October 1, 2025 • 61 mins
Shutdown Schmutdown
U.S. government shutdown, its historical context, and the political motivations behind it. Clay argues that shutdowns are cyclical and often overblown, citing that since 1976, the federal government has shut down 20 times. He emphasizes that the current impasse stems from Democratic efforts to extend COVID-era healthcare subsidies, which Republicans argue should expire now that the pandemic is over.
A major segment of the hour is devoted to a deep critique of the American healthcare system, which Clay describes as inefficient, opaque, and anticapitalistic. He shares personal anecdotes to illustrate how insurance often leads to irrational pricing and decision-making, and how the system penalizes those who try to do the right thing. He calls for a complete overhaul of both the healthcare and tax systems, likening them to unstable buildings built on broken foundations.
Congressional Stock Trading
Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who passionately discusses the need to ban Congressional stock trading, citing suspiciously well-timed trades by lawmakers like Nancy Pelosi. Rep. Burchett advocates for legislation that would restrict members of Congress to mutual funds and blind trusts, arguing that insider access is being abused. He also shares his personal hobby of building and selling skateboards, humorously noting the ethical hurdles he faces compared to the lack of oversight on stock trading.
The conversation shifts to political hypocrisy, particularly targeting Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for reversing his stance on shutdowns due to pressure from progressive challengers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Rep. Burchett speculates that Schumer’s actions are driven by fear of losing power and criticizes the broader culture of entitlement and insider privilege in Washington. Clay and Rep. Burchett engage in a light-hearted debate comparing bad decisions—Nico transferring to UCLA versus Kamala Harris selecting Tim Walz as VP—with Burchett humorously siding against Kamala’s pick.
Writing, Radio and TV
Clay dives into the media landscape, contrasting the depth of radio and writing with the superficiality of television soundbites. He critiques the advertising industry's left-wing bias, noting the absence of major brands like car companies and restaurants from conservative platforms despite massive audience reach. This leads into a cultural discussion about American Eagle’s successful ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney, which sparked controversy but resulted in a surge in sales and customer growth. Clay defends the campaign, arguing that “sex sells” and praising American Eagle for resisting cancel culture.
They Really Said That?
Clay critiques MSNBC’s hypocrisy for attacking Trump’s mental fitness while ignoring President Biden’s cognitive decline. He contrasts Trump’s transparency and stamina with Biden’s limited public appearances, calling out the media’s double standards. Clay plays a clip from his interview with Paul Finebaum, who shares his personal political evolution from liberal roots to conservative values. The discussion highlights how many Americans are waking up to the radical shift in the Democratic Party and reconsidering their political affiliations.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome in Wednesday edition Clay Travis Buck Sexton Show. I
hope all of you are having fabulous weeks so far.
We are here hopefully to make that a bit better
than it otherwise would be. The government is shut down,
what is the impact we will discuss. Buck is not
(00:20):
shut down, but he is in Taiwan right now and
he is continuing to travel around over there. He'll be
back Monday on the program, just to FYI, so you
have got me as you have on Monday and Tuesday
solo for the rest of this week, we will take
your calls, we will take your talkbacks. We will dive
(00:41):
into a variety of different pertinent subjects. We're going to
be joined by Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett. He was listening
to our discussion about why congressional stock trading is not
banned and he has some strong thoughts on that. I'm
sure we'll talk about the shutdown as well. And then
(01:02):
at two o'clock our friend Tutor Dixon. I just saw
her last week speaking when I was speaking up in Michigan.
She will join us. She's part of the Clay and
Buck podcast network. We had a really good time hanging
out up at mckinaw Island where the Michigan Republican Party
was having there by annual event at the Grand Hotel
(01:23):
up there. So that was a lot of fun, and
I was there last week. I think I was there
last week. Everything runs together, but I guess it was
two weeks ago. We will dive into a lot of topics,
but off the top, the shutdown is underway, and I
got to be honest with y'all. You know, and I
think Buck and I have talked about this quite a
(01:44):
bit on the program. We are not of the opinion
that the shutdown is ultimately that big of a story,
because eventually it will get resolved and we'll just add
on more debt. But I do want to give you
some historical analogy of where we are. Since nineteen seventy six,
(02:05):
the US government has shut down twenty times. So if
you were out there and you're thinking, this just feels
like the same plot over and over again, Groundhog Day,
in many ways it is. There were no shutdowns between
nineteen ninety five and twenty thirteen, but three have occurred
(02:25):
in the twelve years since. The longest one was in
Trump one point zero and that lasted thirty four days
back in twenty eighteen. Really, the essence of this shutdown,
just so you know, is a battle over whether there
should be an extension of COVID healthcare policies, which were
(02:49):
put in place by Democrats as part of their massive blockbuster,
out of control spending bills that they forced through in
the COVID era. And the reason why this spending cost
is up now is because they pegged it for a
relatively short period of time so that it did not
(03:10):
continue to cost money going forward. Now, this is me,
and you have heard me go off on this quite
a lot. The healthcare system in the United States is broken.
Every single one of you listening to me right now
is nodding along because it is just a broken marketplace.
It makes no sense the way we have designed it.
(03:33):
It is the most inefficient and the least effective part
of I would argue the American economic system. It is
anti capitalistic in many ways. It is profoundly broken. This
spending package that the Democrats are insisting on continuing would
(03:54):
add up over the next decade, according to the Wall
Street Journal editorial page, to a round four hundred and
fifty billion dollars, and much of it is a subsidy
that is in a large extent unnecessary. And so this
let me give you a little bit of a background
of exactly what's going on, try to simplify this for you.
(04:16):
So we begin with the foundational point that the healthcare
system in this country is broken, and anybody who's ever
had to get on the phone with their insurance provider
knows exactly what I'm talking about. Studies suggest that one
reason our healthcare system is broken, probably the primary one,
(04:38):
is nobody has any idea what anything costs, and so
you can't make a rational decision in your life about
whether or not you need an MRI, or whether you
need a need to go to the hospital or not,
because a lot of times you don't have the information
as you're not a doctor, as necessary. And what has
(05:03):
happened is doctors wildly over prescribe because much of this
is paid for by insurance and patience to a large extent,
are not making choices that are rational. I'll give you
an example that happened recently in my family. I think
it was a few years ago. My wife was in
(05:25):
a car accident. She was fine, she was able to
get to the hospital and make sure everything was okay
without needing an ambulance. But the ambulance the police officer
told her, Hey, the ambulance can take you, but it
will end up costing you thousands and thousands of dollars,
(05:48):
or you can take yourself to the hospital on your own.
How many people actually make that choice? How many people
actually in much of your life? And I've talked about
this in my own life. When it came to having
our kids, we went to go tour the hospitals. Nobody
(06:10):
could tell me what a delivery cost. Went to all
these different hospitals, they're competing to see who has the
fastest WiFi. They're competing to see who has bamboo floors,
who has the best flat screen televisions in the delivery area,
what sort of security there is to make sure that
(06:31):
your babies are safe. All those things are fine. They
don't compete on price. I just said to each of them, Hey,
what's this going to cost me? None of them could
tell me. I mentioned to you, I think last week,
because I think it's a really instructive analogy that I
went and took one of our kids when he had
(06:53):
strapped throat. My wife took the other one. She was
on the ball, knew where our healthcare card was, knew
exactly who are health care provider was turned it over
when we checked in, when she checked in, I didn't
have any idea where the healthcare card was. Somehow I
couldn't find it in my wallet. I think we had switched,
and my incompetence meant that we were billed as not
(07:16):
having health care and we paid a fraction of what
my wife paid for the exact same medical treatment because
we had health insurance. It's all broken. All of it
is broken, and I could get on a pedestal and
talk about this forever. The fact that we run healthcare.
(07:39):
As someone who has owned a business and has had
to pay for health care, the fact that healthcare is
connected to employment is crazy. I have been a freelancer
who was not an employee, and the fact that I
had to go out into the healthcare marketplace and figure
out what policy was the right one one for me
(08:01):
was incredibly complicated too. Insurance is the only thing all
of us have to pay for that we hope to
never use, and the entire insurance industry is totally broken.
In conjunction with health care, we spend way more than
(08:22):
any country in the world, and we do not get
the best results. And the data reflects that you could
eliminate half of all medical treatments and there wouldn't be
any change in life expectancy in this country. So my
general proposition is, I don't want to take anything. I
know tilan always in the news, I get made fun of.
I don't want to take any drugs. I don't want
(08:43):
to take anything. I feel fortunate. I've been pretty healthy
in the grand scheme of things, and I think that
they wildly over prescribe and over medicate us as a whole.
And yet simultaneously, the people who actually do need health care,
the people who are actually sick, the people who are
in desperate need of healthcare, cannot get it, and the
(09:05):
people who don't need it don't feel like we're getting
any kind of rational healthcare that makes common sense. Okay,
So that's where we really are, and in essence, much
like our tax code, because I would say number one
broken system in America's healthcare number two is tax code.
They're both so fundamentally broken that you would actually do
(09:29):
better if you just tore them both down and built
a functional, rational healthcare system. And tax policy. Instead, we
have just continued to add layer upon layer of a
broken foundation. And as a result, if you want to
use sort of a building metaphor, we have constantly shifting
(09:52):
in the winds, tall buildings with no structural stability, and
they'll fall over all the time and they make absolutely
no So go hey, happy optimistic Wednesday, everybody. We've got
two hugely broken systems that threaten the very fabric of
our democratic republic because as we have an aging population,
(10:13):
the costs that we're going to have to put out
for health care is going to be borne increasingly by
a dwindling number of young people in America, and the
budget and the math just doesn't add up. So all
of that is the foundational issue that is in play here.
And one of the real unfortunate aspects of our democratic
(10:39):
republic is once something is created, once the government creates
a project, it almost never leaves. It just goes on
the ledger as a cost long into the future. And
Democrats want to provide healthcare for as many people as possible,
including many different illegal immigrants, and ultimately this is paid
(11:03):
for by all of you out there that are working
hard every single day. They're reaching into your pocket, they're
taking your money out, and they're giving it to someone
very often who is not even an American citizen. But
this is all part and parcel of a broken healthcare system.
Obamacare is collapsing, by the way, because it's predicated on
(11:26):
giving insurance companies more money, and the entire concept of
insurance is they have to get tons of people who
are never going to need it in order to pay
for the people that actually do need it, and young,
healthy people, a lot of them just say I don't
need health insurance, and as a result, the insurance companies
(11:48):
don't get that money. And as we have an aging society,
the profit margins of insurance companies going down in the future.
But I just come back to that analogy. I would
be paying far less for health care if I had
no insurance at all, so would most of you. That
is a broken system. And my analogy there of walking
(12:09):
in with a kid who has strep throat one day
after we got insurance for the kid who did have
a strep throat, I paid. My wife knows the exact
dollars because she's still fed up about it, because my
incompetence actually benefited the family because we had to pay
less money, but we paid a fraction as uninsured walking
(12:30):
into a clinic patience of what a health care insured
family would pay. So it's not only that the system
is broken, it's that people who are actually trying to
do the right thing are getting gouged, and people who
have no interest whatsoever in buying in at all, they're
essentially getting free health care. You pay a lot, many
(12:52):
people pay virtually nothing at all. Okay, So that is
the essence of why we have a government shut down,
because Democrats want to give more people who do not
pay taxes free health care, and Republicans are saying, wait,
that was a COVID era policy that we put in place.
It should expire, thankfully now that COVID is over. So
(13:16):
that is the essence of what is going on, and
we will see exactly how long it takes for this
to be resolved. I suspect that many of you out
there will be like me, and there will be absolutely
no impact to your life whatsoever by the fact that
the government has shut down. In fact, a lot of
you are saying I wouldn't mind the government shutting down
for a long time. First time I heard the stat
(13:38):
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Speaker 2 (14:44):
Clay Travis and Fuck Sexton mic drops that never sounded
so good. Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Welcome back in Clay Travis buck Sexton show. We are
joined now well by Congressman Tim Burchett of the great
State of Tennessee. Government is shut down. We're going to
get into that. But Congressman, you wanted to come on
because you're as fired up as Buck and I were
about the amount of stock trading that some of your
(15:16):
colleagues are engaged in, and not just stock trading, some
of the best timing that has ever existed in the
history of the world. I mean, Nancy Pelosi is Warren
Buffett level investing savant. Isn't this just even if it's
not actually improper, it certainly has the appearance of impropriety,
(15:39):
which I think demeans the overall value of trust in
public servants. I think you probably agree. It's kind of crazy,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I agree with one hundred percent, and thank you so
much for letting me come on with you. It's an honor.
Congress is broke, and it is crooked as a dog's leg.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Brother.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
There is no other explanation when a congressman can make
six hundred percent return on their investment and you know,
and day in and day out, or three hundred or
two hundred or whatever. I mean, just go on the
Unusual Wales website and read the top hundred. It's unbelievable.
(16:18):
It is unfreaking believable. I mean, people are making a
living now of just following Nancy Pelosi's stock trades. Warton
Buffett needs Warren Buffett needs to go to go to
the front porch and sit there and play with his
grandkids or something, and just turn it over to Pelosi.
It is unbelievable. And we can't even get the bill
in committee, neither party. They're gutless. They are gutless, and
(16:43):
it is shady as all get out. And you know,
I have a I had a twelve thousand dollars portfolio.
My buddy Tommy Siler managed. Everybody needs a bad gum
mutual fund, and that's what we ought to do. And
I get sick and tired of hearing people in cong say, oh,
I'm sacrificing so much, Well that gum it go home
(17:05):
and let somebody else do it. That's not sacrificing so much.
America is tired of this garbage. It is broke. You've
called it out. We've called it out, and here's what's
going to happen if we do get this bill before
and Luna has represent Annapolina Luna, she's going to try
to if we don't get this bill out that everybody's
been working on, which is a little too big and
(17:27):
a little too beautiful in my opinion, but still she's
going to take my bill, which is a clean bill.
It just says no stop trading, you know, for members
of Congress unless it's a mutual fund and your and
your siblings and your wife and spouse whatever, and that's it.
That should be it, you know, make the dad gum sacrifice.
(17:49):
It's crazy, you know. I make skateboards. It's and I'm
sixty one years old and I haven't broke my neck yet.
I made one for Telca Gabbard a couple of weeks
ago and she loved it. But yeah, I always kill
people that when I work on these skateboards. It's cheaper
than a psychiatrist. It's good therapy for me. But people
want to buy them, so I'm trying to sell them.
I went to the ethics people and I literally have
(18:12):
to get I'm getting a business plan together. I've had
to hire an attorney if I want to sell skateboards.
But dad, gummut, if I want to do insider trading,
just become a member of Congress. And it rains on you.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
It is wild. And you know, I was going off
on this congressman, because my thing is I now have resources.
I've been in a position where I had nothing and
actually owed a lot more money. Go to law school.
It's not cheap. I owed a lot more money than
I had assets for a while. But just doing what
you're saying is actually really good advice by s and
(18:47):
P five hundred index funds, by big groups of stocks.
We're not even saying, certainly that members of Congress can't
own stocks. It's just don't trade individual stocks like this
is having a blind trust and just having a large
basket of mutual funds or index funds is actually really
(19:08):
smart advice for anyone out there listening to us right now.
And it's crazy to me that, first of all, your
job should be pretty busy. The idea that you should
be pulling out your phone and doing individual stock trades anyway,
it feels it just feels blonkers to me that this
is going on.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Well, some of them do hundreds of hundreds, I know,
trades in a year. And can I give you one
example that everybody can follow and can understand. Nearing the
Biden reign of terror, when he decided to give our
methial defense system to Ukraine, which I don't vote for
any more any I haven't vote for any dollars for Ukraine.
I'm sick of that. But anyway, that's another story. Well,
(19:49):
it turns out that members of some of our military
committees that had access to that information had bought stock
and guess what the mental defense companies over, just some
of them, a couple of weeks prior to it. Now,
why you say, what does that mean? Well, we had
to replenish ours in a no bid, multi billion dollar
(20:11):
contract with these companies overnight. So you see their stock
prices would go up dramatically. And yet that's common practice
in Congress. They can watch the trends. You're in the meetings,
you know, you hear about COVID. You hear I was
in the meeting. You heard about COVID, and I remembered
I had had bought Denny's stock, and all the left
(20:33):
accused me of some kind of insider trading. I left
the DAD meeting because the Democrats wouldn't let any of
the They had all their staff members in the seats
and we couldn't get any seats. But anyway, I have
I've just come to the conclusion that we've got too
much information and generally the vast majority of the people
(20:53):
up there probably aren't doing something incredibly shady. But we
know that this time man in time out when they
just seem to just defy all logic, every odd and
the odds of trading, and every month they turn in
these huge games. And it's shift baffling to me that
we allow that to go on, and we could sit
(21:15):
here and tell the American public that nothing's going on.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
How does this shutdown end up ending? Congressman? Like, where
does it go from here?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
When Schumer sees his polling numbers declining, I think what's
really behind it? And this is my theory. I've put
it on people, and they've agreed with me. Schumer is
looking in his rear view mirror right now and all
he sees is AOC and that big grint of hers
bearing down on him. He knows that she can raise
(21:46):
millions of dollars overnight. Just that was me snapping my fingers. Overnight, Hollywood,
all the elitists, they'll be throwing the money at her.
And all he's doing is watching that New York mayor's race,
where literally a Marxist communist will win, probably unless something
lets God Shine's favor upon the poor folks in New
(22:11):
York that don't know any better.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
By the way, God shining favor on the poor folks
of New York actually means Andrew Cuomo should win. That's
how bad of a situation they're in.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well that's you're very accurate. You're very accurate.
But the truth is that that Schumer is watching his
review mirror. He knows his polling numbers, and the reality
is he needs to go back to flipping rawl cheeseburgers
on his grill and playing with his grandkids if he
(22:41):
has any, and get out of this thing he has left.
You know, he was he wasn't a moderate, but he
was just an old classic liberal and now he's just
turned far left as you can get. And all it
is is about staying in power. And that's what Washington,
DC is truly about in leadership. They love the suburbans,
(23:01):
they love the you know, for deep with security, they
love the spotlight, they love never standing in line, they
love the security. They love the access, and you have
the access to the inside information. And when they're out
of leadership, it's gone. It's gone. All that is gone
and they can't stand it. And his time has come
(23:23):
and gone, like a whole lot of them that need
to be out of there, but he is. That is
why he's going to wreck this country. It's just to
keep himself in power. And a came. You know, he's
out there talking about something. Nobody's paying attention to him.
He's saying, how the House Republicans are shutting government down.
We voted to keep the Dad given government open. Only
one Democrat voted with us. And you know, the whole
(23:47):
thing is just it's so obvious. And as soon as
he's polling data flips on him, he'll be at the
table with Trump. But he won't be till then.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
We're talking to Congressman Tim Burchett at Tennessee. How did
you into skateboarding and making skateboards?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Well, I didn't smoke pot and I didn't drink. Although
since I've become a member of Congress, I've fiercely considered
taking on crack cocaine just to take off the edges.
But but no, I just always liked it. I liked
I liked the physics of it. And and I'm an inventor.
I'll always just make stuff. And I had a little
(24:24):
piece of ply wood and some old skates and I
put it on there, and I would just and you
could that's those are death traps, you know. And and
I never and you know, my dad would challenge me,
if you can get to the end, to see if
you can get to the end of the driveway or
something that you know eventually I would and then and
so I and I'm just I've always been fascinated by bamboo.
(24:46):
It's the poor man's carbon fiber. I read an article
on it in nineteen eighty in a National geographic and
so I started just I've always done stuff and tinkered,
and now that I've got some equipment to do it.
And my major was technological adult education, certified to teach shop. Basically,
I can weld and build engines, and I can burn
(25:10):
your house down if you want me to wired. I'm
not very good at that, but I can do all
those things. I can do casting and just all the
stuff around the machine shop. But I just like it.
And then I'm a capitalist at heart. And I read
somewhere that there's a I think it's a five billion
dollar industry in this country. Now I don't want all
(25:30):
five billion of it, but I wouldn't mind shaving a
little off the edge. And so you know, I make
it out of recycled stuff, mainly because I'm cheap. I
guess I'm fiscally smart. But you know, I use old
palettes and I've been using banana fibers off of banana
plants that I've grown, and I'm just just all over
(25:51):
about it. I just and and skateboards something you can
make small and you can transport easily, and kids dig it.
And when you see sixty one year old out there
with his vans on skateboarding on a board that he
built himself, it's kind of cool and it's good to
bring up conversation, and you know, and I like it.
(26:11):
And again, as I say, it's cheaper than a psychiatrist.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
We're talking to Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee. All right,
I got the ultimate controversial question for you here. To
close up the interview, Congressman all right, better decision? Who
made the better decision? Who made the worst decision? I
know you are a big University of Tennessee football fan.
Nico going to UCLA transferring from Tennessee going to UCLA.
(26:40):
UCLA is now lost every game. His head coach has
been fired, his offensive coordinator has been fired. Sorry UCLA
fans out there catching astray. You didn't expect this. Okay,
Nico to UCLA? That choice or Kamala Harris picking Tim
Walls as her vice president? Who made the worst decision?
(27:02):
Who made the better decision? You're on the floor.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
I'm gonna say Kamala because she was a train wreck anyway,
and she just picked a bigger train wreck. I almost.
You know, they always pick somebody who I always feel
like somebody that's not going to overshadow him a lot
of times. But I the JD Vance, as we say
(27:28):
in East Tennessee. He kicks a ass. I like JD.
He's strong, and he's a kind of a buddy of mine,
I guess. But yeah, that gum when they call him
tampon tim or something, I don't like saying it, but
he is just a he's a knucklehead man. He just
can't get out of his own way. I don't know
(27:49):
who he was running against to get elected governor out there,
but that gum must have been a convicted fella and
getting ready to go to the electric chair or something.
I'm not sure the Republicans put up against him, But yeah, Nico,
I mean, he just took some mad advibes. But he's
he'll get a little bit of a paycheck. And if
he's he can just get all his groupies and family
(28:10):
away from him, he might be okay. He might be
able to salvage something in the Canadian Football League. But yeah,
that's where I'm at be where I get myself in
any more trouble.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Well, I'm already thinking the headline for the New York
Times is going to be Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett praises
Nico for his move to UCLA. Hey, this is this
is a lot of fun, and I would argue I
love the Tim Walls. You may have seen the meme
Congressman where it shows Barack Obama and he says I
need someone dumber than me as VP Joe Biden. Joe
(28:42):
Biden says I need someone dumber than me as VP
Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris says, I need someone dumber than me,
and it's Tim Walls. There's a lot of truth to that,
and we have seen a rapid descent and intelligence across
the board there. We appreciate the time. If people want
to get the skateboard, by the way, where do they go?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Well, nowhere yet.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
I'm okay, I.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Got a business plan. I got to put it on
ethics and and so they can approve it or not.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Hey, if Hunter can sell paintings for five hundred thousand dollars,
I would think you could probably sell a skateboard for
a couple one hundred bucks. But what do I know.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Well, the Biden family couldn't spell ethics. So I got it.
I just want to be the man my little girl
thinks I am. So I'm going to try to follow
the rules here. I get my lawyers involved and we'll
get it all worked out eventually, hope the end of
the year, hopefully in time for Christmas.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
That's the goal, just in time for Christmas. Hey, we
appreciate the time. Go big Orange and we'll talk to
you again soon.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Thank you, brother, appreciate y'all. Man.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
He is great Congressman Tem Burchett of Tennessee. Let me
give you a good news. Gold's up forty percent this year. Now,
the downside is that's because people are like, I don't
know if I have a lot of faith in the
US dollar right now, because government's spending so much money,
Inflation has skyrocketed, and still it's kind of lingering around
(30:11):
out there, and a lot of people have decided, as
has been the case for centuries, that gold is a
safe repository for your money because it's always going to
have value. And if you've never done it before, Birch
Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or a
four to oh one k into a tax sheltered IRA.
(30:33):
In gold, you don't pay a dime out of pocket.
This is just your opportunity to invest in gold, physical
tangible asset that has held value for centuries. The best
indicator of the future is the past, and gold has
always been a safe haven. If you want to learn
more about whether gold can make sense for you, text
(30:54):
Clay to ninety eight ninety eight ninety eight right now
to claim your free info kit on gold. That's Clay
to ninety eight ninety eight ninety eight. Protect your Future
Today with Birch Gold. Want to begin to know when
you're on to go the.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Team forty seven podcast Trump highlights from the week some
days at noon Eastern in the Clan Buck podcast Speed
find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Welcome back in Clay Travis Buck Sexton show. A lot
of reaction rolling in to Tim Burchett, who was awesome
congressman from Tennessee. And I put up a poll question
that for those of you who are big college football
fans and also big interested in politics people, which I
think is a I know actually is a huge, huge
(31:49):
number of you. Which was the worst decision Nico to UCLA,
Sorry to the UCLA fans out there, or Kamala Harris
picking Tim Walls. It is up on my Twitter page
at Clay Travis You can go vote there. Also, want
to thank you guys here as we start off our
number two. The numbers on the YouTube page were through
(32:12):
the roof. Now partly this is because we're finally starting
to get somewhat treated fairly. We got banned from YouTube
all the time. We've talked about the fact that they
took down our interview with Rand Paul with President Trump.
President Trump just settled for twenty four point six million dollars.
(32:33):
I think over YouTube banning him. He's going to use
the money to build the new dining room that he's
building off the patio there at the White House, which
is very funny and good for him. But we got
a digital summary and we added a lot of YouTube.
This is just in September. I saw this. Our total
(32:56):
views on YouTube basically triple in the month of September.
So that's a credit to you guys. Again, I don't
think it's coincidental. The algorithm is I got so many
thoughts on algorithms in general. The algorithm gives you whatever
(33:16):
you want the algorithm to give you. So YouTube could decide, hey,
Clay and Buck videos are the most popular thing on
the planet, and it would feed those videos to you
over and over and over again. Or they can say, hey,
Clay and Buck are the worst people on the planet
and you would never be able to find us. So
(33:37):
when people say well the algorithm, yeah, a person programs
the algorithm. You can create an algorithm to do anything.
This is my fear in many ways. By the way,
about AI, everybody says, well, the AI is doing. The
AI is going to be a reflection of whatever is
put in and whatever guardrails are put in place. So
(34:00):
what I suspect will end up seeing this is my
AI prediction, is it looks like XAI, which is Elon
Musk's AI company, is going to be the Fox News
of AI, and then everybody else is going to be
left wing AI. So I suspect that, like many other
(34:21):
things in life, you will end up choosing the AI
that most you believe reflects your worldview, and that will
actually lead the AI to becoming even more polarized because
that will be the business model. That's my general thought. Now,
I gotta be honest. I didn't watch a lot of news.
(34:44):
I'm a sports guy. I didn't watch a lot of
news on television. I've always been a reader, and I
never trust video. I always have known that because I'm
in television that I love doing sports television for instance,
but I've always known that it's hard to get great
(35:04):
in depth knowledge from television on anything. This is the reality.
Television is a SoundBite era. And I always thought it
was funny because I've always done Radio two and people say, Okay,
what's the difference between writing, which is where I started.
And by the way, please go buy my new book Balls.
(35:24):
I'm gonna talk about this a little bit more later
in the week, but it's up pre ordered. I want
this thing to be everywhere I think it's important. But
people say, what's the difference between writing radio and TV?
Writing for me is just me in front of a
computer screen. Every word is mine and there's nobody else helping,
(35:45):
So for better or worse, I have complete control of
every argument that I make in a written article. And
that is why, in many ways writing is still my
favorite discipline because it's just me sitting in front of
a computer screen and there's no one else to help,
(36:07):
and for better or worse, it's on me to make
an argument, or to write a column, or to write
a book that hopefully is entertaining and helps to make
people think. On a deeper level, Radio, we have the
luxury of time, so I can sit with you for
three hours every day. Buck can sit with you for
three hours every day. Over time, we become in some
(36:29):
ways a family because you have fifteen hours a week
to spend with us, and we love all of you
that spend that much time. But you're going to learn
about our families. You're gonna learn about the things that
we like, the serious things, the not serious things. We
hang out. It's basically just one long form conversation. First
time I did television, I did television. I came out
(36:51):
in a studio and they were like, that was amazing,
How was that so good? That was so great? I
was like, it's three minutes. I wish my wife had
that standard. There you go, but but it's three minutes.
Like you go on television and you give a couple
of takes and then you're gone. And there is not
(37:13):
a great deal of nuance or complexity or depth that
television can convey. And so I was always a little
bit skeptical of television in general when it comes to
complicated issues. And so I didn't watch I didn't watch
a lot of CNN. I've never watched MSNBC. But I
didn't really pay much attention to Fox News. I now
(37:36):
think it's funny. Fox News is the most I now
pay a lot more attention to news. You have to
be crazy to watch MSNBC. I'm not like I watch MSNBC.
I read the New York Times, the Washington Post, so
to kind of have some sense of what's going on.
(37:58):
They live in a crazy world. People say, oh, Fox News,
it's super right wing. Fox News is just normal. And
this is what they did to me, and this is
what they try to do to anybody like me. I've
talked about this before. They try to always label me controversial.
(38:18):
If you read any article about me or somebody's talking
about me, within thirty seconds, they will say, Clay Travis,
the controversial sometimes firebrand right wing conservative political commentator, I
don't think I'm controversial at all. I say this. I've
(38:38):
been saying this for fifteen years now, as people have
constantly labeled me controversial. There's nothing wrong with controversy, but
I don't think most of my comments or opinions are
remotely controversial. They've labeled me super controversial for saying men
shouldn't play in women's sports. Again, I have nothing wrong
(39:01):
with controversy, but when you are on the side of
eighty or ninety percent of people, what's controversial is the
other side. But that is an emblematic of how they
took over the culture. Is they label anyone, anyone at
all who is just not left wing. You're considered to
(39:25):
be right wing and they try to label you as controversial,
and it has an impact. I give tremendous credit to
iHeart for hosting this show, but the most left wing
industry in the country is advertising. This show's audience is
massive across all five hundred and fifty five stations right now.
(39:46):
There are millions of you that will listen to me
today on this program. Y'all ever think about the fact
that we've never had a car advertisement on this program.
Flip on MSNBC. Every car brand in a Mayor, Erica
advertises on MSNBC. We've never had a restaurant on this program.
(40:08):
Flip on CNN. Every restaurant in America advertises on those brands.
And I'm thinking about this a lot because I'm going
to be potentially starting a new media company, and when
you rely on media companies being founded and funded and
existing or even having success based on advertising dollars, the
(40:32):
left has been brilliant in going after anybody who advertises
on anything other than far left wing and labeling them
controversial to try to create the idea that brands can't
be associated with people like me, or people like Buck
or frankly, people like you. Think about that never a
(40:54):
car never a restaurant in the entire history of us
being on this program. It's crazy, right, Well, I think
it ties in with this story that I want to
talk about this morning. I'm reading an American Eagle headline.
American Eagle gained customers after their Sydney Sweeney ads. Stock
price has also skyrocketed. It's nearly doubled since they debuted
(41:19):
this ad. So if you had just said, hey, that's
a pretty girl in jeans, that's probably gonna work, and
you went and bought American Eagle stock, you've doubled your
money just in the last few months, nearly over this.
But I thought this was interesting. This is again from
the Wall Street Journal. They said that they have added
nearly a million customers since they debuted the Sydney Sweeney ads.
(41:46):
And not only that, they have immediately sold out. And
I don't even know what these things are. I'm not
exactly the hippest person on the planet. When it comes
to close. As many of you know, the Sweeney Cinched
waste denim jacket sold out in one day, and the
Sydney Jane. And I'm reading from the Wall Street Journal.
(42:08):
This is not my description. An ultra wide leg with
a butterfly on the back pocket sold out in a week.
They added a million customers, and they immediately sold out
of everything that she was wearing in the ads. Okay,
here's something else. The owner CEO Jy Schottenstein, big Ohio
(42:33):
state guy. By the way, Ohio State, Buckeye. He is
seventy one years old, and he said he is also
an Orthodox Jew, and he said, quote according to the
Wall Street Journal, he was perplexed at the criticism of
(42:53):
Sidney Jeanie. Sidney Sweeney has good genes, because remember they
said that was oh, this is a NOI ad, this
is about eugenics. This guy, an Orthodox Jew, actually said
his mother in law grew up in Nazi Germany and
watched as the synagogue across the street from her home
(43:16):
was burned to the ground. Quote I'm very conscious of
that term. He said. He felt that the team had
felt the campaign was offensive in any way, we never
would have done it. Orthodox Jew whose mother in law
lived through actual Nazi Germany, said, Hey, this is a
(43:39):
crazy idea that you would try to brand this a
Nazi advertising campaign because we put a pretty girl in denim,
and the denim immediately sold out. Do you know why,
because pretty girls sell products. Sexy products sell I was
laughing about this the day Victoria's Secret has a new CEO.
(44:04):
She's having a lot of success. Do you know the
new Victoria's Secret CEO's plan make lingerie sexy again? It
turns out putting unattractive models in panties and bras doesn't
make anyone want to buy more panties than bras. I'm fat.
They don't want to put me in a male underwear campaign.
(44:26):
It will be the least successful underwear on the planet.
Nobody's gonna see me in underwear and be like, I
want to look like that guy. I want to look
like that forty six year old dad of three. They
need a super ripped guy who's at least gonna make
you think, hey, maybe I'll be more attractive if I
wear this underwear. This is people want to look better
(44:47):
than they actually are. They want the fantasy of hey,
I'm gonna put this on and I'm gonna look like
a supermodel. This is not you know, they don't sell
athletics shoes by putting fat guys in in sneakers and saying, hey,
look at this guy's eighteen inch vertical They have a
(45:07):
guy who could jump over the moon in the tennis shoes,
and they make you think you're gonna jump over the
moon too. I should start an advertising agency. I've actually
thought about this. I would sell everything better than what
these morons at these advertising agencies do. But I want
to give credit because American Eagle said basically screw you
(45:30):
to all their critics. Stock price has nearly doubled. They're
selling out like crazy. They got a million extra customers
and all they did was go back to the old
adage of sex cells put a pretty girl in denim
instead of some ridiculous androgynous you know, miss, I don't
even know what the unigender. I don't even know what
these terms are, pan sexual, whatever the heck it is
(45:52):
that nobody wants to be. They just put a pretty
girl in jeans and they immediately sold out. Maybe America
is going to be fine. And speaking of selling out,
Cozy Earth is selling out of their products on a
level that you could not believe because they got a
crazy idea, Hey, we just want to have awesome products
available for everybody. And my wife is one reason they're
(46:12):
selling out because when they came on as an advertiser.
They said, hey, Laura Travis, you can go on the
website and you can order what you want. What was
the number, Allie, ten boxes of stuff. They were like,
we've never actually we always did seventeen boxes. My wife
bought seventeen boxes of their stuff. They always say this like, hey,
(46:34):
new advertiser, you can go on the website, just tell
us what you want. They may stop doing this now
because my wife went on and she was like, I'll
get seventeen boxes of the stuff. That's how much she
loves this product. They got everything bamboo sheets, amazing comforters. Basically,
if you are out there in the marketplace to have
(46:55):
better products in your home, you need to be on
the Cozy Earth website. They will get give you one
hundred day Herndred Night Sleep trial to see if the
Cozy earthsheets are right for you. Use my name Clay,
you get twenty percent off everything. Please go to this
website because I think I almost bankrupted the company by
letting my wife go and buy whatever she wanted. So
(47:16):
we've got to make sure the company doesn't go bankrupt
because Laura Travis went on the website and took advantage
of it. On a level I don't know we've ever
had it. So I need this company to actually make
some money here to make up for what my wife
took from them. Cozyearth dot com, my name Clay. That's
cozyearth dot com. My name Clay, and let him know
Clay and Bucks sent you. If you get a post
(47:37):
by survey. Home isn't just where you live, it's how
you feel. We've got these products all throughout the house,
as you know, because my wife bought seventeen boxes, and
by bought, I mean she went on and they sent
us seventeen boxes of their stuff. She loved it all.
Your wife will love it. You will love it. Check
it out cozyerth dot com, code Clay, that's coeozy earth
dot com. Cozyerth dot com, code Clay twenty off. Check
(48:00):
it out today.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
You don't know what you don't know right, but you
could on the Sunday Hang with Clay and Buck podcast.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
People ask us all the time how we can save
the next generation.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
We've got our show and the info is an antidote.
But we also have a couple of books coming out
Clay that's right, and you can pre order both of
them right now. And be book nerds just like us.
You'll laugh, you'll nod, and you'll get smarter too. Mine's
called balls. How Trump young men in sports saved America
and mine is manufacturing delusion how the Left uses brainwashing,
(48:33):
indoctrination and propaganda against you.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Both are great reads. One might even say they would
make fabulous gifts.
Speaker 4 (48:41):
Indeed, so do us a solid and pre order yours
on Amazon Today.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Welcome back in Clay Travis bock Sexton Show. Uh this,
I got a couple of clips that are fun for you.
First of all, I thought, and I'm gonna be just
have to out myself here. I thought that after covering
for Joe Biden and his clear cognitive decline for years,
(49:07):
that on MSNBC they would have to say, you know what,
We're not going to try to rerun Trump one point
zero when we argued all the time for the twenty
fifth Amendment and then Joe Biden was cognitively and mentally
and physically incapable of being president and instead so we
(49:31):
ignored all that, So we can't go back to the
same Trump's not able to be president. I was wrong.
Rachel Mattout, Lawrence O'Donnell bashed Trump over his issues, and
they say Trump is not intellectually capable basically of being president.
He's got cognitive decline. This is what they really are
selling their audience. After not saying anything about Biden four
(49:54):
years cut twenty four.
Speaker 5 (49:55):
We are watching publicly a very dramatic mental decline in
Donald Trump. This is a sharp cliff that he's just
fallen off within the last fortnight, especially over this particular
weekend of social media posting.
Speaker 4 (50:10):
And it's not just like transgressive or offensive or bad,
it's also just weird.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
It's really weird stuff, like there's something weird going on
up there.
Speaker 5 (50:19):
Yeah, it's inexplicable, and it is absolutely worthy of a
family intervention. There's no other family in America that would
let a seventy nine year old do things like this publicly.
They would absolutely intervene. It would be the only thing
every family member wanted to do. They would do it urgently.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
You got to share that clip from the Clay and
Buck account team. If you're watching on video, you could
see my jaw drop. Trump does all day long basically
rolling press conferences well where he will answer any question
under the sun. Biden couldn't even be out after dark
(51:01):
because his cognitive decline was so real, they never talked
about it on MSNBC. Now they're suddenly saying, oh, Trump,
his behavior is unacceptable in public. No one would ever
led a seventy nine year old behave in this way.
But I it was eighty one, all right, I think
I'm correct, and they let him do all sorts of things,
(51:22):
clearly demonstrating that his brain didn't work. An MSNBC didn't
say anything. And now Trump, who has basically a rolling
press conference all day long every day, Oh wow, look
what's going on here. Let me play a couple of
cuts for you as well. This interview that I did
with Paul Feinbaum has gone everywhere, and some people say,
(51:48):
I've talked about how to me the goal of talking
about current events politics should be persuading people that you're right,
because I believe that there are a lot of people
out there who will change their opinions on things if
you make the argument in a way that they can
understand it. And there are lots of different ways to
(52:10):
make those arguments. But basically, politics is the art of
communication and decision making, and a huge part of any
political decision is the decision, what are you going to do?
But you also have to explain why you're doing it
and why it matters. And Paul Feinbaum talked with me
about the fact that he was raised in New York
(52:32):
City by a family from New York City Jewish family.
They moved to Memphis, they were died in the warl Liberals,
and what happened in nineteen ninety four when he called
his mom for the first time and said, I voted Republican. Mom,
listen to this. What do you think the reaction to
this process will be like for you?
Speaker 3 (52:52):
Clai?
Speaker 6 (52:52):
There might be some surprise because I don't think anybody
knows what I am.
Speaker 7 (52:56):
Claire.
Speaker 6 (52:56):
I grew up the son to liberal New York Jews.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Yeah, who came down south.
Speaker 6 (53:05):
Yeah, my sister was born in New York in long
before my mother died in nineteen ninety four. I called
her on election day and she said, well, who did
you vote for? And I said, I voted for This
was an off year election.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Yeah, the ninety four was the Republican red wave.
Speaker 6 (53:25):
I told her I'd voted for the Republican and my mother,
who I loved dearly, one of the most important people.
Maybe the most important person in my life because my
dad died at fifteen. She hung up the phone. I
have one of my best friends I grew up with.
I told a number of years ago I was going
to be on Fox News. It was a story in Birmingham.
(53:46):
You may remember Natalie Hollway.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 6 (53:49):
I called him and I said, I'm going to be
on Greta's show tonight on Fox. He said, I refuse
to watch it. So, I mean I grew up around
a lot of this. My mother hanging up on me
still stings, and she might hang up if she.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
If she knew you were going to run for the
Senate in Alabama.
Speaker 3 (54:03):
But that's okay.
Speaker 6 (54:04):
I mean you you come from. I mean Donald Trump
was a Democrat too.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Yeah, I was a Democrat.
Speaker 6 (54:10):
I'm not running away from that. Yeah, I understand when
you're when you're a journalist, there's a perception. But there's
also such a thing as growing up, uh and uh
maturing and moving past the ideals that you were taught
as a as a young person and believed in as
a teenager, and that I've evolved. My wife is a Republican.
(54:34):
Her family are Republicans, and so am I. But It's
not something I talk about, and a lot of my
friends wouldn't probably even know that because I have until
this moment, I've never discussed it.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
So people change their minds. How do people change their minds?
You convince them that the things that they used to
believe are no longer true. There are tons of you
out there right now with friends and family that still
think this is Bill Clinton's Democrat Party. They still think
(55:09):
this is Jimmy Carter's Democrat Party. They don't pay attention
to what Democrats actually say. They picked the team and
they turned their brain off, and they've continued to hit
that button because they haven't really paid attention to the
fact that the Democrat Party of the seventies and the
eighties and the nineties and even the early two thousands,
(55:32):
all of the people that believed what those guys believe
would be Republicans. Now you'll go back and look Bill
Clinton ninety two, Bill Clinton ninety six. Heck, look at
the clips of Chuck Schumer back then, look at the
clips of Joe Biden back then. They're saying everything Donald
Trump is saying now. A lot of us, and I
(55:55):
would put myself in this camp, haven't moved very much
on issues. It's the Democrat Party's gone insane, and we
weren't willing to hop on the train to crazy town.
And so I believe there are tens of millions of people,
a lot of them. You guys are listening to me
right now that in nineteen nineties may not have listened
(56:15):
to Russian Inball, in the early two thousands, may not
have listened to Russian Inball. But over time and COVID
was for many people. I think that push point where
it radicalized a lot of us, and where it demonstrated
how lost the Democrat Party has become in many ways.
I mean, I've made this argument for a long time.
(56:36):
I think it's the best argument you can make, other
than the fact that clearly it's not true. But when
somebody says Trump's a fascist, Trump wants to be a dictator,
we all know that's a laughable argument. But you can
actually push back with this simple question that they won't
have an answer to if that were actually true, why
(56:56):
didn't Trump take over everything? During the early days of
COVID in twenty twenty, Trump could have said, under my
national authority, I'm mandating all the What did Trump do
then a lot of you are upset with the choices
Trump made in the early days of COVID, But most
of it was just deferring to local state politicians. He
(57:21):
let every state and every mayor make their own determinations
about what the best decisions were for their communities. Democrats
were begging to be regulated, then, they were begging to
be dictated to. They were demanding that a guy on
a paddle board on the ocean be arrested. They were
(57:43):
demanding that kids on hiking trails be handcuffed. They were
begging for federal authority, for big government to come in
and weigh down its heavy hand. Never in most of
our lives, with the possible exception of the immediate aftermath
of nine to eleven, has a president had a time
when he could have taken more power and more authority
(58:07):
than right in the immediate aftermath of COVID in the
spring and summer of twenty twenty. What did Trump do
when he had that opportunity to take almost complete and
total power in the United States? He deferred to state
and local authorities. In fact, to such an extent that
I think you can criticize him not for being a
dictator but for being too committed to the principles of
(58:30):
federalism such that he did not take over all of
the power that was waiting to be grabbed. There you
know who did, Joe Biden. So anybody out there who says, oh,
Trump's going to be a dictator, just ask well, why
didn't he dictate when for basically the time in American
history when a president could have taken more power than
almost ever before in the history of this republic, Trump
(58:53):
actually deferred and said let's let local governments and local
leaders make decisions instead of federalizing. His leadership stuff one
to respond to. We got to cut government shutdowns going on.
This is what happens. This is what you hear. Press
Secretary Caroline Levitt has recorded a message. They can't answer
the phones. Federal workers can't do their jobs because of
(59:15):
the Chuck Schumer shutdown. This is what it sounds like
if you call the White House.
Speaker 3 (59:19):
Thank you for.
Speaker 7 (59:20):
Calling the White House commentary, Hello America, this is White
House Press Secretary Caroline Lovitt. Democrats and Congress have shut
down the federal government because they care more about funding
health care for illegal immigrants than they care about serving you,
the American people until Democrats vote for the Clean Republican
(59:40):
fact Continuing Resolution to reopen the government.
Speaker 8 (59:44):
The White House is unable to answer your call or
respond to your questions. We look forward to hearing from
you again very soon, and in the meantime, please know
President Trump will never stop fighting for you. Thank you,
and God bless you.
Speaker 1 (59:58):
That's Caroline Levit. That's what you get when you call
the White House Comment line. Boy, can you imagine some
of the comments that line gets, Probably even crazier than
some of the comments we get. We come back, we'll
have some fun. We'll close up shop on the Wednesday
edition of the program. But I want to tell you
last weekend in New York City, the Tunnel to Towers
Foundation had their annual Tunnel to Towers five K Run
(01:00:20):
and Walk, held each year on the last Sunday of September.
What began with fifteen hundred people in two thousand and
two as now one of the top five K runs
in the country, drawing forty thousand people. It retraces firefighter
Steven Siller's final footsteps that day after abandoning his car.
He ran with sixty pounds of gear from the foot
(01:00:41):
of the battery Tunnel to the Twin Towers. He never
made it out. The five K pays homage to the
three hundred and forty three FDNY firefighters, law enforcement officers,
and thousands of civilians who lost their lives on nine
to eleven. Proceeds from the event support the foundation's programs,
including those benefiting first responders and catastrophically injured service members.
(01:01:02):
Producer Ali and Cash Bettel, among others, have done this
event and said it's one of the most powerful and
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support the great work Tunnel the Towers does by going
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(01:01:27):
that's t twot dot org. T the number two t
dot org.
Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Cheap up with the biggest political comeback in world history.
On the Team forty seven podcast, playin Book Highlight Trump
Free plays from the week Sundays at noon Eastern. Find
it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome in Wednesday edition Clay Travis Buck Sexton Show. I
hope all of you are having fabulous weeks so far.
We are here hopefully to make that a bit better
than it otherwise would be. The government is shut down,
what is the impact we will discuss. Buck is not
(00:20):
shut down, but he is in Taiwan right now and
he is continuing to travel around over there. He'll be
back Monday on the program, just to FYI, so you
have got me as you have on Monday and Tuesday
solo for the rest of this week, we will take
your calls, we will take your talkbacks. We will dive
(00:41):
into a variety of different pertinent subjects. We're going to
be joined by Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett. He was listening
to our discussion about why congressional stock trading is not
banned and he has some strong thoughts on that. I'm
sure we'll talk about the shutdown as well. And then
(01:02):
at two o'clock our friend Tutor Dixon. I just saw
her last week speaking when I was speaking up in Michigan.
She will join us. She's part of the Clay and
Buck podcast network. We had a really good time hanging
out up at mckinaw Island where the Michigan Republican Party
was having there by annual event at the Grand Hotel
(01:23):
up there. So that was a lot of fun, and
I was there last week. I think I was there
last week. Everything runs together, but I guess it was
two weeks ago. We will dive into a lot of topics,
but off the top, the shutdown is underway, and I
got to be honest with y'all. You know, and I
think Buck and I have talked about this quite a
(01:44):
bit on the program. We are not of the opinion
that the shutdown is ultimately that big of a story,
because eventually it will get resolved and we'll just add
on more debt. But I do want to give you
some historical analogy of where we are. Since nineteen seventy six,
(02:05):
the US government has shut down twenty times. So if
you were out there and you're thinking, this just feels
like the same plot over and over again, Groundhog Day,
in many ways it is. There were no shutdowns between
nineteen ninety five and twenty thirteen, but three have occurred
(02:25):
in the twelve years since. The longest one was in
Trump one point zero and that lasted thirty four days
back in twenty eighteen. Really, the essence of this shutdown,
just so you know, is a battle over whether there
should be an extension of COVID healthcare policies, which were
(02:49):
put in place by Democrats as part of their massive blockbuster,
out of control spending bills that they forced through in
the COVID era. And the reason why this spending cost
is up now is because they pegged it for a
relatively short period of time so that it did not
(03:10):
continue to cost money going forward. Now, this is me,
and you have heard me go off on this quite
a lot. The healthcare system in the United States is broken.
Every single one of you listening to me right now
is nodding along because it is just a broken marketplace.
It makes no sense the way we have designed it.
(03:33):
It is the most inefficient and the least effective part
of I would argue the American economic system. It is
anti capitalistic in many ways. It is profoundly broken. This
spending package that the Democrats are insisting on continuing would
(03:54):
add up over the next decade, according to the Wall
Street Journal editorial page, to a round four hundred and
fifty billion dollars, and much of it is a subsidy
that is in a large extent unnecessary. And so this
let me give you a little bit of a background
of exactly what's going on, try to simplify this for you.
(04:16):
So we begin with the foundational point that the healthcare
system in this country is broken, and anybody who's ever
had to get on the phone with their insurance provider
knows exactly what I'm talking about. Studies suggest that one
reason our healthcare system is broken, probably the primary one,
(04:38):
is nobody has any idea what anything costs, and so
you can't make a rational decision in your life about
whether or not you need an MRI, or whether you
need a need to go to the hospital or not,
because a lot of times you don't have the information
as you're not a doctor, as necessary. And what has
(05:03):
happened is doctors wildly over prescribe because much of this
is paid for by insurance and patience to a large extent,
are not making choices that are rational. I'll give you
an example that happened recently in my family. I think
it was a few years ago. My wife was in
(05:25):
a car accident. She was fine, she was able to
get to the hospital and make sure everything was okay
without needing an ambulance. But the ambulance the police officer
told her, Hey, the ambulance can take you, but it
will end up costing you thousands and thousands of dollars,
(05:48):
or you can take yourself to the hospital on your own.
How many people actually make that choice? How many people
actually in much of your life? And I've talked about
this in my own life. When it came to having
our kids, we went to go tour the hospitals. Nobody
(06:10):
could tell me what a delivery cost. Went to all
these different hospitals, they're competing to see who has the
fastest WiFi. They're competing to see who has bamboo floors,
who has the best flat screen televisions in the delivery area,
what sort of security there is to make sure that
(06:31):
your babies are safe. All those things are fine. They
don't compete on price. I just said to each of them, Hey,
what's this going to cost me? None of them could
tell me. I mentioned to you, I think last week,
because I think it's a really instructive analogy that I
went and took one of our kids when he had
(06:53):
strapped throat. My wife took the other one. She was
on the ball, knew where our healthcare card was, knew
exactly who are health care provider was turned it over
when we checked in, when she checked in, I didn't
have any idea where the healthcare card was. Somehow I
couldn't find it in my wallet. I think we had switched,
and my incompetence meant that we were billed as not
(07:16):
having health care and we paid a fraction of what
my wife paid for the exact same medical treatment because
we had health insurance. It's all broken. All of it
is broken, and I could get on a pedestal and
talk about this forever. The fact that we run healthcare.
(07:39):
As someone who has owned a business and has had
to pay for health care, the fact that healthcare is
connected to employment is crazy. I have been a freelancer
who was not an employee, and the fact that I
had to go out into the healthcare marketplace and figure
out what policy was the right one one for me
(08:01):
was incredibly complicated too. Insurance is the only thing all
of us have to pay for that we hope to
never use, and the entire insurance industry is totally broken.
In conjunction with health care, we spend way more than
(08:22):
any country in the world, and we do not get
the best results. And the data reflects that you could
eliminate half of all medical treatments and there wouldn't be
any change in life expectancy in this country. So my
general proposition is, I don't want to take anything. I
know tilan always in the news, I get made fun of.
I don't want to take any drugs. I don't want
(08:43):
to take anything. I feel fortunate. I've been pretty healthy
in the grand scheme of things, and I think that
they wildly over prescribe and over medicate us as a whole.
And yet simultaneously, the people who actually do need health care,
the people who are actually sick, the people who are
in desperate need of healthcare, cannot get it, and the
(09:05):
people who don't need it don't feel like we're getting
any kind of rational healthcare that makes common sense. Okay,
So that's where we really are, and in essence, much
like our tax code, because I would say number one
broken system in America's healthcare number two is tax code.
They're both so fundamentally broken that you would actually do
(09:29):
better if you just tore them both down and built
a functional, rational healthcare system. And tax policy. Instead, we
have just continued to add layer upon layer of a
broken foundation. And as a result, if you want to
use sort of a building metaphor, we have constantly shifting
(09:52):
in the winds, tall buildings with no structural stability, and
they'll fall over all the time and they make absolutely
no So go hey, happy optimistic Wednesday, everybody. We've got
two hugely broken systems that threaten the very fabric of
our democratic republic because as we have an aging population,
(10:13):
the costs that we're going to have to put out
for health care is going to be borne increasingly by
a dwindling number of young people in America, and the
budget and the math just doesn't add up. So all
of that is the foundational issue that is in play here.
And one of the real unfortunate aspects of our democratic
(10:39):
republic is once something is created, once the government creates
a project, it almost never leaves. It just goes on
the ledger as a cost long into the future. And
Democrats want to provide healthcare for as many people as possible,
including many different illegal immigrants, and ultimately this is paid
(11:03):
for by all of you out there that are working
hard every single day. They're reaching into your pocket, they're
taking your money out, and they're giving it to someone
very often who is not even an American citizen. But
this is all part and parcel of a broken healthcare system.
Obamacare is collapsing, by the way, because it's predicated on
(11:26):
giving insurance companies more money, and the entire concept of
insurance is they have to get tons of people who
are never going to need it in order to pay
for the people that actually do need it, and young,
healthy people, a lot of them just say I don't
need health insurance, and as a result, the insurance companies
(11:48):
don't get that money. And as we have an aging society,
the profit margins of insurance companies going down in the future.
But I just come back to that analogy. I would
be paying far less for health care if I had
no insurance at all, so would most of you. That
is a broken system. And my analogy there of walking
(12:09):
in with a kid who has strep throat one day
after we got insurance for the kid who did have
a strep throat, I paid. My wife knows the exact
dollars because she's still fed up about it, because my
incompetence actually benefited the family because we had to pay
less money, but we paid a fraction as uninsured walking
(12:30):
into a clinic patience of what a health care insured
family would pay. So it's not only that the system
is broken, it's that people who are actually trying to
do the right thing are getting gouged, and people who
have no interest whatsoever in buying in at all, they're
essentially getting free health care. You pay a lot, many
(12:52):
people pay virtually nothing at all. Okay, So that is
the essence of why we have a government shut down,
because Democrats want to give more people who do not
pay taxes free health care, and Republicans are saying, wait,
that was a COVID era policy that we put in place.
It should expire, thankfully now that COVID is over. So
(13:16):
that is the essence of what is going on, and
we will see exactly how long it takes for this
to be resolved. I suspect that many of you out
there will be like me, and there will be absolutely
no impact to your life whatsoever by the fact that
the government has shut down. In fact, a lot of
you are saying I wouldn't mind the government shutting down
for a long time. First time I heard the stat
(13:38):
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Speaker 2 (14:44):
Clay Travis and Fuck Sexton mic drops that never sounded
so good. Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Welcome back in Clay Travis buck Sexton show. We are
joined now well by Congressman Tim Burchett of the great
State of Tennessee. Government is shut down. We're going to
get into that. But Congressman, you wanted to come on
because you're as fired up as Buck and I were
about the amount of stock trading that some of your
(15:16):
colleagues are engaged in, and not just stock trading, some
of the best timing that has ever existed in the
history of the world. I mean, Nancy Pelosi is Warren
Buffett level investing savant. Isn't this just even if it's
not actually improper, it certainly has the appearance of impropriety,
(15:39):
which I think demeans the overall value of trust in
public servants. I think you probably agree. It's kind of crazy,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I agree with one hundred percent, and thank you so
much for letting me come on with you. It's an honor.
Congress is broke, and it is crooked as a dog's leg.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Brother.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
There is no other explanation when a congressman can make
six hundred percent return on their investment and you know,
and day in and day out, or three hundred or
two hundred or whatever. I mean, just go on the
Unusual Wales website and read the top hundred. It's unbelievable.
(16:18):
It is unfreaking believable. I mean, people are making a
living now of just following Nancy Pelosi's stock trades. Warton
Buffett needs Warren Buffett needs to go to go to
the front porch and sit there and play with his
grandkids or something, and just turn it over to Pelosi.
It is unbelievable. And we can't even get the bill
in committee, neither party. They're gutless. They are gutless, and
(16:43):
it is shady as all get out. And you know,
I have a I had a twelve thousand dollars portfolio.
My buddy Tommy Siler managed. Everybody needs a bad gum
mutual fund, and that's what we ought to do. And
I get sick and tired of hearing people in cong say, oh,
I'm sacrificing so much, Well that gum it go home
(17:05):
and let somebody else do it. That's not sacrificing so much.
America is tired of this garbage. It is broke. You've
called it out. We've called it out, and here's what's
going to happen if we do get this bill before
and Luna has represent Annapolina Luna, she's going to try
to if we don't get this bill out that everybody's
been working on, which is a little too big and
(17:27):
a little too beautiful in my opinion, but still she's
going to take my bill, which is a clean bill.
It just says no stop trading, you know, for members
of Congress unless it's a mutual fund and your and
your siblings and your wife and spouse whatever, and that's it.
That should be it, you know, make the dad gum sacrifice.
(17:49):
It's crazy, you know. I make skateboards. It's and I'm
sixty one years old and I haven't broke my neck yet.
I made one for Telca Gabbard a couple of weeks
ago and she loved it. But yeah, I always kill
people that when I work on these skateboards. It's cheaper
than a psychiatrist. It's good therapy for me. But people
want to buy them, so I'm trying to sell them.
I went to the ethics people and I literally have
(18:12):
to get I'm getting a business plan together. I've had
to hire an attorney if I want to sell skateboards.
But dad, gummut, if I want to do insider trading,
just become a member of Congress. And it rains on you.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
It is wild. And you know, I was going off
on this congressman, because my thing is I now have resources.
I've been in a position where I had nothing and
actually owed a lot more money. Go to law school.
It's not cheap. I owed a lot more money than
I had assets for a while. But just doing what
you're saying is actually really good advice by s and
(18:47):
P five hundred index funds, by big groups of stocks.
We're not even saying, certainly that members of Congress can't
own stocks. It's just don't trade individual stocks like this
is having a blind trust and just having a large
basket of mutual funds or index funds is actually really
(19:08):
smart advice for anyone out there listening to us right now.
And it's crazy to me that, first of all, your
job should be pretty busy. The idea that you should
be pulling out your phone and doing individual stock trades anyway,
it feels it just feels blonkers to me that this
is going on.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Well, some of them do hundreds of hundreds, I know,
trades in a year. And can I give you one
example that everybody can follow and can understand. Nearing the
Biden reign of terror, when he decided to give our
methial defense system to Ukraine, which I don't vote for
any more any I haven't vote for any dollars for Ukraine.
I'm sick of that. But anyway, that's another story. Well,
(19:49):
it turns out that members of some of our military
committees that had access to that information had bought stock
and guess what the mental defense companies over, just some
of them, a couple of weeks prior to it. Now,
why you say, what does that mean? Well, we had
to replenish ours in a no bid, multi billion dollar
(20:11):
contract with these companies overnight. So you see their stock
prices would go up dramatically. And yet that's common practice
in Congress. They can watch the trends. You're in the meetings,
you know, you hear about COVID. You hear I was
in the meeting. You heard about COVID, and I remembered
I had had bought Denny's stock, and all the left
(20:33):
accused me of some kind of insider trading. I left
the DAD meeting because the Democrats wouldn't let any of
the They had all their staff members in the seats
and we couldn't get any seats. But anyway, I have
I've just come to the conclusion that we've got too
much information and generally the vast majority of the people
(20:53):
up there probably aren't doing something incredibly shady. But we
know that this time man in time out when they
just seem to just defy all logic, every odd and
the odds of trading, and every month they turn in
these huge games. And it's shift baffling to me that
we allow that to go on, and we could sit
(21:15):
here and tell the American public that nothing's going on.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
How does this shutdown end up ending? Congressman? Like, where
does it go from here?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
When Schumer sees his polling numbers declining, I think what's
really behind it? And this is my theory. I've put
it on people, and they've agreed with me. Schumer is
looking in his rear view mirror right now and all
he sees is AOC and that big grint of hers
bearing down on him. He knows that she can raise
(21:46):
millions of dollars overnight. Just that was me snapping my fingers. Overnight, Hollywood,
all the elitists, they'll be throwing the money at her.
And all he's doing is watching that New York mayor's race,
where literally a Marxist communist will win, probably unless something
lets God Shine's favor upon the poor folks in New
(22:11):
York that don't know any better.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
By the way, God shining favor on the poor folks
of New York actually means Andrew Cuomo should win. That's
how bad of a situation they're in.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well that's you're very accurate. You're very accurate.
But the truth is that that Schumer is watching his
review mirror. He knows his polling numbers, and the reality
is he needs to go back to flipping rawl cheeseburgers
on his grill and playing with his grandkids if he
(22:41):
has any, and get out of this thing he has left.
You know, he was he wasn't a moderate, but he
was just an old classic liberal and now he's just
turned far left as you can get. And all it
is is about staying in power. And that's what Washington,
DC is truly about in leadership. They love the suburbans,
(23:01):
they love the you know, for deep with security, they
love the spotlight, they love never standing in line, they
love the security. They love the access, and you have
the access to the inside information. And when they're out
of leadership, it's gone. It's gone. All that is gone
and they can't stand it. And his time has come
(23:23):
and gone, like a whole lot of them that need
to be out of there, but he is. That is
why he's going to wreck this country. It's just to
keep himself in power. And a came. You know, he's
out there talking about something. Nobody's paying attention to him.
He's saying, how the House Republicans are shutting government down.
We voted to keep the Dad given government open. Only
one Democrat voted with us. And you know, the whole
(23:47):
thing is just it's so obvious. And as soon as
he's polling data flips on him, he'll be at the
table with Trump. But he won't be till then.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
We're talking to Congressman Tim Burchett at Tennessee. How did
you into skateboarding and making skateboards?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Well, I didn't smoke pot and I didn't drink. Although
since I've become a member of Congress, I've fiercely considered
taking on crack cocaine just to take off the edges.
But but no, I just always liked it. I liked
I liked the physics of it. And and I'm an inventor.
I'll always just make stuff. And I had a little
(24:24):
piece of ply wood and some old skates and I
put it on there, and I would just and you
could that's those are death traps, you know. And and
I never and you know, my dad would challenge me,
if you can get to the end, to see if
you can get to the end of the driveway or
something that you know eventually I would and then and
so I and I'm just I've always been fascinated by bamboo.
(24:46):
It's the poor man's carbon fiber. I read an article
on it in nineteen eighty in a National geographic and
so I started just I've always done stuff and tinkered,
and now that I've got some equipment to do it.
And my major was technological adult education, certified to teach shop. Basically,
I can weld and build engines, and I can burn
(25:10):
your house down if you want me to wired. I'm
not very good at that, but I can do all
those things. I can do casting and just all the
stuff around the machine shop. But I just like it.
And then I'm a capitalist at heart. And I read
somewhere that there's a I think it's a five billion
dollar industry in this country. Now I don't want all
(25:30):
five billion of it, but I wouldn't mind shaving a
little off the edge. And so you know, I make
it out of recycled stuff, mainly because I'm cheap. I
guess I'm fiscally smart. But you know, I use old
palettes and I've been using banana fibers off of banana
plants that I've grown, and I'm just just all over
(25:51):
about it. I just and and skateboards something you can
make small and you can transport easily, and kids dig it.
And when you see sixty one year old out there
with his vans on skateboarding on a board that he
built himself, it's kind of cool and it's good to
bring up conversation, and you know, and I like it.
(26:11):
And again, as I say, it's cheaper than a psychiatrist.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
We're talking to Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee. All right,
I got the ultimate controversial question for you here. To
close up the interview, Congressman all right, better decision? Who
made the better decision? Who made the worst decision? I
know you are a big University of Tennessee football fan.
Nico going to UCLA transferring from Tennessee going to UCLA.
(26:40):
UCLA is now lost every game. His head coach has
been fired, his offensive coordinator has been fired. Sorry UCLA
fans out there catching astray. You didn't expect this. Okay,
Nico to UCLA? That choice or Kamala Harris picking Tim
Walls as her vice president? Who made the worst decision?
(27:02):
Who made the better decision? You're on the floor.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
I'm gonna say Kamala because she was a train wreck anyway,
and she just picked a bigger train wreck. I almost.
You know, they always pick somebody who I always feel
like somebody that's not going to overshadow him a lot
of times. But I the JD Vance, as we say
(27:28):
in East Tennessee. He kicks a ass. I like JD.
He's strong, and he's a kind of a buddy of mine,
I guess. But yeah, that gum when they call him
tampon tim or something, I don't like saying it, but
he is just a he's a knucklehead man. He just
can't get out of his own way. I don't know
(27:49):
who he was running against to get elected governor out there,
but that gum must have been a convicted fella and
getting ready to go to the electric chair or something.
I'm not sure the Republicans put up against him, But yeah, Nico,
I mean, he just took some mad advibes. But he's
he'll get a little bit of a paycheck. And if
he's he can just get all his groupies and family
(28:10):
away from him, he might be okay. He might be
able to salvage something in the Canadian Football League. But yeah,
that's where I'm at be where I get myself in
any more trouble.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Well, I'm already thinking the headline for the New York
Times is going to be Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett praises
Nico for his move to UCLA. Hey, this is this
is a lot of fun, and I would argue I
love the Tim Walls. You may have seen the meme
Congressman where it shows Barack Obama and he says I
need someone dumber than me as VP Joe Biden. Joe
(28:42):
Biden says I need someone dumber than me as VP
Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris says, I need someone dumber than me,
and it's Tim Walls. There's a lot of truth to that,
and we have seen a rapid descent and intelligence across
the board there. We appreciate the time. If people want
to get the skateboard, by the way, where do they go?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Well, nowhere yet.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
I'm okay, I.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Got a business plan. I got to put it on
ethics and and so they can approve it or not.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Hey, if Hunter can sell paintings for five hundred thousand dollars,
I would think you could probably sell a skateboard for
a couple one hundred bucks. But what do I know.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Well, the Biden family couldn't spell ethics. So I got it.
I just want to be the man my little girl
thinks I am. So I'm going to try to follow
the rules here. I get my lawyers involved and we'll
get it all worked out eventually, hope the end of
the year, hopefully in time for Christmas.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
That's the goal, just in time for Christmas. Hey, we
appreciate the time. Go big Orange and we'll talk to
you again soon.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Thank you, brother, appreciate y'all. Man.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
He is great Congressman Tem Burchett of Tennessee. Let me
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Speaker 2 (31:13):
Team forty seven podcast Trump highlights from the week some
days at noon Eastern in the Clan Buck podcast Speed
find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Welcome back in Clay Travis Buck Sexton show. A lot
of reaction rolling in to Tim Burchett, who was awesome
congressman from Tennessee. And I put up a poll question
that for those of you who are big college football
fans and also big interested in politics people, which I
think is a I know actually is a huge, huge
(31:49):
number of you. Which was the worst decision Nico to UCLA,
Sorry to the UCLA fans out there, or Kamala Harris
picking Tim Walls. It is up on my Twitter page
at Clay Travis You can go vote there. Also, want
to thank you guys here as we start off our
number two. The numbers on the YouTube page were through
(32:12):
the roof. Now partly this is because we're finally starting
to get somewhat treated fairly. We got banned from YouTube
all the time. We've talked about the fact that they
took down our interview with Rand Paul with President Trump.
President Trump just settled for twenty four point six million dollars.
(32:33):
I think over YouTube banning him. He's going to use
the money to build the new dining room that he's
building off the patio there at the White House, which
is very funny and good for him. But we got
a digital summary and we added a lot of YouTube.
This is just in September. I saw this. Our total
(32:56):
views on YouTube basically triple in the month of September.
So that's a credit to you guys. Again, I don't
think it's coincidental. The algorithm is I got so many
thoughts on algorithms in general. The algorithm gives you whatever
(33:16):
you want the algorithm to give you. So YouTube could decide, hey,
Clay and Buck videos are the most popular thing on
the planet, and it would feed those videos to you
over and over and over again. Or they can say, hey,
Clay and Buck are the worst people on the planet
and you would never be able to find us. So
(33:37):
when people say well the algorithm, yeah, a person programs
the algorithm. You can create an algorithm to do anything.
This is my fear in many ways. By the way,
about AI, everybody says, well, the AI is doing. The
AI is going to be a reflection of whatever is
put in and whatever guardrails are put in place. So
(34:00):
what I suspect will end up seeing this is my
AI prediction, is it looks like XAI, which is Elon
Musk's AI company, is going to be the Fox News
of AI, and then everybody else is going to be
left wing AI. So I suspect that, like many other
(34:21):
things in life, you will end up choosing the AI
that most you believe reflects your worldview, and that will
actually lead the AI to becoming even more polarized because
that will be the business model. That's my general thought. Now,
I gotta be honest. I didn't watch a lot of news.
(34:44):
I'm a sports guy. I didn't watch a lot of
news on television. I've always been a reader, and I
never trust video. I always have known that because I'm
in television that I love doing sports television for instance,
but I've always known that it's hard to get great
(35:04):
in depth knowledge from television on anything. This is the reality.
Television is a SoundBite era. And I always thought it
was funny because I've always done Radio two and people say, Okay,
what's the difference between writing, which is where I started.
And by the way, please go buy my new book Balls.
(35:24):
I'm gonna talk about this a little bit more later
in the week, but it's up pre ordered. I want
this thing to be everywhere I think it's important. But
people say, what's the difference between writing radio and TV?
Writing for me is just me in front of a
computer screen. Every word is mine and there's nobody else helping,
(35:45):
So for better or worse, I have complete control of
every argument that I make in a written article. And
that is why, in many ways writing is still my
favorite discipline because it's just me sitting in front of
a computer screen and there's no one else to help,
(36:07):
and for better or worse, it's on me to make
an argument, or to write a column, or to write
a book that hopefully is entertaining and helps to make
people think. On a deeper level, Radio, we have the
luxury of time, so I can sit with you for
three hours every day. Buck can sit with you for
three hours every day. Over time, we become in some
(36:29):
ways a family because you have fifteen hours a week
to spend with us, and we love all of you
that spend that much time. But you're going to learn
about our families. You're gonna learn about the things that
we like, the serious things, the not serious things. We
hang out. It's basically just one long form conversation. First
time I did television, I did television. I came out
(36:51):
in a studio and they were like, that was amazing,
How was that so good? That was so great? I
was like, it's three minutes. I wish my wife had
that standard. There you go, but but it's three minutes.
Like you go on television and you give a couple
of takes and then you're gone. And there is not
(37:13):
a great deal of nuance or complexity or depth that
television can convey. And so I was always a little
bit skeptical of television in general when it comes to
complicated issues. And so I didn't watch I didn't watch
a lot of CNN. I've never watched MSNBC. But I
didn't really pay much attention to Fox News. I now
(37:36):
think it's funny. Fox News is the most I now
pay a lot more attention to news. You have to
be crazy to watch MSNBC. I'm not like I watch MSNBC.
I read the New York Times, the Washington Post, so
to kind of have some sense of what's going on.
(37:58):
They live in a crazy world. People say, oh, Fox News,
it's super right wing. Fox News is just normal. And
this is what they did to me, and this is
what they try to do to anybody like me. I've
talked about this before. They try to always label me controversial.
(38:18):
If you read any article about me or somebody's talking
about me, within thirty seconds, they will say, Clay Travis,
the controversial sometimes firebrand right wing conservative political commentator, I
don't think I'm controversial at all. I say this. I've
(38:38):
been saying this for fifteen years now, as people have
constantly labeled me controversial. There's nothing wrong with controversy, but
I don't think most of my comments or opinions are
remotely controversial. They've labeled me super controversial for saying men
shouldn't play in women's sports. Again, I have nothing wrong
(39:01):
with controversy, but when you are on the side of
eighty or ninety percent of people, what's controversial is the
other side. But that is an emblematic of how they
took over the culture. Is they label anyone, anyone at
all who is just not left wing. You're considered to
(39:25):
be right wing and they try to label you as controversial,
and it has an impact. I give tremendous credit to
iHeart for hosting this show, but the most left wing
industry in the country is advertising. This show's audience is
massive across all five hundred and fifty five stations right now.
(39:46):
There are millions of you that will listen to me
today on this program. Y'all ever think about the fact
that we've never had a car advertisement on this program.
Flip on MSNBC. Every car brand in a Mayor, Erica
advertises on MSNBC. We've never had a restaurant on this program.
(40:08):
Flip on CNN. Every restaurant in America advertises on those brands.
And I'm thinking about this a lot because I'm going
to be potentially starting a new media company, and when
you rely on media companies being founded and funded and
existing or even having success based on advertising dollars, the
(40:32):
left has been brilliant in going after anybody who advertises
on anything other than far left wing and labeling them
controversial to try to create the idea that brands can't
be associated with people like me, or people like Buck
or frankly, people like you. Think about that never a
(40:54):
car never a restaurant in the entire history of us
being on this program. It's crazy, right, Well, I think
it ties in with this story that I want to
talk about this morning. I'm reading an American Eagle headline.
American Eagle gained customers after their Sydney Sweeney ads. Stock
price has also skyrocketed. It's nearly doubled since they debuted
(41:19):
this ad. So if you had just said, hey, that's
a pretty girl in jeans, that's probably gonna work, and
you went and bought American Eagle stock, you've doubled your
money just in the last few months, nearly over this.
But I thought this was interesting. This is again from
the Wall Street Journal. They said that they have added
nearly a million customers since they debuted the Sydney Sweeney ads.
(41:46):
And not only that, they have immediately sold out. And
I don't even know what these things are. I'm not
exactly the hippest person on the planet. When it comes
to close. As many of you know, the Sweeney Cinched
waste denim jacket sold out in one day, and the
Sydney Jane. And I'm reading from the Wall Street Journal.
(42:08):
This is not my description. An ultra wide leg with
a butterfly on the back pocket sold out in a week.
They added a million customers, and they immediately sold out
of everything that she was wearing in the ads. Okay,
here's something else. The owner CEO Jy Schottenstein, big Ohio
(42:33):
state guy. By the way, Ohio State, Buckeye. He is
seventy one years old, and he said he is also
an Orthodox Jew, and he said, quote according to the
Wall Street Journal, he was perplexed at the criticism of
(42:53):
Sidney Jeanie. Sidney Sweeney has good genes, because remember they
said that was oh, this is a NOI ad, this
is about eugenics. This guy, an Orthodox Jew, actually said
his mother in law grew up in Nazi Germany and
watched as the synagogue across the street from her home
(43:16):
was burned to the ground. Quote I'm very conscious of
that term. He said. He felt that the team had
felt the campaign was offensive in any way, we never
would have done it. Orthodox Jew whose mother in law
lived through actual Nazi Germany, said, Hey, this is a
(43:39):
crazy idea that you would try to brand this a
Nazi advertising campaign because we put a pretty girl in denim,
and the denim immediately sold out. Do you know why,
because pretty girls sell products. Sexy products sell I was
laughing about this the day Victoria's Secret has a new CEO.
(44:04):
She's having a lot of success. Do you know the
new Victoria's Secret CEO's plan make lingerie sexy again? It
turns out putting unattractive models in panties and bras doesn't
make anyone want to buy more panties than bras. I'm fat.
They don't want to put me in a male underwear campaign.
(44:26):
It will be the least successful underwear on the planet.
Nobody's gonna see me in underwear and be like, I
want to look like that guy. I want to look
like that forty six year old dad of three. They
need a super ripped guy who's at least gonna make
you think, hey, maybe I'll be more attractive if I
wear this underwear. This is people want to look better
(44:47):
than they actually are. They want the fantasy of hey,
I'm gonna put this on and I'm gonna look like
a supermodel. This is not you know, they don't sell
athletics shoes by putting fat guys in in sneakers and saying, hey,
look at this guy's eighteen inch vertical They have a
(45:07):
guy who could jump over the moon in the tennis shoes,
and they make you think you're gonna jump over the
moon too. I should start an advertising agency. I've actually
thought about this. I would sell everything better than what
these morons at these advertising agencies do. But I want
to give credit because American Eagle said basically screw you
(45:30):
to all their critics. Stock price has nearly doubled. They're
selling out like crazy. They got a million extra customers
and all they did was go back to the old
adage of sex cells put a pretty girl in denim
instead of some ridiculous androgynous you know, miss, I don't
even know what the unigender. I don't even know what
these terms are, pan sexual, whatever the heck it is
(45:52):
that nobody wants to be. They just put a pretty
girl in jeans and they immediately sold out. Maybe America
is going to be fine. And speaking of selling out,
Cozy Earth is selling out of their products on a
level that you could not believe because they got a
crazy idea, Hey, we just want to have awesome products
available for everybody. And my wife is one reason they're
(46:12):
selling out because when they came on as an advertiser.
They said, hey, Laura Travis, you can go on the
website and you can order what you want. What was
the number, Allie, ten boxes of stuff. They were like,
we've never actually we always did seventeen boxes. My wife
bought seventeen boxes of their stuff. They always say this like, hey,
(46:34):
new advertiser, you can go on the website, just tell
us what you want. They may stop doing this now
because my wife went on and she was like, I'll
get seventeen boxes of the stuff. That's how much she
loves this product. They got everything bamboo sheets, amazing comforters. Basically,
if you are out there in the marketplace to have
(46:55):
better products in your home, you need to be on
the Cozy Earth website. They will get give you one
hundred day Herndred Night Sleep trial to see if the
Cozy earthsheets are right for you. Use my name Clay,
you get twenty percent off everything. Please go to this
website because I think I almost bankrupted the company by
letting my wife go and buy whatever she wanted. So
(47:16):
we've got to make sure the company doesn't go bankrupt
because Laura Travis went on the website and took advantage
of it. On a level I don't know we've ever
had it. So I need this company to actually make
some money here to make up for what my wife
took from them. Cozyearth dot com, my name Clay. That's
cozyearth dot com. My name Clay, and let him know
Clay and Bucks sent you. If you get a post
(47:37):
by survey. Home isn't just where you live, it's how
you feel. We've got these products all throughout the house,
as you know, because my wife bought seventeen boxes, and
by bought, I mean she went on and they sent
us seventeen boxes of their stuff. She loved it all.
Your wife will love it. You will love it. Check
it out cozyerth dot com, code Clay, that's coeozy earth
dot com. Cozyerth dot com, code Clay twenty off. Check
(48:00):
it out today.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
You don't know what you don't know right, but you
could on the Sunday Hang with Clay and Buck podcast.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
People ask us all the time how we can save
the next generation.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
We've got our show and the info is an antidote.
But we also have a couple of books coming out
Clay that's right, and you can pre order both of
them right now. And be book nerds just like us.
You'll laugh, you'll nod, and you'll get smarter too. Mine's
called balls. How Trump young men in sports saved America
and mine is manufacturing delusion how the Left uses brainwashing,
(48:33):
indoctrination and propaganda against you.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Both are great reads. One might even say they would
make fabulous gifts.
Speaker 4 (48:41):
Indeed, so do us a solid and pre order yours
on Amazon Today.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Welcome back in Clay Travis bock Sexton Show. Uh this,
I got a couple of clips that are fun for you.
First of all, I thought, and I'm gonna be just
have to out myself here. I thought that after covering
for Joe Biden and his clear cognitive decline for years,
(49:07):
that on MSNBC they would have to say, you know what,
We're not going to try to rerun Trump one point
zero when we argued all the time for the twenty
fifth Amendment and then Joe Biden was cognitively and mentally
and physically incapable of being president and instead so we
(49:31):
ignored all that, So we can't go back to the
same Trump's not able to be president. I was wrong.
Rachel Mattout, Lawrence O'Donnell bashed Trump over his issues, and
they say Trump is not intellectually capable basically of being president.
He's got cognitive decline. This is what they really are
selling their audience. After not saying anything about Biden four
(49:54):
years cut twenty four.
Speaker 5 (49:55):
We are watching publicly a very dramatic mental decline in
Donald Trump. This is a sharp cliff that he's just
fallen off within the last fortnight, especially over this particular
weekend of social media posting.
Speaker 4 (50:10):
And it's not just like transgressive or offensive or bad,
it's also just weird.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
It's really weird stuff, like there's something weird going on
up there.
Speaker 5 (50:19):
Yeah, it's inexplicable, and it is absolutely worthy of a
family intervention. There's no other family in America that would
let a seventy nine year old do things like this publicly.
They would absolutely intervene. It would be the only thing
every family member wanted to do. They would do it urgently.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
You got to share that clip from the Clay and
Buck account team. If you're watching on video, you could
see my jaw drop. Trump does all day long basically
rolling press conferences well where he will answer any question
under the sun. Biden couldn't even be out after dark
(51:01):
because his cognitive decline was so real, they never talked
about it on MSNBC. Now they're suddenly saying, oh, Trump,
his behavior is unacceptable in public. No one would ever
led a seventy nine year old behave in this way.
But I it was eighty one, all right, I think
I'm correct, and they let him do all sorts of things,
(51:22):
clearly demonstrating that his brain didn't work. An MSNBC didn't
say anything. And now Trump, who has basically a rolling
press conference all day long every day, Oh wow, look
what's going on here. Let me play a couple of
cuts for you as well. This interview that I did
with Paul Feinbaum has gone everywhere, and some people say,
(51:48):
I've talked about how to me the goal of talking
about current events politics should be persuading people that you're right,
because I believe that there are a lot of people
out there who will change their opinions on things if
you make the argument in a way that they can
understand it. And there are lots of different ways to
(52:10):
make those arguments. But basically, politics is the art of
communication and decision making, and a huge part of any
political decision is the decision, what are you going to do?
But you also have to explain why you're doing it
and why it matters. And Paul Feinbaum talked with me
about the fact that he was raised in New York
(52:32):
City by a family from New York City Jewish family.
They moved to Memphis, they were died in the warl Liberals,
and what happened in nineteen ninety four when he called
his mom for the first time and said, I voted Republican. Mom,
listen to this. What do you think the reaction to
this process will be like for you?
Speaker 3 (52:52):
Clai?
Speaker 6 (52:52):
There might be some surprise because I don't think anybody
knows what I am.
Speaker 7 (52:56):
Claire.
Speaker 6 (52:56):
I grew up the son to liberal New York Jews.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Yeah, who came down south.
Speaker 6 (53:05):
Yeah, my sister was born in New York in long
before my mother died in nineteen ninety four. I called
her on election day and she said, well, who did
you vote for? And I said, I voted for This
was an off year election.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Yeah, the ninety four was the Republican red wave.
Speaker 6 (53:25):
I told her I'd voted for the Republican and my mother,
who I loved dearly, one of the most important people.
Maybe the most important person in my life because my
dad died at fifteen. She hung up the phone. I
have one of my best friends I grew up with.
I told a number of years ago I was going
to be on Fox News. It was a story in Birmingham.
(53:46):
You may remember Natalie Hollway.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 6 (53:49):
I called him and I said, I'm going to be
on Greta's show tonight on Fox. He said, I refuse
to watch it. So, I mean I grew up around
a lot of this. My mother hanging up on me
still stings, and she might hang up if she.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
If she knew you were going to run for the
Senate in Alabama.
Speaker 3 (54:03):
But that's okay.
Speaker 6 (54:04):
I mean you you come from. I mean Donald Trump
was a Democrat too.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Yeah, I was a Democrat.
Speaker 6 (54:10):
I'm not running away from that. Yeah, I understand when
you're when you're a journalist, there's a perception. But there's
also such a thing as growing up, uh and uh
maturing and moving past the ideals that you were taught
as a as a young person and believed in as
a teenager, and that I've evolved. My wife is a Republican.
(54:34):
Her family are Republicans, and so am I. But It's
not something I talk about, and a lot of my
friends wouldn't probably even know that because I have until
this moment, I've never discussed it.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
So people change their minds. How do people change their minds?
You convince them that the things that they used to
believe are no longer true. There are tons of you
out there right now with friends and family that still
think this is Bill Clinton's Democrat Party. They still think
(55:09):
this is Jimmy Carter's Democrat Party. They don't pay attention
to what Democrats actually say. They picked the team and
they turned their brain off, and they've continued to hit
that button because they haven't really paid attention to the
fact that the Democrat Party of the seventies and the
eighties and the nineties and even the early two thousands,
(55:32):
all of the people that believed what those guys believe
would be Republicans. Now you'll go back and look Bill
Clinton ninety two, Bill Clinton ninety six. Heck, look at
the clips of Chuck Schumer back then, look at the
clips of Joe Biden back then. They're saying everything Donald
Trump is saying now. A lot of us, and I
(55:55):
would put myself in this camp, haven't moved very much
on issues. It's the Democrat Party's gone insane, and we
weren't willing to hop on the train to crazy town.
And so I believe there are tens of millions of people,
a lot of them. You guys are listening to me
right now that in nineteen nineties may not have listened
(56:15):
to Russian Inball, in the early two thousands, may not
have listened to Russian Inball. But over time and COVID
was for many people. I think that push point where
it radicalized a lot of us, and where it demonstrated
how lost the Democrat Party has become in many ways.
I mean, I've made this argument for a long time.
(56:36):
I think it's the best argument you can make, other
than the fact that clearly it's not true. But when
somebody says Trump's a fascist, Trump wants to be a dictator,
we all know that's a laughable argument. But you can
actually push back with this simple question that they won't
have an answer to if that were actually true, why
(56:56):
didn't Trump take over everything? During the early days of
COVID in twenty twenty, Trump could have said, under my
national authority, I'm mandating all the What did Trump do
then a lot of you are upset with the choices
Trump made in the early days of COVID, But most
of it was just deferring to local state politicians. He
(57:21):
let every state and every mayor make their own determinations
about what the best decisions were for their communities. Democrats
were begging to be regulated, then, they were begging to
be dictated to. They were demanding that a guy on
a paddle board on the ocean be arrested. They were
(57:43):
demanding that kids on hiking trails be handcuffed. They were
begging for federal authority, for big government to come in
and weigh down its heavy hand. Never in most of
our lives, with the possible exception of the immediate aftermath
of nine to eleven, has a president had a time
when he could have taken more power and more authority
(58:07):
than right in the immediate aftermath of COVID in the
spring and summer of twenty twenty. What did Trump do
when he had that opportunity to take almost complete and
total power in the United States? He deferred to state
and local authorities. In fact, to such an extent that
I think you can criticize him not for being a
dictator but for being too committed to the principles of
(58:30):
federalism such that he did not take over all of
the power that was waiting to be grabbed. There you
know who did, Joe Biden. So anybody out there who says, oh,
Trump's going to be a dictator, just ask well, why
didn't he dictate when for basically the time in American
history when a president could have taken more power than
almost ever before in the history of this republic, Trump
(58:53):
actually deferred and said let's let local governments and local
leaders make decisions instead of federalizing. His leadership stuff one
to respond to. We got to cut government shutdowns going on.
This is what happens. This is what you hear. Press
Secretary Caroline Levitt has recorded a message. They can't answer
the phones. Federal workers can't do their jobs because of
(59:15):
the Chuck Schumer shutdown. This is what it sounds like
if you call the White House.
Speaker 3 (59:19):
Thank you for.
Speaker 7 (59:20):
Calling the White House commentary, Hello America, this is White
House Press Secretary Caroline Lovitt. Democrats and Congress have shut
down the federal government because they care more about funding
health care for illegal immigrants than they care about serving you,
the American people until Democrats vote for the Clean Republican
(59:40):
fact Continuing Resolution to reopen the government.
Speaker 8 (59:44):
The White House is unable to answer your call or
respond to your questions. We look forward to hearing from
you again very soon, and in the meantime, please know
President Trump will never stop fighting for you. Thank you,
and God bless you.
Speaker 1 (59:58):
That's Caroline Levit. That's what you get when you call
the White House Comment line. Boy, can you imagine some
of the comments that line gets, Probably even crazier than
some of the comments we get. We come back, we'll
have some fun. We'll close up shop on the Wednesday
edition of the program. But I want to tell you
last weekend in New York City, the Tunnel to Towers
Foundation had their annual Tunnel to Towers five K Run
(01:00:20):
and Walk, held each year on the last Sunday of September.
What began with fifteen hundred people in two thousand and
two as now one of the top five K runs
in the country, drawing forty thousand people. It retraces firefighter
Steven Siller's final footsteps that day after abandoning his car.
He ran with sixty pounds of gear from the foot
(01:00:41):
of the battery Tunnel to the Twin Towers. He never
made it out. The five K pays homage to the
three hundred and forty three FDNY firefighters, law enforcement officers,
and thousands of civilians who lost their lives on nine
to eleven. Proceeds from the event support the foundation's programs,
including those benefiting first responders and catastrophically injured service members.
(01:01:02):
Producer Ali and Cash Bettel, among others, have done this
event and said it's one of the most powerful and
moving five k's they've ever seen. When you come out
of the tunnel, there are firefighters service members lining the
road holding photos of all those we lost. You can
support the great work Tunnel the Towers does by going
to t twot dot org and donating eleven dollars a month. Again,
(01:01:27):
that's t twot dot org. T the number two t
dot org.
Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Cheap up with the biggest political comeback in world history.
On the Team forty seven podcast, playin Book Highlight Trump
Free plays from the week Sundays at noon Eastern. Find
it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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