September 1, 2025 • 33 mins
The best of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show Hour 1.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you for listening. This is the best of with
Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
We're joined by Heather MacDonald, Manhattan Institute fellow author of
When Race, Trump's Merit and the War on Cops, particularly
apro pos in the light of today's discussion here.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Heather. Always great to have you on the program.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
Thank you so much. Buck, It's great to be with
you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
So you must be watching this debate play out over
specifically the DC crime rate, but more broadly. Obviously, this
brings in a lot of arguments that you've heard from
the other side in the past and counter arguments that
you've been making. Are you surprised that it seems that
so many national level democrats have fallen into the trap
(00:43):
of defending the indefensible, which is the DC crime rate.
What's your perspective on this, Well, I.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Think this is one of the greatest moments of the
Trump presidency. His August eleventh Liberation Day speech just sent
chills down my spine, and I mean in a good way.
Words like we are not going to let it happen anymore.
We're not going to take it. We're not going to
lose our cities. We're taking our capital back. He has
(01:11):
finally broken fully with the dominant ideology in America, which
is to normalize the unacceptable, to define deviancy down and
Trump is saying, we are no longer going to make
excuses for crime. This is something we can control. The
Democrats have spent decades trying to write this off, to say, well,
(01:34):
it's just kind of a normal aspect of cities. A
lot of this, almost entirety of the criminal justice discourse
on the Democratic side is driven by race considerations. They've
of course played the race card here, So no, I'm
not surprised. It has just brought out their innate tendencies
to normalize crime in an extraordinarily vivid way, and they
(02:00):
are going to lose the debate. There's just no question.
You cannot. As you say, they are defending the indefensible.
Their argument is a set of non sequiturs. They say, well,
crime isn't bad in DC because it went down somewhat
last year. So what the fact is? Are you defending
three year olds being shot fatally in the head sitting
(02:23):
in their car, as has happened over the last couple
of years regularly. You cannot defend that. And yet that's
what the Democrats are doing, Heather.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
I actually thought about you on Sunday when I read
the New York Times editorial which basically said, hey, Heather
McDonald was right about everything, without saying Heather McDonald was
right about everything. I don't know if you officially read
that editorial, but let me just read to you from
the New York Times Sunday, and I want to just
(02:55):
get your thoughts on the cultural winds shifting that would
allow this to occur. During this is the New York Times.
During the twenty twenty protests, many progressives embrace calls to
quote defund the police, including prominent Democrats Kamala Harris, AOC
Eric Garcetti, then mayor of Los Angeles, and the protesters
(03:17):
had an effect. Officers were disheartened by public criticisms, quit
their jobs, police departments had staffing shortages. Overall crime surged,
and Democrats have to recognize that they were responsible for
it and their arguments created this. Did you ever think
the New York Times would say this when it came
(03:37):
to policing? And what is the significance of them completely
abandoning the cultural arguments they were making? Certainly five years.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Ago well, the editorial board would appear to be a
little tiny island of sanity in the paper large because
their news coverage is continuing, yeah to harp on the
theme that Trump is a fascist by daring to talk
about crime in DC and worse, daring to do something
about it. And this is all just a race based
(04:09):
ploy to try and go after black cities. So there's
a there's an absolute split in sensibility there. But it
is a good thing. I'll take every win I can get.
It is a good thing that the editorial board has
put out a little, a little strand of sanity there
that says that the police are not the problem in
(04:32):
high crime communities. Criminals are. And when you demoralize the police,
when you delegitimate prosecution and arrests, there's only one thing
that's going to happen. You're not going to get peace,
You're going to get more criminal victimization. And if your
claim is and this is of course a complete hypocritical pose,
(04:52):
but if your claim is to care about black lives,
you have to support the police because they are the
strongest a agency in any city, in any state that
is dedicated to saving black lives. They make arrests, they
deter crime. The National Guard there is there now just
to crime. Further, it is not there as some kind
(05:14):
of occupying force. It is using its command presence, and
when the cops back off, criminals take over. I have
spent years going to police community meetings in high crime
narrative areas like the South Side of Chicago, or Central
Harlem or Brooklyn, and all I hear from the good,
(05:35):
law abiding black residents there, especially the elderly ladies in
these fantastic cats, is the police are our friends? Please
Jesus send more police.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah. Heather McDonald with us here from the Manhattan Institute.
War on Cops is her excellent book. Heather, you are
somebody who also not just looks at the narratives, but
looks at the stats, the numbers, and have you been
able to I know it's hard at some level because
you have to rely on the DC crime stats from DC, right,
meaning that the police, if they're cooking the books, it
(06:09):
might be a little tough to see that because you
have to rely on the frontline numbers at some level
that they're putting out there. But have you looked into
that at all? Do you think it is possible and
or likely that this thirty percent crime drop, which as
you pointed out, isn't even really significant, but that that
thirty percent crime drop may be the result of some
(06:29):
fudging of the numbers.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I haven't looked into that personally. It is in line
with the crime drop that we're seeing in the rest
of the country. So if it were like twice as much,
that would be a real red flag. But I can say,
you know, there's constant pressure and ironically in the police
departments that are the best run, which means the ones
that are most aggressive towards their own police commanders, that
(06:56):
are demanding accountability, that are demanding that those account those
commanders have a plan for lowering crime, and the top
brash should be monitoring their numbers on a daily, if
not hourly basis. So those precinct commanders are in the
hot seat under what was known in New York City
as the CompStat system, They're going to feel the most
(07:17):
pressure to get their crime statistics down, and if they
don't have one hundred percent integrity, they're the more likely
to possibly declassify things, muck around with how you categorize crime.
The police departments that are lackadais agal that don't have
a strong commands structure, their PRECIN commanders are under less pressure.
(07:40):
So it's a weird thing, and it's something that departments
have to fight. The New York Police Department has a
whole unit dedicated to police integrity and going after corruption,
and it's not well loved in the department. But this
is a constant battle. I can't say in this case,
But again I would say that conservatives should not be
(08:03):
pulled into this game that the liberals are playing, which
is it well because crime dropped twenty seven percent last
year compared to its overwhelmingly high post George Floyd race,
riots thing that everything is okay, and conservatives saying, well,
it's still been Is that a true crime drop or not.
(08:26):
The fact is you can concede that crime has dropped
in the last two years in Washington, d C. And
still say so what, I don't care. Is it acceptable
that every single day in Washington, D C. There were
ten violent crimes, fourteen carthefts, three juvenile shot a day?
(08:49):
Is that acceptable? Is it acceptable that our homicide rate
is twenty seven times that of London's and sixty times
that of Switzerland? The only possible response is none of
that is acceptable. And that is what is so thrilling
about Trump's instincts. It's not even the details of the plan,
(09:10):
it's that he has instincts that are correct, which is
that any level of crime is not compatible with a
civilized society. Children being shot, cars being stolen, mass looting
going on, the carjackings, and it's overwhelmingly juvenile. Sixty percent
(09:31):
of a carjackings in DC are juveniles. Trump is correct,
they are not punished. In twenty twenty three, there were
five girls, ages twelve to fifteen who beat to death
a sixty four year old cancer victim weighing one hundred
and ten pounds. They filmed themselves laughing as they stomped
and beat them to death. None of them had long sentences.
(09:54):
The most their serving time is until they're twenty one.
Most of them will be out long before that. Trump
is absolutely right. DC has a soft on crime approach
that must change, just as every progressive prosecutor. It's all
driven by not wanting it to have a racial lead
disparate impact on black criminals. All law enforcement will simply
(10:17):
because the black crime rate is so high in DC,
Blacks commit about ninety six percent of all homicides even
though they are only forty three percent of the population.
Whites commit just under over one percent of the homicides
though they're thirty nine percent. You do not that should
not affect how you enforce the law. You enforce the
(10:40):
law to protect the law abiding, not to protect the criminals.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
Not only that, Heather, and the people who are the
victims overwhelmingly would be black too. So when you say, oh,
we're arresting people disproportionately for based on race, you're also
disproportionately protecting people who are race right, because most black
murder victims are going to be killed by black murder ers.
(11:11):
But last question for you here, and I love all
the data you provide, is there a city or a state,
based on the data that you have seen, that is
handling violent crime better than any others and it do
they have policies that should be replicated nationwide. We're fortunate
because we have these fifty different federal systems so we
(11:32):
can try experiments. And the idea is somebody in a
state does something good, hopefully it spreads. Is there any
one city or state that you would point to and say,
boy from a violent crime perspective. These guys and gals
are doing great. We should be copying more of what
they're doing nationwide. Any positive out there, Well.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Until recently, I would have said New York City because
of the CompStat Revolution, the accountability revolution, where police Chief
William Bratton followed up by William with we are going
to go.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Ahead, No no, I was a safer Kelly. I was
trying to give you the next commissioner, we go ahead, right.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Right, Kelly said, we are going to bring this down.
They brought They brought crime and homicides down eighty percent
by enforcing the law and above all by paying attention
to public disorder. That's why also the Trump initiative against
the encampments is so important, because this is something else
that simply should not be tolerated in the city. You
(12:36):
cannot have public space overcome by people urinating, defecating, shooting
up drugs in public. This is not acceptable. We cannot
define devancy down. So New York was very good in
paying attention to public order, in using its officers proactively
to use their powers of observation to stop people suspected
(13:00):
of carrying guns. It had an enormous effect they've backslid
in recent years. Now they've got a pretty good commissioner,
Jessica Tish, So that's that's good. But it's a constant battle,
and you know, we need we need politicians to have
the basic expectation that crime is not normal. And again,
(13:23):
it just cannot be stated enough. Buck and Clay Trump's
Liberation Day speech could be epic changing if people get
rid of the idea that they should just accept squalor
disorder and violence as the normal part and also mass looting,
mass shoplifting as simply normal parts of American cities.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Heather MacDonald, everybody always excellent, Heather, Thank you so much,
Thanks so much.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Buck and Clay.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
Hey, Buck, one of my kids called me an unk
the other day, and unk yep slaying evidently for not
being hip, being an old dude.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
So how do we un unky get.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
More people to subscribe to our YouTube channel? At least
that's what my kids tell me.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
That's simple enough. Just search the Klay Travis and Buck
Sexton show and hit the subscribe button.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
Takes less than five seconds to help ununk me.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Do it for Clay, do it for freedom, and get
great content while you're there. The Clay Travison Buck Sexton
Show YouTube channel, one of.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
Our podcast listeners has got an issue that he wants
to raise with you. As we finished the Thursday edition
of the program, this is Steve, who wants to talk
with you about your big flamingo discussion.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yes day. Oh, let's hear it. Let's hear it.
Speaker 6 (14:34):
Buck, check your history on the flamingos. I'm seventy years
old and as a kid before long before Miamivice came out,
I grew up thinking flamingos were from Florida. Chat GPT
says that they were native, but then when it almost extinct,
(14:56):
so check it out.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
All right, all right, buddy, all right, I don't know
the answer here. I'm stepping out of this, Phray. This
seems pretty intense for me.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Go you know, when you make you know, the zoological
specificity necessary.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
On this on this show is quite a thing. All right.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Let me let me just say this. This is what
the truth is as I understand it.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
There were flamingos here.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
They went extinct though for about two hundred years. Okay,
so they were gone in the eighteen hundreds and nineteen hundreds,
and then they wouldn't weren't able to find any. And
then the twentieth century they started to try to reintroduce
some native colonies and now in Florida they're about one
hundred of them, but that they are doing better than
the dodo bird here, but not much better like they
(15:42):
weren't around. And like I said, the it was the
it was a flock of imported African pink flamingos in
Miami Vice that were not indigenous to Florida that got
everybody thinking about in the eighties of Florida and flamingos again,
they didn't have.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
They have flamingos in Florida for over one hundred years
so and yet every everywhere you go there's flamingo.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
This in flamingo that it's kind of weird, right, like
walking around Newfoundland being like, hey, the dodo birds.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Not as many dodo birds.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
I'll tell you this. All over northern Michigan they've got
bear in every business, streets named after bear. I don't
think there's any bear left up here, by the way,
Jody Jody says, love the show they used to have
flaminga you got lit up by flamingo. People out there
also saying the same thing. They were decimated for the
(16:37):
feathers used in women's hats back in the day. That's
why they killed all the flamingos off in Florida. So
I don't know, sir, you better step check yourself before
you step into flamingo wars.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Well, I'm just they were gone though.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
That's my point is that there were no flamingos, and
everyone's talking about flamingos all the time.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
The only flamingos you're gonna see in Florida are the lawn.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Ornaments out there. I'm just telling you, guys the truth.
You can come at me with whatever you like.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
You're listening to the best of Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
We're joined by Senator Eric Schmidt of the Great State
of Missouri. He's also got a new book out, The
Last Line of Defense Had to Beat the Left in Court.
It is out today. Senator Schmidt, thanks for being here
with us.
Speaker 7 (17:21):
Up with you, guys.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Well, let's talk a little bit if we can about
law enforcement, because you were the attorney general in your
state of Missouri. Now, Saint Louis has had a crime
problem for quite some time, and I'm sure that was
a focus of some of your efforts at the state level,
if you had the writ, the support, the backing of
(17:43):
the federal government, whatever could be brought to bear Trump
administration saying, let's clean up crime in Saint Louis and
we'll give you whatever resources you need at the federal
level to do it. Could you do it? What would change?
How would it work?
Speaker 6 (17:57):
Well?
Speaker 7 (17:58):
I think one thing is you'd give some of the
central lawns forcement officials out of Washington, d C and
get them out into the country. I think Cash Hotel's
talked about this, and I think senior leadership and Department
of Justice just talked about this. So there's just too many, honestly,
of those folks are in d C and they're not helping,
you know, take out the bad guys across the country. Sadly,
they're spending a lot of their time. And we talk
(18:18):
about it in the book Last Line of Defense, in
the censorship effort, Russia Gate, all this nonsense, all the
man hour has been wrapped up in this political you know,
weaponization of the DOJ as opposed to fighting crime. The
other thing is one of the things that we did
when I was an attorney generals relatively what was unprecedent
at the time. We created something called the Safer Strengths
Initiative where we had Deputy Attorney generals in our office
(18:42):
deputized as assistant US attorneys. So we added the capacity
of prosecuting federal crime. When you have let's just say,
you have a prosecutor in Saint Louis and she's gone,
but Kim Gardner was a Soros backed prosecutor. If they
don't want to do their job, then we worked with
the US attorneys to go take on carjackings and things
like that. Really successful program. When Biden came in, ironically,
(19:03):
he scrapped the program because he just you know that
this just was not their focus. So I'm glad President
Trump's in there. I'm glad you know he's getting his
US attorneys. That's going to be kind of next up
when we get back to get these US attorneys in
place across the country, and I think that'll help.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Are you stunned that Democrats seem unable to break the
reflexive opposition to anything Trump says, even when he says
things that are super super popular with most normal people
in the country. Keep men out of women's sports, let's
have less violent crime in Washington, d C. Hey, I'm
(19:38):
trying to do whatever I can to stop people from
getting killed in Ukraine in the war there. All of
these things don't seem particularly political to me. Yet Democrats
have so brought into Trump is hitler, Trump is going
to start World War three, whatever negative you want to
associate it with it that they seem unable to acknowledge
(19:59):
that he actually has a lot of good ideas.
Speaker 7 (20:02):
Yeah, I think it's less political play and it's more psychological.
At this point, it truly is. It truly is a
psychosis and Trump arrangement syndrome is real, and it manifests
itself in just some crazy ways. I mean, you gave
a couple of examples. They're already actually taking criminals off
the streets in Washington, DC. Carjackings have been up five
hundred plus percent in five years. Clearly something needs to
(20:24):
be done, but they don't want them to do it.
You've got it president who has the confidence and the
strength to actually try to broker a deal to end
the bloodiest war in Europe since World War Two, and
they just tried to undercut them at every turn. And
I think the classic example, which is why I don't
think they've hit rock bottom yet. Is this issue of
illegal immigration. I mean, they cannot help themselves. Chris van
(20:47):
Holland goes to El Salvador and has Margarita's with an
MS thirteen member because they hate Trump so much. It's bizarre,
But I think they've got a couple more election cycles
in them. They're going to continue to lose before they
wake up. And this is just no longer the party
Ferry Truman or even Bill Clinton. This has been captured
by the radical left.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Now, you were part of some of the battles, legal
battles that the well, the forces of constitutionalism and the
rule of law, but also Republicans and Trump supporters were
involved in recent years. I know that's something you deal
with in the book.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
How should we.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
View the fact that they brought four criminal cases against
a president. They held those prosecutions specifically so they would
occur in an election year. I mean, on the one hand, Senator,
it's well, Trump is president and all's well, that ends well.
But in the other hand, that is a shocking precedent,
breach betrayal, I would say, of the American people's trust,
(21:48):
and they actually did it. I feel like we're still
processing that that happened, because it happened so recently.
Speaker 7 (21:54):
Yeah, And one of the reasons why I wrote last
line of Sense, which you can get on Amazon right now,
is there is a tendency, guys, I think too now
that we're past the fever dream the fever broke, I
think in November twenty twenty four of this kind of crazy,
woke nonsense and the lawfair that was brought against President
Trump to throw him in jail for the rest of
his life. There's a tendency to kind of gloss all
(22:15):
that over. But you got to remember the dark days,
and I was on your show talking about this was
why I think your audience really liked the book. This
was a time of lockdowns, compulsory COVID shots, open borders,
DEI struggle, sessions, ESG requirements, and a censorship enterprise so
vast that the Biden administration instituted that was the biggest
(22:35):
affront of the First Amendment in American history. This is
all just like in a four year period of time
where they opened up the floodgates on all this and
we had to push back. And so while President Trump
was out of power, we were able to kind of
hold the line on a lot of this for the
cavalry to arise. In November of last year, it did arrive,
and President Trump finished this, you know, epic historic comeback,
and we're talking about all the good things that Clay
(22:57):
you just mentioned they're happening that Democrats are still opposed to.
But there's a lot of important lessons learned. I mean,
whether it was you know, we took that vaccine mandate case,
always from court, we won. We took the Missouri took
the student on depth forgiveness case, always from court, we won.
I sued fifty plus school districts in Missouri for their
forced mass mandates. We won. We had the censorship case.
And what that shows and what the story is so important.
(23:19):
It's kind of behind the scenes look at what was
it like to take the duppel of Anthony Fauci, What
was it like to take the deposition of Elvis Chan
at the FBI who was pre bunking the Hunter Biden
laptop story. We did all that. The point is you
got to have courage. It's a lot easier to just
go to ribbon cuttings or just kind of walk along
than it is. We got to stand up and fight.
And President Trump, I think has transformed the Republican Party
(23:40):
now certainly from the one that I grew up in
into much more not just a working class party, but
a party that's just not going to lie down. We're
going to stand up, We're going to fight back, and
if we do it, we can actually win. So the
book is kind of a playbook on how we did
it then and how we can do it moving forward.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Okay, I love everything that's happening now. I think most
people out there listening do as well. Here's my concern.
And you know this better than anybody, because you were
involved in so many of these lawsuits. All of a sudden,
it's acceptable to say, hey, we believe in the marketplace
of ideas. Hey, we shouldn't be rigging the algorithms. Hey
we shouldn't be artificially inserting ourselves into the public discourse
(24:19):
and manipulating the results. Yet twenty twenty one, every social
media company in America ban Donald Trump from getting on
I like to joke because it kind of brings it home.
Pinterest banned Donald trumpest like he couldn't share his scrap
book collages for people out there. How do we stop
(24:43):
this from happening when Trump isn't in office and may
ensure that what we are doing now is going to
extend into the future no matter who the president happens
to be.
Speaker 7 (24:54):
Well, a couple things. One is I think there has
to be accountability for some of these actions. I think
the most I have an op at about this. I
think you can draw a straight line, like ironically Obama
has has immunity because of the case that that was
brought against President Trump presidential meday. But but but Clapper doesn't,
Brennan doesn't, Komy doesn't, And if you can prove beyond this,
(25:17):
you have a statue limitation issues. But you don't if
there's a conspiracy and it was an ongoing conspiracy, because
if you like the fuse in a conspiracy, whatever happens
a mile down the road, you're still responsible for. And
these guys knew it was fake, they knew it was BS.
They laundered that stupid Steele dossier into an actual intelligence report,
and they tried to not only a cub but tried
(25:38):
to sideline an entire first term of a president. And
then of course that was the impetus for all of
the Oh, this is Russian disinformation. This is Russian misinformation.
Everything was about Russian this, Russian that, even though it
was all bs and so I don't think we should
just forget about that. I think there have to be repercussions.
And as far as like social media companies, you guys
know this, it's a good thing that they have some
(26:00):
thing called Section two thirty protections, meaning they're a platform
not a publisher, meaning they're not legally responsible if somebody has,
you know, an opinion that you disagree with on that platform.
That's good for free speech, but you don't get to
have it both ways. You don't get the multi billion
dollar subsidy of being a platform where you can't be sued,
but then also try to manipulate what's on your platform
in an editorial like decision. So I think they got
(26:22):
to pick, and if they pick the wrong one, then
you're a publisher. You don't have the protections. I also
think a reform that will be important that I talk
about in the book two is these individual bureaucrats. If
you're engaged in suppressing somebody's First Amendment rights, you individually
ought to be able to be sued. There ought to
be an individual right of an action for an American
citizen to sue you for suppressing your speech about you know,
(26:43):
questioning masks and how they work for kids or not.
That would change the kind of risk dynamic that currently works.
Because as you guys know that beercrafts aren't accountable to anybody,
we need to start making them accountable to real people.
So there's a few things that we can do. But
you know what we saw, guys in that four year
in particular, if that was going on somewhere else, like
you know, the law their and the censorship and all
(27:05):
this mass migration, all this stuff that is being used
with tax thir dollars to fund, you know, we would
be the State Department would be warning American citizens about
that place. But that was happening here. And again, the
story of the Last Line of Defense, which you can
get on Amazon now, is about standing up, pushing back.
If you do it, if you've got the courage, that
you can win. And this is a playbook of how
(27:26):
conservatives moving forward can can fight and win in the courts,
which we've always kind of resisted because we thought that
was their terrain.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Okay, procedurally, you're an expert on this Democrats have a
huge advantage in DC because they have basically a ninety
five percent approval rating in DC, they can get any
indictment they want. How do you deal with that if
you're talking about bringing conspiracy charges? I don't need like
(27:52):
a you know, law review analysis style, but just for
me and people out there who have a general sense
that this is a problem, how do you rectify that?
Speaker 7 (28:02):
Well, once you have a conspiracy moving forward, it doesn't
just exist exclusively in Washington, DC. It emanates out. So
for example, which and I'm just using this potentially as
an example, but let's just say that the raid at
mar A Lago was really about getting documents back that
they thought President Trump had as related to the Steele Dosia.
(28:22):
I'm just throwing out a scenario, yesh Epathetically, of course,
if that were the case, you've got Southern Florida's where
you can issue indictments. Because again, remember if Jack Smith
is using a phony intelligence report that was generated by
Brennan and Kobe and Clapper, like they begin in the
conspiracy process, and he's furthering the conspiracy in South Florida. Again,
(28:44):
the jurisdiction that you can kind of work in gets
much broader, and I think that's one area that they
might they might look at.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Senator appreciate you being with us. I just want to
tell everybody one last time go check out the book
which is out today, the Senators new book. Very important,
very good stuff, The Last Line of Defense, How to
beat the Left in Court. Appreciate you, sir.
Speaker 7 (29:07):
All right, guys stick here, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
You're enjoying the best of program with Clay Travis and
Buck Sexton.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
I feel pretty good about the difficulty of anybody getting
out of Alligator Alcatraz as a Floridian? Are you one
hundred percent behind this idea?
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Certainly getting a lot of attention, and you need places
where you can hold people, quickly process them and then
get those deportation proceedings going. You know, you look at
the numbers, and I know the Trump administration is moving
rapidly on this stuff, but when you see the flood
that happened under Biden in four years, it's going to
(29:43):
take some real doing here to begin to really chip
away at the illegal invasion that happened in the country.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
But yeah, I think about you.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Know, alligators there, you know, during the daytime, they'll leave
you alone. For the most part not too bad. It's
really at night. You wouldn't want to be trying to
go up to like chest deep water in the Everglades
and hope that you don't make some new friends you
weren't intending on. That would be tough.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
There's also crocodiles and as he mentions, pythons, anacondas. There's
like basically anything can live in the Everglades. And they
do these python searches. I mean there are twenty foot pythons.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Now they do pythonnts. Yeah, well those are an invasive
species brought here as pets. The pythons are pets that
were brought here and released. Iguanas were pets that were
brought here and release. The iguanas are everywhere. You'll see
all over the place here. A lot of the smaller
lizards as well. They're not indigenous to South Florida. They
were brought here as pets. So that's why when you
(30:44):
go to places and they say did you bring any
like animals or livestock products or whatever, because if you
introduce some of these things into the ecosystem, I think
lionfish as well, which you can go and you can
kill as many lionfish as you want down here in Florida,
and you can. I think you can eat them. They
have a spot on them. They're very poisonous. Parrots are
(31:04):
I live next to flocks of wild parrots now, they're
all over the place here. Those were brought here as pets.
So a lot of stuff that you think of, and
you know what is not native to Florida or you
will not find in Florida.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Flamingos. Have I talked to you about this before?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
People think of there are thousands of businesses and places.
There's a flamingo park here in Miami Beach. Flamingo is
everywhere as a concept in Florida. Flamingo lawn ornaments, we've
all seen them.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Clay.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
The flamingos that most people think of when they think
of Miami were actually a flock of flamingos brought from
Africa at the racetrack in the intro of Miami Vice.
And everyone thought from that show, because there's flamingos at
the racetrack, there must be flamingos in Florida. There are
(31:53):
very rare, like a handful of occasions where they think
that maybe during severe weather, flamingos have basically been like
blown here, but there are there are not indigenous flamingos
and any numbers in Florida, which I think even shocks
some Floridians when they find out.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
The most successful, most liked invasive species in American history
bees they did.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
It's crazy.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
People don't realize it. There were no bees, no honey
bees in the United States or in the Americas until
they were brought over from Europe. By the way, another
crazy one tomatoes not native to Italy.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
We all think.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
About tomatoes like because so much of their cuisine involves
tomatoes not native.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
So they say now that they think there are up
to one hundred flamingos in the state of Florida that
may have been blown here during Hurricane Idalia, but there
was There's been a long period where there were no
wild flamingos here. So now there's like a very small
colony of them. But it's you know, I always I'm
(33:00):
down here. You see pelicans all over the place. Yeah,
they're not as famous, but flamingos are the things you
think of as Florida. They're not really here. But yeah,
so that's it's like the state bird for a state
that barely has any of these birds
Thank you for listening. This is the best of with
Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
We're joined by Heather MacDonald, Manhattan Institute fellow author of
When Race, Trump's Merit and the War on Cops, particularly
apro pos in the light of today's discussion here.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Heather. Always great to have you on the program.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
Thank you so much. Buck, It's great to be with
you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
So you must be watching this debate play out over
specifically the DC crime rate, but more broadly. Obviously, this
brings in a lot of arguments that you've heard from
the other side in the past and counter arguments that
you've been making. Are you surprised that it seems that
so many national level democrats have fallen into the trap
(00:43):
of defending the indefensible, which is the DC crime rate.
What's your perspective on this, Well, I.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Think this is one of the greatest moments of the
Trump presidency. His August eleventh Liberation Day speech just sent
chills down my spine, and I mean in a good way.
Words like we are not going to let it happen anymore.
We're not going to take it. We're not going to
lose our cities. We're taking our capital back. He has
(01:11):
finally broken fully with the dominant ideology in America, which
is to normalize the unacceptable, to define deviancy down and
Trump is saying, we are no longer going to make
excuses for crime. This is something we can control. The
Democrats have spent decades trying to write this off, to say, well,
(01:34):
it's just kind of a normal aspect of cities. A
lot of this, almost entirety of the criminal justice discourse
on the Democratic side is driven by race considerations. They've
of course played the race card here, So no, I'm
not surprised. It has just brought out their innate tendencies
to normalize crime in an extraordinarily vivid way, and they
(02:00):
are going to lose the debate. There's just no question.
You cannot. As you say, they are defending the indefensible.
Their argument is a set of non sequiturs. They say, well,
crime isn't bad in DC because it went down somewhat
last year. So what the fact is? Are you defending
three year olds being shot fatally in the head sitting
(02:23):
in their car, as has happened over the last couple
of years regularly. You cannot defend that. And yet that's
what the Democrats are doing, Heather.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
I actually thought about you on Sunday when I read
the New York Times editorial which basically said, hey, Heather
McDonald was right about everything, without saying Heather McDonald was
right about everything. I don't know if you officially read
that editorial, but let me just read to you from
the New York Times Sunday, and I want to just
(02:55):
get your thoughts on the cultural winds shifting that would
allow this to occur. During this is the New York Times.
During the twenty twenty protests, many progressives embrace calls to
quote defund the police, including prominent Democrats Kamala Harris, AOC
Eric Garcetti, then mayor of Los Angeles, and the protesters
(03:17):
had an effect. Officers were disheartened by public criticisms, quit
their jobs, police departments had staffing shortages. Overall crime surged,
and Democrats have to recognize that they were responsible for
it and their arguments created this. Did you ever think
the New York Times would say this when it came
(03:37):
to policing? And what is the significance of them completely
abandoning the cultural arguments they were making? Certainly five years.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Ago well, the editorial board would appear to be a
little tiny island of sanity in the paper large because
their news coverage is continuing, yeah to harp on the
theme that Trump is a fascist by daring to talk
about crime in DC and worse, daring to do something
about it. And this is all just a race based
(04:09):
ploy to try and go after black cities. So there's
a there's an absolute split in sensibility there. But it
is a good thing. I'll take every win I can get.
It is a good thing that the editorial board has
put out a little, a little strand of sanity there
that says that the police are not the problem in
(04:32):
high crime communities. Criminals are. And when you demoralize the police,
when you delegitimate prosecution and arrests, there's only one thing
that's going to happen. You're not going to get peace,
You're going to get more criminal victimization. And if your
claim is and this is of course a complete hypocritical pose,
(04:52):
but if your claim is to care about black lives,
you have to support the police because they are the
strongest a agency in any city, in any state that
is dedicated to saving black lives. They make arrests, they
deter crime. The National Guard there is there now just
to crime. Further, it is not there as some kind
(05:14):
of occupying force. It is using its command presence, and
when the cops back off, criminals take over. I have
spent years going to police community meetings in high crime
narrative areas like the South Side of Chicago, or Central
Harlem or Brooklyn, and all I hear from the good,
(05:35):
law abiding black residents there, especially the elderly ladies in
these fantastic cats, is the police are our friends? Please
Jesus send more police.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah. Heather McDonald with us here from the Manhattan Institute.
War on Cops is her excellent book. Heather, you are
somebody who also not just looks at the narratives, but
looks at the stats, the numbers, and have you been
able to I know it's hard at some level because
you have to rely on the DC crime stats from DC, right,
meaning that the police, if they're cooking the books, it
(06:09):
might be a little tough to see that because you
have to rely on the frontline numbers at some level
that they're putting out there. But have you looked into
that at all? Do you think it is possible and
or likely that this thirty percent crime drop, which as
you pointed out, isn't even really significant, but that that
thirty percent crime drop may be the result of some
(06:29):
fudging of the numbers.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I haven't looked into that personally. It is in line
with the crime drop that we're seeing in the rest
of the country. So if it were like twice as much,
that would be a real red flag. But I can say,
you know, there's constant pressure and ironically in the police
departments that are the best run, which means the ones
that are most aggressive towards their own police commanders, that
(06:56):
are demanding accountability, that are demanding that those account those
commanders have a plan for lowering crime, and the top
brash should be monitoring their numbers on a daily, if
not hourly basis. So those precinct commanders are in the
hot seat under what was known in New York City
as the CompStat system, They're going to feel the most
(07:17):
pressure to get their crime statistics down, and if they
don't have one hundred percent integrity, they're the more likely
to possibly declassify things, muck around with how you categorize crime.
The police departments that are lackadais agal that don't have
a strong commands structure, their PRECIN commanders are under less pressure.
(07:40):
So it's a weird thing, and it's something that departments
have to fight. The New York Police Department has a
whole unit dedicated to police integrity and going after corruption,
and it's not well loved in the department. But this
is a constant battle. I can't say in this case,
But again I would say that conservatives should not be
(08:03):
pulled into this game that the liberals are playing, which
is it well because crime dropped twenty seven percent last
year compared to its overwhelmingly high post George Floyd race,
riots thing that everything is okay, and conservatives saying, well,
it's still been Is that a true crime drop or not.
(08:26):
The fact is you can concede that crime has dropped
in the last two years in Washington, d C. And
still say so what, I don't care. Is it acceptable
that every single day in Washington, D C. There were
ten violent crimes, fourteen carthefts, three juvenile shot a day?
(08:49):
Is that acceptable? Is it acceptable that our homicide rate
is twenty seven times that of London's and sixty times
that of Switzerland? The only possible response is none of
that is acceptable. And that is what is so thrilling
about Trump's instincts. It's not even the details of the plan,
(09:10):
it's that he has instincts that are correct, which is
that any level of crime is not compatible with a
civilized society. Children being shot, cars being stolen, mass looting
going on, the carjackings, and it's overwhelmingly juvenile. Sixty percent
(09:31):
of a carjackings in DC are juveniles. Trump is correct,
they are not punished. In twenty twenty three, there were
five girls, ages twelve to fifteen who beat to death
a sixty four year old cancer victim weighing one hundred
and ten pounds. They filmed themselves laughing as they stomped
and beat them to death. None of them had long sentences.
(09:54):
The most their serving time is until they're twenty one.
Most of them will be out long before that. Trump
is absolutely right. DC has a soft on crime approach
that must change, just as every progressive prosecutor. It's all
driven by not wanting it to have a racial lead
disparate impact on black criminals. All law enforcement will simply
(10:17):
because the black crime rate is so high in DC,
Blacks commit about ninety six percent of all homicides even
though they are only forty three percent of the population.
Whites commit just under over one percent of the homicides
though they're thirty nine percent. You do not that should
not affect how you enforce the law. You enforce the
(10:40):
law to protect the law abiding, not to protect the criminals.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
Not only that, Heather, and the people who are the
victims overwhelmingly would be black too. So when you say, oh,
we're arresting people disproportionately for based on race, you're also
disproportionately protecting people who are race right, because most black
murder victims are going to be killed by black murder ers.
(11:11):
But last question for you here, and I love all
the data you provide, is there a city or a state,
based on the data that you have seen, that is
handling violent crime better than any others and it do
they have policies that should be replicated nationwide. We're fortunate
because we have these fifty different federal systems so we
(11:32):
can try experiments. And the idea is somebody in a
state does something good, hopefully it spreads. Is there any
one city or state that you would point to and say,
boy from a violent crime perspective. These guys and gals
are doing great. We should be copying more of what
they're doing nationwide. Any positive out there, Well.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Until recently, I would have said New York City because
of the CompStat Revolution, the accountability revolution, where police Chief
William Bratton followed up by William with we are going
to go.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Ahead, No no, I was a safer Kelly. I was
trying to give you the next commissioner, we go ahead, right.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Right, Kelly said, we are going to bring this down.
They brought They brought crime and homicides down eighty percent
by enforcing the law and above all by paying attention
to public disorder. That's why also the Trump initiative against
the encampments is so important, because this is something else
that simply should not be tolerated in the city. You
(12:36):
cannot have public space overcome by people urinating, defecating, shooting
up drugs in public. This is not acceptable. We cannot
define devancy down. So New York was very good in
paying attention to public order, in using its officers proactively
to use their powers of observation to stop people suspected
(13:00):
of carrying guns. It had an enormous effect they've backslid
in recent years. Now they've got a pretty good commissioner,
Jessica Tish, So that's that's good. But it's a constant battle,
and you know, we need we need politicians to have
the basic expectation that crime is not normal. And again,
(13:23):
it just cannot be stated enough. Buck and Clay Trump's
Liberation Day speech could be epic changing if people get
rid of the idea that they should just accept squalor
disorder and violence as the normal part and also mass looting,
mass shoplifting as simply normal parts of American cities.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Heather MacDonald, everybody always excellent, Heather, Thank you so much,
Thanks so much.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Buck and Clay.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
Hey, Buck, one of my kids called me an unk
the other day, and unk yep slaying evidently for not
being hip, being an old dude.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
So how do we un unky get.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
More people to subscribe to our YouTube channel? At least
that's what my kids tell me.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
That's simple enough. Just search the Klay Travis and Buck
Sexton show and hit the subscribe button.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
Takes less than five seconds to help ununk me.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Do it for Clay, do it for freedom, and get
great content while you're there. The Clay Travison Buck Sexton
Show YouTube channel, one of.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
Our podcast listeners has got an issue that he wants
to raise with you. As we finished the Thursday edition
of the program, this is Steve, who wants to talk
with you about your big flamingo discussion.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yes day. Oh, let's hear it. Let's hear it.
Speaker 6 (14:34):
Buck, check your history on the flamingos. I'm seventy years
old and as a kid before long before Miamivice came out,
I grew up thinking flamingos were from Florida. Chat GPT
says that they were native, but then when it almost extinct,
(14:56):
so check it out.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
All right, all right, buddy, all right, I don't know
the answer here. I'm stepping out of this, Phray. This
seems pretty intense for me.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Go you know, when you make you know, the zoological
specificity necessary.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
On this on this show is quite a thing. All right.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Let me let me just say this. This is what
the truth is as I understand it.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
There were flamingos here.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
They went extinct though for about two hundred years. Okay,
so they were gone in the eighteen hundreds and nineteen hundreds,
and then they wouldn't weren't able to find any. And
then the twentieth century they started to try to reintroduce
some native colonies and now in Florida they're about one
hundred of them, but that they are doing better than
the dodo bird here, but not much better like they
(15:42):
weren't around. And like I said, the it was the
it was a flock of imported African pink flamingos in
Miami Vice that were not indigenous to Florida that got
everybody thinking about in the eighties of Florida and flamingos again,
they didn't have.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
They have flamingos in Florida for over one hundred years
so and yet every everywhere you go there's flamingo.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
This in flamingo that it's kind of weird, right, like
walking around Newfoundland being like, hey, the dodo birds.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Not as many dodo birds.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
I'll tell you this. All over northern Michigan they've got
bear in every business, streets named after bear. I don't
think there's any bear left up here, by the way,
Jody Jody says, love the show they used to have
flaminga you got lit up by flamingo. People out there
also saying the same thing. They were decimated for the
(16:37):
feathers used in women's hats back in the day. That's
why they killed all the flamingos off in Florida. So
I don't know, sir, you better step check yourself before
you step into flamingo wars.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Well, I'm just they were gone though.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
That's my point is that there were no flamingos, and
everyone's talking about flamingos all the time.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
The only flamingos you're gonna see in Florida are the lawn.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Ornaments out there. I'm just telling you, guys the truth.
You can come at me with whatever you like.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
You're listening to the best of Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
We're joined by Senator Eric Schmidt of the Great State
of Missouri. He's also got a new book out, The
Last Line of Defense Had to Beat the Left in Court.
It is out today. Senator Schmidt, thanks for being here
with us.
Speaker 7 (17:21):
Up with you, guys.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Well, let's talk a little bit if we can about
law enforcement, because you were the attorney general in your
state of Missouri. Now, Saint Louis has had a crime
problem for quite some time, and I'm sure that was
a focus of some of your efforts at the state level,
if you had the writ, the support, the backing of
(17:43):
the federal government, whatever could be brought to bear Trump
administration saying, let's clean up crime in Saint Louis and
we'll give you whatever resources you need at the federal
level to do it. Could you do it? What would change?
How would it work?
Speaker 6 (17:57):
Well?
Speaker 7 (17:58):
I think one thing is you'd give some of the
central lawns forcement officials out of Washington, d C and
get them out into the country. I think Cash Hotel's
talked about this, and I think senior leadership and Department
of Justice just talked about this. So there's just too many, honestly,
of those folks are in d C and they're not helping,
you know, take out the bad guys across the country. Sadly,
they're spending a lot of their time. And we talk
(18:18):
about it in the book Last Line of Defense, in
the censorship effort, Russia Gate, all this nonsense, all the
man hour has been wrapped up in this political you know,
weaponization of the DOJ as opposed to fighting crime. The
other thing is one of the things that we did
when I was an attorney generals relatively what was unprecedent
at the time. We created something called the Safer Strengths
Initiative where we had Deputy Attorney generals in our office
(18:42):
deputized as assistant US attorneys. So we added the capacity
of prosecuting federal crime. When you have let's just say,
you have a prosecutor in Saint Louis and she's gone,
but Kim Gardner was a Soros backed prosecutor. If they
don't want to do their job, then we worked with
the US attorneys to go take on carjackings and things
like that. Really successful program. When Biden came in, ironically,
(19:03):
he scrapped the program because he just you know that
this just was not their focus. So I'm glad President
Trump's in there. I'm glad you know he's getting his
US attorneys. That's going to be kind of next up
when we get back to get these US attorneys in
place across the country, and I think that'll help.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Are you stunned that Democrats seem unable to break the
reflexive opposition to anything Trump says, even when he says
things that are super super popular with most normal people
in the country. Keep men out of women's sports, let's
have less violent crime in Washington, d C. Hey, I'm
(19:38):
trying to do whatever I can to stop people from
getting killed in Ukraine in the war there. All of
these things don't seem particularly political to me. Yet Democrats
have so brought into Trump is hitler, Trump is going
to start World War three, whatever negative you want to
associate it with it that they seem unable to acknowledge
(19:59):
that he actually has a lot of good ideas.
Speaker 7 (20:02):
Yeah, I think it's less political play and it's more psychological.
At this point, it truly is. It truly is a
psychosis and Trump arrangement syndrome is real, and it manifests
itself in just some crazy ways. I mean, you gave
a couple of examples. They're already actually taking criminals off
the streets in Washington, DC. Carjackings have been up five
hundred plus percent in five years. Clearly something needs to
(20:24):
be done, but they don't want them to do it.
You've got it president who has the confidence and the
strength to actually try to broker a deal to end
the bloodiest war in Europe since World War Two, and
they just tried to undercut them at every turn. And
I think the classic example, which is why I don't
think they've hit rock bottom yet. Is this issue of
illegal immigration. I mean, they cannot help themselves. Chris van
(20:47):
Holland goes to El Salvador and has Margarita's with an
MS thirteen member because they hate Trump so much. It's bizarre,
But I think they've got a couple more election cycles
in them. They're going to continue to lose before they
wake up. And this is just no longer the party
Ferry Truman or even Bill Clinton. This has been captured
by the radical left.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Now, you were part of some of the battles, legal
battles that the well, the forces of constitutionalism and the
rule of law, but also Republicans and Trump supporters were
involved in recent years. I know that's something you deal
with in the book.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
How should we.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
View the fact that they brought four criminal cases against
a president. They held those prosecutions specifically so they would
occur in an election year. I mean, on the one hand, Senator,
it's well, Trump is president and all's well, that ends well.
But in the other hand, that is a shocking precedent,
breach betrayal, I would say, of the American people's trust,
(21:48):
and they actually did it. I feel like we're still
processing that that happened, because it happened so recently.
Speaker 7 (21:54):
Yeah, And one of the reasons why I wrote last
line of Sense, which you can get on Amazon right now,
is there is a tendency, guys, I think too now
that we're past the fever dream the fever broke, I
think in November twenty twenty four of this kind of crazy,
woke nonsense and the lawfair that was brought against President
Trump to throw him in jail for the rest of
his life. There's a tendency to kind of gloss all
(22:15):
that over. But you got to remember the dark days,
and I was on your show talking about this was
why I think your audience really liked the book. This
was a time of lockdowns, compulsory COVID shots, open borders,
DEI struggle, sessions, ESG requirements, and a censorship enterprise so
vast that the Biden administration instituted that was the biggest
(22:35):
affront of the First Amendment in American history. This is
all just like in a four year period of time
where they opened up the floodgates on all this and
we had to push back. And so while President Trump
was out of power, we were able to kind of
hold the line on a lot of this for the
cavalry to arise. In November of last year, it did arrive,
and President Trump finished this, you know, epic historic comeback,
and we're talking about all the good things that Clay
(22:57):
you just mentioned they're happening that Democrats are still opposed to.
But there's a lot of important lessons learned. I mean,
whether it was you know, we took that vaccine mandate case,
always from court, we won. We took the Missouri took
the student on depth forgiveness case, always from court, we won.
I sued fifty plus school districts in Missouri for their
forced mass mandates. We won. We had the censorship case.
And what that shows and what the story is so important.
(23:19):
It's kind of behind the scenes look at what was
it like to take the duppel of Anthony Fauci, What
was it like to take the deposition of Elvis Chan
at the FBI who was pre bunking the Hunter Biden
laptop story. We did all that. The point is you
got to have courage. It's a lot easier to just
go to ribbon cuttings or just kind of walk along
than it is. We got to stand up and fight.
And President Trump, I think has transformed the Republican Party
(23:40):
now certainly from the one that I grew up in
into much more not just a working class party, but
a party that's just not going to lie down. We're
going to stand up, We're going to fight back, and
if we do it, we can actually win. So the
book is kind of a playbook on how we did
it then and how we can do it moving forward.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Okay, I love everything that's happening now. I think most
people out there listening do as well. Here's my concern.
And you know this better than anybody, because you were
involved in so many of these lawsuits. All of a sudden,
it's acceptable to say, hey, we believe in the marketplace
of ideas. Hey, we shouldn't be rigging the algorithms. Hey
we shouldn't be artificially inserting ourselves into the public discourse
(24:19):
and manipulating the results. Yet twenty twenty one, every social
media company in America ban Donald Trump from getting on
I like to joke because it kind of brings it home.
Pinterest banned Donald trumpest like he couldn't share his scrap
book collages for people out there. How do we stop
(24:43):
this from happening when Trump isn't in office and may
ensure that what we are doing now is going to
extend into the future no matter who the president happens
to be.
Speaker 7 (24:54):
Well, a couple things. One is I think there has
to be accountability for some of these actions. I think
the most I have an op at about this. I
think you can draw a straight line, like ironically Obama
has has immunity because of the case that that was
brought against President Trump presidential meday. But but but Clapper doesn't,
Brennan doesn't, Komy doesn't, And if you can prove beyond this,
(25:17):
you have a statue limitation issues. But you don't if
there's a conspiracy and it was an ongoing conspiracy, because
if you like the fuse in a conspiracy, whatever happens
a mile down the road, you're still responsible for. And
these guys knew it was fake, they knew it was BS.
They laundered that stupid Steele dossier into an actual intelligence report,
and they tried to not only a cub but tried
(25:38):
to sideline an entire first term of a president. And
then of course that was the impetus for all of
the Oh, this is Russian disinformation. This is Russian misinformation.
Everything was about Russian this, Russian that, even though it
was all bs and so I don't think we should
just forget about that. I think there have to be repercussions.
And as far as like social media companies, you guys
know this, it's a good thing that they have some
(26:00):
thing called Section two thirty protections, meaning they're a platform
not a publisher, meaning they're not legally responsible if somebody has,
you know, an opinion that you disagree with on that platform.
That's good for free speech, but you don't get to
have it both ways. You don't get the multi billion
dollar subsidy of being a platform where you can't be sued,
but then also try to manipulate what's on your platform
in an editorial like decision. So I think they got
(26:22):
to pick, and if they pick the wrong one, then
you're a publisher. You don't have the protections. I also
think a reform that will be important that I talk
about in the book two is these individual bureaucrats. If
you're engaged in suppressing somebody's First Amendment rights, you individually
ought to be able to be sued. There ought to
be an individual right of an action for an American
citizen to sue you for suppressing your speech about you know,
(26:43):
questioning masks and how they work for kids or not.
That would change the kind of risk dynamic that currently works.
Because as you guys know that beercrafts aren't accountable to anybody,
we need to start making them accountable to real people.
So there's a few things that we can do. But
you know what we saw, guys in that four year
in particular, if that was going on somewhere else, like
you know, the law their and the censorship and all
(27:05):
this mass migration, all this stuff that is being used
with tax thir dollars to fund, you know, we would
be the State Department would be warning American citizens about
that place. But that was happening here. And again, the
story of the Last Line of Defense, which you can
get on Amazon now, is about standing up, pushing back.
If you do it, if you've got the courage, that
you can win. And this is a playbook of how
(27:26):
conservatives moving forward can can fight and win in the courts,
which we've always kind of resisted because we thought that
was their terrain.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Okay, procedurally, you're an expert on this Democrats have a
huge advantage in DC because they have basically a ninety
five percent approval rating in DC, they can get any
indictment they want. How do you deal with that if
you're talking about bringing conspiracy charges? I don't need like
(27:52):
a you know, law review analysis style, but just for
me and people out there who have a general sense
that this is a problem, how do you rectify that?
Speaker 7 (28:02):
Well, once you have a conspiracy moving forward, it doesn't
just exist exclusively in Washington, DC. It emanates out. So
for example, which and I'm just using this potentially as
an example, but let's just say that the raid at
mar A Lago was really about getting documents back that
they thought President Trump had as related to the Steele Dosia.
(28:22):
I'm just throwing out a scenario, yesh Epathetically, of course,
if that were the case, you've got Southern Florida's where
you can issue indictments. Because again, remember if Jack Smith
is using a phony intelligence report that was generated by
Brennan and Kobe and Clapper, like they begin in the
conspiracy process, and he's furthering the conspiracy in South Florida. Again,
(28:44):
the jurisdiction that you can kind of work in gets
much broader, and I think that's one area that they
might they might look at.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Senator appreciate you being with us. I just want to
tell everybody one last time go check out the book
which is out today, the Senators new book. Very important,
very good stuff, The Last Line of Defense, How to
beat the Left in Court. Appreciate you, sir.
Speaker 7 (29:07):
All right, guys stick here, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
You're enjoying the best of program with Clay Travis and
Buck Sexton.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
I feel pretty good about the difficulty of anybody getting
out of Alligator Alcatraz as a Floridian? Are you one
hundred percent behind this idea?
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Certainly getting a lot of attention, and you need places
where you can hold people, quickly process them and then
get those deportation proceedings going. You know, you look at
the numbers, and I know the Trump administration is moving
rapidly on this stuff, but when you see the flood
that happened under Biden in four years, it's going to
(29:43):
take some real doing here to begin to really chip
away at the illegal invasion that happened in the country.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
But yeah, I think about you.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Know, alligators there, you know, during the daytime, they'll leave
you alone. For the most part not too bad. It's
really at night. You wouldn't want to be trying to
go up to like chest deep water in the Everglades
and hope that you don't make some new friends you
weren't intending on. That would be tough.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
There's also crocodiles and as he mentions, pythons, anacondas. There's
like basically anything can live in the Everglades. And they
do these python searches. I mean there are twenty foot pythons.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Now they do pythonnts. Yeah, well those are an invasive
species brought here as pets. The pythons are pets that
were brought here and released. Iguanas were pets that were
brought here and release. The iguanas are everywhere. You'll see
all over the place here. A lot of the smaller
lizards as well. They're not indigenous to South Florida. They
were brought here as pets. So that's why when you
(30:44):
go to places and they say did you bring any
like animals or livestock products or whatever, because if you
introduce some of these things into the ecosystem, I think
lionfish as well, which you can go and you can
kill as many lionfish as you want down here in Florida,
and you can. I think you can eat them. They
have a spot on them. They're very poisonous. Parrots are
(31:04):
I live next to flocks of wild parrots now, they're
all over the place here. Those were brought here as pets.
So a lot of stuff that you think of, and
you know what is not native to Florida or you
will not find in Florida.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Flamingos. Have I talked to you about this before?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
People think of there are thousands of businesses and places.
There's a flamingo park here in Miami Beach. Flamingo is
everywhere as a concept in Florida. Flamingo lawn ornaments, we've
all seen them.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Clay.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
The flamingos that most people think of when they think
of Miami were actually a flock of flamingos brought from
Africa at the racetrack in the intro of Miami Vice.
And everyone thought from that show, because there's flamingos at
the racetrack, there must be flamingos in Florida. There are
(31:53):
very rare, like a handful of occasions where they think
that maybe during severe weather, flamingos have basically been like
blown here, but there are there are not indigenous flamingos
and any numbers in Florida, which I think even shocks
some Floridians when they find out.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
The most successful, most liked invasive species in American history
bees they did.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
It's crazy.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
People don't realize it. There were no bees, no honey
bees in the United States or in the Americas until
they were brought over from Europe. By the way, another
crazy one tomatoes not native to Italy.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
We all think.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
About tomatoes like because so much of their cuisine involves
tomatoes not native.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
So they say now that they think there are up
to one hundred flamingos in the state of Florida that
may have been blown here during Hurricane Idalia, but there
was There's been a long period where there were no
wild flamingos here. So now there's like a very small
colony of them. But it's you know, I always I'm
(33:00):
down here. You see pelicans all over the place. Yeah,
they're not as famous, but flamingos are the things you
think of as Florida. They're not really here. But yeah,
so that's it's like the state bird for a state
that barely has any of these birds
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