BONUS: Daily Review With Clay Travis and Buck Sexton - Jun 03 2025
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This is an iHeart Podcast. Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show Podcast. Welcome everybody to the Tuesday edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay is having a great time on vacation. He was in the Bahamas. He's working on his tan.

He wears sandals year-round, so nothing new there. But he's having a good time. He'll be back with us on Friday. Just me today, tomorrow, and Thursday. You are riding with the Buckster, and we have much to discuss here. Our friend Ryan Groduski will also be with us of the Clay and Buck Podcast Network, talking to him about the latest data from CNN. It just keeps getting worse.

For the Libs and the Democrats, the numbers increasingly showing that wherever it is that you poll on any important issue in the country right now, Trump is much stronger, is doing much better than the Democrats anticipated, hoped for, and have tried very hard to prevent from being the overall perception. So we'll get into some of that. More on the immigration and border issue. Tom Homan.

The guy's just an all-star. It's so nice to see, and this is true in a number of the senior Trump administration roles, it's just so nice to have people who...

know exactly what they're doing and are totally in line with the Trump agenda. And they're making moves every day to that end. So I just think that is critical. And on the border, there may be nothing, maybe no issue that is honestly more important. I think the border and the economy are side by side. Thanks to Trump, we're not getting involved in any crazy wars anytime soon. So we shall dive into that. But I did want to take a few moments here to update you.

The story we talked about yesterday about this firebombing terror attack in Colorado and what this tells us about not only the kinds of ideological hatred that are spreading in this country under this, I think often this shield of, oh, I'm not anti-Jewish or anti-Soviet,

Semitic, I'm just anti-Zionist. Well, I don't know a lot of Zionists who aren't Jews. I think the I'm just anti-Zionist or even anti-Israel is doing a lot of work in that sentence. What is it that they really object to? And as I have pointed out to you, and I will continue to do so, there are many places around the world where there is extreme violence, there is very real oppression,

And there are plenty of ways you could argue we should put more pressure on or we should do something. Now, whether you believe we should or not is a separate issue, but we could theoretically do more. And yet, because it cannot be blamed on the Jewish people, you know, the situation in South Sudan, because it is very tough to make that about Zionism.

These individuals who are so upset on college campuses and just on streets in cities across America, they have nothing to say about it.

It doesn't even register with them. The realities of Middle East totalitarianism as it pertains to places like Iran, for example, that is not a problem that gets protests in the streets. People who think they care about women's rights on the left have no issue with Iran, at least no issue they're willing to speak about publicly, but endless issues with Israel and endless issues with Gaza.

And I think we all see what that's all about. You'll also notice this. And as I've told you before, this was the first issue in a foreign policy that I ever spent real time on. It was going on now over 20 years when I first I worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

I was an intern for Clinton's ambassador, Dennis Ross, who was ambassador. Ross was the negotiator on the Arab-Israeli peace accords under the Clinton administration. Camp David didn't work, but they tried.

I also worked at the Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations, you know, they got the Bilderbergs, the Illuminati. No, Council on Foreign Relations, I did work there as an intern. So trust me, I didn't know the secret handshakes or the secret tunnels or any of that stuff. But I worked there on the U.S. Middle East Project, which was also an Arab-Israeli peace project initiative. So I started, as many do, my academic background in Middle East studies on this issue of Israel-Palestine.

And so I do have some institutional memory. I do have some recall, not just of how it is now, but how it has been the last 20 years. And what you see is that there are a lot of people who care not a bit about foreign policy as a general matter, but they care so much about what's going on with Israel. And you say, well, why is that? Why is Israel the place? And, you know, we say these things rhetorically. I think we know why.

And I think that in the context of America, first of all, there's a tremendous amount of anti-Jewish feeling throughout the Muslim world. That is just a reality. That is a truth. You can even think to the character Borat. I always thought this was fascinating. Remember Ali? Ali G was another one of his characters. Sasha Baron Cohen, who is Jewish.

Last name is Cohen, a common Jewish last name. Sacha Baron Cohen playing the Ali G character, playing Borat, and Borat became this big famous movie. Kazakhstan is a Muslim country.

And one of the bits that Sacha Baron Cohen would do was constantly kind of satirizing the just blatant anti-Semitism of the supposed Kazakh Borat. Now, he got away with this because he never got away with it. You know, the left didn't get angry about it because he never mentioned this was a

effectively a Muslim character that he was playing. But there's a tremendous amount of anti-Semitism throughout the Muslim world. And no serious person would argue otherwise or no person who knows what they're talking about. Now, there's a lot of anti-Semitism in Europe and clearly a lot of anti-Semitism in America, too. But it is worse in the Islamic world by far. And ask any Jew you know who knows anything about these regions and they'll say, yeah, that is certainly the case.

But why is it that this goes to the front of the line? Why is this so important to the American left? Well, as I've discussed here, as I've laid forward, and I know Clay has adopted this to his own thinking as well.

This is a white versus brown conflict in the minds of the American left. The Israelis are white. The Palestinians are brown. Therefore, the moral high ground is set and unchangeable in favor of the brown Palestinians. Whatever they have to do is justified. They are oppressed. They are

They are the ones who are suffering any action, including the most heinous and vicious actions humanly possible or thinkable, which Hamas and affiliated and assorted terrorist groups on behalf of the Palestinians comprised of Palestinians have engaged in is inherently justified because they're so oppressed. I've said this before. If October 7th.

wouldn't turn people against the Palestinian cause such as it is because the cause is not an independent state the causes the eradication of the Jewish state that is the truth is obvious to anyone paying attention who's being honest but if that won't turn you against the cause or if there won't be criticism from people after that there is nothing that will make them critical of this there's nothing that will turn them and make them think that the Palestinians perhaps should look inward and take a different approach

And I think that couldn't be more clear than it is right now. This is why I remind everyone the so-called glorious martyrs and the resistance of groups like Hamas stretching back into the second intifada in the early 2000s was just a series of suicide bombings meant to bring Israeli life to a halt, to a standstill, to destroy the daily lives of Israelis and to murder as many Israelis, women and children as possible. A moral person

A moral person from any country, from any culture, of any religion or skin color, a moral person does not go into a crowded restaurant with a suicide vest on, packed with ball bearings, killing himself and everyone else there because they think that somehow this is going to achieve what exactly? Revenge? A state? No one's even clear what they want because what they want

is the manifestation of and the right to act on deep hatred. And that brings me to Colorado. And this individual, Egyptian national, came to this country claiming he wants asylum. Think about that for a moment. You know, this this reminds me of there's something particularly heinous here.

And you see this playing out in a number of different very well-known and well-made movies about World War II. But it was well-known, and some of those of you had veteran, particularly Marine and Army dads fighting in World War II, it was well-known that the Japanese, as one of their tactics, would claim that they were wounded and surrender, and then they would actually have a grenade fired.

And so they would say, please, please don't kill me. I'm wounded. I can't fight. And then our GIs would go over because our people were always trying to be humane in the most inhumane circumstances. And they would go and then they would be blown up by this person. And this was common. You see this in a whole you see this in Thin Red Line. You see this in letters from Iwo Jima, somebody who claims asylum in your country.

is on that same moral plane. They're saying, please, I need to skip the line. I'm in a desperate situation. I have to get away from my home country. My home country is so awful that if you send me back, I could be tortured and killed. Please, out of the kindness of your heart, take me in. This individual, this terrorist in Colorado,

said that he wanted asylum, used our process, used the goodness of the American people, used our mercy against us and against our Jewish brothers and sisters in Colorado who were burned severely in this attack. And now we even we have more details. We know this was absolutely not just an act of terror, but a premeditated and particularly vicious one.

It is hard to think of something that is more awful than intentionally lighting defenseless people on fire. But that is what Mohammed Saliman, who disguised himself as a gardener in an orange vest so he could get as close as possible to these individuals in Boulder, Colorado, that is what Mohammed Saliman wanted to do. And he believed his actions just, not just then, but after the fact. He believes, because he has said it to law enforcement,

that this was vengeance for, quote, his people, his people, his Egyptian. You might say to yourself, well, what is he talking about? Oh, OK. You mean Muslim, brown, non-Jews. That's essentially what he means by his people or rather the people that he associates with who hate the Jewish people.

If you do not understand these hatreds and see how they are, for one side, immovable and unfortunately central to the society, the hatred of Jews is central to the people of Gaza. Look at their textbooks. There are whole initiatives that have been going on for years to show people what is taught about Jews in the schools, such as there are schools in places like Gaza and in the West Bank.

And it couldn't be more clear which side of this issue all of us should be on. And yet you have not just radical fringe elements of the left. You have the Democrat Party itself sympathetic to and making room for this virulent anti-Semitism. This is now replaced.

The kneeling for George Floyd, you have to understand. This is filling that hole in the soul of all of these leftists in America who think that we must always be having some sort of racial reckoning. I know it isn't.

reasonable or even logical, but they view the Israelis fighting Hamas as a racial reckoning of white oppression against the non-white adversary here. And so this is why they attach themselves to this. They feel so... These people don't know anything. They don't know anything.

about the Balfour Declaration, about the Nakba, about 1948, about UN Resolution 242 or UN Resolution 338 or the 1973 war or the... I mean, go down the list. They don't know anything about the removal of Israelis, of settlers from Gaza and the destruction of greenhouses and the destruction of infrastructure and all the... They don't know. All they know is they have been told...

The Jews, the white people here who are Jews, are the bad people, and they are obsessed with the virtue signaling of marching around campus, proclaiming to care so much about the oppressed and the dispossessed. And that ideology, unfortunately, also inspires and creates far too much room for maniacs like this Molotov cocktail-throwing murderer or attempted murderer

who thought that lighting defenseless people on fire was people he had never met before, who had never done anything to him. And here we are now seeing once again, just like we saw on October 7th, there is a side of evil and a side of decency here. And every American gets to choose. The Democrats largely, for the most part, not all of them, are on the wrong side of this one.

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Leaffilter.com slash B-U-C-K. That's L-E-A-F filter.com slash buck. See your representative for warranty details. We've been talking about this terrorist attack in Colorado and Boulder. The guy was an illegal, a visa overstay illegal. And I can tell you that in the pre-Trump era, I'm pretty familiar with these stats. They would estimate something like a half a million visa overstays a year.

That's not even a number that you think of when you're generally considering illegals in the country, right? You think of the people that come across the border, which was about 10 million under Biden. We'll call it 10 million. I think that's right. Eight million officially, plus you add up all the gotaways. Nine or 10 million is where it is. And we have more people and more ways that they are gaming our immigration system and staying in this country illegally than

This is a massive problem. Last time we were talking about the anti-Semitism and the components of the ideology of anti-Semitism against, well, against the Jewish people and why so many Americans... I mean, think about this for a second. A lot of these college kids who take this very anti-Israel and very pro-Palestine or pro-Palestinian point of view, and I know there's something deeply unfair about

About the same way I said this with Iran, I extend the same thing to there are people in Gaza who, you know, there are children there. There are people who have no choice. There are people who have no political agency and they're stuck there. And it's unfair. But there are also a lot of adults who are there and aren't doing anything. And then there are a lot of adults who are doing terrible things. Right. Or rather,

There are adults who could do more to try to bring about something else. Somehow there's always there's always somebody who will fire a rocket at the Israelis in Gaza. There's not somebody who will, let's just say, try to change up the Hamas leadership situation. You know what I mean?

And somehow there are plenty of people willing to be, you know, brave martyrs, so to speak, against the Israelis. But they won't do anything to stop the madmen in their midst who are running the country. So but the same same thing is true in Iran. Right. If we had to do strikes in Iran for some reason, it wouldn't be the fault of every Iranian. But this war is hell and war is unfair. And this is reality. And we have to operate within that reality.

And, you know, you do the best that you can. We didn't want to be bombing villages in Afghanistan until 9-11, quite honestly. We didn't really care very much about Afghanistan. But then they made us care. Well, the Israelis have been made to care more than ever about their own safety and security after October 7th. So there's the immigration part of this. So that's the ideological Mideast foreign policy part of it. Now let's look at the

the truth of what's going on here with our border. It's wide open. And, I'm sorry, has been wide open. Of course, it's not wide open anymore. Trump has brought the numbers down 99%. Something unfathomable. I thought Trump would do a good job. And if I'm just being honest with you, I thought we would see a 90%, something like that, a 90%. I didn't think it would be almost zero. And the numbers now, I think they can count in the hundreds on a monthly basis how many are entering the country illegally. I mean, it is...

And this frees up. This is what I have said all along. This is so important. This frees up the resources at Border Patrol. And I've spent time with our Border Patrol guys. You got it. The more people know about Border Patrol, I think the more respect for those men and women they have. They do a tough job. Something like a third of Border Patrol are United States military veterans.

Maybe 25 percent are Latino as well, Latino Americans. So this notion that, you know, that Border Patrol is in some way a racist enterprise or that these aren't people that are, you know, they're demonized by the left as though they're doing something terrible. You know, they're rounding people up and putting them into these camps. They're protecting us.

And as we see with with this this terrorist, I know that he's a visa overstay, but OK, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is supposed to and should have gotten this guy out of the country. Now, I know he's he has claimed asylum. I think that we just need to have a shutdown of the asylum process in this country for a while until we figure things out.

That's really where we are. And all pending asylum claims just need to be, you know, maybe they come up with some very high threshold for it. But there are. And I know that's unfair, too, right? Because there are people who need a place to go, but we're not the only place they can go. The more you dig into this, almost all of the asylum claims that are making their way through our courts are invalidated by one thing alone.

And that is that these people came via Mexico. They are not supposed to pick which country they they want to get to for asylum. It's which country they get to first where they can be considered safe. So if we were serious and the Trump administration will be. But if the Biden administration had any intention of enforcing actual asylum, all right, think about it. If you're fleeing, you know, I don't know, you're fleeing oppression in Indonesia.

as a as an ethnic minority and you make your way to Mexico you're supposed to say hey Mexico I need asylum you're not supposed to go hey you know would be really cool if I can make it to America because they're rich and they have a big fat welfare state that's not how it is supposed to go

And so all of these people that are saying they claim asylum, they right on its face. We should be able to just say to them, OK, well, did you show me your asylum paperwork from Mexico? Wait, you didn't you didn't try to get asylum in Mexico. Why? Oh, because you want to just jump the line and go to America. And you're and then that's not even looking at whether they have a legitimate claim of asylum, which they don't.

Because there's not a hundred and if one hundred and eighty countries around the world all have asylum seekers all coming to America, it just means that every country, you know, pretty much, you know, we don't have a lot of asylum seekers from Liechtenstein or or, you know, Denmark. But we've got a lot of asylum seekers from everywhere else. Tom Homan is pointing out.

That this has created the Biden administration problem is something that is going to plague this country for years to come. No matter how fast, no matter how efficient the Trump administration border policies are and the and the enforcement mechanisms are, it is just mathematically impossible to fully handle and turn around just what Biden did.

Think about that. If I said to you the Trump administration's mandate is to return everybody who came under Biden in those four years illegally, never mind everyone who came before Biden illegally. That's what we'll just we'll put that to the side for a second. That number is probably too much, just logistically too much. I'd like to think that I'm wrong, but I don't think I'm wrong, because if we ramped it up and you got to a million deportations a year under Trump, which would be a lot.

Let's say you get to a million. And these are real deportage. People are going to say, but Buck, what about in the 2000s? Or what about in the 90s when we were deporting? No, a lot of that was people who were turned away. The immigration, illegal immigration, particularly in California in the 90s, was single adult males crossing the border, working and then going off and going back and then coming back again seasonally. So yeah, they were breaking our laws, but there were multiple crossings.

and they were single adult males. Now it's turned into a lot of family units, women, women showing up with children, and they plan to stay forever, and they're from all over the world. What the Obama administration did to make the numbers seem much more robust than they were was, oh, Border Patrol stopped you and just sent you back to Mexico? That's a deportation. That was how we got to the deporter-in-chief. They changed the way that they... So if we got to a million real deportations a year,

Meaning people picked up from the interior, put on a plane, and sent to their country of origin. That would be pretty impressive. Okay, well, that's $4 million. You got $6 million to go. Here's Tom Holman. This is cut 10. Just laying this out so everybody understands the scale of this problem. Play it. We are going to be dealing with this for the next 10 years.

because of the chaos they created in four years. We're out there kicking butt. We're arresting a lot of criminal aliens. We're out there looking for the bad guy. And when we're out there doing that, we got protesters assaulting ICE officers. We got members of Congress all

All of the country going to ICE facilities raising hell, saying this is their oversight responsibility. Where was the oversight responsibility when 10.5 million illegal aliens came across the border? Where is the oversight responsibility? I'm releasing over 8 million illegal aliens to this country. Where is the oversight responsibility then? This is an attack on ICE. This is an attack on the Trump administration. We're trying to fix the damage done by Biden. An attack on the Trump administration and fixing the damage done by Biden. So true.

And I just think that we all need to understand it was a choice made by Biden and his team. It was not a failure of policy. It was the enacting of policy. They wanted the illegals in this country. They wanted millions and millions of illegals to pile into the country to overwhelm the system. Rules for radicals, Saul Alinsky, overwhelm the system.

And then once you break it through overwhelming it, you can remake it. That's what they were trying to do here. And they got very far in that process. And we are playing catch up and then some. Even this administration has dialed in as they are. But now we look at the what about the fact that we were wide open for terrorist infiltration? We just had an illegal alien terror attack lighting Jewish people on fire in Colorado. We just had one. We're going to have more.

There will be more. If you were a foreign terrorist organization and you just had access to the Internet, you would have seen what was going on under Biden and known it is open season for infiltration of the United States. And this is why the gotaway issue is so is so problematic or so concerning for us, because remember.

Under Biden, and I saw this with my own eyes at the border many times, they were surrendering at the border. It's not, oh, I think the coast is clear. I'm going to make a run for it. And Border Patrol is, you know, coming after you in the pickup truck and they're running after you on foot. You know, no, no, no. That's only for the gotaways, which were a small percentage overall of those who cross. Most people, it was they would show up. They would find a hole in the fence or a gap in the fence or they'd show up at a port of entry or whatever.

They'd say, here I am. I'm claiming asylum. Oh, okay, now we have to put you through the whole process. Now you get to get released into America. We'll give you a bus ticket. We'll give you food. That whole thing. So if you know that's the process, why would you make a run for it? You make a run for it if you happen to be in that category of

You can't claim asylum because you're going to come up on that database and they know you're a risk, you're a problem. You're either a convicted murderer. And by the way, there were convicted murderers who got in the country anyway. But, you know, you're somebody that could get flagged or somebody that didn't want to have any scrutiny on him whatsoever. This is cut 11.

Tom Homan, the guy who I think knows the border better than anybody else on the scene right now. Here's what he says. Play it. Why did two million illegal aliens pay more to get away? They could have paid half of what they paid, cross the border, turn yourself in to a border control agent, get released that same day, get a free airline ticket to the city of their choice, get a free hotel room, get three meals a day, plus free medical care and work authorization. Two million people paid more to get away.

to get away. They didn't want to be vetted. They didn't want to be fingerprinted. Why? This scares the hell out of me. I've been doing this for 40 years. It should have scared the hell out of every American, what the Biden administration did. This two-man known gotaways scares the hell out of me. So I'm convinced something's coming unless we can find him. He's right. And they're tracking him down as fast as they can. But we had, it was open season on America for four years of Biden.

And now we're trying to play catch up and the Trump team is doing everything they can. But you could have never imagined that the Democrats would so grotesquely sell out their country and sell out our sovereignty the way they did for all of Biden's time in office. It's intentional. They did this on purpose. It's just sabotage.

It's sabotage. And that's one of the reasons I think so many people have seen that the Democrats are a malignant force. They sabotage this country's border and our security. And we do not know the full consequences yet. And I pray that we never find out. But we have a big problem on our hands. This terrorist, this guy letting people on fire, he's just that's just the beginning. We're going to get hit again tomorrow.

Unless the people in charge now are able to figure out who's where and stop them. Maybe they can, but it is a big ask. And I know this business. I was in that business. The whack-a-mole jihadist business. I know how this goes. Sometimes you get them just in time, and sometimes you don't.

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Right.

Ryan Groduski joins us now. He is of the Clay and Buck Podcast Network. It's a numbers game, a great podcast. Some people are saying it's a big, beautiful podcast. Certainly worth all of you checking out. Breaks down a lot of the data, the numbers. Mr. Groduski, great to have you with me, sir. Thanks for having me on. I'm so excited. I wanted to... Look, there's...

I like to just get this out of the way first and foremost. You know, there are some bootleg Gerduskis out there, including CNN's Harry Enten, right? I mean, it's like he's a fine guy. I think he does okay data analysis, but he's a poor man's Gerduski. But he did say some – yes, sir?

Yes, that's 100% true, yes. Yes, he's a poor man's Gerduski. We have the original deal, right? We've got the real deal here with Ryan Gerduski. But he's been saying some stuff about the numbers as it pertains to Trump. Let's start this one with Cutt.

Here's CNN's data guy. And then, Ryan, I want you to explain what's going on here and what you see. Play it. The party that is closest to your economic views in November of 2023, it was the Republicans by 11 points. Now it's still within that range, still within that margin of error, plus a point advantage for the Republican Party. How is that?

possible, Democrats? How is that possible after all the recession? After the stock market's been doing all of this, after all the terrorists that Americans are against, and Republicans still hold an eight-point lead on the economy? Are you kidding me? I don't think it's that surprising. I just think it's interesting that Democrats have to reckon with this. What do you make of the numbers on Trump's support with the economy right now being just as strong as when he got elected? Well, I mean, Harry lets it out. The recession fears. The fear...

Did we just lose Ryan? He just dropped. He was about to get to all the nuggets of wisdom. And I don't know where he was going with that. We'll take him back here in a second. I don't know. Maybe my comments about Harry Enten somehow have backfired.

And we are now dealing with the ghost in the machine here that has kicked Ryan off the air. Let me know when we get him back, guys. Got to heat him up so well for this. He's about to tell us all about the data. I'm not surprised that Trump is in a better spot or in as strong a spot because he was in a great spot at the time. What is the Democrat message on the economy other than professing or prophesying that there will be? Is it prophesizing or prophesying?

Help me out with that one, team. You know if I get this wrong, pronunciation police, or maybe they're the lexicon, the word usage police on this show. Man, pronunciation police is rough. They're waiting for you everywhere. They got pronunciation police on the Clay and Buck show have speed traps like every two miles.

You guys got those mirrored aviators on. I know I know your type. I know what's going on. You pull us over the second you can. But I think that the Democrats claims for how things are going to go poorly and then not go and then they don't go poorly are the primary reason that the numbers are where they are, because they don't even really have a counter message here. They don't even have something to say to point out.

Okay, Ryan, you were about to share your brilliance with us. Hopefully you have a cell phone that works now. Let's hear what you've got.

So, yes, there is. What is the what is the Democrats economic message? I know hating Trump has been their political message, but what is their economic message? What are they focused on? Aside from keeping Medicare spending and Social Security, I don't ever hear of it. And also the voters are against the against their retaliatory efforts of tariffs. They don't want to pay higher prices. That's understandable. But they are for the message of reshoring manufacturing.

They're for their efforts of trying to bring back economic patriotism. So they're not against the overall idea of it. They just don't want to pay higher prices. But higher prices didn't come. So, of course, Trump's numbers are not that bad. And also – and I think this is a very big point of why Trump's poll numbers are so high right now. No one is talking about Trump in the media. What are they talking about?

They're talking about Biden still. They're talking about his mental health. They're talking about what Democrats lied about. So the Republicans are still getting dividends from the bad governance and the lies of the Democratic Party over Biden's administration. That does matter. And they don't have an alternative. They don't have a leader. They have nothing. I mean, it's AOC running around with and Gavin Newsom with his podcast. And, you know, what else is there?

So I think that they have a lot of problems as far as just what is their message. I don't know what the alternative is. Now, we'll get into, because you sat down with or did an interview, right, with Alex Thompson and Tapper or just Alex Thompson? Just Alex Thompson, yeah. Oh, okay. That actually I would have been more amenable to myself than having to listen to Tapper's nonsense. Right.

We'll get to that in a second. First, that is more of poor man's Gerduski, Harry Enten, talking about who looks out. I mean, because this is if you're a Democrat and you've bought into the Democrat messaging for a long time, or maybe you've been a purveyor of the Democrat messaging. Their whole thing is this make believe that they're the ones that care about the middle class. Here's the latest on the numbers when it comes to middle class and looking out for them. This is cut 20. Play it.

Which is the party of the middle class has been a huge advantage for Democrats. I have polling from NBC going all the way back since 1989 when Democrats had a 23 point advantage, 2016, a 17 point advantage. But by this decade, we already started seeing declines back in 2022. We saw that Democrats led, but only by four points, well within the margin of error. And now in our latest CNN poll among registered voters, which is the party of the middle class? It is

tied? This, I think, speaks to Democratic ills more than anything else. They have traditionally been the party of the middle class. No more. Donald Trump and the Republican Party have taken that mantle away, and now a key advantage for Democrats historically has gone adios amigos, and now there is no party that is the party of the middle class. Republicans have completely closed the gap.

And Ryan, what do you make of that? Because that's got to be, you know, given the election they just had, the fact that they've also got to contend with this in a broader messaging sense. Rough days for the Democrats.

Yeah, they're having this and they're going through it. And they but they're very publicly admitting that they're going through it right now. They can't admit to the fact that they lied, that Biden's health was so bad. They can't find a leader. And their only message is I hate Donald Trump. And maybe that'll be enough to win them back the House. But overall, that long term vision, there is none.

It's remarkable that this is the situation they find themselves in and that they've had so little introspection. I mean, they still have things like Gavin Newsom's California pretending that having a guy beat all the girls in the state champion track meet, that this is not like this makes their party look crazy. They can keep pretending otherwise. But to 80 percent of the country, even people that vote Democrat, 80 percent of the country look at some guy who now wants to be called a B who's beating all these girls in a track meet and says, OK,

There's something wrong with these Democrats. And to that end, though, also on the Biden stuff and the like. So you you talk to Alex Thompson has got this book out now. And, you know, we've talked about, you know, Tapper particularly with it. By the way, I think that it should have been Thompson solo. I would have been far more open. This is what I think. And he didn't say this, but this is what I think. When you write a book and you don't have a big name, when I wrote my.

I wrote my book. I had, like, no social media following. And they said to me, if you can get someone with the name, we'll publish your book. That's what the publishers told me when I wrote my book. I think the same thing probably happened to Alex Thompson. I think that he was told, if you can get a name, we'll publish your book. I mean, he should have gone with Wolf Blitzer or somebody who's considered a little bit more of a neutral. Wolf Blitzer.

Nobody would think that Wolf Blitzer wrote a word of it. I don't know if they think Jake Tapper wrote a word of it either, but definitely not Blitzer. You know, that guy, he looks about as confused as Biden sometimes, just being honest. He's been going for 40 years on air. So, I mean, he's done his time.

Yeah, he's done his time for sure. But OK, so you sat down with Thompson, this book, Original Sin, that's out there. What did you gather from it that was interesting? Like we already know, yes, they all lie. You know, they missed all the stuff about Biden. What was insightful? And anyone wants to hear the interview? It's on the it's a numbers game. Clay and Buck podcast network. Go subscribe to Clay and Buck show and it'll be right in your feed. But Ryan, what what did you what did you learn from it? That was interesting. Or where'd you get into? That was worth talking about.

Well, one, the fact that Mrs. Biden, Jill Biden, was I did not know that she was a school teacher, a professor the entire time she was second lady of the United States. She taught at a community college and apparently she hated being.

being a politician's spouse, which is not unoriginal because a lot of people hate being politician's spouses. But the fact that she went from doing that to being one of the most powerful first ladies in American history and essentially running large portions and being the one who said, no, Joe, you can't drop out. Her transformation, I think, is fascinating. I asked him specifically about how much it

went into why, how much was considered the fact that the Biden family needed Joe. And I put the idea up there, was Bo supposed, had Bo lived, which is always the essential question of the Biden legacy and the Biden family, had Bo lived, was he supposed to be the politician to grant them access so that they continue to live with a lot of economic, you know, flourishment and millions of dollars coming in because

Because that's how that entire family makes money. It's political connections. Did Joe have to do this because he needed to bring money in? And apparently now there's reporting that the Bidens are basically broke, that they want Joe out there more because they need a way to make money. They can't do it, you know, I don't know, other ways. So was that the entire premise of why Joe had to run from the family's perspective is

They needed millions to come in every year. They didn't want a Clinton Foundation situation where all of a sudden all the money is just gone and dried up, and they have to pay for everyone because they pay for the grandkids. They pay for the cousins, the brothers. Everyone lives off the Biden teat.

So that was a big, big part of it. Also with the book, the people who even after the debate had come out and said, no, Biden's our ticket. John Fetterman screamed at every Democratic – they had a big meeting with Democratic senators, and they said, who is still with Biden every one but –

three said no. And Fetterman got up and started screaming and saying, how effing dare you betray our great president like this? And he was the only one in the room still defending Joe Biden, even with the poll numbers bad, even with everything. So I thought that was fascinating, which alliances remain close to Joe long afterwards. First of all, Ryan, that is really interesting, and I hadn't heard that, and that's something that should certainly be better known.

Fetterman has been getting a lot of credit because of the stuff he says on Israel from people on the right. And I mean, I don't know how to say this. Do you think Fetterman just took it personally that people were saying the guy's brain didn't work because of his own stuff? Or why would Fetterman? So it was just he just took that personally.

Yes, I think that that's I think that's exactly what it was. I think Fetterman said, you know, if you were to judge everybody by how their brain operates, allegedly, then I wouldn't be here. But to be the most vocal and curse out your I mean, he cursed out Chuck Schumer. He cursed out everybody that you betrayed him, that you betrayed Joe Biden. And he was the only one in the room. He stood by himself. So I give him credit for that. But it was an experience.

So he talked to Alex Thompson about that, which I thought was fascinating how he was the sole voice to stand with Biden when they said, hey, you're going to lose New Jersey. Fetterman said we ride with him until the very end. And everyone else at that point was trying to get him to drop out. So that was really interesting. I think it's fascinating that right now Joe Biden's team is still leaking information before – this came out yesterday – before Biden.

The debate Biden had a one point five percent lead in Minnesota and Virginia. That was before the debate. Had Biden been on the ticket, it would have been, you know, not 1984 landslide, but 1988 landslide. It would have been a serious contention where New York and Illinois would have been in close single digits.

And New Jersey would have just been gone. So I don't – I think that right now, rather than looking for a leader, looking for a mess, looking for something, they're still kind of sitting there and blaming each other and who gets to inherit the throne of a dead party. That's fascinating. But I will say one thing. I think if – they did a poll. They did a study. Democrats did. What is the message from?

going forward. Ezra Klein has this stupid book out about abundance and all this rest of it. Didn't respond at all. Voters didn't care. They still want a populist message. I think if I was advising a Democrat what they would be doing, there's the big, beautiful bill that's coming out. There is a provision in it that...

I forbid states to sit there and enforce AI technology, any enforcement of AI reforms, any AI development, anything. I prevent states from even doing – enacting any of that or any protections from AI. That's what they should be jumping on right now because that's where the fears are. That's my next episode of the podcast. It comes on –

Thursday on a numbers game is about the genuine fears of AI in job law. And the populist backlash from that will be as severe, if not more severe than immigration itself. That's really interesting. Go check out. It's a numbers game on the claim book podcast network. Ryan Groduski is the host. Ryan, before that, you go quick one kind of a lightning round question here. Who's the most powerful Democrat in America right now? AOC and Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders, number one, and then AOC, number two. Wow.

Bernie Sanders in the AFC. Yeah, Bernie's the one for sure. All right. Ryan Gerduski, always insightful. Good to have you on, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. If your family was like mine and you had a dad who enjoyed videotaping family events, you'd always be like, hey, Bucko, you like your present? I'd be like...

I'm two. I don't know. Sure. But you had these VHS tapes of it, right? You know, I look kind of confused. I had the same haircut then, though, when I was two years old. So there's that. But if you want to enjoy that stuff, how do you watch those old VHS tapes today? Well, this is where Legacy Box comes in. Legacy Box helps you preserve and relive those precious family memories. The company's based in Tennessee. Clay and I know the founders. They're great people. They take great care of their people who work. All-American company here in Tennessee.

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Got a ton of calls. I knew that last segment would get some of you fired up. So, you know, sometimes I got to poke you a little bit. Sometimes the Buckster just has to be like, you know what? We're getting a little too chummy around here. I want to fight. That's what happens with Ginger sometimes. She's so cute. I miss her. She's at a doggy camp today because we're traveling. But it's a lovely camp. She's like playing with golden retrievers and pugs. It's very nice. She

She has a good time when we go to pick her up. She's like, I don't even know who you are anymore. But she comes over and she gets all like nice and snuggly. And then she kind of looks at me and I'm like, oh, oh, it's on. And then she wants to, you know, and she wants to like jump all over me and like that. So sometimes, you know, you get a little chummy. You got to throw down a little bit. So some of you are a little frustrated over the comments on how to fix the debt.

I'm just telling you the numbers. I don't even have much of a dog in this fight, so to speak. Well, I do, because America, and I don't want it to collapse, but it's going to be a while before I'm getting Medicare or Social Security. And I know we're going to have to go over some of these things like, no, it doesn't mean people don't get Medicare who are on Medicare now. No, it doesn't mean that if you're supposed to get Social Security starting in five years, that all of a sudden you're going to get like a fraction of... It means that if you're...

Of prime working age now, we could start to set up different programs and we could start to prepare people for means testing and, you know, and change. Like there are ways to fix this thing that don't hurt people who were promised and paid in good faith and are on it or about to be on it.

But if you're 25, it's not going to work for you to say, oh, well, from age 65 to 100, because that's how long people are going to start to live, by the way. I'm just going to get paid this or I'm going to have everything paid by the government. It's going to have to change at some point. So I just I want to be clear, you know, my dad's, you know, he gets Social Security, right? He deserves it.

No one's touching anyone's Social Security that's getting it now. No one's touching anyone's Medicare that's getting it now. The change would come over a 10-year horizon, a budget set in place now that makes some of the switches necessary.

um to allow us to be on a sound fiscal foot or just don't we just let's just you know thelma and louise baby let's hit the accelerator and let's just take this guy off a cliff let's just go you know what i mean we'll we'll hold each other's hands we'll look at each other and we'll just take this thing off the cliff together it was fun while it lasted america uh jay in ohio here we go six months from turning 65 what's going on jay

Well, yeah, you don't have to poke me. The government's doing that well enough already. Yes, I'm months away from being forced onto Medicare, and I don't want to.

I want to take care of it myself, but I am not allowed. If I don't enroll for Medicare, they'll penalize me anyway. What kind of a perverse system is that? So, you know, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, if you're listening, this grow our way out of the debt isn't going to happen. It's about force. And the other thing is the insurance industry –

And I'm wired about this. The insurance industry loves the concept of Medicare because they can offload all the old schmucks like me and the government will take care of us, quote unquote. It's all about force. I don't have any freedom. I want the freedom to not enroll in Medicare. And I don't have that at this point. And it's infuriating.

Jay, you're spot on and an excellent call. And you're seeing this with clear eyes. Full hearts can't lose. And thank you for the call. Thanks for being in. Look, it's a mess, everybody. It's a mess. Elon knows it's a mess. All he does is look at balance sheets and look at projections based on numbers into the future and figure out how to fix things. And he told us we've got to fix this, and we're not fixing it.

And he just said that. And he said that people that are voting for this should be ashamed, ashamed on the Republican side. This is what Elon's saying. So he's a smart guy. I think that's putting it mildly. Michael in Oswego, New York. What's going on, Mike?

Hi, Buck. Second time caller. Apparently you had fun the first time, so that's good news. I sure did. I listen to you guys every day. Thank you. Anyway, I was calling to jump back to the segment about income taxes, and I told the guy that I first talked to, I said, you know, well, anyway, my mother and father were both teachers.

you know, high school and junior high. Sure. So, I mean, when I needed help with my homework and that,

My mother was a specialist in history. She's still after she retired, so I got a lot of that. But to my memory, didn't FDR institute income taxes at the time that World War II with the U.S. was imminent? Or we had already gone into the war, and to get more money to hire people and build the bombs and all that and the planes,

And it was never supposed to be a permanent thing. Now, that's what I remember reading in history. Now, I don't know if that's true. I mean, you're making. Well, the first the first income tax was actually back in with the Revenue Act of 1861 to fund the Civil War. So it is war. So if you're if you're thinking about it in this context, it was wars that got us to or a major war that got us to attacks in the first place.

But the federal income tax then kind of disappeared. It comes back in 1894 with the Wilson Tariff Act, 2% tax on incomes over $4,000. But the modern federal income tax is the 16th Amendment, 1913. So the history of taxation, I mean, I think what you're raising here is interesting, Michael. Thank you for calling in. The history of taxation is one of...

fits and starts or two steps forward, one step back. But once they got us with the 16th Amendment, then that was rough. That was rough. That was when the bad things started. That was when the bad stuff with the taxes started to happen. I mean, it bums me out, I'll tell you this. Now that I live in a zero-state income tax place, it's just unthinkable to go back to one of these super high-tax states like New York or California.

because you're just you're paying so much more of the money you work for and getting nothing additional. You're getting nothing. In fact, I would argue that the services that I get in South Florida from, you know, on a whole range of things is better than what I was getting in New York City. And so with that, you say, well, why am I paying more? Just because Democrats have bad ideas and they're in charge.

And so they just take more of your money. I wish that the notion that we have all these states where you have state income tax, some of which tax you by the day. I always have this thing where I tell people this. I think Utah is one of them. Utah, what is going on with you, Utah?

A lot of great stuff about Utah. Beautiful state. Lovely people. But I think you get taxed by the day you work there. Because I think I had to pay like, you know, $50 to the state of Utah once. And I had to have like a little. You guys, we have a huge audience in Salt Lake City. You know what I'm talking about. I think that definitely New York.

Per day, you are taxed in New York City if you work. If you're there with your family over a weekend on vacation, of course, no. But if you're there and you fly into New York and you do work out of your New York office or something, they can tax you for that day and every day that you're there. So you just feel like, all right, well, that's pretty annoying. You don't want more of that. Jack in Ohio wants to weigh in. What's going on, Jack?

Hey, happy anniversary a week ahead of time. Real quick, just want to talk about like what the... You mean the Clay and Buck anniversary, right? Because like the Carrie and Buck anniversary of getting married was back in February. Just making sure. I'm like, I have to get my wife a gift? Uh-oh.

No, not again. If you want to stay in good graces, yeah. My major concern, okay, and Carolyn Lovett just even announced it, you know, on a clip that you just played, where she was talking about what Trump inherited, okay, from the Biden-Harris regime, okay? My point is Biden and Harris in Mallorca, okay, who caused a great problem with the immigration, okay, are not running for office. Yeah.

Yes, we need to hang this on them. OK, however, there are 260 Democrats, OK, in Congress right now. And I can't remember hearing any one of them, maybe except Federer, talking about the problem of immigration.

And I'm looking at the midterms. OK, that's right around the corner. And I would like to hear the media talk about all of the Democrats who've been sitting on their hands and they're going to be up for reelection. And let's not forget them. Biden and Harris, they're not running again.

And you even have the down ticket, okay, which goes to state and local. So I would like to hear more about all the Democrats. We have somebody here in our office, okay, in Ohio, where she's been in office 40 years as a congresswoman.

And she votes 90, 95 percent of the time right along with the ticket. OK, a few things. Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Jack in Ohio. A couple of things on what you're saying. One is you'll be a lot more talk about this as we get closer to the midterm. So this is your right now calling in at the the absolute low point, I think, of political midterm conversation. June after a presidential election is is when you're going to hear probably the least political

Well, I mean, right after an election, maybe, but I'm just there's so much talk about politics in general that'll be going on and all the thinking about the last election. But as we get into certainly the beginning of next year and then into next summer, you're going to have a lot of talk about all and we're going to talk about them on this show. So that's part one. Part two is the reason the Biden revelations matter.

is that it goes to, one, the fact that more people than ever should wake up to the fact that the media is, the corporate Democrat media lies and has no integrity whatsoever. That CNN as an entity has no integrity. The people who call themselves journalists are not journalists. They are propagandists. And I know that you all know that.

But we need not 51 percent, but 54 percent of the country to know that and maybe 57 percent of the country. Now, you know, this is this is why I think it does matter, because they've relied on a media industrial complex for a long time to do their heavy lifting for them as Democrats. And we want to make that harder. And they all lied about Biden and we caught them and we know. And now they're trying to wriggle out of any kind of accountability. So I don't think it's just a.

kind of like a parlor game here that we on the right are playing. I think there is real meaning to it and also just shows you how ruthless the Democrats are. I mean, you should all know every day there was a right choice and a wrong choice in this last election. And if you voted for Trump, you made the right choice. That's it.

That's it. You know, there's no there's no other way around it. You know, I view that as as clear as day. Let's take here we go. G.G. Day from North Carolina listens on WPTI. Play it.

So, Buck, Dave from North Carolina. Retired Navy, turning 70, limited income. You guys get rid of Medicare, Social Security, the thing that I have to support me for my last 10 years. What the hell am I supposed to do if you change the system? Nobody has an answer.

Well, Dave, the way the answer is you don't change it for people who are on it right now. That would be wrong. That would be unfair. You made your plans and you paid your taxes and you did your planning with the belief that it would be there for you. That is a covenant that the state, so to speak, the big S state, right, that the government has made with you.

You're not going to you know, that's not what anybody who talks about reforming the system in a serious way. But see what they hope and this is what Democrats will do is that they want they want the reaction from Dave. Oh, they're going to take away your Social Security. Oh, they're going to take away your Medicare. Now vote in the communists, you know.

No, it's not about taking it away from people who have it now. It's about looking back with the numbers in front of you. Where can we begin to create changes here and off ramp so that people have plenty of time to

and plenty of notice for their financial future that there's going to be means testing for Medicare. If you're a very wealthy person, you're not going to get Medicare or you'll get some different level of Medicare. There's going to be a raise in the retirement age rate.

That's not fair if you're 64. But if you're my age and you're told, you know what, you're not going to retire at 65, you're going to retire at 67, that's something that I think my generation should just say, you know what, we're going to live longer than the generation before us on average. So I think it's fair that we actually start a little later in retirement, a year or two. These are the things that we're talking about. But see?

It upsets people and they don't want to hear it. And they get told the fear mongering. And so, all right, look, we go full Thelma and Louise. We're in the convertible. Let's take it off the cliff. Let's spend ourselves into a big fireball at the bottom, you know, and let AOC and Bernie Sanders stare at us over the cliff like now we're in charge. What are you going to do about that? It's not going to be good.

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