May 11, 2022 • 37 mins
Kudlow on economy: Buckle up. Jim Jordan: There'd be no war in Ukraine with Trump. New WH press secretary doesn't know who's running point on baby formula shortage. Joe Manchin saves Democrats again on abortion legislation. Vivek Ramaswamy, Founder and Executive Chairman of Strive and author of Woke, Inc., joins Clay and Buck to tell us how he's pushing back on woke corporate America. Could you land a plane if the pilot was incapacitated? C&B weigh in.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Suxton Show podcast. There is no let up in the
inflation rate, and I just want to note a couple
of things here. Food prices are skyrocketing really out of control,
of twelve percent at an annual rate for the past
three months, nine point four percent overall, the CPI itself
(00:21):
in the past three months up close to ten percent,
nine point nine percent at an annual rate. And if
you take out of Vladimir putin energy and food prices,
you're still up about six and a quarter percent, which
kind of puts the lie to what President Biden was
saying yesterday. I mean, this is gonna be you know,
(00:42):
buckle your seat belts. Buckle your seat belts, folks. That
was Larry Cudlow over on Fox News saying this inflation
situation is bad and unfortunately going to be getting worse,
as we've been discussing with you here, in large part
because the Biden illustration. The people in charge, instead of
reacting to this, reacting to the stimuli the data that
(01:08):
comes in that demands course correction, they're in double download. Essentially,
this Biden administration still pretending like if only we had
spent more money, things would be somehow better. If only
we had lit more matches and thrown them onto the kindling,
there would have been less of a fire. This is
(01:29):
crazy talk, but this is where they are, and people
are feeling it. They're feeling the pain here. They're feeling
the reality of what this is doing to their doing
to their pocketbooks, doing to their monthly budgets. Our friend
Jim Jordan, friend of the show, Jim Jordan, said just yesterday,
(01:50):
or maybe yeah, just last night. That look, people are
recognizing that the problem here is the people in charge,
and that means that we probably want to go back
to what was working before. And he's got quite a
swoop of blonde hair. He's spend some time in the
(02:11):
sun here he is listen. I voted for all kinds
of help for Ukraine thus far, but this bill we
said no. Look, we got to focus on the issues
that count here in America, that matter to American families
and also help Ukraine, but doing it in a way
that makes more sense than I think this piece of
legislation did. Particularly the fact that we only had a
few hours to look at it forgets is another reason
we should have been against it. It is insane. And
(02:33):
at the same time, we're taking the tariffs off of
the Chinese goods coming into the country, which means we're
helping the country that's giving money to Russia by dumping
the tariffs Trump's tariffs. So figure out how that is
that Trump back. That's why we need President Trump back.
I mean, all the good things he did, we would
not be in this situation if President Trump are still
in the office, in the Oval office. And I think
(02:54):
all your viewers know that it is Clay. It's more
than even just on the economy. They're more and more
fun are coming around to say probably wouldn't be a
ward Ukraine if President Trump was in office. Then even
some experts who don't like Trump on foreign policy have
admitted this. So I think this is part of what's
driving It's not just Trump, it's the GOP, it's the
(03:16):
adults were in charge, Clay, that's what some people are realizing. Well, look,
the border wouldn't be a sieve. I think it's very
likely and were some of the first to say this
that the reason why Putin felt like he could move
on Ukraine was because of Biden's weakness, particularly as it
related to international affairs. With the way that he withdrew
from Afghanistan, certainly the police would have been far better supported,
(03:39):
and the murder rate in this country is unlikely to
have skyrocketed to the degree that it has. And Trump was,
for better or worse, a business person who understood the
ravages of inflation. And also Trump had a good pulse
on the things that were motivating American interest. And Buck
I just heard this clip. We've got a brand new
(04:01):
press secretary coming in and she's being hired not based
on her abilities. She's been a liar on many different issues,
spreading left wing dogma. And the way that this is
really crystallizing for a lot of people out there, certainly
moms and dad's parents who are trying to buy baby
formula is we got a major nationwide shortage. As you
(04:24):
heard earlier in the program. We were taking calls from
the east coast in Savannah all the way to the
west coast in Santa Santa Barbara, California of people experiencing
the same thing, which was this baby formulas shortage. Seems
like something that you should be on top of if
you're in the White House. And so there was a
question for this new press secretary, Hey, who's running point?
(04:47):
Who's in charge of trying to help parents who are
dealing with this baby formulas shortage? This is something that
a competent White House, if there were truly adults in charge,
would be on top of. Listen to this, and sir,
and listen to this. Laugh if you are out there
driving around desperate to find this listening on the formula
(05:08):
issue at the White House. You mentioned the White Houses above,
I mean at the White House, I don't I don't
know if I can find out for you and get
you a person who's running point, Buck, this is infuriating, right.
First of all, you're laughing at something that is making
parents drive around to eight or ten different stores to
try to literally feed their children. But I can give
you a specific example, Buck, I fought hard for sports
(05:32):
to come back in twenty twenty when it came to
all the cancelations that were going on in high school
college football, and in particular, I was working hand in
hand with the White House to try to get Big
ten football back. So for all you listeners out there
in Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who were big Big
(05:52):
ten fans, Indiana. I know we got to Ohio. Tons
of you out there listening. Do you know who they
had running point in the White House? Great guy named
Tim Pataki. He was one hundred percent running point on
getting the big ten. He deserves a lot of credit
for this. He's an Ohio state Buckeyegrad. He was running
point in the Trump White House. My point is here, Buck,
(06:15):
there was a guy when I wanted to try to
fight to get college football back, they had assigned Tim
to be one hundred percent driving the bus on helping
to make this happen for the Trump White House. How
is there no one fuck think about this? How is
there no one running point on a freaking baby formulas
(06:37):
shortage in the White House such that they can't even
give us a name of someone who is focused on this?
And how could you not foresee that there should be
someone here just just to give a sense. I mean,
you remember when the expert class of Fauci and the
rest were demanding the invocation of the Defense Production Act, Yeah,
(06:58):
for the million then laters that we absolutely did not need.
And in fact, the history of the use of ventilators
is one of the more controversial components of the early
pandemic because of an incredibly high fatality rate, and it
was essentially a really bad approach early on. But point
being their friends production act, a million ventilators. People can't
(07:19):
find baby formula for their kids. They can't get it.
We've got clay. We could have taken calls like the
whole show of people that can't find baby formula for
their kids. The Biden administration, I mean, I know there
was that actor who superglued his hand about the vegan
milk prices at Starbucks, which is still amazing by the way. Yes,
(07:40):
it's like if SNL was funny, which it is not,
they would do sketches like vegan milk protester at Starbucks
who's actually a famous actor. But you see what this
Biden administration is focused on. It is not actually doing
the things that will help everyday folks. The essential promise,
central promise of Joe Biden was not only that there
(08:02):
would be unity, which is laughable, Like there's been no
effort at unity that Joe Biden's presidency so far has
been defined by pushing for people to be fired as
the other for refusing a vaccination that did not stop
the spread full stop. Did not stop the spread, and
we all know it. So that's Joe Biden. He's the
anti unity president. But he's a guy who's been given
(08:23):
the same speech for forty years about you know, oh,
we need to get folks, you know, kitchen table, pay
the pills. I know what it's like, you know, the
usual stick. And what are they actually looking at? I mean,
what are they really forty billion dollars for Ukraine a
wide open border, wants to spend trillions more dollars when
inflations at eight point three percent, We got the formula
(08:44):
shortage for babies all over the country. You wonder what
do they think their job? Apparently they think their job
is to make sure that your toddler can be taught
about the thirty seven genders that the left made up yesterday. Yeah,
how about we feed babies instead of worrying about what
pronouns you want to use in your school when you're
in first grade. And here's the other thing, Trump, to
(09:08):
your point on the ventilators, Buck accurately pointed out that
we were going to wildly overproduce ventilators and we're going
to have a lot that we're not being used. And
the reason why I think that's significant is when you
run a business, and I know we got a ton
of people out there who run small businesses. That's a
backbone of our American economy. When you have to run
(09:31):
a business, one of the most important things about running
any business is figuring out how to spend your time.
And I ran a business for I sold it to OutKick,
sold OutKick to Fox. There are billion things every day
that are on your plate that you're trying to address.
And one of the particular skill sets that I think
Trump had is as a business person, he understood what
(09:54):
mattered and he intuitively knew what the American public cares about.
Think about Joe Biden, who claims that he's Amtrak Joe Scranton, Pennsylvania. Joe,
he's a grandpa. How is he missing this huge baby
formulas shortage? And not? If he were truly competent Buck,
if many of you out there listening right now, if
(10:16):
you were in the White House, you wouldn't be perfect
on every decision. But recognizing what Americans are struggling with
and trying to address it is the number one job.
I would argue in many cases of the president, how
do you not have somebody running point on a baby
formulas shortage, and how are you not prepared for questions
like this? How are you laughing them off? Yeah, well
(10:37):
it's because you know, Grandpa Biden really could be and
should be just from a political optics perspective out there
telling people exactly what you're saying. We're on it. We
know this is a problem. We're working with private industry.
I've been on the phone for the last hour with
the head of Walmart, with the head of Target, with
the head of you know, Dwayne Reid or CBS or whatever.
(10:58):
We're getting. We're breaking down every barrier. We're gonna make
sure there's baby formula in the shelves. As we said
in the show, it's probably the most important food people
possibly have for if you're looking at food, I don't know. Yeah,
I mean there's certain antibiotics and things people certainly need
as well, but in terms of food, this should be
top of the apps, top of the list, and there's
(11:18):
an opportunity here, but they don't think about this because
their attitude is, you know, we've got to have more
Ukraine flags in our bios and we got to send
them forty billion dollars and this is a fight for democracy,
and they'd rather talk about that, they'd rather focus on that.
And there are limited hours in the day, limited decision
making capability. This federal government doesn't have any answers for
(11:40):
folks that are feeling the pain right now. Clay and
people can't find baby formula among them. Should be on
the phone with every baby formula production company in the
country saying, what could the federal government do to help
you get more baby formula on the shelves. Are you
caught up in a supply crane chain crisis? Is there
some inability to move your product around? Let's facility take
that as best we can. This White House can't even
(12:02):
tell you who's working on that in any way. It
should be the President himself, and at a minimum it
should be a high ranking official. They don't have anybody.
It's failure in every direction. I want to tell everybody
there's a sponsor we have on the show that isn't
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and I learned about them that way. I have been
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(12:25):
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(13:10):
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(13:30):
Joined the pack at Wolf and Shepherd dot Com. That's
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D Wolf and Shepherd dot Com. Welcome back in Clay
Travis buck Sexton Show. Encourage you to go subscribe to
(13:52):
the podcast. Make sure you don't miss a single moment.
We're about to be joined here in the next segment,
by the way, by Vivic rabat Swamy, who did a
great book, wrote a great book called Woking, and it's
fighting back against the woke universe in politics from a
business perspective, and I wanted to update you on the
latest news. Right now, the Senate is attempting to codify
(14:16):
Roe v. Wade, except Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has
actually drafted a bill that is far more expansive in
terms of what it says about abortion than what Roe v.
Wade itself said, including going all the way up to
nine months of a pregnancy and allowing abortions to take place.
It's not just me saying this, by the way, it
(14:38):
is Senator Joe Mansion of West Virginia, who has now
announced that he will be a no vote on this
attempt to codify Roe v. Wade by the Democrats in
the Senate. And Mansion was pretty direct in explaining why
he would be voting no. Let's listen to what he
had to say. And by the way, point that Buck
(14:59):
made the the day is Joe Mansion is saving in
many ways the Democrats from some of the worst versions
of what they would put out. Remember he was the
only real guy who was standing up and saying, I
can't get to yes on build back better when Joe
Biden wanted to pour another five trillion plus into this economy,
(15:20):
which would have made inflation even worse. But listen to
Mansion explain why he is a no vote. And by
the way, West Virginia, there may well be a strong
Republican challenger coming out of West Virginia based on how
that Republican versus Republican primary challenge went. And don't think
he's not looking over his shoulder thinking already about twenty
(15:42):
twenty four. But listen to Mansion. Here the bill we
have today to vote on, the Women's Health Protection Act,
And I respect people who support but don't Make no mistake,
it is not Roe v Way codification. It's an expansion.
It wipes five hundred five hundred state laws off the books,
it expands abortion and with that, that's not where we
(16:03):
are today. We should not be dividing this country further
than we're already divided. And it's it's really the politics
of Congress is dividing the country. It's not to people.
They're telling us what they want, and it's just disappointing
that we're going to be voting on a piece of
legislation which I will not vote for today. To credit
Joe Mansion here, Buck, he's actually acting like Biden said
(16:27):
he was going to act when he was President of
the United States. Now, you probably a lot of people
out there are not going to agree with everything Joe
Mansion says and does. People with West Virginia, he's had
the biggest increase in his overall support of any senator
I was looking at polling in the last year. Even
though West Virginia is the number one state in the
Union in terms of voting for Donald Trump, I think
(16:48):
he got sixty nine percent of the vote in the
twenty twenty presidential election, won that state by more than
any other state, I believe, And this is what Joe
Biden claimed that he was going to do, what Joe
Mansion actually has. It is remarkable that Democrats keep talking
about the need to protect our sacred democracy by preventing
people from voting democratically on very important, very intensely believed
(17:14):
and central issues in this country, but that they just
they normalize that. To borrow a term from them, it's, oh, yeah,
we have to defend our democracy by preventing people from
being able to vote on important issues. They really think
that that's normal. We have to protect free speech by
censoring people and shutting down what they can say. You know,
(17:35):
Democrats the old thing about you know, you don't want
to protect the village by burning it down, you know,
don't don't burn the village down to save it. That
is their approach to the institutions of our government, and
that's their approach to our democratic processes. If they can't
have it their way, nobody can have it anyway. And
you see this with a with abortion. Joe Mansion is
saving them from the excesses of their party with spending
(17:56):
it on abortion, no doubt. And I think that's an
important clip there that Republicans should use and that rational
saying people across the country should pay attention to how
many magazines do you hear anymore that how are seeing
an increase in their monthly circulation rates? Not too many. Well,
our friends at Hillsdale College have a magazine and Primus,
which is monthly speech digest published that is growing rapidly.
(18:19):
In fact, that's why the readership is continuing to expand
there's such a hunger for it, and we encourage you
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(18:40):
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(19:01):
Buck for Hillsdale dot com. Clayon Buck for Hillsdale dot com.
Clayon Buck rolling on through here. Thanks for being with
us team all across the country. Our friend Vivek Ramaswamy
is with us now. He's the founder and executive chairman
(19:21):
of Strive and the author of the very excellent book
Woke Inc. VIVEC great to have you on. How you doing,
I'm good man. Look, before we talk about the solution
to a form of corporate wokeness, a very powerful, very
broad scale one, can you can you put into just
layment terms for all of us? The problem here when
(19:43):
it comes to wokeness, woke capital, and how it affects places,
massive asset managers, financial institutions like black Rock, State Street,
what's going on? Yeah, so I think there's a a
fiduciary duty problem here where what's happening with these large
(20:04):
asset managers black Rock, State Street, bandguard you set them.
They manage over twenty trillion dollars That is more than
the GDP of the United States. But here's the problem.
That money belongs to everyday citizens. Who's capital they're using
to advocate for policies in corporate America that most of
those everyday citizens would disapprove of. And I think that
(20:25):
that is the greatest fiduciary betrayal of our time that
no one has paid attention to, no one has woken
up to, and certainly no one has stepped up to solve.
That's the problem we're stepping up to solve. And it
runs pretty deep. And I'll tell you how deep it runs,
just I think it's gotten so bad that it borders
on an antitrust problem. Yeah, the Arizona Attorney General has
actually launched an anti trust investigation. He called it boldly,
(20:48):
in my opinion and possibly correctly, the greatest anti trust violation,
the biggest act trust violation in history. Where yas running
you through a thought experiment. Here, imagine the CEOs of
say Exxon and Shell and Chevron got together in a
room and decided that they were going to cut gas
production and gas prices at the pump spike as a result.
(21:09):
That'd be the stuff of movies. Right, people are walking
out with handcuffs. That's not what's happening here, but it's
pretty close. Where the top asset managers in the world
who own those same firms are basically mandating that they
do the same thing, and somehow we celebrate that as EESG,
I didn't have the problem. And so what we're doing
is we're bringing a different voice to the table saying that,
(21:29):
you know what, if you're a company, you should focus
exclusively on delivering excellent products and services to your customers,
not on political agendas, and not on social agendas. And
I hope that's going to be good for restoring the
heart of our economy. Yeah, thanks for coming on the show.
The book was fantastic, Vivec, and I actually have been,
I'm going to be honest with you, until you started
(21:49):
raising the red flag here and pointing out some of
these issues. I went and did my own research. And
the guy who's probably the most powerful that in America
that most people don't know in terms of having influence
here on corporate woke politics is Larry Fink. He is
the CEO of Blackrock, and I think people are still
(22:10):
learning what all of this means. Can you explain where
Larry think, a guy who is the CEO of black
Rock derives his power from and what he's able to do,
basically to bend many of these companies towards his own
political will when many people out there are not even
(22:30):
aware of the power that he wields. Yeah, and look,
I'll quote Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett who said Larry
Think is not my emperor. More recently, I think CEO
is an inappropriate title. Emperor might be more appropriate to
what happened here. Let's take a walk through history lane
here of the last decade and a half. After the
two thousand and eight financial crisis, right, there was a
(22:52):
new demand of American capitalism saying that greed is no
longer good. You know, we need to find a new model.
Larry Think is the guy who stepped into that wait
and turn that into an opportunity, who said that, you
know what we did tough to play a different game
here that we call this stakeholder capitalism. The old left
used to be occupy Wall Street, left knocking on our doorsteps.
(23:12):
Let's put them to one side by now start talking
about social responsibility and preach about the racially disparate impact
of climate change. After you're flying a private jet to Davos,
this is pretty good work. You blow a smoke screen
that distracts people from the essence of what they were
mad about, and use corporate power to actually advance the
very progressive agendas that used to come after a corporate
(23:34):
power in the first place. And it turned out he
used that as a marketing tool to create the world's
largest asset manager today, managing over ten trillion dollars. And
what they do is they show up as the shareholder
and say that you know what, Milton Friedman might have said,
that use the CEO owe a duty to the shareholders
and you shouldn't be pushing social agendas. Well guess what,
(23:54):
I am the shareholder, and I am telling you that
you must push these social agendas or else I'm going
to dock your pay or else I'm going to fire
you a CEO, or else I'm going to replace your
board directors. Until most CEOs bend a knee into it,
You're a reallytractical example Disney. People think that this guy
is just bending the need to progressive employees. Well not
(24:14):
so fast. It's actually a deeper problem. You look at
the top shareholders of Disney, it's none other than those
big three black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard. So this
runs pretty deep. And you think we live in a
system of free market capitalism with competitions will get through
the top shareholders of Microsoft and Apple art competitors, right,
or Coke and Pepsi or let's just say any Shell
and Exxon or chet run. These are supposed to be
(24:37):
competitors and economy. It turned out they all have the
same top shareholders. That's the problem here. And so what
I'm aiming to expose, and the problem knowledge exposed, but
to solve, is that actually, even though folks like Larry
Think or black Rock claim to be the shareholders of
those companies and dictate what those companies do, actually they're
not the real shareholders. The real shareholders are the fire five,
(25:00):
the nurses, the doctors, the small business owners of this
country who unknowingly see their money directed through their four
one K accounts, their pension fund accounts, etc. To the
hands of these firms that are voting their shares and
advocating for policies in the boardroom that would make their
blood boil if they actually knew what was going on.
But they don't. And that's why I think transparency is
(25:21):
going to be the key here. And that's why I
think we have a big mountain to climb, and believe me,
it's a big mountain because they have black Rock under
their firms, have mastered the lobbying game, have mastered the
game of government capture. Look at the number of Black
Rock alumni that staffed the Administration and the White House
and the Treasury Department, in the Council of Economic Advisors.
It is chrony capitalism today. So it is a big
hill to climb. But the thing we have on our
(25:42):
side is that at the end of the day, the
voices of the American people and the desires of the
American people, not just as citizens but as shareholders, are
demanding once they're aware of it, a new direction. That's
what we're providing. We're speaking of Evec Ramaswami. Woke Ink
is his book, and he's the founder of Straw. I've
capital and to that end, more on the solution VIVEK,
(26:04):
which you're trying to build. You've already raised twenty million
dollars I believe for this venture. What's it going to
do and how does it affect the folks out there?
I mean, as you mentioned, if you've got a four
oh one K, it's probably with one of these financial giants.
You want to build an alternative to those woke financial
gargantuan companies. Yeah, so look, that's just the seed capital.
(26:27):
You know, the Wall Street Journal broke the story, so
we ended up announcing it a little bit earlier than expected.
But at the end of the day, we should probably
talk again in the third quarter of this year because
the thing, that's when we're going to launch our first product,
and these are going to be you know, products that
live out our mission, that allow everyday shareholders to have
a choice, that give them an opportunity to be able
(26:49):
to help us realize our mission of bring a different
voice to the table in corporate America. So I'm limited
in what I can say about it right now, but
let's come back in in the third quarter when we
said we're going to launch our first product. And I
hope that this is the beginning of a long journey
that actually represents the voice that most Americans want to
bring to corporate America, which they don't want capitalism to
(27:09):
be political. They don't want the places where they shop,
or where they work, or where they invest to be political.
And you know what, I think. You know, it's really
important to me too that this is not just a
left wing or a right wing movement. This is about
reviving the heart and soul of American capitalism itself is
that by depoliticizing the private sector, I think the thing
that we're going to be able to do is hopefully
(27:30):
recreate solidarity between different people, irrespective of whether they're on
left or right, or black or white. We come together
in an a political private sector that's supposed to bring
us together. We lost that with the rise of stakeholder
capitalism and black rock led capitalism over the last decade.
We want to restore a new type of capitalism, the
classical kind of capitalism at the heart of American capitalism
(27:52):
in the next decade ahead. So I'll be happy to
say more about that in a few months. I think
your battle is an important one. Also, do you believe
that there is a significant message sent based on what
you wrote about and woke ink when Ron de Santis
fired back against Disney and basically let it be known
that the right was not just going to continue to
(28:13):
cowtow to a tiny percentage on the left that is
woke that had been driving the trajectory of our country. Yeah,
I think it's in a powerful message it. Disney is
just a great example to look at where there's a
good survey data on this, We're over sixty percent of
their own customers were put off by their decision. Okay,
so if we were a shareholder of Disney, the thing
(28:33):
we would tell Disney is knock it off. Three words
to bout chaffick knock at all. You're alienating your customers.
Customer volume is down, your stock is down more than
the SMP five hundred over the same period, and you
have had clear losses of business benefits in the state
of Florida. That's not what you should be doing if
you're focusing on excellence for your customers. And yet the
top three shareholders of Disney, they don't give them that message. Instead.
(28:56):
If anything, if you read between the lines of their
comments and other context, it actually seems to encourage them
to exactly take the kinds of harmful positions that they have.
So yeah, I do think there's a room for political
responsiveness and even legal responsiveness here. But actually the solutions
that I prefer the most are competition through the market itself.
All state actions have unintended consequences, even ones that are
(29:17):
necessary to be taken. That's why I generally prefer, whenever possible,
let's sort these things out through the marketplace of ideas
and through the market itself and actually leave it to
consumers to make the decisions. And I think that's going
to be the way that we hope to reform the
management industry, and not just the asset management industry. That
is the one industry that's upstream of every industry in
the American economy, which is what my real motivation is.
(29:39):
I think the battle that you're fighting is an incredibly
important one. Encourage you to check out Woke, Inc. It's
a fantastic book. He is Vivek Ramaswamy, and he is
fighting the battles that many of us need to be
fighting in both the marketplace of ideas and also the
capitalistic marketplace in general. Look forward to talking to you again, Vivec.
Thanks for having me, guys talk to you. Look, Mike
Glendell and my Hello. Right now, have got to buy one,
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pillow dot com. We'll walk back in play Travis buck
(31:05):
Sexton Show. When you're finishing off the Wednesday edition of
the podcast, encourage you to go grab sign up for
the podcast. You can search out my name play Travis.
You can search out buck Sexton's name Boom. You'll make
sure that you never miss a single moment of the program.
Vivic was just great. Also, David Marcus was fantastic in
the second hour, and Buck We've been talking about it
off the air. There was a story that both of
(31:27):
us could not stop checking out the details on it.
Maybe everybody's thought about it before. Guy was up in
a Cesna plane, passenger, the pilot has an emergency and
is no longer able to fly the plane, and the passenger,
who had never ever flown an airplane, put on the
(31:47):
headset and air traffic Control walked him through landing the plane.
And I'm gonna be honest, this is something I've worried
about before. I had never been in a situation where
I was on the plane and it was just me
and the pilot until recently, just a couple of months ago,
and I legitimately was sitting in the back of the
(32:07):
plane thinking about this. Do you think you could land
a plane if that was the situation, if the pilot
became incapacitated and it was just you and you had
to go up to the cockpit, do you think you
could pull this off? I'm a confident fellow, Clay, so
you know my CIA training would kick in, which would
involve memo writing, not plane fly. Yeah, right, but yeah,
(32:29):
I think I'd get it done. You know, I wouldn't
bet all the money in the world on me, though.
I'm just saying that I don't know. I mean, I
don't have a lot of confidence in myself. I had
never been in that situation. And the guy who was
flying the plane, I was like, man, I'm glad he's
around my own age, because if it had been an
older guy, I would have been like, Oh my god,
(32:49):
what happens if he has a heart attack? What happens
if something goes on here? I can't think of anything
much more terrifying than suddenly having to climb into the
pilot's seat well land an airplane. Can we just think
about there's a moment here where the pilot, I mean
a medical emergency he passed out. Yeah, so I mean,
this is like something that you would see in a
movie where all of one second, the pilot maybe at
(33:12):
a stroke, a heart attack, whatever it may be, out.
So it's not even like the pilot is, you know,
incapacitated but awake and can tell you you know, let's
say that you know, the he had been you know,
injured in some way or whatever. You're alone, You're in
that cockpit and you're going down and you're not gonna
make it unless I mean, and by the way, credit
(33:32):
to air traffic Control. Can you imagine you're an air
traffic control guy. You're sitting there and all of a
sudden it's like, uh, yeah, I've never flown a plane
before in my life, and the pilot is knocked out
cold and I don't want to die, so can you
please help me figure this out? Full credit to them,
this happened down. It was Bahamas to a Florida was
(33:53):
the flight here, and they managed they managed to pull
this one off, which it's pretty pretty markable. I mean,
I gotta say, you know, not everybody, not everybody able
to pull this one off. I mean, I think also
the panic that would set in for that one moment
you'd be like, this is this is rough now, I've
probably got to get you know, even those planes are
(34:14):
not very big buck right, so even getting up into
the cockpit area with an incapacitated pilot would be a
difficult thing to even pull off. I think. I think
if you're telling me though, if it's a Cessna and
you're only there's only two people in the plane, which
I believe was the case here, that that feels more doable.
(34:34):
Let's just say this is like from the movie Airplane
or something. Let's say you're on a fully stacked, you know,
seven forty seven or something full of people and for
some reason it's all on you. You got your head
set on. The pilots are all out cold, whatever that.
I don't think. I think that I would just panic.
I think I'd have a heart attack. I don't know.
(34:55):
I think the bigger and I'm not an expert. I've
never actually tried to, you know, gone up and even
done anything in an airplane. But my understanding, buck is
that the bigger the airplane, the easier it is to fly.
Meaning this and our pilot audience can tell me if
I'm a total imbecile here. Because so much of the
big planes is computerized now, I think it might be
(35:16):
somewhat easier to take the controls, and as obviously a
lot more that may be true. Then maybe you could
hit the auto Maybe they could just say, hey, hit
the autopilot, hit this, hit that, and you're good. I'm
just saying, if there were a hundred other people, they're
on the way, more lives at stage, it's way more
stressful than just yourself. But I think it might be
more difficult to land the Cesna because those are less
(35:38):
controlled by the computer technology than it would be to
suddenly find yourself in a seven forty seven cockpit. I
think in fixed wing you would have a shot. I
think if we're talking rotary, you're probably we're probably toast
because so I think my helicopters are really tough. I
know fixed wing pilots were like, I can't fly. I
knew them in the military. They're like, I'm a fixed
(35:58):
wing guy. I don't mess with those those peller things.
Oh I'm not only that. I think the time of
day matters the weather, you know, because if you've ever
been up in some of those little planes when when
there's a storm coming through, that is you're bouncing around
a lot. And if you're flying at night, it's a
lot different than flying during the day too. I mean,
(36:18):
so this is a heck of a story, but congratulations.
I think I think both of them ended up okay.
So see, look we end on a on a happy story.
I believe I believe that they're both. I know the
guy landed, he's okay. I believe the pilot also ended
up getting medical attention. UNI. I should just check on
this one. Uh play. We've covered a lot of ground today,
(36:41):
my man, and tomorrow we've got Kennedy from Fox Business
of Kennedy Fame, her own show over at Fox Show
be talking to us our buddy Rob Smith, who is
a commentator, author, army veteran, and all the news today. Man,
It's going to be fantastic, can't wait. I look forward
to continue to have a good time down here on
(37:03):
the Gulf Coast appreshade, all the people who listened to
the show down here in this market, and man will
continue to be voices for sanity in an insane world. Tomorrow,
Sleet Travis and Buck Sexton on the front lines of
truth
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Suxton Show podcast. There is no let up in the
inflation rate, and I just want to note a couple
of things here. Food prices are skyrocketing really out of control,
of twelve percent at an annual rate for the past
three months, nine point four percent overall, the CPI itself
(00:21):
in the past three months up close to ten percent,
nine point nine percent at an annual rate. And if
you take out of Vladimir putin energy and food prices,
you're still up about six and a quarter percent, which
kind of puts the lie to what President Biden was
saying yesterday. I mean, this is gonna be you know,
(00:42):
buckle your seat belts. Buckle your seat belts, folks. That
was Larry Cudlow over on Fox News saying this inflation
situation is bad and unfortunately going to be getting worse,
as we've been discussing with you here, in large part
because the Biden illustration. The people in charge, instead of
reacting to this, reacting to the stimuli the data that
(01:08):
comes in that demands course correction, they're in double download. Essentially,
this Biden administration still pretending like if only we had
spent more money, things would be somehow better. If only
we had lit more matches and thrown them onto the kindling,
there would have been less of a fire. This is
(01:29):
crazy talk, but this is where they are, and people
are feeling it. They're feeling the pain here. They're feeling
the reality of what this is doing to their doing
to their pocketbooks, doing to their monthly budgets. Our friend
Jim Jordan, friend of the show, Jim Jordan, said just yesterday,
(01:50):
or maybe yeah, just last night. That look, people are
recognizing that the problem here is the people in charge,
and that means that we probably want to go back
to what was working before. And he's got quite a
swoop of blonde hair. He's spend some time in the
(02:11):
sun here he is listen. I voted for all kinds
of help for Ukraine thus far, but this bill we
said no. Look, we got to focus on the issues
that count here in America, that matter to American families
and also help Ukraine, but doing it in a way
that makes more sense than I think this piece of
legislation did. Particularly the fact that we only had a
few hours to look at it forgets is another reason
we should have been against it. It is insane. And
(02:33):
at the same time, we're taking the tariffs off of
the Chinese goods coming into the country, which means we're
helping the country that's giving money to Russia by dumping
the tariffs Trump's tariffs. So figure out how that is
that Trump back. That's why we need President Trump back.
I mean, all the good things he did, we would
not be in this situation if President Trump are still
in the office, in the Oval office. And I think
(02:54):
all your viewers know that it is Clay. It's more
than even just on the economy. They're more and more
fun are coming around to say probably wouldn't be a
ward Ukraine if President Trump was in office. Then even
some experts who don't like Trump on foreign policy have
admitted this. So I think this is part of what's
driving It's not just Trump, it's the GOP, it's the
(03:16):
adults were in charge, Clay, that's what some people are realizing. Well, look,
the border wouldn't be a sieve. I think it's very
likely and were some of the first to say this
that the reason why Putin felt like he could move
on Ukraine was because of Biden's weakness, particularly as it
related to international affairs. With the way that he withdrew
from Afghanistan, certainly the police would have been far better supported,
(03:39):
and the murder rate in this country is unlikely to
have skyrocketed to the degree that it has. And Trump was,
for better or worse, a business person who understood the
ravages of inflation. And also Trump had a good pulse
on the things that were motivating American interest. And Buck
I just heard this clip. We've got a brand new
(04:01):
press secretary coming in and she's being hired not based
on her abilities. She's been a liar on many different issues,
spreading left wing dogma. And the way that this is
really crystallizing for a lot of people out there, certainly
moms and dad's parents who are trying to buy baby
formula is we got a major nationwide shortage. As you
(04:24):
heard earlier in the program. We were taking calls from
the east coast in Savannah all the way to the
west coast in Santa Santa Barbara, California of people experiencing
the same thing, which was this baby formulas shortage. Seems
like something that you should be on top of if
you're in the White House. And so there was a
question for this new press secretary, Hey, who's running point?
(04:47):
Who's in charge of trying to help parents who are
dealing with this baby formulas shortage? This is something that
a competent White House, if there were truly adults in charge,
would be on top of. Listen to this, and sir,
and listen to this. Laugh if you are out there
driving around desperate to find this listening on the formula
(05:08):
issue at the White House. You mentioned the White Houses above,
I mean at the White House, I don't I don't
know if I can find out for you and get
you a person who's running point, Buck, this is infuriating, right.
First of all, you're laughing at something that is making
parents drive around to eight or ten different stores to
try to literally feed their children. But I can give
you a specific example, Buck, I fought hard for sports
(05:32):
to come back in twenty twenty when it came to
all the cancelations that were going on in high school
college football, and in particular, I was working hand in
hand with the White House to try to get Big
ten football back. So for all you listeners out there
in Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who were big Big
(05:52):
ten fans, Indiana. I know we got to Ohio. Tons
of you out there listening. Do you know who they
had running point in the White House? Great guy named
Tim Pataki. He was one hundred percent running point on
getting the big ten. He deserves a lot of credit
for this. He's an Ohio state Buckeyegrad. He was running
point in the Trump White House. My point is here, Buck,
(06:15):
there was a guy when I wanted to try to
fight to get college football back, they had assigned Tim
to be one hundred percent driving the bus on helping
to make this happen for the Trump White House. How
is there no one fuck think about this? How is
there no one running point on a freaking baby formulas
(06:37):
shortage in the White House such that they can't even
give us a name of someone who is focused on this?
And how could you not foresee that there should be
someone here just just to give a sense. I mean,
you remember when the expert class of Fauci and the
rest were demanding the invocation of the Defense Production Act, Yeah,
(06:58):
for the million then laters that we absolutely did not need.
And in fact, the history of the use of ventilators
is one of the more controversial components of the early
pandemic because of an incredibly high fatality rate, and it
was essentially a really bad approach early on. But point
being their friends production act, a million ventilators. People can't
(07:19):
find baby formula for their kids. They can't get it.
We've got clay. We could have taken calls like the
whole show of people that can't find baby formula for
their kids. The Biden administration, I mean, I know there
was that actor who superglued his hand about the vegan
milk prices at Starbucks, which is still amazing by the way. Yes,
(07:40):
it's like if SNL was funny, which it is not,
they would do sketches like vegan milk protester at Starbucks
who's actually a famous actor. But you see what this
Biden administration is focused on. It is not actually doing
the things that will help everyday folks. The essential promise,
central promise of Joe Biden was not only that there
(08:02):
would be unity, which is laughable, Like there's been no
effort at unity that Joe Biden's presidency so far has
been defined by pushing for people to be fired as
the other for refusing a vaccination that did not stop
the spread full stop. Did not stop the spread, and
we all know it. So that's Joe Biden. He's the
anti unity president. But he's a guy who's been given
(08:23):
the same speech for forty years about you know, oh,
we need to get folks, you know, kitchen table, pay
the pills. I know what it's like, you know, the
usual stick. And what are they actually looking at? I mean,
what are they really forty billion dollars for Ukraine a
wide open border, wants to spend trillions more dollars when
inflations at eight point three percent, We got the formula
(08:44):
shortage for babies all over the country. You wonder what
do they think their job? Apparently they think their job
is to make sure that your toddler can be taught
about the thirty seven genders that the left made up yesterday. Yeah,
how about we feed babies instead of worrying about what
pronouns you want to use in your school when you're
in first grade. And here's the other thing, Trump, to
(09:08):
your point on the ventilators, Buck accurately pointed out that
we were going to wildly overproduce ventilators and we're going
to have a lot that we're not being used. And
the reason why I think that's significant is when you
run a business, and I know we got a ton
of people out there who run small businesses. That's a
backbone of our American economy. When you have to run
(09:31):
a business, one of the most important things about running
any business is figuring out how to spend your time.
And I ran a business for I sold it to OutKick,
sold OutKick to Fox. There are billion things every day
that are on your plate that you're trying to address.
And one of the particular skill sets that I think
Trump had is as a business person, he understood what
(09:54):
mattered and he intuitively knew what the American public cares about.
Think about Joe Biden, who claims that he's Amtrak Joe Scranton, Pennsylvania. Joe,
he's a grandpa. How is he missing this huge baby
formulas shortage? And not? If he were truly competent Buck,
if many of you out there listening right now, if
(10:16):
you were in the White House, you wouldn't be perfect
on every decision. But recognizing what Americans are struggling with
and trying to address it is the number one job.
I would argue in many cases of the president, how
do you not have somebody running point on a baby
formulas shortage, and how are you not prepared for questions
like this? How are you laughing them off? Yeah, well
(10:37):
it's because you know, Grandpa Biden really could be and
should be just from a political optics perspective out there
telling people exactly what you're saying. We're on it. We
know this is a problem. We're working with private industry.
I've been on the phone for the last hour with
the head of Walmart, with the head of Target, with
the head of you know, Dwayne Reid or CBS or whatever.
(10:58):
We're getting. We're breaking down every barrier. We're gonna make
sure there's baby formula in the shelves. As we said
in the show, it's probably the most important food people
possibly have for if you're looking at food, I don't know. Yeah,
I mean there's certain antibiotics and things people certainly need
as well, but in terms of food, this should be
top of the apps, top of the list, and there's
(11:18):
an opportunity here, but they don't think about this because
their attitude is, you know, we've got to have more
Ukraine flags in our bios and we got to send
them forty billion dollars and this is a fight for democracy,
and they'd rather talk about that, they'd rather focus on that.
And there are limited hours in the day, limited decision
making capability. This federal government doesn't have any answers for
(11:40):
folks that are feeling the pain right now. Clay and
people can't find baby formula among them. Should be on
the phone with every baby formula production company in the
country saying, what could the federal government do to help
you get more baby formula on the shelves. Are you
caught up in a supply crane chain crisis? Is there
some inability to move your product around? Let's facility take
that as best we can. This White House can't even
(12:02):
tell you who's working on that in any way. It
should be the President himself, and at a minimum it
should be a high ranking official. They don't have anybody.
It's failure in every direction. I want to tell everybody
there's a sponsor we have on the show that isn't
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and I learned about them that way. I have been
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(12:25):
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Joined the pack at Wolf and Shepherd dot Com. That's
Wolf and Shepherd spelled sh E P h e r
D Wolf and Shepherd dot Com. Welcome back in Clay
Travis buck Sexton Show. Encourage you to go subscribe to
(13:52):
the podcast. Make sure you don't miss a single moment.
We're about to be joined here in the next segment,
by the way, by Vivic rabat Swamy, who did a
great book, wrote a great book called Woking, and it's
fighting back against the woke universe in politics from a
business perspective, and I wanted to update you on the
latest news. Right now, the Senate is attempting to codify
(14:16):
Roe v. Wade, except Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has
actually drafted a bill that is far more expansive in
terms of what it says about abortion than what Roe v.
Wade itself said, including going all the way up to
nine months of a pregnancy and allowing abortions to take place.
It's not just me saying this, by the way, it
(14:38):
is Senator Joe Mansion of West Virginia, who has now
announced that he will be a no vote on this
attempt to codify Roe v. Wade by the Democrats in
the Senate. And Mansion was pretty direct in explaining why
he would be voting no. Let's listen to what he
had to say. And by the way, point that Buck
(14:59):
made the the day is Joe Mansion is saving in
many ways the Democrats from some of the worst versions
of what they would put out. Remember he was the
only real guy who was standing up and saying, I
can't get to yes on build back better when Joe
Biden wanted to pour another five trillion plus into this economy,
(15:20):
which would have made inflation even worse. But listen to
Mansion explain why he is a no vote. And by
the way, West Virginia, there may well be a strong
Republican challenger coming out of West Virginia based on how
that Republican versus Republican primary challenge went. And don't think
he's not looking over his shoulder thinking already about twenty
(15:42):
twenty four. But listen to Mansion. Here the bill we
have today to vote on, the Women's Health Protection Act,
And I respect people who support but don't Make no mistake,
it is not Roe v Way codification. It's an expansion.
It wipes five hundred five hundred state laws off the books,
it expands abortion and with that, that's not where we
(16:03):
are today. We should not be dividing this country further
than we're already divided. And it's it's really the politics
of Congress is dividing the country. It's not to people.
They're telling us what they want, and it's just disappointing
that we're going to be voting on a piece of
legislation which I will not vote for today. To credit
Joe Mansion here, Buck, he's actually acting like Biden said
(16:27):
he was going to act when he was President of
the United States. Now, you probably a lot of people
out there are not going to agree with everything Joe
Mansion says and does. People with West Virginia, he's had
the biggest increase in his overall support of any senator
I was looking at polling in the last year. Even
though West Virginia is the number one state in the
Union in terms of voting for Donald Trump, I think
(16:48):
he got sixty nine percent of the vote in the
twenty twenty presidential election, won that state by more than
any other state, I believe, And this is what Joe
Biden claimed that he was going to do, what Joe
Mansion actually has. It is remarkable that Democrats keep talking
about the need to protect our sacred democracy by preventing
people from voting democratically on very important, very intensely believed
(17:14):
and central issues in this country, but that they just
they normalize that. To borrow a term from them, it's, oh, yeah,
we have to defend our democracy by preventing people from
being able to vote on important issues. They really think
that that's normal. We have to protect free speech by
censoring people and shutting down what they can say. You know,
(17:35):
Democrats the old thing about you know, you don't want
to protect the village by burning it down, you know,
don't don't burn the village down to save it. That
is their approach to the institutions of our government, and
that's their approach to our democratic processes. If they can't
have it their way, nobody can have it anyway. And
you see this with a with abortion. Joe Mansion is
saving them from the excesses of their party with spending
(17:56):
it on abortion, no doubt. And I think that's an
important clip there that Republicans should use and that rational
saying people across the country should pay attention to how
many magazines do you hear anymore that how are seeing
an increase in their monthly circulation rates? Not too many. Well,
our friends at Hillsdale College have a magazine and Primus,
which is monthly speech digest published that is growing rapidly.
(18:19):
In fact, that's why the readership is continuing to expand
there's such a hunger for it, and we encourage you
to go sign up today because for fifty years and
Primus has featured speeches given at Hellsdale events and great
written work by people like Victor Davis Hanson, Molly Hemingway,
and Mark Stein Chris Rufo. Over six point two million
(18:40):
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because of generous donors to Hillsdale College. We want you
to be able to get this magazine yourself monthly sent
to your home for free as well, which is why
we want you to sign up today no charge. I'm
telling you this is a fantastic read. Go to Clay
and Buck for Hillsdale dot com. Now that's Clay and
(19:01):
Buck for Hillsdale dot com. Clayon Buck for Hillsdale dot com.
Clayon Buck rolling on through here. Thanks for being with
us team all across the country. Our friend Vivek Ramaswamy
is with us now. He's the founder and executive chairman
(19:21):
of Strive and the author of the very excellent book
Woke Inc. VIVEC great to have you on. How you doing,
I'm good man. Look, before we talk about the solution
to a form of corporate wokeness, a very powerful, very
broad scale one, can you can you put into just
layment terms for all of us? The problem here when
(19:43):
it comes to wokeness, woke capital, and how it affects places,
massive asset managers, financial institutions like black Rock, State Street,
what's going on? Yeah, so I think there's a a
fiduciary duty problem here where what's happening with these large
(20:04):
asset managers black Rock, State Street, bandguard you set them.
They manage over twenty trillion dollars That is more than
the GDP of the United States. But here's the problem.
That money belongs to everyday citizens. Who's capital they're using
to advocate for policies in corporate America that most of
those everyday citizens would disapprove of. And I think that
(20:25):
that is the greatest fiduciary betrayal of our time that
no one has paid attention to, no one has woken
up to, and certainly no one has stepped up to solve.
That's the problem we're stepping up to solve. And it
runs pretty deep. And I'll tell you how deep it runs,
just I think it's gotten so bad that it borders
on an antitrust problem. Yeah, the Arizona Attorney General has
actually launched an anti trust investigation. He called it boldly,
(20:48):
in my opinion and possibly correctly, the greatest anti trust violation,
the biggest act trust violation in history. Where yas running
you through a thought experiment. Here, imagine the CEOs of
say Exxon and Shell and Chevron got together in a
room and decided that they were going to cut gas
production and gas prices at the pump spike as a result.
(21:09):
That'd be the stuff of movies. Right, people are walking
out with handcuffs. That's not what's happening here, but it's
pretty close. Where the top asset managers in the world
who own those same firms are basically mandating that they
do the same thing, and somehow we celebrate that as EESG,
I didn't have the problem. And so what we're doing
is we're bringing a different voice to the table saying that,
(21:29):
you know what, if you're a company, you should focus
exclusively on delivering excellent products and services to your customers,
not on political agendas, and not on social agendas. And
I hope that's going to be good for restoring the
heart of our economy. Yeah, thanks for coming on the show.
The book was fantastic, Vivec, and I actually have been,
I'm going to be honest with you, until you started
(21:49):
raising the red flag here and pointing out some of
these issues. I went and did my own research. And
the guy who's probably the most powerful that in America
that most people don't know in terms of having influence
here on corporate woke politics is Larry Fink. He is
the CEO of Blackrock, and I think people are still
(22:10):
learning what all of this means. Can you explain where
Larry think, a guy who is the CEO of black
Rock derives his power from and what he's able to do,
basically to bend many of these companies towards his own
political will when many people out there are not even
(22:30):
aware of the power that he wields. Yeah, and look,
I'll quote Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett who said Larry
Think is not my emperor. More recently, I think CEO
is an inappropriate title. Emperor might be more appropriate to
what happened here. Let's take a walk through history lane
here of the last decade and a half. After the
two thousand and eight financial crisis, right, there was a
(22:52):
new demand of American capitalism saying that greed is no
longer good. You know, we need to find a new model.
Larry Think is the guy who stepped into that wait
and turn that into an opportunity, who said that, you
know what we did tough to play a different game
here that we call this stakeholder capitalism. The old left
used to be occupy Wall Street, left knocking on our doorsteps.
(23:12):
Let's put them to one side by now start talking
about social responsibility and preach about the racially disparate impact
of climate change. After you're flying a private jet to Davos,
this is pretty good work. You blow a smoke screen
that distracts people from the essence of what they were
mad about, and use corporate power to actually advance the
very progressive agendas that used to come after a corporate
(23:34):
power in the first place. And it turned out he
used that as a marketing tool to create the world's
largest asset manager today, managing over ten trillion dollars. And
what they do is they show up as the shareholder
and say that you know what, Milton Friedman might have said,
that use the CEO owe a duty to the shareholders
and you shouldn't be pushing social agendas. Well guess what,
(23:54):
I am the shareholder, and I am telling you that
you must push these social agendas or else I'm going
to dock your pay or else I'm going to fire
you a CEO, or else I'm going to replace your
board directors. Until most CEOs bend a knee into it,
You're a reallytractical example Disney. People think that this guy
is just bending the need to progressive employees. Well not
(24:14):
so fast. It's actually a deeper problem. You look at
the top shareholders of Disney, it's none other than those
big three black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard. So this
runs pretty deep. And you think we live in a
system of free market capitalism with competitions will get through
the top shareholders of Microsoft and Apple art competitors, right,
or Coke and Pepsi or let's just say any Shell
and Exxon or chet run. These are supposed to be
(24:37):
competitors and economy. It turned out they all have the
same top shareholders. That's the problem here. And so what
I'm aiming to expose, and the problem knowledge exposed, but
to solve, is that actually, even though folks like Larry
Think or black Rock claim to be the shareholders of
those companies and dictate what those companies do, actually they're
not the real shareholders. The real shareholders are the fire five,
(25:00):
the nurses, the doctors, the small business owners of this
country who unknowingly see their money directed through their four
one K accounts, their pension fund accounts, etc. To the
hands of these firms that are voting their shares and
advocating for policies in the boardroom that would make their
blood boil if they actually knew what was going on.
But they don't. And that's why I think transparency is
(25:21):
going to be the key here. And that's why I
think we have a big mountain to climb, and believe me,
it's a big mountain because they have black Rock under
their firms, have mastered the lobbying game, have mastered the
game of government capture. Look at the number of Black
Rock alumni that staffed the Administration and the White House
and the Treasury Department, in the Council of Economic Advisors.
It is chrony capitalism today. So it is a big
hill to climb. But the thing we have on our
(25:42):
side is that at the end of the day, the
voices of the American people and the desires of the
American people, not just as citizens but as shareholders, are
demanding once they're aware of it, a new direction. That's
what we're providing. We're speaking of Evec Ramaswami. Woke Ink
is his book, and he's the founder of Straw. I've
capital and to that end, more on the solution VIVEK,
(26:04):
which you're trying to build. You've already raised twenty million
dollars I believe for this venture. What's it going to
do and how does it affect the folks out there?
I mean, as you mentioned, if you've got a four
oh one K, it's probably with one of these financial giants.
You want to build an alternative to those woke financial
gargantuan companies. Yeah, so look, that's just the seed capital.
(26:27):
You know, the Wall Street Journal broke the story, so
we ended up announcing it a little bit earlier than expected.
But at the end of the day, we should probably
talk again in the third quarter of this year because
the thing, that's when we're going to launch our first product,
and these are going to be you know, products that
live out our mission, that allow everyday shareholders to have
a choice, that give them an opportunity to be able
(26:49):
to help us realize our mission of bring a different
voice to the table in corporate America. So I'm limited
in what I can say about it right now, but
let's come back in in the third quarter when we
said we're going to launch our first product. And I
hope that this is the beginning of a long journey
that actually represents the voice that most Americans want to
bring to corporate America, which they don't want capitalism to
(27:09):
be political. They don't want the places where they shop,
or where they work, or where they invest to be political.
And you know what, I think. You know, it's really
important to me too that this is not just a
left wing or a right wing movement. This is about
reviving the heart and soul of American capitalism itself is
that by depoliticizing the private sector, I think the thing
that we're going to be able to do is hopefully
(27:30):
recreate solidarity between different people, irrespective of whether they're on
left or right, or black or white. We come together
in an a political private sector that's supposed to bring
us together. We lost that with the rise of stakeholder
capitalism and black rock led capitalism over the last decade.
We want to restore a new type of capitalism, the
classical kind of capitalism at the heart of American capitalism
(27:52):
in the next decade ahead. So I'll be happy to
say more about that in a few months. I think
your battle is an important one. Also, do you believe
that there is a significant message sent based on what
you wrote about and woke ink when Ron de Santis
fired back against Disney and basically let it be known
that the right was not just going to continue to
(28:13):
cowtow to a tiny percentage on the left that is
woke that had been driving the trajectory of our country. Yeah,
I think it's in a powerful message it. Disney is
just a great example to look at where there's a
good survey data on this, We're over sixty percent of
their own customers were put off by their decision. Okay,
so if we were a shareholder of Disney, the thing
(28:33):
we would tell Disney is knock it off. Three words
to bout chaffick knock at all. You're alienating your customers.
Customer volume is down, your stock is down more than
the SMP five hundred over the same period, and you
have had clear losses of business benefits in the state
of Florida. That's not what you should be doing if
you're focusing on excellence for your customers. And yet the
top three shareholders of Disney, they don't give them that message. Instead.
(28:56):
If anything, if you read between the lines of their
comments and other context, it actually seems to encourage them
to exactly take the kinds of harmful positions that they have.
So yeah, I do think there's a room for political
responsiveness and even legal responsiveness here. But actually the solutions
that I prefer the most are competition through the market itself.
All state actions have unintended consequences, even ones that are
(29:17):
necessary to be taken. That's why I generally prefer, whenever possible,
let's sort these things out through the marketplace of ideas
and through the market itself and actually leave it to
consumers to make the decisions. And I think that's going
to be the way that we hope to reform the
management industry, and not just the asset management industry. That
is the one industry that's upstream of every industry in
the American economy, which is what my real motivation is.
(29:39):
I think the battle that you're fighting is an incredibly
important one. Encourage you to check out Woke, Inc. It's
a fantastic book. He is Vivek Ramaswamy, and he is
fighting the battles that many of us need to be
fighting in both the marketplace of ideas and also the
capitalistic marketplace in general. Look forward to talking to you again, Vivec.
Thanks for having me, guys talk to you. Look, Mike
Glendell and my Hello. Right now, have got to buy one,
(30:01):
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(31:05):
Sexton Show. When you're finishing off the Wednesday edition of
the podcast, encourage you to go grab sign up for
the podcast. You can search out my name play Travis.
You can search out buck Sexton's name Boom. You'll make
sure that you never miss a single moment of the program.
Vivic was just great. Also, David Marcus was fantastic in
the second hour, and Buck We've been talking about it
off the air. There was a story that both of
(31:27):
us could not stop checking out the details on it.
Maybe everybody's thought about it before. Guy was up in
a Cesna plane, passenger, the pilot has an emergency and
is no longer able to fly the plane, and the passenger,
who had never ever flown an airplane, put on the
(31:47):
headset and air traffic Control walked him through landing the plane.
And I'm gonna be honest, this is something I've worried
about before. I had never been in a situation where
I was on the plane and it was just me
and the pilot until recently, just a couple of months ago,
and I legitimately was sitting in the back of the
(32:07):
plane thinking about this. Do you think you could land
a plane if that was the situation, if the pilot
became incapacitated and it was just you and you had
to go up to the cockpit, do you think you
could pull this off? I'm a confident fellow, Clay, so
you know my CIA training would kick in, which would
involve memo writing, not plane fly. Yeah, right, but yeah,
(32:29):
I think I'd get it done. You know, I wouldn't
bet all the money in the world on me, though.
I'm just saying that I don't know. I mean, I
don't have a lot of confidence in myself. I had
never been in that situation. And the guy who was
flying the plane, I was like, man, I'm glad he's
around my own age, because if it had been an
older guy, I would have been like, Oh my god,
(32:49):
what happens if he has a heart attack? What happens
if something goes on here? I can't think of anything
much more terrifying than suddenly having to climb into the
pilot's seat well land an airplane. Can we just think
about there's a moment here where the pilot, I mean
a medical emergency he passed out. Yeah, so I mean,
this is like something that you would see in a
movie where all of one second, the pilot maybe at
(33:12):
a stroke, a heart attack, whatever it may be, out.
So it's not even like the pilot is, you know,
incapacitated but awake and can tell you you know, let's
say that you know, the he had been you know,
injured in some way or whatever. You're alone, You're in
that cockpit and you're going down and you're not gonna
make it unless I mean, and by the way, credit
(33:32):
to air traffic Control. Can you imagine you're an air
traffic control guy. You're sitting there and all of a
sudden it's like, uh, yeah, I've never flown a plane
before in my life, and the pilot is knocked out
cold and I don't want to die, so can you
please help me figure this out? Full credit to them,
this happened down. It was Bahamas to a Florida was
(33:53):
the flight here, and they managed they managed to pull
this one off, which it's pretty pretty markable. I mean,
I gotta say, you know, not everybody, not everybody able
to pull this one off. I mean, I think also
the panic that would set in for that one moment
you'd be like, this is this is rough now, I've
probably got to get you know, even those planes are
(34:14):
not very big buck right, so even getting up into
the cockpit area with an incapacitated pilot would be a
difficult thing to even pull off. I think. I think
if you're telling me though, if it's a Cessna and
you're only there's only two people in the plane, which
I believe was the case here, that that feels more doable.
(34:34):
Let's just say this is like from the movie Airplane
or something. Let's say you're on a fully stacked, you know,
seven forty seven or something full of people and for
some reason it's all on you. You got your head
set on. The pilots are all out cold, whatever that.
I don't think. I think that I would just panic.
I think I'd have a heart attack. I don't know.
(34:55):
I think the bigger and I'm not an expert. I've
never actually tried to, you know, gone up and even
done anything in an airplane. But my understanding, buck is
that the bigger the airplane, the easier it is to fly.
Meaning this and our pilot audience can tell me if
I'm a total imbecile here. Because so much of the
big planes is computerized now, I think it might be
(35:16):
somewhat easier to take the controls, and as obviously a
lot more that may be true. Then maybe you could
hit the auto Maybe they could just say, hey, hit
the autopilot, hit this, hit that, and you're good. I'm
just saying, if there were a hundred other people, they're
on the way, more lives at stage, it's way more
stressful than just yourself. But I think it might be
more difficult to land the Cesna because those are less
(35:38):
controlled by the computer technology than it would be to
suddenly find yourself in a seven forty seven cockpit. I
think in fixed wing you would have a shot. I
think if we're talking rotary, you're probably we're probably toast
because so I think my helicopters are really tough. I
know fixed wing pilots were like, I can't fly. I
knew them in the military. They're like, I'm a fixed
(35:58):
wing guy. I don't mess with those those peller things.
Oh I'm not only that. I think the time of
day matters the weather, you know, because if you've ever
been up in some of those little planes when when
there's a storm coming through, that is you're bouncing around
a lot. And if you're flying at night, it's a
lot different than flying during the day too. I mean,
(36:18):
so this is a heck of a story, but congratulations.
I think I think both of them ended up okay.
So see, look we end on a on a happy story.
I believe I believe that they're both. I know the
guy landed, he's okay. I believe the pilot also ended
up getting medical attention. UNI. I should just check on
this one. Uh play. We've covered a lot of ground today,
(36:41):
my man, and tomorrow we've got Kennedy from Fox Business
of Kennedy Fame, her own show over at Fox Show
be talking to us our buddy Rob Smith, who is
a commentator, author, army veteran, and all the news today. Man,
It's going to be fantastic, can't wait. I look forward
to continue to have a good time down here on
(37:03):
the Gulf Coast appreshade, all the people who listened to
the show down here in this market, and man will
continue to be voices for sanity in an insane world. Tomorrow,
Sleet Travis and Buck Sexton on the front lines of
truth
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