December 11, 2024 • 36 mins
The Trump nominees have succeeded in something other than government, which should be a prerequisite. Who is the West Point leaker trying to sabotage Pete Hegseth? Sean Parnell defends our guy. The Harry Potter vs. Star Wars debate continues.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Second hour of play and Buck kicks off. Right now,
let's talk a little bit about the incoming administration.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Here's some updates on this one.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
First of all, our friend Pete Hegseath has in terms
I'm sure he would understand very much and appreciate thought
through the ambush, he has gotten off the X and
it looks like he is on his way to a
confirmation as the next United States Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Remarkable.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I still remember first time Pete and I were on
Real News at the Blaze, a show that doesn't exist
anymore but was great at the time. I want to
say twenty twelve, so that was now coming on thirteen
years ago, and here he is now up for and
I think going to become the next Secretary of Defense.
But it's very interesting to see, particularly Clay the warfighter
(00:52):
support for Pete in this role.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
We have gotten very used to before.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I talk about the merits of a war fighter leading
a war fighting agency or war fighting department, which you know,
it used to be the War Department, as we all remember,
and then they change it to the Defense Department.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
But the point is to be able to make war
and win.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Wars if war is necessary, right, that is actually what
the role that is the fundamental role. Yes, it is
to defend us and our rights and everything else, but
it is also to be able to engage with and
defeat the enemy, not to be a massive social engineering
experiment where we get to address historical you know, injustices
to the trans community or whatever. And there's been a
(01:33):
lot of that in the military in recent years. There's
been a ton of it, I can say from my
friends inside the CIA. Still, you know, there's like trans
Appreciation Day every couple of months or something. It's there's
a lot of stuff going on with that DEI. But
let's just first focus in on this clay. There's there's
a history now going back, let's say, and this really
coincides with you know, most of our our time post
(01:57):
college right of people getting these jobs as secretary of defense.
And I understand, no one person is in charge of everything,
but one person is supposed to be responsible at the
very top.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Actually so he can't.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Do everything, but the responsibility for how wars are going,
how military interventions are conducted, is supposed to well end
with the commander in chief, but right below that the
Secretary of Defense. We've had a history of really bad
for a country that has no real military peer. We've
had a history of some terrible strategic decision making. Right,
(02:33):
our guys are the best tactical war fighters and gals
are the best tactical war fighters in the world, no
question about it. But yet we haven't gotten the outcomes
we want when you look at the Secretary of Defense
on down and the strategies that have been deployed stretching
back now for let's say twenty four years, here's Senator
Rick Scott who is just pointing out that having somebody
(02:55):
who has actually led troops in battle seems like a
pretty good idea. In fact, why is that so strange
to a lot of people that have opposed Pete play
This is cut eleven.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
You look at Pete Hedgsep. Here's a guy that's a
combat veteran. He knows the risk of sending troops into battle.
He's led troops in battle. He knows people that have lost,
he knew people that lost their lives, he knows people
have been injured. That's the type of person we want
to run the Department of Fence.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Clay, There's a lot of people talk about the military
industrial complex, but I can say from the people I know,
particularly in the special operations community, who have been over
relied upon in a lot of ways over the last
couple of decades to do so much of the fighting
and so much of these sort of counter terrorism mission
and the insurgency fighting mission and all this stuff. And
(03:43):
there's a sense that the people that make these decisions
are it's kind of these like chubby figered fingered think
tank types, you know what I mean, people that are
just you know, real armchair generals, and that I think
there's a resentment to it in p addresses that Pete
is a new form of top of the scale, you know,
(04:05):
top of the apparatus.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I would suggest to you, Buck that Pete hag Seth
and Elon Musk and much of the Trump cabinet, certainly
including Trump himself, see if you buy into this thesis,
have accomplished more than any other cabinet that has been
put forth ever before, not all in government, but actually
(04:33):
done things. And I understand there are some people out
there that get into bureaucracies and you're really good at
moving yourself up from a G one to a G
six or however the heck they give government ratings and
you're embedded in that bural.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I think those are private jets.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
But yeah, go oh, I need to get a G
six all right, So I'm not knocking it. But I
don't even know there's classifications inside to the government, right
you can rise to different levels. Income is connected to it.
I would many of these jobs I would have no
(05:10):
interest in. Many of you out there in our audience
would have no interest in because you're driven. I know
I am to try to do something new in an
entrepreneurial way, and that, to me is what I love
so much about huge swaths of the nominees that Trump
(05:31):
is putting forward, they've actually succeeded in something other than government.
I don't think government, this is my personal opinion, should
be your life's ambition, in your life's work. To me,
it should be something that you do after you have
done something else successfully and then you are able to
(05:52):
give back.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's my personal life. That would be public.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Service instead of self service, which is what we have
so much with a permanent political class and really the
extensions of it. And I think it is something that
we cannot shy away from and need to keep in
mind that I can't remember the exact number. Something like
six of the top ten per capita wealthiest counties in
(06:17):
the entire United States are just the ring around DC,
which is just all it's all just government contractors, lobbyists,
people who are suckling at the government teat that is
what is going on with that. There's not some other
industry in DC. Okay, there's not some other massive, multi
multi billion dollar industry that is centered in DC. It
(06:40):
is the federal government. It is government as a means
of enrichment and clay. There's this whole permanent and then
this gets to the sort of ruling class and also
the swamp idea. There's an echelon of people who they
get there and they do this for a long time,
and maybe a part of or a side effect of
doing it for so long as they can to think
that they're the ones that are supposed to be in
(07:02):
charge for the rest of us. And you certainly have
that in the federal bureaucracy. And this is where I say, really,
I think it's kind of chilling. It's a joke, but
it's a little chilling to those of us who think
about it. Whether it's the State Department's famous for this
that presidents come and go, but the State Department is forever.
As in their running foreign policy, it doesn't matter who
the people elect. Now, run that same idea through all
(07:24):
of these federal agencies.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Run that same idea. Now through the Department of Justice.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I might add, where the idea that the president and
his enforcement priorities should be taken should be taken seriously
when it's a Republican I think has run into a
lot of resistance and obviously the weaponization of it. You know,
we can go into this forever. But there's another part
of this too, Clay. With Pete facing this confirmation, I
(07:51):
think he's going to have the votes, but Democrats are
going to try to They're going to try to extract
as much humiliation and pain from Pete as they can.
That's what I think we can all get ready for
as well. These are not honorable people. They do not
honor pete service. They do not care that he put
(08:12):
himself in a place where he very very well could
have been maimed or killed that so many of our
servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan were. They will say they care,
They do not care. They will try to humiliate him.
Here's Senator Cornyn, who's straight up saying that he's like, yeah,
he's going to be confirmed, but it's going to get
ugly play twelve.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
I know of no one who said they will vote
against him. Senator Earnst, you mentioned, has had a couple
of meetings now, in the most recent one says she
will certainly support this processes that goes forward. I know
everybody is eager to see these nominees confirmed, but we
haven't even started the new Congress yet, which is where
we will actually be doing that. But it's important for
(08:54):
all of these nominees to come around and answer questions.
I told Pete this is going to be a very
unpleasant process for him and his family, having been involved
in the Kavanaugh hearings, for example. I know they'll be
unnamed accusations and some things that are going to be hurtful,
not only to him and his family. But he's ready
for that, his wife is ready for that, and I'm
(09:15):
confident he will be confirmed.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Now, you know, kind of a mixed bag there from Cornyn. Right, Yeah,
he's confident to be confirmed, but he's saying he's going
to be dragged over the dragged over the uh, over
the broken glass and clay. To the point you're making
about serving the country. Pete had a seven figure job
working at Fox News. He could have just done that
and been very happy, and you know, and down the line,
(09:38):
you know, just kind of use his wealth, either start
his own company, you know, just do whatever he wants
to do. He's going into this meat grinder. He's choosing
to do that, And that tells you a lot.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
I think so.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
And that's the kind of people I wanted government.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And we come back. Have you seen the latest.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Smear that they're trying to getst Hegseth. No, they they
We were working on a story that is now blown up.
But I think it's indicative of what John Cornyn was
just saying. Pete Hegseth had said before, Hey, I thought
about going to West Point and I was admitted and
decided not to go there. He went to I think
(10:16):
Princeton instead, smart guy Prince. We talked about him playing
basketball there when his most recent book came out, if
I remember, and they were writing a story because somebody
at West Point leaked that he had never applied and
never been admitted, and they were going to run a
story saying that he was lying about it. He got
(10:38):
out ahead of this and posted his admission letter to
West Point. The question I have and he was admitted,
and like he's got the Thankfully he's still got the
evidence of it. Who inside of West Point is trying
to sabotage the potential secretary of Defense? And how does
(10:58):
that person still have a because the newswriters are saying
that they were tipped off by someone inside a West
Point saying there's no record of Pete Hegseth ever applying
or being admitted.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
I mean, Clay, we also see this, and I know
all of you know this. Pete Hegseth. They attack, They say, well,
he only went to Princeton and then he went to Harvard,
but he said he got into west Point and he
didn't get into west Point, and they try to They
would elect fake Indian Elizabeth Warren president tomorrow if they could.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
She is a fake Indian, built her whole career on it.
And they do not care.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
But Pete, whether or not he got into West Point
is now a matter of national concern. It just goes
to show you this is the different These are the
two different scales that they apply, and they don't care.
The point is that it is unfair. Right, It's not
that they think it's fair. The point is that it's unfair.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
But I want somebody fired over this because they reached
out to a left wing news organization based on whatever
files they had, trying to sabotage Pete Hegseth. Now thankfully
he still had the letter and he published it in
advance and posted it on his Twitter feed. But this
(12:12):
is what they do. They use the media to try
to destroy you, and they typically hide in the process.
So who at the US Military Academy, which of every
how about be nonpartisan? How About don't weid in on
somebody nominated for Secretary of Defense who may be in
charge of your institution, Democrat or Republican. I don't think
(12:35):
you should be leaking information about somebody's college records. Now,
thankfully Hegseth had it, but they tried to sabotage him.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Clay, when people realize and I know that we all
think we know, but I'm telling you from even what
I hear just inside a Langley, when people find out
how deep and widespread the infiltration of pronoun announcing America
hating communists into the federal bureaucracy and into the military,
(13:06):
into the upper echelons of leadership or management within different military.
It will blow everyone's minds when we have a better
sense of this. It is far more pervasive than the
everyday folks realize. And even though people like me, I mean,
I've been out of the agency now over over what
a decade and a half, I don't even know the
full extent of it because things have gotten worse and
(13:27):
worse than worse. We'll come back into this though, and
also talk a little bit about DOGE. Got a couple
of smart guys involved in DOGE. I think that's fair
to say. I think they got some big plans. Let's
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Speaker 2 (15:02):
You don't know what you don't know right, but you could.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
On the Sunday Hang with Clay and Buck podcast.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Welcome back in Clay Travis Buck Sexton Show. We're gonna
be joined by our buddy Sean Parnell at the bottom
of the hour. Here we'll ask him about this West
Point scandal, what he thinks should happen there, and also
just continue to talk about Pennsylvania and what a battleground.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
It has become.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Buck, I don't know if you saw this, but speaking
of Pennsylvania, we'll maybe talk about this with Sean Parnell
a bit. Did you see where Scott Presler, who basically
focused entirely on registering people in Pennsylvania, has decided on
a new target state and it's New Jersey. And he
believes that based on if you go back and look
(15:47):
at the data, Trump lost Pennsylvania in twenty twenty by
I think it was eighty thousand votes and then flipped
it and came back to win by one hundred and
twenty thousand votes in twenty twenty four. I believe New
Jersey was only decided by eighty thousand votes. And he
(16:08):
thinks that there is a play to be made in
the state of New Jersey to potentially make it a
competitive battleground.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
State based on the data.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
I mean, come on, Jersey, you know what I mean,
Come on, call, you gotta come Republic and.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
What are you doing in New Jersey?
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Remember we've got the reason the timing on this is
interesting is we've got elections for governor in both Virginia
and New Jersey, which will be the first test of
the first year of the Trump regime. And so we
almost flipped New Jersey in twenty twenty one. I thought
that was interesting. But I'll I'm curious because what Sean
(16:49):
Parnell will say. Did you see Fetterman's comments on the
murder of the CEO Healthcare CEO? He totally ripped anyone
trying to turn this Luigi guy into a hero. How
much of Fetterman's acts are now They flipped the Senate seat,
they flipped the back to maybe he's feeling seat, yeah
(17:12):
he I mean, Pennsylvania is headed.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
The Democrats used to have this contingent at least of
the kind of everyday working man.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
You know, yeah, I want some big government.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Wants to help the little guy, but common sense was
an outlawed common sense has been outlawed in the Democrat Party,
and that's not going to be a long term winning
play for them.
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Speaker 2 (18:51):
I'm back into Clay and Buck.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
We got our friend Sean Parnell with US now combat veteran,
all around badass American patriot, host of Ground podcast on
the Clay and Buck Network, which is doing phenomenal numbers.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Thank you all for listening in.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Sean does a great show, and Sean appreciate you being
with us here. You me, Clay. We all have one
thing in common other than being dashingly handsome, and that
is we are all friends of Pete hag Seth and
are are hoping that he is able to take the
reins of Secretary of Defense. You know you're a warfighter,
(19:27):
a true combat veteran. I wrote a great book about
an outlaw platoon which I have read every word of,
and I just wanted to give you the floor to
speak about not just you know, get Yeah, you're pro Pete.
We're pro Pete. But from the warfighter perspective, I'm seeing
so many special operations guys, so many guys with many
combat tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, who are saying,
(19:49):
we've got to give this shot to Pete. We've got
to put him in the in the role. Why is that.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
You know?
Speaker 6 (19:54):
Pete's a war fighter? I mean, plain and simple, I mean,
I've known Pete Haig Seth buck Clay for a very
long time. I mean we were both in the infantry
around the same time together, and we worked at Concerned
Veterans for America during the exact same time period that
these supposed fake allegations, all this stuff happened in the
(20:15):
New Yorker. And you know what I know about Pete,
and what has been true about Pete for a very
long time, guys, is that he has a deep, abiding
love of the war fighters. He appreciates the people who
are in the trenches, who are on the front lines,
front towards enemy. He appreciates the people who do the
(20:38):
heavy lifting in the military. And that doesn't necessarily mean
certainly not talking about the people with stars on their shoulders.
But the actual warfighters. And you know what's I think
so brilliant about the hag Seth pick here is that
he is an outsider. He's somebody that thinks outside the box.
(20:58):
Having worked with him before, he is very, very reform minded,
and he understands the issues both of the Pentagon and
the military. And he knows what it feels like to
have a bullet cracked by his head, so that matters too.
But he understands these policy issues in a very deep
and substantive way, and I think that bodes well for
his prospects through the confirmation process and when eventually he
(21:20):
gets confirmed in a Secretary of Defense. So all of
these things are great things. But beyond all of that,
I just love the guy. He's a good man, he's
a good husband, he's got a great family, and I
think he'll be great for the job.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
I want to dive in with you because I saw
you tweeting about this and we just talked about it
a couple of minutes ago. West Point, the Public Affairs
Group or whoever they are, tried to undercut Pete. Heg
Seth's nomination by reaching out to media and saying, not
only is Pete Hegseth lying about getting into West Point.
(21:56):
He never even applied, and then HEGs posted the letter
of admission that he received on social media. I'm good
for him that he still has it, because you know
not that I got admitted that many places. But I
have no idea what happened to any of my edition's letters.
I got rejected a lot of places for law school too,
by the way, I don't know what happened to those either.
(22:18):
But what's going on here? Like Sean he would theoretically
be in charge of the United States Military Academy, Democrat, Republican,
whatever else. It is the fact that they tried to
sabotage him. Somebody needs to get fired here. We need
an investigation into what happened.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
And this is precisely why you need somebody like Pete,
because these are once venerated institutions, the Department of Defense,
the Pentagon, the US Military Academy at west Point, they
have been infested with these radical leftists and key positions
for quite some time now. I'm not talking about everybody
in the Pentagon or at the United States Military Academy.
(22:58):
I'm not painting with broad strokes here, but the folks
there are lots of decision makers in these is in
West Point that are radical leftists that put the radical
leftist agenda before in this case the military UH, the
mission of the United States Military Academy. And you described
it perfectly, Clay. This was somebody at West Point trying
(23:22):
to undermine an incoming president Alex Pick for Secretary of Defense,
who would theoretically be in charge of West Point, to
try to tank his nomination. That was the motivation behind this.
And ironically enough, this is precisely why we need an
outsider in a guy like Pete to root out this
radical leftist infestation at the Pentagon and other at the
(23:45):
Pentagon UH and and and focus the mission of the
United States mission of the United States Military on lethality
first last and always get us back to our war
fighting mission. Get rid of all the DEI stuff, get
all the get rid of all the own stuff, get out,
get rid of all the stuff that is a distraction
to the warfighter, and focus on the mission. And in
(24:06):
the case of West Point, the mission is raising up
officers who embody duty, honor, country, service, selfless service, sacrifice,
not focused on tanking political nominations.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Speaking of Sean Parnell. Battleground is his podcast on the
Clay and Buck Network. Go subscribe to the network and
look for Battleground. Give it a listen. You will love it. Sean,
let's talk politics for a second here. I mean we
kind of were in a sense, right they're trying to
block people political reasons, but you know, more in the
on the electoral politics side of things, we were just
discussing Pennsylvania. Amazing work, Scott Presler, bit did your home
(24:45):
state delivered? We got a great new senator coming in
with Dave McCormick. Fetterman, you're familiar. You ran for Congress, right,
you know that the deal the political landscape in Pennsylvania
very well. Fetterman is saying a lot of sensible stuff,
and people get sometimes a little mad at those like
(25:06):
me who will just say, look what he said is good.
I don't know, is this is he not? Do you
think he's actually changing the way he views things? Or
is this just a gamut? Is this just something that
he's doing because he sees where the political winds are blowing? Like,
how would you assess this? Because he's definitely not saying
the woke stuff these days.
Speaker 6 (25:27):
He definitely I'll just say this, he definitely sees the
way that the political wins are are blowing and knows
that he has election and election coming up in twenty
twenty eight. And just do the simple math. From twenty
twenty six, hundred and fifty thousand more registered Democrats than Republicans.
In twenty twenty four, that number is three hundred thousand
in change, so still a lot more Democrats than Republicans.
(25:49):
But look, Republicans just won the state up and down
the ballot, a clean sweep of Republicans in Pennsylvania in
twenty four So in another four years, I mean, this
state could be even Republican Democrats and that makes the
state very, very tough for him. So John Fetterman is
going to have to do some things to reach across
(26:12):
the aisle, give conservatives some you know, quote unquote wins
while simultaneously voting the way that the Democrat Party wants
him to vote. And to me, that's the key differentiator.
Don't listen to the things that John Fetterman says, Like
he says some cool, catchy stuff that conservatives like to
latch onto, but watch how he votes. A good example
(26:34):
of this is Israel. He waives the Israeli flag all
the time, but he votes against aid for Israel in
the Senate over and over and over again. So you
can't in many cases listen to how the Democrats talk.
You have to watch how he votes. So fuck and Clay.
If he votes starts voting with the Republicans, then I'll
take him a heck of a lot more serious than
the way he is now. But the last thing I'll
(26:55):
say about John Fetterman is this, and I'll give him
a compliment. John is one of the few elected officials,
especially now on the Democrats side of the isle, who
seemed totally out of touch with reality on most things.
But John Fetterman really truly does understand Pennsylvania, and so
I will give him credit for that, and for that
(27:17):
for that reason alone, it makes him a very formidable politician.
And so the fact that he's this forward thinking, sees
the numbers, sees that the state is trending right. The
fact that he's already thinking about this in twenty four
for a cycle in twenty eight just gives you a
sense that he does have some political strategy up up here.
(27:40):
He does understand the state, He understands the demographics and
so makes him formidable and Republicans should not take him
for granted.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Sean, I know we're four years out from a major election,
but how durable do you think the new calculus, the
new math is four Pennsylvania. You mentioned that you think
the state is tilting red. Trump one hundred and twenty
thousand vote win in the state of Pennsylvania. It was close,
(28:10):
but it was a major statement win. How much of
that is Trump and how much of that is the
overall trajectory of Pennsylvania moving in a Republican direction.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
Well, so a lot of this is Trump, and I
think part of our job moving forward in the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania is try to preserve this crazy coalition cross
section of people that only show up for Trump. Our
job moving forward is to figure out how to get
those people to the ballot box each and every cycle,
not just in midterms, but in off cycles as well.
(28:43):
Consider this all the work that we did with early
votes in mail in ballots this cycle. Dave McCormick, he
won twenty seven counties and vote cast by mail. Of
the sixty seven counties in Pennsylvania, McCormick won twenty seven.
Doctor oz in twenty twenty two won two. But in
those twenty seven counties that Dave McCormick won, his margin
(29:05):
of victory was twenty one thousand mail in votes. That
was greater than a statewide margin of victory. So what
we did in Pennsylvania, in addition to President Trump just
being very strong at the top of the ticket, what
we did for Dave McCormick and Republicans down ballock was
literally the difference. And so you don't see the same
dynamic playing out in Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, and other places.
(29:29):
But what we did in Pennsylvania made the difference. And
so we're going to have to focus on all of
the you know, hey, vote by mail early vote operation,
continue banging the drum on voter registration, getting low prop
voters to the polls, and continuing to cobble together this
very eclectic coalition that Trump brings to the table, because
(29:51):
that is the base of our party now and we've
got to serve them.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Well, what are you hitting on Battleground Podcast this week, Sean?
Speaker 6 (30:00):
We got to talk about Pete's confirmation process, actually all
of President Trump's cabinet nominees, in the fact that it's
very rare for cabinet nominees to be voted down by
Democrats or Republicans, but we've let the media gaslight us
into believing that that's possible this cycle.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
So we're going to go into the politics on all
of that.
Speaker 6 (30:16):
So we're Monday through Friday on the Clay and Buck
podcast network. And by the way, guys, very grateful to
be there. So thank you both very much for the platform.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Well, thanks for making us look good by building a
huge audience super fast.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
We appreciate that. Yeah, well, it's an honor to be
with you, guys. Thank you. Sean.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Go check out Battleground Podcast guys, and join the Sean
Parnell Revolution.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
In Wall Street Circles. There's a name that you may
not have heard of, but you should. Brad Thomas.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
This is a guy who distinguished himself by establishing his
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Speaker 6 (31:44):
Research News and politics, but also a little comic relief.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Clay, Travis and Buck Sexton.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you
get your podcasts. Welcome back in Play, Travis, Buck Sex
and show appreciate all of you hanging out with us.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
We're rolling through the Wednesday edition of the program.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
By the way, Amir o'hanna, speaker of the Israeli Knesset,
he is the third ranking individual in the Israeli government.
He wanted to talk to us. There are a lot
of fans of the radio program over in Israel. He
is going to be with us. I taped this earlier.
(32:26):
I was with him in the third hour about what's
going on in Syria, what about Iran, what about the
election of President Trump? And what does he think about
the relationship that Trump and Israel are going to have.
What was the significance of moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
Really interesting conversation with him. I think you guys are
(32:48):
going to enjoy that. That's going to be in the
next hour that I recorded in Jerusalem. Looking forward to that.
But yesterday, speaking a controversial I made a clearly true
to the buck Sexton old man and his anti Harry
Potter takes are out of step with American life.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
And the reaction was massive.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Including many of you who wait in with your own
messages for me, including one of our listeners, Ken in Lincoln, Nebraska,
home of the corn Huskers.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
He was really fired up about this. Listen to what
he had to say. Clay, I'm a black guy who
listens to your show. No, I'm not African American. I'm Black.
I cannot believe.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
That you would put Harry Potter and Star Wars in
the same sentence.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
You're lost, Clay lost.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
That man is correct? I correct?
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Wow, I mean I used to think that people of Lincoln,
Nebraska were a fine group of upstanding individuals, just hoping
that their corn huskers could return to nineteen nineties glory.
And then my man and let's see, let me get
his name right, my man Ken just comes after me.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Ken. You're wrong.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
You and Buck are are just on the wrong side
of history here, frankly, and just because you hate fun,
enjoy and effervescent children overcoming evil doesn't mean that I
have to stoop to your level. You're just wrong. Why
you gotta be so mean as the esteem? Taylor Swift
(34:26):
once said.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
I mean Star Wars is an era defining movie spectacle
and change cinema.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Harry Potter is you know, It's like, I don't know,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
I'm gonna blow your mind. Harry Potter is more influential
than Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Dude, the I'm not kidding the amount of people dressed
as Jedi with lightsabers that are gonna be waiting outside
your next book signing just went up dramatically. I'm telling you,
Obi Wan Kenobi lookalikes are never going to forget this Clay.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
I'm telling I get it.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
All the what do they call them, the cosplay people,
all the people who wear their their cost tooth. By
the way, a lot of them are Harry Potter people too.
They even play fake quidditch right, which isn't even real.
They are crazy. Here's my argument. Star Wars incredibly influential.
I'm not anti Star Wars for all of you out
there that are coming after me with your blaster guns,
(35:28):
but the book and the movie is more influential than
just the movie standing alone. And I think Buck, if
you had been born in two thousand or nineteen ninety
instead of or yeah, nineteen ninety or two thousand, you
would feel very differently about this hate that you're spreading
(35:49):
on the biggest radio show in the country. And we
will continue to allow everyone to rate way in, including
Dan in Denver, who says Buck's wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Listen, my god, that Harry Potter rant there. I think
we know who the.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Grendle is now, wow, throwing me under the bus as
it's you know it's Frendle, just because I don't like
Harry Potter doesn't mean that I go tearing Vikings in
half and eating them.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
That's a little intense.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
We have monster audiences thanks to kfab listener that was
Ken and thanks to Freedom ninety three point seven Katie
FD in Denver. Those Denver numbers have gotten huge. We
love all of you, but really love the people who
are on the right side of history. Here and join
(36:42):
me in Harry Potter Vanquishing Star Wars third hour, Next
Second hour of play and Buck kicks off. Right now,
let's talk a little bit about the incoming administration.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Here's some updates on this one.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
First of all, our friend Pete Hegseath has in terms
I'm sure he would understand very much and appreciate thought
through the ambush, he has gotten off the X and
it looks like he is on his way to a
confirmation as the next United States Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Remarkable.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I still remember first time Pete and I were on
Real News at the Blaze, a show that doesn't exist
anymore but was great at the time. I want to
say twenty twelve, so that was now coming on thirteen
years ago, and here he is now up for and
I think going to become the next Secretary of Defense.
But it's very interesting to see, particularly Clay the warfighter
(00:52):
support for Pete in this role.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
We have gotten very used to before.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I talk about the merits of a war fighter leading
a war fighting agency or war fighting department, which you know,
it used to be the War Department, as we all remember,
and then they change it to the Defense Department.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
But the point is to be able to make war
and win.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Wars if war is necessary, right, that is actually what
the role that is the fundamental role. Yes, it is
to defend us and our rights and everything else, but
it is also to be able to engage with and
defeat the enemy, not to be a massive social engineering
experiment where we get to address historical you know, injustices
to the trans community or whatever. And there's been a
(01:33):
lot of that in the military in recent years. There's
been a ton of it, I can say from my
friends inside the CIA. Still, you know, there's like trans
Appreciation Day every couple of months or something. It's there's
a lot of stuff going on with that DEI. But
let's just first focus in on this clay. There's there's
a history now going back, let's say, and this really
coincides with you know, most of our our time post
(01:57):
college right of people getting these jobs as secretary of defense.
And I understand, no one person is in charge of everything,
but one person is supposed to be responsible at the
very top.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Actually so he can't.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Do everything, but the responsibility for how wars are going,
how military interventions are conducted, is supposed to well end
with the commander in chief, but right below that the
Secretary of Defense. We've had a history of really bad
for a country that has no real military peer. We've
had a history of some terrible strategic decision making. Right,
(02:33):
our guys are the best tactical war fighters and gals
are the best tactical war fighters in the world, no
question about it. But yet we haven't gotten the outcomes
we want when you look at the Secretary of Defense
on down and the strategies that have been deployed stretching
back now for let's say twenty four years, here's Senator
Rick Scott who is just pointing out that having somebody
(02:55):
who has actually led troops in battle seems like a
pretty good idea. In fact, why is that so strange
to a lot of people that have opposed Pete play
This is cut eleven.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
You look at Pete Hedgsep. Here's a guy that's a
combat veteran. He knows the risk of sending troops into battle.
He's led troops in battle. He knows people that have lost,
he knew people that lost their lives, he knows people
have been injured. That's the type of person we want
to run the Department of Fence.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Clay, There's a lot of people talk about the military
industrial complex, but I can say from the people I know,
particularly in the special operations community, who have been over
relied upon in a lot of ways over the last
couple of decades to do so much of the fighting
and so much of these sort of counter terrorism mission
and the insurgency fighting mission and all this stuff. And
(03:43):
there's a sense that the people that make these decisions
are it's kind of these like chubby figered fingered think
tank types, you know what I mean, people that are
just you know, real armchair generals, and that I think
there's a resentment to it in p addresses that Pete
is a new form of top of the scale, you know,
(04:05):
top of the apparatus.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I would suggest to you, Buck that Pete hag Seth
and Elon Musk and much of the Trump cabinet, certainly
including Trump himself, see if you buy into this thesis,
have accomplished more than any other cabinet that has been
put forth ever before, not all in government, but actually
(04:33):
done things. And I understand there are some people out
there that get into bureaucracies and you're really good at
moving yourself up from a G one to a G
six or however the heck they give government ratings and
you're embedded in that bural.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I think those are private jets.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
But yeah, go oh, I need to get a G
six all right, So I'm not knocking it. But I
don't even know there's classifications inside to the government, right
you can rise to different levels. Income is connected to it.
I would many of these jobs I would have no
(05:10):
interest in. Many of you out there in our audience
would have no interest in because you're driven. I know
I am to try to do something new in an
entrepreneurial way, and that, to me is what I love
so much about huge swaths of the nominees that Trump
(05:31):
is putting forward, they've actually succeeded in something other than government.
I don't think government, this is my personal opinion, should
be your life's ambition, in your life's work. To me,
it should be something that you do after you have
done something else successfully and then you are able to
(05:52):
give back.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's my personal life. That would be public.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Service instead of self service, which is what we have
so much with a permanent political class and really the
extensions of it. And I think it is something that
we cannot shy away from and need to keep in
mind that I can't remember the exact number. Something like
six of the top ten per capita wealthiest counties in
(06:17):
the entire United States are just the ring around DC,
which is just all it's all just government contractors, lobbyists,
people who are suckling at the government teat that is
what is going on with that. There's not some other
industry in DC. Okay, there's not some other massive, multi
multi billion dollar industry that is centered in DC. It
(06:40):
is the federal government. It is government as a means
of enrichment and clay. There's this whole permanent and then
this gets to the sort of ruling class and also
the swamp idea. There's an echelon of people who they
get there and they do this for a long time,
and maybe a part of or a side effect of
doing it for so long as they can to think
that they're the ones that are supposed to be in
(07:02):
charge for the rest of us. And you certainly have
that in the federal bureaucracy. And this is where I say, really,
I think it's kind of chilling. It's a joke, but
it's a little chilling to those of us who think
about it. Whether it's the State Department's famous for this
that presidents come and go, but the State Department is forever.
As in their running foreign policy, it doesn't matter who
the people elect. Now, run that same idea through all
(07:24):
of these federal agencies.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Run that same idea. Now through the Department of Justice.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I might add, where the idea that the president and
his enforcement priorities should be taken should be taken seriously
when it's a Republican I think has run into a
lot of resistance and obviously the weaponization of it. You know,
we can go into this forever. But there's another part
of this too, Clay. With Pete facing this confirmation, I
(07:51):
think he's going to have the votes, but Democrats are
going to try to They're going to try to extract
as much humiliation and pain from Pete as they can.
That's what I think we can all get ready for
as well. These are not honorable people. They do not
honor pete service. They do not care that he put
(08:12):
himself in a place where he very very well could
have been maimed or killed that so many of our
servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan were. They will say they care,
They do not care. They will try to humiliate him.
Here's Senator Cornyn, who's straight up saying that he's like, yeah,
he's going to be confirmed, but it's going to get
ugly play twelve.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
I know of no one who said they will vote
against him. Senator Earnst, you mentioned, has had a couple
of meetings now, in the most recent one says she
will certainly support this processes that goes forward. I know
everybody is eager to see these nominees confirmed, but we
haven't even started the new Congress yet, which is where
we will actually be doing that. But it's important for
(08:54):
all of these nominees to come around and answer questions.
I told Pete this is going to be a very
unpleasant process for him and his family, having been involved
in the Kavanaugh hearings, for example. I know they'll be
unnamed accusations and some things that are going to be hurtful,
not only to him and his family. But he's ready
for that, his wife is ready for that, and I'm
(09:15):
confident he will be confirmed.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Now, you know, kind of a mixed bag there from Cornyn. Right, Yeah,
he's confident to be confirmed, but he's saying he's going
to be dragged over the dragged over the uh, over
the broken glass and clay. To the point you're making
about serving the country. Pete had a seven figure job
working at Fox News. He could have just done that
and been very happy, and you know, and down the line,
(09:38):
you know, just kind of use his wealth, either start
his own company, you know, just do whatever he wants
to do. He's going into this meat grinder. He's choosing
to do that, And that tells you a lot.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
I think so.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
And that's the kind of people I wanted government.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And we come back. Have you seen the latest.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Smear that they're trying to getst Hegseth. No, they they
We were working on a story that is now blown up.
But I think it's indicative of what John Cornyn was
just saying. Pete Hegseth had said before, Hey, I thought
about going to West Point and I was admitted and
decided not to go there. He went to I think
(10:16):
Princeton instead, smart guy Prince. We talked about him playing
basketball there when his most recent book came out, if
I remember, and they were writing a story because somebody
at West Point leaked that he had never applied and
never been admitted, and they were going to run a
story saying that he was lying about it. He got
(10:38):
out ahead of this and posted his admission letter to
West Point. The question I have and he was admitted,
and like he's got the Thankfully he's still got the
evidence of it. Who inside of West Point is trying
to sabotage the potential secretary of Defense? And how does
(10:58):
that person still have a because the newswriters are saying
that they were tipped off by someone inside a West
Point saying there's no record of Pete Hegseth ever applying
or being admitted.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
I mean, Clay, we also see this, and I know
all of you know this. Pete Hegseth. They attack, They say, well,
he only went to Princeton and then he went to Harvard,
but he said he got into west Point and he
didn't get into west Point, and they try to They
would elect fake Indian Elizabeth Warren president tomorrow if they could.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
She is a fake Indian, built her whole career on it.
And they do not care.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
But Pete, whether or not he got into West Point
is now a matter of national concern. It just goes
to show you this is the different These are the
two different scales that they apply, and they don't care.
The point is that it is unfair. Right, It's not
that they think it's fair. The point is that it's unfair.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
But I want somebody fired over this because they reached
out to a left wing news organization based on whatever
files they had, trying to sabotage Pete Hegseth. Now thankfully
he still had the letter and he published it in
advance and posted it on his Twitter feed. But this
(12:12):
is what they do. They use the media to try
to destroy you, and they typically hide in the process.
So who at the US Military Academy, which of every
how about be nonpartisan? How About don't weid in on
somebody nominated for Secretary of Defense who may be in
charge of your institution, Democrat or Republican. I don't think
(12:35):
you should be leaking information about somebody's college records. Now,
thankfully Hegseth had it, but they tried to sabotage him.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Clay, when people realize and I know that we all
think we know, but I'm telling you from even what
I hear just inside a Langley, when people find out
how deep and widespread the infiltration of pronoun announcing America
hating communists into the federal bureaucracy and into the military,
(13:06):
into the upper echelons of leadership or management within different military.
It will blow everyone's minds when we have a better
sense of this. It is far more pervasive than the
everyday folks realize. And even though people like me, I mean,
I've been out of the agency now over over what
a decade and a half, I don't even know the
full extent of it because things have gotten worse and
(13:27):
worse than worse. We'll come back into this though, and
also talk a little bit about DOGE. Got a couple
of smart guys involved in DOGE. I think that's fair
to say. I think they got some big plans. Let's
talk about my fellow gun owners here for a second.
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Speaker 2 (15:02):
You don't know what you don't know right, but you could.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
On the Sunday Hang with Clay and Buck podcast.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Welcome back in Clay Travis Buck Sexton Show. We're gonna
be joined by our buddy Sean Parnell at the bottom
of the hour. Here we'll ask him about this West
Point scandal, what he thinks should happen there, and also
just continue to talk about Pennsylvania and what a battleground.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
It has become.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Buck, I don't know if you saw this, but speaking
of Pennsylvania, we'll maybe talk about this with Sean Parnell
a bit. Did you see where Scott Presler, who basically
focused entirely on registering people in Pennsylvania, has decided on
a new target state and it's New Jersey. And he
believes that based on if you go back and look
(15:47):
at the data, Trump lost Pennsylvania in twenty twenty by
I think it was eighty thousand votes and then flipped
it and came back to win by one hundred and
twenty thousand votes in twenty twenty four. I believe New
Jersey was only decided by eighty thousand votes. And he
(16:08):
thinks that there is a play to be made in
the state of New Jersey to potentially make it a
competitive battleground.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
State based on the data.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
I mean, come on, Jersey, you know what I mean,
Come on, call, you gotta come Republic and.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
What are you doing in New Jersey?
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Remember we've got the reason the timing on this is
interesting is we've got elections for governor in both Virginia
and New Jersey, which will be the first test of
the first year of the Trump regime. And so we
almost flipped New Jersey in twenty twenty one. I thought
that was interesting. But I'll I'm curious because what Sean
(16:49):
Parnell will say. Did you see Fetterman's comments on the
murder of the CEO Healthcare CEO? He totally ripped anyone
trying to turn this Luigi guy into a hero. How
much of Fetterman's acts are now They flipped the Senate seat,
they flipped the back to maybe he's feeling seat, yeah
(17:12):
he I mean, Pennsylvania is headed.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
The Democrats used to have this contingent at least of
the kind of everyday working man.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
You know, yeah, I want some big government.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Wants to help the little guy, but common sense was
an outlawed common sense has been outlawed in the Democrat Party,
and that's not going to be a long term winning
play for them.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
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Speaker 2 (18:51):
I'm back into Clay and Buck.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
We got our friend Sean Parnell with US now combat veteran,
all around badass American patriot, host of Ground podcast on
the Clay and Buck Network, which is doing phenomenal numbers.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Thank you all for listening in.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Sean does a great show, and Sean appreciate you being
with us here. You me, Clay. We all have one
thing in common other than being dashingly handsome, and that
is we are all friends of Pete hag Seth and
are are hoping that he is able to take the
reins of Secretary of Defense. You know you're a warfighter,
(19:27):
a true combat veteran. I wrote a great book about
an outlaw platoon which I have read every word of,
and I just wanted to give you the floor to
speak about not just you know, get Yeah, you're pro Pete.
We're pro Pete. But from the warfighter perspective, I'm seeing
so many special operations guys, so many guys with many
combat tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, who are saying,
(19:49):
we've got to give this shot to Pete. We've got
to put him in the in the role. Why is that.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
You know?
Speaker 6 (19:54):
Pete's a war fighter? I mean, plain and simple, I mean,
I've known Pete Haig Seth buck Clay for a very
long time. I mean we were both in the infantry
around the same time together, and we worked at Concerned
Veterans for America during the exact same time period that
these supposed fake allegations, all this stuff happened in the
(20:15):
New Yorker. And you know what I know about Pete,
and what has been true about Pete for a very
long time, guys, is that he has a deep, abiding
love of the war fighters. He appreciates the people who
are in the trenches, who are on the front lines,
front towards enemy. He appreciates the people who do the
(20:38):
heavy lifting in the military. And that doesn't necessarily mean
certainly not talking about the people with stars on their shoulders.
But the actual warfighters. And you know what's I think
so brilliant about the hag Seth pick here is that
he is an outsider. He's somebody that thinks outside the box.
(20:58):
Having worked with him before, he is very, very reform minded,
and he understands the issues both of the Pentagon and
the military. And he knows what it feels like to
have a bullet cracked by his head, so that matters too.
But he understands these policy issues in a very deep
and substantive way, and I think that bodes well for
his prospects through the confirmation process and when eventually he
(21:20):
gets confirmed in a Secretary of Defense. So all of
these things are great things. But beyond all of that,
I just love the guy. He's a good man, he's
a good husband, he's got a great family, and I
think he'll be great for the job.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
I want to dive in with you because I saw
you tweeting about this and we just talked about it
a couple of minutes ago. West Point, the Public Affairs
Group or whoever they are, tried to undercut Pete. Heg
Seth's nomination by reaching out to media and saying, not
only is Pete Hegseth lying about getting into West Point.
(21:56):
He never even applied, and then HEGs posted the letter
of admission that he received on social media. I'm good
for him that he still has it, because you know
not that I got admitted that many places. But I
have no idea what happened to any of my edition's letters.
I got rejected a lot of places for law school too,
by the way, I don't know what happened to those either.
(22:18):
But what's going on here? Like Sean he would theoretically
be in charge of the United States Military Academy, Democrat, Republican,
whatever else. It is the fact that they tried to
sabotage him. Somebody needs to get fired here. We need
an investigation into what happened.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
And this is precisely why you need somebody like Pete,
because these are once venerated institutions, the Department of Defense,
the Pentagon, the US Military Academy at west Point, they
have been infested with these radical leftists and key positions
for quite some time now. I'm not talking about everybody
in the Pentagon or at the United States Military Academy.
(22:58):
I'm not painting with broad strokes here, but the folks
there are lots of decision makers in these is in
West Point that are radical leftists that put the radical
leftist agenda before in this case the military UH, the
mission of the United States Military Academy. And you described
it perfectly, Clay. This was somebody at West Point trying
(23:22):
to undermine an incoming president Alex Pick for Secretary of Defense,
who would theoretically be in charge of West Point, to
try to tank his nomination. That was the motivation behind this.
And ironically enough, this is precisely why we need an
outsider in a guy like Pete to root out this
radical leftist infestation at the Pentagon and other at the
(23:45):
Pentagon UH and and and focus the mission of the
United States mission of the United States Military on lethality
first last and always get us back to our war
fighting mission. Get rid of all the DEI stuff, get
all the get rid of all the own stuff, get out,
get rid of all the stuff that is a distraction
to the warfighter, and focus on the mission. And in
(24:06):
the case of West Point, the mission is raising up
officers who embody duty, honor, country, service, selfless service, sacrifice,
not focused on tanking political nominations.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Speaking of Sean Parnell. Battleground is his podcast on the
Clay and Buck Network. Go subscribe to the network and
look for Battleground. Give it a listen. You will love it. Sean,
let's talk politics for a second here. I mean we
kind of were in a sense, right they're trying to
block people political reasons, but you know, more in the
on the electoral politics side of things, we were just
discussing Pennsylvania. Amazing work, Scott Presler, bit did your home
(24:45):
state delivered? We got a great new senator coming in
with Dave McCormick. Fetterman, you're familiar. You ran for Congress, right,
you know that the deal the political landscape in Pennsylvania
very well. Fetterman is saying a lot of sensible stuff,
and people get sometimes a little mad at those like
(25:06):
me who will just say, look what he said is good.
I don't know, is this is he not? Do you
think he's actually changing the way he views things? Or
is this just a gamut? Is this just something that
he's doing because he sees where the political winds are blowing? Like,
how would you assess this? Because he's definitely not saying
the woke stuff these days.
Speaker 6 (25:27):
He definitely I'll just say this, he definitely sees the
way that the political wins are are blowing and knows
that he has election and election coming up in twenty
twenty eight. And just do the simple math. From twenty
twenty six, hundred and fifty thousand more registered Democrats than Republicans.
In twenty twenty four, that number is three hundred thousand
in change, so still a lot more Democrats than Republicans.
(25:49):
But look, Republicans just won the state up and down
the ballot, a clean sweep of Republicans in Pennsylvania in
twenty four So in another four years, I mean, this
state could be even Republican Democrats and that makes the
state very, very tough for him. So John Fetterman is
going to have to do some things to reach across
(26:12):
the aisle, give conservatives some you know, quote unquote wins
while simultaneously voting the way that the Democrat Party wants
him to vote. And to me, that's the key differentiator.
Don't listen to the things that John Fetterman says, Like
he says some cool, catchy stuff that conservatives like to
latch onto, but watch how he votes. A good example
(26:34):
of this is Israel. He waives the Israeli flag all
the time, but he votes against aid for Israel in
the Senate over and over and over again. So you
can't in many cases listen to how the Democrats talk.
You have to watch how he votes. So fuck and Clay.
If he votes starts voting with the Republicans, then I'll
take him a heck of a lot more serious than
the way he is now. But the last thing I'll
(26:55):
say about John Fetterman is this, and I'll give him
a compliment. John is one of the few elected officials,
especially now on the Democrats side of the isle, who
seemed totally out of touch with reality on most things.
But John Fetterman really truly does understand Pennsylvania, and so
I will give him credit for that, and for that
(27:17):
for that reason alone, it makes him a very formidable politician.
And so the fact that he's this forward thinking, sees
the numbers, sees that the state is trending right. The
fact that he's already thinking about this in twenty four
for a cycle in twenty eight just gives you a
sense that he does have some political strategy up up here.
(27:40):
He does understand the state, He understands the demographics and
so makes him formidable and Republicans should not take him
for granted.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Sean, I know we're four years out from a major election,
but how durable do you think the new calculus, the
new math is four Pennsylvania. You mentioned that you think
the state is tilting red. Trump one hundred and twenty
thousand vote win in the state of Pennsylvania. It was close,
(28:10):
but it was a major statement win. How much of
that is Trump and how much of that is the
overall trajectory of Pennsylvania moving in a Republican direction.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
Well, so a lot of this is Trump, and I
think part of our job moving forward in the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania is try to preserve this crazy coalition cross
section of people that only show up for Trump. Our
job moving forward is to figure out how to get
those people to the ballot box each and every cycle,
not just in midterms, but in off cycles as well.
(28:43):
Consider this all the work that we did with early
votes in mail in ballots this cycle. Dave McCormick, he
won twenty seven counties and vote cast by mail. Of
the sixty seven counties in Pennsylvania, McCormick won twenty seven.
Doctor oz in twenty twenty two won two. But in
those twenty seven counties that Dave McCormick won, his margin
(29:05):
of victory was twenty one thousand mail in votes. That
was greater than a statewide margin of victory. So what
we did in Pennsylvania, in addition to President Trump just
being very strong at the top of the ticket, what
we did for Dave McCormick and Republicans down ballock was
literally the difference. And so you don't see the same
dynamic playing out in Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, and other places.
(29:29):
But what we did in Pennsylvania made the difference. And
so we're going to have to focus on all of
the you know, hey, vote by mail early vote operation,
continue banging the drum on voter registration, getting low prop
voters to the polls, and continuing to cobble together this
very eclectic coalition that Trump brings to the table, because
(29:51):
that is the base of our party now and we've
got to serve them.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Well, what are you hitting on Battleground Podcast this week, Sean?
Speaker 6 (30:00):
We got to talk about Pete's confirmation process, actually all
of President Trump's cabinet nominees, in the fact that it's
very rare for cabinet nominees to be voted down by
Democrats or Republicans, but we've let the media gaslight us
into believing that that's possible this cycle.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
So we're going to go into the politics on all
of that.
Speaker 6 (30:16):
So we're Monday through Friday on the Clay and Buck
podcast network. And by the way, guys, very grateful to
be there. So thank you both very much for the platform.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Well, thanks for making us look good by building a
huge audience super fast.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
We appreciate that. Yeah, well, it's an honor to be
with you, guys. Thank you. Sean.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Go check out Battleground Podcast guys, and join the Sean
Parnell Revolution.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
In Wall Street Circles. There's a name that you may
not have heard of, but you should. Brad Thomas.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
This is a guy who distinguished himself by establishing his
own New York Stock Exchange listed ETF and that's a
pretty big deal in his ability, or rather his ability
to help a network of investors help them find their
way to increase is of forty percent or more over
a number of years. Brad's an expert in the world's
largest asset, an asset that's actually bigger than stocks and
(31:07):
bonds combined. So Brad is on a mission to help
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he's sharing insights he's gained from his network of very connected,
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(31:27):
into the White House. He insists it's one of several
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Speaker 6 (31:44):
Research News and politics, but also a little comic relief.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Clay, Travis and Buck Sexton.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you
get your podcasts. Welcome back in Play, Travis, Buck Sex
and show appreciate all of you hanging out with us.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
We're rolling through the Wednesday edition of the program.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
By the way, Amir o'hanna, speaker of the Israeli Knesset,
he is the third ranking individual in the Israeli government.
He wanted to talk to us. There are a lot
of fans of the radio program over in Israel. He
is going to be with us. I taped this earlier.
(32:26):
I was with him in the third hour about what's
going on in Syria, what about Iran, what about the
election of President Trump? And what does he think about
the relationship that Trump and Israel are going to have.
What was the significance of moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
Really interesting conversation with him. I think you guys are
(32:48):
going to enjoy that. That's going to be in the
next hour that I recorded in Jerusalem. Looking forward to that.
But yesterday, speaking a controversial I made a clearly true
to the buck Sexton old man and his anti Harry
Potter takes are out of step with American life.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
And the reaction was massive.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Including many of you who wait in with your own
messages for me, including one of our listeners, Ken in Lincoln, Nebraska,
home of the corn Huskers.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
He was really fired up about this. Listen to what
he had to say. Clay, I'm a black guy who
listens to your show. No, I'm not African American. I'm Black.
I cannot believe.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
That you would put Harry Potter and Star Wars in
the same sentence.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
You're lost, Clay lost.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
That man is correct? I correct?
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Wow, I mean I used to think that people of Lincoln,
Nebraska were a fine group of upstanding individuals, just hoping
that their corn huskers could return to nineteen nineties glory.
And then my man and let's see, let me get
his name right, my man Ken just comes after me.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Ken. You're wrong.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
You and Buck are are just on the wrong side
of history here, frankly, and just because you hate fun,
enjoy and effervescent children overcoming evil doesn't mean that I
have to stoop to your level. You're just wrong. Why
you gotta be so mean as the esteem? Taylor Swift
(34:26):
once said.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
I mean Star Wars is an era defining movie spectacle
and change cinema.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Harry Potter is you know, It's like, I don't know,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
I'm gonna blow your mind. Harry Potter is more influential
than Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Dude, the I'm not kidding the amount of people dressed
as Jedi with lightsabers that are gonna be waiting outside
your next book signing just went up dramatically. I'm telling you,
Obi Wan Kenobi lookalikes are never going to forget this Clay.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
I'm telling I get it.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
All the what do they call them, the cosplay people,
all the people who wear their their cost tooth. By
the way, a lot of them are Harry Potter people too.
They even play fake quidditch right, which isn't even real.
They are crazy. Here's my argument. Star Wars incredibly influential.
I'm not anti Star Wars for all of you out
there that are coming after me with your blaster guns,
(35:28):
but the book and the movie is more influential than
just the movie standing alone. And I think Buck, if
you had been born in two thousand or nineteen ninety
instead of or yeah, nineteen ninety or two thousand, you
would feel very differently about this hate that you're spreading
(35:49):
on the biggest radio show in the country. And we
will continue to allow everyone to rate way in, including
Dan in Denver, who says Buck's wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Listen, my god, that Harry Potter rant there. I think
we know who the.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Grendle is now, wow, throwing me under the bus as
it's you know it's Frendle, just because I don't like
Harry Potter doesn't mean that I go tearing Vikings in
half and eating them.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
That's a little intense.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
We have monster audiences thanks to kfab listener that was
Ken and thanks to Freedom ninety three point seven Katie
FD in Denver. Those Denver numbers have gotten huge. We
love all of you, but really love the people who
are on the right side of history. Here and join
(36:42):
me in Harry Potter Vanquishing Star Wars third hour, Next
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
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