February 19, 2025 • 36 mins
Ukraine, Russia and the Civil War. Trump is accelerating the endgame in Ukraine. Why is Zelensky afraid to hold elections? LA Mayor Karen Bass is investigating why nobody told her she shouldn't go to Ghana before the fires. Caller describes Trump as Ronald Reagan on steroids.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome in our number two Wednesday edition, Clay Travis Buck
Sexton Show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us.
Encourage you to go subscribe to the podcast. You can
search out my name Clay Travis. You can search out
Buck Sexton Podcast network is phenomenal, lots of different aspects there.
There's also a weekend fun edition if you just want
(00:26):
to have something to drive around and listen to, maybe
you work out on Saturday or Sunday. Tens of millions
of you downloading the episodes every single month.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That is an incredible credit.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We want to be as many places as we can
possibly be to be fighting the battles that we are fighting,
and we thank all of you for listening to us
in all fifty states five hundred ish stations nationwide. As
we are rolling through the top of our number two
here on the Wednesday edition of the program, and there
is big discussion we so far have had a ceasefire
(00:59):
whole being in the Middle East. Now, I don't know
if you saw buck this awful story. As they are
releasing different hostages. It appears Unfortunately that one of the
families that has been most focused on that had two
young toddler age children along with the mother. It appears
(01:22):
that Hamas has murdered them, kidnap them. The father has
been released. There is expectation that Hamas is turning over
murdered bodies as part of the ongoing ceasefire there. It's
an awful situation. We will update you on that as
it goes forward. But the best case scenario is that
(01:43):
the ceasefire keeps holding and the hostages who have not
been murdered by Hamas are able to be released. That
is a credit. The fact that we have a ceasefire
at all in the Middle East is a credit to
Trump's election. When I was in Israel in December meeting
with top Israeli official, they all said the election of
Trump changed the calculus of Hamas. Shortly thereafter got the
(02:06):
ceasefire in the North with Hesbola, and then Hamask also
got in line. We hope that that ceasefire is going
to hold. Now the focus has shifted to the European theater.
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, we talked to last week.
They had the first face to face meetings between the
Russians and the Americans since the invasion of Ukraine began.
(02:29):
That happened in Saudi Arabia, and one of the discussions
now going on is what needs to happen in order
for a ceasefire to take root in Ukraine, Russia and
in the largest ground war to take place in Europe
since World War Two. And Trump has now teed off
(02:50):
on Zelenski in particular, saying why is this guy? First
of all, where's the money going? Which is a valid question.
We have sent hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine
and there does not seem to be an accounting for
where all that money went, taxpayer dollars. The continued just
(03:11):
shovel of money that we have been sending there has
slowed down.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Trump has put a pause on.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
It, but he's also raised a really important question, and
I don't know that many of you have even thought
about this. One of the conditions going forward in order
for Ukraine and Russia to have a ceasefire is Ukraine
actually having an election. Zolensky does not appear willing to
(03:38):
have an election because he doesn't actually have that much
popular support in Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
We have all been told.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Oh, Zolenski, he is the most popular politician anywhere. Everyone
loves him. Why won't he allow an election to take place?
If he supposedly is standing for democracy. It's a question
that suddenly has emerged, and I think it's an important
one that we should be talking about.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Clay our resident Civil War amateur historian, brought up that
even during the height of the Civil War, and it
is in fact the case, Abraham Lincoln was concerned about
challenges from the electorate, as in, is he going to
get re elected? And if there weren't some battlefield successes
from specifically, I think was Grant and Sherman right to
(04:26):
make the public feel like the North was actually on
a pathway to victory. Abraham Lincoln might have lost that election,
but it turned out he won, and as we know, well,
it certainly wasn't happily ever after for Lincoln after that.
But the point is they allowed elections to happen, and
they don't allow that in Ukraine right now. I'm also
(04:47):
curious what the role is that Zelenski thinks that Trump
administration is supposed to play here because we have provided them.
Here's one thing to remember, there's what we have officially
provided them, as in people know about, and then there's
the help that we have given them quietly, as well
as some of our more militarily adept NATO partners. It's
(05:09):
a lot more than people think and realize. It is right,
the intelligence assistants, the training assistants, the things that have
been going on to bring Russia to a stalemate. Without
the help of the US specifically, and then a couple
of our NATO partners pitching in too, Ukraine would not
be able to hold Russia back in this way. So
(05:31):
it's not like Clay. We are bystanders, you know, We're
not up in the bleachers yelling at the ref and
interfering in the game. Without us, there is no game
without us. This war would have been lost for Ukraine
a long time ago. So for Trump to take a
role in trying to get negotiations started, let's see where
(05:51):
this goes. I'm not surprised, but it is a little
bit frustrating to see some of the comments that have
been made from Zelensky specifically given this, he certainly does
not come across as being somebody who is grateful for
the help of the unit. I mean, he kind of
says it, but he, I think is in a position
(06:12):
right now. Well, well, first of all, the Russians are
on the move. The Russians are actually on the offensive.
So to get a deal done is probably better now
than it would be if you were to wait six
months or twelve months. And now Putin obviously knows that too.
But bringing this conflict to an end is essential. I
mean Trump has called Zelenski now a dictator and has
(06:34):
accused him publicly of misusing usaid is that true, Because
if it's true, Trump calling out is the right thing
to do. And I don't think Trump would say this
unless he felt like he needed to bring Zelensky to
the table with a bit more pressure to get an
end to this.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Well, yeah, let me put my history nerd hat on here.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
If you are arguing, hey, Ukraine stands on the side
of democracy, did you know?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
And I know because I wrote my thesis on it.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
In eighteen sixty four, Abraham Lincoln ran against George McClellan
buck his former head of the Union Army, and McClellan
ran as the Democrat.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Lincoln was the Republican. In eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
McClellan ran basically on the precept of we need to
have peace, and we need to go ahead potentially and
allow the South to withdraw.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
And to your point, basically the South winds I mean correct,
South gets to be what it is, which is not
a part of the Union. And that's ballgame, everybody correct.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And the entire election came down to be a referendum
on should the Civil War continue to be prosecuted as
it was.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
And to your point, it was uncertain who was going
to win.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Again we had an election during the Civil War in
this country, and until Sherman took Atlanta and began his
march to this for those of you who are Civil
War history nerds, it was unclear whether Lincoln was gonna win.
It was the capture of Atlanta in September that was
the false surprise of the eighteen sixty four election, and
(08:13):
Lincoln could say, we've got to keep the steam going.
We don't need to now allow the South to have
the opportunity to think they can win the war.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Because all you needed from the Confederate point of view
was a stalemate that continued long enough where the survival
of the Confederate army ran off that the North loses
the political will to continue the fight. When Sherman comes
in and makes it more of a total war scenario
going after the war, making capability the railroad depots, supply
lines of the Lee's Confederate Army. It changed the equation
(08:46):
in the minds of people in the North. So that's
how mcloughn's defeated and Lincoln wins. Point here being so
Zelenski just says, no elections and I'm in charge until
what And by.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
The way, not just Civil War buck World War two.
W FDR won an election which was in many ways
a referendum against Dewey in November of nineteen forty four.
On how the election was going, and if you go
back in time and if you actually do your historical analysis,
(09:16):
it wasn't a coincidence that Eisenhower invaded in June of
nineteen forty four, because in the summer of that election season,
this was the idea being, hey, we're prosecuting the war
against Hitler in Germany, and things were going well enough
that people said, I can see an end coming to
(09:37):
this war. But in the summer when they were running,
there was an uncertainty about how this should come out.
My point on it is the United States arguing that
Ukraine through Trump, that Ukraine should have an election is
actually consistent with democratic republican values of the United States.
(09:57):
When we have allowed elections to take place in this
country during the two I would argue most crucible moments
about what the future of this republic would be. We
allowed citizens to go vote on whether the Civil War
should continue. We allowed citizens to go vote on whether
World War two should happen. And why shouldn't we ask
(10:18):
the same thing of Zelensky? This seems very rational to me. Now,
the reason Trump's calling him a dictator buck is because
Zelensky doesn't think he would win the election. And this
is important for everybody in America who's been told, oh,
Zelensky is this war hero. Everybody in Russia loves him.
Wait a minute, why won't he allow Ukrainian will to
(10:39):
come out and for Ukrainians to vote about what they
think should happen this These are really good questions that
haven't been discussed in this country.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Well.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
There's also one of the challenges here is that the
Ukrainian fight has been held up as a proxy, effectively
a proxy army against the Russians, and the really cynical,
but I think for a lot of people that view
it as a very accurate sense of this is that
(11:10):
the support of the Ukrainian Army was an opportunity for
US to bleed the Russian Federation without losing any of NATO,
without losing any actual NATO ally soldiers, right. And so
in that formulation, the longer the conflict goes, the better
it is for the people sitting there pulling the puppet
strings because they're just losing Ukrainians, they're not losing NATO allies,
(11:33):
and they're making things harder on Russia. Now, I think
that's a brutal and an immoral and short sighted way
of viewing the situation. But there is that sentiment among
the foreign policy elites. I wouldn't say consensus anymore, because
they're not calling the shots Trump is, but there is
that sense among them that this is giving us greater
(11:53):
strategic depth against Russia. And they also say this, and
Zelensky says this himself, This crazy stuff about how Russia
is going to over run all of Europe unless they're
stopped in Ukraine. That's just not true. The Russians don't
have the capacity to do that. They don't have the
capacity to overrun Ukraine right now with the support that's
being given. They're not about to invade Germany and trigger
Article five of NATO. That's not gonna happen. So we're
(12:15):
told things about this conflict that are not true, and
the longer it drags on, the higher the body count goes.
Isn't it fascinating? Think of all the people, Clay, who
are so upset about the loss of I'm talking about
the left and Democrats in this country. Everything that happens
in Gaza is a cause for you know, college kids
and you know MSNBC hosts to start crying. Look at
(12:37):
the loss of life that's going on in Ukraine day
in and day out. No, that's worth it because it's
protecting democracy? Is it?
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Really?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
How is it protecting democracy?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Isn't the very foundation of democracy allowing people to pick
their leaders in.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Time or learning something new.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I also don't think very many people even are aware
that Zelensky has ended all elections in his country, and
so I think this is a real conversation. We'll take
some of your calls, by the way, eight hundred and
two two two eight a two. If some of you
have questions about this, But I do think this is
a conversation on a substantial level that frankly, the American
(13:14):
public has not been as well informed as they could
have been. And I think it's important to use our
country's history as a argument for what we think the
precedent should be for other countries. In times of war.
The Constitution doesn't vanish in the United States. In times
of Chris Lincoln did suspend corps. That nobody's perfect, nobody's
(13:37):
that's actually a super nerd a bit that you know that,
But he did allow the election to happen. And unfortunately,
what we learned during COVID is the Constitution matters far
more during a time of crisis than it does during
actual normal times of peace and prosperity. Look, speaking of
peace and prosperity, I love college basketball season.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
March Madness is coming up.
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(14:20):
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Speaker 3 (15:25):
We were just talking about the Russia Ukraine war and
how Trump is trying to bring this, help bring this
to a conclusion. There's a lot of pushback in Wall
Street Journal I could tell a little hostile toward the
Trump position on this, not a surprise some others too.
But Trump is very confident that this can be brought
to a negotiated end, which I think is the only outcome. Really,
(15:49):
it's just a question of when and what the final
status is of each side after that deal is struck. Right,
But there's no future in which Ukraine is not going
to take over and destroy all of or you know,
destroy the Russian army and take over Russia. That's not happening,
doesn't look like as long as we're supporting Ukraine, Russia
can overrun all the Ukrainian forces and take most or
(16:12):
all of Ukraine. So in this situation, you have a stalemate,
you have a lot of lives being lost, a lot
of material, a lot of US taxpayer dollars going to this.
Hundreds of billions I think is the official number. As
I said, it'll end up being a trillion dollars that
has gone to Ukraine from the US and NATO from
the start, of this war. Here's Trump just saying, a
half baked negotiator, this is cut eleven could have ended
(16:32):
this thing.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Well, I think I'm really disappointed in what's happened. I've
been watching this for three years. It's a war that
would have never happened if I was president, And I've
been watching these these you know, people being killed at
levels that you've rarely seen, not even close since the
Second World War. And I'm very disappointed. I hear that,
(16:54):
you know there's upset about not having a seat. Well,
they've had a seat for three years, and a long
time before that. This could have been settled very easily,
just a half a half bigd negotiator could have settled
this years ago without either without the loss of much land,
very little land, without the loss of any lives.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
He's very bold on this, Clay. What if he's right,
what happens to the foreign policy quote consensus? Then if
Trump just comes in and this thing stops.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
I mean, he should get the Nobel Prize because it
would be such a transformative thing. But he's already been
right so far about the Middle East. Whatever your perspective
is on the Middle East, the killing has certainly slowed
down since Trump was elected in November, and I think again,
if you look at the way this situation is playing out,
(17:46):
Trump is going to get a resolution in Ukraine. And
what is the Lensky afraid of in terms of having elections?
I think it's a question that no one is asking,
but I think it's very important, particularly in the content
of American history. Look, you can switch your cell phone
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Speaker 1 (18:40):
Again.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
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claim your Samsung Galaxy or iPhone fourteen. That's pound two
five zero, say Clay and Buck. We talked about the
drama in New York City surrounding the mayor's race there.
(19:02):
We also on the flip side of the country still
have all of the awfulness unspooling from the Los Angeles
wildfires in Pacific Palisades, in particular in terms of the
failure of Los Angeles City government mayor Karen Bass, who
remember beat Rick Caruso, and I saw where Elon Musk
(19:27):
came out recently and said, hey, if Rick Caruso had
been the mayor, I think thousands of homes would have
been spared because he would have been a more competent leader.
And if you say, okay, what is Elon Musk based
that on? Rick Caruso has one of the biggest developments
in Pacific Palisades and none of it burned down. He
(19:48):
had his team ready to protect the area there, the
shopping area. He had them putting out fires instantaneously if
there were to be potential flames that were spreading in
the winds the.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Wildfires, he was ready. He was ready for this event.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Remember Karen Bass famously was in Ghana she had gone
for the inauguration of the new Ghanian president or vice president,
and she was there as an official, as a dignitary
for that swearing in. Despite the fact that there were
(20:28):
ample warnings that Los Angeles was going to face wildfire dangers.
In other words, there were a lot of weather forecasters saying, hey,
this is going to be an issue. Everybody should be
aware of the danger that is coming. Because of the
increased amount of wind and the dry nature of Los Angeles.
(20:51):
Right now, it wasn't crazy that these wildfires could emerge.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Well.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
And by the way, you'll remember, we talked about the
history of Los.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Angeles, which is millions.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Of acres on a regular basis, pre major settlement of
Los Angeles would burn every year and it was only
via the management of the surrounding environment that we had
driven down the overall amount of wildfires and acreage that
burns every year. And in fact, the climate change activist
(21:22):
had decided to come in and start to argue, oh,
you're impacting the climate too much with some of the
anti burn regulations that you put in place. They eliminated
a lot of that, and then the fires if kicked
back up in the last several years, so it's very circular.
We're basically back to what we were in a pre
(21:43):
developed Los Angeles. Reason why I bring all this up
Karen Basset for an interview Mayor of Los Angeles, and
she said, you know what, we need an investigation into
why I was in Ghana when all the wildfires happened.
I can't believe this is real.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
Listen, when I talked about it with the fire chief,
what she said is is that we have warnings of
Santa Anna wins a lot but predicting this and you
saw from the city, from the county that level of
preparation really didn't happen. So it didn't reach that level
to me to say something terrible could happen and maybe
(22:19):
you shouldn't have gone on the trip. So two investigations
are taking place. One internal to the city and that's
the Fire Commission because that's mandated by the city charter.
So the commission will hire an outside entity to examine everything,
the pre deployment. You know, why were firefighters sent home,
you know, all of that that should have taken place
(22:40):
that didn't. And then also the governor has contracted with
the Fire Safety Research Institute, which is a national institute
that investigated what happened in the fires and MAUI.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Okay, So that is one statement.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
We need an investigation into why we were so incompetent.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
We also have another cut.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
This is the consequence of choosing incompetence.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
As your mayo oral leader.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
This is Karen Bass, second largest city in America right now,
Eric Adams runs New York City.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
We were talking about the failures there.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Here is Karen Bass continuing to talk about how could
we have possibly known that the wildfires were going to
be this bad? We need another investigation.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
So let me just tell you a couple of things.
First of all, when the White House called and asked
me if I would represent the president, I said yes.
It was going to be a very very short trip
over a weekend and two business days. We need to
look at everything about the preparation and all of that
for the fires, because I think when we evaluate that,
(23:45):
we will find that although there were warnings that I
frankly wasn't aware of, although there were warnings, I think
our preparation it wasn't what it typically is.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Okay, So this is in common competence buck on a
pretty crazy level that you would have the mayor basically saying,
how come nobody told me there might be fires? How
come we weren't prepared. Meanwhile, there are oodles, there are
scads of LA area meteorologist and weather forecasters who were saying,
(24:20):
we were out telling everybody that these dangers were here.
You know, it's also just a culture of no accountability
now that we see increasingly from a lot of different politicians,
where they think their job is when they've been caught
completely wrong footed, something really bad has happened. I mean
(24:40):
wildfire for a mayor, that's a particularly awful situation, and
then they think their job is to turn around and say, well,
we're going to have a commission and a bunch of
committees and explain why the bad thing happened over the
next six to eighteen months, and I promise.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
You we'll have a report ready for you. No, you're
actually supposed to get it done. You know, we were
talking about generals before the Civil War and Lincoln having
to deal with the realities of the battlefield. As a politician.
Sometimes you just got to replace a general because you're losing,
and you know, it's it's one thing to say, well,
there's a lot of circumstances, A lot of facts going
on here, but ultimately, the buck has to stop. Pardon
(25:21):
the expression, the buck has to stop with someone, and
Mayor Karen Bass is just making very clear the buck
does not stop with her on this that it was
a lot of things and being gone, and yeah it
was a bad look, but it was just supposed to
be a couple of days. What are you doing going
to Ghana? That's the question, right, it doesn't I don't
care if it's for five minutes. What are you doing.
You're the mayor of the second largest city in America
(25:41):
and you're flying to Ghana on on a a busy look.
If she was on vacation for a week with her
family and she came back right away, it's a look
unfortunate timing. No, she was representing Los Angeles in Ghana,
which is the part of it that is particularly absurd.
I think bothers people about this a lot. And also
now the rebuilding realities have started to set in for
(26:03):
people there, you know, the whole imagine if your house
is still standing in Pacific Palacedays. I've talked to friends
who have friends who lost their houses. I don't know
anyone well personally who lost a house, But I know
a lot of people who are one person removed who
got their house burned down. But even if your house
is still standing, there the neighborhood around you is like
a war zone right now in terms of you know
(26:24):
what the debris and everything looks looks like it's been
bombed out. You're missing schools. In some places, the neighborhood
isn't even there. It's not just your house is gone,
the houses around your house, or rather, it's not just
whether your house is gone or not, it's also the
surrounding area. And California is not going to make this
super easy and efficient because they're incapable of making things
(26:46):
super easy and efficient. So I think that there are
going to be some people who have left, and more will.
Some people have left, I think more will leave, and
I just hope that there's some sense along the Californians
you stay. You have to stop voting for imbeciles, whether
it's Newsome or Bass. You have to stop voting for
(27:06):
people who cannot do the very important, very serious jobs
that you are electing them to do.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
One of our OutKick executives that we started with at
Fox had his house burned down in LA.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I was texting about it with him this week.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
How long does he think the rebuild's going to be? Years? Yeah,
I mean at least three to five is what I've heard.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
And I have talked to a couple of other friends
who lost their homes that are scrambling to try to
find places to live. And one of the things that
is occurring in LA and I bet many of you
listening in this area know what I'm talking about. The
rental prices for homes have skyrocketing. Of course, so if
you were going to in you got kids in school
(27:46):
right now, and you're like, I can't bell on Los Angeles.
I still want to be in this area. Everybody who
had a property that was high end property available has
doubled and tripled what they would be charging per month.
And you've got I've got so many people out there.
That's people who are fortunate enough to be able to
have the resources to buy places. You've also got a
ton of people out there, and this is going to
(28:08):
become more and more unfortunate. I think as this story continues,
huge numbers of people in Los Angeles their primary retirement
vehicle is the value of their home and a lot
of people. If you bought a home in that area
of Los Angeles thirty years ago, prices were somewhat affordable.
Some people have had those homes for forty years. They
(28:31):
were not insured as much because some people had already
paid off their mortgage and the cost of rebuilding. Not
only is it going to talk take years, but a
lot of people frankly don't have the money to be
able to afford to rebuild, and so this is frankly,
it's cataclysmic.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
If you could rebuild it. We've talked about this a
little bit, but keep this in mind. If you could rebuild,
your house for tax purposes, will be assessed at the
new market value. And they're not going to give some
holiday on that, if you will to everybody. They're gonna say, look,
if you're building a house in this area, it's brand new,
it's worth it's worth five million bucks. You're not paying
because if you've lived there from when you could get
(29:11):
a house there for I don't know, thirty years ago,
probably a million dollars, maybe maybe half a million forraction
of what it would be where it is, you know,
thirty years ago it was probably half a million dollars.
Maybe it was even even less than that. So if
you moved in and you got a half million dollar
house in this swanky area, now it's worth five million
dollars after thirty years the five hundred thousand initial price,
they're capped at how much they can raise your taxes
(29:33):
every year, so it gets nowhere close to the new
market value of that house. So the point is now
your annual burn rate of cash would be a lot more.
And so people are gonna say, look, I don't want
to I don't want to deal with that. And then
you add on top of that, California is fourteen percent
property tax rate. Because the people live in Pacific Palisades,
they're going to be paying high rates. I mean, these
(29:54):
are these are generally going to be high earners because
the housing is so expensive. So yeah, it's an absolute mess.
But the good new it is for everybody. Karen Bass
is going to have a lot of people looking into
why she didn't do her job better and that's what
she offers for you.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And we have reached out, but we should put it in.
I'm sure she won't come on. Yeah, we should in
buye Karen Bass. But we have reached out to Rick Caruso,
who should have been the pick to come on this
program and kind of walk through the rebuild of LA.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I think the Caruso conversation would be interesting and worthwhile,
and I look forward to that if we can get him,
I mean, even if it's funny clear, even if we
got Karen bass On, I feel like she would just
say it would just be the stuff that she's prepared
to say, and we wouldn't get any answers. Every nothing
is her fault. They did everything right, and yet you know,
you hear all this stuff and you go, hold on,
(30:41):
so it's not your fault. It's not anybody's fault. And
everything that needed to go right from the government side
basically was done right by the people in charge. There
were some system issues, so nobody's nobody's accountably, you see
what I mean? Notice notice that, so nobody should get fired.
The whole neighborhood burned down, or neighborhoods, multip them, they's
burned down. They clearly were not prepared for this, They
(31:03):
had no ability to handle it. And nobody gets fired
or even resigns, really or steps Has anyone resigned or
stepped down? Don't know maybe someone's resigned, But anyway, I
just think it's indicative of the mindset. I'm gonna tell Clay.
What am I holding up right here is chalk.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
When I walked into your place today, I said, my goodness,
you've lost a ton of weight. And one reason you've
done it is you've been using this.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
When you work out. Susture is in fighting shape these days.
My friends, that's right down about thirty pounds. As you know,
this is kind of where I used to be. Got
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I've also got over my shelf. I got the glutathione,
(31:45):
which is a fantastic antioxidant. Because, yeah, obviously the core
things diet, exercise, sleep. By the way, diet, exercise sleep,
you need to have those three things dialed in or else.
But proper supplementation for energy, overall wellness and for being
on a fitness journey, and like I've been on now
for six months, it's essential. It makes such a difference.
(32:05):
You know, you can get to the gym, but do
you have the energy to get the most out of
the gym, And how are your testosterone levels doing? Do
you want to boost in testosterone Tongu kat Ali some
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at Chalk they can show you which ones online they've
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(32:27):
I'm like, that's right, look at these abs. Not quite
not quite. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't do that. But
Chalk is amazing. And you know, I have an online
trainer who's fantastic and I'll eventually give you his name
if some of you guys want it, because he's been unbelievable.
And I made him go on the Chalk website and
I made him try these himself and do some due
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(32:49):
as part of our protocol. So I'm in. My friends,
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(33:10):
this stuff, you're gonna say this is part of your
protocol too. That's Chalk choq dot com. Use my name Buck,
and I'm about to take a toncot Ali as soon
as we go on to commercial break, So Clay here
goes see you guys in a second. Got a bunch
of calls coming in about you frame which we want
(33:32):
to take in just a second. Here as I have
my steaming cup of hot Crockett coffee right here in
my hand. Crockettcoffee dot Com. It's what you should all
be drinking. Just made some French press down there for
Clay of our light roast light Blend. Fantastic, drinking it
right now, drinking it right now and getting us all
fired up. So please join a subscribe, become part of
the Crocket Revolution. Davy Crockett, amazing man, Let's get sorry.
(33:56):
I started to sound like Trump. Davy Crockett. Some people
are saying the most amazing on tear pietyer like ever seeing. Yeah,
here we go, we have uh Andy in Austin, Texas
talking to us about Ukraine. What's going on?
Speaker 7 (34:09):
Hey, you know one thing I love about Trump and
his he's like Ronald Reagan on steroids. When he just
bypasses the media, He bypasses everything.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
He doesn't allow the filters to.
Speaker 7 (34:24):
Dictate the narrative of what he wants to say. And
so people might think that his comment on X about
Ukraine was for Zelenski, but it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
It was for the US senators that wanted to, you.
Speaker 7 (34:39):
Know, support giving him more money. Uh So those guys
have a clear message right now. Lindsey Graham others lik
him that, you know, think the war in Ukraine is
a spend it all costs, you know, an item for
us financially here in the United States. They're going to
have to defend what Donald Trump just made real clear
that there really should be principles that every Amica I
(35:00):
can agree with about how we spend our money and
so and he didn't have to come out and name
many names. But if all of a sudden there's a
big spending package going through the Senate for Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
They're going to have to defend that position. And based
on Trump's you know, ex posts, So anyhow, it's he
just bypasses everything else says here it is now.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yes, he is.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
He is something of a disruptor, this Donald Trump. I
think that is definitely the case. Various stude comments, Andy,
thank you for calling in from Texas.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah, we'll take some of your calls in the third
hour on this. But the way that I would put
this into context is Trump is accelerating the end game
in Ukraine. If he is saying, hey, we're not going
to give you an unlimited check. We know, unfortunately that
hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost. We have
been effectively in a stalemate by and large, where both
(35:56):
sides are dug in and the lines aren't moving very
much for over a year now. There needs to be
a resolution, and the resolution is probably going to be
that Ukraine loses several of its provinces that are closer
to Russia. That seems like the only conclusion coming here.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Can I bring this back home here for a second,
everybody home, at least in the United States. Trump administration
is moving to break New York's congestion pricing here that
everyone listening on seven to ten wor and NYC, and
we're going to talk about this President Trump taking upon
(36:35):
himself to end congestion pricing in America's biggest city. That
Eric Adams is like, thank you. That's very smart.
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome in our number two Wednesday edition, Clay Travis Buck
Sexton Show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us.
Encourage you to go subscribe to the podcast. You can
search out my name Clay Travis. You can search out
Buck Sexton Podcast network is phenomenal, lots of different aspects there.
There's also a weekend fun edition if you just want
(00:26):
to have something to drive around and listen to, maybe
you work out on Saturday or Sunday. Tens of millions
of you downloading the episodes every single month.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That is an incredible credit.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We want to be as many places as we can
possibly be to be fighting the battles that we are fighting,
and we thank all of you for listening to us
in all fifty states five hundred ish stations nationwide. As
we are rolling through the top of our number two
here on the Wednesday edition of the program, and there
is big discussion we so far have had a ceasefire
(00:59):
whole being in the Middle East. Now, I don't know
if you saw buck this awful story. As they are
releasing different hostages. It appears Unfortunately that one of the
families that has been most focused on that had two
young toddler age children along with the mother. It appears
(01:22):
that Hamas has murdered them, kidnap them. The father has
been released. There is expectation that Hamas is turning over
murdered bodies as part of the ongoing ceasefire there. It's
an awful situation. We will update you on that as
it goes forward. But the best case scenario is that
(01:43):
the ceasefire keeps holding and the hostages who have not
been murdered by Hamas are able to be released. That
is a credit. The fact that we have a ceasefire
at all in the Middle East is a credit to
Trump's election. When I was in Israel in December meeting
with top Israeli official, they all said the election of
Trump changed the calculus of Hamas. Shortly thereafter got the
(02:06):
ceasefire in the North with Hesbola, and then Hamask also
got in line. We hope that that ceasefire is going
to hold. Now the focus has shifted to the European theater.
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, we talked to last week.
They had the first face to face meetings between the
Russians and the Americans since the invasion of Ukraine began.
(02:29):
That happened in Saudi Arabia, and one of the discussions
now going on is what needs to happen in order
for a ceasefire to take root in Ukraine, Russia and
in the largest ground war to take place in Europe
since World War Two. And Trump has now teed off
(02:50):
on Zelenski in particular, saying why is this guy? First
of all, where's the money going? Which is a valid question.
We have sent hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine
and there does not seem to be an accounting for
where all that money went, taxpayer dollars. The continued just
(03:11):
shovel of money that we have been sending there has
slowed down.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Trump has put a pause on.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
It, but he's also raised a really important question, and
I don't know that many of you have even thought
about this. One of the conditions going forward in order
for Ukraine and Russia to have a ceasefire is Ukraine
actually having an election. Zolensky does not appear willing to
(03:38):
have an election because he doesn't actually have that much
popular support in Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
We have all been told.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Oh, Zolenski, he is the most popular politician anywhere. Everyone
loves him. Why won't he allow an election to take place?
If he supposedly is standing for democracy. It's a question
that suddenly has emerged, and I think it's an important
one that we should be talking about.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Clay our resident Civil War amateur historian, brought up that
even during the height of the Civil War, and it
is in fact the case, Abraham Lincoln was concerned about
challenges from the electorate, as in, is he going to
get re elected? And if there weren't some battlefield successes
from specifically, I think was Grant and Sherman right to
(04:26):
make the public feel like the North was actually on
a pathway to victory. Abraham Lincoln might have lost that election,
but it turned out he won, and as we know, well,
it certainly wasn't happily ever after for Lincoln after that.
But the point is they allowed elections to happen, and
they don't allow that in Ukraine right now. I'm also
(04:47):
curious what the role is that Zelenski thinks that Trump
administration is supposed to play here because we have provided them.
Here's one thing to remember, there's what we have officially
provided them, as in people know about, and then there's
the help that we have given them quietly, as well
as some of our more militarily adept NATO partners. It's
(05:09):
a lot more than people think and realize. It is right,
the intelligence assistants, the training assistants, the things that have
been going on to bring Russia to a stalemate. Without
the help of the US specifically, and then a couple
of our NATO partners pitching in too, Ukraine would not
be able to hold Russia back in this way. So
(05:31):
it's not like Clay. We are bystanders, you know, We're
not up in the bleachers yelling at the ref and
interfering in the game. Without us, there is no game
without us. This war would have been lost for Ukraine
a long time ago. So for Trump to take a
role in trying to get negotiations started, let's see where
(05:51):
this goes. I'm not surprised, but it is a little
bit frustrating to see some of the comments that have
been made from Zelensky specifically given this, he certainly does
not come across as being somebody who is grateful for
the help of the unit. I mean, he kind of
says it, but he, I think is in a position
(06:12):
right now. Well, well, first of all, the Russians are
on the move. The Russians are actually on the offensive.
So to get a deal done is probably better now
than it would be if you were to wait six
months or twelve months. And now Putin obviously knows that too.
But bringing this conflict to an end is essential. I
mean Trump has called Zelenski now a dictator and has
(06:34):
accused him publicly of misusing usaid is that true, Because
if it's true, Trump calling out is the right thing
to do. And I don't think Trump would say this
unless he felt like he needed to bring Zelensky to
the table with a bit more pressure to get an
end to this.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Well, yeah, let me put my history nerd hat on here.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
If you are arguing, hey, Ukraine stands on the side
of democracy, did you know?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
And I know because I wrote my thesis on it.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
In eighteen sixty four, Abraham Lincoln ran against George McClellan
buck his former head of the Union Army, and McClellan
ran as the Democrat.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Lincoln was the Republican. In eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
McClellan ran basically on the precept of we need to
have peace, and we need to go ahead potentially and
allow the South to withdraw.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
And to your point, basically the South winds I mean correct,
South gets to be what it is, which is not
a part of the Union. And that's ballgame, everybody correct.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And the entire election came down to be a referendum
on should the Civil War continue to be prosecuted as
it was.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
And to your point, it was uncertain who was going
to win.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Again we had an election during the Civil War in
this country, and until Sherman took Atlanta and began his
march to this for those of you who are Civil
War history nerds, it was unclear whether Lincoln was gonna win.
It was the capture of Atlanta in September that was
the false surprise of the eighteen sixty four election, and
(08:13):
Lincoln could say, we've got to keep the steam going.
We don't need to now allow the South to have
the opportunity to think they can win the war.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Because all you needed from the Confederate point of view
was a stalemate that continued long enough where the survival
of the Confederate army ran off that the North loses
the political will to continue the fight. When Sherman comes
in and makes it more of a total war scenario
going after the war, making capability the railroad depots, supply
lines of the Lee's Confederate Army. It changed the equation
(08:46):
in the minds of people in the North. So that's
how mcloughn's defeated and Lincoln wins. Point here being so
Zelenski just says, no elections and I'm in charge until
what And by.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
The way, not just Civil War buck World War two.
W FDR won an election which was in many ways
a referendum against Dewey in November of nineteen forty four.
On how the election was going, and if you go
back in time and if you actually do your historical analysis,
(09:16):
it wasn't a coincidence that Eisenhower invaded in June of
nineteen forty four, because in the summer of that election season,
this was the idea being, hey, we're prosecuting the war
against Hitler in Germany, and things were going well enough
that people said, I can see an end coming to
(09:37):
this war. But in the summer when they were running,
there was an uncertainty about how this should come out.
My point on it is the United States arguing that
Ukraine through Trump, that Ukraine should have an election is
actually consistent with democratic republican values of the United States.
(09:57):
When we have allowed elections to take place in this
country during the two I would argue most crucible moments
about what the future of this republic would be. We
allowed citizens to go vote on whether the Civil War
should continue. We allowed citizens to go vote on whether
World War two should happen. And why shouldn't we ask
(10:18):
the same thing of Zelensky? This seems very rational to me. Now,
the reason Trump's calling him a dictator buck is because
Zelensky doesn't think he would win the election. And this
is important for everybody in America who's been told, oh,
Zelensky is this war hero. Everybody in Russia loves him.
Wait a minute, why won't he allow Ukrainian will to
(10:39):
come out and for Ukrainians to vote about what they
think should happen this These are really good questions that
haven't been discussed in this country.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Well.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
There's also one of the challenges here is that the
Ukrainian fight has been held up as a proxy, effectively
a proxy army against the Russians, and the really cynical,
but I think for a lot of people that view
it as a very accurate sense of this is that
(11:10):
the support of the Ukrainian Army was an opportunity for
US to bleed the Russian Federation without losing any of NATO,
without losing any actual NATO ally soldiers, right. And so
in that formulation, the longer the conflict goes, the better
it is for the people sitting there pulling the puppet
strings because they're just losing Ukrainians, they're not losing NATO allies,
(11:33):
and they're making things harder on Russia. Now, I think
that's a brutal and an immoral and short sighted way
of viewing the situation. But there is that sentiment among
the foreign policy elites. I wouldn't say consensus anymore, because
they're not calling the shots Trump is, but there is
that sense among them that this is giving us greater
(11:53):
strategic depth against Russia. And they also say this, and
Zelensky says this himself, This crazy stuff about how Russia
is going to over run all of Europe unless they're
stopped in Ukraine. That's just not true. The Russians don't
have the capacity to do that. They don't have the
capacity to overrun Ukraine right now with the support that's
being given. They're not about to invade Germany and trigger
Article five of NATO. That's not gonna happen. So we're
(12:15):
told things about this conflict that are not true, and
the longer it drags on, the higher the body count goes.
Isn't it fascinating? Think of all the people, Clay, who
are so upset about the loss of I'm talking about
the left and Democrats in this country. Everything that happens
in Gaza is a cause for you know, college kids
and you know MSNBC hosts to start crying. Look at
(12:37):
the loss of life that's going on in Ukraine day
in and day out. No, that's worth it because it's
protecting democracy? Is it?
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Really?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
How is it protecting democracy?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Isn't the very foundation of democracy allowing people to pick
their leaders in.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Time or learning something new.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I also don't think very many people even are aware
that Zelensky has ended all elections in his country, and
so I think this is a real conversation. We'll take
some of your calls, by the way, eight hundred and
two two two eight a two. If some of you
have questions about this, But I do think this is
a conversation on a substantial level that frankly, the American
(13:14):
public has not been as well informed as they could
have been. And I think it's important to use our
country's history as a argument for what we think the
precedent should be for other countries. In times of war.
The Constitution doesn't vanish in the United States. In times
of Chris Lincoln did suspend corps. That nobody's perfect, nobody's
(13:37):
that's actually a super nerd a bit that you know that,
But he did allow the election to happen. And unfortunately,
what we learned during COVID is the Constitution matters far
more during a time of crisis than it does during
actual normal times of peace and prosperity. Look, speaking of
peace and prosperity, I love college basketball season.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
March Madness is coming up.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
But you know what, I also so, I'm down in
South Florida with Buck right now pitcher and catcher season.
All of the baseball teams going out in Arizona for
the Grapefruit League. Down here in Florida for spring training.
Pitchers and catchers are back. Major League Baseball is close
to being back and if you love Major League Baseball,
if you love college basketball, if you like the NBA,
(14:20):
there are a lot of activities going on. Heck, how
many of you out there excited tomorrow? I know I
am for the USA against Canada hockey game up in Boston.
It's gonna be a barn burner. Why not have some fun?
Go get signed up. You can play in California, you
can play in Texas, you can play in Georgia.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
You can get hooked up right now.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
If you go and sign up for Prize Picks, you
will get real money sports action over thirteen million downloads
of the Prize Picks app forty states. You can get
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(15:00):
That is prizepicks dot com code Clay. Sign up today,
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Speaker 1 (15:09):
Whatever your sport is, you're gonna love it.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Fifty dollars when you play five dollars when you use
my name Clay. That's pricepicks dot com code Clay.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
We were just talking about the Russia Ukraine war and
how Trump is trying to bring this, help bring this
to a conclusion. There's a lot of pushback in Wall
Street Journal I could tell a little hostile toward the
Trump position on this, not a surprise some others too.
But Trump is very confident that this can be brought
to a negotiated end, which I think is the only outcome. Really,
(15:49):
it's just a question of when and what the final
status is of each side after that deal is struck. Right,
But there's no future in which Ukraine is not going
to take over and destroy all of or you know,
destroy the Russian army and take over Russia. That's not happening,
doesn't look like as long as we're supporting Ukraine, Russia
can overrun all the Ukrainian forces and take most or
(16:12):
all of Ukraine. So in this situation, you have a stalemate,
you have a lot of lives being lost, a lot
of material, a lot of US taxpayer dollars going to this.
Hundreds of billions I think is the official number. As
I said, it'll end up being a trillion dollars that
has gone to Ukraine from the US and NATO from
the start, of this war. Here's Trump just saying, a
half baked negotiator, this is cut eleven could have ended
(16:32):
this thing.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Well, I think I'm really disappointed in what's happened. I've
been watching this for three years. It's a war that
would have never happened if I was president, And I've
been watching these these you know, people being killed at
levels that you've rarely seen, not even close since the
Second World War. And I'm very disappointed. I hear that,
(16:54):
you know there's upset about not having a seat. Well,
they've had a seat for three years, and a long
time before that. This could have been settled very easily,
just a half a half bigd negotiator could have settled
this years ago without either without the loss of much land,
very little land, without the loss of any lives.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
He's very bold on this, Clay. What if he's right,
what happens to the foreign policy quote consensus? Then if
Trump just comes in and this thing stops.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
I mean, he should get the Nobel Prize because it
would be such a transformative thing. But he's already been
right so far about the Middle East. Whatever your perspective
is on the Middle East, the killing has certainly slowed
down since Trump was elected in November, and I think again,
if you look at the way this situation is playing out,
(17:46):
Trump is going to get a resolution in Ukraine. And
what is the Lensky afraid of in terms of having elections?
I think it's a question that no one is asking,
but I think it's very important, particularly in the content
of American history. Look, you can switch your cell phone
service to pure Talk right now and in the process
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Speaker 1 (18:40):
Again.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Dial pound two five zero, say Clay and Buck to
claim your Samsung Galaxy or iPhone fourteen. That's pound two
five zero, say Clay and Buck. We talked about the
drama in New York City surrounding the mayor's race there.
(19:02):
We also on the flip side of the country still
have all of the awfulness unspooling from the Los Angeles
wildfires in Pacific Palisades, in particular in terms of the
failure of Los Angeles City government mayor Karen Bass, who
remember beat Rick Caruso, and I saw where Elon Musk
(19:27):
came out recently and said, hey, if Rick Caruso had
been the mayor, I think thousands of homes would have
been spared because he would have been a more competent leader.
And if you say, okay, what is Elon Musk based
that on? Rick Caruso has one of the biggest developments
in Pacific Palisades and none of it burned down. He
(19:48):
had his team ready to protect the area there, the
shopping area. He had them putting out fires instantaneously if
there were to be potential flames that were spreading in
the winds the.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Wildfires, he was ready. He was ready for this event.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Remember Karen Bass famously was in Ghana she had gone
for the inauguration of the new Ghanian president or vice president,
and she was there as an official, as a dignitary
for that swearing in. Despite the fact that there were
(20:28):
ample warnings that Los Angeles was going to face wildfire dangers.
In other words, there were a lot of weather forecasters saying, hey,
this is going to be an issue. Everybody should be
aware of the danger that is coming. Because of the
increased amount of wind and the dry nature of Los Angeles.
(20:51):
Right now, it wasn't crazy that these wildfires could emerge.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Well.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
And by the way, you'll remember, we talked about the
history of Los.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Angeles, which is millions.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Of acres on a regular basis, pre major settlement of
Los Angeles would burn every year and it was only
via the management of the surrounding environment that we had
driven down the overall amount of wildfires and acreage that
burns every year. And in fact, the climate change activist
(21:22):
had decided to come in and start to argue, oh,
you're impacting the climate too much with some of the
anti burn regulations that you put in place. They eliminated
a lot of that, and then the fires if kicked
back up in the last several years, so it's very circular.
We're basically back to what we were in a pre
(21:43):
developed Los Angeles. Reason why I bring all this up
Karen Basset for an interview Mayor of Los Angeles, and
she said, you know what, we need an investigation into
why I was in Ghana when all the wildfires happened.
I can't believe this is real.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
Listen, when I talked about it with the fire chief,
what she said is is that we have warnings of
Santa Anna wins a lot but predicting this and you
saw from the city, from the county that level of
preparation really didn't happen. So it didn't reach that level
to me to say something terrible could happen and maybe
(22:19):
you shouldn't have gone on the trip. So two investigations
are taking place. One internal to the city and that's
the Fire Commission because that's mandated by the city charter.
So the commission will hire an outside entity to examine everything,
the pre deployment. You know, why were firefighters sent home,
you know, all of that that should have taken place
(22:40):
that didn't. And then also the governor has contracted with
the Fire Safety Research Institute, which is a national institute
that investigated what happened in the fires and MAUI.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Okay, So that is one statement.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
We need an investigation into why we were so incompetent.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
We also have another cut.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
This is the consequence of choosing incompetence.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
As your mayo oral leader.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
This is Karen Bass, second largest city in America right now,
Eric Adams runs New York City.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
We were talking about the failures there.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Here is Karen Bass continuing to talk about how could
we have possibly known that the wildfires were going to
be this bad? We need another investigation.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
So let me just tell you a couple of things.
First of all, when the White House called and asked
me if I would represent the president, I said yes.
It was going to be a very very short trip
over a weekend and two business days. We need to
look at everything about the preparation and all of that
for the fires, because I think when we evaluate that,
(23:45):
we will find that although there were warnings that I
frankly wasn't aware of, although there were warnings, I think
our preparation it wasn't what it typically is.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Okay, So this is in common competence buck on a
pretty crazy level that you would have the mayor basically saying,
how come nobody told me there might be fires? How
come we weren't prepared. Meanwhile, there are oodles, there are
scads of LA area meteorologist and weather forecasters who were saying,
(24:20):
we were out telling everybody that these dangers were here.
You know, it's also just a culture of no accountability
now that we see increasingly from a lot of different politicians,
where they think their job is when they've been caught
completely wrong footed, something really bad has happened. I mean
(24:40):
wildfire for a mayor, that's a particularly awful situation, and
then they think their job is to turn around and say, well,
we're going to have a commission and a bunch of
committees and explain why the bad thing happened over the
next six to eighteen months, and I promise.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
You we'll have a report ready for you. No, you're
actually supposed to get it done. You know, we were
talking about generals before the Civil War and Lincoln having
to deal with the realities of the battlefield. As a politician.
Sometimes you just got to replace a general because you're losing,
and you know, it's it's one thing to say, well,
there's a lot of circumstances, A lot of facts going
on here, but ultimately, the buck has to stop. Pardon
(25:21):
the expression, the buck has to stop with someone, and
Mayor Karen Bass is just making very clear the buck
does not stop with her on this that it was
a lot of things and being gone, and yeah it
was a bad look, but it was just supposed to
be a couple of days. What are you doing going
to Ghana? That's the question, right, it doesn't I don't
care if it's for five minutes. What are you doing.
You're the mayor of the second largest city in America
(25:41):
and you're flying to Ghana on on a a busy look.
If she was on vacation for a week with her
family and she came back right away, it's a look
unfortunate timing. No, she was representing Los Angeles in Ghana,
which is the part of it that is particularly absurd.
I think bothers people about this a lot. And also
now the rebuilding realities have started to set in for
(26:03):
people there, you know, the whole imagine if your house
is still standing in Pacific Palacedays. I've talked to friends
who have friends who lost their houses. I don't know
anyone well personally who lost a house, But I know
a lot of people who are one person removed who
got their house burned down. But even if your house
is still standing, there the neighborhood around you is like
a war zone right now in terms of you know
(26:24):
what the debris and everything looks looks like it's been
bombed out. You're missing schools. In some places, the neighborhood
isn't even there. It's not just your house is gone,
the houses around your house, or rather, it's not just
whether your house is gone or not, it's also the
surrounding area. And California is not going to make this
super easy and efficient because they're incapable of making things
(26:46):
super easy and efficient. So I think that there are
going to be some people who have left, and more will.
Some people have left, I think more will leave, and
I just hope that there's some sense along the Californians
you stay. You have to stop voting for imbeciles, whether
it's Newsome or Bass. You have to stop voting for
(27:06):
people who cannot do the very important, very serious jobs
that you are electing them to do.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
One of our OutKick executives that we started with at
Fox had his house burned down in LA.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I was texting about it with him this week.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
How long does he think the rebuild's going to be? Years? Yeah,
I mean at least three to five is what I've heard.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
And I have talked to a couple of other friends
who lost their homes that are scrambling to try to
find places to live. And one of the things that
is occurring in LA and I bet many of you
listening in this area know what I'm talking about. The
rental prices for homes have skyrocketing. Of course, so if
you were going to in you got kids in school
(27:46):
right now, and you're like, I can't bell on Los Angeles.
I still want to be in this area. Everybody who
had a property that was high end property available has
doubled and tripled what they would be charging per month.
And you've got I've got so many people out there.
That's people who are fortunate enough to be able to
have the resources to buy places. You've also got a
ton of people out there, and this is going to
(28:08):
become more and more unfortunate. I think as this story continues,
huge numbers of people in Los Angeles their primary retirement
vehicle is the value of their home and a lot
of people. If you bought a home in that area
of Los Angeles thirty years ago, prices were somewhat affordable.
Some people have had those homes for forty years. They
(28:31):
were not insured as much because some people had already
paid off their mortgage and the cost of rebuilding. Not
only is it going to talk take years, but a
lot of people frankly don't have the money to be
able to afford to rebuild, and so this is frankly,
it's cataclysmic.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
If you could rebuild it. We've talked about this a
little bit, but keep this in mind. If you could rebuild,
your house for tax purposes, will be assessed at the
new market value. And they're not going to give some
holiday on that, if you will to everybody. They're gonna say, look,
if you're building a house in this area, it's brand new,
it's worth it's worth five million bucks. You're not paying
because if you've lived there from when you could get
(29:11):
a house there for I don't know, thirty years ago,
probably a million dollars, maybe maybe half a million forraction
of what it would be where it is, you know,
thirty years ago it was probably half a million dollars.
Maybe it was even even less than that. So if
you moved in and you got a half million dollar
house in this swanky area, now it's worth five million
dollars after thirty years the five hundred thousand initial price,
they're capped at how much they can raise your taxes
(29:33):
every year, so it gets nowhere close to the new
market value of that house. So the point is now
your annual burn rate of cash would be a lot more.
And so people are gonna say, look, I don't want
to I don't want to deal with that. And then
you add on top of that, California is fourteen percent
property tax rate. Because the people live in Pacific Palisades,
they're going to be paying high rates. I mean, these
(29:54):
are these are generally going to be high earners because
the housing is so expensive. So yeah, it's an absolute mess.
But the good new it is for everybody. Karen Bass
is going to have a lot of people looking into
why she didn't do her job better and that's what
she offers for you.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And we have reached out, but we should put it in.
I'm sure she won't come on. Yeah, we should in
buye Karen Bass. But we have reached out to Rick Caruso,
who should have been the pick to come on this
program and kind of walk through the rebuild of LA.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I think the Caruso conversation would be interesting and worthwhile,
and I look forward to that if we can get him,
I mean, even if it's funny clear, even if we
got Karen bass On, I feel like she would just
say it would just be the stuff that she's prepared
to say, and we wouldn't get any answers. Every nothing
is her fault. They did everything right, and yet you know,
you hear all this stuff and you go, hold on,
(30:41):
so it's not your fault. It's not anybody's fault. And
everything that needed to go right from the government side
basically was done right by the people in charge. There
were some system issues, so nobody's nobody's accountably, you see
what I mean? Notice notice that, so nobody should get fired.
The whole neighborhood burned down, or neighborhoods, multip them, they's
burned down. They clearly were not prepared for this, They
(31:03):
had no ability to handle it. And nobody gets fired
or even resigns, really or steps Has anyone resigned or
stepped down? Don't know maybe someone's resigned, But anyway, I
just think it's indicative of the mindset. I'm gonna tell Clay.
What am I holding up right here is chalk.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
When I walked into your place today, I said, my goodness,
you've lost a ton of weight. And one reason you've
done it is you've been using this.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
When you work out. Susture is in fighting shape these days.
My friends, that's right down about thirty pounds. As you know,
this is kind of where I used to be. Got
a little gal, little chubby, got married gall little chubby,
but I needed a little extra boost in my day
to day tong Cat one hundred. This is something I
take daily now. It's from Chalk, our friends at Chalk Choq.
I've also got over my shelf. I got the glutathione,
(31:45):
which is a fantastic antioxidant. Because, yeah, obviously the core
things diet, exercise, sleep. By the way, diet, exercise sleep,
you need to have those three things dialed in or else.
But proper supplementation for energy, overall wellness and for being
on a fitness journey, and like I've been on now
for six months, it's essential. It makes such a difference.
(32:05):
You know, you can get to the gym, but do
you have the energy to get the most out of
the gym, And how are your testosterone levels doing? Do
you want to boost in testosterone Tongu kat Ali some
of the other supplements that they have have been proven
at Chalk they can show you which ones online they've
been proven to help boost mail testosterone levels in just
a few months. Times. Why I'm taking it. It makes a
big difference. I mean, Clay came in, He's like, my gosh,
(32:27):
I'm like, that's right, look at these abs. Not quite
not quite. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't do that. But
Chalk is amazing. And you know, I have an online
trainer who's fantastic and I'll eventually give you his name
if some of you guys want it, because he's been unbelievable.
And I made him go on the Chalk website and
I made him try these himself and do some due
diligence on it, and he just said, this is a
top class supplement company. You should absolutely be using them
(32:49):
as part of our protocol. So I'm in. My friends,
go to Chalk Cchoq dot com, choq dot com, use
my name Buck, and please make sure you use it,
so our friend the CEO that you're hearing about it
here on the Clay and Buck show. Go to chalk
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(33:10):
this stuff, you're gonna say this is part of your
protocol too. That's Chalk choq dot com. Use my name Buck,
and I'm about to take a toncot Ali as soon
as we go on to commercial break, So Clay here
goes see you guys in a second. Got a bunch
of calls coming in about you frame which we want
(33:32):
to take in just a second. Here as I have
my steaming cup of hot Crockett coffee right here in
my hand. Crockettcoffee dot Com. It's what you should all
be drinking. Just made some French press down there for
Clay of our light roast light Blend. Fantastic, drinking it
right now, drinking it right now and getting us all
fired up. So please join a subscribe, become part of
the Crocket Revolution. Davy Crockett, amazing man, Let's get sorry.
(33:56):
I started to sound like Trump. Davy Crockett. Some people
are saying the most amazing on tear pietyer like ever seeing. Yeah,
here we go, we have uh Andy in Austin, Texas
talking to us about Ukraine. What's going on?
Speaker 7 (34:09):
Hey, you know one thing I love about Trump and
his he's like Ronald Reagan on steroids. When he just
bypasses the media, He bypasses everything.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
He doesn't allow the filters to.
Speaker 7 (34:24):
Dictate the narrative of what he wants to say. And
so people might think that his comment on X about
Ukraine was for Zelenski, but it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
It was for the US senators that wanted to, you.
Speaker 7 (34:39):
Know, support giving him more money. Uh So those guys
have a clear message right now. Lindsey Graham others lik
him that, you know, think the war in Ukraine is
a spend it all costs, you know, an item for
us financially here in the United States. They're going to
have to defend what Donald Trump just made real clear
that there really should be principles that every Amica I
(35:00):
can agree with about how we spend our money and
so and he didn't have to come out and name
many names. But if all of a sudden there's a
big spending package going through the Senate for Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
They're going to have to defend that position. And based
on Trump's you know, ex posts, So anyhow, it's he
just bypasses everything else says here it is now.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yes, he is.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
He is something of a disruptor, this Donald Trump. I
think that is definitely the case. Various stude comments, Andy,
thank you for calling in from Texas.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah, we'll take some of your calls in the third
hour on this. But the way that I would put
this into context is Trump is accelerating the end game
in Ukraine. If he is saying, hey, we're not going
to give you an unlimited check. We know, unfortunately that
hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost. We have
been effectively in a stalemate by and large, where both
(35:56):
sides are dug in and the lines aren't moving very
much for over a year now. There needs to be
a resolution, and the resolution is probably going to be
that Ukraine loses several of its provinces that are closer
to Russia. That seems like the only conclusion coming here.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Can I bring this back home here for a second,
everybody home, at least in the United States. Trump administration
is moving to break New York's congestion pricing here that
everyone listening on seven to ten wor and NYC, and
we're going to talk about this President Trump taking upon
(36:35):
himself to end congestion pricing in America's biggest city. That
Eric Adams is like, thank you. That's very smart.
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