Shownotes Transcript
Under Biden, Americans' cost of living skyrocketed. Food, housing, auto insurance. Lawsuit abuse is a big reason everything's more expensive today. Frivolous lawsuits cost working Americans over $4,000 a year in hidden taxes. President Trump understands the problem. That's why he supports loser pays legislation to stop lawsuit abuse and put thousands back in the pockets of hardworking Americans.
It's time to make America affordable again. It's time to support the President's plan. Welcome in, Tuesday edition, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show. Congratulations to the Florida Gators.
Buck Sexton and I both nailed it, said the Florida Gators are going to win the NCAA tournament. They did in a really fun game last night. We'll maybe have a little bit of fun with that. Buck's wife, Carrie, is a Florida Gator alum, and I know many of you out there listening across the country are Gator fans as well.
Houston Cougar fans, probably great season. Probably not going to be as angry at me today and the talkbacks as they were yesterday since Florida won, covered, as I told you they were going to do. We'll have some fun with that. We also will continue to be CNBC and...
Fox Business since everybody is suddenly obsessed with what the day-to-day movement of the stock market is. Let me go ahead and tell you right off the top. It is the Dow is up roughly a thousand points today. For those of you who have been obsessively following the stock market during the Trump battle.
S&P 500 up about 2.5 points, 2.5% that is, and the NASDAQ up about 2.5%. So I am your business beat writer here, giving you the absolute latest on the stock market in all seriousness. Stock market is bouncing back quite a lot, as we told you it was likely to do. And I saw Buck...
Something that I thought kind of perfectly epitomized the way the market is being used to attack Trump right now.
CNN yesterday, when the stock market was down, had the stock market ticker on their screen constantly all day long. Hey, it's down this, it's down that. Today, the stock market is surging, going to have one of its best days in probably months, maybe years. And CNN, at the time that I was watching it, did not have the ticker showing that it was back up substantially. But...
So again, general lesson here, they are going to use whatever they can to attack Trump. The stock market is going to go up and it's going to go down. I told you if it's below where it is today, 18 months from now, and if the inflation is up, I'll come on and I'll wear a clown costume and I'll tell you, hey, you know what? I was totally wrong.
I think it's going to resolve itself. I think by the summer, many of these trade disputes will be decided. The battle with China is going to be longer lasting because China has been for decades now taking advantage of the global free trade marketplace to rig its game in its favor. And it will take a long time, I think, to potentially get a resolution there. But...
We told you at some point water is going to find its level. The markets have seemingly adjusted to this trade war that is now underway. Big drops Thursday, Friday. Big bounce back to
And we will see kind of how this plays out. But I think you should know that the main attack here is just find anything that is negative and decide to use it as a cudgel against Trump. Other news today, Buck's last radio show as tomorrow.
You're going to be on tomorrow, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. I thought you were out. I thought you were out tomorrow, too. No, it's my last full day. And for those of you who are saying, like, how do you know it could happen? Yes, it could happen, like, in five minutes. Let's hope not, because I'm in the middle of a show. But I would go with my wife to the hospital. But because the baby's gotten a little big, the doctors would like us to induce. So that's why we have a set date. So you are inducing tomorrow. But you're going to be on the show tomorrow.
I'm going to be on the show tomorrow. I'm finishing the show tomorrow, grabbing my go bag with the wifey, going to the hospital. Okay. I thought you were at the hospital tomorrow. Okay. So Buck has one more show. I'm actually going to do a live segment from the hospital during the...
Be like, Clay, here I am at seventh floor of the Miami Presbyterian. You're going to be the sideline reporter of the baby delivery. Okay, I thought today was the last day. You'll be in tomorrow, and then the baby is scheduled to arrive. So Buck in his final moments of getting ready for a baby to arrive. All right, what's your take as we sit here and the stock market does, as the stock market does bounce back,
How many days in a row do you think it would need to bounce back for the latest, oh my goodness, the world is burning down? Remember when it was the first term, everything Trump did, World War III would trend. When he killed Soleimani, it was...
Immediately, every decision that he made was in some way going to lead to imminent catastrophe. And then by and large, none of that occurred. And the one thing that actually caused the biggest calamity was something he was not responsible for at all, which was COVID escaping from a Chinese lab in January of 2020. And that sort of set the whole world on fire. But Trump had nothing at all to do with having caused it in any way, unless you want to say
hey, Fauci had something to do with it from years and years ago, which I think is fair based on gain-of-function research. But you would think that people would have learned their lesson, but they just have to run around. These left-wingers and many of their legacy media allies say,
as if we are in the midst of an unprecedented catastrophe over and over again, and the catastrophe is constantly shifting. The signal leaked Jeffrey Goldberg Atlantic story was going to burn everything down. Now that's completely gone, and the new thing is, oh, Trump's tariff battle is going to destroy the world. That's the new calamity. Well, they've had to come to grips with something in the anti-Trump media, which is that
Their credibility in the public's mind, and I mean that broadly. I mean that even for Trump voters, right? It's just evaporated. We're in a totally different world now. Just the front page of the New York Times is not enough to convince someone of anything's truth anymore broadly. Everyone recognizes, I think, much more clearly than ever before that Trump,
The media is running anti-Trump ops on a regular basis, choosing what to cover, how they cover it, everything. And so, Clay, they no longer have the ability. They no longer have the ability to induce, there's that word again, to induce panic across the country the same way. Now, their audience still demands it and wants it at some level, but even they, I think, have become a little bit numb to Trump.
The synapses are kind of fried for the libs. They can't get themselves quite as freaked out now because we were told even a matter of, what, six months ago that he would be Hitler. And now we're seeing, no, it's actually fine. It's all fine, libs. You know, this was the one thing when I was with Bill Maher on his show, and, you know, he just had dinner with Trump recently.
Yes. I tried. The one thing that I tried to convince him of that I thought I might make a little ground is I said, I promise you Trump is not Hitler and it's all going to be fine. And he refused. He said, I disagree. I think I think the country's over if he wins. Well, now we just went and had dinner with him. So put that one put one in the column for the Buxter was speaking truth to to Mr. Bill Maher on that, obviously. So, Clay, this is.
the administration continuing to keep promises and also, I think, to be very focused on what the agenda is, irrespective of whatever the media says. And that's the Trump doesn't give a...
You know what about what they say is actually a powerful political tool right now or it's a powerful political reality. And I think he should continue to do this. They also we haven't mentioned it. We'll get into it more later. Supreme Court just came down five or on the Alien Enemies Act deportations. And the White House is going to be able to continue to do that. And I know there's a change of venue. We can get into some of those specifics.
But it is not, in fact, the case that this was open and shut. Trump can't do this. No, actually, Trump can. So we should continue to look at that as well. But I think on the economic side of things, they're really running out of stuff to tell us
Is going to cause the depression because of Trump, right? They're running out of levers to pull here on this one, because if this was supposed to be Black Monday, as they were saying, as Kramer said, the to whatever degree anyone thinks that guy should be listened to. I think the answer should be almost not at all. But what are they going to keep saying this? Is this going to be the walls are closing in with the impeachments all over again? You know, I think that, uh,
They still are completely ineffectual at their efforts to derail this administration, which is to the benefit of the American people. Yeah, I think that's totally true. And I think it's important. Again, I'm pulling up since I'm the stock market reporter right now. You know, your stocks are basically the exact same price as they were in May of last year.
So 11 months ago, if you did not feel, as I would imagine most of you did not, 11 months ago, if you did not feel like you were on the verge of imploding...
Then stocks go up, they go down, and I believe that we will soon continue that upswing in the Trump era over the next couple of years. But you don't know when the average stock market price every year on average goes up 8% or 9%, but there's a wide range of how that can go. And I would just say, look at prices back in May of last year. If you weren't panicked...
If you weren't sitting around staring at the walls thinking to yourself, oh, my goodness, how am I going to live? Probably take a breath and realize that you're OK. Yeah. Well, Clay, beyond that, though, you know, the stock market is just an indicator. Let's talk about America and the economy as well here. They said, meaning the people that are freaked out about Trump as a as a profession.
They said that he was going to crash the stock market with this. He didn't. It didn't happen. And this is probably the moment of maximum disruption as it relates to market perception. We'll get into some of these specifics. There's negotiations ongoing. This country's come forward and said, hey, let's figure this out. 50 countries plus already have said, all right, let's get a deal going here. So there will be a greater degree of market certainty and a greater degree of...
The economy is OK, right? The perception of stability will create additional stability with this, which which I think also, Clay, goes to Trump and his team understand these fundamental currents within the economy, not just the stock market about manufacturing, about trade, about employment, about the price of gas, the price of eggs, the price of mortgages, all of that.
All of these things are in consideration, and this team knows what they are doing and is trying to achieve something. You can just tell the Democrats were hoping for the stock market to go down 40% yesterday. Yes. Because in their minds, that would be, okay, we're back, baby, the end of the Trump presidency. It didn't happen, and now we're going to see who's right and who's wrong. And I definitely think, again, for all of you out there,
Just trust, to the extent you trust us on anything, 8% or 9% a year. Every 10 years, the S&P 500 is going to double. If you really significantly get sick to your stomach watching the stock market, then don't pay a lot of attention to the stock market.
and recognize that whatever is not going a little bit perfectly, they are going to immediately weaponize against Trump. And you don't make decisions, typically in your own life, on a day-to-day basis. You would never—I think this analogy is so good—you would never look at what Zillow says the value of your house is
and be like, oh my goodness, I've got to sell my house right now. Your house is constantly fluctuating in price. You have no idea what it's going to be worth. Most people do well on their houses because there is a significant cost associated with selling a home, with moving. Most people move into a house and they stay there for years. And if you do that, if you make a solid decision, the best financial decision most people make is buying a house and holding on to it.
Same thing's true also of stocks. We'll take some of your calls, by the way. We're also scheduled to be joined by Selena Zito, who does a good job of reporting from out in the Midwest, kind of the middle part of the country, about what she's seeing on the road and what she's seeing in all these different communities. Well, her calling card for a lot of us who remember the 2016 election is she was the one who said that people in the media and the Democrats took Trump seriously.
literally but not seriously when they should have taken him seriously but not literally and also was reporting from Rust Belt, Flyover, whatever you want to call them, you know, deindustrialized areas of the country and said, no, I'm talking about 2016 now, right? When this was still a shock to a lot of people. She was doing that reporting saying, no, people are really, this is a movement, this is real. So she's got an update now eight years later on that for us that I think, Clay, will be really interesting to hear.
No doubt. In the meantime, if you're feeling a little bit draggy right now, maybe you're sitting around and coming out of a little bit late night with the Houston and Florida game, maybe coming out of the weekend with a lot of March Madness going on. A lot of kids hitting the fields for Little League baseball, soccer. I know my kids are running around like crazy. Maybe you need a little bit more energy. I got a lacrosse game to get to this afternoon. A lot of different things going on right now, and chalk can hook you up. They will make a great match.
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Saving America. One thought at a time. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Under Biden, Americans' cost of living skyrocketed. Food, housing, auto insurance. Lawsuit abuse is a big reason everything's more expensive today. Frivolous lawsuits cost working Americans over $4,000 a year in hidden taxes.
President Trump understands the problem. That's why he supports loser pays legislation to stop lawsuit abuse and put thousands back in the pockets of hardworking Americans. It's time to make America affordable again. It's time to support the president's plan. Welcome back in Clay Travis Buck Sexton show. OK, I understand. And it feels like.
Getting a law degree was actually a good decision solely based on being in media because there are so many court decisions that are constantly coming down, not only when Trump was running for office, but now as a part of the Trump era. So let me hit you with the latest ruling that just came down in the last—what am I looking at this?—in the last 20 minutes or so.
The Supreme Court headline at the Wall Street Journal, Supreme Court lets Trump fire federal employees. The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted a lower court order that blocked the Trump administration from firing 16,000 federal employees, saying that these organizations that claim they were harmed lack legal standing to challenge the layoffs. Order was unsigned.
But two liberal justices opposed it, suggesting that it would have otherwise been a 7-2 decision. This was to overturn an injunction put in place by the U.S. District Court Judge Alsup in San Francisco requiring the reinstatement of Arsene
all of these employees that the Trump administration was seeking to dismiss. Okay, so what's going on there also was the decision that came down relating to Trump's executive power to deport individuals from this Trinidad-Raguas gang. Basically, the Supreme Court is coming in and slapping down these federal nationwide injunctions that are being put in place by these district court judges.
So Trump's executive authority and power is being reinforced by the Supreme Court, which is telling these federal district court judges, you have to lift these injunctions. Now,
We talked about this. The Trump 2.0 resistance is not coming from the legacy media. It's not even coming from the Democrat Party. It's coming from left-wing judges at the district court level that are deciding to try to enjoin, that is stop basically, Trump from undertaking his executive authority. And we talked about it within the context historically, Trump has more nationwide injunctions than Biden had in four years,
already than obama had in four years already these judges are trying to throw themselves to thwart the trump agenda and forcing the supreme court to come in and say hey you can't do this
Well, I think it's also important context that not only the number that you laid out shows that something is clearly amiss here, right? Four years versus 60 days. And he already has more injunctions. But also, Clay, in both cases of Obama and Biden, those were presidents who said openly, I don't have the authority to do this thing and then did the thing.
So those are those are presidents who were reckless about the use of executive power, just just flagrantly making stuff up, doing, you know, we're talking about, oh, is it the administration? Look, look at what they use against Trump. It's the Administrative Procedures Act. It was all due notice given and all the forms checked before you can fire a single federal employee.
With Obama or with Biden, it was, yeah, you don't owe money to the student loans anymore. We're just going to make that go away for you. We're talking about big things that they had clearly no authority to do whatsoever. So I just think that when you have it in that context, clearly...
Right-leaning judges are like, look, I may not like what's going on here, but unless they violate the law, clearly I'm not going to try to step in. Left-wing judges are, I don't like Trump. I'm going to find a way to stop him. Perfect example of this, Judge Boasberg, who has really become the pinnacle of the resistance. You know that he wasn't supposed to get the case?
I just heard this the other day. It was amazing. He wasn't the judge on duty for the flight leaving. Remember, first of all, this is in D.C., and why is this falling under the D.C. jurisdiction? There's all these questions. But Clay, he stepped in and was like, oh, no, I want this one.
That's not how that's supposed to work. The judge that hates the president isn't supposed to shove aside other judges in the rotation. Think about this, Clay. If somebody was charged with murder and some judge shoved another judge out of the way, oh, no, I want this case because everybody knows I hate this defendant. Nobody would think that was okay. It's exactly what Boasberg did.
And also, all these federal district court judges really do think that if they oppose Trump, they're also setting themselves up for promotion. Because, again, for those of you out there, and I understand sometimes your head rolls back into your head over this, there's the federal district court judge level, which is the lowest level of the district court judges. Then there's the circuit court, and then there's the Supreme Court. So these lowest level judges...
are trying to put in place, like this guy from San Francisco is trying to put in place a ruling that applies nationwide, and eventually it works its way into the Supreme Court, and they say no. And remember, the precedent that they're putting in place about executive power and executive authority applies for all future presidents.
So what they're trying to do is Trump resistance 2.0 is almost exclusively the province so far of the judiciary. And to your point, Buck, it certainly is interesting that all these judges claiming that they are trying to defend the Constitution from an authoritarian dictator. Actually, the Supreme Court is saying time after time, Trump has the right to be able to do what he's doing. And I think it's important to point out that Biden knew
Many times when he was taking action, for instance, when it came to the extension of the lack of evictions under FEMA authority, that he didn't have the ability to do that. And he even said, this will just buy a few more months for us to be able to keep this policy in place. He defied what he knew the law was.
Trump, on so many of these legal issues, when he gets up against these resistance judges, Clay, how many times have we been told, and all these people are like, especially the former conservatives or former Republicans out there, you know who they are, I'm so principled, what Trump is doing is flagrantly violating the Constitution. And then it turns out when real judges look at it, they go, no, he has the power to do this.
Time and again, remember the so-called Muslim ban that wasn't a Muslim ban? It was a countries that can't vet and have a lot of terrorists coming out of them ban. You know, they said he couldn't do that. He ended up being correct on that. The courts eventually upheld it. Right. They made some kind of a modification to the first order to clarify. But.
It wasn't some crazy idea. It was based on Obama administration designations of terror-supporting countries. But they have no ability. Trump derangement syndrome, it's so tiring, isn't it? Clay, they keep telling you they're objective. They can't be objective when it comes to this guy. What about crazily? Remember when the Colorado Supreme... I know everybody just tries to forget all this stuff happened. You don't hear it talked about very often.
But the Colorado Supreme Court said Trump couldn't be on the ballot. Yeah. And it went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. And all these people out there were saying, well, under the Confederate clause of the whatever it was, the 14th, 15th, 16th Amendment. I don't even remember what the specific battle was, but it was one of those.
They said, well, this is a really difficult legal issue. I think there's a very strong case that he shouldn't be able to be on the ballots at all. I remember reading all these editorials in the New York Times. And then the Supreme Court said, no, no, I know you can't do this. And when you get slapped down, no, by the United States Supreme Court and trying to argue, actually, they have the right to do this. I think a lot of people, it was Lucy and Charlie Brown.
You know, are you really is the football going to get pulled football going to get pulled New York Times saying no, this is a really legitimate legal argument that they've made. And then the Supreme Court says, no, I know you can't do this, Colorado. Clay, it was the Democrat apparatus that was telling us just a year ago that you can prosecute a president criminally for decisions that he makes as president. Right. Think about that.
I don't like the airstrike he did. Throw him in. Yeah, that was effectively the argument that they were making. The Supreme Court had to clarify. No, if he's acting within presidential capacity, you can't say that's a criminal matter. It's a his discretion matter.
But they needed that to be clarified, right? I mean, think, if we could run a tape play, the whole show of CNN legal experts and New York Times legal experts, they're just wrong over and over. And to your point, in some of these cases, they're wrong 9-0. Yeah, when you get slapped down 9-0. Even Sotomayor has to be like, you guys are insane. Even Sotomayor, who is herself insane. Right.
Well, even this with the San Francisco district judge, everybody's telling us, oh, we don't know whether the president has authority. We told you on this show. Yeah, this is the very province of presidential authority. Even this was seven to seven.
Even this order striking down what the San Francisco judge did was very clearly telling him, this is not within the province of your powers. The president has the ability to do this. And again, this is why so many of these rulings are not designed to win elections.
They're designed to delay. It's like if you're putting, you know, back in the day, somebody's on the train tracks and you're trying to just put a bunch of burning logs on them. Your goal is not to end the ability of the train track to exist. It's just to slow everything down. It's all dilatory tactics. That's all that's going on here. And, you know, in this order about the five, this is the one that just came down.
It's essentially saying, hey, the judge that said you have to rehire everybody needs to slow the roll here because the people that brought the suit to get them reinstated don't even have standing. Right, correct.
Correct. So they have no right to be in court on this issue. And, you know, you can't just you can't just go to a federal judge and say, hey, some federal employees somewhere else got fired. And I don't like that. So, hey, judge, I know you hate Trump. Can you make them hire them back?
And the fact that a lower court judge, Clay, went along with this sham, it just shows you how insane these people are. And they don't care. They simply don't care. This is the federal judge in Baltimore that ordered the administration to reinstate thousands of fired probationary workers. One federal judge can say that you have to rehire thousands of people in the federal government because some...
nonprofit has brought a lawsuit in his court. Get out of here. This is a judge tried to tell the president that he had to turn a plane around and return. Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty I'm actually glad I'm glad that he did that because that really that was he overplayed his hand big time and everyone saw that for what it was. By the way, because if he can do that, he can say, hey, turn the F-18 around, not allowed to bomb the nuclear reactor, turn it around.
By the way, breaking news on the tariffs. The White House has now imposed 104% tariffs on China, effective immediately in response to China's
response to us. So we are seeing things roll. This is a trade war, just to be clear. With China, we are entering trade war territory. The other countries are allies. We're going to figure out a nice deal. But China, Clay, wouldn't you agree? I mean, this is a trade war now. Oh, yeah. The gloves are off with China right now. So we'll break into that in a little bit more details. In the meantime, we talked about you. I bet a lot of you last night stayed up and watched Houston, stayed up and watched the Florida Gators.
and I hope you had some fun with the PrizePix app during the NCAA tournament. But you can continue to have fun with the PrizePix app because Major League Baseball is going on basically every day. NBA playoffs are starting in the next 10 days or so. Whatever sport you're into, the Masters are going on this weekend if you like to watch the Masters, which for many people is like a sportscast.
Spring is back. Let's get ready for summer. It's an opportunity to celebrate everything. Get hooked up right now with price picks. You can put in a $5 pick. You can play in Florida. You can play in Texas. You can play in California. You can play all over the country.
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Patriots, radio hosts, a couple of regular guys, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Now we're going to go talk with journalist Selena Zito, who did a great job covering Trump in the Midwest.
We'll talk to her at the bottom half of this hour. We've been giving you the absolute latest on everything that's taking place in the markets. Markets have come back down, but they are still in the green. That is, they are still positive for the day. Trump versus China has accelerated with the tariff on Chinese goods going to over 100%. I think it's important for many of you out there to realize that.
that we're really not talking about one policy fits all. It's going to be very different. But ultimately, this trade battle is really about the United States versus China. Yes, there's going to be some tension with the European Union, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, whoever else you want to toss out there.
But really, this is about the United States versus China. This is the big battle to be fought. It's going to resolve itself in the weeks and months ahead. But right now, Trump is retaliating for China's retaliation to us. And I guess the next question, Buck, is will China retaliate again? Or is this move by Trump to put 100% tariff on all Chinese goods that
going to actually provoke China to say, okay, let's sit down, let's talk about a way to figure this out. So we will see exactly how that pans out. Bridge Colby confirmed, not committed. We probably need to commit some Democrats, but not Bridge Colby. And so he is confirmed, and we have been talking about the liberal judges
And what they have been doing, Supreme Court, in back-to-back rulings, has given Trump the ability to continue to maintain his overall power.
executive authority. Florida Gators get the win over the Houston Cougars. Both Buck and I had the right champions in our brackets. I managed to get a very narrow victory over Buck based on being better in the Sweet 16. We both had three-fourths of the Final Four and also one-half of the championship game.
By the way, we're going to be joined by Dr. Art Laffer. We're trying to get you a wide variety of perspectives on the trade dispute. Dr. Laffer had a really interesting Wall Street Journal piece that was up yesterday online. I believe it's in today's newspaper about how to resolve the trade disputes. One of the most brilliant economists in the entire world. And so we will talk with him about this tomorrow. Okay.
Something fun, Buck. There's lots of chaos going on. Lots of craziness on a day-to-day basis. I bet there are strong opinions on this. There are reports, this was the Time Magazine cover, that we have brought back, a company has. I read all about this yesterday. I was fascinated by it yesterday afternoon. The dire wolf, which is a bigger wolf than the traditional wolf,
Has been thanks to using. DNA code. A company is saying. They have brought the dire wolf. Back from extinction. After 10,000 years. Now.
Many of you are going to be familiar with the idea of the dire wolf because you watched Game of Thrones and the wolves in that Game of Thrones multi-year saga grew into gigantic killing machines from small puppies. So I wanted to dive into this, Buck. Back in the day when you and I were young,
The book before they made the movie, Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, the entire concept is that they're able to take the DNA of the dinosaurs from these, if I remember correctly, mosquitoes frozen in amber.
And that they are then able to extract that DNA to create new dinosaurs. And obviously, the Jurassic Park franchise, in terms of movies, has remained incredibly durable and powerful for 30-some-odd years because...
Lots of people remain fascinated by dinosaurs in general. Lots of little boys, although not lots of little girls, too. I remember I think you said your nephew knows everything about dinosaurs. When I was a little kid, I knew everything about dinosaurs. There is a great deal of interest still, obviously, in the Jurassic universe.
Yes, and there are other species that could already be brought back. I think, aren't they working on mastodons? The woolly mammoth for sure. Or maybe the mastodon. The woolly mammoth, I think, is basically going to happen. In the article that I read, they are going to bring back the saber-toothed tiger. That's a little scary. They're going to bring back. So my question, I'm fascinated by the reaction of this audience too. Good or bad?
And let me give you a question to think about this, Buck. I was just out in Colorado over spring break, and I bet we have a lot of people listening in Colorado right now, and I know this has turned into a major issue all over the West. They have reintroduced wolves in lots of states and communities where the wolf had basically been eradicated.
And if you have a ranch, ranchers are furious about this because suddenly what I was told, I was in Colorado, they're like, yeah, everybody in Boulder and Denver decided they wanted to vote to bring back wolves. And all the people who live in rural Colorado were like, thanks, jerks. Like, we have no interest in bringing back wolves. And suddenly our livestock are getting killed and we're having to worry about something that we had eradicated.
My thought is, now these direwolves, there are three of them that they say they have brought back. Two boys that they named Romulus and Remus and one girl pup.
Will they, like in Jurassic Park, eventually find their way out and then they're suddenly circulating in the community? They say that the dire wolf basically covered all of North America back in the day. 10,000 years ago, if you were out, this thing was from Canada all the way down into South America. They basically roamed free. They were wiped out about 10,000 years ago.
What is your take on the idea, not only of the dire wolf, saber-toothed tiger, woolly mammoth, bringing back extinct animals, good or bad move? What's your take? Well, I love the book Jurassic Park, as all of you know. And so I find this a fascinating entry into the scientific annals that is going on right now. I think that, man, the truth is,
The same way that I've never been to Africa, but I love knowing that there's all these incredible... I'm sorry, I have been to Africa. That's not true. But I've never been on safari in Africa. I've been to places where there are no safaris. I've been to some rough parts of Africa. But I've never done safari, but I love knowing that there are lions and hippopotami and all that stuff. So I think that it's tough for us to separate out the concept of it. This is why when you brought up the ranchers,
I think that's very apropos, the concept of it versus the reality of it. A saber-toothed tiger is fine until a saber-toothed tiger eats your grandma. And then you're pretty in. This actually came up. Do you remember when, I think it was Cecil the Lion was the big story. Oh, they killed him, yes. Jimmy Kimmel was crying on TV about Cecil the Lion in Africa who on a lawful hunt was shot.
Yeah, I remember this. Yeah, it's like Cecil the Lion is crying. And look, I love animals, so I get that. And there's something that's, you know, like, I love my little dog, Ginger, so much, and yet I'm going to eat lamb chops for dinner. Like, I understand. Some of this stuff, we get a little, it's about sentimentality over pure logic, okay? But,
That all said, there was a really interesting Wall Street Journal article that I remember from that time written by I think he was a student at Harvard or Princeton who was like, you know what lions mean in my village? Yeah, I read people get eaten. Yeah.
Like, this isn't a game to us. Like, we actually have to control the population because they'll eat your dad. They'll eat your sister. Like, you know, this is a real thing that happens to real people, which reminds me of that movie Ghost in the Darkness based on a true story. And I know you all know this. And you can go see the stuffed carcasses of those lions in a museum in Chicago. Wasn't Val Kilmer in that movie that just died? Yes.
Yeah, yeah, it was a Val Kilmer movie with Michael Douglas, kind of a weird casting of Michael Douglas. But anyway, Val Kilmer was good in it, and that's based on a true story. I mean, these lions became habituated to eating people, and they're like, wow, people are slow and kind of weak. Like, let's just eat them instead. So this is all a way to say, I think for, you know, should we bring back dodo birds? Yeah, totally. Like, should we bring back species that...
But, you know, this is where you also get into clay. I'm here in South Florida, and you have the boa constrictors and also, what do you call them? The big, they look like little dragons. Anacondas. Iguanas. Yeah, iguanas. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, and they are invasive. Well, boas are definitely an invasive species. I think iguanas are too. I don't think they're native to here. They're basically pets that have escaped, and now they're killing all the native ecosystem animals off. So you have to go hunt them and deal with them. True thing also, you know that little brown bird that you guys all think of, the European house sparrow? Probably the most common bird in the entire United States. It's everywhere. A little kind of brown squat bird.
They're an invasive species from Europe, and they have killed off a lot of native bird species because they will break into another bird's nest and break their eggs. They're mean. They're mean little birds. The honeybee is an invasive species. Well, but we like honeybees. This is the point, right? We like the honeybees. People don't realize this. North America, until colonization, had no honeybees anywhere. No.
And then they slowly spread across the entirety of the North American continent. But they were an invasive species that otherwise didn't exist here. Some of you will remember this, too. There was a fear about fire ants and how they're going to keep spreading up and spreading up. And, you know, they're dangerous to people if you step on one of their anthills. And there was a briefly discussed proposal that I remember reading about. The only real natural predators for the fire ants...
They were thinking maybe we should introduce it's a South American anteater, which has like six inch long claws and weighs like 200 pounds. And then they're like, well, if we introduce that, what's its natural predator? Yeah, right. Jaguars. So you create all these problems. The food chain gets dangerous. Okay, so I am in favor of this.
Here is my thing. Can you have a dog as a pet? Yes or no. Once they introduce. No, no, no, no, no. I'm in favor of it only for keeping them in captivity. And I understand some of you are going to say, yeah, that's the whole point of Jurassic Park. But I like it also for endangered species now, because in theory it would mean there should be no animal that actually vanishes.
You should be able to get the existing DNA of all animals that are alive on Earth today, and we should be able to create a genetic Noah's Ark of all living animals here today and be able to create them. Now, I don't want... I think about this in terms of the farmers out there and the ranchers.
The idea that you would reintroduce grizzly bears or wolves that are going to attack my livestock is, I think, different than this. I would not reintroduce these animals. Something else that would be on the docket here. I believe it's called a short-faced bear. Go look up the short-faced bear. It's like a grizzly bear times three. It's a massive land predator. Yeah.
that they could also, along with the Sabre, it's from the same era as the Sabretooth Tiger, they could also bring that one back.
And I think that, you know, you're starting to see we definitely don't want that. Right. I mean, that's going to be the same way that polar polar bears hunt people. It's really the only North American land animal. Yeah, I know grizzlies can. Wolf has never actually attacked a healthy wolves have never attacked a human being in the history of North America is at least what you that's what they announced. I mean, you're going to say no, but that's what they say. OK, that's what the official statistics are. The wolves won't attack people if they're healthy, if they're rabid. That's different.
Polar bears see you and they're like, food, food. There's no ifs, ands, or buts. And the same thing would be true of a short-faced bear. So, you know, something to think about. Let me hit you with this one, Buck. My boys are obsessed with the Megalodon, which is just a giant shark. In theory, the dire wolf can be kept inside of a fenced enclosure and everything else.
My concern on this would be that we would start to create big, massive animals that are in the water, and those are a lot harder to control. Have you ever been to, say, for instance, the Atlanta Aquarium where they have the whale sharks? You know, they've never been able to, for instance, keep, I believe this is still true, a great white shark in captivity. Yes. They're impossible to keep inside of museums or aquariums, anything like that.
My concern is that some of these that we will create will get out. And can you imagine a world where suddenly you have, instead of a great white shark, you've got the Megalodon suddenly rolling around in the ocean deep? That starts to get a little bit scarier to me, but I think it's the reality of where we are going. I think you're going to see all of these extinct animals
us able to bring them back. Now, one more thing as we go to break. Some people are saying this is not the real animal because of the way they're doing the DNA coding, and that gets way more complicated and above my pay grade, but I have read some of those critiques as well.
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Heaven forbid you could find yourself facing huge court fees. Okay. That's just reality. So you want to have someone to have your back. That's where USCCA comes in handy. Uh, the, the newest sponsor on this program and, uh,
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Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Mic drops that never sounded so good. Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Under Biden, Americans' cost of living skyrocketed. Food, housing, auto insurance. Lawsuit abuse is a big reason everything's more expensive today. Frivolous lawsuits cost working Americans over $4,000 a year in hidden taxes.
President Trump understands the problem. That's why he supports loser pays legislation to stop lawsuit abuse and put thousands back in the pockets of hardworking Americans. It's time to make America affordable again. It's time to support the president's plan. Welcome back in, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate everybody hanging out with us. We got a lot of you weighing in with a variety of questions. And let's hit some of these. Selena, thanks.
Zito is scheduled to join us. He's got a Washington Post op-ed about the manufacturing universe right now in the Midwest. She's done a great job covering that area for some time and the era of the Trump Midwest surge. So we'll talk about that when she reaches out to us. And she is now with us now. So we bring in Selena Zito. She has got an op-ed in the Washington Post where she has been spending time with Midwestern workers.
Selena, I'm curious what you're hearing from people in the Midwest, an area that used to be the manufacturing hub of America that has certainly dried up in many different ways. J.D. Vance has been a huge part of his political career, is talking about the jobs that no longer exist in the Midwest. What are you hearing from voters in the Midwest? How do you think this tariff war plays for them? And how would you assess the politics of what's going on right now?
Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. You know, I cover a different world, very different than, you know, sort of the very online world. And where I'm at in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, you know, the heart of the Great Lakes Midwest and Appalachia, these people here are very happy with the tariffs. Thank you.
They have spent the past 40 years, whether it was themselves or their parents or their grandparents, watching these communities, these churches, the tax base in their communities being decimated. And nobody even wrote a story. I mean, I'm obviously being a little exaggerating here, but there wasn't this big, overt, wildfire.
worry about their lives, right, when all their jobs were lost, when everything was taken away from them. And so they look at it two ways. They look at it as being patriotic, bringing back American manufacturing, sacrificing
in their 401k for the betterment of the country, but they also look at it as leveling the playing field. And it's not just manufacturing. Talk to a rancher. They're happy, right? Talk to a manufacturer, a small businessman.
Like Tyler Merritt down in Savannah, Georgia, the guy who owns Nine Line. He's thrilled. You know, these guys are thrilled. And these are the people that placed Donald Trump into office. It was the working class that was at the heart of this election.
What'd you learn, Selena, specifically from, and thanks for being here with us, when you went to a, in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, a steel mill, and you talked to the folks at the mill, I mean, just what were your biggest takeaways, both from seeing that operation, I think very few people who don't work in a steel mill have ever really been inside one, and also their sense of
What would they say to people who claim, well, but we can never make steel the way they do as cheaply as they do in China. So why even try?
Right. So if people go and check my Twitter feed out, Zito Selena, I put the story up for free. It's a Washington Post story. It is a very detailed, long read. And it really puts you into the heart of why people feel the way they do. This isn't just a steel mill. This is the first steel mill. This is the granddaddy of them all. That was an 86-year-old hot rolling mill that I spent years.
the day watching work and watching the men and women work around it. And these workers who would traditionally be born Democrats, right? In Western PA, you're usually born Catholic and Democrats.
It just like goes together there. They are the perfect example of how the coalitions in American politics have dramatically changed. And now that the Republican Party or the conservative populist party is now the party that embraces the working man and woman. And so that's,
They're very happy, and they're willing to take a bite out of their 401ks if it means that this will be better for the future generations. And that's the way these union guys talk. Like a lot of those union workers that you'll meet in the story, they're towards the end of their career, right? They're in their 50s.
They said, this isn't about me. This is about the guy that just started at the plant two weeks ago. Guys before me did this and took sacrifices, and I'm to pay it forward and make sure that they are able to retire when they turn 60. Selena, one of the real challenges, and we played a cut from Trump talking about this, is...
Right.
What is the trajectory of changing this culture that we created where the jobs don't exist? How long does it take? And to be fair, is anything is this anything that one president can do? Or do we have to string together a lot of presidents that see this as an issue in order to reverse what's happened?
So I'm so glad you asked that. Last week, I reported out a story. There was a the law, the tallest coal stack, a smokestack in the country was was blasted and fell. It was very traumatic. It was very sad for a coal fired power plant. Ten days later, because this site is collapsed.
shovel ready. They announced they've already started to turn this plant into a natural gas plant to facilitate not just the electricity in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and parts of New York. It's going to be the largest electric power plant in the country. It is also going to power
a data center, an AI data center. There are going to be 10,000 new jobs, and it is a $10 billion investment. And that's not even before the AI data center is built. You know, Bergman was there. I was at a fracking well, and he said, look,
Our job right now is to build, build, build. It's more than drill, drill, drill. Because we, this is like the arms race. AI is like the arms race, and we have to win in this country. And he pointed to the fact that there are places like that everywhere.
coal-fired power plant in Homer City, all over the industrial Midwest that are ready and capable to be built. So I think that is where the new construction, the new jobs, and these aren't just working class jobs. These aren't just welders. These aren't just artisans that work with their hands. There are geologists there, chemists,
engineers, men and women with degrees in AI and technology. So it is a broad reconstruction of how the American economy and how the American worker approaches the next generation.
It's fascinating, Selena. You know, you're giving us this other perspective than what you'd get if you were to flip on CNBC. It's the sky is falling. And yet if you go into some of these places like you have where people have seen what happens with the offshoring of American jobs and deindustrialization of certain industries, it's
They're they're excited about the future. I just wonder, you know, what what you think they're the the hopes are and the plans are in these areas. If Trump is able to continue on this path, what does that start to look like? What towns are affected? What what industries do you think can boom?
Well, energy is at the top of the list, but also artificial intelligence, right? Those are the two big booms. If energy is going well, then that means farming is going well because, you know, energy and farming go really hand in hand together. And I think one of the big things as part of these tariffs is to give a boost to our American farmer and rancher.
So those are industries you see right then and there. And then we can talk about our universities, right? Our universities will have a bit of a turnaround in what they focus on. You know, maybe it's not your kids. You send your kid off for French literature. You know, maybe they go to school for things that are going to recreate these communities. The footprint is already there in places like Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio.
or West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, or Clayville, Pennsylvania, and all across, and not just in Pennsylvania, it's in Ohio, it's in Michigan, it's in Wisconsin. These places are already there, and these universities already have sort of the grain to begin these kinds of new developments
degrees that young people can go for, but also the trades. Like, you guys, I'm sure you've talked or listened to Mike Rowe. You know, the trades are also where we are going to see a growth and jobs that create real prosperity, where people can live in the same hometown that their parents grew up
And if they want to write and that that generational investment in a community that's worth more than money in a lot of ways. Selena, how optimistic are you? You know, we hear a lot of, hey, everything is burning down. The world's on fire. Based on what you have seen in the reporting that you have done, how would you assess your overall optimism?
I think the optimism is great. You know, I straddle two different, very different worlds. When I step on social media, I see a very different attitude in the world than what I see and feel and hear out here in the middle of the country.
And it's always remarkable to me. And it's sort of like when I said to President Trump in 2016 when I was covering him, I said, you know, voters take you seriously, but they don't take you literally. And my profession takes everything you say literally and not so seriously. And it's that same sort of dichotomy, right? It's...
It's very different in the middle of the country, and in particular among young people. You know, you see all these protests out there, and they got a lot of play on social media and the national news. However, I would argue American politics is all about addition. If you go to any of these rallies, try to find someone that's changed their mind.
You likely can't because they're the same people that voted for who lost last November. So they're not adding anything new. And I think that's the challenge right now for anything that is against what President Trump and the Republicans are trying to accomplish. I was four feet away from President Trump in Butler, California.
in July 13th of last year. In fact, I have a book coming out about it. But one thing I can tell you in the day after I talked to him and the days after I talked to him, he had this fundamental understanding that there was a reason that he did not die that day. Because there's so many reasons why he shouldn't have survived what happened.
But because of that, he will be forever changed and feels this urgency to do something because he was given that moment to be saved. Selena Zito. Yeah, great, great work as always. Thanks for your piece, The Washington Post, and everything you do to cover this. And up at clayandbuck.com, guys, we've got her op-ed link there. If you just want to go and grab it quickly, give it a read, you absolutely should. Selena, thank you so much. We'll talk to you again soon.
Oh, sounds great. Thanks so much, guys. She does great work, and we'll have some fun. A lot of great talkbacks. We'll play them for you when we come back to close out the Tuesday edition of the program. But a lot of you out there, NHL fans, NBA fans, Major League Baseball fans, please
Florida Gators, NCAA champions, as we have talked about during the course of the show a couple of times. But what sport do you love? The Masters coming up this weekend. I know a lot of you are golfers out there. Prize picks give you an opportunity to play along with whatever your sport is. You just pick more or less on all your favorite athletes and see whether or not
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Keep up with the biggest political comeback in world history on the Team 47 podcast. Clay and Buck highlight Trump replays from the week. Sundays at noon Eastern. Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Biden, Americans' cost of living skyrocketed. Food, housing, auto insurance. Lawsuit abuse is a big reason everything's more expensive today. Frivolous lawsuits cost working Americans over $4,000 a year in hidden taxes. President Trump understands the problem. That's why he supports loser pays legislation to stop lawsuit abuse and put thousands back in the pockets of hardworking Americans.
It's time to make America affordable again. It's time to support the President's plan.