the most unimportant thing in the world. I thought it was fascinating. The Snickers, I'll give you, Snickers is always mid tier. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, that's top tier candy bar, that's on almost everybody's top five. What Chris, Chris said, when you're going through candy, you're gonna have to unwrap

Reese's twice. Chris, you're thinking like a logical adult. Children hyped up on sugar at Halloween are not walking through this like you taking a part of car engine, You goober. The kids are not gonna worry about an extra little piece of paper on rate on reeis is the only the only way I would push back on that and maybe say you could get agreement on that is what's up with the starburst? The starbursts were not big either. Now that you have to unwrap twice and it's not

easy to unwrap it twice. You have to dig your fingernails at what it didn't go because Starburs sucks. It's not that it sucks. It can be too hard. It could be if you get Star Wars that's fresh enough, where it's nice and squishy, it's fine. I don't want to have to pull out my molars trying to eat candy, or I'm just not doing it. I have no idea why we just talked about this for like ten minutes, but we're gonna, you know what, I'm gonna ask Klay Travis about it in a couple of minutes and then

we'll move on. I swear we'll get back to other important things. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful Monday. Reminding you you can email the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. Joining me now reluctantly because we're gonna talk about his new book and other things. Is my buddy Clay Travis. Of course, of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show doesn't exactly need an introduction on this program, Okay, Clay before we get into politics and the book and everything else. That there was a

weird phenomenon at the Kelly household. I just talked about it. I want to know if you experienced this Halloween night. Skittles went super fast, Twigs super fast, Reese's peanut butter cups lagging way behind Snickers. Snickers might as well have not even showed up. McLay, I've got Snickers coming out the wazoo. Now what happened at the Travis household.

the ultimate unk. I don't know if you ever are called this, but you know, an old guy who's not necessarily plugged in is now called an unk by the young kids, obviously short for uncle. But but I am the Travis family unk beyond the shadow of a doubt, And so I didn't even know these things existed. I couldn't believe how popular they were. And my boys are like, of course, and even my wife is like, you know,

where have you been? And I'm like, well, sitting around watching a lot of sports, not aware of gummy gummy nerds. I guess concoctions. But but yeah, this was we gave out how much like how busy is your house? Like how many people would you bet come by on a Halloween?

dispute with a company called Jack Daniels Fire. Do you remember Jack Daniels when they got into the cinnamon whiskey business.

was called, like they're cinnamon whiskey event. And I was like yeah, I mean all I got to do is show up and you know, be like, here's a picture of me with a whiskey bottle. Yeah, I'll go. So I agreed to do that. I think this is probably like twenty seventeen or so, like six weeks later, I get called and they're like, hey, this is so and so with Jack Daniels fire. I'm like yeah, and they're like, some of your social media posts we believe are bringing

the brand potentially into disreputable peritils. I swear to God, Whiskey company Jack Daniels like, I mean, do you know who consumes your product? They were like, you are no longer able to come to our Cinnamon Whiskey event. We are canceling your invitation. I swear to God. I was like, is this I thought I was. I thought it was one of my buddies like pranking me, because you know, like I probably bragged. I'm like, yeah, I'm getting three

grand to pose, you know. I mean I I three grands a lot of freaking money to just post a whiskey model, right, and you know they probably got, you know, pretty fun crowd that's showing up to come drink. I was like, I'll show up for three I mean, I wanna go to the bar probably for free between you and me for three grand. So I'm all set, all set to show up. They cancel on me, and I was like, what did I say? And this, You'll love this.

They were like, well, your comments about Confederate statues being torn down brought the brand into disrepute. I'm like, Jack daniels brothers fought for the Confederacy. The only reason the Tennessee Company, the only reason Jack Daniels wasn't a Confederate soldier was because he was too young when the Civil War happened to actually fight in the Civil War. I was like, do you know who consumes your brand? What percentage of whiskey drinkers are? Like, you know what? I

want more historical statues torn down. So this is one hundred percent truth. So the story Fireball sent me their top competitor. They sent me a fireball machine. They sent me like like, it is like the same thing that they have in the bar. It's a chiller. You plug it in, you turn a fireball, you know, plastic bottle upside down, double loaded. It will feed constant fireball shots

out to anybody chilled, you know, directly out. So, starting about a decade ago, I don't know, eight years ago, whenever they sent this to me, we started giving out shots to parents in our neighborhood who would come by with kids. You know, if they wanted it. So kids get a trick or treat, they get anything. And then my wife, you know, is manning the shot machine. And so on Halloween for the last several you know, last almost a decade in this house, we have now given

out last on Halloween. On Friday, we gave up seventeen bottles of Fireball cinnamon whiskey. And it all started because those morons that Jack Daniels said, Clay, you're too controversial, and to their credit, Fireball sent me a shot making machine and so we get we gave out seventeen bottles of Fireball shots. Everybody loves it. And you know, there are worse things than having some alcohol when you're having to walk around and chase your kids all over the neighborhood.

So so yeah, seventeen bottles. My wife has been in charge over the last years. And we're now moving and we have beweats to the fireball shop machine to a neighbor so that trend can continue in the neighborhood.

same type thing. It wasn't just fireball though. They had one of the big, like gigantic coolers and they were handing out like I think it's a college party, jello shots and all kinds of stuff and them all No, I'm not interested, no thank you, no thank you. But one of my buddies in the neighborhood was very interested, Clay, and he happened to be the same buddy who took the governor off the golf cart he bought for his house. Oh,

he spent too much time in that corner. One night, long story short, the golf cart ended up upside down in the middle of the road and the ambulance came in and he had thirty five stitches in his legs because the golf cart ended up on top of it. And that was the last time they rolled out the white cooler full of jello shots and fireball. Close friend of mine solely responsible for getting the alcohol taken out of the neighborhood on Halloween.

on golf carts. I think because you just don't think about a golf cart as being dangerous, but the number of times that guys tip him over or that you had accurbed the wrong way, I think the golf cart is actually more dangerous than the actual car because in most neighborhoods, you would have to be a true moron driving twenty or twenty five miles an hour to hurt yourself in a car, right, I mean, you have to be like literally an absolute moron to hurt yourself in

the car to go in that speed. But at golf cars, people are getting screwed up all the time. I had a buddy to one up your the guy that I sold OutKick with my business partner. He was on his fortieth birthday, hadn't even had any drinks. He was down on the beach, driving around in the neighborhood, as a lot of people have golf cars. They took a corner, he says. He thinks they just had too many people on one side. It flipped off. His foot got caught between the brake pad, the and the He almost died.

They had to transfuse him because they hit the artery to such an extent that he was bleeding to such an extent. And look, you never even he was like, I never even considered that I was doing anything dangerous. I think he had like three buddies sitting on one side and only one on the other. And when they hit a curve, that thing flipped over and he got caught under it.

you're a moron, you know. Deciding that you want to make d's instead of a's because you think it's not cool to get good grades is not really a smart rebellion. Other times, there are rebellions that actually make sense, And I think young men are fed up with being told that they are the cause of all problems in the world. You and I are around the same age. We grew up with the idea being that you should be treated equally, not that everybody's equal, because we all have different skills

and talents. But these kids grew up and it started with young white boys. Now it's young black boys, Hispanic boys, Asian boys. They're all being told there's a problem with being male, that masculinity is toxic, and they all just look around and they say this is not true, and I think they've gotten fed up. And I actually think culturally they are coming back around to the idea that there's something to aspire to about masculinity, that we should be proud of it, that they want to go row

up and be masculine men. And this is what the book is about. How do we raise stronger boys the cultural revolution that I think is happening. And you know, they saying someone is a Kamala voter is an insult for my boys, right Like, when they're like sitting around making fun of somebody, they're like, oh, that dude voting Kamala, and it like it brings down the house, right Like they just all die laughing at it. And I think it's a sign of the Democrat Party having lost young

men and just not become cool. And I think it's only growing with the younger generation and I'm super optimistic about it. But you know, we have a lot of work to do as men, because unfortunately, we still have way too many absent dads, We have way too many families that are single parent moms trying to do both jobs. And you know, the data reflects that young girls actually do well when there's a strong woman in the household,

makes sense like sending them a message. But young boys are the ones that actually struggle the most when mom is trying to cover both sides, because a lot of dads are not living up to their obligations. And I know there's grandpas and uncles out there and male figures that try to lift up everyone, but this is about how men are stronger and have to take back, frankly, the country and lead us to a better place. And I'm optimistic they are green shoots of that starting to happen.

Can you help me understand it?

and eleven, but they are my life's purpose. They are the most important thing in my life by far, and I can't imagine not being around them. And I tell them all the time, Hey, I want you guys to grow up, get married, have as many kids as you possibly can. Because I don't really understand. And I understand some people can't have kids, don't have kids, don't find

the right person. I understand all that, trust me, But I just for me personally, and I think this is true for a lot of men without a family to provide for and without kids to raise. I just I think I would struggle in life. I don't think I would find very much purpose because at some point it's a lot of fun to be hedonistic and go out and have steaks and chase girls and all those things. But at some point you've run out of hedonism in some way and you do start to wonder what is

the purpose of life? And for me, it's raising three strong boys who I hope are really good dads. I know you lost your dad recently. My dad is eighty one. He's I was fortunate to have an incredible dad, and I always say, if I can be nearly as good of a dad as my dad was, then my boys are going to do really well. So that's my life's purpose now. It's to raise three boys who are really good dads and get married and have a bunch of kids themselves. And I hope I get to have a

lot of grandkids, you know, in the future. That would be you know, sort of my ideal world would be kicking back. You know, my wife God Lover basically lives in a frat house now because the boys just, you know, they all just want to get you know, hamburgers and French fries and potato chips and soda and just watch games.

And it's like filthy, and it smells in the house all the time, and like it's not clean, and my wife's just rolling her eyes because she has Thank god we don't have three daughters, because I would be I think I would probably you know, be in significant trouble. But yeah, she's got the three boys and me and I'm the toughest to deal with. But it is. It's an incredible experience. I can't imagine not living with them.