Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to today's edition of The Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton Show podcast. Fascinating to see what stories the media
focuses on day in and day out, because it tells
you so much about their worldview or their politics in
a whole range of ways, and certainly in the aftermath
(00:22):
of a horrific mass shooting, whether they decide that this
story deserves wall to wall coverage is a political call
to action and is something that should be used to
shame their political opponents, irrespective of really what the facts
are of the situation. That is something that we see
(00:46):
happening time and time again. I bring it up because
right now, Clay and I talked to you yesterday about
the shooting that occurred over the weekend at a dance
hall where you had ten people who were murdered by
this guy who was just a disgruntled, disgruntled, deeply unhappy
(01:09):
person who just turned to the worst kind of evil,
killed ten people and was going to kill more. He
moved to a second location. I actually shared this clip
on Twitter. It's it's remarkable. Brandon SI was on scene
there and he was the individual, the hero who this
guy is reloading. Now I know a lot of people think, oh,
(01:31):
I would have done this too. A lot of people
would freeze. You've got somebody who has I think it
has been repeatedly described as a pistol, but it's or
rather as an assault rifle in the media, But it's
really a pistol with a folding stock, I think. But
either way it's it's illegal under technically a pistol of
the folding stock illegal under California law. This guy, Brandon Si,
(01:55):
essentially rushed the shooter, who you can, I think safely
assume otherwise would have been able to kill another ten, fifteen,
twenty people who were helpless, defenseless at this So this
guy saved a lot of lives. But that shooting occurred
over the weekend, and as we know, the Democrats immediately
jumped into the oh, this is a hate crime. And
(02:15):
I don't just mean in general Democrats, top legislators, senators,
Democrats associated closely with the Bide administration in the White House.
There was another shooting over the last few days. Seven people.
Seven people were killed in this shooting. And this shooting
also involved an Asian American elderly, a person, yeah, a
(02:43):
person of Asian dissent, A Chinese agricultural laborer sixty seven
years old, so he's almost a senior citizen who was
in the San Francisco area Half Moon Bay, went into
his work facility and just started murdering people. Shot seven
(03:04):
people in cold blood. Now that came seventy two hours
after the other individual who actually killed eleven people. Excuse me,
one of them additionally succumbed to injuries. I'll kill the
eleven people at a lunar New Year's celebration in Monterey Park,
which is near Los Angeles. Two major mass shootings by
(03:25):
two Asian assailants, one of whom already a believe committed
suicide in the car right during the standoff, so he
won't face any trial. But two shootings, mass shootings Asian assailants,
and the media interest on this is minimal because it's
not an opportunity to try to find some tie into
(03:47):
Trump and MAGA and white supremacy and all this other stuff.
And one of the one of the big lives Clay
the media pushes about shooting a mass shootings, in particular
mass shootings of three or more people, is that this
is the it's disgruntled white males who do this this
is what you'll always hear. It's actually not true. It's
(04:08):
not true because if you look at the data, what
you see is that when it comes to mass shootings,
the ethnicity of the shooter is essentially totally in line
with their percentage of the population. So mass shooters are
spread evenly among all they're all male, but among all
demographics white, Hispanic, Black, Asian. But yet the media likes
(04:31):
to push this storyline of it's you know, angry white
males or you know, white supremacists who are the ones
who are doing all of this, which I think is
why they're not really talking about. Once again, they two
mass shootings, seventeen or eighteen people killed, you would think
like this would be wall to wall coverage. No, it
vanishes if it's not a white guy. And this is
(04:52):
the this is the truth. I mean, all of you
out there listening know that if there isn't an opportunity
to tie this into white supremacy or to far right
extremist culture, then the story just automost automatically vanishes. And
the one that is maybe the most emblematic of this
(05:12):
to me, buck is the shooting that happened in Colorado
at Boulder. Remember, they thought that that was a white guy,
just based on pictures that came out of a guy
who looked like he was white in terms of you
could see his skin, and then it ended up being
that he was Middle Eastern and the story almost immediately vanished.
(05:34):
So they initially said, oh, look, another crazy white guy
goes in and kills a bunch of people in Boulder, Colorado,
and you could actually track the story and how much
attention it was getting. And then as soon as it
came out that he was of Middle Eastern descent, the
story vanished, and a lot of you probably haven't heard
anything about that shooting in Colorado since. Yeah, there is
something deeply disturbing when you look at when you really
(05:57):
dive into it, when you pay attention into it. The
the democrat liberal mind has an obsession with the denigration
of of whiteness all the time, and particularly from white liberals.
They this is this is a a false virtue signaling
(06:22):
fixation that they have with how the evils of whiteness.
And you see this as it is evidenced by media
coverage of these these mass shootings we're talking about. We
all know if the if, the if, the mass instead
of saying there are evil people and deeply violently mentally
ill people who are spread through all populations, which is true,
(06:44):
and understanding that there are going to be people that
from from all different ethnic groups that are mass shooters
that's going to happen, which is what the data all shows.
Instead of looking honestly at that issue because there's no
political advantage in it, they try to skew the issue
toward all mass shooter You see this, by the way,
I mean, they'll even be blue check commentators. There's a
mass shooter and the guy's white. They say, oh, it's
(07:06):
always a white mass shoot It's just not true. Yeah,
but this is this is one of the lies that
they believe and one of the lies that they repeat.
And unfortunately a lot of people you and I make
a living knowing what actually happens and what the data
actually is. A lot of people see, oh, okay, well,
CNN says, you know another another white, you know, male shooter,
(07:26):
and this is all the mass shooters or white males.
It's not It's not reality. And that's why I think,
you know, you have to remember the mindset during the
War on Terror era, we used to call the g
Watt the Global War on Terror, and then they try
to get rid of that term. The Obama administration came
in and they wanted to call this is the fight
against al Qaeda and you know later ISIS and all
(07:47):
this stuff. They wanted to call it something like Overseas
Continuency Operations against Violent Radical Extremism. I'm not kidding. It
was actually something that was so long. I remember sitting
in Langley when when the obamaministration came in and we're
all our asses off because it was we're like, that's
this is ridiculous. This is an encyclopedia. This isn't a
you know, an operation discussion. But I remember there was
(08:09):
there was a belief that to service the narrative of oh,
we're so scared about Islamophobia, they would always downplay when
there was a terrorist incident. You know, oh, we don't know,
we don't know if this person is a Muslim, we
don't know what their belief system is. And they would
do this and we all kind of knew, like usually
the guy screaming a lot of walk Barns on video
(08:30):
and he's shooting something up, you kind of know right away.
I think there's a similar mentality among a lot of
the democratic line media now, which is, let's not focus
too much on the mass shot, on any mass shooting
that doesn't evolve a white perpetrator, because we have to
tackle the problem of white male mass shooters because they're
the ones that do it all the time. It's incongruent.
(08:53):
It's what's the phrase, I'm dre cognitive dissonance. Yeah, they
can't handle it and pay attention to this. I mean,
we had the Walmart shooter, was a black guy right
in Virginia, went in shot up the place. We had
also in Virginia, in the same way that we have
the double Asian shooter. We had the former football player
(09:16):
at the University of Virginia who went and shot several
of his teammates. Two black mass shootings in Virginia in
like short concert. Now you've got two Asian mass shooting
in short concert. The stories will vanish, but you still
hear a lot of talk about the Buffalo shooting. Right,
(09:38):
racist white guy goes into a black supermarket, kills people there,
and they choose which stories to emphasize. To your point,
first of all mass shootings, if we eliminated every mass shooting,
and I think this is important. Ninety eight percent of
murders would still be happening. So we have this idea
out there that mass shooting is a huge part of
(10:01):
the national murder rate. It's actually the case that if
we eliminated them, forty nine out of fifty murders would
still be happening in this country. You know, that's also
true of a part of an issue. It's also true
about modern sporting rifles aka assault rifles. You banned assault rifles,
ninety eight percent of shooting still happen. Yeah, but they're
(10:21):
you know, they're obsessed with you know why, because they
view gun control. Yes, ultimately they want to stop they
want to eliminate the final stop gap against tyranny to
the founding fathers and shrine of the Constitution. But every
call by a Democrat for gun control in some way
is meant to be a thumb in the eye of
(10:42):
a white male Republican, AAR fifteen owner. And that's why
Libs in Brooklyn and Santa Monica and Chicago and we're
in DC, they get so excited about it because it's
meant to be c somehow. You a law abiding own
owner who lives in Texas and has you know seven
a R fifteens and loves to go to the range.
(11:05):
You're the problem. It's a neuroses that they have to
do this. They want to poke those people in the
chest and blame them for mass shootings by lunatics that
have nothing to do with those individuals. But that's it's
just meant to be a political cudgel. That's how the
exception to this rule buck that I would point to
is the shooting in Texas, and the school shooting is
(11:25):
such a unique circumstance. The Hispanic shooter there they covered.
Obviously u vil Day got a massive amount of attention
because of who the victims were and where that shooting occurred,
but otherwise the focal point is always on white guys.
That was also on the list of the biggest police
(11:48):
failures of all time, you know, up there with the
FBI response to Waco. Up there. You know, people talk
about Ruby Ridge and Waco and uval Day is a
place of abject law enforcement failure, and you know, you
would hope that there'd be important lessons learned from it,
if that's possible for you know, for future law enforcement generations.
(12:13):
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dot com slash buc k, learn, laugh and join us
on the weekend on our Sunday Hang with Clay and
Buck podcast. Find it on the iHeart at or wherever
you get your podcast. Welcome back in Clay, Travis, Buck
Sexton Show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us.
Tuesday edition of the program, Final hour of the show.
(14:00):
We bring in now our buddy Annie McCarthy, who is
doing an incredible job breaking down so much of the
legal related issues all around the absurdity of classified documents
and beyond. Fox News contributor, former federal prosecutor at the
Southern District of New York he spent over twenty years there,
wrote a book Ball of Collusion, the plot to rigging
(14:21):
election and destroy a presidency. And like me, he also
had sorry Buffalo fans and also fans of the Dallas Cowboys.
You had a Bill's Cowboys super Bowl that went up
in smoke on Sunday as well. I did, Clay, And
you know, I feel terrible about this because I hate
both teams. I just you know, but I thought they
were I thought they were getting hot at the right time.
(14:42):
So who knows? Do you think before we get into
serious stuff, do you think Tom Brady's going to retire
or do you think he'll come back? No, I think
I think he's going to play another year. I think
he could still He'd have to be like in the
right offense, right, because he could still really throw the ball.
He's got. You know, he's not what he used to be,
but it's like that's like saying, like each roo's only
(15:03):
hitting three oh five, you know, I mean, he's still
really pretty good. I think I think he's going to
end up down in Miami where Bucks been in part
of the year. Now, I think he's going to be
another Miami and more Miami people. I think he's going
to play for the dolphins. That's my prediction. Yeah, a
lot of reports about that today that he's like, look,
you're checking out schools and stuff like that, so we'll see, Yeah,
(15:25):
we'll see. All right, So let's dive into Mike Pennce
today comes out and says he's got classified documents. The
continued fallout five different times Joe Biden has been caught
with classified documents. What's your take on the big picture
question here of whether anybody's going to get charged with
anything related to these classified documents. I don't think anybody's
(15:47):
going to get charged. But if, like I think we've
discussed before, if you would ask me that question like
two and a half weeks ago, I would say, you know,
Trump was one hundred percent going to be charged. Yeah,
I was with you. I think anyone will be. But
my other, I mean, my other big picture impression. I
couldn't help this, but I'm I'm reminded. I guess this
(16:08):
is because I'm getting too old, but I'm reminded of
the Clinton Lyinsky stuff where the Democrats refrain throughout those years,
was everybody does it? And I'm like, well, no, everybody
doesn't have sex with interns in the White House. But
maybe everybody does do this. I don't. It's starting to
look at that. Why isn't it Andy? You know, you
(16:30):
may have seen yesterday there was an arrest of a
former top FBI official who oversaw counterintelligence in New York City.
I don't know if you guys ever crossed paths in
your day, but Charles McGonagall is facing charges of money laundering.
I think, among others that he took money from a
(16:52):
former Albanian intelligence employee and a representative of the Russian
oligarch Oleg Deripaska. A lot of people see this and
they say, so one of the guys, who if you
were involved at that level of counterintelligence in New York City,
the FBI office in New York City, you certainly were
aware of the Trump Russia collusion investigations and things going
(17:14):
on there. So somebody who would have been overseeing the
fake Russia collusion investigation of Trump has now been charged
with colluding with Russians to evade US money laundering loss. Yeah,
that's exactly right. And Buck I was reminded you guys
were kind enough to mention my book in the intro.
(17:36):
I wrote a lot in the book about Darra Pasca
including the fact that number one, the FBI tried to
flip him in with the twenty sixteen before the Trump
stuff ever got rolling, and that was the reason they
were dealing with Steele at the time, because Steele was
working for Tera Pasca while the FBI was taking information
(18:00):
from him that ended up in the Steel Dosier, which
I thought, in and of itself was remarkable. And you know,
the funny thing with Derri Pasca was apparently the Bureau.
One of the reasons the Bureau soured on the whole
idea of turning him is when he sat down with them,
they pitched him on this on the Trump putin conspiracy,
(18:23):
and he was like, what are you talking about this? No,
Trump putin conspiracy, which was apparently that was not what
the party line was at the time. But I'm just
I can't help I mean, it's terrible for the FBI,
but I can't help but be amused by, you know,
the way these guys, you know, seem to change on
a dime. So like, you know, first they're trying to
(18:44):
flip Dera Pasca, then they're prosecuting Dera Pasca. Then the
head of the Foreign counter Intelligence in New York is
working for Derri Pasca. It it makes you dizzy, doesn't
It Is the FBI something that we could dramatically reform
in a meaningful way, Andy, I mean a lot of
people ask me this all the time, and I know
(19:05):
some people in the rivals say, oh, we got to
tear it down to the studs and start anew. Well,
if you're gonna have federal laws, you've gotta you're gonna
have a federal law enforcement agency, so you know, remolding
the f You know, people think, oh, we have a
DNI and we had NCTC and all these things. You know,
we didn't need all that, right, you're just creating more
bureaucracy to paper over the failures of the bureaucracy you
had before. Could we do something within the FBI? I mean,
(19:28):
can there be a house cleaning that that would be meaningful?
I think there could buck if they were serious about it,
like if they really went about it, uh, in a
church committee type style. I'm not I'm not a big
fan of the outcomes of the Church Committee, but like
the driving force behind it, those spying scandals and the
(19:48):
you know, the sixties into the eighties, those were good
reasons to have that um Committee, and if they you know,
I think, you know, if you throw out the streams
of both sides, like there's one side on the left
that wants to be fund all police and really doesn't
believe in prosecution at all, and then there's people on
(20:09):
the right who I think unrealistically think that we could
get on without a federal police force. I just think
the way society is and the way the law is now,
you have to have a federal police force. It doesn't
have to be the FBI, but we have to have one.
So if you toss those people aside, I think there's
enough people in the broad middle on both sides who
(20:32):
have gripes about the current FBI, and maybe that's the
makings if people could if we still have a capability
in Washington of people like like being grown ups with
respect to a problem that everybody understands as a problem.
I mean my own view of it. You and I
I think have talked about this before. I think the
Bureau after nine to eleven became too much of an
(20:55):
intelligence agency, and it started to be an intelligence agency
with the police sideline. And they're very you know, I
think intelligence work is very important. Police work is very important,
but they're very different. And if you become an intelligence agency,
it really damages your dedication to civil rights, which police
(21:17):
have to keep like in the front of their minds.
And I think that's what's really hurt the FBI. I
would take their counter intelligence mission away from them. Andy,
I want you to take me into what a search
of Joe Biden's home would have required, at least in
your mind from a sort of procedural mechanics perspective. It's
(21:39):
one thing when you know Marlago, they show up at
former President Trump's home and they raid that. But for
a sitting president to be essentially searched by his own
Department of Justice's FBI is truly unprecedented. Is that something
(21:59):
that Merritt Land signs off on? Is that something that
is threatened if the Biden regime does not comply? Like who?
I just don't even understand how that ends up happening.
What do you think the mechanics and the procedures behind
the scenes were like for this, Clay, I think that
the big thing was Biden signing off on it, because
(22:23):
you're quite right, you know, this is President Trump had
a very exalted status because he's a former president, which
is a big deal, but it doesn't have any political power, right,
whereas the incumbent president is the only guy. I mean,
you know, Justice Scalia taught us all this like thirty
years ago, right or forty years ago. The only person
(22:47):
with power in the executive branch is the president. Everybody else,
including the Attorney general, and the executive branch is a
delegate who exercises the president's power at the President's pleasure,
and that includes the special counsel. Like they try to
tell you they're getting an independent prosecutor, and there's no
independent prosecutor in the United States prosecutions and executive function.
(23:09):
Everybody answers to the president. So they couldn't have done
this without Biden's signe off. It would have been insubordinate.
And I think that's probably a big part of the
reason why they didn't get a search warrant, which they
certainly had legal grounds for, and why they cut a
deal with Biden's lawyers that they were able to accompany
(23:29):
the FBI as they did the search, which of course
didn't happen in Trump's case. So I think the mechanics
of this is Biden has to sign off on it,
and then there's probably some limits that are negotiated about
what they're allowed to look at or where they're allowed
to look and then the lawyers went along with them
as they went from from room to room in the house. Andy,
(23:55):
So this basically goes where in your mind, I mean,
how does all this end up? I mean, you saw
Mike Pennce has classified documents at home too. This has
crossed over into crazytown. Yeah, so I think that's a
big part of why nothing's going to happen with this,
because I think people are starting to think that, you know,
(24:17):
if we now started to look at like, listen to
what Biden's excuses here, right, he wants you to believe
that it was sloppy AIDS who packed up his stuff
and sent it to you know, and it turned out
that classified information ended up in there, as if the
AIDS had security clearances, right as if the AIDS when
he was a senator went into the skip with him
and are the ones who stole the document, you know,
(24:38):
I mean, it's it's ridiculous, But I think this is
such a culture of carelessness that if we started to
search a lot of these guys, who knows what we
would find and everybody kind of realizes that. So I
think the Democrats badly want to prosecute Trump. Right, So
if it was just Trump who had this problem, there'd
(25:00):
be a very high chance that he'd be indicted. But
now that it looks like Biden has it and Pence
has it, and who knows, what will you know who's
the next person we'll hear about. I don't think they're
gonna I don't think they're going to get indicted. And
I wonder if Pence having these documents is going to
lessen the enthusiasm of the new Republican majority in the
(25:23):
House to start asking a lot of aggressive questions, because
I really think that's the only way we're going to
find out anything here. That these special counsels are there
to just say, you know, we're doing our investigation. We
can't comment. So this whole thing is supposed to go
into a black hole. Either the Republicans in the House
use their subpoena power and conduct hearings. That's the only
(25:45):
way we're going to find out anything. And I just
wonder if they'll do that at this point. Andy, you
mentioned earlier, and Buck and I both have this opinion.
Now my opinion's changed. I thought they would charge Trump
over the classified documents. I now think with you that
they will not. I wonder if this classified documents scandal
is becoming so all encompassing that it actually is going
(26:08):
to make it harder for the Department of Justice to
charge Trump for anything January sixth. They're related. Now, I
presume you would think those were harder charges to bring
in the first place. But do you think this overall
mushroom cloud of incompetence that sort of is surrounding everything
now is actually making it far less likely that anything
January sixth related will also be brought against President Trump.
(26:32):
That's a really interesting question. I hadn't thought about that.
I've thought up until now that they look at January
sixth and the Mara Lago documents as like two separate
boxes that don't really have much to do with each other.
Although I do think that if they had found at
Mara Lago any documents that were incriminating with respect to
(26:56):
the Capital Riot, they would certainly have used them. But
I thought they were looking at that as like two
separate trend I agree with you, by the way on that,
but I thought the charges would actually be easier on
the classified docs to prove and so, but it's such
a mushroom cloud now that I almost feel like it
implicates January sixth. Then I was just wondering if you
(27:17):
thought so too, because in the mind of the public
charging anybody now, when it looks like there could be,
you know, potentially felonious behavior everywhere, feels kind of like
a arbitrary and capricious application of the law. Yeah, I
think there could be something to be said to that,
But I still think that their big problem with January
(27:38):
sixth is because Trump is not implicated in the violence,
the only way that you make a federal case out
of that is to criminalize John Eastman's legal theory, right,
And I just think that this whole idea of going
down the avenue of making a felony into frivolous legal
(27:58):
theories is nuts. I mean, I don't think we want
to live in that kind of a system. I know
they're so rapid to get Trump that they'll probably overlook
all that, But I've had hope that because they haven't
done it up until now, that maybe Garland realizes this
is like a really bad idea. Annie MacArthur, everybody look
(28:20):
for his latest on National Review and also on Fox News. Andy.
We always appreciate it, look forward to talking to you again. Thanks, guys.
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they haven't had to call an all out stop to
air traffic in a little while, so I guess the
(30:53):
Biden's got that going forward tomorrow. Oh man, I forgot
about that one. Sorry, you could blame me when your
flight's delayed four hours because you know, not enough diversity
and inclusion seminars have been completed by you know, the
FAA or something. But Pete Buddha Judge is out there
telling everybody. Remember, he's transportation secret I think it's fair
(31:15):
to say the most consequential think about that term, though,
the most consequential transportation secretary in recent memory. I'm saying
he's good, but he certainly had consequences. Yeah, very much
about transportation secretaries in the past, because everything just kind
of worked and so it didn't matter. It's it's an
interesting argument. You'd have to go back quite a ways
(31:37):
to be able to or you have to ask a
lot of people for them to even be able to
rattle off a transportation secrety. I think. By the way, Langley,
the George HW. Bush Intelligence Center is also right next
to the Federal Highway Administration. So there's that for those
of you who've ever had a tour of CIA headquarters.
I didn't even I don't know Federal Highway Administration. I
(31:57):
used to joke around. You know, that's that's where the
real secret stuff's actually happening. Langley was all just a front.
You know. It's like men and even tour. You can
take a tour of the CIA. Uh, they used to
do them. They don't really do them. I don't know.
They kind of go back and forth on it. It's
obviously super limited. You basically can like press sometimes will
go into the lobby, or they have portraits of the
(32:18):
former directors, the stars on the wall for fallen officers.
But like that's it. You know, you're not you're not
like hanging out with everybody that you could even walk
around Langley like I wouldn't think. I know, you can
tour the FBI. I've done the FBI tour before, but
that's not really on its own camp. It's right down
on its own campus. They have a couple of internal
(32:39):
spy museums at the CIA where they have things, you know,
World War two era oss stuff and things like that.
So I think, you know, they're very limited tours you
can do. But it's not, No, they don't. They don't bust.
It's not like the Bronx su They're not sending bus
loads of kids out there to you know, to go
check out did you get adrenaline Rusha's working at the CIA,
(33:00):
where you were like, oh, like, this is because people
tend to have it. And I'll say this, people think
when you practice a law that it's all like a
time to kill, you know, and when they think of lawyers,
and most of the time you're just like sitting in
front of a computer pushing a button, you know, like
over and over again to scroll through emails. So I'm
just curious. Very similar, yeah, very similar reality. I used
to say to people that being a CIA analyst, which
(33:22):
is what I was doing, and there's other jobs. Case
officers a very prominent role the people often will think of.
It's written about a lot of books and talked about
but to be a CIA analyst, which is what Jack
Ryan was very handsome, played by Harrison Ford and now
by John Krasinski. Just putting that out in Affleck I
think also played him right, Ben Affleck. So you know,
(33:42):
handsome CI analysts with great hair who live in Georgetown.
That's like a thing. That's a thing that happens. But
you know, it's it's I used to tell people it's
eighty percent mundane, ten percent particularly crappy, and ten percent
legitimately cool and badassy. So eighty percent of your hours
are doing things that you're like, well, you know, I
(34:03):
could be like I could be working in mutual of Omaha.
You know, it's paperwork, it's meeting, that's whatever. Some of
the training stuff you get to do. And then obviously
going overseas it's a whole lot more interesting and you
see a side of the world. I love reading, You
love reading. So the information that you got to learn
and have access to is itself interesting. But the job
of a CIA analyst is like the job of an
(34:25):
analyst anywhere else, massive amounts of information absorption and then
synthesis into small usable bytes, in this case for the
policy community. But it is it's a reading and writing job. Like, yeah,
I did get weapons training and stuff, but it's really
a reading and writing job, which is really very similar
to being a lawyer, right, Like you're basically just synthesize
(34:46):
arguments and try to and a little bit of what
we do here, right, there's a voluminous amount of data
that comes in every single day and we try to
make sense of it for the larger or community. Yeah,
being an intelligence officer, I always joke around people's actually
very good training for being a doing media, being a writer, journalism.
It's all very very similar. Back to Pete Boute judge
(35:08):
for a second here though, because the most now increasingly,
I think you could say, incompetent secretary of transportation that
anybody can remember is out there reminding everyone that every
decision about transportation is a climate change decision, Play twenty four.
But we're looking at investments that are fair, that contribute
to equitable economic growth, We're looking at climate impacts, because
(35:30):
every transportation decision in the twenty first century is a
climate decision, whether we recognize it or not. And thankfully,
because we have such a big investment, you don't have
to look at which states got funds from this infrastructure
law and which ones didn't every single state. I believe
we're already over three thousand bridges. So we're making sure,
(35:51):
whether they're talking about big projects like this or smaller communities,
that every part of America sees the benefit, because frankly,
every part of America has a need. Just notice that
whenever someone starts using the term equity and climate and
climate equity and these things altogether. This is the language
of the modern day American commissar, sort of like in
(36:11):
the Soviet Union when there's always talk of the revolution
and the need for the workers and all that stuff. Equity, climate,
this is the secular religion of America today, and Pete
Buddha Judge is one of its priests. I think that's
well said. I'm also genuinely curious about what his future is.
So he's not a very good transportation secretary. He's relocated
(36:36):
to Michigan. There's obviously a Senate seat that is opening
in Michigan. But if he ran for the Senate and lost,
it would certainly dent his ambitions going forward. He probably
in the back of his mind thinks, Okay, I'm going
to run against Kamala and beat her in twenty eight
because we think Biden's going to run in twenty four,
(36:56):
but is he going to be Transportation secretary for eight years?
I gotta say I think. I think in a head
to head matchup, I think Kamala Harris for the Democrat
nomination beats Pete Bouda Judge. I think Pete Bouddha Judge
has a zero percent chance of being nominated because he's gay.
And I don't mean that because I think there's some
massive anti gay sentiment in the country that will prevent
(37:17):
him from being elected. I mean him getting the Democrat
nomination because there's lots of black guys that aren't going
to vote for a gay white guy to be the
nominee for the Democrat Party. And it's like they won't
talk about it, but you look at the data. He
didn't get any support from minority voters. Pete Mayor Pete
(37:37):
is the woke white liberal selection right, A lot of
woke white people like him, but it doesn't actually connect
with the huge percentage of the overall electorate. I think
he'd probably have to be VP, and then maybe he's
Kamala's VP, and we have the Diversity and Inclusion Ticket
officially out there for twenty twenty eight. The conversation continue
(38:00):
on the Clay and Buck podcast feed Go subscribe today,
We'll talk to you tomorrow. Welcome back in Clay Travis
Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us.
We are joined now by Mike Pompeo, seventieth Secretary of State,
former CIA director under Donald Trump, his new book, Never
Given Inch, Fighting for the America I love and Secretary Pompeo,
(38:22):
you probably didn't expect this would be the lead question.
But given that Mike Pence has classified documents, and given
that Donald Trump has classified documents and Joe Biden has
classified documents, do you have classified documents? Have have you
gone back through papers in the way all this? What
do you make of everybody seeming to have classified documents? Oh,
(38:43):
my goodness, foot one a mess. No, I don't believe
that anything that's classified. Anybody who has that, they should
turn it back in what a mess. Classified documents should
stay in the places they're supposed to be. And just
as importantly, if it turns out that somehow they where
they weren't supposed to be, you should give them back,
and then you should be as transparent as you can
(39:05):
about what the heck it happened. By the way, you
shouldn't say you don't have regrets. If someone as classified
information in my home or near my corvette corvette, I
promise you I wouldn't say I didn't have any regrets.
I would regret it deeply that I'd screwed up in
that way. Secretary Pompeo, it's buck wanted to ask you
about the reports on Abrams tanks possibly being provided to
(39:30):
Ukraine by the US. A lot of the people you're
you're speaking now who are listening all across the country
served in a Rock and Afghanistan. We have a lot
of veterans in this audience, a lot of active duty military,
and I hear from them all all the frequently about
their concerns that we're getting deeper and deeper into the
Ukraine fight. Where one, do you think the Abrams tank
(39:51):
should be provided? And then where would you draw the
line on US support for the fight against Russia. Well
too things. I do think that that equipment should be
providing if Ukrainians can make use of it and it
can help them push back against invasion by Vladimir Putin,
it's in America's best interest to do so. They haven't
asked for To your point, I'm a veteran too. I
(40:13):
served as a young soldier and then East German Communist border.
I worry about American getting too deeply involved. But the
best way to keep American soldiers from having to fight
in Europe, or to fight against Russia or China any place,
is to make sure that when there's an authoritarian invades
a place like Ukraine, and they haven't asked for the
eighty second Airborne, they haven't asked Promotorized Raffle Division. All
(40:33):
they said is can you send us stuff? We ought
to provide them with the stuff that we can that
they can use, that they can be trained on, that
are actually going to deliver against the mission set. It's
the only way to end Putin's invasion of Europe. Secretary
Pompeo a lot of talk lately about twenty twenty four,
who's running, what the time frame is to run. If
(40:54):
you are going to run for president, when would you
announce and are you exploring for president now? So my
wife and I are praying about it, trying to figure
out if this is the next place for us to
go serve. As for timeline, we kind of think the
Lake Spring early summer is probably when she and I
will have to turn from prayer to action, and we
(41:16):
decide to get in head to Iowa and Hampston's after
Carolina to make our case to the American people and
if not find where it is, will next purfey if
not an elected office. So that we're so go about yeah,
so so far Donald Trump is in. Does that impact
your thinking in any way given that you were a
Secretary of State and served at the CIA under him?
(41:36):
Or is it not even about who else is running
from your determination? Now? It has nothing to do with
who wealth ratens, mother, President Biden, rins deparment, President Trump
or whoever. In the end, you must come to believe
that this is the time and you have something that
you cannot only offer the American people in terms of
a policy agenda that delivers good outcomes for them, but
(41:58):
that you have the tanasa that we're with the capability
to actually deliver on those promises. If you believe those
two things and it all works as a personal matter,
you have an obligation to go make the kings and
then like the American people start it all out speaking
a Mike Pompeo, former CI director of former Secretary of
State under Trump, and his book is out today, So
(42:20):
our timing here on Clanbuck is always as excellent. Never
Given Inch is the book and secretary of Pompeio. I
kind of ask you because it's always fun whenever I
see a book come out from from somebody on our
side of things, to see what the media focus is
on right away and they are drilling down into it's
all over Twitter. Oh my gosh. Have you seen Mike
(42:42):
Pompeo's book, which I guess in a sense this is
kind of an unintentional advertisement they're doing. Have you seen
his book, Never Given Inch? Because of what he says
about the murdered journalist Jamal Kashogee, well, the Secretary, what
did you say? And why are they all so upset
about it? Oh? I don't know, I don't know what
(43:03):
they're so upset about. The Washingtons has had an obsession
about this. When I was in office, we made very
clear the murder of Jamaica Shogi was nasty, it was heinous,
which was sumptions thirteen Saudis for what they did. But
We also knew that that person's life wasn't more important
than the lives of Americans, life of American soldiers who
were protecting us, And we weren't about to give up
the partnership with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that was
(43:25):
helping us keep the American economy going, keeping American security going.
You can see what happens when you flipped the script
prosen Biden said, oh, this is a prionation. He immediately
had to go on bended knee to the Kingdom and
Austin to produce just a little more crude oil. For
we did not for a moment mistake the fact that
this was a bad act. But we did not for
a moment forget the putting America first was what really
(43:45):
mattered most, and keeping America's secure men, keeping a relationship,
a security relationship and a diplomatic relationship with the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia and the United States Secretary Pompeio. There's
a big debate now still ongoing about where COVID came from.
You have worked in the CIA, you certainly served as
Secretary of State. Do you think it's a settled question?
(44:07):
What's your own opinion about where COVID came from. Was
it a lab leak or was this a natural animal
evolution of a virus. It's largely this settled question. This
virus came from a laboratory where they were working on
the virus and others like it in Wuhan, China, and
it leaked accidentally from that lab, and then the Chinese
(44:27):
Communist Party knowingly sent that virus across the world when
it was inside of human beings on airplane, and they
killed millions of people as a result of that decision.
So what consequences should there be on China? And what
do you think about people like doctor Fauci who are
still saying, oh, I don't believe the lab leak theory happened.
If you're correct, and I agree with you that this
(44:49):
was a lab leak and that China tried to cover
it up and also then basically spread this virus all
over the world, it seems like there should be really
severe consequences for them. And it also seems like it's
kind of an important discussion to be having in the
United States and not have somebody like doctor Fauci wagging
his finger and saying the evidence doesn't support this, and
(45:10):
how dare you even raise it as an issue? Well,
the second one's easy, and doctor Faucci got this wrong
from the beginning. Seen it debates on gain A function
research is angles on the head of a pan. The
truth is he knew that America was funding gain A
function research in the laboratories in China. I can't explain
why he's chosen it that. Perhaps it's money. I don't
(45:33):
truly know, but I know this. I know he's wrong.
I know that with near certainty that it came from
that lab. You should know that lab is still up
and operating and conducting the same kind of research it
did before this thing leaked. Who knows when we will
see that again? Which really gets your second question is
what should the penalty be? How should we respond to that?
There are lots of pieces to this. The challenge of
(45:53):
the Chinese Commist Party far extends beyond, far beyond the
challenge of the Wuhan virus, and we have for forty
years allowed the Chinese Communist Party to be at war
with US, at least economic war, and we've turned the energy.
One of the things I'm most proud of that I
did a secondary States, we confronted the Chinese Communist Party
in a serious way. We understood its ideology, we understood
(46:15):
its economic motive, and we began to put real restrictions
on their capacity to do harm to the American people.
Secretary State Pompeio, appreciate you joining us to talk to
us about all this, and people should go check out
the book Never give an Informer Secretary POMPEII, I appreciate you, sir, gentlemen,
(46:35):
thank you. I'm a good day. Thank you. Rising inflations
out there, friends, You see it. Things are really expensive,
going to get more expensive depending on where you are,
what sector you're in. Plus there's some big layoffs coming.
Stock markets volatile. Things are rough right now. You're a
retirement account. Look what's going on last couple of years
until all this uncertainty turns around and things look better ahead.
(46:58):
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