Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show podcast. Welcome in Thursday edition, Clay Travis buck Sexton Show. Appreciate all of you rolling with us as we are diving into the biggest stories of the day and beyond probably, but also it's going to have a lot of fun with you as we break down everything
going on in the larger universe. And right off the top here, we had a big conversation about this yesterday, the fact that there was a leak to CNN and The New York Times that suggested the attack on Saturday evening here in the United States on Tehran was not actually effective, and that has been pushed back on aggressively. And it started really early this morning at eight am Eastern, when Pete Hegseth came out and just went to town
on the press and the reporting surrounded this. Now, I want to play some of these cuts because it was a pretty intense press conference, but I'll start with a conversation that we had yesterday, which was about the challenge the difficulty of finding out who leaked this information, particularly as it appears that it may well not have been accurate. So Buck, you worked in the intelligence community when you saw this report was leaked, did you think initially, hey,
this is kind of unheard of. Did it totally seem maybe not a positive thing, but not an unexpected thing. And I know we talked about this some yesterday, but what are the difficulties that would be inherent in figuring out who actually leaked to this because it is certainly classified information.
Well, the fact that somebody would take this to the press so early on in the process and that it was already known to be a low confidence assessment just means somebody wanted to blunt the narrative of Trump is just kicking ass and making excellent decisions as commander in chief.
And this war those who said, it's not even a war, it's a military strike, okay, you know, think of all the countries that we have had military operations in that we would not consider ourselves to be at war or in the midst of a war.
But Clay, this was meant.
To have a political ramification, because if you wanted this to have US national security in mind, if you wanted to be somebody said, hey, guys, hey, I'm worried about the reactors. I'm worried that there could still be a
lot more here. We didn't get enough. What you would want is to wait until you pull together all of the best sources, get it rock solid, and then work its way up the chain through the CIA director or the DiiA director in this case, and then at that point you know you would have done your due diligence. This wasn't a due diligence moment. This was somebody who decided I'm going to be the one who reigns on Trump's parade. Here, this was an individual. This was a
deep stater. This is someone who did not have the interests of the United States in mind, but the interests of a very bitter and weak and feckless looking Democrat machine in mind, and hope to take away some of the sense of a bulliance and some of the congratulations that have been going around, not just for Trump's decision, but for the men and women who flew the airstrikes themselves, for the Pentagon pulling this off, the intelligence community for having these sites mapped out play.
It's a big win. But this would to me, this is a bit like saying.
Somebody from within the intelligence community after the bin laden raid is raising concerns that there was really, you know, no document exploitation that came out of that raid, or maybe that we didn't even get bin laden.
So why would you do that.
You would only do that if you were trying to hurt Now, of course that didn't happen because somehow our team doesn't do those kinds of leaks. That's always a Democrat, left wing thing when there's a leak of classified to hurt a commander in chief.
But that's what this was.
It's very clear there's no way that this person could have had the level of visibility necessary to with a Remember it's a low confidence assessment.
Clay I was.
In the room many times with people from d IA, CIA, NSA, go down the list all of them, and there were squabbling over who's right about very important and we were at war, right, we were in the midst of a war, and you know things like, hey, could a surge in Baghdad work to stabilize things? Let me tell you something, a lot of fighting and dissenting voices over that. The notion that one person has the keys to the kingdom
on the damage assessment is absurd. It's just a political hit, and that's why they should go after the leaker.
All right, so let me play some of these cuts. This was from the Pentagon earlier today. Secretary of Defense Pete Hutt Hegseth. I do give a lot of credit. We've talked about this on the program. They made everybody get there early eight am Eastern time start for this to dominate the news cycle for the day. Here's hegseet blasting the press in particular for these leaks. This is cut too.
Because you, and I mean specifically you, the press, specifically you the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard. It's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to.
Be successful so bad.
You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes. You have to hope maybe they weren't effective, Maybe the way the Trump.
Administration is representative isn't true. So let's take half truths.
Spun information, leaked information, and then spin it, spin it in every way we can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the mind, the public mind over whether or not our brave pilots were successful.
How many stories have.
Been written about how hard it is to I don't know fly a plane for thirty six hours.
Has MSNBC done.
That story as Fox? Have we done the story how hard that is? Have we done it two or three times so that American people understand, How about how difficult it is to shoot a drone from an F fifteen or sixteen or F twenty two or F thirty five, or what it's like to man a Patriot battery, or how hard it is to refuel mid air. Giving the American people an understanding of how complex and sophisticated this
mission really was. There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that because of the hatred of this press, corps are undermined because your people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful.
It's your responders. Okay, so that's one. Let's continue. This sounds a little bit like Fox and Friends or a hit that Pete Hegseth is doing on Fox News. And it's one reason I think that Trump wanted him in this position because he is a very talented communicator, and that matters in this world where you are really having to lace on the gloves and go head to head
with the press every single day. Here's cut three more on Hegseth saying, the classified information, as you said, Buck, is leaked to try and harm Trump cut three time and time again.
Classified information is leaked or pedled for political purposes, to try to make the president look bad. And what's really happening is you're undermining the success of incredible B two pilots and incredible F thirty five pilots, and incredible refuelers and incredible air defenders who accomplish their mission set back a nuclear program in ways that other presidents would have dreamed.
How about we celebrate that.
How about we talked about how special America is that we only we have these capabilities.
I think it's too much to ask.
Unfortunately for the fake news, so we're used.
To that, but we also have an opportunity to stand at the podium and read the truth of what's really happening.
And the reality is.
You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated.
Choose your word.
This was an historically successful attack and we should celebrate as Americans, and it gives us a chance to have peace, chance to have a deal, and an opportunity to prevent a nuclear Iran, which is something President Trump talked about for twenty years.
I mean guns blazing here. I don't think we mentioned the New York Times getting upset about the fact that heg Seth praised our boys, and so he was actually asked, we have this cut. And I couldn't believe he was actually asked, why not acknowledge female pilots that participated instead of congratulating the boys?
This is cut for why not acknowledge the female pilots that also participated in this mission. The early messages that you sent out only congratulated the boys. So when I say something like our boys and bombers, see, this is the kind of thing the press does.
Right.
Of course, the chairman mentioned a female bomber pilot. That's fantastic. She's fantastic, She's a hero. I want more female bomber pilots. I hope the men and women of our country sign up to do such brave and audacious things.
But when you spin it as because I say our boys and.
Bombers is a common phrase, I'll keep saying things like that, whether they're men or women. Very proud of that female pilot, just like I'm very proud of those male pilots, and I don't care if it's a male or a female in that cockpit, and the American people don't care. But it's the obsession with race and gender in this department that's changed priorities.
And we don't do that anymore. We don't play your little games. I love this. I mean, I can't believe that's a real question he got to ask. But it's good that we see that.
This is what the press still pretends is their job right is to push They're just asking questions. We'll get to Jake Tapper's latest on that. Really they're always pushing an agenda. No one thinks that Pete Hegseth was undermining any woman who This is a bit like saying, hey, when you when you were talking, you said, hey, you guys, great job. Why didn't you say you guys and girls? I mean, it's absurd, it's it's childish, it's it's focused
on nothing. But I also think that what the shows you play is in these you know, the media, the non Fox media and the Democrat media, the non aligned leftist media. They have been making a lot of jokes about how Fox News essentially has staffed this Trump administration. And what's interesting is, yeah, guess what. Now You've got people who are both qualified to do the job, people like Dan Bongino and and Hegseeth and others who are also really good at media and comms themselves.
Yes, and so if you think back to.
Other times, we've had people who are running, you know, Department of Defense, We've had people who were in these kinds of cabinet level position, Secretary of Say, look look at Secretary of Say Rubio. I mean that guy might as well have been a Fox contributor for the last decade. He's been on Fox, you know, as much as anybody. They're good at this, and so the ability that the media has to attack them, trip them up, undermine them, and then focus on that instead of what's actually happening
is vastly diminished. I mean it's almost non existent at this point.
Can you imagine being a Pentagon News reporter and we just had the strike that we did on Iran and you get a limited amount of time to ask questions and a limited amount of things that you can even ask about because they're only going to be whatever it is. Five six seven people called on that. That would be the thing that you went in as a Pentagon reporter to focus on was the fact that one female was there and said when the when he said the boys in the planes or whatever the heck used to be,
that that would be your focus. It even is stunning to me.
Still this all makes sense, though, because their job. If you work for the Washington Post and you're in the Pentagon briefing room, or work for the New York Times and you're in the White House, the only way you're going to get any attention and that your readership, which is hyper partisan, is going to like your reporting is if you manage to attack successfully, get them to stumble, get to pull some sound bite.
They don't actually care about the information.
They don't They're not there to ask relevant, reasonable questions and get back objective data for the American people. They are there to be partisan attack dogs, and so if they don't do that, they're not actually serving the purposes of their paper.
I get the part as an attack dog thing, but to think that your audience is obsessed because he used the word boys and did you see.
Who asked that question? Did you see who asked that question?
She's been wagging her finger at people for saying you guys for the last twenty years, I guarantee you.
I just I can't believe that that is real. And by the way, the New York Times got savaged in their live chat because they had a male reporter who said, in real time, Hey, well, actually you know there was a girl. First of all, when the idea that boys and girls or guys or we all understand the concept, I mean, I imagine it comes from the boys in the bombers is also a phrase boys in the boat, which was one of the best selling books, A great book by the way, But is there are there any women
that were actually offended by that? I just the fact that that would be a question that's asked of the Secretary of Defense in a limited public availability situation where he doesn't answer a lot of questions, is actually even for left wing media, I think a huge embarrassment for them. Look heads up, everybody. Another massive data breach has happened. Sixteen billion, team billion log in credentials have been leaked Apple, Google,
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Mamadanni Mania sweeping the Democrats all across this land of ours, and uh, we all know from yesterday that this guy, Zoran Mamadani is the Democrat nominee for the mayor of New York City. Now that's not a done deal. There are some long bomb in the end zone hopes that maybe Eric Adams could pull this off, or maybe there's some Cuomo deal, although I think Cuomo now is just considered a loser right the comeback play, the comeback has
not worked out the way that Cuomo wanted these. The spaghetti and meat balls was not as good as he was hoping for. It's because it was a.
Total whiff by me, Buck, I mean, I really thought that they had rolled out the red carpet for him. I thought he was going to win the mayoral race and would then use it as the jumping off point to be a candidate in twenty twenty eight. Instead, I think his political career is over. I think I think he gave up the political ghosts, so to speak, in that loss and the way that he lost.
So now here here's again, I have to I bring this to.
Your attention because so go with New York City, so go with a lot of other Democrat cities. I think this is going to be viewed. So if you live in Texas and you're like, well, that's New York's problem. Yeah, but you know he's live in a city like Houston or Dallas, which is Democrat majority.
Unfortunately, this might affect you.
You know, obviously, if you live in California, you're in a Democrat enclave statewide. You know, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that that will filter out from this. And I think it's an interesting test case because you already have national level them. You had Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton, I don't even know he was on Twitter. He was like, hey, here, you're a socialist. You love those pretty ladies. I lock
pretty ladies too. We should talk, you know. Bill Clinton all of a sudden giving his congratulations Komaney himself, just kidding. Komane didn't congratulate him, but it would have been funny if he had. Komatie did say that they've won the war though, that is I do have that one here.
We'll get to that later.
Bill Clinton, congratulations to Zorn on your victory, wishing you success. Well yeah, yeah, nothing really interesting there. But Bill Clinton weighed in AOC and Bernie there's really there's really a decision that's being made with AOC within the Democrat Party.
There's the AOC.
Bernie pathway, and then there's the you know, somebody who's the Democrat in charge of Kentucky.
What's that guy? I'm forgetting blanket. You know, there's like the Basheer.
Or the governor of Maryland or the you know, there's that Like, I'm a Democrat, but I'm not like one of those crazy Democrats. They'll do whatever Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi tell them, but they pretend.
Not to be right.
Right now, you've just had a big win go up on the board for the crazy AOC wing of the Democrat Party. And I understand you might say, Buck, they'll never be able to win a national election. Kamala lost by in the.
Electoral college, which is what matters.
A couple of hundred thousand votes really right, meaning I understand she lost by a lot more she lost the popular vote. I'm not taking away from Trump's enormous victory. It was fantastic, but if you were able to shift a couple of hundred thousand votes in half a dozen states, really less than the half dozen states would have been president. So don't let's not get complacent about the fact that the worst presidential candidate in my lifetime is somebody who
wasn't that far. It was not like a you know, Mondale, absolute thrashing. Okay, this was something that was closer than it should have been. Now let's just just because of why, I don't want you to think, oh, this is just New York City's problem. This is that's like saying Soros prosecutors were New York's problem. Oh wait, hold on a second. They were in every major city in the country for a while. There were Soros prosecutors in Saint Louis and and in Philly, and in la and the let you
now you get it on the list right Chicago. Soros money all over the country. So you have to watch these trends. Clay, let's get into some of the crazy stuff here. Socialist democrat Zoran Mamdani. Something that he says he wants to do this is cut nine. This guy says he wants to eight hundred percent in tree hate crime prevention play this.
I know that Jewish New Yorkers, like Jewish Americans, are fearful in this moment of antisemitism. And ultimately, it's through the conversations I've had with Jewish New Yorkers that I have developed a proposal for the Department of Community Safety that would include an eight hundred percent increase in funding for hate crime prevention programs. Because ultimately, we cannot simply say that anti Semitism has no home in this city or no place in this country. We have to do
more than talk about it. We have to tackle it. And that's what we will do. Through this funding and through this commitment, we will root out bigotry across the five boroughs.
Let me just throw this out there, Clay.
This is going to absolutely not work at all to stop any bigotry, but it will be a way to fund left wing and doctrination programs in community centers, schools and all the rest of it.
Yeah, and look, I think what you're saying is so important because a lot of people think, oh, New York City, that doesn't really impact to my life in a substantial way. I think who with the mayor of New York City is impacts all of our lives, even if you live in the smallest town in Alabama or the most remote
part of Utah. The decisions made in New York City, given its primacy as the financial capital of the world, have a major residence, and the idea that New York City is going to potentially elect a guy like Mom Donnie should be a clarion call for sanity to ring forth. And I think maybe some of these parents that are subsidizing all their kids to live in New York City.
Producer Ali made a good point yesterday, But I do think it's true that a lot of Mom Donnie's voters are young under thirties, who otherwise wouldn't be living in New York City but for the fact that their parents are helping to pay their rent and they have decided they like socialism. The parents like capital because that's how
they can afford to take care of their kids. But I do think that there's a generational divide here, and I think as you break all of this down, Unfortunately, look, I don't know that the Democrat Party, this is a good question for you, buck is still in a powerful enough position that they would be able to knock out a Bernie Sanders candidacy now that they would be able to knock out an AOC candidacy. Now, I think the party is so fractured and so broken, and you might say, okay,
well that's good. The problem is they could win. I don't think it's a crazy idea that Bernie Sanders could if he weren't eighty three or eighty four or whatever the heck he is, that he could catch fire, someone like him could catch fire and end up as the president. I don't think it's a crazy, ridiculous idea. I'm gonna tell you something.
I watched a lot of these Mom Donnie videos and the guy is the guy is very slick. He understands social media. He comes across as just objectively, he comes across as affable and pretty humble and a guy who just wants to talk to people. He did this whole video it's now gone pretty viral play where he goes around talking to like you know, if people call him like halal carts, like the meat, meat and rice carts that are in New York City, asking them like why is it so expensive? Like why is it ten or
twelve dollars? Now for this wouldn't couldn't be less. And he has these guys he goes right in and they're saying, Oh, it's because of city permitting. The city permitting process is corrupt and takes too long and it's too expensive. And he goes, oh, we're going to fix that. You know, say what you will about the fact that he was, you know, freezing. There's a whole bill Ackman has a whole takedown to this guy. Freezing rent prices is just going to make the housing shortage worse course, because.
It means that, you know, there are expenses that are already.
Baked in and people have to build more, and they don't want to build more if they can't actually charge the market rate anyway. So here he's an economic illiterate, but he understands Mom, Donnie understands story, and he understands social media and how to connect with an audience. I you know, don't don't sleep on this guy. Everybody, you know, we have this thing, you know, and I know we've done this with AOC two. Oh you know she's this guy doesn't strike me as dumb. Wrong, yes, dumb. No,
he doesn't strike me as dumb. And you know, horrible ideas certainly. But this is the other you know, the option that Democrats have is not is to say we're not going to go towards the center and try to reform our crazy.
We're gonna double down on crazy. We're just gonna package it better.
Oh I think AOC sees this and says I'm running for president now in twenty twenty eight. Absolutely, I've said that's all along.
You asked me right after this election, who's going to be the leader Democrat Party as well? He AOC at one point, and then I've also mentioned Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland.
But those are the pathways.
There's the AOC hard left socialist, just say the stuff that you want to say as and then there's.
The oh I'm not like them, I'm more normal.
And then you get the AOC policies. But you get somebody who pretends to be something else during the election cycle.
That's the way sure approach. The Democrat Party has the ability to slap down someone like Bernie Sanders if he were running today, which if I'm looking at AOC, I'm saying, mom Donnie just ran through. What did mom Donnie do? Well? He's pretty good on social media you may think, and I certainly think that AOC is economically illiterate and a moron. There's a huge audience for what she puts out on
social media, and she's skilled at that. Now I don't I hope that her overall policies are so crazy and she would do such a poor job even of defending those policies that she not be capable of winning an election. But I think you're starting to see that the Democrat Party had two pathways. They could wake up and be somewhat more sane, or at least pretend to be more sane and take the more moderate path as they move towards twenty twenty six and twenty twenty eight, or they
could double triple and quadruple down on crazy. And it seems to me that the early returns, based on what we saw in New York City, are that they're going
to double triple, quadruple down on crazy. And you know, now we're in a situation where Eric Adams is the savior of New York City, and that's only if they can get Cuomo to officially drop out, if they can find a way to kind of corral this strange coalition that potentially he would be able to bring to bear, and that would require black voters interestingly deciding that they had to show up in a monster number for Eric Adams in order to offset a lot of these young
white voters that have fallen in love with socialism.
So you've got Mamdannie talking about the eight hundred percent increase in the anti bigotry forces, not police, like, I don't know what they're going to be bigotry prevention programs. Also, as we know in New York, talking about if you're talking about anti Semitic or anti Asian bigotry, yeah, probably not gonna if you're a leftist, you're not going to like the demographics that are disproportionately targeting those groups. This is just a matter of fact, a matter of numbers
and data. But put that aside for a moment. Here is really at the heart of it, Mamdani saying that our criminal justice system, this is cut eight, is just straight up racist.
The alternatives are things that we must look to immediately, both with regards to you neighborhood groups who do anti violence work and are shown to be more effective than the police, but also asking you know, if we have an understanding that our criminal justice system is racist, which is a quite a general understanding now it seems to
be shared by many, many people. And how can we simultaneously be investing in it as the way we both judge and determine the futures of so many people in our state.
Now that was twenty twenty, granted, but the criminal justice system in this country is actually not racist.
It is not racist.
I know that this is something Democrats love to say. But the laws are the laws, and we.
Have talked about this before, and to me, the way that this gets destroyed is if you just push back anybody who says this, just nod and say super sexist too. Why are men charged with crime?
Men do really unfair those murdered laws. Men do all the murders.
This is my favorite argument, Clay. We've been making it here for a long time because they don't know what to say, because they have to admit, Yeah, men commit more murders. We just threw sorry, guys, we're the ones who kill people. Does that mean we should change the murder laws? Does that mean that murder laws are sexist?
It does not.
It's pretty strong argument.
It's a good one to use on your kids or grandkids if they bring that home with you sometime instead of immediately combating them there say, you know what, I've been thinking about this a lot. Why are men in prison at such higher rates than women? I think maybe we need to go back and look at all of our laws. They're very sexist, and see how your kids respond.
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Dot com American meat delivered. White House Press Secretary our friend Caroline Levitt taking questions right now on the intel leaks surrounding the Iran operation. We have been talking about the big decision that New York City is going to have. What do you think Cuomo does? I was totally wrong. I thought I did think he would run for mayor. I look like a genius. Told I can put this one in the forget file. Clay, Okay, you've made some great.
Calls, this one. This one didn't quite work out as we thought, but it's okay.
What's the best Let's pretend that you were giving advice to Andrew Cuomo. Is it to now get behind mom Donnie and just kind of step off to the side, or is it to try to run as an independent and maybe have a secret deal behind the scenes. Because if he runs as an independent and Eric Adams runs, then Mom Donnie's definitely gonna win because they will split the Mom Donnie opposition vote.
I think he's a two time loser, and that means the best thing that he can do is to get an agent and find his way onto an episode of Law and Order where he plays a probably elderly mobster or something along those lines, maybe a corrupt politician. I do not think that he has a future in New York politics anymore after this. I don't see it, because you know, you can't win the no, He'll just be playing spoiler at that point. If I'm a New Yorker and I'm New York adjacent in my heart, right, I mean,
if I'm a New Yorker still though voting. You know, I talk to my family about this all the time, and I want what's best for New York. Not just for all of our fantastic wo R listeners and podcast listeners in the New York area. We want the best for all of you, but also my own family is there. So when when we talk about safe streets in New York, I'm thinking about my mom, my dad, my sister, and I'm thinking about people who I love and mean a lot to me. So that means that I want what's best.
Now.
In what way is Andrew Cuomo an improvement over Eric Adams? I have to say I don't think he is. And so that's where the problem. You've got a guy who's already mayor, already in the job. Not horrible, Okay, he's not good, you know, I think Eric Adams And let me know w O R listeners if you want, if
you think this is a fair grade. I think he's a you know, if the Blasio was an F, I think Mayor Eric Adams is probably a C minus maybe a C. You know, I think that's that's a fair you know, he's not intentionally maliciously destroying New York.
He's just not a very good manager. Uh.
He was good on the issue. Let's take a few things.
He tried to help on the crime issue. Brought in somebody good here with Jesse Tish to run the NYPED as commissioner. He spoke out in a way that I think was really important for the Trump campaign. Actually he didn't speak on behalf of them, but when he said guys were flooded with all these migrants, this is crazy. He was honest about that. And said he didn't want anymore. So he did do some things that are there's nothing
I can do. Blasio did nothing that is good. Everything to Blasio did was in my in my mind, every decision he made was against the interest of New Yorkers. And we can just forget about him. But you know, didn't he run for president? By the way, didn't he run for president?
For a second?
I think he did, wasn't he One of those guys was like, I'm also on this stage.
Everyone was like, get out of here.
So Clay, I think that Eric Adams is the non mom downy hope of New York now.
And is that enough?
And people who are gonna tell me, Buck, you can get behind Curtis Sliewell, you can get behind Curtis Sliewill.
Obviously I agree with Curtis. I like Curtis.
We've had him on the show several times. You've had him on the show. You know he's it's an eighty twenty democrat city guys, It's just not gonna happen. It's just not gonna happen. I wish you know that that wasn't the case. But you just had the most radical leftist win the Democrat primary. You're not about to win over a lot of Democrats to be a Republican. That's not gonna happen to vote for a Republican.
A part of me wonders whether there might be such a panic setting in among the Wall Street universe that somebody with hundreds of millions of dollars a lah of Bloomberg.
Well Ackman is by saying he's gonna spend huge money Bill Ackman, who's kind of happy.
To get him. We need to get him on the show because I think that would be an interesting conversation. But he has been tweeting that there are people out there that he thinks he could help to persuade. The challenge is, whoever is opposed to Mom Donnie, everybody else has to drop out, and there has to be one focal point of, Hey, this is the guy or the gal, as the case may be, who is going to go head to head against Mom Donnie, and everybody has to
get behind this person. My concern is, I think Cuomo's ego is involved here. Now, Eric Adams, I don't think there's any way he's going to drop out, And then Curtis Sliwa, you start getting all these different groups, and it's hard to get to fifty percent plus one when you've got bes many different splintered individuals running. De Blasio's
presidential campaign, by the way, good research by Ali. He ran from May sixteenth, twenty nineteen to September twentyth, twenty nineteen, spent one point four million dollars, and everybody just kind of laughed him out of the arena, because even New Yorkers were like, this is one of the craziest things we've ever seen that a guy who's this didn't the guy this unpopular would decide to run? Did it? Build?
The Blasio make news most recently Buck, because he and his wife announced that they were going to basically have an open marriage. Am I wrong about this?
I think I know this and tried to forget it because I don't really need to know this stuff. But I believe there's something like that that has occurred.
Yeah, they made a public statement that they were staying married, but they were going to be with other people. I mean, what a ridiculous guy that dude was the fact that he could get elected actually makes me terrified because Mom, Donnie, to your point, Buck is actually a super articulate smart, charismatic guy who's just wrong about everything, but he's not
an unlikable person, if that makes sense. He's wrong about everything, but not unlikable, and also smart and savvy when it comes to trying to understand how to make arguments on social media. Yes, I think that he's more formidable than a lot of people looking from the outside are are assessing right now.
And that's something to keep in mind as we go forward.
So look, I'm totally I hope I'm wrong on this one, and I hope that this is something that you know that does not come to pass. But here is, let me see, We've got Tom Homan laying down the law. Here. You know, there's this whole separation of powers thing, and here is Tom Holman saying, look, you can't kick ice out of New York, buddy. It's called federal law play sixteen.
He's vowed to kick the quote fascist ice out of New York City. Okay, So how do you intend to deal with that? Because I would guess there's gonna be a lot of criminals and Iranian seals and whatnot in New York City.
The job's not done there. What do you say to this guy.
Good luck for that douggle law trumps him every every every every day, every hour, every minute. We're gonna be in New York City. Matter of fact, because there's a sanctuary city. President Trump made a clear week and a half ago, we're going we're going double Downald triuple down on sanctuary cities.
If we can't arrest the bad guy and accounted.
You know, one agent rest and one bad guy, they released him in the streets like New York does every day. We got to send whole team to look at this this guy.
Yeah, that's gonna be a showdown that I don't think it's gonna go well for Mam Donnie. By the way, I don't think that he wants to be on the other side of Tom Homan on the immigration issue because, first of all, legally Holman's right, and second of all, if there's anything that looks like a showdown, this Mam Donnie guy is gonna shrink away from that fight very quickly.
I'm not sure anybody in the entire Trump team is working harder right now than Tom Holman is. I mean, if you look at.
That Pean Miller, I mean when we saw him, Steven Miller looks like he looks like he lives on a cot on.
The White House floor right now. I mean he's going through a lot.
There are a lot of guys who are working unbelievable hours because they see this as the eighteen months when Trump is able to be his most effective and efficient version of himself. But the amount of media that is out there that Tom Holman is doing on a day to day basis and the amount of success that he is having is frankly unparalleled. And I know we talk about this on this program and try to make sure
that we reference it often. I'm not sure in our lives that there has ever been anything that government has fixed faster and more effectively than the border under Trump when you consider historic failure under Biden. And it was as if a light switch just got flipped or got off whichever direction you want to go, and overnight everything
changed and it became flawless. And you know that's the case because it suddenly isn't talked about anywhere, But my goodness, this is the number one thing Trump said he would fix, and they don't want to give him any credit for it. But Tom Holman and the team and Steven Miller is a part of this too. They've just been unbelievable on this front.
Also, want to bring this to your attention again because I know, you know, we talk about this and it's like, oh, we're so new York focused and bucks from New York. And maybe that's why a lot of people are focused in on this all over the country right now, because it's a playbook that I think you're going to see replicated elsewhere, and you could even see replicated in the twenty twenty eight election cycle, which I know feels like an eternity.
Away, but it's not. I'll be here before you know it.
And socialist Mamdanni Kami Mamdani this is cut ten is saying, yeah, what I did, this should be the playbook. This absolutely will work in other cities in other states across America.
Play it. You're a proud Democratic socialist.
Do you think that is a platform that would work for other candidates running in other parts of the country.
Absolutely.
I think ultimately this is a campaign about inequality, and you don't have to live in the most expensive city in the country to have experienced that inequality. Because it's a national issue and what Americans coast to coast are looking for are people who will fight for them. And part of how we got to this point was through the endorsements of Congressman Alexandria Ocasio Cortes and Senator Bernie Sanders, who've been leading this fight against oligarchy across the country.
And I think that in focusing on working people and their struggles, we also return back to what makes so many of us proud to be Democrats in the first place.
Not shine away from it at all, Clay, I think you will see more people try to play this. Remember the whole thing about socialism is that all you have to do you find as many people as possible who are unhappy with some aspect of their day to day life, and you tell them it's not your fault. There's nothing that you can do to change this. Other people are
the reason for this. I'm going to hurt those other people, usually financially, sometimes more than that, but I'm going to hurt those other people and take their stuff and give it to you and make your problems go away. It's very appealing. It works for a reason, and so we have not seen the end of this. You know, on the right, we yell socialism and act like it's some kind of argument ender a lot of people, a lot of you, especially gen X and gen Z. They love
their socialism. They don't know what it is, but sounds good to them.
The biggest flaw of capitalism is it provides the wealth and luxury to think you don't need capitalism anymore. It's just the lesson out there is you have to have the freedom and the time and the wealth in order to make these arguments. And I look at those Mom Donnie celebration partners. Those aren't poor kids celebrating Mom Donnie winning, not people struggling to put food in their mouths. I know who they are. I know who they are.
I used to socialize in New York with a lot of people that would fall into the Mamdani category. M clay, you know I often mentioned Naval Ravakan. Did you see this? I just thought this was a perfect one liner on this whole situation. He wrote, socialism is the suicide pact of mediocrity. It is absolutely true, and that really gets the psychology of it. If there are people that have more than me, people work you know that are doing more than me, people that are happier and enjoying more than me.
I want a.
System of power that will pull them down and promises.
To pull me up.
And even if it doesn't pull me up, as long as it pulls them down, I'll be happy.
This is why I thought sports was such an important battleground, because sports is the ultimate meritocracy. Best man or best woman wins, and as soon as they can start to create the idea that there's something wrong with that, or that a boy can be a girl's champ and all this other stuff, they destroy the underbelly of much of success in the meritocracy in the country, which is embedded in sports. You know, I made this argument something fun for you guys to think about. Is there anything more
trusted in America today than the scoreboard? Think about that for a minute, and where everybody sits around and argues about everything the scoreboard in a game, if it's a little bit off, everybody's standing up like that, Hey that
bucket was just made. Now. You may be upset with officials every now and then, but I would argue that the scoreboard might be the most trusted symbol in America today, that we trust it to be able to tell us who's winning and who's losing, and at the end, of a game, everybody says, you know what that team won or that team lost. Think about it for a minute. I really think it might be number one. Look, I
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America's heroes need your help now more than ever. Help heroes like James and their families donate eleven dollars a month to tunnel to towers at t twot dot org. That's t the number two T dot org. I really want to say thanks. I've met a ton of you up here in northern Michigan. I know a lot of you say please don't say positive things about it up here because it's getting so crowded, but it is amazing in the summer up here. We've been all over the place.
Traverse City News Talk five eighty has been taking care of us every single day here this week, and I appreciate all of you bucks been down in Miami. I'm sitting here in a jacket because it's only like sixty five degrees today. But new affiliate that we have up here in Traverse City, Michigan WTCM five eighty they've had me all week. They have been fantastic couple of cuts that I want to play for you because I think they kind of get at the failures that CNN in
general has been having. First of all, every evening they just have sort of the Star Wars universe of crazy left wing peddler arguments. And Jamal Bowman, who lost his Democrat primary and no longer has a job, was on he is the guy who pulled the fire alarm and was defeated in the New York City area district which he was representing. Here he is saying, and I want to get Buck's reaction to this, that he was confronted on the street and heckled, and this is what he
has to deal with on a regular basis. Listen, I don't want to fight. I just want to chill. I just want to know. I was in I was walking down the street the other day.
Some white dude, ballhead, he looked me, called me a piece of in my face, said I'm gonna get what's coming to me. Why not deal with that dog in Yaker's New York can tell you I'm not making that up.
Do you buy it? Buck? Do you think Jamal Bowman?
I think he's making it up. Yes, I think he's making it up.
Jamal Bowman, I've seen bench three plates on each side.
He's a big dude. H Yeah.
I mean so, I just I don't buy this story. And it's one of these things you can never prove or disprove.
But I don't.
I don't believe that somebody went up to him in Yonkers. And you know, I'm just glad he didn't say that. You know, the guy yelled like this is a maga country or whatever like this just sounds fake to me.
I just don't buy very often big dudes being confronted by probably small and if the guy who confronted Jamal Bowman would have to be a heavyweight boxer or an NFL defensive lineman to be appreciably bigger than Jamal Momen. First of all, I don't think most people know who Jamal Bowman is, and I don't mean that to be to insult him. I just I don't think most people in New York City have any idea who he is.
So the percentage of people that would hate him enough to taunt him face to face and know him is what like one of New York.
Also, the way he tells the story, did he did he do something like rude to somebody and then they responded because they're supposed to think? I guess that someone came after him because he's Jamal Bowman. I don't know, maybe he was. Maybe he was having a loud speakerphone conversation or doing something that sets people off that made you know, I gave somebody on my plane ride over to France Clay an extra set of headphones. Oh no, Because I turned around, I said, I have a spare. I have a spare.
He was wise. It was a guy.
I'm just gonna say.
It's a white guy in his fifties, okay, very well dressed, like very you know, uh hoity toity at like Louis Vuitton, baggage and uh. And he thought he could watch his iPad like he's a little kid with no headphones on. So I actually had a spare, had the wired set in my bag, and I said, here you go, here's a wired set of headphones. And he kind of stared me down for a second and realized, like, so, now, what's your excuse?
So he put them on. Now I have to watch them though.
That is really really so he gave him back to you at the end of the day. He did trip.
He rolled them up, rolled them up nicely, and gave them back to me at the end. So now this is my new move.
I'm going to carry an extra set of headphones in public places and offer headphones to people who are on the side of barbarism and think that we want to hear your cell phone conversation or your iPad noises or whatever it is.
This is funny because on my flight up to Michigan with the Travis Boys, my oldest son wanted to watch Trump's address about the bombing of Iran, did not have wireless phones or his or a plug to put in, and my wife, who was in the row in front of us, turned around and complained about our oldest son making too much noise while he was watching Trump's address. So she would have certainly appreciated if you had had
an extra pair of headphones for my son. All right, that Jamal Bowman claiming that he's this also always reminds me what there are people who behave awfully towards famous people. But the idea that the Jsse Smallett this is Maga country. The number of Trump voters who knew who use Smallett is or was in that era was zero. I mean,
there was nobody watching what was the show Empire. The number of Trump voters watching Empire frequently enough that they knew who Jusse Smallett was that they would feel compelled to not only know who he was, but know his politics and taunt him in Chicago at two am. So one of the craziest stories.
On a freezing called winter night, to lie in wait with the deuse, Yes, and some kind of thing to spray on him because you're that angry about Jesse Smollette, who nobody who voted for Trump had any idea whom he was.
Yes, yeah, that would be. That was a strange one, and you would.
Think that the media might have actually questioned some of that, particularly because our good friend Jake Tapper wants all of you to know what the role of the media really is. So you got to see an in jabal bowman saying he's getting taunted because of who he is. Here is Jake Tapper lecturing everyone about what it is. The job of the media really is, asking questions.
Is literally our job, demanding facts and answers instead of just taking a president's word for it. No, that's actually that is That's actually not their job, though. Is This is where I have a really I have a big bone to pick with all these people who call themselves journalists. We have seen what their job is, depending on where they work. The job of a CNN employee is to tell Democrats in the audience what they want to hear and to hurt Republicans in terms of public perception in
every way that they can. That is the job. That's actually the job. If you don't do that, you will be fired. So that what the job is this, it's to ask questions and get the truth to the people.
That is a lie that is meant.
To cover for the actual job, which is to tell Democrats what they want to hear and attack Republicans in every.
Way you can. What do you think. Let's pretend that suddenly you or I were in charge of CNN and they said, hey, we've been listening to your radio show. It's phenomenal.
They should do it as we would shake that place up. It'd be amazing. Okay, so is it salvageable? Like, let me just give you a hypothetical.
If Meghan Kelly, who obviously had a very successful show on.
Fox News, look at you, look at you always given Mammy. Look Meghan's great. She was always great to me in my career at everything else. But she's always number one on your list for who's gonna I think.
She's the smartest, most talented person in digital space that I don't work with. Does that make sense? So? Wow?
Who would you put top of this and send this to Meghan.
Well, I think she is. I think she asks really smart questions. I think she gets to the heart of issues if I were running so But the question here is, let's pretend that I am running CNN and I say, hey, I want to change. We kind of get away from the Jake Tapper world. We can't have this stenographer for the Democrat powerful anymore. We're going to shake things up. Could Megan Kelly, who I think I'm just telling you, I think is the most talented independent voice in media today?
All right, all right, I mean I think Megan's great too, But yes, okay, could she be alone?
Would she be able to produce an audience? Or CNN's brand so broken that even if you put somebody who's good at television and good at doing a show, people wouldn't respond to it because their brand is broken. In other words, how salvageable do you think it is? Right?
You would have to accept that during the change process from being a Democrat propaganda outlet, you would lose a lot of audience and then have to rebuild audience. Yeah, the audience of CNN right now does not want anything to be told to them that is outside of what the DNC would approve and send themselves. They don't want to hear it, and so you would have to accept that there'd be that painful ratings transition period and then
I think you could build into something else. But that's you know, that's a risk that executives at these places are very rarely willing to take any risks.
I think CNN's brand is in terminal decline.
I think CNN will exist in kind of the way that ABC News in some of these places. Yeah, sure they'll have some audience, but a shadow of their former. Now ABC News still has a pretty big TV audience, but it's a shadow of what it was twenty or thirty or thirty years ago. So I think that that's where I don't think CNN is going to be able to turn this thing around.
I know, to look at it, surely from a business market perspective. If Fox News has around seventy percent of the news audience on cable, and it does, and it's got an incredibly loyal brand, what is CNN's angle Because that leaves thirty percent. MSNBC, whatever you think about them, has the left wing angle covered. Why would you not go after some of the seventy. This is why.
And I was there and observe this when it happens. CNN, under Jeff Zucker's leadership, if you can call it, that ignominiously ended in scandal. CNN decided to become MSNBC with different letters, anti trump Ism, completely crazy, treat all the actual conservatives who would have come on your air like trash.
This is what they did. And so that space that they were at least.
Theoretically occupying of somewhere in betwe between Fox and MSNBC, that just became untenable. They were just another version there were MSNBC with less honesty, and that is not a tenable brand. That that's not a place where you can really be.
And so that's what ended up happening to them. But I'm happy.
I mean, if you had told me, if you had told me when the tea Party was getting their thing going, don't worry one day. Not only will Trump call CNN fake news to their faces, but he'll essentially destroy the death star of propaganda that is CNN.
I would have said that sounds amazing, And we're pretty much there, oh, totally. And again they only have about ten or fifteen percent of the overall news marketplace, and you know what it really comes through. It used to be when big news happened, people would turn on CNN because they trusted them to get big news. I still think about CNN back in the day a Bernard Shaw and the scud stud whatever that guy's name was, during the First Gulf War, when that really made CNN's brand
as somebody that could you could trust. Now they don't even get turned on when big news happens. Fox News I think had four point nine million viewers when they Iran attacks happened. Nobody else was even close to them. And it just feels like CNN is in a terminal decline. And I wonder at this point if there's anything they could do to change the trajectory that they're on. And I don't know that they could, but I would be trying to undertake radical change I think if I were
in charge of CNN. Yeah, I mean it would have to be.
You know, when you're doing a you're doing some housing construction stuff, but when you're doing a renovation and people say I'm going to tear it down to the studs, CNN really needs to be torn down to the studs. You need to get all the way, you know, get all the way into the dry wall and really pull things apart in there to rebuild.
You can't just do a little code of paint and call it a day. That's totally what's, by the way, happening with the intelligence agencies right now too. We'll see how that's going. We are.
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