May 20, 2025 • 38 mins
In Hour 1 of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, the hosts dive deep into the political and economic headlines dominating the national conversation. The hour kicks off with a detailed discussion of what President Donald Trump has dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a sweeping piece of legislation currently under debate on Capitol Hill. President Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, and other GOP leaders are rallying behind the bill, which includes major tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and incentives aimed at boosting the U.S. economy. The hosts predict the bill will pass, likening the political theatrics to previous debt ceiling and speaker vote showdowns. Key highlights of the bill include: Permanent extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts Elimination of taxes on tips Adjustments to SALT (state and local tax) deductions Phased elimination of EV and green energy tax credits Increased funding for defense and immigration enforcement Tightening of SNAP (food stamp) eligibility A $4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling Buck Sexton shares insights from a recent interview with the head of the National Economic Council, emphasizing that the bill could result in $7,000–$12,000 in annual savings for the average American household. However, both hosts acknowledge conservative criticism over the bill’s lack of deeper spending cuts and its continuation of certain green energy subsidies. The conversation shifts to broader fiscal concerns, including the unsustainable trajectory of the national debt. Clay and Buck argue that without reforming Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending—which together comprise over 85% of the federal budget—true fiscal responsibility is unattainable. They warn that rising interest payments on the national debt now exceed defense spending, a historical indicator of national decline. The hosts also touch on cultural and political flashpoints, including: A bizarre feud between former NFL players Robert Griffin III and Ryan Clark over Caitlin Clark, Reports of Bill Belichick’s engagement to 24-year-old, Jordan Hudson, sparking light-hearted commentary, former FBI Director James Comey’s controversial Instagram post featuring “86 47” spelled out in seashells, which many interpreted as a veiled political message against Trump. Comey’s media tour defending the post is met with sharp criticism from the hosts, who accuse him of playing semantic games and lacking accountability. The hour concludes with a preview of upcoming topics, including the arrest of a Democratic congresswoman for assaulting an ICE officer and continued fallout from the Biden administration’s handling of health disclosures.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Welcome in Tuesday edition Clay Travis Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate
all of you hanging out with us as we are
rolling through the program.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
A ton of.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Different news stories out there, the big beautiful Bill Trump
on Capitol Hill. We will talk with White House official
James Blair at two point thirty that is the third
hour eastern of this program to get the absolute latest there.
James Comey went on MSNBC to talk about his Seashells
(00:39):
by the Seashore original sin the book is out. And
then a couple of crazy stories that we may have
some fun with during the course of the program. Robert Griffin. Third, Buck,
you saw this story and you were like this, this
can't be real. Is in a feud with a guy
named Ryan Clark Caitlin Clark and they have had wife attacks.
(01:06):
Now anyway, this is crazy. Also, I don't know if
you saw this. This is not super serious, but is
a little bit crazy. Bill Belichick and his twenty four
year old girlfriend are reportedly engaged. Buck, So true love
as spring flowers bloom may well be a foot in
the Great State of North Carolina with Bill Belichick as
(01:29):
the head coach of the tar Heels.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Some ladies like granddad Bob, What can I tell you.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Seventy two year old Belichick, twenty four year old Jordan Hudson.
The heart wants what the heart wants.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Buck.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
But we begin, We begin with the big beautiful bill.
Trump is up on Capitol Hill. Here is my prediction
before we go through all this different audio. The bill's
gonna pass. This reminds me a bit of the speaker
count votes every time. Else eventually there is going to
(02:01):
be a speaker and it reminds me of the debt ceiling.
Oh my goodness, what's going to happen. The government's gonna
shut down?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Oh oh no. And then the debt ceiling gets resolved,
nothing ever really changes. It's all posturing and negotiation. So
that is my prediction of where we are, where we
are headed. But let's listen to what Trump said this
morning on Capitol Hill before the meeting. Uh. He said,
this is a big, beautiful bill, and we're gonna get
(02:29):
it done because it has tremendous tax cuts. Cut one.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Well, it's not a.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Question of all us.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
They have a tremendously unified party.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
I don't think we've never had a party like this.
There are some people that.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Want a couple of things that maybe I don't like
or that they're not going to get. But I think
we're going to have tremendous not in luck. We have
tremendous talent. This man has done an incredible job of speaking.
So I think we're going to I think we're a
very unified party. The Senate's doing great. John fun is
doing fantastically. He's a great guy. And we're gonna have
(03:01):
a bill, the one big, beautiful bill. I think it's
going to be the biggest bill ever passed, and we
got to get it done. Tremendous tax cuts for people,
tremendous incentives, tremendous regulation shuts, so all these regulations that
are so horrible.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Okay, So that was before the meeting. Speaker Johnson after
the meeting, and then I'll play some Trump. Here's Speaker
Johnson after the meeting of what happens if they don't
pass this bill.
Speaker 6 (03:25):
So they love this president. The people back home love
what he's doing.
Speaker 7 (03:27):
It's historic and everybody understands the scope and the meaning
of this.
Speaker 6 (03:31):
If we do not accomplish this mission.
Speaker 7 (03:33):
Every one of you, all the American people, are gonna
have the highest tax increase that you've ever had. And
among the debt sealing clip that's approaching and all the
other problems, this is the bill to do it.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
I think we're gonna get the dumbest president.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Okay, and then Trump after the meeting, one more cut,
five and then Buck, you can weigh in on all
the drama on Capitol.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
How big it is, how beautiful it is, so beautiful,
I can't stop looking at it. Trump says it was
a meeting of love.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
That was a meeting of love. Let me tell you
that was love in that room. There was no shouting there.
I think it was a meeting of love. There were
a couple of things that we talked.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
About, specifically where some people felt a little.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
Bit one way or the other not a big deal.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
And I covered them and wasn't so much a speech.
I covered certain points, and I think it was I'd
be very surprised. No, I didn't tell who told you?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I said I'm losing inside room.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
Get some ready question who's told you that?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
From people inside the room?
Speaker 5 (04:31):
Totally.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I never used the term I didn't stay losing I
didn't even talk about it.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
In fact, it's the opposite.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
I think we're getting.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Into that I'm not losing patients, We're ahead of schedule.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
Anybody that told you that a liar.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
I never mentioned that we're losing patients because I'm.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Not losing were ahead of such. Why didn't you go
back to your source and tell them they are liars?
If the source even existed.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
All right, So there is Trump getting into it with
a reporter. Capitol Hill, buck your take on all this.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well, one thing, I'll get into the substance of the
bill in just a second. I just when I hear
Trump with the reporters, I do think you know you
and I we know Don Junior and Ivanka. Could you
imagine Trumps your dad like trying to tell him why
you broke curfew or something like excuse me, excuse like
just he's very tough to remember. Remember when we had
Junior on at the RNC, if I remember correctly, and
(05:26):
he had gotten permission to have a few people over.
And Trump got home and there were, like he said,
one hundred people at the house and he's just like,
all of them have to be gone. Can you imagine
being at that party of the high school kid. Trump
walks in and he's like, you're all gone, Like he's
not the dad. He's not the dad that you wanted
to be rolling kegs in when he wasn't looking. I'm
(05:47):
just throwing that out there, like I can tell you know,
I met him when I was thirteen or fourteen for
the first time, and uh yeah, he was Nobody was
messing with him then, and nobody's messing with him now. Okay,
the big beautiful bill, it's huge, it's beautiful's get into it.
The biggest thing in this Clay and you know I
spoke to and you can check it out. It's on
the Clay and Buck podcast network. And then Buck Brief.
(06:08):
I spoke to the head of the National Economic Council
and I just said, my friend, you are respectfully he's
a PhD from Harvard in economics, and I said, you
are an econ guy. I didn't want to say nerd,
but I mean I think econ NERD would be respectfully.
Said here, I said, take me through the whole thing,
and so we just sat there and I went through it.
I'll give you some of the highlights of it, and
(06:30):
what is in this that really matters to people, and
why Trump is so excited about it. The first thing
is it's one of those if you don't do it,
really bad things are going to happen, meaning the tax
raises that would kick in, because the twenty seventeen Trump
tax cuts are made permanent here, so I know it's confusing,
but if the stuff, if you don't do this, they
(06:52):
would expire and you would go back to much higher
tax rates. So that would be a shock to the
system in a bad way. Right, that's one part of it.
You're extending tax cuts. You're extending tax cuts really across
a whole range, whether it's for businesses, for individual filers,
and the average American family on an annual basis. And
(07:17):
again this is from the Chairman of the National Economic Council,
and I said, let's nerd out, buddy. Let's get it's
something like seven to twelve thousand dollars of additional money
in the bank for you at the end of the year,
for the average American household. Okay, that's not I think
that's such an important because of say it's for the rich,
it's for the billionaires. The Democrats who rely on their
(07:39):
plurality of billionaires to fund their party. Are always so
upset about billionaires, right, this has nothing to do with
the billionaires. This is about the average American household. And
you're gonna have think about that. If someone told you, hey,
you're gonna have an extra ten grand next year at
the end of the year, you'd say, wow, that's great. Well,
that's what this does for the average household. So I
think that's really it's also there's the salt deduction component
(08:05):
of this, so there's the cap for this is going
to be changed. They're going to deduct more of the
regional taxes from the federal tax bill. That's actually good
for blue states. And I think that's probably for some
blue state Republicans or purple state Republicans something they're happy
to see. The big one Clay and I said, Wow,
they're actually doing this no tax on tips. That that
(08:30):
is a real thing. Remember that was so popular and
cool when Trump said it on the campaign trail that
Kamala for whatever campaign she was running, she was like, yeah,
I think we should have no tax. She just blatantly
copied it. It was totally lifted it. Yeah, totally lifted it.
She was plagiarizing Trump. One thing that I'm going to
say people on the right are annoyed about is the
(08:53):
green energy tax credits part of this. The bill's initial
tax eliminates tax credits for electric vehicles within years, phases
out credits for low carbon electricity, including wind and solar.
New requirements on these credits, but doesn't totally zero. And
there are people that are I'm just gonna tell you
what's getting criticized. They're criticizing this for not getting like
(09:14):
there should be the whole Green New Deal scam. Stuff
should all be completely root and branch taken out. Some
Republicans are saying, okay, we had Ron Johnson on yesterday
talk a bit about this. They tighten up snap benefits,
which is food stamps. I guess we don't like to
call it food stamps anymore. They're tightening that up so
they think there'll be some savings. They're limiting funding for
(09:35):
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had been Elizabeth Warren's
little fiefdom that didn't actually help consumers but was a
good way to harass disfavored businesses by Democrats, increases the
debt limit for trillion dollars, and then some substantial funding
boost for Pentagon priorities and deportation. So Clay, I think
those are the big top lines of where where this
(10:00):
thing is, where this thing stands, And the biggest critic
is it's over a thousand pages, eleven hundred pages. Just
remember that when somebody's like, I've read the bill, really
you have really? Yeah? You know, yeah, they've read the
section of the bill that their lobbyists one and included.
I'm sure, but this is on eleven hundred pages. And
(10:20):
the part of it that I think people on the right,
conservatives are a little frustrated on, is just that it's
extending the debt's dealing four trillion dollars and doesn't really
have the big meaty cuts that from dose you would
have liked to see. That's the part of it. That's
but if you're talking about if you're talking about juicing
the economy, I mean, this thing, I think is going
(10:42):
to be rocket fuel for the economy. So that's why
Trump's so excited about it. Look, it's it's not a
perfect bill. And the big issue, which if you're around
our age, meaning if you're forties or younger, that you're
going to have to deal with over the next two generations.
Is the national debts out of control. And the only
(11:03):
real way.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
We've told you this before, the only real way to
fix the national debt is to address social security and Medicare.
And if you look, I believe social Security, Medicare, defense,
and the interest. I believe that's eighty six percent of
the entire federal budget. I think that's the number.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So even if you eliminated every other part of the
federal government, eighty six percent of it would still exist
just based on those four things. And unfortunately, as our
debt grows, the percentage of interest that we have to
pay on that debt grows massively, such that we now
pay more typically unfortunately now for the debt than we
(11:50):
do national defense. And there is an argument that if
you look at history, as soon as the debt expenditures
exceed the defense expens your country, your civilization has begun
a decline. So want first segment on Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
No one in the Democrat Party, no one in the
Republican Party, really wants to address social security and Medicare.
And until those issues are addressed, then there is virtually
no opportunity to balance a budget.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
That's the reality.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Now, I agree with Ron Johnson when he says like, hey,
we should be going back to pre COVID baseline s expenditures.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
That's way better. That's the better solution here.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
In my mind, because we basically have embedded the cost
of a growing government from COVID and we're continuing. By
the way, when you have twenty one percent inflation, your
expenses are going to go up substantially just to keep
pace with the cost of goods. But this is the
reality in which we live. There's also on the good
(13:02):
side of things. So I can give you the quick
negative overview, not of the bill, but just of the
US fiscal trajectory is, uh, we are not stopping this
train at all, really, and the next I think four
years on the train are gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So there's that, right, I think. I think the Trump administration,
you're gonna see everyone's gonna be doing great, and that's fantastic,
and you know, that's nothing to sneeze at. But the
other side of it is, we haven't we haven't suffered
enough as a country from the overspending. When we've suffered enough,
people will want to do something about it, and we
This is I almost think it's a waste of time
(13:39):
to get into beyond that right now, Clay, because every
time we could say we're spending too much money, look
at the math, you can just line up. We'll just
get calls all day from everyone saying you absolutely cannot
touch my medicare. Okay, that's where we are, and that's
what Trump is said. You can't trusty if you can't
touch Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid. Basically, there's nothing to talk about. People.
(14:01):
So we haven't suffered enough as a country from the
fiscal profligacy, and that means that we just got to
keep going and keep on hoping that we grow and
grow and grow this economy. We got hundreds of billions
coming in from the tariffs, by the way, which you're hearing,
you're not getting a lot of conversation about that right
now in the media because the tariffs are going to
bring in additional revenue to the government. Remember, we used
(14:23):
to fund until the twentieth century, we funded this country's
government on tariffs overwhelmingly. I mean that was that was
the primary source. So it is a thing. But yeah,
hopefully we can grow, grow the economy much faster and
find you know, greater efficiencies that we'll be able to
kind of keep riding this thing out. But yeah, I'm
(14:46):
with you, it's not even worth the debt bomb. The
debt bomb is ticking, nobody wants to fix it, so
why whine about it. Trump is doing the best thing
he can do for the economy this year, and hopefully
that means we lead into better things than the years
after it. But yeah, that's kind of where I am
on this. It's also like having the debt ceiling fight. No,
it's not even fun to talk about it anymore because
they're just going to raise the debt ceiling. If I'm wrong,
(15:07):
let me know, trying to stir the pot a little bit.
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(17:36):
So we're talking a lot about the big beautiful bill.
It's huge. It's a fantastic bill, and that's good, you know, Clay.
We got some other things that we will hit. I
just want to give everyone a little little preview of it.
You see, James Comy is making the rounds now, yes,
and that is something that we will have some fun
(17:58):
with because I think he's second and only to Fauci
in terms of awful government employees. I think Fauci is
still number one. I think Komi's number number two for sure.
And then we have a represent remember the US House
of Representatives charged with assault. Do you see that one too?
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, they dropped the charges against the mayor. I guess
because on video the congresswoman was more significantly engaged in
pushing and shoving, and so all of that is a
is a is a mess for Democrats, and I would
just point out that what happened to Santos when he
(18:41):
was forced from office, Democrats will not do it right.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So she's charged with all these.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Criminal charges, came down yesterday, and there will not be
any demand or consequences for her from four purposes of
not being able to to stay in office. So we
will see what exactly happens with that will break all
that down for you, and more fallout of the Biden
(19:08):
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(20:25):
back in play, Travis Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate all of
you hanging out with us as we are rolling through
the Tuesday edition of the program, Big Beautiful Bill underway.
But I did want to hit this buck. Was it Friday?
Was it Friday when Sherlock Clay was on the case
(20:49):
about the seashells by the Seashore? I believe it's Friday Show,
right elementary, my dear Clay elementary. Yes, sir, Well, finally
James Comey has got and around to sitting down and
having conversations with his friends at MSNBC, and he just
doesn't understand what the big deal is. He was just
(21:12):
on a beach walk with his wife when he happened
to come across the eighty six forty seven seashells spelled out.
He doesn't understand why he's in the news at all.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Cut six, you're back in the middle of a political firestorm.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Yeah, for walking on the beach with my wife. So
I don't know how we ended up here. Never occurred
to me that it was any kind of controversial thing,
but that's the time we live in.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I mean, first of all, is he a total moron?
I mean, I mean this honestly, if you don't think,
as a former FBI agent that putting forward a eighty
six forty seven message off a twice recently attempted assassinated
(21:59):
president is going to get people to take notice when
you post a photo on your Instagram page.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Why did you do it? I mean, you have to
be a moron to actually argue this, to say nothing
of the absurdity of him sticking to the story that
somebody he has no idea who randomly decided to write
a message in seashells on the seashore that he happened
to walk past. I mean, this is next level crazy.
(22:26):
I think Comy has a particular addiction to the sophistry
of Komyism. What I mean by that is, remember when
he wrote down the notes with the Trump meeting, and
then those notes were like relayed to the newspaper and
people said they classified, and Comy was all, well, I
(22:47):
was the originator and they weren't marked classified, and got
on the like. I think he likes to play these
little semantic games where he gets to be political but
act like he's not, because there's no way he didn't
recognize what at Like, why would you understand what the
forty seven means without the context of what the eighty
six means? What what is so fascinating about eighty six
(23:09):
hundred and forty seven, James? That's what I would want
to ask him. What is it about that number? No,
eighty six forty seven is what he saw. We understand
what the implication of that was when he shared it.
But I think he knew at the time I'll be
able to share this get a bunch of attention, but
also nobody can prove my men'sraa. Nobody can prove that
(23:32):
I don't actually or that I do actually know what
this means. And so I'll get a rise out of
everybody and then go, oh, you know, did you ever
have a friend in your circle, Clay, who is the
guy who would either with you or with another friend,
make the joke that was actually like a day. Get
the person and then be like, what do you mean?
(23:52):
Like I just thought we were having fun, Like I
just that person always deserved to punch in the face
because they're the most annoying person on the planet, Like
they know what doing you know? And call me as
that guy the goal I thought. I thought I was
just sharing a seashells photo. I think he likes to
do this, this this he gets some thrill out of
(24:13):
playing these little word games with everybody.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
And then he continued, He said he thought it was
a clever way to express a political viewpoint. This is
cut seven Komy, sixty four year old man on Instagram
taking pecked pictures of seashells by the seashore, talking about
it on MSNBC.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
This is cut seven, just.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Again and again and again. I really thought that I
was done. I was in another life. I was a
grandfather and an author, wearing you know, sweaters and jeans,
and then they went for a walk on the beach
and posted a silly picture of shells that I thought
was a clever way to express a political viewpoint. And
actually I still think it is. I don't see it
the way some people are still saying it is. But again,
(24:59):
I don't want any part of any violence. I've never
been associated with violence, and so that's why I took
it down.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
I mean, I just again, I think your argument of oh,
you know, claiming that he didn't know what he was doing,
he's just a moron. And I wonder how many of
these people are in our federal governments in general. The
fact that this guy rose all the way to the
top of the FBI is staggering to me because you
(25:30):
would think in most professions you rise to a higher
level by having some degree of competence. I feel like
in our federal government that is just not the case,
and lots of people rise to positions of prominence simply
by avoiding getting noticed. And then you just keep kind
of sliding up up the scale of achievement. And I
(25:56):
just look at him, and I mean, he just seems
to me to be just a total non entity. And remember,
this is still a big deal. And I know we've
got cash Pateel, and I know we got Dan Bongino
at the FBI, and I trust those guys to be
doing a really good job.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
But one of the great unsolved mysteries of twenty twenty
is who ordered the code red on the Hunter Biden laptop.
In other words, who knew that it was real and
allowed the shutting down of the New York Post story
and all these things. We still have no idea. I
presume those people are there, But to me, I can
(26:34):
tell you that started the whole Russia collusion mess and
there were no consequences. You have to remember that in
all of these places, there is a culture, a daily
culture in the CIA, in the FBI of having meetings
where you talk about sensitive things, and there is no
note taker per se, there is no recording of the
(26:56):
meeting obviously. In fact, you're not even allowed to bring
your phone into the room, so it's not even possible
for someone to make a surreptitious or unless they want
to commit a crime, surreptitious recording. So it's very easy
to have conversations and have it trickle down through one
of these entities for which there will be no record,
(27:18):
And that's one of the challenges here. I mean, I
can tell you that I know this, You know this
from a law enforcement side, for sure, anything you text
or email is effectively record for a court to draw upon. Well,
they don't record your phone calls, So a lot of
things get talked about on the phone that are maybe
in the gray area of what we can and can't
(27:39):
do in law enforcement, with everyone knowing that that's not
going to be able to be subpoenut unless they're actively
If they're already actively monitoring your phone, it means you're
in a whole lot of trouble for something else. So
there are I'm just saying when people see like Bongino
and Patel at the FBI, they're trying to uncover a
(28:00):
massive amount of problems and fix those problems. And also
the people there are pretty good at hiding problems and
hiding their tracks if they want to be That's really
what I'm It's not as simple as like, oh, we
have the you know, like to your point at the
Code Red like, there was never a Code Red meeting.
We need to make sure that Biden wins this election.
(28:20):
But could you have had four or five of the
top people in the FBI meeting Comy's office and be like,
make sure that our people know that, you know, we're
weighing on this in the following or whatever. Absolutely, And
that's how that stuff really gets done. It's a little
bit like a mafia family, you know, the mafia. Don
He doesn't write out in an email like I need
you to take out Tommy Tuto's, but he whispers to
(28:42):
somebody about Tommy Tuto's and then he sleeps with the
fishes well. And then also, I mean, and this is
something that I think is not unique to the FBI,
but you know it having been in the CIA. There's
a lot of guys and gals that are working in
the FBI right now that believe their job is permanent
and all they have to do is ride out the
(29:03):
storm of Trump for the next couple of years and
they go right back to doing what they were doing before, right,
I mean that they are. And also I think a
lot of them even given the efforts to rein that in.
We're finding out that as long as they have activists,
left wing judges on their side, maybe they are unfirable.
You know, that still remains to be seen in a
(29:24):
lot of these cases. So you know, they've been operating
under this assumption, and Trump is trying to make sure
that that assumption changes, or I should say, is shown
to be wrong. It has not been shown to be wrong.
How many people have been frog marched out of the
FBI for malfeasance relating to Russia collusion or anything like
that effectively? I mean none. I think that McCabe was fired,
(29:45):
and I believe he's had his full pension restored, so
he was going to be retiring pretty soon anyway, So
you could say, oh, he was fired and he was yeah,
but he's a hero to Democrats. He's got a book deal,
speaking circuit, and his pension's restored. So but if you
were lower level in the bowels of the bureaucracy, are
you right to think that administrations come and go, but
the bureau is forever. I will look, Cash and Dan
(30:10):
have been there for one hundred you know, roughly one
hundred days or whatever it is. Now, it's very early,
but I'm just saying, if you were one of those
people who was involved in this, who's still sitting there
drawing your paycheck and doing whatever you want you right now,
think you're probably still good to go. Maybe that changes.
And also they don't know who they can trust, which
(30:31):
is a huge part of this, right how many people
are actually trying to implement what they are doing. It's
a super big challenge, and I don't think it's unique
to the FBI. I think it's the reality is the
deep state. Swamp.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Employees by and large think that presidents are inconsequential to
their overall ability to maintain their job and do whatever
they think is important. That's why, frankly, from the get go,
I've felt pretty confident that we could eliminate half of
all federal employees and not have any actual, well disruption
in our day to day life as non federal employees.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
One part of this that everyone should just understand, I think,
and it goes to why it's so hard to reform this.
The federal government, the bureaucracy in a lot of ways,
is a jobs program. There's a lot of jobs that
everybody knows aren't necessary but somebody's getting a paycheck to
(31:31):
do to show up and pretend to be doing the thing.
And there's enough of those people that and you know,
they have families, and they have they have votes, and
they have the ability to make their voices heard. You know,
it gets very it gets very difficult politically speaking to
rain that stuff in. Again, I'm not saying it won't happen,
(31:51):
but I've I said along even about Elon, who you
just told me is saying he's pretty much done. I
was like, Elon is used to being, in the best
possible way, private set dictator, like we're doing this, you're
not on board, you are fired. He has tried to
bring that discipline to the federal government and he's told
us a lot of critical stuff and he's shown the
(32:13):
public a lot, but you know what the bureaucracy has
said so far, we'll see. That's the frustration I think
of anyone. If you aren't in charge like Elon has
been in charge at SpaceX and Tesla and the Boring
Company and now XAI, he can make decisions. A lot
(32:33):
of people don't want to make decisions in the federal government.
They don't really want to do anything, and it's hard
to get the federal government to move in any particular
direction because the big sort of hot bound of bureaucracy.
I mean, I could tell you one of the big
problems they have, and they had this at the CIA
when I was there, and this isn't self serving, but
they had this huge five to seven year exodus problem
(32:56):
of people do this stuff for five to seven years
and then and they it depends, you know, there's a
lot of reasons. Sometimes they want to get advanced degree,
or they you know, they want to just transition private sector.
But a lot of people leave the federal government if
they go in especially the really the intel community, because
people go like, if you're working at the Department of Agriculture,
you're probably just riding that out for until you get
you know, all the way to right environment. But in
(33:18):
the in the intel agencies, and I'm sure the same
thing is true, maybe less so with the FBI, but
they were losing people five to seven years. And one
of the big challenges is when you have so many
people who are effectively replicating and even in a sense
competing with your work, because you're all doing the same
thing and trying to get the same decision makers to
pay attention to you. What value are you really bringing
(33:40):
day in a day out. So it's like after after five, six, seven,
maybe eight years, you've done cool stuff, you've learned cool stuff,
but then you have to show up and be like,
what am I really adding? And you know, if you
sit there and you're the guy at the you know,
now I'm really telling you what it's like. You sit
there and your analysts, you know, I'm making up the
numbers because this stuff is not you know, but you're
analy number fifty who's working like the China Taiwan issue
(34:03):
from your branch, and there's you know, then there's the
d d i A has one hundred analysts and they're
looking at the China time. And at the end of
the day, you're all trying to tell the Secretary of
Defense of the President, you know, what you think the best,
what you know. At some point you're just like, what
am I doing here? And that's really the problem they
have because you ask, You're like, what am I doing?
And people say, oh, what about the field The field agents,
(34:24):
you know, the case officers have the same problem trying
to get the same kind of reports, the same kind
of information to the same hands. So it's very hard
to keep people when you're like, what exactly are we
doing here?
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Sounds like Milton from Office Space. Yeah, alright, sorry, that's
the head boss, not Milton, poor Milton with his stapler.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, Milton. Milton is the is the
guy with the stapler, Milton West.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
But the guy who's the wumbarumba mumbert.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Is what exactly is it you would say that you
do here? That's no, that's that's not that's the two bobs.
You're getting the two bobs mixed all the t bdged
I need to watch the efficiency experts. Yes, and some
might judge movies a fantastic movie, by the way. Yeah,
they're the ones that say, what would you say you
do here? Devastating question.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
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Speaker 1 (36:35):
All right, welcome back into Clay and Buck. Uh so
we've got a quick turn here. We'll get back into
more of the stuff on Capitol Hill, big beautiful bill.
Some updates. There also this arrest of a member of
Congress for an assault on an ice of an ice officer.
Immigration and Customs. Of course, we'll talk about that. But
(36:56):
I don't know if you know this yet, but if
you were to go to crocketcoff and it is a
fantastic place, a website that I'm hoping all of you
have visited at some point. You will see there's the
most amazing and delicious coffee you'll find anywhere, including the
new Mushroom Blend. Now, mushroom coffee is different. It doesn't
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hot water. It's got instructions, it's delicious, really interesting, a
(37:19):
lot of health benefits for it that people really really love.
And then we've also I'm just making sure Clay as
we do this, Yep, the Over Mountain Club mug, the
new Crockett Diner mug. We've got awesome new mugs which
we will start using here on video on the show.
But I'm telling you Over Mountain Club, Clay, you know
the history of this. Tell everybody the history of the
(37:40):
Over Mountain Men. Well, so, first of all, these mugs
are phenomenal because I just got them. They're oversized.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
If you're out there, I don't know what the deal
is with the tiny coffee mugs where you barely can
get a cup of coffee and they fit in. This
is like how we want oversized mugs that connect with
the history of Davy Crocket and the brave explorers who
were willing to put their lives on the line and
go places people had never been before.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
So join the over Mountain Club. The over Mountain Men
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and Tennessee who played a key role in the American Revolution,
particularly the Battle of King's Mountain in seventeen point eighty.
So go join the over Mountain Club because it's cool.
Crocketcoffee dot Com, Go get some coffee.
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Welcome in Tuesday edition Clay Travis Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate
all of you hanging out with us as we are
rolling through the program.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
A ton of.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Different news stories out there, the big beautiful Bill Trump
on Capitol Hill. We will talk with White House official
James Blair at two point thirty that is the third
hour eastern of this program to get the absolute latest there.
James Comey went on MSNBC to talk about his Seashells
(00:39):
by the Seashore original sin the book is out. And
then a couple of crazy stories that we may have
some fun with during the course of the program. Robert Griffin. Third, Buck,
you saw this story and you were like this, this
can't be real. Is in a feud with a guy
named Ryan Clark Caitlin Clark and they have had wife attacks.
(01:06):
Now anyway, this is crazy. Also, I don't know if
you saw this. This is not super serious, but is
a little bit crazy. Bill Belichick and his twenty four
year old girlfriend are reportedly engaged. Buck, So true love
as spring flowers bloom may well be a foot in
the Great State of North Carolina with Bill Belichick as
(01:29):
the head coach of the tar Heels.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Some ladies like granddad Bob, What can I tell you.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Seventy two year old Belichick, twenty four year old Jordan Hudson.
The heart wants what the heart wants.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Buck.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
But we begin, We begin with the big beautiful bill.
Trump is up on Capitol Hill. Here is my prediction
before we go through all this different audio. The bill's
gonna pass. This reminds me a bit of the speaker
count votes every time. Else eventually there is going to
(02:01):
be a speaker and it reminds me of the debt ceiling.
Oh my goodness, what's going to happen. The government's gonna
shut down?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Oh oh no. And then the debt ceiling gets resolved,
nothing ever really changes. It's all posturing and negotiation. So
that is my prediction of where we are, where we
are headed. But let's listen to what Trump said this
morning on Capitol Hill before the meeting. Uh. He said,
this is a big, beautiful bill, and we're gonna get
(02:29):
it done because it has tremendous tax cuts. Cut one.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Well, it's not a.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Question of all us.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
They have a tremendously unified party.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
I don't think we've never had a party like this.
There are some people that.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Want a couple of things that maybe I don't like
or that they're not going to get. But I think
we're going to have tremendous not in luck. We have
tremendous talent. This man has done an incredible job of speaking.
So I think we're going to I think we're a
very unified party. The Senate's doing great. John fun is
doing fantastically. He's a great guy. And we're gonna have
(03:01):
a bill, the one big, beautiful bill. I think it's
going to be the biggest bill ever passed, and we
got to get it done. Tremendous tax cuts for people,
tremendous incentives, tremendous regulation shuts, so all these regulations that
are so horrible.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Okay, So that was before the meeting. Speaker Johnson after
the meeting, and then I'll play some Trump. Here's Speaker
Johnson after the meeting of what happens if they don't
pass this bill.
Speaker 6 (03:25):
So they love this president. The people back home love
what he's doing.
Speaker 7 (03:27):
It's historic and everybody understands the scope and the meaning
of this.
Speaker 6 (03:31):
If we do not accomplish this mission.
Speaker 7 (03:33):
Every one of you, all the American people, are gonna
have the highest tax increase that you've ever had. And
among the debt sealing clip that's approaching and all the
other problems, this is the bill to do it.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
I think we're gonna get the dumbest president.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Okay, and then Trump after the meeting, one more cut,
five and then Buck, you can weigh in on all
the drama on Capitol.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
How big it is, how beautiful it is, so beautiful,
I can't stop looking at it. Trump says it was
a meeting of love.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
That was a meeting of love. Let me tell you
that was love in that room. There was no shouting there.
I think it was a meeting of love. There were
a couple of things that we talked.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
About, specifically where some people felt a little.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
Bit one way or the other not a big deal.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
And I covered them and wasn't so much a speech.
I covered certain points, and I think it was I'd
be very surprised. No, I didn't tell who told you?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I said I'm losing inside room.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
Get some ready question who's told you that?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
From people inside the room?
Speaker 5 (04:31):
Totally.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I never used the term I didn't stay losing I
didn't even talk about it.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
In fact, it's the opposite.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
I think we're getting.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Into that I'm not losing patients, We're ahead of schedule.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
Anybody that told you that a liar.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
I never mentioned that we're losing patients because I'm.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Not losing were ahead of such. Why didn't you go
back to your source and tell them they are liars?
If the source even existed.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
All right, So there is Trump getting into it with
a reporter. Capitol Hill, buck your take on all this.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well, one thing, I'll get into the substance of the
bill in just a second. I just when I hear
Trump with the reporters, I do think you know you
and I we know Don Junior and Ivanka. Could you
imagine Trumps your dad like trying to tell him why
you broke curfew or something like excuse me, excuse like
just he's very tough to remember. Remember when we had
Junior on at the RNC, if I remember correctly, and
(05:26):
he had gotten permission to have a few people over.
And Trump got home and there were, like he said,
one hundred people at the house and he's just like,
all of them have to be gone. Can you imagine
being at that party of the high school kid. Trump
walks in and he's like, you're all gone, Like he's
not the dad. He's not the dad that you wanted
to be rolling kegs in when he wasn't looking. I'm
(05:47):
just throwing that out there, like I can tell you know,
I met him when I was thirteen or fourteen for
the first time, and uh yeah, he was Nobody was
messing with him then, and nobody's messing with him now. Okay,
the big beautiful bill, it's huge, it's beautiful's get into it.
The biggest thing in this Clay and you know I
spoke to and you can check it out. It's on
the Clay and Buck podcast network. And then Buck Brief.
(06:08):
I spoke to the head of the National Economic Council
and I just said, my friend, you are respectfully he's
a PhD from Harvard in economics, and I said, you
are an econ guy. I didn't want to say nerd,
but I mean I think econ NERD would be respectfully.
Said here, I said, take me through the whole thing,
and so we just sat there and I went through it.
I'll give you some of the highlights of it, and
(06:30):
what is in this that really matters to people, and
why Trump is so excited about it. The first thing
is it's one of those if you don't do it,
really bad things are going to happen, meaning the tax
raises that would kick in, because the twenty seventeen Trump
tax cuts are made permanent here, so I know it's confusing,
but if the stuff, if you don't do this, they
(06:52):
would expire and you would go back to much higher
tax rates. So that would be a shock to the
system in a bad way. Right, that's one part of it.
You're extending tax cuts. You're extending tax cuts really across
a whole range, whether it's for businesses, for individual filers,
and the average American family on an annual basis. And
(07:17):
again this is from the Chairman of the National Economic Council,
and I said, let's nerd out, buddy. Let's get it's
something like seven to twelve thousand dollars of additional money
in the bank for you at the end of the year,
for the average American household. Okay, that's not I think
that's such an important because of say it's for the rich,
it's for the billionaires. The Democrats who rely on their
(07:39):
plurality of billionaires to fund their party. Are always so
upset about billionaires, right, this has nothing to do with
the billionaires. This is about the average American household. And
you're gonna have think about that. If someone told you, hey,
you're gonna have an extra ten grand next year at
the end of the year, you'd say, wow, that's great. Well,
that's what this does for the average household. So I
think that's really it's also there's the salt deduction component
(08:05):
of this, so there's the cap for this is going
to be changed. They're going to deduct more of the
regional taxes from the federal tax bill. That's actually good
for blue states. And I think that's probably for some
blue state Republicans or purple state Republicans something they're happy
to see. The big one Clay and I said, Wow,
they're actually doing this no tax on tips. That that
(08:30):
is a real thing. Remember that was so popular and
cool when Trump said it on the campaign trail that
Kamala for whatever campaign she was running, she was like, yeah,
I think we should have no tax. She just blatantly
copied it. It was totally lifted it. Yeah, totally lifted it.
She was plagiarizing Trump. One thing that I'm going to
say people on the right are annoyed about is the
(08:53):
green energy tax credits part of this. The bill's initial
tax eliminates tax credits for electric vehicles within years, phases
out credits for low carbon electricity, including wind and solar.
New requirements on these credits, but doesn't totally zero. And
there are people that are I'm just gonna tell you
what's getting criticized. They're criticizing this for not getting like
(09:14):
there should be the whole Green New Deal scam. Stuff
should all be completely root and branch taken out. Some
Republicans are saying, okay, we had Ron Johnson on yesterday
talk a bit about this. They tighten up snap benefits,
which is food stamps. I guess we don't like to
call it food stamps anymore. They're tightening that up so
they think there'll be some savings. They're limiting funding for
(09:35):
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had been Elizabeth Warren's
little fiefdom that didn't actually help consumers but was a
good way to harass disfavored businesses by Democrats, increases the
debt limit for trillion dollars, and then some substantial funding
boost for Pentagon priorities and deportation. So Clay, I think
those are the big top lines of where where this
(10:00):
thing is, where this thing stands, And the biggest critic
is it's over a thousand pages, eleven hundred pages. Just
remember that when somebody's like, I've read the bill, really
you have really? Yeah? You know, yeah, they've read the
section of the bill that their lobbyists one and included.
I'm sure, but this is on eleven hundred pages. And
(10:20):
the part of it that I think people on the right,
conservatives are a little frustrated on, is just that it's
extending the debt's dealing four trillion dollars and doesn't really
have the big meaty cuts that from dose you would
have liked to see. That's the part of it. That's
but if you're talking about if you're talking about juicing
the economy, I mean, this thing, I think is going
(10:42):
to be rocket fuel for the economy. So that's why
Trump's so excited about it. Look, it's it's not a
perfect bill. And the big issue, which if you're around
our age, meaning if you're forties or younger, that you're
going to have to deal with over the next two generations.
Is the national debts out of control. And the only
(11:03):
real way.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
We've told you this before, the only real way to
fix the national debt is to address social security and Medicare.
And if you look, I believe social Security, Medicare, defense,
and the interest. I believe that's eighty six percent of
the entire federal budget. I think that's the number.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So even if you eliminated every other part of the
federal government, eighty six percent of it would still exist
just based on those four things. And unfortunately, as our
debt grows, the percentage of interest that we have to
pay on that debt grows massively, such that we now
pay more typically unfortunately now for the debt than we
(11:50):
do national defense. And there is an argument that if
you look at history, as soon as the debt expenditures
exceed the defense expens your country, your civilization has begun
a decline. So want first segment on Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
No one in the Democrat Party, no one in the
Republican Party, really wants to address social security and Medicare.
And until those issues are addressed, then there is virtually
no opportunity to balance a budget.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
That's the reality.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Now, I agree with Ron Johnson when he says like, hey,
we should be going back to pre COVID baseline s expenditures.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
That's way better. That's the better solution here.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
In my mind, because we basically have embedded the cost
of a growing government from COVID and we're continuing. By
the way, when you have twenty one percent inflation, your
expenses are going to go up substantially just to keep
pace with the cost of goods. But this is the
reality in which we live. There's also on the good
(13:02):
side of things. So I can give you the quick
negative overview, not of the bill, but just of the
US fiscal trajectory is, uh, we are not stopping this
train at all, really, and the next I think four
years on the train are gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So there's that, right, I think. I think the Trump administration,
you're gonna see everyone's gonna be doing great, and that's fantastic,
and you know, that's nothing to sneeze at. But the
other side of it is, we haven't we haven't suffered
enough as a country from the overspending. When we've suffered enough,
people will want to do something about it, and we
This is I almost think it's a waste of time
(13:39):
to get into beyond that right now, Clay, because every
time we could say we're spending too much money, look
at the math, you can just line up. We'll just
get calls all day from everyone saying you absolutely cannot
touch my medicare. Okay, that's where we are, and that's
what Trump is said. You can't trusty if you can't
touch Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid. Basically, there's nothing to talk about. People.
(14:01):
So we haven't suffered enough as a country from the
fiscal profligacy, and that means that we just got to
keep going and keep on hoping that we grow and
grow and grow this economy. We got hundreds of billions
coming in from the tariffs, by the way, which you're hearing,
you're not getting a lot of conversation about that right
now in the media because the tariffs are going to
bring in additional revenue to the government. Remember, we used
(14:23):
to fund until the twentieth century, we funded this country's
government on tariffs overwhelmingly. I mean that was that was
the primary source. So it is a thing. But yeah,
hopefully we can grow, grow the economy much faster and
find you know, greater efficiencies that we'll be able to
kind of keep riding this thing out. But yeah, I'm
(14:46):
with you, it's not even worth the debt bomb. The
debt bomb is ticking, nobody wants to fix it, so
why whine about it. Trump is doing the best thing
he can do for the economy this year, and hopefully
that means we lead into better things than the years
after it. But yeah, that's kind of where I am
on this. It's also like having the debt ceiling fight. No,
it's not even fun to talk about it anymore because
they're just going to raise the debt ceiling. If I'm wrong,
(15:07):
let me know, trying to stir the pot a little bit.
Eight hundred and two two two eight eight two. Look,
we admired pure Talk for a lot of reasons here,
and not just because they provide the single best wireless service.
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(17:36):
So we're talking a lot about the big beautiful bill.
It's huge. It's a fantastic bill, and that's good, you know, Clay.
We got some other things that we will hit. I
just want to give everyone a little little preview of it.
You see, James Comy is making the rounds now, yes,
and that is something that we will have some fun
(17:58):
with because I think he's second and only to Fauci
in terms of awful government employees. I think Fauci is
still number one. I think Komi's number number two for sure.
And then we have a represent remember the US House
of Representatives charged with assault. Do you see that one too?
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, they dropped the charges against the mayor. I guess
because on video the congresswoman was more significantly engaged in
pushing and shoving, and so all of that is a
is a is a mess for Democrats, and I would
just point out that what happened to Santos when he
(18:41):
was forced from office, Democrats will not do it right.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So she's charged with all these.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Criminal charges, came down yesterday, and there will not be
any demand or consequences for her from four purposes of
not being able to to stay in office. So we
will see what exactly happens with that will break all
that down for you, and more fallout of the Biden
(19:08):
health lies. Much to discuss there as well. But you
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(20:25):
back in play, Travis Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate all of
you hanging out with us as we are rolling through
the Tuesday edition of the program, Big Beautiful Bill underway.
But I did want to hit this buck. Was it Friday?
Was it Friday when Sherlock Clay was on the case
(20:49):
about the seashells by the Seashore? I believe it's Friday Show,
right elementary, my dear Clay elementary. Yes, sir, Well, finally
James Comey has got and around to sitting down and
having conversations with his friends at MSNBC, and he just
doesn't understand what the big deal is. He was just
(21:12):
on a beach walk with his wife when he happened
to come across the eighty six forty seven seashells spelled out.
He doesn't understand why he's in the news at all.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Cut six, you're back in the middle of a political firestorm.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Yeah, for walking on the beach with my wife. So
I don't know how we ended up here. Never occurred
to me that it was any kind of controversial thing,
but that's the time we live in.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I mean, first of all, is he a total moron?
I mean, I mean this honestly, if you don't think,
as a former FBI agent that putting forward a eighty
six forty seven message off a twice recently attempted assassinated
(21:59):
president is going to get people to take notice when
you post a photo on your Instagram page.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Why did you do it? I mean, you have to
be a moron to actually argue this, to say nothing
of the absurdity of him sticking to the story that
somebody he has no idea who randomly decided to write
a message in seashells on the seashore that he happened
to walk past. I mean, this is next level crazy.
(22:26):
I think Comy has a particular addiction to the sophistry
of Komyism. What I mean by that is, remember when
he wrote down the notes with the Trump meeting, and
then those notes were like relayed to the newspaper and
people said they classified, and Comy was all, well, I
(22:47):
was the originator and they weren't marked classified, and got
on the like. I think he likes to play these
little semantic games where he gets to be political but
act like he's not, because there's no way he didn't
recognize what at Like, why would you understand what the
forty seven means without the context of what the eighty
six means? What what is so fascinating about eighty six
(23:09):
hundred and forty seven, James? That's what I would want
to ask him. What is it about that number? No,
eighty six forty seven is what he saw. We understand
what the implication of that was when he shared it.
But I think he knew at the time I'll be
able to share this get a bunch of attention, but
also nobody can prove my men'sraa. Nobody can prove that
(23:32):
I don't actually or that I do actually know what
this means. And so I'll get a rise out of
everybody and then go, oh, you know, did you ever
have a friend in your circle, Clay, who is the
guy who would either with you or with another friend,
make the joke that was actually like a day. Get
the person and then be like, what do you mean?
(23:52):
Like I just thought we were having fun, Like I
just that person always deserved to punch in the face
because they're the most annoying person on the planet, Like
they know what doing you know? And call me as
that guy the goal I thought. I thought I was
just sharing a seashells photo. I think he likes to
do this, this this he gets some thrill out of
(24:13):
playing these little word games with everybody.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
And then he continued, He said he thought it was
a clever way to express a political viewpoint. This is
cut seven Komy, sixty four year old man on Instagram
taking pecked pictures of seashells by the seashore, talking about
it on MSNBC.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
This is cut seven, just.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Again and again and again. I really thought that I
was done. I was in another life. I was a
grandfather and an author, wearing you know, sweaters and jeans,
and then they went for a walk on the beach
and posted a silly picture of shells that I thought
was a clever way to express a political viewpoint. And
actually I still think it is. I don't see it
the way some people are still saying it is. But again,
(24:59):
I don't want any part of any violence. I've never
been associated with violence, and so that's why I took
it down.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
I mean, I just again, I think your argument of oh,
you know, claiming that he didn't know what he was doing,
he's just a moron. And I wonder how many of
these people are in our federal governments in general. The
fact that this guy rose all the way to the
top of the FBI is staggering to me because you
(25:30):
would think in most professions you rise to a higher
level by having some degree of competence. I feel like
in our federal government that is just not the case,
and lots of people rise to positions of prominence simply
by avoiding getting noticed. And then you just keep kind
of sliding up up the scale of achievement. And I
(25:56):
just look at him, and I mean, he just seems
to me to be just a total non entity. And remember,
this is still a big deal. And I know we've
got cash Pateel, and I know we got Dan Bongino
at the FBI, and I trust those guys to be
doing a really good job.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
But one of the great unsolved mysteries of twenty twenty
is who ordered the code red on the Hunter Biden laptop.
In other words, who knew that it was real and
allowed the shutting down of the New York Post story
and all these things. We still have no idea. I
presume those people are there, But to me, I can
(26:34):
tell you that started the whole Russia collusion mess and
there were no consequences. You have to remember that in
all of these places, there is a culture, a daily
culture in the CIA, in the FBI of having meetings
where you talk about sensitive things, and there is no
note taker per se, there is no recording of the
(26:56):
meeting obviously. In fact, you're not even allowed to bring
your phone into the room, so it's not even possible
for someone to make a surreptitious or unless they want
to commit a crime, surreptitious recording. So it's very easy
to have conversations and have it trickle down through one
of these entities for which there will be no record,
(27:18):
And that's one of the challenges here. I mean, I
can tell you that I know this, You know this
from a law enforcement side, for sure, anything you text
or email is effectively record for a court to draw upon. Well,
they don't record your phone calls, So a lot of
things get talked about on the phone that are maybe
in the gray area of what we can and can't
(27:39):
do in law enforcement, with everyone knowing that that's not
going to be able to be subpoenut unless they're actively
If they're already actively monitoring your phone, it means you're
in a whole lot of trouble for something else. So
there are I'm just saying when people see like Bongino
and Patel at the FBI, they're trying to uncover a
(28:00):
massive amount of problems and fix those problems. And also
the people there are pretty good at hiding problems and
hiding their tracks if they want to be That's really
what I'm It's not as simple as like, oh, we
have the you know, like to your point at the
Code Red like, there was never a Code Red meeting.
We need to make sure that Biden wins this election.
(28:20):
But could you have had four or five of the
top people in the FBI meeting Comy's office and be like,
make sure that our people know that, you know, we're
weighing on this in the following or whatever. Absolutely, And
that's how that stuff really gets done. It's a little
bit like a mafia family, you know, the mafia. Don
He doesn't write out in an email like I need
you to take out Tommy Tuto's, but he whispers to
(28:42):
somebody about Tommy Tuto's and then he sleeps with the
fishes well. And then also, I mean, and this is
something that I think is not unique to the FBI,
but you know it having been in the CIA. There's
a lot of guys and gals that are working in
the FBI right now that believe their job is permanent
and all they have to do is ride out the
(29:03):
storm of Trump for the next couple of years and
they go right back to doing what they were doing before, right,
I mean that they are. And also I think a
lot of them even given the efforts to rein that in.
We're finding out that as long as they have activists,
left wing judges on their side, maybe they are unfirable.
You know, that still remains to be seen in a
(29:24):
lot of these cases. So you know, they've been operating
under this assumption, and Trump is trying to make sure
that that assumption changes, or I should say, is shown
to be wrong. It has not been shown to be wrong.
How many people have been frog marched out of the
FBI for malfeasance relating to Russia collusion or anything like
that effectively? I mean none. I think that McCabe was fired,
(29:45):
and I believe he's had his full pension restored, so
he was going to be retiring pretty soon anyway, So
you could say, oh, he was fired and he was yeah,
but he's a hero to Democrats. He's got a book deal,
speaking circuit, and his pension's restored. So but if you
were lower level in the bowels of the bureaucracy, are
you right to think that administrations come and go, but
the bureau is forever. I will look, Cash and Dan
(30:10):
have been there for one hundred you know, roughly one
hundred days or whatever it is. Now, it's very early,
but I'm just saying, if you were one of those
people who was involved in this, who's still sitting there
drawing your paycheck and doing whatever you want you right now,
think you're probably still good to go. Maybe that changes.
And also they don't know who they can trust, which
(30:31):
is a huge part of this, right how many people
are actually trying to implement what they are doing. It's
a super big challenge, and I don't think it's unique
to the FBI. I think it's the reality is the
deep state. Swamp.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Employees by and large think that presidents are inconsequential to
their overall ability to maintain their job and do whatever
they think is important. That's why, frankly, from the get go,
I've felt pretty confident that we could eliminate half of
all federal employees and not have any actual, well disruption
in our day to day life as non federal employees.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
One part of this that everyone should just understand, I think,
and it goes to why it's so hard to reform this.
The federal government, the bureaucracy in a lot of ways,
is a jobs program. There's a lot of jobs that
everybody knows aren't necessary but somebody's getting a paycheck to
(31:31):
do to show up and pretend to be doing the thing.
And there's enough of those people that and you know,
they have families, and they have they have votes, and
they have the ability to make their voices heard. You know,
it gets very it gets very difficult politically speaking to
rain that stuff in. Again, I'm not saying it won't happen,
(31:51):
but I've I said along even about Elon, who you
just told me is saying he's pretty much done. I
was like, Elon is used to being, in the best
possible way, private set dictator, like we're doing this, you're
not on board, you are fired. He has tried to
bring that discipline to the federal government and he's told
us a lot of critical stuff and he's shown the
(32:13):
public a lot, but you know what the bureaucracy has
said so far, we'll see. That's the frustration I think
of anyone. If you aren't in charge like Elon has
been in charge at SpaceX and Tesla and the Boring
Company and now XAI, he can make decisions. A lot
(32:33):
of people don't want to make decisions in the federal government.
They don't really want to do anything, and it's hard
to get the federal government to move in any particular
direction because the big sort of hot bound of bureaucracy.
I mean, I could tell you one of the big
problems they have, and they had this at the CIA
when I was there, and this isn't self serving, but
they had this huge five to seven year exodus problem
(32:56):
of people do this stuff for five to seven years
and then and they it depends, you know, there's a
lot of reasons. Sometimes they want to get advanced degree,
or they you know, they want to just transition private sector.
But a lot of people leave the federal government if
they go in especially the really the intel community, because
people go like, if you're working at the Department of Agriculture,
you're probably just riding that out for until you get
you know, all the way to right environment. But in
(33:18):
the in the intel agencies, and I'm sure the same
thing is true, maybe less so with the FBI, but
they were losing people five to seven years. And one
of the big challenges is when you have so many
people who are effectively replicating and even in a sense
competing with your work, because you're all doing the same
thing and trying to get the same decision makers to
pay attention to you. What value are you really bringing
(33:40):
day in a day out. So it's like after after five, six, seven,
maybe eight years, you've done cool stuff, you've learned cool stuff,
but then you have to show up and be like,
what am I really adding? And you know, if you
sit there and you're the guy at the you know,
now I'm really telling you what it's like. You sit
there and your analysts, you know, I'm making up the
numbers because this stuff is not you know, but you're
analy number fifty who's working like the China Taiwan issue
(34:03):
from your branch, and there's you know, then there's the
d d i A has one hundred analysts and they're
looking at the China time. And at the end of
the day, you're all trying to tell the Secretary of
Defense of the President, you know, what you think the best,
what you know. At some point you're just like, what
am I doing here? And that's really the problem they
have because you ask, You're like, what am I doing?
And people say, oh, what about the field The field agents,
(34:24):
you know, the case officers have the same problem trying
to get the same kind of reports, the same kind
of information to the same hands. So it's very hard
to keep people when you're like, what exactly are we
doing here?
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Sounds like Milton from Office Space. Yeah, alright, sorry, that's
the head boss, not Milton, poor Milton with his stapler.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, Milton. Milton is the is the
guy with the stapler, Milton West.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
But the guy who's the wumbarumba mumbert.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Is what exactly is it you would say that you
do here? That's no, that's that's not that's the two bobs.
You're getting the two bobs mixed all the t bdged
I need to watch the efficiency experts. Yes, and some
might judge movies a fantastic movie, by the way. Yeah,
they're the ones that say, what would you say you
do here? Devastating question.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
It was more than a week ago that President Trump
signed an executive order slashing the cost of prescription drugs,
going after the price gouging on prescription drugs you're now
getting with Obamacare. There's a more formal name for that
healthcare plan, the Affordable Care Act, and it's anything but affordable,
as you all know. Luckily, there are better options like
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Speaker 1 (36:35):
All right, welcome back into Clay and Buck. Uh so
we've got a quick turn here. We'll get back into
more of the stuff on Capitol Hill, big beautiful bill.
Some updates. There also this arrest of a member of
Congress for an assault on an ice of an ice officer.
Immigration and Customs. Of course, we'll talk about that. But
(36:56):
I don't know if you know this yet, but if
you were to go to crocketcoff and it is a
fantastic place, a website that I'm hoping all of you
have visited at some point. You will see there's the
most amazing and delicious coffee you'll find anywhere, including the
new Mushroom Blend. Now, mushroom coffee is different. It doesn't
come into cacup or anything. You just put it in
hot water. It's got instructions, it's delicious, really interesting, a
(37:19):
lot of health benefits for it that people really really love.
And then we've also I'm just making sure Clay as
we do this, Yep, the Over Mountain Club mug, the
new Crockett Diner mug. We've got awesome new mugs which
we will start using here on video on the show.
But I'm telling you Over Mountain Club, Clay, you know
the history of this. Tell everybody the history of the
(37:40):
Over Mountain Men. Well, so, first of all, these mugs
are phenomenal because I just got them. They're oversized.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
If you're out there, I don't know what the deal
is with the tiny coffee mugs where you barely can
get a cup of coffee and they fit in. This
is like how we want oversized mugs that connect with
the history of Davy Crocket and the brave explorers who
were willing to put their lives on the line and
go places people had never been before.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
So join the over Mountain Club. The over Mountain Men
were a group of American frontiersmen from Western Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky,
and Tennessee who played a key role in the American Revolution,
particularly the Battle of King's Mountain in seventeen point eighty.
So go join the over Mountain Club because it's cool.
Crocketcoffee dot Com, Go get some coffee.
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