March 6, 2026 • 36 mins
Hour 1 of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show opens with Buck anchoring solo from the studio as Clay makes his way in from Washington, D.C. The hour is dominated by urgent geopolitical developments, major U.S. policy shifts, and fast moving military action as President Donald Trump oversees one of the most aggressive foreign policy operations of his presidency. The top story is the massive U.S.–Israeli aerial campaign against Iran, which Buck repeatedly characterizes as true wartime activity, even if some avoid using the word “war.” The hosts detail how U.S. and Israeli forces have achieved air dominance over Iran, systematically destroying Iranian military infrastructure, including missile launchers, drone facilities, and even a bunker used by Iran’s supreme leader. Buck emphasizes that the U.S. now exercises “total control” over Iranian airspace, and that Trump has ordered intensified strikes against the IRGC and Iran’s proxy network, including Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. President Trump’s recorded statements, played during the hour, highlight his insistence that no new Iran deal will occur without unconditional surrender, and his demand that Iranian security forces lay down their arms in exchange for complete amnesty. Trump also stresses that Iranian leadership figures are being eliminated with unprecedented precision, creating leadership paralysis inside Tehran. Clay and Buck explore the strategic vacuum emerging as Iranian leadership is targeted. They debate who could run Iran in a post regime environment, discussing exiled Persian figures, potential caretaker governments, and the historic role of ethnic minorities. A long section of the hour examines the role of the Kurds, their reliability as fighting partners, and their limits—especially outside Kurdish regions. Buck, drawing on CIA experience, compares the current situation to operations in Iraq, explaining how Kurdish forces were critical in some areas but could not govern Sunni or mixed ethnic cities. Clay adds an unexpected angle by noting that Nashville has the largest Kurdish population in the United States, shaping the domestic connection to Middle Eastern geopolitics. The hosts also address whether the Iranian people themselves have the will to rise up, citing messages from inside Tehran indicating support for U.S. and Israeli strikes. The big question, Buck says, is whether ordinary Iranians will seize the opportunity for a “Persian Spring” once the regime’s command-and-control structure collapses. Additional topics in Hour 1 include: The U.S. jobs report, which shows a loss of 92,000 jobs—a development Buck argues the media frames selectively depending on whether the news is favorable or unfavorable to President Trump. Kristi Noem's firing as DHS Secretary, with upcoming guest Sen. John Kennedy expected to discuss the scandal over a $220 million advertising budget and concerns about Nome’s testimony regarding Corey Lewandowski. Venezuela and Cuba, and how the Trump administration’s policies are reshaping geopolitics beyond the Middle East. Historical context on Kurdish oppression, including Saddam Hussein’s chemical attack on Halabja, and how those atrocities influenced Kurdish loyalty to U.S. forces during the Iraq War. Overall, Hour 1 delivers a sweeping overview of U.S. foreign policy, Middle East conflict, Iranian regime instability, national security strategy, and Trump administration decision making, all while teasing major interviews and deeper analysis coming in Hour 2. This hour positions listeners to understand the rapidly evolving situation in Iran and the global consequences of America’s military and diplomatic offensive.
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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. Welcome everybody to the Friday edition of
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay is heading
to us from the airport. He'll be joining in progress.
It is me the Buckster, leading you in this deep
dive into everything you need to know. All the thing's
(00:21):
happening right now, all across this land of ours, all
across the world. In fact, we have some things to
talk about, like a new job support not good not
a good job support. We'll discuss a little bit. Ninety
two thousand jobs lost. Now they're gonna revise this, it
could change. I get all that. But obviously any economic
(00:43):
news that is not if it's fantastic economic news, the
media doesn't want to talk about it because they don't
want to give Trump credit. And if it's even a
little negative, it's all they want to talk about when
it comes to the economy. So we're gonna look at
that a little bit. We're gonna look at that. We've
also got the aftermath of the firing of Christy Noan
by Trump from DHS. It was a long time coming.
(01:07):
It should have happened months and months ago, quite honestly,
but there's a lot of back and forth over this.
We may be joined by are we do. We still
have Senator Kennedy on the DAKA team. Is Senator Kennedy
of Louisiana, who is involved in that hearing. He's coming
on the show. We're gonna talk to him. We're gonna
talk to the good senator from the great state of
Louisiana about the situation with well Baran first and foremost
(01:31):
and the DHS. But look, there's the single biggest thing
happening right now is the US slash Israeli aerial campaign
against Iran and now against regional proxies of Iran. There
have been strikes in the southern suburbs of Lebanon, so
(01:59):
that that is interesting. Lebanon is at a tipping point as
it seeks to curb Hesbola's influenced countries, waiting to see
if the government seizes on this moment to disarm the
Iranian BacT armed group and how the militants will respond.
So Israeli military pounding Hesbelah on the southern edge of
(02:19):
the Lebanese capital. This is just worth noting because we're
going they're going after. We're going after. We're with the
Israelis on this. We are allies in this mission. That
is the reality of the situation. So it is a
we situation and we're going after Hesbolah, a primary proxy
army of the Mullahs in Tehran. And man, are we
(02:44):
pounding the Iranians, Iranian regime, not Iranian civilians, but we
are pounding military assets and government assets hard. This is
in fact Trump speaking about this. This is cut one.
You can hear it from the command in chief, play it.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
The United States military, together with the wonderful Israeli partners,
continues to totally demolish the enemy, far ahead of schedule
and at levels that people have never seen before. Actually,
we're destroying more of Iran's missiles and drone capability every
(03:25):
single hour, knocking them out like nobody thought it was possible.
As soon as they set off a missile, within four
minutes the launcher gets hit. They don't know what's happening,
and they're calling. They're saying, how do we make it deal?
I said, you're being a little bit late, and we
want to fight now more than they do.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Trump has said, no Iran deal now without unconditional surrender.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So again once again calling on all members.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
So what we have here is an escalation and a
line in the sand. President Trump has had enough of
the Iranians, the Mullahs, the IRGC, playing all these games,
pretending like they want to negotiate, when really they just
(04:19):
want to stall. Certainly, when Republicans like Trump are in office,
they want to stall. Democrats will make concessions and stupid deals,
but with Trump they're trying to just play games and
play for time. He decided enough is enough and there's
no need to sit and wait for Iran to improve
or expand upon its ballistic missile capability, which I might
(04:41):
add was always left out of that disastrous Obama deal.
Remember the Obama Iran deal did not cover ballistic missiles,
so the Iranians were free to build up those stockpiles,
and as we have seen, those stockpiles are now being
dramatically reduced by the air campaign. It is incredible the efficiency,
(05:02):
the technology, the skill, the precision with which US planes
and Israeli planes are able to We don't just have
aerial superiority, we are dominating their airspace. We are the airspace.
Now have complete and total control over it, and it
did not take very long, So you can pick any
(05:25):
targets you want to hit. Now the big question becomes
as we have discussed who is going to take over?
Who is going to be in charge of this country
or really perhaps a caretaker regime for a transition to
what we would like to have democratic elections. I'm sure,
(05:46):
And so that is people keep asking me, like, do
how do I think this is going to go? I
think if there was a clear plan, we would already
know what the clear plan is. This is a little
bit of Kentucky windage. You could say, this is a
little bit of just let it fly. Got to figure
this one out as we go. But Trump decided the
(06:08):
alternative was worse. Here he is saying to all members
of the security services, just put down your arms full amnesty,
that is the way forward. Plate cut too, and once.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Again calling on all members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,
the military, and the police to lay down their arms.
They're only going to be killed, and now is the
time to stand up for the Iranian people and help
take back your country. You're going to have a chance
after all these years to take back your country. Except immunity,
we'll give you immunity, and we'll be giving you really
(06:43):
the right side of history, because that's what it is.
So you'll be perfectly safe with total immunity, or you'll
face absolutely guaranteed death. And I don't want to see that.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It's true. One of the components of this that is
different from even what we were dealing with twenty years ago.
The intelligence apparatus that we and the Israelis can bring
to bear on Iran from the sky, electronically and otherwise
(07:18):
and on the ground is such that we can take
anybody out. Trump is just taking anybody out that he
chooses to. That gives you a lot of leverage. One
of the challenges of air campaigns in the past has
been you always needed people with guns to go door
to door, house to house and pull the other guy
(07:40):
out of his fighting position, out of his foxhole, so
to speak. I mean that that's part of this. But
if we are so capable that we can take out
anybody we want, any member of the leadership, I mean,
here you go. Israel just says this is an update.
The Israeli military destroyed a bunker used by Iran Supreme
(08:02):
Leader in a nuance slaught. They are just taking apart
the entire military infrastructure of Iran right now. That's and
there's nothing the Iranians can do about it. There's nothing
the mullets can do. There is no secret super weapon
option that they have. And I wonder how long this
(08:23):
continues before it's clear that they're not really in charge
of their own country. If you can't control your airspace
and you can't keep any leadership alive without the say
so of the United States and Israel, are you really
in control? So we are entering a new phase. Remember,
this brings together drones, it brings together surveillance technology that's
(08:46):
even beyond people that ask me like, well, what do
you think they have? Guys, I've been out. I haven't
had a clearance in over a decade now, So there's
all kinds of new wizbangs that I read about just
like you. But the technology and the mapping capability and
the human terrain assessments that they can do are way
(09:07):
beyond what you could have done in the early two thousands,
And we went into Iraq far greater precision. The munitions
are much more targeted and precise, as well our ability
to shoot things out of the sky that they try
to fire at US is far better. I mean, you
are seeing a dominant military performance on display right now.
(09:32):
We haven't seen anything really like it since Persian Gulf
War one. Nothing that comes that at this level, and
that was that was quite different in its own way.
So I think that the Trump administration feels like this
is going so far to plan, and I think that
they are having to do some improvisation as they move
(09:55):
along to figure out who's going to be in charge.
People talk about the curve. The Kurds are great in
Kurdish areas. I'm very proud. Everyone I know who was
US military in Iraq, everyone know who is intel in
Iraq was tending to be very pro Kurdish. They fight,
they they are reliable in their own areas, but they
(10:16):
have limitations because you take them out of Kurdish areas
and there are problems. All of a sudden, all these
old ethnic conflicts come together. So you got that help
in Iran in in some capacity. You got to figure
out what you're going to do with the Persian. Who's
going to be the figurehead of the Persian majority. I
don't know. People are saying some descendant of the Shaw
(10:37):
that could be complicated. I don't know if the administration
was certain, I think they would have already started to
lay out that plan for us. But I also believe
that there's some wisdom in this approach of let's just
as Rubio said, and I said, if you defang the snake,
let's remove their capability to hit us or any of
(10:57):
our friends, and say, when do you want to talk?
Let us know when you want to talk. Molliss, Your
missiles are disappearing, your stockpiles are getting blown up or
entombed by our bunker busters. How much longer do you
want this to go on for? We did try it
the nice way. We tried it the nice way for
a long time. And I would argue the Obama administration
(11:19):
tried it the far too nice way, bending the knees,
sending them palettes of cash, you know whatever. We tried
that for a long time. They weren't willing to play ball.
They were playing games so that they could get to
a nuke. It's very obvious there's no reason for them
to have caused all these problems if they weren't planning
to get nuclear weapons, and then they wouldn't be in
(11:43):
this position because there would be redlines, And I think
we might have argued if Iran had nukes and we
were doing to them what we've already done in the
early days here, would they have fired them. Yes, people
have been saying to me, Buck, do you think Aram
would have fired nukes? I don't know as a first strike.
But what we're doing now, Oh, yes, I think the
Molas probably would say, we're going to take a shot
at Tel Aviv. Let's see if we can hit it,
(12:04):
or Jerusalem or where we'll probably tel Aviv. But yes,
I think the Molas would do that. Now they can't.
Now they can't, So we're entering a different phase. Things
in Venezuela are already starting to move in a more
positive direction. Look, we have to understand Trump is remaking
the world in an image of stability and safety in
(12:27):
a way that a lot of people, including Trump voters,
didn't anticipate. I didn't know he was going to do
all this stuff. He didn't say he was going to
do all this stuff. So far, it's working. We should
all pray that it does work, because it could be
so enormously beneficial to all these different regions, whether it's
Venezuela slash Cuba and what that would do for Latin America,
(12:49):
for the Caribbean basin, what we see with Iran in
the Middle East and the removal of these proxies and
everything else. You know, these places don't have to be dysfunctional,
problematic for the global community hell holes, it doesn't have
to be that way. There are plenty of places that
we don't sit around spending a lot of time worrying
(13:09):
about plenty of countries, and this is bold stuff from
the administration, There's no two ways about it. So I
am just very hopeful that this will continue as it
has been and that will start to see a coalescing
of anti regime forces coming together on the ground. We
(13:33):
saw the protest movements. But this stuff is very hard,
you know. It's think about it this way, Okay, you
think that a new you think that a new government
is possible in Iran. You hate the molas. When is
it safe for you to go outside and start talking
to people about this? When are you willing to join
that march and think that you're not going to get
(13:54):
mowed down by IRGC or besiege elements with pkms you
and your whole family. This is tricky. This is tricky.
So I think that's part of why Trump is saying
put down your guns now, because I can tell you this,
if they start going after civilians, I think Trump is
(14:15):
going to hit military elements even harder. And we're talking
about blowing up barracks or whatever he's got to do.
So we shall see. Wondering what you think about all
of this, Uh, definitely give us a call eight hundred
two eighty two two eight A two will continue to
analyze it, make sense of it, and dive into it together.
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told is in the building in DC, so he'll be
on air with the shortly and he'll be talking about
some big sports stuff going on, the sports ball conversation.
We are here talking about the Iran This is a war.
You can call it an air war, but it is war.
I know people maybe are shying away from that term
(16:07):
because it has a lot of implications. But this is,
you know, if there's such a thing as submarine warfare,
for example, remember unrestricted submarine warfare was a big deal
in the Second World War. If there's submarine warfare, there's
aerial warfare, and we are definitely doing that. So and
just just a note on the terminology of this. This
(16:28):
is not a kinetic ongoing contingency operation for no. No,
this is this is us destroying the Iranian military. By
the way, I noted the team brought us up to
my attention. Here's former General Petraeus, the former five star
or four star five star sorry four star, right, I
don't know whatever. Yeah, the team will correct me on
(16:51):
that one. Sorry. Here he is this cut five. I'm
just trying to get this in play.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
It in this case, I actually see the military missions
being accomplished steadily.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Here.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
The trajectory is very good, you know. First and foremost
of course, they went after the air and ballistic missile defenses,
took those down whatever had been reconstituted after the Aurcereelis
took them apart in the early days of the Twelve
Day Air campaign. And that's crucial because we don't want
to be restricted to just the F thirty five stealth
fighter bombers and the B two stealth bombers. We want
(17:21):
to bring in the big ones, the B fifty two's,
the B one bombers, and they are flying now almost
at will. I would argue that we have actually achieved
air supremacy, not just air superiority. But again, I think
people are cautious in making that declaration.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
I said dominant, same idea. By the way, four stars. Sorry,
there is a five star rank for general of the
whole army, but he was not that. I try to remember.
I'm speaking fast today. I got a cover a lot
of ground. He was a four star general. All right,
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Speaker 4 (18:49):
The combination of our ingenuity, the skill, the professionalism, the discipline,
and then the sheer weight of the capabilities of the
US military, what you're gonna see may look routine. It
might start to be like, oh another boat, Oh another launcher,
Oh another drone facility. What it takes to do this
with the precision that we do is world class. No
(19:11):
one else can do it, and it's world class Americans
like the ones I saw here, like the ones that
are coming home that we're going to greet home that
are the engine of what makes our country great.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
And so I'm so grateful for folks like those here
at sent Comme at Central Command. There's our Secretary of War,
Pete Hegseth laying out that it is absolutely the case
nobody can even begin to do what our pilots are
airmen and women are doing in this campaign against Iran.
(19:43):
We are now joined by Klay Travis, co host of
The Clay and Buck Show, who is with us. Mister Clay,
we've been talking Iran stuff, not a whole lot of well,
more targets getting blown up, more losses for the Iranians
or through through the Iranian regime. Hesbola taken some hits
(20:05):
on the outskirts of be Root. Now the Israelis are
doing some cleanup operations there too. It looks like the
plan is to get everything done from the sky and
then figure out the ground as we go. Yeah, and
Iran may have gotten smart enough not to announce any
new leaders. Did you see that? The reports are.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
That Iran has recognized that if they announced new leaders,
they're going to get killed. I don't know about you,
but I don't know. It's like, like we said a
little while ago. You don't want to be al Qaida
number two because al Qaeda number two didn't last very long.
They were always quickly tracked down. I think we have
established that whomever Iran puts in charge, we can take out.
(20:44):
And that's why I think the primary story as it
pertains to this current attack plan that's going on is
at what point does Iran say, Okay, here's our guy.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Are you okay with these guys? Do they go?
Speaker 5 (21:00):
I mean, is it a little bit like the draft?
Are they going to President Trump? And they're like, hey,
here are the four guys we're thinking about naming as
the next head of Iran? Which of these four are
any of these four acceptable?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Trump is set. He wants to basically pick the leader.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
You've been involved in this, I mean, and by the way,
this is kind of a challenge. I mean, I'm kind
of jokingly saying it's like the NFL draft, but you're
trying to project how someone will be as a leader
who has never been a leader before. So you got
all sorts of promises probably being made, but what really
matters is what's the relationship, Like who is the delse
Rodriguez Where everything seems to be going very well with Venezuela.
(21:39):
Right now, is there that person inside of Iran that
the CIA? I mean, if you were still in the CIA,
this is probably one of the things that they have
huge teams of people doing right now. I would imagine
as all the leadership is getting wiped out, they're trying
to do deep dives on whomever the candidates are to
potentially take over and try to figure out who can
they have a relationship with, who is trustworthy at all
(22:02):
in real time. I would imagine that's to a large extent,
what the data analysis is consisting of.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
This is what Benjamin Hall is saying. He's getting messages.
This is Benjamin Hall of Fox Right, Fox News, Fox News.
Is Benjamin Hall saying that he's getting messages from the
people of Iran that they will rise up. This has
got seven play it.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
The primary objective is to remove the threat, is to
remove the missiless to hit the nuclear programs, and it's
to make sure they can't rebuild those programs as well.
That's the primary goal, and now I believe will happen
in a few weeks. The question is regime change. How
long does that take afterwards? And I was getting messages
very very rare from people inside Tehran who support this
action and who was saying just today, you reduce that hierarchy,
(22:43):
you get rid of the leaders, and we will rise up.
President Trump has said it as well. The people of
Iran have to do this. So if you can tear
apart the regime, you can tear apart their weapons program,
the people of Iran should do.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
It, we hope. So this is the huge question, and
this has been a question for decades now. Will this
ever happen? Will there be a I guess a Persian
spring instead of an Arab spring where the dictator is
thrown out by a popular uprising on the streets.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
We'll see you worked on this back in the day,
because it's been a story that has emerged before I
was reading this morning getting ready for the show. You
actually have a lot of expertise on this, I would think,
although I don't know how much it changed in the
last twenty some odd years. What's the Kurdish situation, how
many people do they have, how armed are they to
(23:38):
what extent? Everybody's talking now about them potentially uprising. There's
different reports about whether or not it's going to happen.
But I haven't seen anybody say, hey, they have ten
thousand people with guns, they have twenty thousand. Do we
have any sense for how many people they could mobilize
as part of any sort of invading force any Because
I know this was talked about back in the days
of Iraq. I mean, how viable of a uprising? In
(24:01):
your mind? Is it likely to be able to produce?
Or is this just kind of a hair brain scheme
that's unlikely to go very far?
Speaker 1 (24:09):
I can tell you in the case of Iraq, I
actually talked about this a little bit at the very
start today. In the case of Iraq, it was the
Kurds were very reliable at securing the areas of Iraq
that were historically Kurdish. The problem, one of the big
problems was that there are cities, notably Mosl was one
(24:31):
of them, and then places like the Yala, and there
was Kirkook. There were a number of cities in Iraq
that there was like a Kurdish part and a non
Kurdish part. And then it's who does security. I mean,
the Tiger's River cut Moses in half. I was in
Moses and remember this issue, and the northern part of
(24:53):
the river was essentially largely Kurdish. Provided this is going
back to two thousand and six, two thousand seven eight
largely Kurdish. The southern part of the city or the
southern half of the city was like Sunni Arab hellscape,
suicide bombings going off all the time. It was craziness.
So I think in Iran, where you have roughly fifteen
to twenty percent of the population is Kurdish, it's actually
(25:15):
pretty similar to what it is in Iraq. By the way,
you can use the Kurds for stability operations where they are,
which is helpful. But you know, you can't just like
have Kurdish column the idea of them as into Tehran
and be like we're in charge now, that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
Yeah, and again this comes back to you worked on this.
I know we talked about it earlier this week. But
I wonder if at some point they're gonna start talking
about dividing up Iran like they talked about back in
the day, dividing up Iraq. I don't know that that's
a viable option. But I was given a Kurdis Dan
T shirt. I don't have it anymore.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
But it was like with like its own flag and
the whole thing, and they're like, yeah, we love you
up here. I'm like, you guys are kind of declaring
your own country. That's a whole other thing.
Speaker 5 (25:59):
Well, I mean this may or may not surprise a
lot of people out there, but one of the largest
populations of Kurdish people in America is Nashville. I mean,
it's pressed. So I went to school with a ton
of Kurdish kids.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah, a man who knows your Kurds.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Actually, I actually am somewhat knowledgeable about the idea.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
You know, they're considered one of the largest stateless ethnic
groups in the world. This is why there's such a
There's something like fifteen to twenty million Kurds I think
worldwide is the estimate. So it's a pretty big population.
Most of it is dispersed across southeastern Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.
That's really the Kurdish Crescent. The Kurds were promised I
(26:42):
think it was by the League of Nations, maybe Woodrow Wilson.
There was talk of giving the Kurds a state in
the Middle East, and they kind of got screwed out
of that, and there's been some let's just say frustration
over that for a long time. And this is evidenced
by my favorite Kurdish saying is the Kurds have only
one friend, the mountains, because they've had to just go
(27:05):
up into the mountains and fight and defend themselves over
and over and over again. So yeah, and the Turks
called the mountains unexpected buck, but I looked it up
to confirm. Nashville actually has the largest Kurdish population in
the United States, the largest, and there's an area of
Nashville called Little Kurdistan because so many people relocated after
(27:27):
the Gulf War and ended up in Nashville. So I
went to school with a bunch of kids that were Kurdish,
and so I remember being steeped in hearing about all
of this. And so the question is, obviously, is there
any viable alternative. It seems like a lot of people
are putting faith in this. I'm sure we have some
US mill listening who worked with the Kurds in Iraq.
(27:47):
If you guys want to weigh in on this, you
know a heck of a lot more about it, even
I do. I was only there for a few months
at a time, and really not I was really just
trying to help the Task Force Target Bad guys. I
wasn't really deep in with the Kurds, embedded with them,
training them. I know some of you were, you know,
in base with on a base with them probably for
twelve to fifteen months at a time. So if you
have some thoughts on this, anybody who were who was
(28:09):
working with them part of the training operations Special Forces.
I mean I remember going to I went to Special
Forces compounds Clay where it was just SF guys and
then some Curds running security for them. I mean that
was the level of trust that that people would have
in them. The Curds at different times in the Iraq
War were really the only, really the only group that
(28:33):
US mill and and the agencies, various agencies could trust
to stand and fight when when Yah, when the bullets
started to fly, and they had far less problems with infiltrators,
you know, people that were actually Al Kaida in Iraq
or whatever. So look, there's a lot. I'm I've I
always have sort of a soft spot for the curd
(28:54):
so much so that actually I get a little aggravated
with Turkey with Turkey sometimes over it. I've always been
very pro Kurdished and a lot of US Miller pro
Kurdish because of their experience with them. But in the
Iran context for what we're looking at now, use will
do a point useful to probably secure some areas that
will be uh, we won't have to worry about. But
(29:14):
you're gonna you're gonna need the Persian majority, the Farsi
speaking Persian majority, to coalesce into some sort of process here.
And the biggest thing is going to be getting the
security services that I mentioned this before. When people can
walk out in Tehran on the street and and chant
(29:37):
and whatever and have no fear of any security service
opening up on them, then we will have turned a corner.
I think there is still that very much that fear
right now. So we'll see. Yeah, for sure. That's really
by the way, I did not know that about Nashville.
I mean, I know there's some ethnic enclaves of immigrants,
and you know there's a huge Ethiopian population in the DC,
(30:00):
for example, a lot of Ethiopian friends that live in DC.
You know, there's a lot of El Salvadorans in the
like Maryland and Northern Virginia, ere like, you get these
groups that I didn't know the Kurds are. That's actually
a nice choice for them. I gotta say, well done.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Kurds Nashville pretty close to remember how exactly it happened,
but but yeah, it's a huge population. And if you
remember back in the day when they had the first
elections in Iraq, Nashville was one of the places that
allowed the voting to occur here because there were such
a huge Kurdish population.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah, very interesting, large size, there's yeah, he looked with
them every day. There's not a day that goes by
without our sun Speed doing something so cute that I
have to take a photo of it or a video
of it. iPhones make that easy, and that's life in
twenty twenty six. But twenty plus years ago you had
to have a camquarterer and record it on a cassette
or a VHS tape and then label it and then
(30:51):
keep it somewhere. Well, if you're part of that videotape generation,
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to legacy box dot com slash buck and get fifty
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continue to roll.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
I'm up here in Washington, DC as we get ready
for everything. Senator Kennedy is going to join us at
the top of the next hour, and to a large extent, Buck,
I can't wait, honestly from Louisiana Senator Kennedy to hear
what he's going to say, because it seems that his
questioning of the DHS Secretary Nome and the amount of
(32:15):
two hundred and twenty million dollars that was spent on
an advertising campaign may well have been the final precipitating
event that led to her being removed, So we will
be talking to the Senator here in a few moments,
and I would just say to everybody, maybe get your popcorn,
because I feel like Senator Kennedy is usually pretty entertaining
(32:36):
with a lot of homespun wisdom, but I think he
might be bringing a little bit of a bazuka with
him on this interview in a bit.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Well, there's reporting that is out already that says that
Nome the last straw was saying that Trump approved the
two hundred twenty million. There's also reporting that for Trump,
the last straw was the way that she answered the
question answered the questions about her special government employee advisor
Corey Lewandowski. So both of those have gotten a lot
(33:06):
of focus right now. But one thing I do know
for sure about Trump is if most of your currency
is and I mean like ninety nine percent of it
is your loyalty to Trump, you better stay loyal to
Trump and not crack under oath and try to throw
him under the bus or involve him in some problem
(33:27):
that you've got. That was a very big mistake, regardless
of what the reporting all says on this by We've
got a VIP email for Mike lu says buck. I
was with ISG in Iraq from two thousand and three
to two thousand and four, starting in air bill what's
up in the North and moving to Baghdad. Remind your
listeners of what happened Halabja in nineteen eighty eight with
(33:48):
the Kurds and what Saddam did to those people. Yeah,
he dropped seren gas on them, He gassed the Kurds
tried to rise up and uh, Saddam just with helicopters.
He had air spiority. There's no Kurdish air worse really
to speak of. And they were they gassed people, villages
in Jilabja. It was wore, thousands of people killed. So, yeah,
Saddam was a very bad guy and the kurd suffered
(34:09):
horribly under the Saddam regime. But that meant when Saddam
was gone, they're willing to fight. Look some of this clay.
This brings up another part of the conversation. Do the
do the Iranian people do they are you know, do
they have a stomach to step up for their own freedom?
It's being it's being offered to them right now, not
(34:31):
on a silver platter, because they're going to take casualties
and losses. That's going to happen. But do they want it?
Do they want to be free of the tyrant? We'll see,
We'll see what ends up happening with that. Jack in
Nashville says, there's a lot of Kurds in Nashville. What's
going on?
Speaker 7 (34:48):
Jack? Well, I was just going to refer you to
a book called Sellout, uh by a guy named Shippers,
and it's probably about the Clinton impeachment, but we got
the curve words here because of Clinton and Gore's immigration policies,
the same policies that brought the Somalians to Minnesota and
(35:12):
the Cubans down to Florida. And the theory was that
they're gonna try and swing purple states blue or even
red states blue, and we're gonna put the immigrants there.
And it's a very good book. You know, the guy
who's the guy that wrote it is a pretty hardcore
Chicago Democrat. But uh uh, it's worth referencing there. But
(35:35):
that's how when we got them all all right.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Thank you, thank you for calling in Clay interesting interesting
little historical tidbics. I know you like history, although maybe
not this region of history as much. Salid didn't sALS
who didn't was occurred. In fact, Richard, the Lionheart's great
opponents in the Crusades was Kurdish. I had something that
something that, let me tell you, the curred certainly remember
(35:57):
probably the greatest general of that peero of history from
the Muslim side. But yes, Suladan was a kurd I
think I mentioned this on the program. The Rick Atkinson
book about World War Two. I've been reading about the
battles in North Africa. He's such an amazing writer that
he has gone all the way into Hannibal in the
(36:18):
way different ways that attacks happened back in those days.
And now it's got me super fascinating to read more
about that era as well. But the Rick Atkinson books
on Revolutionary War World War two. Can't recommend them highly enough.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
When we come back, Senator Kennedy with a two by four,
I think y'all are probably gonna enjoy this. Keep begging
with us,
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton Show podcast. Welcome everybody to the Friday edition of
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay is heading
to us from the airport. He'll be joining in progress.
It is me the Buckster, leading you in this deep
dive into everything you need to know. All the thing's
(00:21):
happening right now, all across this land of ours, all
across the world. In fact, we have some things to
talk about, like a new job support not good not
a good job support. We'll discuss a little bit. Ninety
two thousand jobs lost. Now they're gonna revise this, it
could change. I get all that. But obviously any economic
(00:43):
news that is not if it's fantastic economic news, the
media doesn't want to talk about it because they don't
want to give Trump credit. And if it's even a
little negative, it's all they want to talk about when
it comes to the economy. So we're gonna look at
that a little bit. We're gonna look at that. We've
also got the aftermath of the firing of Christy Noan
by Trump from DHS. It was a long time coming.
(01:07):
It should have happened months and months ago, quite honestly,
but there's a lot of back and forth over this.
We may be joined by are we do. We still
have Senator Kennedy on the DAKA team. Is Senator Kennedy
of Louisiana, who is involved in that hearing. He's coming
on the show. We're gonna talk to him. We're gonna
talk to the good senator from the great state of
Louisiana about the situation with well Baran first and foremost
(01:31):
and the DHS. But look, there's the single biggest thing
happening right now is the US slash Israeli aerial campaign
against Iran and now against regional proxies of Iran. There
have been strikes in the southern suburbs of Lebanon, so
(01:59):
that that is interesting. Lebanon is at a tipping point as
it seeks to curb Hesbola's influenced countries, waiting to see
if the government seizes on this moment to disarm the
Iranian BacT armed group and how the militants will respond.
So Israeli military pounding Hesbelah on the southern edge of
(02:19):
the Lebanese capital. This is just worth noting because we're
going they're going after. We're going after. We're with the
Israelis on this. We are allies in this mission. That
is the reality of the situation. So it is a
we situation and we're going after Hesbolah, a primary proxy
army of the Mullahs in Tehran. And man, are we
(02:44):
pounding the Iranians, Iranian regime, not Iranian civilians, but we
are pounding military assets and government assets hard. This is
in fact Trump speaking about this. This is cut one.
You can hear it from the command in chief, play it.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
The United States military, together with the wonderful Israeli partners,
continues to totally demolish the enemy, far ahead of schedule
and at levels that people have never seen before. Actually,
we're destroying more of Iran's missiles and drone capability every
(03:25):
single hour, knocking them out like nobody thought it was possible.
As soon as they set off a missile, within four
minutes the launcher gets hit. They don't know what's happening,
and they're calling. They're saying, how do we make it deal?
I said, you're being a little bit late, and we
want to fight now more than they do.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Trump has said, no Iran deal now without unconditional surrender.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So again once again calling on all members.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
So what we have here is an escalation and a
line in the sand. President Trump has had enough of
the Iranians, the Mullahs, the IRGC, playing all these games,
pretending like they want to negotiate, when really they just
(04:19):
want to stall. Certainly, when Republicans like Trump are in office,
they want to stall. Democrats will make concessions and stupid deals,
but with Trump they're trying to just play games and
play for time. He decided enough is enough and there's
no need to sit and wait for Iran to improve
or expand upon its ballistic missile capability, which I might
(04:41):
add was always left out of that disastrous Obama deal.
Remember the Obama Iran deal did not cover ballistic missiles,
so the Iranians were free to build up those stockpiles,
and as we have seen, those stockpiles are now being
dramatically reduced by the air campaign. It is incredible the efficiency,
(05:02):
the technology, the skill, the precision with which US planes
and Israeli planes are able to We don't just have
aerial superiority, we are dominating their airspace. We are the airspace.
Now have complete and total control over it, and it
did not take very long, So you can pick any
(05:25):
targets you want to hit. Now the big question becomes
as we have discussed who is going to take over?
Who is going to be in charge of this country
or really perhaps a caretaker regime for a transition to
what we would like to have democratic elections. I'm sure,
(05:46):
And so that is people keep asking me, like, do
how do I think this is going to go? I
think if there was a clear plan, we would already
know what the clear plan is. This is a little
bit of Kentucky windage. You could say, this is a
little bit of just let it fly. Got to figure
this one out as we go. But Trump decided the
(06:08):
alternative was worse. Here he is saying to all members
of the security services, just put down your arms full amnesty,
that is the way forward. Plate cut too, and once.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Again calling on all members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,
the military, and the police to lay down their arms.
They're only going to be killed, and now is the
time to stand up for the Iranian people and help
take back your country. You're going to have a chance
after all these years to take back your country. Except immunity,
we'll give you immunity, and we'll be giving you really
(06:43):
the right side of history, because that's what it is.
So you'll be perfectly safe with total immunity, or you'll
face absolutely guaranteed death. And I don't want to see that.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It's true. One of the components of this that is
different from even what we were dealing with twenty years ago.
The intelligence apparatus that we and the Israelis can bring
to bear on Iran from the sky, electronically and otherwise
(07:18):
and on the ground is such that we can take
anybody out. Trump is just taking anybody out that he
chooses to. That gives you a lot of leverage. One
of the challenges of air campaigns in the past has
been you always needed people with guns to go door
to door, house to house and pull the other guy
(07:40):
out of his fighting position, out of his foxhole, so
to speak. I mean that that's part of this. But
if we are so capable that we can take out
anybody we want, any member of the leadership, I mean,
here you go. Israel just says this is an update.
The Israeli military destroyed a bunker used by Iran Supreme
(08:02):
Leader in a nuance slaught. They are just taking apart
the entire military infrastructure of Iran right now. That's and
there's nothing the Iranians can do about it. There's nothing
the mullets can do. There is no secret super weapon
option that they have. And I wonder how long this
(08:23):
continues before it's clear that they're not really in charge
of their own country. If you can't control your airspace
and you can't keep any leadership alive without the say
so of the United States and Israel, are you really
in control? So we are entering a new phase. Remember,
this brings together drones, it brings together surveillance technology that's
(08:46):
even beyond people that ask me like, well, what do
you think they have? Guys, I've been out. I haven't
had a clearance in over a decade now, So there's
all kinds of new wizbangs that I read about just
like you. But the technology and the mapping capability and
the human terrain assessments that they can do are way
(09:07):
beyond what you could have done in the early two thousands,
And we went into Iraq far greater precision. The munitions
are much more targeted and precise, as well our ability
to shoot things out of the sky that they try
to fire at US is far better. I mean, you
are seeing a dominant military performance on display right now.
(09:32):
We haven't seen anything really like it since Persian Gulf
War one. Nothing that comes that at this level, and
that was that was quite different in its own way.
So I think that the Trump administration feels like this
is going so far to plan, and I think that
they are having to do some improvisation as they move
(09:55):
along to figure out who's going to be in charge.
People talk about the curve. The Kurds are great in
Kurdish areas. I'm very proud. Everyone I know who was
US military in Iraq, everyone know who is intel in
Iraq was tending to be very pro Kurdish. They fight,
they they are reliable in their own areas, but they
(10:16):
have limitations because you take them out of Kurdish areas
and there are problems. All of a sudden, all these
old ethnic conflicts come together. So you got that help
in Iran in in some capacity. You got to figure
out what you're going to do with the Persian. Who's
going to be the figurehead of the Persian majority. I
don't know. People are saying some descendant of the Shaw
(10:37):
that could be complicated. I don't know if the administration
was certain, I think they would have already started to
lay out that plan for us. But I also believe
that there's some wisdom in this approach of let's just
as Rubio said, and I said, if you defang the snake,
let's remove their capability to hit us or any of
(10:57):
our friends, and say, when do you want to talk?
Let us know when you want to talk. Molliss, Your
missiles are disappearing, your stockpiles are getting blown up or
entombed by our bunker busters. How much longer do you
want this to go on for? We did try it
the nice way. We tried it the nice way for
a long time. And I would argue the Obama administration
(11:19):
tried it the far too nice way, bending the knees,
sending them palettes of cash, you know whatever. We tried
that for a long time. They weren't willing to play ball.
They were playing games so that they could get to
a nuke. It's very obvious there's no reason for them
to have caused all these problems if they weren't planning
to get nuclear weapons, and then they wouldn't be in
(11:43):
this position because there would be redlines, And I think
we might have argued if Iran had nukes and we
were doing to them what we've already done in the
early days here, would they have fired them. Yes, people
have been saying to me, Buck, do you think Aram
would have fired nukes? I don't know as a first strike.
But what we're doing now, Oh, yes, I think the
Molas probably would say, we're going to take a shot
at Tel Aviv. Let's see if we can hit it,
(12:04):
or Jerusalem or where we'll probably tel Aviv. But yes,
I think the Molas would do that. Now they can't.
Now they can't, So we're entering a different phase. Things
in Venezuela are already starting to move in a more
positive direction. Look, we have to understand Trump is remaking
the world in an image of stability and safety in
(12:27):
a way that a lot of people, including Trump voters,
didn't anticipate. I didn't know he was going to do
all this stuff. He didn't say he was going to
do all this stuff. So far, it's working. We should
all pray that it does work, because it could be
so enormously beneficial to all these different regions, whether it's
Venezuela slash Cuba and what that would do for Latin America,
(12:49):
for the Caribbean basin, what we see with Iran in
the Middle East and the removal of these proxies and
everything else. You know, these places don't have to be dysfunctional,
problematic for the global community hell holes, it doesn't have
to be that way. There are plenty of places that
we don't sit around spending a lot of time worrying
(13:09):
about plenty of countries, and this is bold stuff from
the administration, There's no two ways about it. So I
am just very hopeful that this will continue as it
has been and that will start to see a coalescing
of anti regime forces coming together on the ground. We
(13:33):
saw the protest movements. But this stuff is very hard,
you know. It's think about it this way, Okay, you
think that a new you think that a new government
is possible in Iran. You hate the molas. When is
it safe for you to go outside and start talking
to people about this? When are you willing to join
that march and think that you're not going to get
(13:54):
mowed down by IRGC or besiege elements with pkms you
and your whole family. This is tricky. This is tricky.
So I think that's part of why Trump is saying
put down your guns now, because I can tell you this,
if they start going after civilians, I think Trump is
(14:15):
going to hit military elements even harder. And we're talking
about blowing up barracks or whatever he's got to do.
So we shall see. Wondering what you think about all
of this, Uh, definitely give us a call eight hundred
two eighty two two eight A two will continue to
analyze it, make sense of it, and dive into it together.
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told is in the building in DC, so he'll be
on air with the shortly and he'll be talking about
some big sports stuff going on, the sports ball conversation.
We are here talking about the Iran This is a war.
You can call it an air war, but it is war.
I know people maybe are shying away from that term
(16:07):
because it has a lot of implications. But this is,
you know, if there's such a thing as submarine warfare,
for example, remember unrestricted submarine warfare was a big deal
in the Second World War. If there's submarine warfare, there's
aerial warfare, and we are definitely doing that. So and
just just a note on the terminology of this. This
(16:28):
is not a kinetic ongoing contingency operation for no. No,
this is this is us destroying the Iranian military. By
the way, I noted the team brought us up to
my attention. Here's former General Petraeus, the former five star
or four star five star sorry four star, right, I
don't know whatever. Yeah, the team will correct me on
(16:51):
that one. Sorry. Here he is this cut five. I'm
just trying to get this in play.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
It in this case, I actually see the military missions
being accomplished steadily.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Here.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
The trajectory is very good, you know. First and foremost
of course, they went after the air and ballistic missile defenses,
took those down whatever had been reconstituted after the Aurcereelis
took them apart in the early days of the Twelve
Day Air campaign. And that's crucial because we don't want
to be restricted to just the F thirty five stealth
fighter bombers and the B two stealth bombers. We want
(17:21):
to bring in the big ones, the B fifty two's,
the B one bombers, and they are flying now almost
at will. I would argue that we have actually achieved
air supremacy, not just air superiority. But again, I think
people are cautious in making that declaration.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
I said dominant, same idea. By the way, four stars. Sorry,
there is a five star rank for general of the
whole army, but he was not that. I try to remember.
I'm speaking fast today. I got a cover a lot
of ground. He was a four star general. All right,
we have played joining us shortly, and we got to
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Speaker 4 (18:49):
The combination of our ingenuity, the skill, the professionalism, the discipline,
and then the sheer weight of the capabilities of the
US military, what you're gonna see may look routine. It
might start to be like, oh another boat, Oh another launcher,
Oh another drone facility. What it takes to do this
with the precision that we do is world class. No
(19:11):
one else can do it, and it's world class Americans
like the ones I saw here, like the ones that
are coming home that we're going to greet home that
are the engine of what makes our country great.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
And so I'm so grateful for folks like those here
at sent Comme at Central Command. There's our Secretary of War,
Pete Hegseth laying out that it is absolutely the case
nobody can even begin to do what our pilots are
airmen and women are doing in this campaign against Iran.
(19:43):
We are now joined by Klay Travis, co host of
The Clay and Buck Show, who is with us. Mister Clay,
we've been talking Iran stuff, not a whole lot of well,
more targets getting blown up, more losses for the Iranians
or through through the Iranian regime. Hesbola taken some hits
(20:05):
on the outskirts of be Root. Now the Israelis are
doing some cleanup operations there too. It looks like the
plan is to get everything done from the sky and
then figure out the ground as we go. Yeah, and
Iran may have gotten smart enough not to announce any
new leaders. Did you see that? The reports are.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
That Iran has recognized that if they announced new leaders,
they're going to get killed. I don't know about you,
but I don't know. It's like, like we said a
little while ago. You don't want to be al Qaida
number two because al Qaeda number two didn't last very long.
They were always quickly tracked down. I think we have
established that whomever Iran puts in charge, we can take out.
(20:44):
And that's why I think the primary story as it
pertains to this current attack plan that's going on is
at what point does Iran say, Okay, here's our guy.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Are you okay with these guys? Do they go?
Speaker 5 (21:00):
I mean, is it a little bit like the draft?
Are they going to President Trump? And they're like, hey,
here are the four guys we're thinking about naming as
the next head of Iran? Which of these four are
any of these four acceptable?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Trump is set. He wants to basically pick the leader.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
You've been involved in this, I mean, and by the way,
this is kind of a challenge. I mean, I'm kind
of jokingly saying it's like the NFL draft, but you're
trying to project how someone will be as a leader
who has never been a leader before. So you got
all sorts of promises probably being made, but what really
matters is what's the relationship, Like who is the delse
Rodriguez Where everything seems to be going very well with Venezuela.
(21:39):
Right now, is there that person inside of Iran that
the CIA? I mean, if you were still in the CIA,
this is probably one of the things that they have
huge teams of people doing right now. I would imagine
as all the leadership is getting wiped out, they're trying
to do deep dives on whomever the candidates are to
potentially take over and try to figure out who can
they have a relationship with, who is trustworthy at all
(22:02):
in real time. I would imagine that's to a large extent,
what the data analysis is consisting of.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
This is what Benjamin Hall is saying. He's getting messages.
This is Benjamin Hall of Fox Right, Fox News, Fox News.
Is Benjamin Hall saying that he's getting messages from the
people of Iran that they will rise up. This has
got seven play it.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
The primary objective is to remove the threat, is to
remove the missiless to hit the nuclear programs, and it's
to make sure they can't rebuild those programs as well.
That's the primary goal, and now I believe will happen
in a few weeks. The question is regime change. How
long does that take afterwards? And I was getting messages
very very rare from people inside Tehran who support this
action and who was saying just today, you reduce that hierarchy,
(22:43):
you get rid of the leaders, and we will rise up.
President Trump has said it as well. The people of
Iran have to do this. So if you can tear
apart the regime, you can tear apart their weapons program,
the people of Iran should do.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
It, we hope. So this is the huge question, and
this has been a question for decades now. Will this
ever happen? Will there be a I guess a Persian
spring instead of an Arab spring where the dictator is
thrown out by a popular uprising on the streets.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
We'll see you worked on this back in the day,
because it's been a story that has emerged before I
was reading this morning getting ready for the show. You
actually have a lot of expertise on this, I would think,
although I don't know how much it changed in the
last twenty some odd years. What's the Kurdish situation, how
many people do they have, how armed are they to
(23:38):
what extent? Everybody's talking now about them potentially uprising. There's
different reports about whether or not it's going to happen.
But I haven't seen anybody say, hey, they have ten
thousand people with guns, they have twenty thousand. Do we
have any sense for how many people they could mobilize
as part of any sort of invading force any Because
I know this was talked about back in the days
of Iraq. I mean, how viable of a uprising? In
(24:01):
your mind? Is it likely to be able to produce?
Or is this just kind of a hair brain scheme
that's unlikely to go very far?
Speaker 1 (24:09):
I can tell you in the case of Iraq, I
actually talked about this a little bit at the very
start today. In the case of Iraq, it was the
Kurds were very reliable at securing the areas of Iraq
that were historically Kurdish. The problem, one of the big
problems was that there are cities, notably Mosl was one
(24:31):
of them, and then places like the Yala, and there
was Kirkook. There were a number of cities in Iraq
that there was like a Kurdish part and a non
Kurdish part. And then it's who does security. I mean,
the Tiger's River cut Moses in half. I was in
Moses and remember this issue, and the northern part of
(24:53):
the river was essentially largely Kurdish. Provided this is going
back to two thousand and six, two thousand seven eight
largely Kurdish. The southern part of the city or the
southern half of the city was like Sunni Arab hellscape,
suicide bombings going off all the time. It was craziness.
So I think in Iran, where you have roughly fifteen
to twenty percent of the population is Kurdish, it's actually
(25:15):
pretty similar to what it is in Iraq. By the way,
you can use the Kurds for stability operations where they are,
which is helpful. But you know, you can't just like
have Kurdish column the idea of them as into Tehran
and be like we're in charge now, that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
Yeah, and again this comes back to you worked on this.
I know we talked about it earlier this week. But
I wonder if at some point they're gonna start talking
about dividing up Iran like they talked about back in
the day, dividing up Iraq. I don't know that that's
a viable option. But I was given a Kurdis Dan
T shirt. I don't have it anymore.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
But it was like with like its own flag and
the whole thing, and they're like, yeah, we love you
up here. I'm like, you guys are kind of declaring
your own country. That's a whole other thing.
Speaker 5 (25:59):
Well, I mean this may or may not surprise a
lot of people out there, but one of the largest
populations of Kurdish people in America is Nashville. I mean,
it's pressed. So I went to school with a ton
of Kurdish kids.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah, a man who knows your Kurds.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Actually, I actually am somewhat knowledgeable about the idea.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
You know, they're considered one of the largest stateless ethnic
groups in the world. This is why there's such a
There's something like fifteen to twenty million Kurds I think
worldwide is the estimate. So it's a pretty big population.
Most of it is dispersed across southeastern Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.
That's really the Kurdish Crescent. The Kurds were promised I
(26:42):
think it was by the League of Nations, maybe Woodrow Wilson.
There was talk of giving the Kurds a state in
the Middle East, and they kind of got screwed out
of that, and there's been some let's just say frustration
over that for a long time. And this is evidenced
by my favorite Kurdish saying is the Kurds have only
one friend, the mountains, because they've had to just go
(27:05):
up into the mountains and fight and defend themselves over
and over and over again. So yeah, and the Turks
called the mountains unexpected buck, but I looked it up
to confirm. Nashville actually has the largest Kurdish population in
the United States, the largest, and there's an area of
Nashville called Little Kurdistan because so many people relocated after
(27:27):
the Gulf War and ended up in Nashville. So I
went to school with a bunch of kids that were Kurdish,
and so I remember being steeped in hearing about all
of this. And so the question is, obviously, is there
any viable alternative. It seems like a lot of people
are putting faith in this. I'm sure we have some
US mill listening who worked with the Kurds in Iraq.
(27:47):
If you guys want to weigh in on this, you
know a heck of a lot more about it, even
I do. I was only there for a few months
at a time, and really not I was really just
trying to help the Task Force Target Bad guys. I
wasn't really deep in with the Kurds, embedded with them,
training them. I know some of you were, you know,
in base with on a base with them probably for
twelve to fifteen months at a time. So if you
have some thoughts on this, anybody who were who was
(28:09):
working with them part of the training operations Special Forces.
I mean I remember going to I went to Special
Forces compounds Clay where it was just SF guys and
then some Curds running security for them. I mean that
was the level of trust that that people would have
in them. The Curds at different times in the Iraq
War were really the only, really the only group that
(28:33):
US mill and and the agencies, various agencies could trust
to stand and fight when when Yah, when the bullets
started to fly, and they had far less problems with infiltrators,
you know, people that were actually Al Kaida in Iraq
or whatever. So look, there's a lot. I'm I've I
always have sort of a soft spot for the curd
(28:54):
so much so that actually I get a little aggravated
with Turkey with Turkey sometimes over it. I've always been
very pro Kurdished and a lot of US Miller pro
Kurdish because of their experience with them. But in the
Iran context for what we're looking at now, use will
do a point useful to probably secure some areas that
will be uh, we won't have to worry about. But
(29:14):
you're gonna you're gonna need the Persian majority, the Farsi
speaking Persian majority, to coalesce into some sort of process here.
And the biggest thing is going to be getting the
security services that I mentioned this before. When people can
walk out in Tehran on the street and and chant
(29:37):
and whatever and have no fear of any security service
opening up on them, then we will have turned a corner.
I think there is still that very much that fear
right now. So we'll see. Yeah, for sure. That's really
by the way, I did not know that about Nashville.
I mean, I know there's some ethnic enclaves of immigrants,
and you know there's a huge Ethiopian population in the DC,
(30:00):
for example, a lot of Ethiopian friends that live in DC.
You know, there's a lot of El Salvadorans in the
like Maryland and Northern Virginia, ere like, you get these
groups that I didn't know the Kurds are. That's actually
a nice choice for them. I gotta say, well done.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Kurds Nashville pretty close to remember how exactly it happened,
but but yeah, it's a huge population. And if you
remember back in the day when they had the first
elections in Iraq, Nashville was one of the places that
allowed the voting to occur here because there were such
a huge Kurdish population.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah, very interesting, large size, there's yeah, he looked with
them every day. There's not a day that goes by
without our sun Speed doing something so cute that I
have to take a photo of it or a video
of it. iPhones make that easy, and that's life in
twenty twenty six. But twenty plus years ago you had
to have a camquarterer and record it on a cassette
or a VHS tape and then label it and then
(30:51):
keep it somewhere. Well, if you're part of that videotape generation,
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(31:37):
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continue to roll.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
I'm up here in Washington, DC as we get ready
for everything. Senator Kennedy is going to join us at
the top of the next hour, and to a large extent, Buck,
I can't wait, honestly from Louisiana Senator Kennedy to hear
what he's going to say, because it seems that his
questioning of the DHS Secretary Nome and the amount of
(32:15):
two hundred and twenty million dollars that was spent on
an advertising campaign may well have been the final precipitating
event that led to her being removed, So we will
be talking to the Senator here in a few moments,
and I would just say to everybody, maybe get your popcorn,
because I feel like Senator Kennedy is usually pretty entertaining
(32:36):
with a lot of homespun wisdom, but I think he
might be bringing a little bit of a bazuka with
him on this interview in a bit.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Well, there's reporting that is out already that says that
Nome the last straw was saying that Trump approved the
two hundred twenty million. There's also reporting that for Trump,
the last straw was the way that she answered the
question answered the questions about her special government employee advisor
Corey Lewandowski. So both of those have gotten a lot
(33:06):
of focus right now. But one thing I do know
for sure about Trump is if most of your currency
is and I mean like ninety nine percent of it
is your loyalty to Trump, you better stay loyal to
Trump and not crack under oath and try to throw
him under the bus or involve him in some problem
(33:27):
that you've got. That was a very big mistake, regardless
of what the reporting all says on this by We've
got a VIP email for Mike lu says buck. I
was with ISG in Iraq from two thousand and three
to two thousand and four, starting in air bill what's
up in the North and moving to Baghdad. Remind your
listeners of what happened Halabja in nineteen eighty eight with
(33:48):
the Kurds and what Saddam did to those people. Yeah,
he dropped seren gas on them, He gassed the Kurds
tried to rise up and uh, Saddam just with helicopters.
He had air spiority. There's no Kurdish air worse really
to speak of. And they were they gassed people, villages
in Jilabja. It was wore, thousands of people killed. So, yeah,
Saddam was a very bad guy and the kurd suffered
(34:09):
horribly under the Saddam regime. But that meant when Saddam
was gone, they're willing to fight. Look some of this clay.
This brings up another part of the conversation. Do the
do the Iranian people do they are you know, do
they have a stomach to step up for their own freedom?
It's being it's being offered to them right now, not
(34:31):
on a silver platter, because they're going to take casualties
and losses. That's going to happen. But do they want it?
Do they want to be free of the tyrant? We'll see,
We'll see what ends up happening with that. Jack in
Nashville says, there's a lot of Kurds in Nashville. What's
going on?
Speaker 7 (34:48):
Jack? Well, I was just going to refer you to
a book called Sellout, uh by a guy named Shippers,
and it's probably about the Clinton impeachment, but we got
the curve words here because of Clinton and Gore's immigration policies,
the same policies that brought the Somalians to Minnesota and
(35:12):
the Cubans down to Florida. And the theory was that
they're gonna try and swing purple states blue or even
red states blue, and we're gonna put the immigrants there.
And it's a very good book. You know, the guy
who's the guy that wrote it is a pretty hardcore
Chicago Democrat. But uh uh, it's worth referencing there. But
(35:35):
that's how when we got them all all right.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Thank you, thank you for calling in Clay interesting interesting
little historical tidbics. I know you like history, although maybe
not this region of history as much. Salid didn't sALS
who didn't was occurred. In fact, Richard, the Lionheart's great
opponents in the Crusades was Kurdish. I had something that
something that, let me tell you, the curred certainly remember
(35:57):
probably the greatest general of that peero of history from
the Muslim side. But yes, Suladan was a kurd I
think I mentioned this on the program. The Rick Atkinson
book about World War Two. I've been reading about the
battles in North Africa. He's such an amazing writer that
he has gone all the way into Hannibal in the
(36:18):
way different ways that attacks happened back in those days.
And now it's got me super fascinating to read more
about that era as well. But the Rick Atkinson books
on Revolutionary War World War two. Can't recommend them highly enough.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
When we come back, Senator Kennedy with a two by four,
I think y'all are probably gonna enjoy this. Keep begging
with us,
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