September 14, 2026 • 49 mins
Clay Travis and Buck Sexton focused overwhelmingly on the rapidly escalating debate over artificial intelligence (AI), AI regulation, data centers, U.S. technological competitiveness, and the growing geopolitical battle with China over AI leadership. They discussed recent comments from President Donald Trump, who forcefully argued that America must lead the AI race and rejected calls for excessive government regulation. Clay and Buck framed AI as one of the most consequential economic, political, and national security issues facing the country, emphasizing that whoever wins the AI race could dominate global innovation, economic growth, and military power in the decades ahead. They also briefly previewed upcoming discussions on key Senate races in Michigan and Texas, as well as Trump’s continued support for proposed $5,000 taxpayer rebate checks if Republicans perform well politically.
Clay argued that anti-Trump messaging has become less effective and that affordability concerns remain tied to lingering economic issues from the Biden era. According to the discussion, some Democratic strategists may now be turning to fears about AI, automation, and data center development as a new political rallying point. The hosts compared current AI fears to previous public anxieties over Y2K, COVID-19, climate change, nuclear war, and overpopulation, arguing that predictions of societal collapse frequently fail to materialize.
An extended interview featuring former NFL broadcaster and Republican Senate candidate Michele Tafoya, who discussed her campaign for Minnesota’s open Senate seat and argued that the race is becoming increasingly competitive. Tafoya described her opponent, Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, as closely tied to Governor Tim Walz’s administration and blamed state leadership for rising concerns over fraud, education decline, crime, government spending, and economic challenges. She emphasized that her campaign is framing the election as a choice between common-sense governance and progressive policies, while pointing to growing support from independents and disaffected Democrats.
Clay passionately advocated for self-driving car technology, particularly Tesla’s autonomous driving systems, describing them as transformative innovations that could drastically reduce traffic fatalities and improve quality of life. He predicted that future generations may view today’s automobile death rates similarly to how modern Americans view historical diseases and other preventable causes of death. The hosts argued that advances in artificial intelligence and automation could significantly improve safety while simultaneously creating enormous societal benefits.
Another segment highlighted a remarkable military rescue operation in Iran involving an American pilot, Dude 44 Bravo, whose story was recently featured on television. The hosts praised the pilot’s survival and the successful rescue effort, describing it as one of the most compelling military stories in recent memory. They discussed the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the operation, including the pilot’s injuries, survival in hostile territory, and eventual recovery by American forces. Clay and Buck praised the bravery of the troops involved and suggested that the story demonstrates the professionalism, courage, and effectiveness of the U.S. military. They also discussed public interest in military storytelling and the possibility that such events could eventually inspire future films or documentaries.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everybody, Monday edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Saxton show, better known to the folks as Clay and Buck.
We begin right now, we've got a lot to discuss
with you. It is a big, I'm going to use
the Clay word, Donnybrook right now over AI, AI regulation,
(00:22):
people are scared, people say don't be scared. The president
weighing in heavy on that. We're going to dive into
this here shortly because, yes, the AI revolution is real.
It is here. The world is changing very quickly. These
are the, really now, in many ways, poised to be
the most powerful companies in the world. Some would argue
(00:44):
that they already are pretty close, if not there. So
we'll discuss that, where Trump falls on all those issues.
He's weighed in. He came back from Ireland. And he
talked a bit about golf. I saw he was discussing
things on the plane on the way back. We have
a whole bunch of clips. I watched about a 10-minute
or so Trump impromptu Q & A addressing many of
(01:07):
the big issues. Also, these big Senate races, two that
we're going to be talking about a lot. One, of course,
down in Texas. We hit that one pretty hard last week.
But today, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan said, This is going
to come down to less than probably 100,000 votes. Could
come down to less than 10,000 votes. I would put
(01:28):
a lot of money on less than 100,000 votes. I
think it's going to come down to 20K probably one
way or the other. So... Very, very tight for a
populous state like Michigan, a Senate race that has huge,
huge implications. We'll discuss. But let me let me let's
set the table here a bit with where things are on. Oh,
(01:49):
Trump also spoke about the five thousand dollar checks, rebate
rebates or whatever they're being called. He says it's happening.
If if. If the Republicans win, he doubled down on this.
He says it's happening. So just we'll discuss this. But first, Clay,
we have some truths coming out here from the president
(02:09):
of the United States. For example, this one just in
the last hour or so. The only control or guardrails
that AI needs is a strong and smart, high IQ president.
And the USA has that in spades. The Trump administration
has stopped AI people from doing bad or potentially bad
(02:32):
things like Dario of Anthropic AI. who is now pretending
to be a perfect little angel. And we will continue
to do so. We already have tremendous criminal and regulatory
power over these companies. There is a sick conspiracy going
on against AI and data centers. And the only one
(02:52):
who is happy about it is China. Whoever wins AI wins,
all caps. We are leading China and all others and
will continue to do so. Conspiracy theorists, treasonists, traitors, and leakers, beware.
Thank you to your attention in this matter. That is
a roundhouse kick to the face of anyone who thinks
(03:16):
that you're being a fool, a wimp or whatever. If
you want us to win an AI, if you believe
the data center should go where communities allow them to go,
et cetera. Big time stuff from the president.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
This feels very calculated to as we sit here in
mid-September coming up on the midterm election. It feels like
Democrats are pivoting in some way to AI is the
boogeyman and we're going to protect you from the boogeyman.
And data centers roll into this, too.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
And. Politically, it does make some sense.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
To give them credit here as much as it pains
me to do so, because I think Trump is going
to destroy the nation has.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Just not worked.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I mean, I'm not hearing very much. You correct me
if you think I'm wrong on this buck. I'm not
hearing very much anti-Trump talk from Democrats. It is affordability.
And I think that Republicans have parried on affordability fairly
well in the grand scheme of things, because basically the
reason we have an affordability crisis is the Biden era.
(04:30):
So Democrats are arguing, yes, we started the fire, but
you can trust us to put it out. And I
think a lot of people are looking at that argument
and saying, I'm not sure that I buy it. And
so now the big bad boogeyman is no longer Trump.
It's AI. It's data centers. it's we're all going to
be dead in 10 years. Now, here is where I
(04:51):
get skeptical. At some point in time, it may well
be the case that humanity ceases to exist, Buck. But
we have heard a lot in the last 20 years
even about humanity ceasing to exist. I mean, some of
us remember Y2K, which is probably the all-time biggest false
(05:12):
alarm in the history of everything's going to shut down,
the whole world's going to collapse. COVID just happened six
years ago, and many people who told you that the
world was going to end because of COVID are now
upset and just want to pretend COVID never happened. That's
their grown-up response to that. It's just, I don't even
know why you still care about that. Why are we
(05:32):
even talking about that? Climate change. Wasn't it only a
few years ago that AOC told us that all of
our beaches and all of our communities were going to
be over, like the world was going to end because
of climate change? Greta Thunberg's kind of vanished. I just
feel like, in general, the person who says this is
going to ruin the world and we're all going to
(05:54):
die and robots are going to take over or a
virus is going to kill us, they're almost always going
to be wrong. Now, one time they're going to be right,
And maybe if you believe in the apocalypse, um, but
nuclear weapons were going to kill us. Like there's been
a lot, if you're 75 and listening to us right now,
you've lived through a lot of things that were going
to be the end of humanity, including overpopulation. And now
(06:15):
we've got the opposite problem. So I, I philosophically totally agree.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
And in fact, in, uh, my book manufacturing delusion, which
is still makes a great gift as we're entering the
fall season for reading and, and, uh, holidays. Um, There's
an extinction anxiety, Clay, is one of the things that
I write about, which is a way to manipulate people.
You're all going to die because of this thing unless
you put me in charge and I'll save you from
the thing. It's longstanding, whether it's climate change, COVID, all
(06:42):
these issues. It's very it's powerful. It's essentially playing on
the fear centers that people have. And it's a real thing.
Extinction anxiety so much so that. The New York Times
and others will write articles about how people don't want
to have kids because they feel like they're adding to
the CO2 that's going to kill all of humanity. So
they don't want to replicate humanity to save humanity. It's
a mental illness, really. But on this AI issue, something
(07:04):
else is going on here. You have companies that are
having very, you know, the founders, the CEOs, the very
senior people, and these are companies that have valuations that
you're already talking about trillion-dollar companies as some of these
go public. If they're not there already, they will be there.
So these are going to be the most valuable tech
(07:24):
entities really in the world, certainly in the top 10,
top 20 companies, or whoever is the winner. Maybe I
should revise it a little bit, Clay. The winner of
the AI race, or rather if there is one company
that breaks out ahead of the others, the Google for search,
if you will, now Google's in the AI race too now,
(07:44):
but I mean 20, 30 years ago, there may be
one company that becomes the AI leader and its value
will be in the trillions of dollars and the influence
it'll have on so many things will be enormous. Clay,
why is it that some of these companies seem to
be asking for regulation right now? It seems to me
(08:07):
that instead of allowing the tech to be guided by
the people who are involved, We have this public, hey,
we need someone else to be writing the rules of
the road for us. That's why Trump is saying, look,
I'll look at this stuff. Congress regulating AI is a
guaranteed own goal, a guaranteed mess. Yes. There's no, well,
(08:30):
Chuck Schumer's going to be writing AI legislation. Chuck Schumer
can't log into an AI platform. I get so many
thoughts on this.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
First of all, The government getting involved in AI is,
I believe, an awful idea. Because to your point, most
people involved in government have no earthly idea. And I
would say one thing that the Clinton era got right, Buck.
as it pertains to big tech, was they mostly stayed
(08:59):
out of the way as the internet became a big
thing in this country. Now, there was a dot-com implosion,
as many of you know, and oftentimes my concern with AI,
as I have said on this program, is actually that
we're overbuilding data centers, and it's going to be similar
to what we saw with the bandwidth issues when suddenly
(09:20):
people The cost of AI is going to plummet and
we're going to have actually too much. But they mostly
got out of the way.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Well, you had a Republican House and Senate in 98.
I mean, when the Internet really got churning and burning,
things were going. You had Bill Clinton. busy with other
things while a Republican Congress under Newt Gingrich was making
smart decisions.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I also think there wasn't the, maybe Y2K kind of
took over the fear.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Do you remember? I never, I was a kid, you know,
I never thought Y2K was something to be worried. It
always struck me as absurd.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I don't remember a panic setting in over the internet's popularity.
Maybe it was because it it took a while. Like,
for those of you out there who remember when you
had to have the dial-up Internet and you would hear, like,
the rotation going on and you would hear the buzzing
and all those things, I feel like AI is coming
on faster as modern technology gets adopted faster.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Maybe that's, to a certain extent, the apprehension. I also
think it's this buck.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
A lot of people, I saw this stat this morning
and I thought, man, this explains so much in this country.
What percentage of Americans every day read for fun?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
16%.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
It's terrible. 16% of Americans read for fun today. I
think we are entering into the most manipulatable era that
any of us have ever lived in. with video and
the lack of basic facts and how quickly things go viral.
(10:53):
I think you have not seen anything. And I think, Buck,
and I understand people get fired up when I say this,
I think this is all China. I think this is
manipulating our minds because China recognizes the scale and impact
of AI victory. And I think they are seeding all
of this. Because you know who's not panicked about data centers?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
China. Yeah, this is like when we were freaked out
about climate change. And China was building a coal fire
power plant. Yeah. They could care less. And they're just
churning out everything as fast as they can and upping
their industrial capacity and stealing our tech and reengineering it. Uh, clay. Um, I,
I think first of all, on the, there's a troubling
article in the wall street journal over the weekend, uh,
(11:34):
which I would say the wall street journal does fabulous profiles.
I don't know if you know about those profiles on
radio hosts are amazing. Um, but, uh, especially when they
say those radio hosts are dominating the airwaves. That's a
nice quote about your favorite radio host. Your favorite radio hosts,
Clay and Buck. But Wall Street Journal had a piece
that kids are getting dumber, which is a thing that
(11:56):
when you click on it, there's data.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Reading scores 25-year low, right, Buck?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah. I say this all the time. People need to read.
Reading is the thing. Reading makes you a better thinker,
makes you a better speaker. I would actually go back, Clay,
and say that people that say that we did too
much pushing kids to do calculus and all this stuff, yeah, okay,
it's fine if you're good at that. But having a
(12:23):
pretty high-level reading ability or a high-enough-level reading ability and
a habit of reading is, I think, more important for
someone's intellectual development than basically anything else. Because it makes
you a better speaker. It makes you a better thinker.
You're borrowing the brains, essentially, of the most brilliant people
(12:44):
to have lived, depending on what you're reading. And even still,
just processing that. And Clay, the trouble is, it used
to be, oh... Well, people need to read, but they
also need to be able to write, to communicate and
everything else. With these AI programs now, how do you
test someone's reading comprehension? Everybody can just... Oh, what's the
reading assignment? You need me to read Moby Dick? Okay, AI,
(13:08):
tell me every important factoid from Moby Dick that I
need for this. And it breaks it all down for you.
It's like Cliff's Notes, if you remember those on steroids.
The ability to... force people or encourage people to read
is a huge thing that we need to talk about more.
In the context of AI, Clay, I think as well,
people are just going to get lazier and lazier about
some of these intellectual habits that they need to have. Nonetheless,
(13:32):
I will just say, because we got a little heat
here on the data centers, a little heat from our people,
a little heat on the flock cameras. Now, Trump hasn't
weighed in on that, to be fair, and heat on
the AI stuff. Trump is more all in on AI
than I've heard him on anything except like Deporting illegals
and building the wall and trade stuff. I mean, Trump
(13:53):
is all in on we need to win this. So
if someone needs to explain to me why Trump is
so off on this, but he's so right on so
many other things, I think it's really important. And he
understands we have to win this one. We'll talk more
about it. But it's a huge story right now. It
affects so much of the economy. By the way, it
(14:14):
affects your 401ks. You want to look at the stocks
that are really propping up the market? They're tech stocks. Right, Clay?
At some level, the U.S. economy, certainly in a short-term
sense and maybe in a long-term sense, has become a
bet on AI productivity. The only way we're going to
be able to handle the $ 40 trillion in debt, the
only way we're going to be able to continue to
grow at the pace we need to in order to
(14:37):
sustain what we're already doing. So at least that's how
I feel about it. I agree with all that. We're
going to get a lot of fire up, fired up responses.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
800-282-2882.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
And you guys can weigh in.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
And it is going to be I'm just telling you,
it feels like you are seeing a coalition of Democrats
coming together. I don't think it's I don't think it's
a surprise that this is happening in mid-September of an
election year as Democrats in many ways. fumble for a
calculated message of why they will fix what Americans are
(15:12):
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never sounded so good clay and buck owning the airwaves
welcome back in clay and buck appreciate all of you
hanging out with us uh we are rolling through the
(16:45):
monday edition of the program and We've got a bunch
of fun talkbacks. Um, let's see, Buck, you just texted
me this, the 5,000 Trump has been talking about the
$ 5, 000 dividend. Um, and it's going to be given, he
says to all adults in the U S due to
the fact that country's taking in trillions of dollars of
economic development, investment, pure success being criticized by Democrats, uh, Democrats,
(17:10):
as he says, who were hoping it never happens. It
will be as an example. Uh, and he continues along
those lines. Um, Buck, I would say in general, and
this is one of the pledges that Trump brought to
bear from his midterm convention.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Let me say this, by the way.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Midterm convention actually came off better than I thought it would.
meaning I don't remember there being any profoundly negative storylines
that came out of the Republican midterm convention. I still
think it was not the best scheduling decision to put
it head-to-head against NFL kickoff games on Wednesday and Thursday
(17:49):
night when you're trying to speak to a larger universe
of potential supporters. But within that construct, I thought it
came off pretty well. Now, I think the idea of
a $ 5, 000 basically tax rebate to all Americans, I don't
think it's very likely to happen because I am not.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Here's the truth.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I am not very optimistic on Congress being able to
do anything over the next two years, whether Republicans have
control of Congress or whether Democrats do. And by the way,
sometimes Congress doing nothing is actually better. Because at least
that way they don't screw things up. I mean, what's
your take on this?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Oh, absolutely. Sometimes gridlock on Capitol Hill is a mercy.
Sometimes it's the best possible outcome. I'll just tell you
guys this. We can discuss and debate whether there should
be some regulating of AI frontiers and breakthroughs. But the
notion that Congress is in any position to do helpful
(18:51):
or meaningful legislation on this is absurd. It's just flatly absurd.
What would that even look like? Hey, we're going to
pass a law not to allow a machine to get
so smart that it could take over everything and kill
all of us? I mean, okay. I promise you they're
not trying to do that at these companies. They're not
going to hope that that's what the outcome is. I
(19:12):
just think that that part of it is, you need
to just remember, the efforts that Congress has had in
the past, when they did want to regulate the internet
in the early days, I think One of the reasons
they didn't is because, first of all, a lot of
them didn't realize how important and how much impact it
would have. And second, they just didn't understand. They had
no knowledge of where it was going or no sense
(19:34):
of vision as to how much it would interconnect all
of our lives. I think AI is that and then some.
Johnny in Texas, be on the talkbacks. Listen to what
Johnny has to say. Hey, guys.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
This is Johnny in West Texas. I work in the
oil and gas industry, and I use spreadsheets and databases.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Sets and maps.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
And I started using AI about a year ago to
help me go through my work. And I have to
tell you, my productivity has just skyrocketed since I did.
Something that used to take me a day to go
through and summarize, I can do it in about 10
minutes or less with AI. And it's all automated and
all high-quality software. I think the effect on the economy
with these things is going to be like the Internet
was 30 years ago.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's just amazing. Yeah, Clay, I I keep we're preaching
the same thing because you and I both are. Look,
I tell you, I use Grok during the show for
stat updates or if I have to pull a factor
figure really quickly, that might be. And it might be
something like, hey, who's the guy wearing the brown hat
in that movie from the 80s that had the alien? Boom.
(20:32):
Grok gets me an answer right away. That's perfect. So
that's why it's so useful for our purposes here. But
I've used it for other things as well. I can
tell you they always say this is not medical advice.
I can tell you that you do your own research.
All that applies. You know, if you get like a
weird bug bite or something somewhere and you take a
photo with Grok. it'll tell you like what's going on.
(20:54):
It'll tell you whether you need to be concerned. I mean, the, the,
the usage of these things as tools play is amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Spider snakes around the house. If you're concerned, Hey, is
this a black widow? What, what should I be concerned
that this is a spider that has some danger in
the household, in the garage, wherever you see it. If
you see a snake, you can upload a photo of
a snake and say, Hey, how much should I be
concerned about this? Is this a venomous snake or is
it not? Um, I think all of these assets in
(21:21):
the palms of our hand. I would also say this, Buck,
much of this comes back to do you trust humans
to make life better? And there are people out there
who believe, as we have gone through, the general pessimism
of climate change or the destruction of what is good
(21:42):
in this country is really comes down to how much
do you trust Americans? How much do you trust the
world to make things better? My general proposition is our
life today, in general, is way better than it has
been in the past. Let me give you just one example.
You've never been safer from violent crime in any of
your lives in America today. It should be a story
(22:04):
that gets talked about every day. You've never been less
likely to be murdered. You've never been less likely to
see a violent crime in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Is it perfect?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
No.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
But in general, trend lines, I believe, are moving in
a very positive direction.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Also, look, there are a lot of jobs that are
kind of nonsense jobs that people who are involved in
them would be better served either focusing on one part
of the job that's more productive. I'll give you my example.
For a lot of you Gen X and old gray-beard
millennials like me, I sit right on the cusp, Clay,
(22:40):
of Gen X and millennial. I am the transition point.
Clay is very Gen X.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
I missed it by a year, thankfully. Gen X has
saved the world, even though we get no respect. If
you look legitimately at the data, Trump is overwhelmingly popular
with Gen X.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
We've talked before about the movie Office Space here. And
I think Office Space captures that zeitgeist. It was like
early 2000s, I think, is when it came out. captures
that zeitgeist incredibly well of office culture, office space culture,
cubicle farmers, if you will, and also has some really
(23:22):
philosophically interesting, it's a comedy, but has some just, you know,
it really resonates. That's all I'm telling you. I think
it's kind of a timeless piece. It's a Mike Judge movie, right?
Mike Judge is a brilliant comedian writer. But there's this
whole thing about Lumberg and the TPS reports, right? And
Lumberg walks up and he goes, hey, how's it going?
And Have you done your TPS reports? And I haven't
(23:46):
seen the movie in a while, so my impression is
not as good as it would normally be. But imagine
that instead of doing the TPS reports, you just could
do that with AI. You check them to make sure
that they seem legit, and then you could focus on.
actually meeting with people to get a sales relationship going
or actually doing the research to make something, you know, better.
(24:07):
That's the product that you're doing or, you know, focusing
on the things that matter. This is what I think, Clay,
when we talk about enhanced productivity, there's, there's just concern.
People have, oh my gosh, all these people will be
without jobs and then they won't be reabsorbed into the
economy because these jobs will, this has always, you know, the, the,
the people don't even remember a farrier, uh, is a
(24:28):
guy that would put the shoe on the bottom of
a horse, right? Okay, there are some still, but there
aren't a lot of farriers anymore. The people who would
have been farriers got involved in either other aspects of
animal husbandry, working on a ranch or whatever, or they
worked with the new automobiles that came out, or they
(24:50):
worked with the new machinery that came out. We've gone
through this so many times. We're not going to have
mass structural unemployment forever because of AI. It is a
tool that will enhance productivity forever. And people will be
using in the jobs that they have to do less.
Nobody wants to do miserable, stupid stuff. I mean, amen.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Look, I just tell you, if you want to be
optimistic about the future, get in a Tesla and let
it drive you.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Just trust me on this. Go to it.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I don't get paid anything by Tesla. I've had a
bunch of people coming up to me and saying, hey, Clay,
after you talked about using your self-driving Tesla, I went
and tried it out and I bought it. You will
feel like you are living in the future. Every single
day gets better. In the future, there are around 40,000
people a day who die in car accidents in the
(25:42):
United States. It's probably the worst, most preventable way that
people die in the United States today. You go to
the grocery store, you die in a car accident. You
take the kid to school in the morning, you die
in an accident. You have a 16-year-old, you put him
into a car. He or she, they're often teenagers in
(26:05):
car accidents and they die. Young people, healthy people, people
who would have otherwise lived for decades die. One split second,
they lose their life in a car accident. I really
believe this.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
20 years from now, 40 years from.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Now, your grandkids and great grandkids are going to look
back and see the equivalent of people dying in car
accidents of. people dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail.
They're going to say, what are you talking about? People
used to get stomach aches and just die because they
drank bad water. The idea that people died in a
(26:40):
car accident, I'm just telling you, watch these numbers. You
want a positive prediction from me. Over the next 20
and 40 years, it's going to plummet, and it's going
to become so rare that people are dying in car accidents.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Think about that.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Over the next 40 years, how many more people are
going to be alive? How many more people are going
to have productive lives? I'm telling you, if you are
pessimistic about the future, take a drive in a Tesla
self-driving vehicle. You are going to look around and you're
going to feel like you stepped into the future. I
don't care how old you are. I don't care if
you're 80 years old. My parents got in the car.
(27:13):
My 18-year-old was driving them around. They couldn't believe that
he just plugged in an address and it just drives them.
I'm telling you, no matter what your age is, we
are moving into an era where where there is going
to be so much awesomeness that in many ways, I
think people are going to have whiplash.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
And look, I get that change is discomforting.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
But good change is something we should all celebrate. And
I think the transformative nature of Tesla at a minimum
is going to right now, trust me, just go take
a test drive.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
You don't have to believe me.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Just let the car drive you around and tell me
that you don't feel like you're living in a future.
And Buck's going to buy one of these things. And
he's going to be looking around. And I'm going to
be honest with you. I trust it already so much
that I want to get it. I would be comfortable
sitting in the backseat. That's how much I trust the
self-driving Tesla that I have. And by the way, $ 50, 000
(28:08):
fully stocked. That is relative to the luxury experience of
the car driving itself. That is one of the best
buys that I have ever made. 0.99% financing. I mean,
basically free, right? When you look at what interest rates
are right now, this technology and using the Tesla AI
(28:31):
as an example is going to blow people's minds. And
I'm telling you, there's a lot of awesomeness like that
coming sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Amen.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Amen. And if you're out there.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Right now and you are trying to decide, hey, how
do we make the budget work for the fall? What
are we going to do? It's not very long until Thanksgiving,
believe it or not. Just a couple of months from
now to be Thanksgiving. And you guys all know as
soon as Thanksgiving gets here, it's a sprint right down
the end of the year all the way to Christmas
(29:06):
and New Year's. You're going to spend a lot more money.
You're going to buy a lot more presents. How about
putting your financial house in order right now? If you've
got credit card debt, over 20% you're paying right now
at credit card debt. How about personal loans? Some of
those personal loan rates are through the roof. If you
have a home right now, home prices have skyrocketed. If
(29:28):
you are fortunate enough to own a home over the
last five or six years, over the last 10 years,
certainly over the last 20 years, it's a great asset
to own.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Your own home.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
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that home, it's just piling up. And you may want
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what Perfect 10 Mortgage can do for you. They can
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Speaker 1 (30:50):
Smart, fun, sane.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
You check all three when you listen to Clay and Buck.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Welcome in hour number two.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Clay and Buck appreciate all of you hanging out with
us as we are rolling through the Monday edition of
the program. We've been talking about a lot of different
Senate battlegrounds out there.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
And one that I.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Consistently see in all the polling is a real battle
that not very many people are talking about. is our
friend Michelle Tafoya, who is in Minnesota. And every poll
that I see comes out shows this a two- or
three-point race, Michelle. And I think that's a credit to
(31:33):
what a good campaign you're running. And I want to
make sure that people are aware it's underway. We've got
a big audience in Minnesota. And so, Michelle, you're out
on the road on a day-to-day basis. Tell us what
the status of the race is so far as you
see it, who your opponent is. This is an open
Senate seat. There is no incumbent here. And why it's winnable?
Speaker 5 (31:56):
Well, where to begin? My opponent is Peggy Flanagan.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
She's the current lieutenant governor, which means for the last
almost eight years, she has been the right hand to
Tim Walz, our governor, that many people got to meet
as Kamala Harris's running mate.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
And their eight years of terror, as I want.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
To call it, has been just an abject failure here
in Minnesota. We've had the fraud that pretty much everyone
around the country has heard about, up to $ 9 billion
at this moment in fraud known. The education system has collapsed.
It used to be a crown jewel, Clay and Buck,
here in Minnesota. And scores have just been plummeting. Meanwhile,
(32:35):
crime is going up. So there are just a number
of ways in which these two folks— Walls and Flanagan,
who have been receiving taxpayer-funded paychecks for the last eight years,
have failed their taxpayers. We're here offering not necessarily a
red versus blue contrast, but a common sense versus crazy contrast.
(32:57):
She's got some crazy social initiatives as well and social stances.
And we are hearing Minnesotans from all walks come over
to our side.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
We're happy.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
We're leading among independents by double digits. And we've had
plenty of Democrats come to us, whether it was at
the state fair last week or whenever it's been, and say,
you know what, I'm ready for change.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
We're on board.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Michelle, thanks for being here with us. So you built
national notoriety and a following on helping to keep men
out of women's sports and locker rooms. As I understand it, Flanagan,
your opponent, has been on the other side of that fight.
If you could walk me through what you would want
to do on day one on that issue and what
(33:41):
you would tell a Minnesota parent of a daughter that
this is not a culture war issue, this is fundamentally
a fairness and safety issue.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
It's fairness and safety, and it's a reality issue.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
And for anyone outside of Minnesota who thinks this is.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
Not getting people off the couch, they are sorely mistaken.
And it's been interesting.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
I've had a lot of dads come to me and say,
this is the issue I got off the couch for.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
I've had moms, too.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
And it's particularly people with with with, you know, daughters
who are playing sports.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
This is just a reality check.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Right.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
You're asking us to buy into a fiction that men
who decide to identify as women are are just women.
And that's just not real. It's not scientifically real. We
could go through all the advantages and disadvantages that women
have and men have when they're competing.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Against one another.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
I'm happy to do that, but I don't think we
need to. People call this an 80-20 issue. I think
it's a 95-5 issue. But yes, Peggy Flanagan is on
that 5% side of it, as are most Democrats here
in Minnesota. They had an opportunity to to codify this
into law to keep women's sports and girls' sports here
(34:58):
for girls and women, and not a single Democrat voted
for that. I know there's precedent now, Supreme Court precedent,
so I anticipate lawsuits across a number of states looking
for this for their high schoolers in particular.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
This is also an issue in Minnesota for people who
say it doesn't happen that often. I believe last year
or the year before, a boy who said he was
a girl was the star softball pitcher in a game
that led to a state championship being won by a
girls team. The star athlete on the team was a
boy for people out there in Minnesota who may have
forgotten that. I know that turned into a big story there.
(35:35):
How much of this is Peggy Flanagan is Tim Walls?
I think this is important. I'm sure you're hammering it
quite a lot. Tim Walz's popularity overall in the state
of Minnesota has collapsed as all of the fraud has
been uncovered that much of it was connected to Somali
immigrants with the investigations that came out of YouTube of
all places. How much of Peggy Flanagan just being a
(35:59):
default stand in? In other words, she's going to argue
that she deserves a promotion based on the job that
she did with Tim Walz. How much is just Minnesotans saying, no,
you have failed us as a steward of public virtue
and treasure.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
And the idea that we would send you to D.C.
is crazy.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Well, I think people have to look at it that way,
don't they?
Speaker 4 (36:19):
You cannot sit there and say you are the Walls
Flanagan administration, not the Walls administration, the Walls Flanagan administration
for close to eight years now and say that all
of the issues only belong to the governor. Now, the
governor was going to run for a third term, and
then Nick Shirley came to town. You alluded to these
YouTube videos. Nick Shirley came to town and introduced everyone
(36:40):
to the Quality Learing Center, and that was the end
of that. So, you know, Tim Walz had to say,
you know what? I guess I won't run after all. Well,
his right hand is Peggy Flanagan. And by the way,
she was in charge for all those months and months
when Walz was out campaigning to be the next vice
president of the United States. So for her to just say, oh,
(37:01):
the buck stops with Walls and I had no part
in this is just completely unrealistic. Again, it's divorced from reality.
And so I really hope that most Minnesotans can come
to their own conclusion about this and we'll help them
do it for sure. But this was a woman who
was tied at the hip to Tim Walls and it
(37:21):
is their administration under which all of these failures have accumulated.
So Good try, Flanagan, but no, this is why you
have the nickname Peggy Fraudigan here in Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Well, you know, fraud, I like that, fraud, energy policy,
a lot of things go into grocery bills and rent.
So I want to talk to you about the cost
of living issue, Michelle, for a second, and specifically for Minnesotans.
What is your... call it elevator pitch, the 60-second version,
(37:53):
that if you're going to give for a dad who's
maybe working two jobs or a mom who's picking her
kids up after finishing her job, living in the suburbs
of Minneapolis or anywhere across the state, what would you
be focusing on if you go to the Senate to
represent them that will help with that issue of cost
of living? What would you do differently or what would
you do positively than, say, Flanagan?
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Well, let's not forget the Working Family Tax Cuts Act,
which is no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security,
no tax on overtime.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
She would love to repeal that. She was against that.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
So let's keep that in mind for everyone that thinks
that those policies are good. She's going to try to
undo them the minute she gets to the Senate. We've
got energy here. We need an all of the above
energy strategy. Peggy Flanagan is pretty much into the Green
New Deal and has even proposed getting rid of liquid
fuels by the year 2030 or 2040. So the fact
(38:48):
of the matter is we've got a lot of tractors
in Minnesota. We've got a lot of farm equipment that
needs to run on fuel. Now, whether it's biofuel, diesel, E15, fine,
but they can't run on batteries. And that's what she
would like. And again, that's going to be tremendously expensive
and inconvenient.
Speaker 5 (39:06):
There is so much regulation.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
We have had just a massive departure, an exodus of
small businesses, even large businesses, Leaving Minnesota. When businesses leave,
the job numbers decline. There aren't as many opportunities. And
that tax base goes, too. And, oh, my gosh, the
number of people coming up to us saying, my property
(39:27):
taxes are going up again.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Why?
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Well, the state ran out of all this money. They
had an $ 18 billion surplus turned into a massive deficit,
$ 6 to $ 7 billion deficit. She can't manage the money.
And she's asking for even more of it, more money
and power to her friends in St. Paul and Washington, D.C.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
That is not the way to fix affordability.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Michelle, you were on sidelines for NFL games for a
long time. The Minnesota Vikings, probably the number one topic
I would imagine in the state of Minnesota, took down
the Green Bay Packers big. I would say it's an
upset early start to the year, despite the fact that
Kyler Murray got knocked out of the game. Give us
(40:10):
your take on the Vikings win and why, if you
win the Senate race, the Vikings will also go to
the Super Bowl, which would probably, if you could guarantee that.
Would probably guarantee you a way to slide victory.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
That would seal the deal if I could do that.
Speaker 5 (40:26):
I noticed the color of the jacket today, by the way.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
Listen, it reminded me of the Texas game the night before,
the way Arch Manning and Texas came back to beat
Ohio State. And then, you know, the Vikings found themselves
in that same place, and I wasn't nearly as confident
that the Vikings.
Speaker 5 (40:41):
Would do this.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
But suddenly, their defense, their secondary in particular, just started
playing really well. And Carson Wentz. was finding Justin Jefferson.
And it just started clicking.
Speaker 5 (40:53):
This was a great start for the Minnesota Vikings. And
what a comeback.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
So, yes, everyone is thrilled all over the place. Wherever
I was driving yesterday, I saw cars parked in front
of houses. They were getting ready for that opening game
and excited about it being sort of the afternoon game.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
And it was great. This is going to be very
interesting now. I would say that.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
Kyler Murray, I don't know what his prognosis is with
this concussion. But the way that Carson Wentz finally found
himself in this rhythm and was finding Justin Jefferson in
a way that wasn't happening early on and really didn't
happen last season, this could make it very, very interesting
at the quarterback position here in Minnesota.
Speaker 5 (41:32):
It's going to be fun to watch.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Does it feel, Michelle, speaking of that, by the way,
the Vikings play the Bears, which will be a heck
of a game next week for those people out there.
Does it feel to you like sports in many ways
are healing in terms of sanity returning? I know we
just had the 10-year anniversary of Colin Kaepernick taking a knee.
You saw what happened. You mentioned men and women's sports.
(41:54):
It feels like that might be very well a 90-10 issue, 95-5.
Does it feel like sane, normal guys and gals out there,
not only in Minnesota but across the country, are finally saying,
we're done with the crazy?
Speaker 5 (42:08):
It sure feels like that.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
I see far fewer pronouns in email signatures these days,
and that is welcomed. You know, if you want to
put them there, I guess go ahead and put them there.
I don't I've always thought that was so performative and
so much of this stuff is performative.
Speaker 5 (42:24):
You know, look, I would like to think so.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
But every time I think that we're coming back to
some place of normalcy, something else happens.
Speaker 5 (42:31):
Like I find out.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
This morning that Minnesota is removing the 9-11 lessons from
high school history.
Speaker 5 (42:38):
That disturbs me greatly. How how can that happen? How
can that happen?
Speaker 4 (42:44):
We're only 25 years out. Are we going to remove
Pearl Harbor too? What else are we going to remove?
Speaker 1 (42:48):
World War II?
Speaker 5 (42:49):
World War I? The Civil War? What else are we
going to remove? I mean, this is insanity to me.
So all of these issues, they.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Keep coming back. I keep thinking maybe the pendulum's coming
in the middle. But I will say this, Clay and Buck.
In 2026, we've seen some fascinating things. We saw Indiana University,
the Hoosiers, a basketball school, win a college football national championship.
We saw both our men's and women's Olympic hockey teams
win gold. We saw our female figure skater win gold.
(43:21):
You know, maybe there are winds of change coming around
and maybe the.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
Vikings will get to the Super Bowl. I'm certainly not
going to guarantee it, but I'm not going to.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Count it out.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
My beloved Minnesota Vikings, they're going to come through huge.
They're going to come through huge. I can tell you
that much. Michelle, you're doing a great job running a
fantastic campaign. And we want to have you back before
because we think the Minnesotans are going to turn out
bigly for you, as they should. Thanks so much for
being here with us.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
People can go to MichelleTafoya.com if they want to help.
Thank you both so much.
Speaker 5 (43:54):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
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Speaker 1 (46:02):
Clay and Buck, owning the airwaves. Welcome back in, Clay
and Buck.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
We are rolling through the Monday edition of the program. Buck,
did you see... You can have some fun with a
couple of things. One, since we want to have a
positive story, can we play a little bit of the audio?
I got to give credit to 60 Minutes. They got
the Iranian pilot that we rescued, the second one that
(46:27):
had to spend over a night, 24 hours plus, on
the ground in Iran. And he told this story yesterday,
and I believe we have a cut of that. And
it was a fantastic story. If you didn't see it,
I would encourage you to go seek it out and watch.
Here's a part of it.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
Were you able to see the rescue operation of Alpha?
Speaker 1 (46:45):
I was.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
What was that like?
Speaker 6 (46:47):
Proudest dad moment of my life. With apologies to my kids,
I was deployed with many of those men and women
on that rescue operation as part of my unit. I
know they build an ethos around doing extraordinary activities so
that others may live. And to see it firsthand made
me incredibly proud of them and of Americans like them.
(47:09):
that continue to raise their hand and say, here I am,
send me.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
I think we're going to cut off there a little
bit at the end, but did you watch this clip?
I really give credit to Barry Weiss, the team. I
think Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, helped to make
this happen. We had not heard from these individuals at
all yet, and I just thought it was incredibly compelling.
The guy hit the ground, they think, between 70 and
(47:35):
100 miles an hour, broke his back, broke, I believe
it was his wrist, had all sorts of injuries. The
fact that he survived and was able to move after
his parachute didn't fully deploy. The fact that he was
able to then go to the top of that mountain
in Iran, hide out, be able to send a message.
It's an extraordinary story. First time we've had American boots
(47:56):
on the ground in Iran, I believe since 1979.
Speaker 5 (47:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
Basically.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Well, at least, I mean, officially. Yeah. Yeah. That we
know of. Yeah. No, it's an incredible story. Um, and yeah,
I do. I think at some point they'll make a
movie of it. Uh, just like they did with behind
enemy lines, which is kind of an underrated Owen Wilson
movie from, uh, like I've never seen it. Really? Oh,
it's pretty good. It's like a good watch. Gene Hackman's
(48:23):
in it. It's a, by the way, Karen, I started
watching we're halfway through, uh, young Washington. It's great.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
Good.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Good.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
It's available on streaming now. You can buy it. Prime Video. Yeah.
We just bought it because we want to support it.
So we bought it on Prime Video, but it was good.
I mean, it's not Mel Gibson's The Patriot. It's not
like a huge epic like that, but it's a good,
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Welcome everybody, Monday edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Saxton show, better known to the folks as Clay and Buck.
We begin right now, we've got a lot to discuss
with you. It is a big, I'm going to use
the Clay word, Donnybrook right now over AI, AI regulation,
(00:22):
people are scared, people say don't be scared. The president
weighing in heavy on that. We're going to dive into
this here shortly because, yes, the AI revolution is real.
It is here. The world is changing very quickly. These
are the, really now, in many ways, poised to be
the most powerful companies in the world. Some would argue
(00:44):
that they already are pretty close, if not there. So
we'll discuss that, where Trump falls on all those issues.
He's weighed in. He came back from Ireland. And he
talked a bit about golf. I saw he was discussing
things on the plane on the way back. We have
a whole bunch of clips. I watched about a 10-minute
or so Trump impromptu Q & A addressing many of
(01:07):
the big issues. Also, these big Senate races, two that
we're going to be talking about a lot. One, of course,
down in Texas. We hit that one pretty hard last week.
But today, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan said, This is going
to come down to less than probably 100,000 votes. Could
come down to less than 10,000 votes. I would put
(01:28):
a lot of money on less than 100,000 votes. I
think it's going to come down to 20K probably one
way or the other. So... Very, very tight for a
populous state like Michigan, a Senate race that has huge,
huge implications. We'll discuss. But let me let me let's
set the table here a bit with where things are on. Oh,
(01:49):
Trump also spoke about the five thousand dollar checks, rebate
rebates or whatever they're being called. He says it's happening.
If if. If the Republicans win, he doubled down on this.
He says it's happening. So just we'll discuss this. But first, Clay,
we have some truths coming out here from the president
(02:09):
of the United States. For example, this one just in
the last hour or so. The only control or guardrails
that AI needs is a strong and smart, high IQ president.
And the USA has that in spades. The Trump administration
has stopped AI people from doing bad or potentially bad
(02:32):
things like Dario of Anthropic AI. who is now pretending
to be a perfect little angel. And we will continue
to do so. We already have tremendous criminal and regulatory
power over these companies. There is a sick conspiracy going
on against AI and data centers. And the only one
(02:52):
who is happy about it is China. Whoever wins AI wins,
all caps. We are leading China and all others and
will continue to do so. Conspiracy theorists, treasonists, traitors, and leakers, beware.
Thank you to your attention in this matter. That is
a roundhouse kick to the face of anyone who thinks
(03:16):
that you're being a fool, a wimp or whatever. If
you want us to win an AI, if you believe
the data center should go where communities allow them to go,
et cetera. Big time stuff from the president.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
This feels very calculated to as we sit here in
mid-September coming up on the midterm election. It feels like
Democrats are pivoting in some way to AI is the
boogeyman and we're going to protect you from the boogeyman.
And data centers roll into this, too.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
And. Politically, it does make some sense.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
To give them credit here as much as it pains
me to do so, because I think Trump is going
to destroy the nation has.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Just not worked.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I mean, I'm not hearing very much. You correct me
if you think I'm wrong on this buck. I'm not
hearing very much anti-Trump talk from Democrats. It is affordability.
And I think that Republicans have parried on affordability fairly
well in the grand scheme of things, because basically the
reason we have an affordability crisis is the Biden era.
(04:30):
So Democrats are arguing, yes, we started the fire, but
you can trust us to put it out. And I
think a lot of people are looking at that argument
and saying, I'm not sure that I buy it. And
so now the big bad boogeyman is no longer Trump.
It's AI. It's data centers. it's we're all going to
be dead in 10 years. Now, here is where I
(04:51):
get skeptical. At some point in time, it may well
be the case that humanity ceases to exist, Buck. But
we have heard a lot in the last 20 years
even about humanity ceasing to exist. I mean, some of
us remember Y2K, which is probably the all-time biggest false
(05:12):
alarm in the history of everything's going to shut down,
the whole world's going to collapse. COVID just happened six
years ago, and many people who told you that the
world was going to end because of COVID are now
upset and just want to pretend COVID never happened. That's
their grown-up response to that. It's just, I don't even
know why you still care about that. Why are we
(05:32):
even talking about that? Climate change. Wasn't it only a
few years ago that AOC told us that all of
our beaches and all of our communities were going to
be over, like the world was going to end because
of climate change? Greta Thunberg's kind of vanished. I just
feel like, in general, the person who says this is
going to ruin the world and we're all going to
(05:54):
die and robots are going to take over or a
virus is going to kill us, they're almost always going
to be wrong. Now, one time they're going to be right,
And maybe if you believe in the apocalypse, um, but
nuclear weapons were going to kill us. Like there's been
a lot, if you're 75 and listening to us right now,
you've lived through a lot of things that were going
to be the end of humanity, including overpopulation. And now
(06:15):
we've got the opposite problem. So I, I philosophically totally agree.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
And in fact, in, uh, my book manufacturing delusion, which
is still makes a great gift as we're entering the
fall season for reading and, and, uh, holidays. Um, There's
an extinction anxiety, Clay, is one of the things that
I write about, which is a way to manipulate people.
You're all going to die because of this thing unless
you put me in charge and I'll save you from
the thing. It's longstanding, whether it's climate change, COVID, all
(06:42):
these issues. It's very it's powerful. It's essentially playing on
the fear centers that people have. And it's a real thing.
Extinction anxiety so much so that. The New York Times
and others will write articles about how people don't want
to have kids because they feel like they're adding to
the CO2 that's going to kill all of humanity. So
they don't want to replicate humanity to save humanity. It's
a mental illness, really. But on this AI issue, something
(07:04):
else is going on here. You have companies that are
having very, you know, the founders, the CEOs, the very
senior people, and these are companies that have valuations that
you're already talking about trillion-dollar companies as some of these
go public. If they're not there already, they will be there.
So these are going to be the most valuable tech
(07:24):
entities really in the world, certainly in the top 10,
top 20 companies, or whoever is the winner. Maybe I
should revise it a little bit, Clay. The winner of
the AI race, or rather if there is one company
that breaks out ahead of the others, the Google for search,
if you will, now Google's in the AI race too now,
(07:44):
but I mean 20, 30 years ago, there may be
one company that becomes the AI leader and its value
will be in the trillions of dollars and the influence
it'll have on so many things will be enormous. Clay,
why is it that some of these companies seem to
be asking for regulation right now? It seems to me
(08:07):
that instead of allowing the tech to be guided by
the people who are involved, We have this public, hey,
we need someone else to be writing the rules of
the road for us. That's why Trump is saying, look,
I'll look at this stuff. Congress regulating AI is a
guaranteed own goal, a guaranteed mess. Yes. There's no, well,
(08:30):
Chuck Schumer's going to be writing AI legislation. Chuck Schumer
can't log into an AI platform. I get so many
thoughts on this.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
First of all, The government getting involved in AI is,
I believe, an awful idea. Because to your point, most
people involved in government have no earthly idea. And I
would say one thing that the Clinton era got right, Buck.
as it pertains to big tech, was they mostly stayed
(08:59):
out of the way as the internet became a big
thing in this country. Now, there was a dot-com implosion,
as many of you know, and oftentimes my concern with AI,
as I have said on this program, is actually that
we're overbuilding data centers, and it's going to be similar
to what we saw with the bandwidth issues when suddenly
(09:20):
people The cost of AI is going to plummet and
we're going to have actually too much. But they mostly
got out of the way.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Well, you had a Republican House and Senate in 98.
I mean, when the Internet really got churning and burning,
things were going. You had Bill Clinton. busy with other
things while a Republican Congress under Newt Gingrich was making
smart decisions.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I also think there wasn't the, maybe Y2K kind of
took over the fear.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Do you remember? I never, I was a kid, you know,
I never thought Y2K was something to be worried. It
always struck me as absurd.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I don't remember a panic setting in over the internet's popularity.
Maybe it was because it it took a while. Like,
for those of you out there who remember when you
had to have the dial-up Internet and you would hear, like,
the rotation going on and you would hear the buzzing
and all those things, I feel like AI is coming
on faster as modern technology gets adopted faster.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Maybe that's, to a certain extent, the apprehension. I also
think it's this buck.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
A lot of people, I saw this stat this morning
and I thought, man, this explains so much in this country.
What percentage of Americans every day read for fun?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
16%.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
It's terrible. 16% of Americans read for fun today. I
think we are entering into the most manipulatable era that
any of us have ever lived in. with video and
the lack of basic facts and how quickly things go viral.
(10:53):
I think you have not seen anything. And I think, Buck,
and I understand people get fired up when I say this,
I think this is all China. I think this is
manipulating our minds because China recognizes the scale and impact
of AI victory. And I think they are seeding all
of this. Because you know who's not panicked about data centers?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
China. Yeah, this is like when we were freaked out
about climate change. And China was building a coal fire
power plant. Yeah. They could care less. And they're just
churning out everything as fast as they can and upping
their industrial capacity and stealing our tech and reengineering it. Uh, clay. Um, I,
I think first of all, on the, there's a troubling
article in the wall street journal over the weekend, uh,
(11:34):
which I would say the wall street journal does fabulous profiles.
I don't know if you know about those profiles on
radio hosts are amazing. Um, but, uh, especially when they
say those radio hosts are dominating the airwaves. That's a
nice quote about your favorite radio host. Your favorite radio hosts,
Clay and Buck. But Wall Street Journal had a piece
that kids are getting dumber, which is a thing that
(11:56):
when you click on it, there's data.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Reading scores 25-year low, right, Buck?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah. I say this all the time. People need to read.
Reading is the thing. Reading makes you a better thinker,
makes you a better speaker. I would actually go back, Clay,
and say that people that say that we did too
much pushing kids to do calculus and all this stuff, yeah, okay,
it's fine if you're good at that. But having a
(12:23):
pretty high-level reading ability or a high-enough-level reading ability and
a habit of reading is, I think, more important for
someone's intellectual development than basically anything else. Because it makes
you a better speaker. It makes you a better thinker.
You're borrowing the brains, essentially, of the most brilliant people
(12:44):
to have lived, depending on what you're reading. And even still,
just processing that. And Clay, the trouble is, it used
to be, oh... Well, people need to read, but they
also need to be able to write, to communicate and
everything else. With these AI programs now, how do you
test someone's reading comprehension? Everybody can just... Oh, what's the
reading assignment? You need me to read Moby Dick? Okay, AI,
(13:08):
tell me every important factoid from Moby Dick that I
need for this. And it breaks it all down for you.
It's like Cliff's Notes, if you remember those on steroids.
The ability to... force people or encourage people to read
is a huge thing that we need to talk about more.
In the context of AI, Clay, I think as well,
people are just going to get lazier and lazier about
some of these intellectual habits that they need to have. Nonetheless,
(13:32):
I will just say, because we got a little heat
here on the data centers, a little heat from our people,
a little heat on the flock cameras. Now, Trump hasn't
weighed in on that, to be fair, and heat on
the AI stuff. Trump is more all in on AI
than I've heard him on anything except like Deporting illegals
and building the wall and trade stuff. I mean, Trump
(13:53):
is all in on we need to win this. So
if someone needs to explain to me why Trump is
so off on this, but he's so right on so
many other things, I think it's really important. And he
understands we have to win this one. We'll talk more
about it. But it's a huge story right now. It
affects so much of the economy. By the way, it
(14:14):
affects your 401ks. You want to look at the stocks
that are really propping up the market? They're tech stocks. Right, Clay?
At some level, the U.S. economy, certainly in a short-term
sense and maybe in a long-term sense, has become a
bet on AI productivity. The only way we're going to
be able to handle the $ 40 trillion in debt, the
only way we're going to be able to continue to
grow at the pace we need to in order to
(14:37):
sustain what we're already doing. So at least that's how
I feel about it. I agree with all that. We're
going to get a lot of fire up, fired up responses.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
800-282-2882.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
And you guys can weigh in.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
And it is going to be I'm just telling you,
it feels like you are seeing a coalition of Democrats
coming together. I don't think it's I don't think it's
a surprise that this is happening in mid-September of an
election year as Democrats in many ways. fumble for a
calculated message of why they will fix what Americans are
(15:12):
upset about. And so anti-AI seems to be the direction
that they are going right now. And the politics of
this could get very intriguing as it continues, particularly the
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never sounded so good clay and buck owning the airwaves
welcome back in clay and buck appreciate all of you
hanging out with us uh we are rolling through the
(16:45):
monday edition of the program and We've got a bunch
of fun talkbacks. Um, let's see, Buck, you just texted
me this, the 5,000 Trump has been talking about the
$ 5, 000 dividend. Um, and it's going to be given, he
says to all adults in the U S due to
the fact that country's taking in trillions of dollars of
economic development, investment, pure success being criticized by Democrats, uh, Democrats,
(17:10):
as he says, who were hoping it never happens. It
will be as an example. Uh, and he continues along
those lines. Um, Buck, I would say in general, and
this is one of the pledges that Trump brought to
bear from his midterm convention.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Let me say this, by the way.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Midterm convention actually came off better than I thought it would.
meaning I don't remember there being any profoundly negative storylines
that came out of the Republican midterm convention. I still
think it was not the best scheduling decision to put
it head-to-head against NFL kickoff games on Wednesday and Thursday
(17:49):
night when you're trying to speak to a larger universe
of potential supporters. But within that construct, I thought it
came off pretty well. Now, I think the idea of
a $ 5, 000 basically tax rebate to all Americans, I don't
think it's very likely to happen because I am not.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Here's the truth.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I am not very optimistic on Congress being able to
do anything over the next two years, whether Republicans have
control of Congress or whether Democrats do. And by the way,
sometimes Congress doing nothing is actually better. Because at least
that way they don't screw things up. I mean, what's
your take on this?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Oh, absolutely. Sometimes gridlock on Capitol Hill is a mercy.
Sometimes it's the best possible outcome. I'll just tell you
guys this. We can discuss and debate whether there should
be some regulating of AI frontiers and breakthroughs. But the
notion that Congress is in any position to do helpful
(18:51):
or meaningful legislation on this is absurd. It's just flatly absurd.
What would that even look like? Hey, we're going to
pass a law not to allow a machine to get
so smart that it could take over everything and kill
all of us? I mean, okay. I promise you they're
not trying to do that at these companies. They're not
going to hope that that's what the outcome is. I
(19:12):
just think that that part of it is, you need
to just remember, the efforts that Congress has had in
the past, when they did want to regulate the internet
in the early days, I think One of the reasons
they didn't is because, first of all, a lot of
them didn't realize how important and how much impact it
would have. And second, they just didn't understand. They had
no knowledge of where it was going or no sense
(19:34):
of vision as to how much it would interconnect all
of our lives. I think AI is that and then some.
Johnny in Texas, be on the talkbacks. Listen to what
Johnny has to say. Hey, guys.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
This is Johnny in West Texas. I work in the
oil and gas industry, and I use spreadsheets and databases.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Sets and maps.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
And I started using AI about a year ago to
help me go through my work. And I have to
tell you, my productivity has just skyrocketed since I did.
Something that used to take me a day to go
through and summarize, I can do it in about 10
minutes or less with AI. And it's all automated and
all high-quality software. I think the effect on the economy
with these things is going to be like the Internet
was 30 years ago.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's just amazing. Yeah, Clay, I I keep we're preaching
the same thing because you and I both are. Look,
I tell you, I use Grok during the show for
stat updates or if I have to pull a factor
figure really quickly, that might be. And it might be
something like, hey, who's the guy wearing the brown hat
in that movie from the 80s that had the alien? Boom.
(20:32):
Grok gets me an answer right away. That's perfect. So
that's why it's so useful for our purposes here. But
I've used it for other things as well. I can
tell you they always say this is not medical advice.
I can tell you that you do your own research.
All that applies. You know, if you get like a
weird bug bite or something somewhere and you take a
photo with Grok. it'll tell you like what's going on.
(20:54):
It'll tell you whether you need to be concerned. I mean, the, the,
the usage of these things as tools play is amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Spider snakes around the house. If you're concerned, Hey, is
this a black widow? What, what should I be concerned
that this is a spider that has some danger in
the household, in the garage, wherever you see it. If
you see a snake, you can upload a photo of
a snake and say, Hey, how much should I be
concerned about this? Is this a venomous snake or is
it not? Um, I think all of these assets in
(21:21):
the palms of our hand. I would also say this, Buck,
much of this comes back to do you trust humans
to make life better? And there are people out there
who believe, as we have gone through, the general pessimism
of climate change or the destruction of what is good
(21:42):
in this country is really comes down to how much
do you trust Americans? How much do you trust the
world to make things better? My general proposition is our
life today, in general, is way better than it has
been in the past. Let me give you just one example.
You've never been safer from violent crime in any of
your lives in America today. It should be a story
(22:04):
that gets talked about every day. You've never been less
likely to be murdered. You've never been less likely to
see a violent crime in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Is it perfect?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
No.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
But in general, trend lines, I believe, are moving in
a very positive direction.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Also, look, there are a lot of jobs that are
kind of nonsense jobs that people who are involved in
them would be better served either focusing on one part
of the job that's more productive. I'll give you my example.
For a lot of you Gen X and old gray-beard
millennials like me, I sit right on the cusp, Clay,
(22:40):
of Gen X and millennial. I am the transition point.
Clay is very Gen X.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
I missed it by a year, thankfully. Gen X has
saved the world, even though we get no respect. If
you look legitimately at the data, Trump is overwhelmingly popular
with Gen X.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
We've talked before about the movie Office Space here. And
I think Office Space captures that zeitgeist. It was like
early 2000s, I think, is when it came out. captures
that zeitgeist incredibly well of office culture, office space culture,
cubicle farmers, if you will, and also has some really
(23:22):
philosophically interesting, it's a comedy, but has some just, you know,
it really resonates. That's all I'm telling you. I think
it's kind of a timeless piece. It's a Mike Judge movie, right?
Mike Judge is a brilliant comedian writer. But there's this
whole thing about Lumberg and the TPS reports, right? And
Lumberg walks up and he goes, hey, how's it going?
And Have you done your TPS reports? And I haven't
(23:46):
seen the movie in a while, so my impression is
not as good as it would normally be. But imagine
that instead of doing the TPS reports, you just could
do that with AI. You check them to make sure
that they seem legit, and then you could focus on.
actually meeting with people to get a sales relationship going
or actually doing the research to make something, you know, better.
(24:07):
That's the product that you're doing or, you know, focusing
on the things that matter. This is what I think, Clay,
when we talk about enhanced productivity, there's, there's just concern.
People have, oh my gosh, all these people will be
without jobs and then they won't be reabsorbed into the
economy because these jobs will, this has always, you know, the, the,
the people don't even remember a farrier, uh, is a
(24:28):
guy that would put the shoe on the bottom of
a horse, right? Okay, there are some still, but there
aren't a lot of farriers anymore. The people who would
have been farriers got involved in either other aspects of
animal husbandry, working on a ranch or whatever, or they
worked with the new automobiles that came out, or they
(24:50):
worked with the new machinery that came out. We've gone
through this so many times. We're not going to have
mass structural unemployment forever because of AI. It is a
tool that will enhance productivity forever. And people will be
using in the jobs that they have to do less.
Nobody wants to do miserable, stupid stuff. I mean, amen.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Look, I just tell you, if you want to be
optimistic about the future, get in a Tesla and let
it drive you.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Just trust me on this. Go to it.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I don't get paid anything by Tesla. I've had a
bunch of people coming up to me and saying, hey, Clay,
after you talked about using your self-driving Tesla, I went
and tried it out and I bought it. You will
feel like you are living in the future. Every single
day gets better. In the future, there are around 40,000
people a day who die in car accidents in the
(25:42):
United States. It's probably the worst, most preventable way that
people die in the United States today. You go to
the grocery store, you die in a car accident. You
take the kid to school in the morning, you die
in an accident. You have a 16-year-old, you put him
into a car. He or she, they're often teenagers in
(26:05):
car accidents and they die. Young people, healthy people, people
who would have otherwise lived for decades die. One split second,
they lose their life in a car accident. I really
believe this.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
20 years from now, 40 years from.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Now, your grandkids and great grandkids are going to look
back and see the equivalent of people dying in car
accidents of. people dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail.
They're going to say, what are you talking about? People
used to get stomach aches and just die because they
drank bad water. The idea that people died in a
(26:40):
car accident, I'm just telling you, watch these numbers. You
want a positive prediction from me. Over the next 20
and 40 years, it's going to plummet, and it's going
to become so rare that people are dying in car accidents.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Think about that.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Over the next 40 years, how many more people are
going to be alive? How many more people are going
to have productive lives? I'm telling you, if you are
pessimistic about the future, take a drive in a Tesla
self-driving vehicle. You are going to look around and you're
going to feel like you stepped into the future. I
don't care how old you are. I don't care if
you're 80 years old. My parents got in the car.
(27:13):
My 18-year-old was driving them around. They couldn't believe that
he just plugged in an address and it just drives them.
I'm telling you, no matter what your age is, we
are moving into an era where where there is going
to be so much awesomeness that in many ways, I
think people are going to have whiplash.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
And look, I get that change is discomforting.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
But good change is something we should all celebrate. And
I think the transformative nature of Tesla at a minimum
is going to right now, trust me, just go take
a test drive.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
You don't have to believe me.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Just let the car drive you around and tell me
that you don't feel like you're living in a future.
And Buck's going to buy one of these things. And
he's going to be looking around. And I'm going to
be honest with you. I trust it already so much
that I want to get it. I would be comfortable
sitting in the backseat. That's how much I trust the
self-driving Tesla that I have. And by the way, $ 50, 000
(28:08):
fully stocked. That is relative to the luxury experience of
the car driving itself. That is one of the best
buys that I have ever made. 0.99% financing. I mean,
basically free, right? When you look at what interest rates
are right now, this technology and using the Tesla AI
(28:31):
as an example is going to blow people's minds. And
I'm telling you, there's a lot of awesomeness like that
coming sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Amen.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Amen. And if you're out there.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Right now and you are trying to decide, hey, how
do we make the budget work for the fall? What
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Smart, fun, sane.
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You check all three when you listen to Clay and Buck.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Welcome in hour number two.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Clay and Buck appreciate all of you hanging out with
us as we are rolling through the Monday edition of
the program. We've been talking about a lot of different
Senate battlegrounds out there.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
And one that I.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Consistently see in all the polling is a real battle
that not very many people are talking about. is our
friend Michelle Tafoya, who is in Minnesota. And every poll
that I see comes out shows this a two- or
three-point race, Michelle. And I think that's a credit to
(31:33):
what a good campaign you're running. And I want to
make sure that people are aware it's underway. We've got
a big audience in Minnesota. And so, Michelle, you're out
on the road on a day-to-day basis. Tell us what
the status of the race is so far as you
see it, who your opponent is. This is an open
Senate seat. There is no incumbent here. And why it's winnable?
Speaker 5 (31:56):
Well, where to begin? My opponent is Peggy Flanagan.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
She's the current lieutenant governor, which means for the last
almost eight years, she has been the right hand to
Tim Walz, our governor, that many people got to meet
as Kamala Harris's running mate.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
And their eight years of terror, as I want.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
To call it, has been just an abject failure here
in Minnesota. We've had the fraud that pretty much everyone
around the country has heard about, up to $ 9 billion
at this moment in fraud known. The education system has collapsed.
It used to be a crown jewel, Clay and Buck,
here in Minnesota. And scores have just been plummeting. Meanwhile,
(32:35):
crime is going up. So there are just a number
of ways in which these two folks— Walls and Flanagan,
who have been receiving taxpayer-funded paychecks for the last eight years,
have failed their taxpayers. We're here offering not necessarily a
red versus blue contrast, but a common sense versus crazy contrast.
(32:57):
She's got some crazy social initiatives as well and social stances.
And we are hearing Minnesotans from all walks come over
to our side.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
We're happy.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
We're leading among independents by double digits. And we've had
plenty of Democrats come to us, whether it was at
the state fair last week or whenever it's been, and say,
you know what, I'm ready for change.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
We're on board.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Michelle, thanks for being here with us. So you built
national notoriety and a following on helping to keep men
out of women's sports and locker rooms. As I understand it, Flanagan,
your opponent, has been on the other side of that fight.
If you could walk me through what you would want
to do on day one on that issue and what
(33:41):
you would tell a Minnesota parent of a daughter that
this is not a culture war issue, this is fundamentally
a fairness and safety issue.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
It's fairness and safety, and it's a reality issue.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
And for anyone outside of Minnesota who thinks this is.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
Not getting people off the couch, they are sorely mistaken.
And it's been interesting.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
I've had a lot of dads come to me and say,
this is the issue I got off the couch for.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
I've had moms, too.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
And it's particularly people with with with, you know, daughters
who are playing sports.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
This is just a reality check.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Right.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
You're asking us to buy into a fiction that men
who decide to identify as women are are just women.
And that's just not real. It's not scientifically real. We
could go through all the advantages and disadvantages that women
have and men have when they're competing.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Against one another.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
I'm happy to do that, but I don't think we
need to. People call this an 80-20 issue. I think
it's a 95-5 issue. But yes, Peggy Flanagan is on
that 5% side of it, as are most Democrats here
in Minnesota. They had an opportunity to to codify this
into law to keep women's sports and girls' sports here
(34:58):
for girls and women, and not a single Democrat voted
for that. I know there's precedent now, Supreme Court precedent,
so I anticipate lawsuits across a number of states looking
for this for their high schoolers in particular.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
This is also an issue in Minnesota for people who
say it doesn't happen that often. I believe last year
or the year before, a boy who said he was
a girl was the star softball pitcher in a game
that led to a state championship being won by a
girls team. The star athlete on the team was a
boy for people out there in Minnesota who may have
forgotten that. I know that turned into a big story there.
(35:35):
How much of this is Peggy Flanagan is Tim Walls?
I think this is important. I'm sure you're hammering it
quite a lot. Tim Walz's popularity overall in the state
of Minnesota has collapsed as all of the fraud has
been uncovered that much of it was connected to Somali
immigrants with the investigations that came out of YouTube of
all places. How much of Peggy Flanagan just being a
(35:59):
default stand in? In other words, she's going to argue
that she deserves a promotion based on the job that
she did with Tim Walz. How much is just Minnesotans saying, no,
you have failed us as a steward of public virtue
and treasure.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
And the idea that we would send you to D.C.
is crazy.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Well, I think people have to look at it that way,
don't they?
Speaker 4 (36:19):
You cannot sit there and say you are the Walls
Flanagan administration, not the Walls administration, the Walls Flanagan administration
for close to eight years now and say that all
of the issues only belong to the governor. Now, the
governor was going to run for a third term, and
then Nick Shirley came to town. You alluded to these
YouTube videos. Nick Shirley came to town and introduced everyone
(36:40):
to the Quality Learing Center, and that was the end
of that. So, you know, Tim Walz had to say,
you know what? I guess I won't run after all. Well,
his right hand is Peggy Flanagan. And by the way,
she was in charge for all those months and months
when Walz was out campaigning to be the next vice
president of the United States. So for her to just say, oh,
(37:01):
the buck stops with Walls and I had no part
in this is just completely unrealistic. Again, it's divorced from reality.
And so I really hope that most Minnesotans can come
to their own conclusion about this and we'll help them
do it for sure. But this was a woman who
was tied at the hip to Tim Walls and it
(37:21):
is their administration under which all of these failures have accumulated.
So Good try, Flanagan, but no, this is why you
have the nickname Peggy Fraudigan here in Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Well, you know, fraud, I like that, fraud, energy policy,
a lot of things go into grocery bills and rent.
So I want to talk to you about the cost
of living issue, Michelle, for a second, and specifically for Minnesotans.
What is your... call it elevator pitch, the 60-second version,
(37:53):
that if you're going to give for a dad who's
maybe working two jobs or a mom who's picking her
kids up after finishing her job, living in the suburbs
of Minneapolis or anywhere across the state, what would you
be focusing on if you go to the Senate to
represent them that will help with that issue of cost
of living? What would you do differently or what would
you do positively than, say, Flanagan?
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Well, let's not forget the Working Family Tax Cuts Act,
which is no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security,
no tax on overtime.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
She would love to repeal that. She was against that.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
So let's keep that in mind for everyone that thinks
that those policies are good. She's going to try to
undo them the minute she gets to the Senate. We've
got energy here. We need an all of the above
energy strategy. Peggy Flanagan is pretty much into the Green
New Deal and has even proposed getting rid of liquid
fuels by the year 2030 or 2040. So the fact
(38:48):
of the matter is we've got a lot of tractors
in Minnesota. We've got a lot of farm equipment that
needs to run on fuel. Now, whether it's biofuel, diesel, E15, fine,
but they can't run on batteries. And that's what she
would like. And again, that's going to be tremendously expensive
and inconvenient.
Speaker 5 (39:06):
There is so much regulation.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
We have had just a massive departure, an exodus of
small businesses, even large businesses, Leaving Minnesota. When businesses leave,
the job numbers decline. There aren't as many opportunities. And
that tax base goes, too. And, oh, my gosh, the
number of people coming up to us saying, my property
(39:27):
taxes are going up again.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Why?
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Well, the state ran out of all this money. They
had an $ 18 billion surplus turned into a massive deficit,
$ 6 to $ 7 billion deficit. She can't manage the money.
And she's asking for even more of it, more money
and power to her friends in St. Paul and Washington, D.C.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
That is not the way to fix affordability.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Michelle, you were on sidelines for NFL games for a
long time. The Minnesota Vikings, probably the number one topic
I would imagine in the state of Minnesota, took down
the Green Bay Packers big. I would say it's an
upset early start to the year, despite the fact that
Kyler Murray got knocked out of the game. Give us
(40:10):
your take on the Vikings win and why, if you
win the Senate race, the Vikings will also go to
the Super Bowl, which would probably, if you could guarantee that.
Would probably guarantee you a way to slide victory.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
That would seal the deal if I could do that.
Speaker 5 (40:26):
I noticed the color of the jacket today, by the way.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
Listen, it reminded me of the Texas game the night before,
the way Arch Manning and Texas came back to beat
Ohio State. And then, you know, the Vikings found themselves
in that same place, and I wasn't nearly as confident
that the Vikings.
Speaker 5 (40:41):
Would do this.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
But suddenly, their defense, their secondary in particular, just started
playing really well. And Carson Wentz. was finding Justin Jefferson.
And it just started clicking.
Speaker 5 (40:53):
This was a great start for the Minnesota Vikings. And
what a comeback.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
So, yes, everyone is thrilled all over the place. Wherever
I was driving yesterday, I saw cars parked in front
of houses. They were getting ready for that opening game
and excited about it being sort of the afternoon game.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
And it was great. This is going to be very
interesting now. I would say that.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
Kyler Murray, I don't know what his prognosis is with
this concussion. But the way that Carson Wentz finally found
himself in this rhythm and was finding Justin Jefferson in
a way that wasn't happening early on and really didn't
happen last season, this could make it very, very interesting
at the quarterback position here in Minnesota.
Speaker 5 (41:32):
It's going to be fun to watch.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Does it feel, Michelle, speaking of that, by the way,
the Vikings play the Bears, which will be a heck
of a game next week for those people out there.
Does it feel to you like sports in many ways
are healing in terms of sanity returning? I know we
just had the 10-year anniversary of Colin Kaepernick taking a knee.
You saw what happened. You mentioned men and women's sports.
(41:54):
It feels like that might be very well a 90-10 issue, 95-5.
Does it feel like sane, normal guys and gals out there,
not only in Minnesota but across the country, are finally saying,
we're done with the crazy?
Speaker 5 (42:08):
It sure feels like that.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
I see far fewer pronouns in email signatures these days,
and that is welcomed. You know, if you want to
put them there, I guess go ahead and put them there.
I don't I've always thought that was so performative and
so much of this stuff is performative.
Speaker 5 (42:24):
You know, look, I would like to think so.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
But every time I think that we're coming back to
some place of normalcy, something else happens.
Speaker 5 (42:31):
Like I find out.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
This morning that Minnesota is removing the 9-11 lessons from
high school history.
Speaker 5 (42:38):
That disturbs me greatly. How how can that happen? How
can that happen?
Speaker 4 (42:44):
We're only 25 years out. Are we going to remove
Pearl Harbor too? What else are we going to remove?
Speaker 1 (42:48):
World War II?
Speaker 5 (42:49):
World War I? The Civil War? What else are we
going to remove? I mean, this is insanity to me.
So all of these issues, they.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Keep coming back. I keep thinking maybe the pendulum's coming
in the middle. But I will say this, Clay and Buck.
In 2026, we've seen some fascinating things. We saw Indiana University,
the Hoosiers, a basketball school, win a college football national championship.
We saw both our men's and women's Olympic hockey teams
win gold. We saw our female figure skater win gold.
(43:21):
You know, maybe there are winds of change coming around
and maybe the.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
Vikings will get to the Super Bowl. I'm certainly not
going to guarantee it, but I'm not going to.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Count it out.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
My beloved Minnesota Vikings, they're going to come through huge.
They're going to come through huge. I can tell you
that much. Michelle, you're doing a great job running a
fantastic campaign. And we want to have you back before
because we think the Minnesotans are going to turn out
bigly for you, as they should. Thanks so much for
being here with us.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
People can go to MichelleTafoya.com if they want to help.
Thank you both so much.
Speaker 5 (43:54):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
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Speaker 1 (46:02):
Clay and Buck, owning the airwaves. Welcome back in, Clay
and Buck.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
We are rolling through the Monday edition of the program. Buck,
did you see... You can have some fun with a
couple of things. One, since we want to have a
positive story, can we play a little bit of the audio?
I got to give credit to 60 Minutes. They got
the Iranian pilot that we rescued, the second one that
(46:27):
had to spend over a night, 24 hours plus, on
the ground in Iran. And he told this story yesterday,
and I believe we have a cut of that. And
it was a fantastic story. If you didn't see it,
I would encourage you to go seek it out and watch.
Here's a part of it.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
Were you able to see the rescue operation of Alpha?
Speaker 1 (46:45):
I was.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
What was that like?
Speaker 6 (46:47):
Proudest dad moment of my life. With apologies to my kids,
I was deployed with many of those men and women
on that rescue operation as part of my unit. I
know they build an ethos around doing extraordinary activities so
that others may live. And to see it firsthand made
me incredibly proud of them and of Americans like them.
(47:09):
that continue to raise their hand and say, here I am,
send me.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
I think we're going to cut off there a little
bit at the end, but did you watch this clip?
I really give credit to Barry Weiss, the team. I
think Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, helped to make
this happen. We had not heard from these individuals at
all yet, and I just thought it was incredibly compelling.
The guy hit the ground, they think, between 70 and
(47:35):
100 miles an hour, broke his back, broke, I believe
it was his wrist, had all sorts of injuries. The
fact that he survived and was able to move after
his parachute didn't fully deploy. The fact that he was
able to then go to the top of that mountain
in Iran, hide out, be able to send a message.
It's an extraordinary story. First time we've had American boots
(47:56):
on the ground in Iran, I believe since 1979.
Speaker 5 (47:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
Basically.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Well, at least, I mean, officially. Yeah. Yeah. That we
know of. Yeah. No, it's an incredible story. Um, and yeah,
I do. I think at some point they'll make a
movie of it. Uh, just like they did with behind
enemy lines, which is kind of an underrated Owen Wilson
movie from, uh, like I've never seen it. Really? Oh,
it's pretty good. It's like a good watch. Gene Hackman's
(48:23):
in it. It's a, by the way, Karen, I started
watching we're halfway through, uh, young Washington. It's great.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
Good.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Good.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
It's available on streaming now. You can buy it. Prime Video. Yeah.
We just bought it because we want to support it.
So we bought it on Prime Video, but it was good.
I mean, it's not Mel Gibson's The Patriot. It's not
like a huge epic like that, but it's a good,
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