April 4, 2024 • 56 mins
Sage Steele calls out Biden. DEI is destructive. War mistakes. Mike Rowe on the toolbelt generation.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton Show podcast. Welcome in Thursday edition Clay Travis Buck
Sexton Show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us
as we are rolling through what should be a very
fun show for all of you. Appreciate all of you
out there listening live. Encourage you as always download podcasts,
(00:22):
make sure you don't miss a moment. The Biden administration
getting nervous, Buck, evidently over the polling issues that they
are seeing in swing states. There's a report that they
are responding by hiring way more polsters in the swing states,
maybe just to try to get out polls that are
more positive for them. We will discuss that a little bit.
(00:46):
But one thing that Biden has not done so far
is really, i would say, aggressively try to make his
case to that many independent voters. You'll remember, Buck, we
talked about out Joe Biden turning down the Super Bowl interview,
and I thought it was a colossal mistake. And then
he followed it up by doing an interview with whatever
(01:08):
that guy's name is, Seth Meyers. I think on NBC
that nobody watched, and they went and got Ice cream
and I just kind of sit around wondering what is
their strategy. They're failing on biden Omics, the bloodbath thing,
I think is bouncing back very much against them. And
a story came out yesterday that was illustrative I think
(01:32):
of how much the Biden administration tries to control everything
that is asked of Biden and everything that he says.
And it was from a friend of the show, Sage Steele,
who was at ESPN for a very long time and
she left recently. She came on this show to talk
about leaving. She's now doing a podcast with Bill Maher
focusing on long form conversations. But as part of an
(01:55):
interview she did, she said that when she interviewed Joe
Biden on e ESPN, that every question was scripted and
that she was not allowed to ask anything, no follow ups,
anything else. Listen to this discussion. I'm curious your reaction, Buck.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
This is about two months after he took office. That
was an interesting experience in its own right because it
was so structured and I was told, you will say
every word that we write out, you will not deviate
from the script, and so to the word, like every
single question was scripted. Gone over dozens of times by
(02:35):
many executives, editors and executives. Absolutely, I was on script
and was told not to deviate. It was very much
this is what she will ask, this is how you
will say it, No follow ups, no follow ups. Next,
I knew that this was a lot bigger than just
the wonderful editors that I worked with. This went up
to the fourth floor, as we said that where all
the bosses, the top executives, the decision makers are. The
(02:57):
president of our company, the CEO were there.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Okay, So Buck, I can say honestly, you and I
in three years of doing this show, and I bet
you when you did your show before and certainly when
I did mine, there's never been a time where we've
been like, okay, we'll script questions or even said okay,
we'll refuse to ask a question about ex ra. Why
we've not have been perfect in our interviews? I'm sure
for you sometimes you finished an interview and you're like,
(03:22):
I should have asked, should have asked another question, But
it wasn't because we were anything other than imperfect, as
everybody is in their jobs every day.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So what's your reaction to this? Because I have a
ton of thoughts.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I'm curious what your reaction is as a guy who
doesn't usually watch what would ostensibly be sports coverage.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Well, for one thing, you can know for certain that
this is not a one off, meaning that this isn't
just something that happened with Stage Deal, the Potemkin Village approach,
to the Biden presidency and to President Biden himself, where
it's all a facade, it's fake. They're presenting something that
isn't real, that isn't just a thing that happens in
(04:00):
the media. And if you really listen a little bit
between the lines with Saved Steel, it is the expectation
in media, meaning you aren't allowed to do journalism. It's
not that people are choosing whether or not they will
do journalism. It is the democrat apparatus of the media
has rules that don't even necessarily need to be spoken,
(04:20):
but sometimes they're spoken, and sometimes people lose their jobs
over it. And a perfect example of this would be
you remember when the what was it ABC? Those things all?
I think it was an ABC reporter said that, you know,
she talked to John Fetterman and the guy clearly has problems.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Dasha Burns, I believe was her name, and I think
it was NBC, and everybody was furious that she was
willing to admit that he had cognitive issues.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
And it was all at once. I mean, it was
a unified front of how dare you say a thing
that hurts a Democrat in an election season, no matter
how important it is, no matter how obvious it is,
and no matter how much the public has a right
to know about the thing you are talking about. This
is true across the board. This reminds me a little
bit of when we would see the most egregious examples
(05:09):
of the censorship that they would do play against conservatives
on Twitter when it was Twitter and on Facebook and
these other places. And I would always say, for every
conservative who's outright band, there are probably one hundred or
one thousand large accounts who are being shadow band and
who are being throttled. And you know, it's an iceberg.
What you see above the surface is just a piece
(05:29):
of it. What Sage Steel is dealing with here is
just the rules being exposed about how you're not allowed
to do. You're supposed to call yourself a journalist to
fool the public into thinking you're neutral so you can
do the dirty work of Democrat propaganda for the Bide administration.
That is the universal corporate Democrat expectation in the media.
(05:52):
And what I think is particularly unique about this story
is this is outreach because your average person who's putting
on ESPN, and this is why it's so insidious, I believe,
is not anticipating that they're going to get political related
takes in any way. So they are interviewing Joe Biden,
they are scripting every question, writing it out for allowing
(06:16):
Sage Steele no deviations here. And they're also I bet
and this is a question that ESPN should have to answer.
I guarantee you they gave all the questions to the
Biden White House before it started. So not only are
they scripting questions, one of the reasons why you would
script all these questions is so you could just send
it along to the Biden White House and let them
(06:37):
know in advance what he's going to be asked, so
his answers are better.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And it's also it should.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Be demeaning to people to play a role in this fraud, right,
I mean, especially if you make a living. You know,
I've never provided questions, and sometimes people will have their
pr reps. I don't know what your stock answer is. Generally, obviously,
we have a great team who handles like the PR
reps who want to do a little bit of you know,
pre interview set up. But whatever someone says, can you
(07:06):
give me a you know, can you give me a
sense of the questions topics? Fine, I'll tell someone we're
gonna talk immigration, We're gonna talk, and that's standard, right,
you can give them because so people can be up
on the news of the day. But if they're like,
can you give me a sense of the questions, I
tend to respond with something like, I'm gonna ask you
questions about the news of the day, or I'm gonna
ask you questions about the topics that we discussed. I've
never provided questions in advance because it's just unseemly right,
(07:27):
because there's something dishonest in doing that and not telling
people that's what you're doing. Right, You're you're a part
of a front, You're a part of a fraud.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Also, I think part of being an interviewer is listening
to what someone says and then following up with what
they say and based on what answers they give, potentially
having a question that would not have been on any
list in advance.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
I mean sometimes you got to ask the same question
more than once, like, g mister Pence, will you pardon
Trump if you become president?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Maybe you ask it a few in a row.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
But I think for Sage Steele here this is a
form of liberation because she's coming out and telling the truth.
But I think it lets you see behind the curtain
how much of a rig job is in effect, and
how protected Biden is, and yet they still will not
do very many interviews with him, even when you consider
(08:21):
that much of this is set up impossible for him
to fail. I don't even like I don't know about you.
I don't even really like that much knowing what the
topics are going to be on television. I do a
lot of Fox News hits, and I always say buck
and I did three hours of radio. If I'm not
prepared to talk on television for three minutes about any
topic under the sun, then I haven't prepped well enough
(08:43):
for radio.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, so you ask me anything.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Basically, I never as a host, I can tell you
I never ask for talking points. I don't understand why
with certain people they ask for talking points. This is
a standard thing in the business because we'll just roll
with whatever. Like some of the there's no question that
I'm gonna be like, oh, I can't I can't handle
that curveball, you know so, and you're also not going
to I think that's an old model where people just
(09:06):
want to get their talking points out. So I'm always
bothered by that. I feel like it's a giant It
is a giant waste of my time. When cable news
show has asked me for talking points beforehand, and I
generally try to avoid doing it, so I generally don't
do it. They'll say it's because they want to know
the POV or something.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I don't know. I think it's worthless personally.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
But that all said, Sage Steel coming out and making
this clear to everybody, you would think that maybe more
people would be willing to say, yeah, I have the
same right. We know she's not the only one correct,
so why would't anyone else come out and back her
up on this and say yeah, I've had the same
experience with Biden. It's because right now, the people who
(09:44):
are in our business, who are supposed to be presenting
the public with the truth, their primary concern is what
will this do for me and my partisan belief system,
especially after the election?
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Right like, where do I go when this is all done?
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I think also again speaks to Biden's decrepitude that even
with these rig job safety interview guidelines in place, he's
not doing any interviews. So and I think you have
to tie this in with whenever you see him walk
around with one of those cards and it says you
(10:19):
sit at the head of the table, you ask this
question of this person. I don't know that we've ever
seen a more scripted presidency. And yet the moment Biden
goes a sentilla off the script, you can see how
much this Simpson village just totally collapses around him.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
You know, there's generally two concerns when people are when
the handlers are all trying to make sure that there
are no disasters in an interview, the concerns are the
person will get asked a question that they is going
to be an attack effectively, because yeah, they're not, you know,
so usually it would be, hey, Biden, why is the
border so bad? The other thing could be maybe this
(10:58):
person's just not a compel speaker, does not is not
good on their feet, so they're going to kind of
fumble and bumble around. That's usually the concern, Clay. I
think with Biden, the primary concern is, and I'm just
being honest, people just seeing him in real time and
seeing the state that he's in, you know what I'm saying, Like,
it's not even it's not even that he would get
(11:19):
cornered on an answer because.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
He's by it. He's said, yeah, it's about folks.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
You know, he just say some nonsense. Seeing him in
real time on TV, when he's not on prompter in
his little suit, trot it out there, you know, with
whatever meds they're giving him, that's the problem they have.
They just don't want people to know what's really going on.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, And I think it's also important to contrast that
as we have with Trump. You and I have interviewed
Trump three times now for an hour.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Right. We did it at Bedminster.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
We've done it at mar A Lago twice, if I
remember correctly, in person, three times for an hour. At
no point in time have they ever said any topic
is off limits or tried to give us any kind
of scripted talking points. I think that's a credit to
Trump and his handlers. But I think it's also emblematic
of the massive difference in ability to just communicate between
(12:10):
Trump and Biden right now, and what Sage Steele said
is more common than not, I believe, for how Biden
is being interviewed right now, and I think it should
kind of give you a picture behind the curtain of
what's really going on. Speaking of what's really going on, Saturday,
Buck final four for the men, I have got winners
for the people at Price Picks. I also saw by
(12:32):
the way big news. Price Picks has announced that they're
hiring one thousand new people in the Atlanta area and
opening up a thirty three thousand square foot headquarters there.
They put out a release, Atlanta Braves begin their season tomorrow. Congrats,
that's a big hit. One thousand new employees coming for
the city of Atlanta. Congratulations, big thirty three thousand square
(12:56):
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and unfortunately, I'm going to take some of their money
and give it to all of you gifts for the
people here.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
With these four winners.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Zach Edy less than forty one and a half points,
rebounds and assists in the Purdue game against NC State.
I think they're going to officiate him a lot more
carefully and not allow him to stay in the lane
for twenty seconds every possession like they did against Tennessee
DJ Burns. He's the star of the NC State team,
(13:32):
a bonafid lovable hero that has emerged the round mound
of rebound the new version points, rebounds, assist more than
twenty two Mark Sears, engine of the Alabama offense, point
guard more than twenty eight and a half points, rebounds
and assists. And Grant Nelson he's a swing or a miss,
(13:53):
almost nothing in the middle. I think he's going to
have a good game. I think Bama plays well against Yukon.
Greg on our staf. Yukon's one been up by thirty
points in all four of the games so far, sooner
or later somebody has to give them a little bit
of a game. I think Grant Nelson goes for more
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Speaker 3 (14:15):
The app today. It's fun.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Does any of that make any sense at all to you?
It makes makes perfect sense. And I need you to
nail this one because I think Carry's going to Costco
on Monday. Good heavens the damage on the credit card.
Who knows what's gonna happen. So that's right, I get
these picks right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
We need to hit uh four to four picks ten
to one payout again. Go download the app prizepicks dot
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Speaker 5 (14:49):
He's Buck Sexton, He's Clay travels Together.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
They're breathing sanity into an insane world.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
That was in the Wall Street Journal in their editorial
pages yesterday. There's been a lot of talk, and we've
certainly discussed it a great deal in the last three
years on this show, about how university should handle student
protests and speakers that are unpopular on campus and all
of these different aspects. And I don't know if we
(15:19):
mentioned the Vanderbilt University college kids who protested against Israel
by occupying university university facilities and refusing to leave.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
But the president of vander I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
The chancellor may be president whatever you want to call him,
wrote a piece and it says free speech is alive
and well at Vanderbilt University. Now full disclosure. I went
to Vanderbilt for law school. I met my wife there.
I absolutely love this school. Okay, so and my wife
graduated from the law school recently. So if you don't
want to believe my opinion here because I'm gonna lum,
(15:56):
certainly I can understand it. But I've ripped plenty of
colleges that I've gone to. You heard me rip gw
to High Heavens over the fact that they had death
to martyrs on the university library as a protest against
against Israel. Responding to defend itself, I thought this was interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Buck.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
There were around twenty eight students, twenty seven students.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
I want to read a paragraph for you.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
On Tuesday, twenty seven students violated the rules when they
forced their way into a closed administrative building, injuring a
community service officer. In the process, students push staff members
and screamed profanities.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
What ends up happening?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
They arrested and charged three students with assault. One student
was charged with vandalism. These are criminal charges. The remaining
twenty five students who were protesting have been suspended for
violating university policies and and violating the speech codes. And
(17:04):
they are saying here teaching students the importance. This is
the chancellor teaching students the importance of upholding rules for
free expression. Doesn't squelch their right to voice their opinion,
it protects it. Free expression is alive and well. But
basically at Vanderbilt, if you violate the law, you're going
(17:25):
to be charged with a crime and you're going to
be suspended from the university.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
I love this.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I love a university coming out and saying, look, you
have the right to share whatever opinion you want. Nobody's
saying these kids can't demand the divestiture of Vanderbilt's connection
to Israel because they want to support Palestine. But if
you shove police officers and you trespass and occupy university
buildings and refuse to leave, there will be consequences. And
(17:55):
so I want every university doing more of this. Whatever
the beach is, if you're going to allow students to
take over a campus, eventually you give a Heckler's veto.
So to speak for speech on campus and everything else.
This is the right move I think.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I think that there are big opportunities here for a
number of educational institutions. You know, we partner with, for example,
Hillsdale on this show. They're already doing the you know,
like constitution patriotic real history teaching. But I think that
there's an opportunity for other schools who aren't known necessarily
(18:33):
as conservative institutions to just take the same path, the
pro education path, and watch their enrollment swell, watch their
donations increase, watch their rankings, which you know, I know
we still have a little bit of a fixation as
a society on like, oh what's this school rank or
what's that school rank? But for example, I mean, I
(18:56):
just look at the University of Florida, where my wife went,
and this is a school that has always had a
very good reputation for a public university, right, I mean
it's been but I mean in the latest rankings you
can see it's gone up nine spots since twenty seventeen,
so it is rocketing up. And these things are related
(19:18):
in my mind to not have you know, getting rid
of the DEI stuff, getting rid of the woke indoctrination.
Focusing on actual education, you can make these relatively straightforward
tweaks and have your adjustments and have some pretty profound
impact on the perception of the places as well as
(19:38):
what's actually going on day to day. So there's a
real opportunity here for schools to just say, you know,
because half the country at least doesn't agree with this stuff, right,
I mean, I think it's more than that, depending on
the issue.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, And I wanted to give a shout out too.
We mentioned the University of Florida firing all the DEI
people because the state law was passed saying hey, we're
not going to do this. University of Tech just got
rid of its entire DEI program too. So all these
red states out there, your state institutions, I give credit
to Greg abbott Ron DeSantis. This is destroying those institutions
(20:13):
to a large extent from the inside. And if you
run a company, you're bringing in these people that are
destroying your company from the inside too. I think you
have to be careful about who you hire. If people
are obsessed inside of your company with only diversity, equity,
and inclusion, I would suggest sooner or later you're going
to get your ass kicked by competitors that care about
(20:35):
serving customers for better.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
You know, there's also a.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Truism or a reality that I came into contact with
in the various government bureaucracies that I worked in in
my twenties. When you have people who are paid to
do a job and there really isn't anything productive for
them to do, they will find things to justify their existence,
their paychecks and their powers. So, you know, the I
(21:03):
think a lot of these places, especially some of the
more old school institutions, you know, universities that are you know, elite,
I think that they I'm going back here maybe twenty years,
but they thought we'll set up this DEI stuff so
that we don't get criticized for not having DEI. But
they didn't realize is once you bring in the commissars,
(21:24):
they start making demands. Yeah, once you have people who
are paid, you know, two hundred grand to give a
lecture once a semester on how racist the school is,
they're going to start making demands because one they like
the power, two their idealogues, and three they want to
be able to turn to everybody and say this is
what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Right. So it's not it's not passive. DEI is never
going to be passive in these places.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Also, you can never have somebody who says, you know what,
you're doing a really good job, because that would get
themselves out of a job. Nobody notice how nobody ever
comes in for DEI and says, you know what, I
think this company's actually doing a really good job promoting the.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Best people to get the best jobs.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Nod I person has ever said that, because if they
say it, then they get fired.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Well, I think also there's there's always work to be done.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
You've see yeah, well you've seen this with some of
the very well funded and very influential formerly you know,
gay and lesbian nonprofits right that we're that we're pushing
for for gay marriage and things like that in the past. Okay,
so then you have the Obergerfeld decision and then you
you know what are they now it's all about transgenderism,
(22:32):
because what are you going to say? We have full
legal equality? And you know, the fight is is right there.
The fight can never be over because you need the
donations and now it's all you got to make your
eight year old trends or you're a bad person.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Well not only that.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I mean, I just I think sport's a perfect example
of this. Every single person I was talking about this
some yesterday and having fun with it. Every single person
out there who is a true sports fan would be
super happy to have a gay or transgender star athlete
on their team if it meant that they were going
to beat their rival. If you told people right now, hey,
your team can be completely heterosexual but they lose every game,
(23:08):
or your team can be half gay and they win
the championship, every real sports fan would be like, I'll
take the half gay team. People just don't care, right,
Like in your own private life, if you want to
make yourself happier and love who you want to love,
I think the vast majority of people don't care. I know,
sports fans only care about wins, right, and companies should.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Care about profit.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
This is why the fight over women in men's sports
is actually so important, even from the perspective of you know,
people that don't watch a lot of professional sports, because
one of the only areas of public life where you
can see true tests of objective excellence and where objective
excellence is rewarded, yes, is professional athletics.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
It's one of the very few where everyone can see it. Right,
you could say, oh, like, look at this.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
You know Hedge fund guys performance, or look at this
doctor's number of surgeries. Yeah, but you don't have twenty
million people watching the doctor do with surgeries, right, you
do have that. So for the social impact, the psychological
impact on our society is the one area where we
can see what is what seems to be the objective
competition and that it is supposed to elevate excellence. They're
(24:18):
telling us, yeah, that six foot five guy who weighs
two hundred and forty pounds has no advantage over those
one hundred and twenty pound girls. And because if they
can get you to say that, as we've said before,
they get you say absolutely anything. They can get you say,
you know, there is no difference between a penis and
a vagina.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
It's the same thing. They can get you to say anything.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's also why you never hear the DEI people say,
you know, the US men's basketball team needs to be
more diverse. Twelve black guys, it's not really representative of
what the United States looks like. The twelve black guys
are the best, right, and people want the best. DEI
doesn't really work in sports because the best might And
(24:56):
you see where England was complaining because the English women's
soccer team was too white, and you're like, well, are
there non white players that are better that should be
on the team, Like nobody cares about anything other than
excellence in sports, and it gets shot down really quickly
in the world of sport.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
This is also honest.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
And this is also why when they say that, you know,
women make eighty seven cents on the dollar or seventy
seven cents in the dollar, whatever it is. Find me
a business that doesn't want to increase its margins by
twenty percent, and I'll find you a business that's about
to go out of business. I mean, that's just it's
also objectively obviously absurd. But these are the things you
have to believe the absurd to be a good person.
That's the central premise of the Democrat Party. You know,
(25:35):
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Speaker 5 (26:44):
Have fun with the guys on Sundays This Sunday Hang podcast.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
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Speaker 3 (26:51):
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Speaker 4 (26:58):
Second hour of Play and Buck kicks off right now.
We're going to discuss this drone strike that killed seven
civilian aid workers in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
On Monday a couple of days ago.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
A lot of political backlash to this in the aftermath
of the strike. The headline here up on the Daily
Mail Biden is pissed.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
That is the quote.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
They say that Joe Biden is furious and is getting
ready for a very tense phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu
after this strike killed seven aid workers. This is what
we know about it so far. IDF and IDF has
taken responsibility for this. They have said it as a tragedy.
(27:43):
They have said it as an accident, and there will
be a full investigation into how this could happen. It
was a marked aid convoy from a World Central kitchen
and they're trying to get food to people who obviously
they are are facing hunger and even possible starvation in
(28:05):
the midst of this war zone. So there's a lot
of outrage from people about this. I think that one
thing that has gotten perhaps the most attention in terms
of the response to this so far has been. Chef
Jose Andres, who is the one who has coordinated this strike,
(28:27):
has said, and team let me know when we have him.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
We have it. Okay.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
Here is Chef Jose Andres saying that what Israel did
with this strike was intentional.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
It was murder. Listen.
Speaker 6 (28:38):
And this happened over more than one point five one
point eight kilometers, So this was not use a bad
luck situation where oops, we dropped the bomb in the
wrong place or or no. This was over one point
five one point eight kilometers with a very defined humanitarian
convoy that had signs in the top in the roofs.
(29:01):
I'm very colorful, lolo, that we are obviously very proud of.
But that's very clear who we are and what we do.
But I know is that we were targeted deliberately, not
as Tom until everybody was dead in this conboy.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Targeted deliberately, he says Jose Andres.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
This is a celebrity chef who's put together World World Kitchen,
World Central Kitchen play. I just think that it's important.
First of all, Jose Andres is somebody who at the
very beginning of this meaning right after October seventh, was
very vocal calling for a ceasefire right away. So the
people who have called for a ceasefire after what we
(29:41):
saw on October seventh, or I think, acting in bad faith,
they generally wanted Israel to suffer a horrific terror attack.
If someone had told me that they wanted to call
for and there were some people who said this very few,
a ceasefire with al Qaeda and the global Jihat after
nine to eleven, I would have only had four letter
words to say to them about it. I think, and
(30:04):
I think that a lot of Israel and the Israelis
and the Jewish people feel the same way as they should.
The notion that this was intentional. Let's unpack this for
a second. If Israel wanted to blow up every AID convoy,
they could blow up every AID convoy, and there's nothing
the Palestinians could do to stop them. In fact, if
they wanted to destroy every standing building in Gaza, everything
(30:25):
and kill everyone in Gaza, they could do so, and
there's nothing that the people of Gaza could do to
stop them. This only makes their actual mission more complicated.
I always say, we say on the show, look at incentives.
There is no incentive put aside the moral calculations here
for a second. There is no combat incentive for the
Israelis to do this. And I'm reminded of the horrific
(30:48):
mistake that we made, or the Biden administration made, during
the withdrawal from Afghanistan. We blew up a car with
I think six or seven kids. It was a father
and his six or seven children. We said it was
a suicide bomber. We hit a drone we were following
the car. We turned the whole thing into charcoal, and
(31:08):
that was America. These kind of mistakes, as awful as
they are, do happen.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
In war one hundred percent. And that's what exactly where
I was going to go to. I think we killed
ten innocent people in Afghanistan with the idea this guy
was driving around with a suicide bomb or a bomb
in his in his vehicle, and it turns out that
he was a dad coming home from a work day
and we blew up his whole family.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
And that doesn't mean he did not do that intentionally.
I can say, you know, knowing the people that make
these decisions, and the Biden administration did not do that intentionally.
They didn't say, blow up a bunch of kids. Nobody
wanted that to happen. It was a colossal screw up.
There was no accountability for it. But that's another conversation.
Speaker 6 (31:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
And by the way, intent is important here because the
way that that celebrity chef is phrasing things, he's making
it sound like they intentionally killed these individuals.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
It doesn't.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
They could have intentionally targeted this group with the idea
being that it was somebody else, as happened in Afghanistan.
But the real intent here, which we seem to be forgetting,
was the intent of Hamas to kill as many Jews
as possible without fail. What Israel has done since then
(32:24):
is try to respond to guarantee that Hamas cannot do
again what it did on October seventh. And so I'm sorry,
I don't have a lot of sympathy.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
For anyone who is allowing.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Hamas to still exist in all of the Gaza region.
That's why this is going on. Hamas began this war,
and now that they are reaping the consequences of beginning
the war, I don't have any desire for Israel to
stop until they have ended Hamas's ability to do this
(32:59):
again for potentially generations, maybe forever.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Now.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
The challenge, of course, is when you are dealing with
people who believe that they are going to die and
be martyrs and get seventy virgins, when you are dealing
with their rational people, dealing with them rationally in fighting
a war creates a whole other generation of people who
(33:23):
are going to continue to want to rain down depredations
upon the Israeli people. That's the reality of where they are.
And so the idea that what I don't like is
when one incident like this turns into a major flashpoint
of oh, this is unacceptable. Israel is saying, I believe
buck that they have killed somewhere in the neighborhood of
(33:44):
fifteen thousand Hamas fighters and people in gods are saying
there's thirty thousand people that have been killed. It's hard
to figure out exactly what the numbers are, what percentage
are combatants, what percent are so called innocent lives, And
the reality is this is impossible to do without there.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Being some loss of innocent civilian life. And your point
is a good one.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
If Israel wanted to carpet bomb Gaza and basically wipe
Gaza off the face of the earth, he'll kill everyone
there they do.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
It Plase, Yeah, there's nothing that they could have done
it on October eighth. They could have done it on
October eighth.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
They could have rained down Holy Hell upon Gaza and
cease to have anyone alive. Basically in that entire footprint,
they've actually tried not to. And I thought it was
Douglas Murrie was a buck who made the argument that
you talk about what is a what is a justifiable response,
what is commensurate with the proportional response that is allowed.
(34:43):
Nothing that Israel has done is as evil as what
Hamas did to Israel on October seventh, None of it,
because their intent from the get go has been to
try to avoid killing anyone but enemy combatants, and Hamas
has hidden enemy combat all throughout places where innocent people
would be hospitals, schools, churches, synagogues, Muslim places of worship.
(35:09):
They have hired hid people wherever they could to try
to make Israel look like the bad guy whenever they
go after.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Them, I mean Hamas fighters in the name of the
Palestinian people, and with orders from above to do this,
gang raped and then murdered Israeli women.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
And Israeli teenagers. They did that.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
When someone does that, the only response in a just
world is to hunt them down and kill them. And
they haven't killed all of the Hamas fighters, so the
fight is not over until they do. And this is
how I felt about bin Laden and Alcada and what
they did to us on nine to eleven. So I
afford our Israeli brothers and sisters the same rights of
(35:52):
self defense as I would afford the American people and have.
So I don't see this the way that the jose
Andres's of the world do that there's some kind of uh,
you know, moral parody here and then it's oh, fog
of war and both sides are doing these bad things.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Uh, the the just.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
The only thing that Hamas did on October seventh was
pursue evil down into the depths of hell and try
to kill as many people who were defenseless and who
are innocent and who had done nothing to them as
they possibly could, and mutilate them and sexually abuse them.
And it didn't advance their interests in nation state. It
didn't advance It wasn't it wasn't about some kind of
(36:32):
territorial dispute really, ultimately, because that's not going to get there.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
It wasn't anyway, buck even a military attack right like,
wasn't as if they were trying to do something to
the people who were actual soldiers.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
Only ask yourself this, what is the concession that Hamas
thinks that it was going to get from doing that
and also taking the hostages. They didn't take hostages so
that they could negotiate a long term and durable peace
and then return them all. As you know, they've killed
hostages in their custody and sexually abuse them as well.
They did all this out of just sheer malice. It
was just an act of malice and hatred and viciousness.
(37:08):
And the only way to respond with that. I mean,
if someone you know breaks into a home, you know,
rapes and murders of family, and then walks out and says,
you know, I want to have a conversation, but the
challenges I've had in life, the proper response is to
execute that individual. And that is what the Israelis are
doing by chasing down the Hamas fighters who came into
(37:28):
their country and did this. And I think it very
strange that people that I know, I'll say this even
on the right, who.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Have who have shown.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Clarity when it came to our fight against the jihattists,
against the al Qaeda and its affiliated entities, basically the
global jih hottiest ideology or really just ge hottest because
it's always global.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Those some of those same voices.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
Are thinking that somehow the Israelis aren't in a similar struggle.
There actually are in a similar struggle. The parallels are
very clear to me. I don't see why anyone on
the right wouldn't understand that.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
If people from Mexico or Canada, but anywhere on our
border crossed over and killed twelve hundred innocent people. Do
you think we would stop because we accidentally killed seven
innocent people or seven thousand innocent people, if we thought
that we had not ended the threat that that could
ever happen again. Of course not so I wouldn't expect
Israel to do anything less.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
And Mexico and Canada would never would never do that
as governing states, the people in that country, in those countries,
would never do that. And I need to say, oh,
all people are capable of evil. It's different in the
areas of Gaza and the West Bank. They I have
friends who have interviewed mothers in the West Bank, for example,
(38:49):
who lost their children as a in a suicide bombing.
This is back in the earlier days of the Second
into Fada in the early two thousands, and the mothers
beam with pride that you know, they're twenty year old
went into a pizzeria in Jerusalem and blew up, you know,
a dozen people and had ball bearing shredding people's you know,
(39:09):
faces and lungs, and they thought that was great. Yeah,
I thought that was really And that's widespread. Just to
be clear, that's widespread. The Hamas entity gives money to
the families of suicide bombers.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
And still does to this day. So this is it's official.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
It's official policy from all the way on down to
be as vicious and inhumane as possible. And it is
and this is strggedy to say that it is ultimately
rooted in hatred of the Jewish people. And that is
just the truth from somebody who has seen it himself
by being over there and understanding the mentality of these jihadists.
So I get that for people like Jose Andres, they
think that all people can be bad, and why don't
(39:48):
we all just get along, and why can't we all
be friends. Maybe we can get along when every Hamas
fighter is dead or in prison and Hamas is no
longer governing Gaza. I think then the Israelis and the
Palestinian people have a real shot at having a conversation
about the future. Until then, I don't think there is
a conversation to be had. That's how I see it.
(40:10):
Eight hundred two two eight two. If you think I'm wrong,
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Speaker 3 (40:17):
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Speaker 4 (40:18):
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(40:40):
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(41:01):
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Make your plans now to go see it in theaters
next weekend.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
Don't miss the day of the Clay Travis and buck
Sexton Show.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Welcome back in Clay Travis buck Sexton Show. Join now
by the host of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. He
has done a phenomenal job, writer, narrator, producer, Emmy Award
winning best selling author. And that's a lot of that's
a lot of aspects out here.
Speaker 5 (41:32):
Mike.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
We appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
And we were talking about it a little bit earlier,
and I was even reading, i think at the Wall
Street Journal recently a story about people who are younger
in their twenties starting to embrace plumbing and hemreting Llayaway.
It's how gen z is becoming the tool belt generation.
(41:54):
Are you optimistic, Mike that a lot of people are
maybe stepping into jobs that they didn't foresee twenty years ago,
people being interested in.
Speaker 5 (42:02):
Well, it's a little early for a victory lap, although
I'd love to take one. We've been at this for
sixteen years now, you know, trying to challenge the idea
that the best path for the most people is the
most expensive path educationally, and also trying to shine a
light on about ten million open positions right now, very
few of which require a four year degree. These jobs
(42:23):
require training, vocational education, trade schools, and so forth. So
it's a bit like pushing a boulder up a hill,
or maybe turning around a tanker, you know, in the
middle of the ocean. Pick your metaphor, but it takes
a long time to challenge those kinds of stigmas and
stereotypes that surround the trades. This article got my attention,
(42:45):
and everybody on my social pages all tapped me on
the shoulder and said, look, this is really encouraging. You know,
it's not what a lot of people expect gen Z
to do, right. This is the generation that is most
often targeted, is lazy and entitled and spoiled and all
this other stuff. But it's like they got the memo
(43:07):
and they've looked around and they've seen a lot of
diplomas hanging on a lot of walls and concluded quite
rightly that it's not necessarily an indication of what you've learned.
It's an indication of what you paid. It's a receipt
right and one point seven trillion dollars in student loans
is no joke. And gen Z doesn't want any part
of it. They want to learn a skill that's in demand,
(43:30):
and I think that's good news.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
Hey, Mike, where do people who are thinking about there's like,
how you know, if you're somebody who's let's say you're eighteen,
you're senior in high school and you're considering it, what
are the some of the pathways? I mean, is it
just applying to trade school? There are apprenticeship programs, and
how do people learn more about, for example, what would
be a particularly in demand trade in their area or
(43:53):
particularly high paying trade in their area?
Speaker 3 (43:55):
What are the resources?
Speaker 5 (43:57):
Well, you can't possibly grew up by learning how to weld.
Welding is like the gateway into the skilled trades. My
foundation has trained hundreds of welders. We've helped a couple
thousand people get the training they need to start whatever
trade they're into. So, to answer your question, microworks dot
(44:18):
org shameless plug all kinds of information on my site,
along with a million dollars right now we're giving away
next month in scholarships for trade schools. But there's so
many ways to go buck. I mean, they're certainly community
colleges and their obvious trade schools all over the place.
A lot of big companies today have their own internal programs.
(44:40):
You know, when we took shop class out of high
school forty years ago, we really kind of unleash the kraken,
you know, that decision removed from view so many vocations,
and so we went through a period where a lot
of millennials didn't even get a look at what works
(45:00):
like on that side of the workforce anyway. So it's
been a long road back. But the resources are all
over the place. Companies are falling over themselves to hire,
the opportunities to get training are everywhere. I'm I can't
overstate it. It's been one of the great unreported stories
in my lifetime, the skills gap, ten million open jobs,
(45:23):
all that opportunity sitting around. At the same time, we've
been told you're screwed if you don't get a four
year degree. It's literally the opposite.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
I think that's so important, Mike, because you mentioned the
one point seven trillion dollars in student loan debt. Let's
say there's an eighteen year old who's listening to us
right now, and his options are, I can take out
tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get an
English major nothing wrong with that degree, which is not
necessarily going to lead me towards being better at any
(45:55):
particular profession. Or I can go start being a plumber
at eighteen. You're nineteen years old, you're stacking tens of
thousands of dollars in assets, and you're starting off when
the college kids coming out at twenty two or twenty three,
in tens of thousands of dollars in debt, you could
have tens of thousands of dollars in savings. How much
do you think people are now recognizing that? And are
(46:18):
people still not aware of how much money there is
out there in plumbing or elect doing electrical work or
all these other things you mentioned welding. What else would
you tell people that there is abundant opportunity in if
they'll just go grab it.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
Electricians. Electricians are in super short supply. Plumbers, steam fitters
pipe fitters, heating and air conditioning guys. I mean, I
can't even tell you. If you're not making six figures
and you're in that space, you're either just getting started
or you're unwilling to go to where the work is.
But even then, I mean, the work is pretty much everywhere.
(46:53):
The track clay in your question is really the reason
that I'm not in politics, I can't. I'm sure there
are some eighteen year olds listening right now, but I
don't know who they are. I don't know what their
skills are, I don't know what their attitude is. Right,
and so much of what our elected officials do, and unfortunately,
(47:15):
what guidance counselors do is they paint with a really
broad brush, and you wind up hearing from a lot
of people who have a certain amount of influence that
this is what your kid should do, or this is
what you should do. And I think it's that tendency
to talk in platitudes and paint with a broad brush
that's brought us to the place where we are right now.
(47:36):
We're still a country of individuals, and your kid, your
eighteen year old kid, might very likely be wired in
a profoundly different way than mine. So I'm kind of
stingy with advice in terms of telling groups of people
what to do. But you can't ignore the big trends.
You can't ignore ten million open positions right now. You
(47:57):
can't ignore you want to hear some really horrible math.
The number that scares me more than one point seven
trillion in student loans is five every year for every
five tradesmen who retire to replace them. Now, that's been
gone on for over a decade, and when you start
to just extrapolate that out, what you realize real fast
(48:20):
is this is not just a conversation about companies who
are struggling to recruit talent or kids who are struggling
to find a path to prosperity. This is a conversation
about how long Clay Travis and bucksex and want to
wait for a plumber when they need one, or an electrician.
Every single person listening to this has skin in the game,
(48:41):
because every one of your audience members shares my addiction
to smooth roads and affordable electricity and indoor plumbing and
a long list of other stuff that we've been taking
for granted long before Dirty Jobs went on the air.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
You know, my uncle is a tradesman and a locksmith,
skilled locks with through the specialty stuff for you know, corporations,
and and my brother in law is actually a welder.
Carrie's brothers a welder, and one thing I hear from
both of them is they just don't have the time
to do all the jobs that people want them to do,
which is not a thing you often hear from that manyfolily.
(49:15):
There's so many offers to do different work in different
places that they can't get to it all. So, Mike,
I mean, I'm experiencing that for my own, uh you know,
extended family, what they're seeing out there. I'm just wondering
to what degree. Also, when you're you know, you're the
CEO of Mike Roworks Foundation, you're encouraging young people to
go into this, but you know, entrepreneurship, small business ownership.
I mean, it's been my experience from people I know,
(49:37):
some of who have become very successful business owners, that
a lot of them start by working for a business
in the trades.
Speaker 5 (49:45):
And this is this is part of the sort of
the disaster scenario. When we took shop Class out, we
also impacted not just the skilled workforce, but the the
entrepreneurial gene. The path to a small business so often
begins with the mastery of a trade. I mentioned welding before,
(50:09):
because you know, I know people who are underwater welders today.
They make three hundred thousand dollars a year. I know
others who are tig welders, you know, who are making
one hundred grand. And I know some who are making
less than that and are basically punching a clock. But
the most interesting cohort are the welders who hired another welder,
(50:31):
or more likely, hired an electrician and some HVAC guys,
and then bought a couple of vans and started a
mechanical contracting company. Those guys are everywhere, and they are
the engine of our economy, and their success stories aren't
told nearly enough because they start by doing something that
so many parents have come to believe as a vocational
(50:54):
consolation prize. I don't want my kid to be a welder.
The hell you don't, man. I can give you example
after example, and Buck, just a quick sidebar. I don't
know if you'll remember this, but I saw you ten
years ago. I think you were filling in for Beck,
and you did a story on one of my favorite
stories of all time. Nobody talks about it today, but
(51:16):
it was a message to Garcia. It was a story
about initiative, and it's a story about work ethic, and
it's a story about the willingness to cheerfully take hold
of a thing and lift. That's part of this conversation too,
and my foundation, you know, we award work ethic scholarships
because we're not just looking to fill an existing hole.
(51:40):
We're looking to find people who are willing to show
up early, stay late, take a bite of the crap sandwich, cheerfully,
volunteer for whatever task is at hand that's still for sale,
that still works. And if gen Z is the cohort
that steps up to do that with the tool belt
and a new understanding of what a.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Good job is, God bless them, Mike. Last question for you.
You mentioned parents or grandparents. How much encouragement do you
see from them? And I know there's a lot of
people out there that are worried their kids are not
working hard enough, maybe they're not making great grades in school,
but they do have that work ethic and they're trying
to find a way. I think most people have no
idea that you can make six figures doing a lot
(52:21):
of these jobs. Do you think parents and grandparents are
making their kids aware enough of that opportunity as well,
or do you think they've been sold the idea that
only success comes from the pathway of college. You can't
do anything else.
Speaker 5 (52:36):
Again, I hate to paint with a broad brush, but
the short answer is yeah, by and large, we have
an idea in our head about what a good job
looks like. And look, most parents also want something better
for their kids than whatever they had. The problem is
what is better? Right? I mean, we get to decide
(52:56):
how much debt is good. We get to decide if work,
for instance, is the proximate cause of our unhappiness. There's
a very popular narrative in this country right now that
says that it is. That's why you'll see support for
Bernie Sanders thirty two hour work week crazy. But if
you believe in your heart that the reason you're unhappy
(53:19):
is because you're working too much, or if you believe,
like genuinely believe in your heart that you're going to
be happy when you retire, then you've bought into an
existing narrative that is in fact persuasive, and it's persuasive
because it's mirrored constantly in sitcoms and movies and advertisements.
We are surrounded by this idea that work is the enemy,
(53:43):
and that you're a failure if you're a parent, if
you don't get your kid into a proper school. So yeah,
I would say to parents who believe that you might
be right.
Speaker 3 (53:54):
Maybe your kid.
Speaker 5 (53:54):
Is exactly wired to do all of those things, but
you might be wrong. Put all the options on the table,
have an honest conversation about the realities of debt and
the advantage of learning a skill that's in demand. My
final thought is, you know this. I'm holding my cell
phone in my hand right now and I'm looking at
(54:15):
it because that is a liberal arts education and it's free.
All the information I learned when I was in school
in nineteen eighty four is right there. Man. If you're
curious and you really want to learn whatever whatever floats
your boat, you can watch a lecture on it right
now for free at MIT or Brown or Yale.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
It's all there.
Speaker 5 (54:39):
Learn a skill first, master a trade, go to work.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
Get rich.
Speaker 4 (54:45):
Mike, what's the website? One more time for anyone listening,
cause I think some people listening are really interested in
following up and learning more.
Speaker 3 (54:51):
Mike Ka, I believe is the website micro dot org.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
He was fantastic you gave him the last the line there,
but man, I know people love that. We'll take some
of your reactions as we close up. Shop Buck what
you got for us.
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Speaker 3 (55:54):
Sometimes all you can do is laugh.
Speaker 1 (55:57):
And they do a lot of it with the Sunday
Join Clay and Buck as they lap it up in
the Clay and Buck podcast feed, on the iHeartRadio app,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton Show podcast. Welcome in Thursday edition Clay Travis Buck
Sexton Show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us
as we are rolling through what should be a very
fun show for all of you. Appreciate all of you
out there listening live. Encourage you as always download podcasts,
(00:22):
make sure you don't miss a moment. The Biden administration
getting nervous, Buck, evidently over the polling issues that they
are seeing in swing states. There's a report that they
are responding by hiring way more polsters in the swing states,
maybe just to try to get out polls that are
more positive for them. We will discuss that a little bit.
(00:46):
But one thing that Biden has not done so far
is really, i would say, aggressively try to make his
case to that many independent voters. You'll remember, Buck, we
talked about out Joe Biden turning down the Super Bowl interview,
and I thought it was a colossal mistake. And then
he followed it up by doing an interview with whatever
(01:08):
that guy's name is, Seth Meyers. I think on NBC
that nobody watched, and they went and got Ice cream
and I just kind of sit around wondering what is
their strategy. They're failing on biden Omics, the bloodbath thing,
I think is bouncing back very much against them. And
a story came out yesterday that was illustrative I think
(01:32):
of how much the Biden administration tries to control everything
that is asked of Biden and everything that he says.
And it was from a friend of the show, Sage Steele,
who was at ESPN for a very long time and
she left recently. She came on this show to talk
about leaving. She's now doing a podcast with Bill Maher
focusing on long form conversations. But as part of an
(01:55):
interview she did, she said that when she interviewed Joe
Biden on e ESPN, that every question was scripted and
that she was not allowed to ask anything, no follow ups,
anything else. Listen to this discussion. I'm curious your reaction, Buck.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
This is about two months after he took office. That
was an interesting experience in its own right because it
was so structured and I was told, you will say
every word that we write out, you will not deviate
from the script, and so to the word, like every
single question was scripted. Gone over dozens of times by
(02:35):
many executives, editors and executives. Absolutely, I was on script
and was told not to deviate. It was very much
this is what she will ask, this is how you
will say it, No follow ups, no follow ups. Next,
I knew that this was a lot bigger than just
the wonderful editors that I worked with. This went up
to the fourth floor, as we said that where all
the bosses, the top executives, the decision makers are. The
(02:57):
president of our company, the CEO were there.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Okay, So Buck, I can say honestly, you and I
in three years of doing this show, and I bet
you when you did your show before and certainly when
I did mine, there's never been a time where we've
been like, okay, we'll script questions or even said okay,
we'll refuse to ask a question about ex ra. Why
we've not have been perfect in our interviews? I'm sure
for you sometimes you finished an interview and you're like,
(03:22):
I should have asked, should have asked another question, But
it wasn't because we were anything other than imperfect, as
everybody is in their jobs every day.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So what's your reaction to this? Because I have a
ton of thoughts.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I'm curious what your reaction is as a guy who
doesn't usually watch what would ostensibly be sports coverage.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Well, for one thing, you can know for certain that
this is not a one off, meaning that this isn't
just something that happened with Stage Deal, the Potemkin Village approach,
to the Biden presidency and to President Biden himself, where
it's all a facade, it's fake. They're presenting something that
isn't real, that isn't just a thing that happens in
(04:00):
the media. And if you really listen a little bit
between the lines with Saved Steel, it is the expectation
in media, meaning you aren't allowed to do journalism. It's
not that people are choosing whether or not they will
do journalism. It is the democrat apparatus of the media
has rules that don't even necessarily need to be spoken,
(04:20):
but sometimes they're spoken, and sometimes people lose their jobs
over it. And a perfect example of this would be
you remember when the what was it ABC? Those things all?
I think it was an ABC reporter said that, you know,
she talked to John Fetterman and the guy clearly has problems.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Dasha Burns, I believe was her name, and I think
it was NBC, and everybody was furious that she was
willing to admit that he had cognitive issues.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
And it was all at once. I mean, it was
a unified front of how dare you say a thing
that hurts a Democrat in an election season, no matter
how important it is, no matter how obvious it is,
and no matter how much the public has a right
to know about the thing you are talking about. This
is true across the board. This reminds me a little
bit of when we would see the most egregious examples
(05:09):
of the censorship that they would do play against conservatives
on Twitter when it was Twitter and on Facebook and
these other places. And I would always say, for every
conservative who's outright band, there are probably one hundred or
one thousand large accounts who are being shadow band and
who are being throttled. And you know, it's an iceberg.
What you see above the surface is just a piece
(05:29):
of it. What Sage Steel is dealing with here is
just the rules being exposed about how you're not allowed
to do. You're supposed to call yourself a journalist to
fool the public into thinking you're neutral so you can
do the dirty work of Democrat propaganda for the Bide administration.
That is the universal corporate Democrat expectation in the media.
(05:52):
And what I think is particularly unique about this story
is this is outreach because your average person who's putting
on ESPN, and this is why it's so insidious, I believe,
is not anticipating that they're going to get political related
takes in any way. So they are interviewing Joe Biden,
they are scripting every question, writing it out for allowing
(06:16):
Sage Steele no deviations here. And they're also I bet
and this is a question that ESPN should have to answer.
I guarantee you they gave all the questions to the
Biden White House before it started. So not only are
they scripting questions, one of the reasons why you would
script all these questions is so you could just send
it along to the Biden White House and let them
(06:37):
know in advance what he's going to be asked, so
his answers are better.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And it's also it should.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Be demeaning to people to play a role in this fraud, right,
I mean, especially if you make a living. You know,
I've never provided questions, and sometimes people will have their
pr reps. I don't know what your stock answer is. Generally, obviously,
we have a great team who handles like the PR
reps who want to do a little bit of you know,
pre interview set up. But whatever someone says, can you
(07:06):
give me a you know, can you give me a
sense of the questions topics? Fine, I'll tell someone we're
gonna talk immigration, We're gonna talk, and that's standard, right,
you can give them because so people can be up
on the news of the day. But if they're like,
can you give me a sense of the questions, I
tend to respond with something like, I'm gonna ask you
questions about the news of the day, or I'm gonna
ask you questions about the topics that we discussed. I've
never provided questions in advance because it's just unseemly right,
(07:27):
because there's something dishonest in doing that and not telling
people that's what you're doing. Right, You're you're a part
of a front, You're a part of a fraud.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Also, I think part of being an interviewer is listening
to what someone says and then following up with what
they say and based on what answers they give, potentially
having a question that would not have been on any
list in advance.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
I mean sometimes you got to ask the same question
more than once, like, g mister Pence, will you pardon
Trump if you become president?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Maybe you ask it a few in a row.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
But I think for Sage Steele here this is a
form of liberation because she's coming out and telling the truth.
But I think it lets you see behind the curtain
how much of a rig job is in effect, and
how protected Biden is, and yet they still will not
do very many interviews with him, even when you consider
(08:21):
that much of this is set up impossible for him
to fail. I don't even like I don't know about you.
I don't even really like that much knowing what the
topics are going to be on television. I do a
lot of Fox News hits, and I always say buck
and I did three hours of radio. If I'm not
prepared to talk on television for three minutes about any
topic under the sun, then I haven't prepped well enough
(08:43):
for radio.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, so you ask me anything.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Basically, I never as a host, I can tell you
I never ask for talking points. I don't understand why
with certain people they ask for talking points. This is
a standard thing in the business because we'll just roll
with whatever. Like some of the there's no question that
I'm gonna be like, oh, I can't I can't handle
that curveball, you know so, and you're also not going
to I think that's an old model where people just
(09:06):
want to get their talking points out. So I'm always
bothered by that. I feel like it's a giant It
is a giant waste of my time. When cable news
show has asked me for talking points beforehand, and I
generally try to avoid doing it, so I generally don't
do it. They'll say it's because they want to know
the POV or something.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I don't know. I think it's worthless personally.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
But that all said, Sage Steel coming out and making
this clear to everybody, you would think that maybe more
people would be willing to say, yeah, I have the
same right. We know she's not the only one correct,
so why would't anyone else come out and back her
up on this and say yeah, I've had the same
experience with Biden. It's because right now, the people who
(09:44):
are in our business, who are supposed to be presenting
the public with the truth, their primary concern is what
will this do for me and my partisan belief system,
especially after the election?
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Right like, where do I go when this is all done?
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I think also again speaks to Biden's decrepitude that even
with these rig job safety interview guidelines in place, he's
not doing any interviews. So and I think you have
to tie this in with whenever you see him walk
around with one of those cards and it says you
(10:19):
sit at the head of the table, you ask this
question of this person. I don't know that we've ever
seen a more scripted presidency. And yet the moment Biden
goes a sentilla off the script, you can see how
much this Simpson village just totally collapses around him.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
You know, there's generally two concerns when people are when
the handlers are all trying to make sure that there
are no disasters in an interview, the concerns are the
person will get asked a question that they is going
to be an attack effectively, because yeah, they're not, you know,
so usually it would be, hey, Biden, why is the
border so bad? The other thing could be maybe this
(10:58):
person's just not a compel speaker, does not is not
good on their feet, so they're going to kind of
fumble and bumble around. That's usually the concern, Clay. I
think with Biden, the primary concern is, and I'm just
being honest, people just seeing him in real time and
seeing the state that he's in, you know what I'm saying, Like,
it's not even it's not even that he would get
(11:19):
cornered on an answer because.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
He's by it. He's said, yeah, it's about folks.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
You know, he just say some nonsense. Seeing him in
real time on TV, when he's not on prompter in
his little suit, trot it out there, you know, with
whatever meds they're giving him, that's the problem they have.
They just don't want people to know what's really going on.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, And I think it's also important to contrast that
as we have with Trump. You and I have interviewed
Trump three times now for an hour.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Right. We did it at Bedminster.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
We've done it at mar A Lago twice, if I
remember correctly, in person, three times for an hour. At
no point in time have they ever said any topic
is off limits or tried to give us any kind
of scripted talking points. I think that's a credit to
Trump and his handlers. But I think it's also emblematic
of the massive difference in ability to just communicate between
(12:10):
Trump and Biden right now, and what Sage Steele said
is more common than not, I believe, for how Biden
is being interviewed right now, and I think it should
kind of give you a picture behind the curtain of
what's really going on. Speaking of what's really going on, Saturday,
Buck final four for the men, I have got winners
for the people at Price Picks. I also saw by
(12:32):
the way big news. Price Picks has announced that they're
hiring one thousand new people in the Atlanta area and
opening up a thirty three thousand square foot headquarters there.
They put out a release, Atlanta Braves begin their season tomorrow. Congrats,
that's a big hit. One thousand new employees coming for
the city of Atlanta. Congratulations, big thirty three thousand square
(12:56):
foot office building in midtown in the atl That's big
and unfortunately, I'm going to take some of their money
and give it to all of you gifts for the
people here.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
With these four winners.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Zach Edy less than forty one and a half points,
rebounds and assists in the Purdue game against NC State.
I think they're going to officiate him a lot more
carefully and not allow him to stay in the lane
for twenty seconds every possession like they did against Tennessee
DJ Burns. He's the star of the NC State team,
(13:32):
a bonafid lovable hero that has emerged the round mound
of rebound the new version points, rebounds, assist more than
twenty two Mark Sears, engine of the Alabama offense, point
guard more than twenty eight and a half points, rebounds
and assists. And Grant Nelson he's a swing or a miss,
(13:53):
almost nothing in the middle. I think he's going to
have a good game. I think Bama plays well against Yukon.
Greg on our staf. Yukon's one been up by thirty
points in all four of the games so far, sooner
or later somebody has to give them a little bit
of a game. I think Grant Nelson goes for more
than nine and a half points. That pays buck ten
to one. If you go to prizepicks dot com, put
in my name Clay, download.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
The app today. It's fun.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Does any of that make any sense at all to you?
It makes makes perfect sense. And I need you to
nail this one because I think Carry's going to Costco
on Monday. Good heavens the damage on the credit card.
Who knows what's gonna happen. So that's right, I get
these picks right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
We need to hit uh four to four picks ten
to one payout again. Go download the app prizepicks dot
com slash Clay. You can play in Georgia, you can
play in California, you can play in Texas, and it
can help Buck cover Carrie's bill at Costco if we
hit fingers crossed gifts for the people. Prize picks dot
com code Clay.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
He's Buck Sexton, He's Clay travels Together.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
They're breathing sanity into an insane world.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
That was in the Wall Street Journal in their editorial
pages yesterday. There's been a lot of talk, and we've
certainly discussed it a great deal in the last three
years on this show, about how university should handle student
protests and speakers that are unpopular on campus and all
of these different aspects. And I don't know if we
(15:19):
mentioned the Vanderbilt University college kids who protested against Israel
by occupying university university facilities and refusing to leave.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
But the president of vander I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
The chancellor may be president whatever you want to call him,
wrote a piece and it says free speech is alive
and well at Vanderbilt University. Now full disclosure. I went
to Vanderbilt for law school. I met my wife there.
I absolutely love this school. Okay, so and my wife
graduated from the law school recently. So if you don't
want to believe my opinion here because I'm gonna lum,
(15:56):
certainly I can understand it. But I've ripped plenty of
colleges that I've gone to. You heard me rip gw
to High Heavens over the fact that they had death
to martyrs on the university library as a protest against
against Israel. Responding to defend itself, I thought this was interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Buck.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
There were around twenty eight students, twenty seven students.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
I want to read a paragraph for you.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
On Tuesday, twenty seven students violated the rules when they
forced their way into a closed administrative building, injuring a
community service officer. In the process, students push staff members
and screamed profanities.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
What ends up happening?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
They arrested and charged three students with assault. One student
was charged with vandalism. These are criminal charges. The remaining
twenty five students who were protesting have been suspended for
violating university policies and and violating the speech codes. And
(17:04):
they are saying here teaching students the importance. This is
the chancellor teaching students the importance of upholding rules for
free expression. Doesn't squelch their right to voice their opinion,
it protects it. Free expression is alive and well. But
basically at Vanderbilt, if you violate the law, you're going
(17:25):
to be charged with a crime and you're going to
be suspended from the university.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
I love this.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I love a university coming out and saying, look, you
have the right to share whatever opinion you want. Nobody's
saying these kids can't demand the divestiture of Vanderbilt's connection
to Israel because they want to support Palestine. But if
you shove police officers and you trespass and occupy university
buildings and refuse to leave, there will be consequences. And
(17:55):
so I want every university doing more of this. Whatever
the beach is, if you're going to allow students to
take over a campus, eventually you give a Heckler's veto.
So to speak for speech on campus and everything else.
This is the right move I think.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I think that there are big opportunities here for a
number of educational institutions. You know, we partner with, for example,
Hillsdale on this show. They're already doing the you know,
like constitution patriotic real history teaching. But I think that
there's an opportunity for other schools who aren't known necessarily
(18:33):
as conservative institutions to just take the same path, the
pro education path, and watch their enrollment swell, watch their
donations increase, watch their rankings, which you know, I know
we still have a little bit of a fixation as
a society on like, oh what's this school rank or
what's that school rank? But for example, I mean, I
(18:56):
just look at the University of Florida, where my wife went,
and this is a school that has always had a
very good reputation for a public university, right, I mean
it's been but I mean in the latest rankings you
can see it's gone up nine spots since twenty seventeen,
so it is rocketing up. And these things are related
(19:18):
in my mind to not have you know, getting rid
of the DEI stuff, getting rid of the woke indoctrination.
Focusing on actual education, you can make these relatively straightforward
tweaks and have your adjustments and have some pretty profound
impact on the perception of the places as well as
(19:38):
what's actually going on day to day. So there's a
real opportunity here for schools to just say, you know,
because half the country at least doesn't agree with this stuff, right,
I mean, I think it's more than that, depending on
the issue.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, And I wanted to give a shout out too.
We mentioned the University of Florida firing all the DEI
people because the state law was passed saying hey, we're
not going to do this. University of Tech just got
rid of its entire DEI program too. So all these
red states out there, your state institutions, I give credit
to Greg abbott Ron DeSantis. This is destroying those institutions
(20:13):
to a large extent from the inside. And if you
run a company, you're bringing in these people that are
destroying your company from the inside too. I think you
have to be careful about who you hire. If people
are obsessed inside of your company with only diversity, equity,
and inclusion, I would suggest sooner or later you're going
to get your ass kicked by competitors that care about
(20:35):
serving customers for better.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
You know, there's also a.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Truism or a reality that I came into contact with
in the various government bureaucracies that I worked in in
my twenties. When you have people who are paid to
do a job and there really isn't anything productive for
them to do, they will find things to justify their existence,
their paychecks and their powers. So, you know, the I
(21:03):
think a lot of these places, especially some of the
more old school institutions, you know, universities that are you know, elite,
I think that they I'm going back here maybe twenty years,
but they thought we'll set up this DEI stuff so
that we don't get criticized for not having DEI. But
they didn't realize is once you bring in the commissars,
(21:24):
they start making demands. Yeah, once you have people who
are paid, you know, two hundred grand to give a
lecture once a semester on how racist the school is,
they're going to start making demands because one they like
the power, two their idealogues, and three they want to
be able to turn to everybody and say this is
what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Right. So it's not it's not passive. DEI is never
going to be passive in these places.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Also, you can never have somebody who says, you know what,
you're doing a really good job, because that would get
themselves out of a job. Nobody notice how nobody ever
comes in for DEI and says, you know what, I
think this company's actually doing a really good job promoting the.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Best people to get the best jobs.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Nod I person has ever said that, because if they
say it, then they get fired.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Well, I think also there's there's always work to be done.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
You've see yeah, well you've seen this with some of
the very well funded and very influential formerly you know,
gay and lesbian nonprofits right that we're that we're pushing
for for gay marriage and things like that in the past. Okay,
so then you have the Obergerfeld decision and then you
you know what are they now it's all about transgenderism,
(22:32):
because what are you going to say? We have full
legal equality? And you know, the fight is is right there.
The fight can never be over because you need the
donations and now it's all you got to make your
eight year old trends or you're a bad person.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Well not only that.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I mean, I just I think sport's a perfect example
of this. Every single person I was talking about this
some yesterday and having fun with it. Every single person
out there who is a true sports fan would be
super happy to have a gay or transgender star athlete
on their team if it meant that they were going
to beat their rival. If you told people right now, hey,
your team can be completely heterosexual but they lose every game,
(23:08):
or your team can be half gay and they win
the championship, every real sports fan would be like, I'll
take the half gay team. People just don't care, right,
Like in your own private life, if you want to
make yourself happier and love who you want to love,
I think the vast majority of people don't care. I know,
sports fans only care about wins, right, and companies should.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Care about profit.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
This is why the fight over women in men's sports
is actually so important, even from the perspective of you know,
people that don't watch a lot of professional sports, because
one of the only areas of public life where you
can see true tests of objective excellence and where objective
excellence is rewarded, yes, is professional athletics.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
It's one of the very few where everyone can see it. Right,
you could say, oh, like, look at this.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
You know Hedge fund guys performance, or look at this
doctor's number of surgeries. Yeah, but you don't have twenty
million people watching the doctor do with surgeries, right, you
do have that. So for the social impact, the psychological
impact on our society is the one area where we
can see what is what seems to be the objective
competition and that it is supposed to elevate excellence. They're
(24:18):
telling us, yeah, that six foot five guy who weighs
two hundred and forty pounds has no advantage over those
one hundred and twenty pound girls. And because if they
can get you to say that, as we've said before,
they get you say absolutely anything. They can get you say,
you know, there is no difference between a penis and
a vagina.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
It's the same thing. They can get you to say anything.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's also why you never hear the DEI people say,
you know, the US men's basketball team needs to be
more diverse. Twelve black guys, it's not really representative of
what the United States looks like. The twelve black guys
are the best, right, and people want the best. DEI
doesn't really work in sports because the best might And
(24:56):
you see where England was complaining because the English women's
soccer team was too white, and you're like, well, are
there non white players that are better that should be
on the team, Like nobody cares about anything other than
excellence in sports, and it gets shot down really quickly
in the world of sport.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
This is also honest.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
And this is also why when they say that, you know,
women make eighty seven cents on the dollar or seventy
seven cents in the dollar, whatever it is. Find me
a business that doesn't want to increase its margins by
twenty percent, and I'll find you a business that's about
to go out of business. I mean, that's just it's
also objectively obviously absurd. But these are the things you
have to believe the absurd to be a good person.
That's the central premise of the Democrat Party. You know,
(25:35):
there's something really satisfying about being able to do this
show with Clay every day because we search for the truth,
as we were just discussing, and we explore it and
take it wherever it leads us. But that's something that
editor and writer Mark Chaikin also does. But he does
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(25:58):
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(26:20):
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Speaker 5 (26:44):
Have fun with the guys on Sundays This Sunday Hang podcast.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
It's silly, It's goofy, it's good times.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Fight it in the Clay and Buck podcast feed on.
Speaker 5 (26:54):
The iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Second hour of Play and Buck kicks off right now.
We're going to discuss this drone strike that killed seven
civilian aid workers in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
On Monday a couple of days ago.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
A lot of political backlash to this in the aftermath
of the strike. The headline here up on the Daily
Mail Biden is pissed.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
That is the quote.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
They say that Joe Biden is furious and is getting
ready for a very tense phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu
after this strike killed seven aid workers. This is what
we know about it so far. IDF and IDF has
taken responsibility for this. They have said it as a tragedy.
(27:43):
They have said it as an accident, and there will
be a full investigation into how this could happen. It
was a marked aid convoy from a World Central kitchen
and they're trying to get food to people who obviously
they are are facing hunger and even possible starvation in
(28:05):
the midst of this war zone. So there's a lot
of outrage from people about this. I think that one
thing that has gotten perhaps the most attention in terms
of the response to this so far has been. Chef
Jose Andres, who is the one who has coordinated this strike,
(28:27):
has said, and team let me know when we have him.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
We have it. Okay.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
Here is Chef Jose Andres saying that what Israel did
with this strike was intentional.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
It was murder. Listen.
Speaker 6 (28:38):
And this happened over more than one point five one
point eight kilometers, So this was not use a bad
luck situation where oops, we dropped the bomb in the
wrong place or or no. This was over one point
five one point eight kilometers with a very defined humanitarian
convoy that had signs in the top in the roofs.
(29:01):
I'm very colorful, lolo, that we are obviously very proud of.
But that's very clear who we are and what we do.
But I know is that we were targeted deliberately, not
as Tom until everybody was dead in this conboy.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Targeted deliberately, he says Jose Andres.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
This is a celebrity chef who's put together World World Kitchen,
World Central Kitchen play. I just think that it's important.
First of all, Jose Andres is somebody who at the
very beginning of this meaning right after October seventh, was
very vocal calling for a ceasefire right away. So the
people who have called for a ceasefire after what we
(29:41):
saw on October seventh, or I think, acting in bad faith,
they generally wanted Israel to suffer a horrific terror attack.
If someone had told me that they wanted to call
for and there were some people who said this very few,
a ceasefire with al Qaeda and the global Jihat after
nine to eleven, I would have only had four letter
words to say to them about it. I think, and
(30:04):
I think that a lot of Israel and the Israelis
and the Jewish people feel the same way as they should.
The notion that this was intentional. Let's unpack this for
a second. If Israel wanted to blow up every AID convoy,
they could blow up every AID convoy, and there's nothing
the Palestinians could do to stop them. In fact, if
they wanted to destroy every standing building in Gaza, everything
(30:25):
and kill everyone in Gaza, they could do so, and
there's nothing that the people of Gaza could do to
stop them. This only makes their actual mission more complicated.
I always say, we say on the show, look at incentives.
There is no incentive put aside the moral calculations here
for a second. There is no combat incentive for the
Israelis to do this. And I'm reminded of the horrific
(30:48):
mistake that we made, or the Biden administration made, during
the withdrawal from Afghanistan. We blew up a car with
I think six or seven kids. It was a father
and his six or seven children. We said it was
a suicide bomber. We hit a drone we were following
the car. We turned the whole thing into charcoal, and
(31:08):
that was America. These kind of mistakes, as awful as
they are, do happen.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
In war one hundred percent. And that's what exactly where
I was going to go to. I think we killed
ten innocent people in Afghanistan with the idea this guy
was driving around with a suicide bomb or a bomb
in his in his vehicle, and it turns out that
he was a dad coming home from a work day
and we blew up his whole family.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
And that doesn't mean he did not do that intentionally.
I can say, you know, knowing the people that make
these decisions, and the Biden administration did not do that intentionally.
They didn't say, blow up a bunch of kids. Nobody
wanted that to happen. It was a colossal screw up.
There was no accountability for it. But that's another conversation.
Speaker 6 (31:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
And by the way, intent is important here because the
way that that celebrity chef is phrasing things, he's making
it sound like they intentionally killed these individuals.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
It doesn't.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
They could have intentionally targeted this group with the idea
being that it was somebody else, as happened in Afghanistan.
But the real intent here, which we seem to be forgetting,
was the intent of Hamas to kill as many Jews
as possible without fail. What Israel has done since then
(32:24):
is try to respond to guarantee that Hamas cannot do
again what it did on October seventh. And so I'm sorry,
I don't have a lot of sympathy.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
For anyone who is allowing.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Hamas to still exist in all of the Gaza region.
That's why this is going on. Hamas began this war,
and now that they are reaping the consequences of beginning
the war, I don't have any desire for Israel to
stop until they have ended Hamas's ability to do this
(32:59):
again for potentially generations, maybe forever.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Now.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
The challenge, of course, is when you are dealing with
people who believe that they are going to die and
be martyrs and get seventy virgins, when you are dealing
with their rational people, dealing with them rationally in fighting
a war creates a whole other generation of people who
(33:23):
are going to continue to want to rain down depredations
upon the Israeli people. That's the reality of where they are.
And so the idea that what I don't like is
when one incident like this turns into a major flashpoint
of oh, this is unacceptable. Israel is saying, I believe
buck that they have killed somewhere in the neighborhood of
(33:44):
fifteen thousand Hamas fighters and people in gods are saying
there's thirty thousand people that have been killed. It's hard
to figure out exactly what the numbers are, what percentage
are combatants, what percent are so called innocent lives, And
the reality is this is impossible to do without there.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Being some loss of innocent civilian life. And your point
is a good one.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
If Israel wanted to carpet bomb Gaza and basically wipe
Gaza off the face of the earth, he'll kill everyone
there they do.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
It Plase, Yeah, there's nothing that they could have done
it on October eighth. They could have done it on
October eighth.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
They could have rained down Holy Hell upon Gaza and
cease to have anyone alive. Basically in that entire footprint,
they've actually tried not to. And I thought it was
Douglas Murrie was a buck who made the argument that
you talk about what is a what is a justifiable response,
what is commensurate with the proportional response that is allowed.
(34:43):
Nothing that Israel has done is as evil as what
Hamas did to Israel on October seventh, None of it,
because their intent from the get go has been to
try to avoid killing anyone but enemy combatants, and Hamas
has hidden enemy combat all throughout places where innocent people
would be hospitals, schools, churches, synagogues, Muslim places of worship.
(35:09):
They have hired hid people wherever they could to try
to make Israel look like the bad guy whenever they
go after.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Them, I mean Hamas fighters in the name of the
Palestinian people, and with orders from above to do this,
gang raped and then murdered Israeli women.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
And Israeli teenagers. They did that.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
When someone does that, the only response in a just
world is to hunt them down and kill them. And
they haven't killed all of the Hamas fighters, so the
fight is not over until they do. And this is
how I felt about bin Laden and Alcada and what
they did to us on nine to eleven. So I
afford our Israeli brothers and sisters the same rights of
(35:52):
self defense as I would afford the American people and have.
So I don't see this the way that the jose
Andres's of the world do that there's some kind of uh,
you know, moral parody here and then it's oh, fog
of war and both sides are doing these bad things.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Uh, the the just.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
The only thing that Hamas did on October seventh was
pursue evil down into the depths of hell and try
to kill as many people who were defenseless and who
are innocent and who had done nothing to them as
they possibly could, and mutilate them and sexually abuse them.
And it didn't advance their interests in nation state. It
didn't advance It wasn't it wasn't about some kind of
(36:32):
territorial dispute really, ultimately, because that's not going to get there.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
It wasn't anyway, buck even a military attack right like,
wasn't as if they were trying to do something to
the people who were actual soldiers.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
Only ask yourself this, what is the concession that Hamas
thinks that it was going to get from doing that
and also taking the hostages. They didn't take hostages so
that they could negotiate a long term and durable peace
and then return them all. As you know, they've killed
hostages in their custody and sexually abuse them as well.
They did all this out of just sheer malice. It
was just an act of malice and hatred and viciousness.
(37:08):
And the only way to respond with that. I mean,
if someone you know breaks into a home, you know,
rapes and murders of family, and then walks out and says,
you know, I want to have a conversation, but the
challenges I've had in life, the proper response is to
execute that individual. And that is what the Israelis are
doing by chasing down the Hamas fighters who came into
(37:28):
their country and did this. And I think it very
strange that people that I know, I'll say this even
on the right, who.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Have who have shown.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Clarity when it came to our fight against the jihattists,
against the al Qaeda and its affiliated entities, basically the
global jih hottiest ideology or really just ge hottest because
it's always global.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Those some of those same voices.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
Are thinking that somehow the Israelis aren't in a similar struggle.
There actually are in a similar struggle. The parallels are
very clear to me. I don't see why anyone on
the right wouldn't understand that.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
If people from Mexico or Canada, but anywhere on our
border crossed over and killed twelve hundred innocent people. Do
you think we would stop because we accidentally killed seven
innocent people or seven thousand innocent people, if we thought
that we had not ended the threat that that could
ever happen again. Of course not so I wouldn't expect
Israel to do anything less.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
And Mexico and Canada would never would never do that
as governing states, the people in that country, in those countries,
would never do that. And I need to say, oh,
all people are capable of evil. It's different in the
areas of Gaza and the West Bank. They I have
friends who have interviewed mothers in the West Bank, for example,
(38:49):
who lost their children as a in a suicide bombing.
This is back in the earlier days of the Second
into Fada in the early two thousands, and the mothers
beam with pride that you know, they're twenty year old
went into a pizzeria in Jerusalem and blew up, you know,
a dozen people and had ball bearing shredding people's you know,
(39:09):
faces and lungs, and they thought that was great. Yeah,
I thought that was really And that's widespread. Just to
be clear, that's widespread. The Hamas entity gives money to
the families of suicide bombers.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
And still does to this day. So this is it's official.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
It's official policy from all the way on down to
be as vicious and inhumane as possible. And it is
and this is strggedy to say that it is ultimately
rooted in hatred of the Jewish people. And that is
just the truth from somebody who has seen it himself
by being over there and understanding the mentality of these jihadists.
So I get that for people like Jose Andres, they
think that all people can be bad, and why don't
(39:48):
we all just get along, and why can't we all
be friends. Maybe we can get along when every Hamas
fighter is dead or in prison and Hamas is no
longer governing Gaza. I think then the Israelis and the
Palestinian people have a real shot at having a conversation
about the future. Until then, I don't think there is
a conversation to be had. That's how I see it.
(40:10):
Eight hundred two two eight two. If you think I'm wrong,
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Speaker 3 (40:17):
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Speaker 4 (40:18):
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(40:40):
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(41:01):
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Make your plans now to go see it in theaters
next weekend.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
Don't miss the day of the Clay Travis and buck
Sexton Show.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Welcome back in Clay Travis buck Sexton Show. Join now
by the host of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. He
has done a phenomenal job, writer, narrator, producer, Emmy Award
winning best selling author. And that's a lot of that's
a lot of aspects out here.
Speaker 5 (41:32):
Mike.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
We appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
And we were talking about it a little bit earlier,
and I was even reading, i think at the Wall
Street Journal recently a story about people who are younger
in their twenties starting to embrace plumbing and hemreting Llayaway.
It's how gen z is becoming the tool belt generation.
(41:54):
Are you optimistic, Mike that a lot of people are
maybe stepping into jobs that they didn't foresee twenty years ago,
people being interested in.
Speaker 5 (42:02):
Well, it's a little early for a victory lap, although
I'd love to take one. We've been at this for
sixteen years now, you know, trying to challenge the idea
that the best path for the most people is the
most expensive path educationally, and also trying to shine a
light on about ten million open positions right now, very
few of which require a four year degree. These jobs
(42:23):
require training, vocational education, trade schools, and so forth. So
it's a bit like pushing a boulder up a hill,
or maybe turning around a tanker, you know, in the
middle of the ocean. Pick your metaphor, but it takes
a long time to challenge those kinds of stigmas and
stereotypes that surround the trades. This article got my attention,
(42:45):
and everybody on my social pages all tapped me on
the shoulder and said, look, this is really encouraging. You know,
it's not what a lot of people expect gen Z
to do, right. This is the generation that is most
often targeted, is lazy and entitled and spoiled and all
this other stuff. But it's like they got the memo
(43:07):
and they've looked around and they've seen a lot of
diplomas hanging on a lot of walls and concluded quite
rightly that it's not necessarily an indication of what you've learned.
It's an indication of what you paid. It's a receipt
right and one point seven trillion dollars in student loans
is no joke. And gen Z doesn't want any part
of it. They want to learn a skill that's in demand,
(43:30):
and I think that's good news.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
Hey, Mike, where do people who are thinking about there's like,
how you know, if you're somebody who's let's say you're eighteen,
you're senior in high school and you're considering it, what
are the some of the pathways? I mean, is it
just applying to trade school? There are apprenticeship programs, and
how do people learn more about, for example, what would
be a particularly in demand trade in their area or
(43:53):
particularly high paying trade in their area?
Speaker 3 (43:55):
What are the resources?
Speaker 5 (43:57):
Well, you can't possibly grew up by learning how to weld.
Welding is like the gateway into the skilled trades. My
foundation has trained hundreds of welders. We've helped a couple
thousand people get the training they need to start whatever
trade they're into. So, to answer your question, microworks dot
(44:18):
org shameless plug all kinds of information on my site,
along with a million dollars right now we're giving away
next month in scholarships for trade schools. But there's so
many ways to go buck. I mean, they're certainly community
colleges and their obvious trade schools all over the place.
A lot of big companies today have their own internal programs.
(44:40):
You know, when we took shop class out of high
school forty years ago, we really kind of unleash the kraken,
you know, that decision removed from view so many vocations,
and so we went through a period where a lot
of millennials didn't even get a look at what works
(45:00):
like on that side of the workforce anyway. So it's
been a long road back. But the resources are all
over the place. Companies are falling over themselves to hire,
the opportunities to get training are everywhere. I'm I can't
overstate it. It's been one of the great unreported stories
in my lifetime, the skills gap, ten million open jobs,
(45:23):
all that opportunity sitting around. At the same time, we've
been told you're screwed if you don't get a four
year degree. It's literally the opposite.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
I think that's so important, Mike, because you mentioned the
one point seven trillion dollars in student loan debt. Let's
say there's an eighteen year old who's listening to us
right now, and his options are, I can take out
tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get an
English major nothing wrong with that degree, which is not
necessarily going to lead me towards being better at any
(45:55):
particular profession. Or I can go start being a plumber
at eighteen. You're nineteen years old, you're stacking tens of
thousands of dollars in assets, and you're starting off when
the college kids coming out at twenty two or twenty three,
in tens of thousands of dollars in debt, you could
have tens of thousands of dollars in savings. How much
do you think people are now recognizing that? And are
(46:18):
people still not aware of how much money there is
out there in plumbing or elect doing electrical work or
all these other things you mentioned welding. What else would
you tell people that there is abundant opportunity in if
they'll just go grab it.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
Electricians. Electricians are in super short supply. Plumbers, steam fitters
pipe fitters, heating and air conditioning guys. I mean, I
can't even tell you. If you're not making six figures
and you're in that space, you're either just getting started
or you're unwilling to go to where the work is.
But even then, I mean, the work is pretty much everywhere.
(46:53):
The track clay in your question is really the reason
that I'm not in politics, I can't. I'm sure there
are some eighteen year olds listening right now, but I
don't know who they are. I don't know what their
skills are, I don't know what their attitude is. Right,
and so much of what our elected officials do, and unfortunately,
(47:15):
what guidance counselors do is they paint with a really
broad brush, and you wind up hearing from a lot
of people who have a certain amount of influence that
this is what your kid should do, or this is
what you should do. And I think it's that tendency
to talk in platitudes and paint with a broad brush
that's brought us to the place where we are right now.
(47:36):
We're still a country of individuals, and your kid, your
eighteen year old kid, might very likely be wired in
a profoundly different way than mine. So I'm kind of
stingy with advice in terms of telling groups of people
what to do. But you can't ignore the big trends.
You can't ignore ten million open positions right now. You
(47:57):
can't ignore you want to hear some really horrible math.
The number that scares me more than one point seven
trillion in student loans is five every year for every
five tradesmen who retire to replace them. Now, that's been
gone on for over a decade, and when you start
to just extrapolate that out, what you realize real fast
(48:20):
is this is not just a conversation about companies who
are struggling to recruit talent or kids who are struggling
to find a path to prosperity. This is a conversation
about how long Clay Travis and bucksex and want to
wait for a plumber when they need one, or an electrician.
Every single person listening to this has skin in the game,
(48:41):
because every one of your audience members shares my addiction
to smooth roads and affordable electricity and indoor plumbing and
a long list of other stuff that we've been taking
for granted long before Dirty Jobs went on the air.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
You know, my uncle is a tradesman and a locksmith,
skilled locks with through the specialty stuff for you know, corporations,
and and my brother in law is actually a welder.
Carrie's brothers a welder, and one thing I hear from
both of them is they just don't have the time
to do all the jobs that people want them to do,
which is not a thing you often hear from that manyfolily.
(49:15):
There's so many offers to do different work in different
places that they can't get to it all. So, Mike,
I mean, I'm experiencing that for my own, uh you know,
extended family, what they're seeing out there. I'm just wondering
to what degree. Also, when you're you know, you're the
CEO of Mike Roworks Foundation, you're encouraging young people to
go into this, but you know, entrepreneurship, small business ownership.
I mean, it's been my experience from people I know,
(49:37):
some of who have become very successful business owners, that
a lot of them start by working for a business
in the trades.
Speaker 5 (49:45):
And this is this is part of the sort of
the disaster scenario. When we took shop Class out, we
also impacted not just the skilled workforce, but the the
entrepreneurial gene. The path to a small business so often
begins with the mastery of a trade. I mentioned welding before,
(50:09):
because you know, I know people who are underwater welders today.
They make three hundred thousand dollars a year. I know
others who are tig welders, you know, who are making
one hundred grand. And I know some who are making
less than that and are basically punching a clock. But
the most interesting cohort are the welders who hired another welder,
(50:31):
or more likely, hired an electrician and some HVAC guys,
and then bought a couple of vans and started a
mechanical contracting company. Those guys are everywhere, and they are
the engine of our economy, and their success stories aren't
told nearly enough because they start by doing something that
so many parents have come to believe as a vocational
(50:54):
consolation prize. I don't want my kid to be a welder.
The hell you don't, man. I can give you example
after example, and Buck, just a quick sidebar. I don't
know if you'll remember this, but I saw you ten
years ago. I think you were filling in for Beck,
and you did a story on one of my favorite
stories of all time. Nobody talks about it today, but
(51:16):
it was a message to Garcia. It was a story
about initiative, and it's a story about work ethic, and
it's a story about the willingness to cheerfully take hold
of a thing and lift. That's part of this conversation too,
and my foundation, you know, we award work ethic scholarships
because we're not just looking to fill an existing hole.
(51:40):
We're looking to find people who are willing to show
up early, stay late, take a bite of the crap sandwich, cheerfully,
volunteer for whatever task is at hand that's still for sale,
that still works. And if gen Z is the cohort
that steps up to do that with the tool belt
and a new understanding of what a.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Good job is, God bless them, Mike. Last question for you.
You mentioned parents or grandparents. How much encouragement do you
see from them? And I know there's a lot of
people out there that are worried their kids are not
working hard enough, maybe they're not making great grades in school,
but they do have that work ethic and they're trying
to find a way. I think most people have no
idea that you can make six figures doing a lot
(52:21):
of these jobs. Do you think parents and grandparents are
making their kids aware enough of that opportunity as well,
or do you think they've been sold the idea that
only success comes from the pathway of college. You can't
do anything else.
Speaker 5 (52:36):
Again, I hate to paint with a broad brush, but
the short answer is yeah, by and large, we have
an idea in our head about what a good job
looks like. And look, most parents also want something better
for their kids than whatever they had. The problem is
what is better? Right? I mean, we get to decide
(52:56):
how much debt is good. We get to decide if work,
for instance, is the proximate cause of our unhappiness. There's
a very popular narrative in this country right now that
says that it is. That's why you'll see support for
Bernie Sanders thirty two hour work week crazy. But if
you believe in your heart that the reason you're unhappy
(53:19):
is because you're working too much, or if you believe,
like genuinely believe in your heart that you're going to
be happy when you retire, then you've bought into an
existing narrative that is in fact persuasive, and it's persuasive
because it's mirrored constantly in sitcoms and movies and advertisements.
We are surrounded by this idea that work is the enemy,
(53:43):
and that you're a failure if you're a parent, if
you don't get your kid into a proper school. So yeah,
I would say to parents who believe that you might
be right.
Speaker 3 (53:54):
Maybe your kid.
Speaker 5 (53:54):
Is exactly wired to do all of those things, but
you might be wrong. Put all the options on the table,
have an honest conversation about the realities of debt and
the advantage of learning a skill that's in demand. My
final thought is, you know this. I'm holding my cell
phone in my hand right now and I'm looking at
(54:15):
it because that is a liberal arts education and it's free.
All the information I learned when I was in school
in nineteen eighty four is right there. Man. If you're
curious and you really want to learn whatever whatever floats
your boat, you can watch a lecture on it right
now for free at MIT or Brown or Yale.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
It's all there.
Speaker 5 (54:39):
Learn a skill first, master a trade, go to work.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
Get rich.
Speaker 4 (54:45):
Mike, what's the website? One more time for anyone listening,
cause I think some people listening are really interested in
following up and learning more.
Speaker 3 (54:51):
Mike Ka, I believe is the website micro dot org.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
He was fantastic you gave him the last the line there,
but man, I know people love that. We'll take some
of your reactions as we close up. Shop Buck what
you got for us.
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Speaker 3 (55:54):
Sometimes all you can do is laugh.
Speaker 1 (55:57):
And they do a lot of it with the Sunday
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