Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
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Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey guys, welcome to the Buck Brief con Carol joins
us now. He is commentary editor at The Washington Examiner
and has a new book out very timely, Sex and
the Citizen, which is how the assault on marriage is
destroying democracy. Hmm.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Sounds a little different than Carrie Bradshaw going shopping for
fancy shoes and doing all kinds of stuff I wouldn't
recommend somebody to do as a young woman in New York.
But anyway, let's dive into some of this because you know,
right now, one of the big things con the Democrats
are grappling with, to the degree they honestly grapple with
anything after election, is why do men who are comfortable
(01:00):
in their manliness and their masculinity run screaming? I guess,
not screaming, but run fast from the Democrat part.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, well, I mean I think a lot of part
of it has to do with the fact that they
parked a planned parenthood dissecting a band outside their convention.
This is a party that does not brand itself to
men in pretty much any way. You know, if you
look at any of their if you look at their website,
if you look at any of their materials, they have
sections for every interest group on the planet, but men.
(01:31):
So for them, there's every group, whether it's women, trans people, minorities,
they are all a special oppressed class, and then men
are just the oppressors. And until they kind of get
over that mindset, they're just going to keep repelling men.
And you know, when you when you look at this
election most recently, but not even most recently, this is
(01:53):
also true in twenty twenty as well. If you divide
the population into you know, four groups, you have you know,
unmarried men, you have unmarried women, you have married men,
and you have married women. So that's four groups there.
Republicans get three of those four groups. The married men
vote for Republicans overwhelmingly, married women slightly favored Republicans, unmarried
(02:15):
men slightly favored Republicans. But then the only group that
doesn't is unmarried women. They overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
So how is the assault on marriage destroying democracy? That's
a bold claim. It's the kind of claim you put
on the cover of a new book like Sex and
the Citizen.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, well, I would just ask people to think of
any major problem in society today, and I guarantee you
the decline of marriage is at the root of it.
If you look at like income and equality, that is
driven by the decline of marriage. If you look at crime,
neighborhoods without married families have more crime. If you look
at the loneliness epidemic, the lowliness is completely caused by marriage.
(02:53):
If you look at polarization, as this Roman book, polarization
is also driven by marriage. The more unmarried women you have,
the more further left they go politically. The more further
left they drive the democredit party and you have more polarization.
You know, you have the famous meme going around of
you know, a person who felt there was selves, you know,
a little to the left, but then the Democratic parties
(03:14):
teach going left and left and left to the center.
That's how a lot of unmarried menfield these days. But
what is pushing the Democratic Party so far to the
left is unmarried women.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Why does the Democrat Party have a hostility to the
institution of marriage? Where does that come from?
Speaker 1 (03:31):
So I would say it's at best an indifference that then,
because of their other priorities, undermines marriage. And I think
when you go and you look at one of the
similar moments in the book that I talk about is
the nineteen sixty eight decision of King versus Smith. And
so here you have the Supreme Court in nineteen sixty
eight getting rid of state man in the House rules.
And so what this meant was that before at before
(03:54):
this time, you would have states administering the welfare program AFTC,
and they would say, look, you know, you can be
eligible for this program, but if you have an unmarried
man that's living with you, then you were no longer
elgible for the program. What that did is it protected
married families because it discriminate against them. Because once you
have a program eligibility that says if you were married,
(04:16):
you're not qualified, but if you are unmarried you are qualified.
Then that effectively discriminates against married families. So once the
Supreme Court got rid of those rules, those man of
the House rules, you have marriage penalties shown up in
the welfare state. The problem being is that at the
time the welfare state was very small. It's basically just
a FDC. But then you have just a slew of
(04:37):
new programs Medicaid, food stamps, Section eight housing, pretty much
all the great society to the point today you have
about a trillion dollars worth of spending going through the
state and federal governments that all punished marriage through marriage
penalties in these programs. Now, the Democrats, to define, you know,
set up these policies to punish marriage. No, but because they,
(04:58):
you know, wanted to not discriminate between kids that are
in unmarried family kids are in a married family, they
essentially created these marriage penalties. And so the confluence of
those two priorities essentially ended up punishing marriage.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Let's come back and talk about how this issue can
be addressed in a positive way. Right, we've got a
Trump administration coming in. What can be done to help
rebuild marriage as an institution that is completely embraced by
all elements and so embraced by elements of society and
(05:32):
also supported appropriately by the state.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
By by the government.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
A lot of people hear about.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Wait, wait, hold on, hold on, no, we have to
we have to pay bills.
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can be done to help rebuild those elements of marriage
that have either been crumbling under assault, sidelined all that stuff?
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Sure? Well, the biggest thing you could do is first
get rid of that trillion dollars in penalties. And well,
for penalties we're just talking about those are programs that
are controlled by federal state governments. You could easily write
to eligibility rules so that married couples were just as
edible as unmarried couples. That'd be a first step, but
there are other steps you can do that are equally important.
(07:04):
One big reason why you have the decline of marriage,
especially you know since the seventies, is decline in mail
wages actually relative to women's wages. So if you look
at overall wages for everyone, wages have gone up, okay,
but the gains in those marriages, the gains in those
wages have been concentrated on college educated men and women. Overall,
(07:25):
men without a college degree, their wages have actually fallen.
So when you look at the policy areas that the
federal government does that undercuts those wages. One big one
is illegal immigration. The more low skilled immigration you have,
most illegal immigrants are low skilled. That drives down wages
for low skilled men. So you already have Trump coming
in and he's going to do a lot to address that.
(07:46):
You also have trade, trade with countries like China. This
is you know, there are many studies have shown that
his decimated good pain manufacturing jobs throughout the country. So
we need to rebounce trade so that we can have
more things built here in the United States. But then
you also have. We need to become a country that
builds things again. Right. You know, it took just a
(08:08):
year or two for New York City to build the
Empire State building. You know, now they can't build or
you know, California is trying to build a bullet train
and it's you know, taking ten years and thirty billion dollars.
We just can't build things like we used to. And
the culprit there is a series of environmental laws, the
biggest among them meet by the National Environmental Policy Act,
and we can change those, we can repeal those laws.
(08:29):
We can you know, stop empowering environmental activists to being
able to stop all infrastructure projects and allow you know,
big corporations, big developers like Donald Trump, like Elon Musk
to build things again. And of course once you're building
things again, that raises wages, mostly construction wages for men,
and that means more men with higher wages, more marriageable men,
(08:51):
you get more marriages. But really it's something where you
need to have this mindset for every area of policy.
You know, instead of acting what's the best way for
economic growth through the tax code, or what does the
best economic through with through immigration? The question for every
area policy needs. How does this affect marriage, because if
we don't have people getting married having kids, our society
(09:13):
is this gun collaps We're going to turn into to
Korea where half our population is going to disappear within
a debt with the generation, and we can't allow that.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Let's talk Trump nominees here. In a second, we'll get
to how you think this. We're going to move it
to the politics of the moment here and dive in
with con Carol Washington Examiner commentary editor. But you know,
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Speaker 3 (10:40):
All right?
Speaker 2 (10:40):
What do you think about the new team that's coming
in and specifically swamp taming, swamp tackling, swamp draining, whatever
you want to call it. Are you optimistic? How do
you think that will work?
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Like?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
How do you how do you see things here? A
couple of months before it gets put into action.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
I'm cautiously optimistic. You know, I'll be honest with you.
I'm not a huge fan of Gates. I think he's
a little chaotic. I'm not a huge fan of our
of k But I think on the other hand, there
are some highlights. You know, look you've got. I think
Burgham is an excellent choice for Secretary of Interior. I
think Right's an excellent choice for Energy secretary. I think
(11:21):
Lee's Elden is great at e p A. Uh. You
know in your last ad you were coming in talking
about gas prices and inflation. You want to get you know,
energy costs down. That is a great trio right there,
because you need you need burghm to open lands for
for development. You need Burgram to open lands for rare
earth animal and rare earth minerals so we can build
batteries and everything else in this country. Again, over at energy,
(11:44):
you need uh, you know, Right to preside over a
renaissance of nuclear energy so we can actually start recycling
nuclear fuel. And you have all these tech companies that
are that are dying to you know, start building a
nuclear actors against licking power. AI Right's the guy to
do that. And then you have Lee's Eldon and E
p A, who you know should be able to undo
(12:04):
Biden's electrical vehicle mandate, undo Biden's uh power plant rule,
which makes energy more expensive for all of us and
it makes the grid more unreliable. Uh. These three guys,
they're competent. They should be approved before by before Trump
gets sworn in and the hit the ground running, and
you know, prices will come down for gasp, which means
(12:25):
come down for everything else as well.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, no, I think that there's It's funny. The economic
side of this, I think is almost taken as a
given right, meaning that expectations are high for the Trump
team to do good things on energy, good things on taxes,
good things on regulation.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I mean, I'm maybe I shouldn't, but I'm I am
very optimistic about that, almost to the point of it's
an expectation, And maybe that's a little bit unfair to
the incoming team because that's all really big stuff. The
places where I see this becomes I don't know if
it's it could be the administration's waterloo or imagine no
(13:05):
line or you know, whatever historical analogy you want to use.
Is on the deportations, uh, and on the DOGE, Department
of Government Efficiency. Let's start with DOGE and I'll talk
deportations with you in a second.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
I mean, do you think that are.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
They really going to try to get rid of the
Department of Education wholesale? Are they are they going to
one take action on and to be able to complete
the action of dramatically cutting the federal bureaucracy itself?
Speaker 3 (13:35):
What do you think I mean the short interest?
Speaker 1 (13:37):
No, I mean, look, you know, we already have a
GAO Government Accountability Office that you know, kind of oversees
and looks for waste within the federal government. That is
an entity that has existed for a while, has a
large staff, has you know, congressional power, authority and funding.
DOGE will have none of those things. I think at best,
(13:58):
at the end of the day, you know, Musk and
Ramaswami can can issue a report and send it to
Congress and say, hey, when you pass next year's appropriations bills,
could you include this include these recommendations in it. But
other than that, I'm just not seeing what legal authority
they have to do anything. Well?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Can the president?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
You know, it's I've never It's funny, I guess I
kind of work in politics and government for a living.
I think that's fair to say. And I don't even
know the answer. I think so, I don't even know
the answer to this myself. I remember when I was
in the CIA, I was told that I think the
director had the authority. I mean, the CI director had
the authority to fire any CIA employee on a one
(14:41):
off basically, like you are like, he could just fire somebody,
and I would assume that that would then extend to
the commander in chief, the head of the executive branch.
But can you just fire five thousand people from the
executive branch if you're the president? Like, is there the
lawful authority for the President of the United States to
do that if he wants to?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I honestly don't know. I'm wondering.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I mean, I mean that the short answer is no. Right.
You know, there's there's unions, protections, regulations on the proper
way of dismissing people. It all takes time. But you
are touching on the issue a close issue here of
Schedule F, which of course was part of Project twenty
twenty five, and I think probably will get adopted, which
(15:26):
would expand the number of positions which are political point
es and decrease the number of career employees at each agency,
so that the president would then been able to come
in and fire more people. But adopting schedule off is
gonna have to go through a regulatory process that's going
to be thought through the courts. So maybe at the
end of the day, you'll be able to get to
(15:46):
a point where the president department heads can't snap their
fingers and fire more people. But no, you can't just
snap your fingers and fire everyone.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Wow, sad, sad, I'm sorry, sorry to work with con
sad times with con Carol.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Well, let's let's call.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
That the segment. Let's not pep excited.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
That's okay. Look, I mean I do know. Here's my thing.
I know what you said.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I'm aware, like I was in the CIA, so I'm
aware of the civil service protections all these things.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
But I just wonder, you know, how.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Does like, like the president really doesn't have the power
to fire whoever he wants who works within the executive branch.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Like that's kind of a crazy thing, do you know
what I mean?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
You are dead and I'm sure the CIA is different
and they have, you know, different protections because of the
national security implications of you know, right.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Theoretically, if you got rid of your whole intelligence service overnight,
it would be bad for the country. I'm not so
sure about that, but anyway, having worked there, but yes,
but yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I mean the you know, president can fire a general
whenever he wants. It's you know, that's not secret porities.
But it's different for like, you know some you know,
regional bureaucract Department of Education. That's just you know, not
not the same system.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
But shouldn't they be even Like now you're talking about
the system I think and what you're saying I know
is true, And you're right, you're very astute guy, and
that's why I have you on. But if you can
fire a general, why can't you fire and Department of
Education bureaucrat?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Do you know what I mean? Like, what you're saying
is true.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
But these are excellent questions and points that go to
you know, a huge part of the debate over the
government of our country. You know, since since the New
Deal in the creation of the administrative state, you know,
what are the democratic controls that we should have over
the buocracy? What are the checks and balances in there?
This is a large body of debate and law that
(17:36):
has been going on for nineteen forties. It's eighty years now,
and yeah, these are not new questions, but these are
the difficult ones.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
My thing is if if you can't if the head
of an organization can't fire anybody in that organization, you know,
within some reason, right, they don't really work for that person,
do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
And I just remember I do.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
And it gets even worse on the state and local level.
I mean, when you talk about you know, California trying
to fix itself, for Illinois trying to fix itself, those
poor governors, they can't fire anyone because it's all through
collective bargaining. So if they can't even really reorganize or
coming into school, I mean, you have some superintendent You're like,
go fix the Chicago public schools. It's like, that's impossible
because everything is governed through the collective bargaining process, they
(18:22):
have no real power.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It's crazy, all right, But this is really interesting, And
this is what I think Elon and and Vivague. I mean,
I worry that Elon is going to see what a
mess the government really is and be like I'm out.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
I gotta build rocket ships with it.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
By the way, maybe what it a mess is and
then there's smart enough lawyers around him to be like, Okay,
these are the specific statutes you need to change so
that the system can be reforred.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well, that's that I think would be probably the best
reasonable outcome from this, based on how hard this stuff is.
Let's come back and talk deportations here in a second.
And also, it would commend you all to go get
a copy of Sex and the Citizen.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
It is.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It's it's it's family friendly, even though the title is
a little it's about Yes, it's about marriage. You go
go pick up your copy and history and history and history.
You know. I'm a part partner here and the sponsor
for the segment is the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
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Speaker 3 (19:58):
Now.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
That's support IFCJ dot org or call eight eight eight
four eight eight IFCJ eight eight eight four eight eight
IFCJ deportations. Can they ramp this part of it up dramatically?
Con Are you optimistic about where this is going?
Speaker 1 (20:15):
I am optimistic, although I probably think there's gonna be
a lot fewer deportations than you do. Look, I mean
basically you.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Have Oh I'm worried.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
You might you might think that I'm worried about how
this is going to go because the cameras are going
to come out and everybody is going to be, you know,
a crying grandma. Who's you know, been like working at
the at the Puppy shelter for the last twenty years.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
You know what I mean, it's just going to be
a mess.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Well, I mean, I mean, hopefully Stephen Miller learned his
lesson and doesn't do that, right. So, I mean, there's
a lot of popular or unpopular things these Trump administration
did in their first administration, like you know, separating children,
which was ineffective and dumb, right, So hopefully they don't
try to do those kind of stunts again. But there
are a lot of things they can do that are
popular and would be effective. Uh. You know. One of them,
(21:03):
first of all, would be shutting down Biden's pro programs,
the CHNAV program where they fly people to the country
and the Sea VB one app program where they make
appointments to enterve points of entry in the country. Shut
those down, that's easy, you know. Then from there, you
you know, restart with the Remain in Mexico program keep uh,
instead of releasing migrants into the country, send them back
(21:25):
to Mexico where they can wait for their asylum hearings,
and then after that when it does come to deportations.
Not many people realize this, but there are one point
two million legal immigrants in this country who have already
had all their due process, meaning they've gone through all
the stages of the court, and a judge has issued
a deportation order. So there's there's no more legal wrangling here.
(21:47):
This person has been adjudicated out of the country. They're
one point two million of those legal immigrants just floating
around this country. We normally only deport about two hundred
thousand people a year, so it's gonna if we even
doubled the amount of people we deport a year, we
could spend four years just on that one point two
million backlog. And we're not even separating families yet. Where
(22:09):
these are going to be most criminals, right, So it's
not gonna be Grandma at the at the at the
puppy store, right, It's going to be you know, uncle
Julio who has four DUIs and in a shoplifting convention. Right.
These are not going to be super sympathetic figures. So
the other part of this, which I think Trump would
be very wise to do, is look at all the
democratic governors and mayors coming out now saying we're not
(22:32):
going to cooperate. Fantastic, Let's fight them, every single one
of them, in court and in Congress, and make them
defend the Julio Bar, the Bars of the world who
killed Lake and Riley. Make them defend all the criminal
legal immigrants that have raped and murdered and stolen from
their citizens. Make them defend those people. And all Trump
has to say is, look, all I'm trying to do
is pick up the criminals and fly them back home.
(22:53):
And these Democrats are stopping me. And that that's not
heavy lift. That doesn't involved, you know, mass deportation camps,
massed attention camps. It just means ramping up the existing
detention senators and going after that criminal element. Yeah, that's
all you need to do.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, if you got to them, if you got rid
of that of you deported that million, one point two million,
that would be a massive success. Actually, and I think
it is. I think it is achievable. By the way,
maybe it will take a couple of years, but I
think it's achievable.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I think I convince you.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah.
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(24:06):
and everybody go get sex and the Citizen and go
read is brilliant stuf at the Washington Examiner. And we'll
come back soon to talk to you about Project twenty
twenty five because you apparently know what that thing is,
which is good because everyone else.
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The Harris Foundation produced it every four years. It's not
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No one even knew that. Look at this Cott Caroly,
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Speaker 1 (24:29):
Take care of here.