Hour 2 - Rubio Rising
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Welcome back in. Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show.

Saturday, United States attacks Iranian nuclear sites. Now, Iran is responding in real time. As we are talking to all of you, there is footage.

playing inside of Qatar. Missiles from Iran fired at the U.S. military base there. Iran has announced that its official response is underway. They are reporting that on Iranian state TV. That's their propaganda network.

The attack on the Qatari U.S. base has begun. Also, other Middle Eastern U.S. forces now reportedly under attack as well. And we are waiting to hear what the impact is of the missiles that have been fired there. Again, this is in real time.

As all of us are talking with you, President Trump is with his top administrators right now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. And the question again is, what is the impact and the desire here, Buck? And this is where you...

as an intelligence analyst back in the day would be trying to scramble and assess. You and I were at Langley. We were on the CIA's campus just a couple of weeks ago, just in advance by like a day or so of the Israeli attack on Iran. And you remember, I can say this now, I think,

I asked a question in a meeting about Iran because there hadn't been that many reports about it to that point, and it was like all of a sudden a veil of silence just descended on the room where they were like, you didn't have to be an expert to know something might be afoot. Yeah, I was like, and after I looked at Clay, I'm like, that was weird. We're striking Iran, or there's a strike coming, I should say. Israel's striking Iran. It was pretty obvious. So the question here, and I'll toss this to you,

is to what extent is this? And look, first of all, we're praying we want all of our forces in the Middle East to be safe. I know many of you out there listening may well have family members, friends. We're going to give you the information as it is reported accurately to the best of our ability in a real-time dynamic situation. Big picture here, Buck.

The question that is going to be integral and will go a long way towards determining what our response is, is how we assess what Iran is doing. Is this a face-saving, hey, U.S., you can't rip our nuclear program to shreds without us doing something back, but it's a pulled punch, meaning we knew it was coming. It's not designed to deliver massive damage.

consequences, relatively speaking, or do we judge this to have been an acceleration beyond expected Iranian response? Much of this now is a dance of diplomacy through missile, which sounds complicated, but actually is.

important here as we try and determine the significance and severity of the Iranian response. Is it face-saving or is it accelerating would be a way, I think, to sum up what we have to analyze at this point in time. Well, I think it's the best the Iranians militarily can muster against the regional enemies that they want to attack. And us and the Israelis are the top of the list. It's not that Iran...

If Iran could level Tel Aviv tomorrow, it would do so. The reason that Iran hasn't done that is they can't do that. And that's also true of their abilities here in...

when it comes to hitting military forces in the region. They also, I think, at some level have to understand that if they were to go after soft targets, non-military targets, they would invite much more extreme retaliation. Look, this is a country that was, as I said, unable to protect its senior military leadership, unable to protect nuclear scientists from getting blown up in just their apartment buildings in like the corner of the building where they happen to live.

unable to do any of those things in the opening of a conflict that they'd supposedly been preparing for for really since the 79 revolution in some way yes they're not militarily sophisticated as a country that doesn't mean they're not dangerous it just means they do not have a sophisticated uh first world military that can do you know russia as we've seen very different situation we talk about russia fighting against ukraine there you have

you know, advanced planes, advanced drones, advanced communications, a lot of firepower. You know, they've got stuff that can cause a headache for anybody. The Russians do. The Iranians, it's a little bit of a different situation. So I think what we'll see is probably these Iranians, these Iranian missiles. Look, I don't want to prejudge it. Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. If it's just the...

strikes that hit bases and there's no major U.S. casualties. I think Trump will repeat his calls for negotiations for some kind of, I guess, a ceasefire. You know, the part of this that is really wide open to me, and I haven't seen much clarity on this, is

We're not going to push for regime change, but we all, I shouldn't say we all, the Trump administration wants a different regime, but doesn't want to push and kind of topple the existing one through more than what we've already done. It feels like we're going to head into this uneasy status quo of a somewhat defanged Iran that we're hoping wants to come to the table and stop being crazy. But really, Clay, the fundamental problem with all of this is that

The people that run Iran are bad people. Yes. And I mean, crazy isn't really the right word, but there is an ideological viciousness that is at the heart of the theocracy that is Iran. And so I also look at what happened in Syria. Yeah, finally the Assad regime came down. It took...

13 years. And at one point early on, like 2013, 2012 timeframe, there were suicide bombers, jihadi suicide bombers that were infiltrating the,

Yeah, I think I've got some information here. This is the spokesperson for Qatar.

And this is a translation from Arabic. So all of this is on Twitter. All right. So obviously I do not speak Arabic. I'm not translating this in real time. This is according to. Yeah, this is according to the Google translation. This is this is Abu Abu Clay. I'll not really go ahead. Yes, this is my attempt. Here's what it.

This is what I want to get out because I know there's a lot of people out there. We express the state of Qatar's strong condemnation of the attack on Al-Yadid Air Base by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Consider it a flagrant violation of the state of Qatar's sovereignty, sovereignty and airspace sovereignty, as well as of international law and the United Nations charter.

We affirm the state of Qatar reserves the right to respond directly in a manner proportional to the nature and scale of this blatant aggression and in accordance with international law. Okay. We are reassured that Qatari air defenses thwarted the attack and successfully intercepted the Iranian missiles. The Ministry of Defense will issue a statement clarifying the circumstances of the attack later. Okay.

We also affirm the continuation of such escalating military actions undermine security and stability in the region. And so the base has been evacuated earlier in accordance with approved security and precautionary measures in light of the tensions. All necessary measures were taken to ensure the safety of the base's personnel. Okay, so far so good. We shot down their stuff and we're looking okay.

No injuries or human losses occurred as a result of the attack, according to this report, which has just come down. That has not been publicly reported by anybody else. But again, that is the Qatari spokesperson. So this is looking so far like it's very similar to the Qasem Soleimani attack.

which was pretty much de minimis from a military damage perspective. And it was the Iranian regime doing really what's within their power militarily, right? And this is something that I think a lot of people, when we talk about this, we have to remember this.

When you talk about something like Hamas, I mean, Hamas doesn't distinguish. In fact, Hamas prefers civilian targets. Not only do they not distinguish military and civilian, they prefer civilian. They're not going to go after the IDF. They're going to get their asses kicked. Hamas likes to go after elderly people, people in wheelchairs, children. That's Hamas' preferred target set, which is heinous. And in the case of Iran, so far, they are sticking to military-to-military response, which is...

which is a different thing under the laws of war and Geneva Conventions, etc. You know, this is something that you could say the Iranians are paying attention to. Will they go and cross that line and go Hamas and start having proxies on their behalf do this? You'd have to wonder, who are these proxies and what do they think they're going to get out of this? I think the message, you know, Clay, we can get into some more. J.D. Vance, for example, is on the Sunday shows.

With this administration, it is so different. And I truly, you know, this is not like, oh, talk radio, our side, their side. It is so different from the dementia puppet in chief and what we had before. When these guys say something, when Trump and Vance and Hegseth say something about if you kill Americans somewhere, we're going to drop the fires of hell on your head, they mean it. Yes. And the bad guys know they mean it.

And they know it will happen. And that has meaning. That has meaning for moments like this. Whereas with Biden, you know, we know the invasion of Ukraine happens. Look at the stuff. No one takes the guy seriously. So, Clay, I'll get into some of this because I think J.D. Vance made it very clear that

There are ways that the Iranians can respond that will be, you know, within the within the laws of war, the boundaries of armed conflict, I should say. And there are ways that they can go outside of that if they go outside of that. I think this administration is going to punish them severely. And that's the way that it should be. And you you also understand better than anybody else.

You have to know what somebody means in negotiation. You can't like Biden was so weak. They felt like they could play him and they knew that there was no spine behind anything he said. And these these dictators, these mullahs, and they were right, respond to violence. Right. This is the thing. It's not it's not like that was their perception. And Biden was actually a sleeping giant or something. No, it was they were right by thinking he was an imbecile and not of sound mind.

And again, I think that sometimes you don't like it. And I think this is where Democrats, frankly, lack of masculinity becomes an issue. Most people.

Who are in positions of power around the world are dudes who are mal actors, right? Are men and they respond to violence. That's what they respond to. It would be great if they would respond to argument. But ultimately, all they care about is do you have the ability to do them wrong?

It's like bullies everywhere, right? Like on some level, you don't usually talk a bully out of being a bully. You have to make the bully fear that you can kick his ass. And that is what Trump is willing to do because I think he understands that. I think a lot of the soft, weak masculinity, frankly, of the Democrat Party is

might work when it comes to persuading lesbians of the truth of their arguments in the United States. It doesn't work when it comes to fundamentalist terrorists who are effectively in control of a country like Iran. I mean, that's the hard truth, and that's the reality. And they respect force and violence everywhere.

And you have to sometimes show them that you're willing to deploy it. Biden wasn't. I think that's why Ukraine got invaded. I think the weakness that he showed in Afghanistan showed the world that he didn't have a steel spine. And they took advantage of it. I don't think Hamas would have invaded if Trump were in office. I don't think that Ukraine would have gotten invaded if Trump were in office. And I think what's happening right now is Iran is learning that Trump isn't to be trifled with.

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Business by business. Building opportunity. Fueling economic growth. Paid for by United for a strong economy. All right, welcome back in here to Clay and Buck. So far, it looks like the Iranian missile launch against U.S. bases has been nothing major in terms of any casualties or any losses on our side. The missiles have been shot out of the sky. So...

We're not seeing any major damage from that. Want to take calls from you and hear from you on all this, how you think this is going. So let's get to Jim in Missouri wants to weigh in. What's going on, Jim?

Point, there's no way Biden could pull this off for two reasons. Number one, it happened on the weekend, and we know where he was on the weekend on vacation. We watched for four years. Second thing is it happened after his curfew or lead time, which is 4 p.m. Eastern. Yeah. I mean, it's funny, Buck. I mean, when I was up late on Saturday night watching the news and following this story like everybody else,

All I could think over and over again was, thank God we do not have Kamala Harris in office. Because to your point, do you think these bad guys respect Kamala Harris in any way? Are they afraid of what she might order against them? I mean, whatever you want to think about Trump, they respect Trump. And...

I think you're seeing it right now with Iran. I don't know if they pulled their punches, Buck, or if they frankly just don't have the ability to throw a very hard punch because, to your point, they're basically a third world country now. Look what they've done with Israel. I mean, if they could, like I said, if they could have leveled the Israeli city with ballistic missiles in response to those strikes, they would have done it. They can't do it. Thank God. But that's where things are. David in Alabama. What's going on, David?

Hey, guys, Kamala Harris couldn't order takeout and make anybody worry. But the comment I want to make, did y'all catch Marco Rubio's joust or that mental midget over the weekend? You know what, David? After our next break here, we'll play those for everybody and walk through those because, Clay, I think they were fantastic. Marco Rubio is en fuego.

Yes. And by the way, more and more reports coming out that basically Iran let us know exactly what they were going to be doing, what the timing of their attacks were going to be. And we said this is very similar to what happened in 2020 after Soleimani. This is from The New York Times, which has a lot of assets here.

Iran coordinated the attacks on the American air base in Qatar with Qatari officials gave advance notice it was coming to minimize casualties according to three Iranian officials familiar with the plans. Officials said Iran symbolically needed to strike back at the U.S., but at the same time carry it out in a way that allowed all sides an exit ramp. They described it as similar to 2020. So that's kind of what we thought. We'll continue to keep you updated.

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Welcome back in, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show. Again, Iran has responded. So far, it appears that they telegraphed their actions. They are seeking to dial back after we kicked their ass on Saturday night.

Either they don't have the ability to actually do anything to us, which is probably true, and or they are afraid of what we might do in response to them. And, Buck, I loved on...

Saturday night when Trump came out about 10 p.m. Eastern, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and J.D. Vance all arrayed behind him, spoke for about three and a half minutes. And then his top spokespeople, Rubio, Vance, and Hegseth, all spoke Sunday publicly and I thought did phenomenally well. But this, sorry, this Marco Rubio versus Margaret Brennan on, I think it's Face the Nation or CBS News or wherever the heck she works, is

Every time that it occurs, it just is an absolutely epic beatdown. And let's just play a couple of these cuts. This is Rubio against Margaret Brennan about cut 12 here, just to give you a sense of the intellectual evisceration that took place on CBS Sunday morning. This is what it sounded like.

It doesn't matter if the order was given. They have everything they need to build nuclear weapons. Why would you bury things in a mountain 300 feet under the ground? Why do they have 60% enriched uranium? You don't need 60% enriched uranium. The only countries in the world that have uranium at 60% are countries that have nuclear weapons because it can quickly make it 90. They have all the elements. Why do they have a space program? Is Iran going to go to the moon? No, they're trying to build an ICBM. No, but that's a question. That's a question.

That's a question of intent and you know in the intelligence assessment that it was that Iran wanted to be a threshold. How do you know what the intelligence assessment says? I'm talking about the public March assessment and that's why I was asking you if you know something more from March. But that's also an inaccurate representation of it. That's inaccurate representation of it. That's not how intelligence is read. That's not how intelligence is used. Here's what the whole world knows. Forget about intelligence.

But the IAEA knows they are enriching uranium well beyond anything you need for a for a for a civil nuclear program. OK, that's point one. Do you want to play? Let's play point two here, because I do think it goes into the essence of the attacks that are being levied here by left wing media, which it should be mentioned here.

Many people out there said, oh, my goodness, if we do this, thousands of American troops are going to die. It's early, but we eviscerated, it appears, the Iranian nuclear opportunity going forward. And Iran basically rolled over and played dead.

To your point, Buck, they are effectively, after 46 years of Ayatollah rule, a third world country that's being, frankly, passed rapidly in their own region by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar. Countries that they used to look down on for generations are now having way stronger economies, way better, frankly, military, and way more success as a country. Yeah, Iran...

is in ancient and proud civilization that for the last fifty years isn't brought low by more on theocrats who make everything worse for everybody in the country

That's what's happened. You know, it's a bit like you talk to Cuban-Americans down here in South Florida about Cuba, a beautiful island with great people who have been immiserated and enslaved by communist imbeciles since the Castro regime took power. Right. I mean, this is unfortunately what can happen in some of these places. But here we've got Marco Rubio cut to you want to play this one. Right. He continues on dealing with Margaret Brennan. Play it.

Why would you enrich uranium at 60% if you don't intend to one day use it to take it to 90 and build a weapon? Why are you developing ICBMs? Why do you have 8,000 short-range missiles and 2,000 to 3,000 mid-range missiles that you continue to develop?

Why do you do all these things? They have everything they need for a nuclear weapon. They have the delivery mechanisms. They have the enrichment capability. They have the highly enriched uranium that is stored. That's all we need to see. Especially in the hands of a regime that's already involved in terrorism and proxies and all kinds of things around. They are the source of all this. And no one's disputing that. I'm not doing that here. And they were censured at the IAEA for that enrichment and for violating their non-proliferation agreements. I was simply asking if we had intelligence...

that there was an order to weaponize because you said weaponization ambitions. We have intelligence that they have everything they need to build a nuclear weapon and that's more than enough.

I mean, here's a question for you, Buck. If Iran has no interest in having nuclear weapons, why do they need to enrich uranium and be pursuing nuclear energy in any way? They sit on one of the biggest oil fields in the world. They have more energy access than almost any country anywhere. Okay, so you're asking the basic and obvious questions that people that...

oppose this, have to just refuse, they can't address, can't deal with this at all. That's my question. What would be the reason they would be burying uranium enrichment mines, basically, for lack of a better way of characterizing it, beneath mountains, while being on top of oil fields if they weren't trying to create nuclear weapons? It's even worse than that, Clay. If they were willing to

Okay.

If they were willing to work with the international community, such as it is, if they were willing to play ball with America, Europe, et cetera, and stop doing the things that they're doing that are destabilizing and that make the region so miserable, quite honestly, and so much violence, I mean, the French would build their reactors for them. And people would help them if the regime was willing to have real inspections, play ball, and do what has been asked here for a long time.

civilian nuclear power, there are ways that that could be achieved and done. Of course, you ask the question, which is maybe even more important, well, why would they even want that considering how much oil they have, which is just easier for them. And the answer is that they want to have a nuclear weapons capability. You see this, if you are a regime of bad actors for the last 50 years or so, if you have nukes, you don't have to worry really about external overthrow.

That's the lesson that a lot of people take from this. Which is why it's hyper-rational to do it. Right? North Korea is a perfect example. You can be a religious, zealot-run theocracy that has hell-bent on... By the way, that's basically what North Korea is. They just worship the Kim dynasty instead of Islam. But it actually really is kind of a theocracy. In a sense, it's a necrocracy because the founder, Kim Il-sung, is still kind of worshipped as the head of the Communist Party. Right.

But to your point, again, from a from a international affairs response, I have actually seen some of the members of the Clinton administration saying publicly now we blew it with North Korea. In retrospect, we should have have had attacks on their nuclear capabilities. Bill Clinton considered it in 1994. I even saw Rahm Emanuel come out and say it. And.

I think most people out there would say, hey, it'd be better if this crazy North Korean dictatorship didn't have nuclear weapons. But because they have them, they basically have power in perpetuity because the risk of attacking them is nuclear war. And that is the lesson that I think Iran has taken now by attacking this regime.

We are trying to prevent another North Korea, but we're also sending the message to other countries that may make the rational choice. Hey, we need to have nuclear weapons to their consequences for pursuing these. And also, Buck, this is why I think the response from China and from Russia has been muted, because deep down they don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons either.

Yes, of course. They can't trust Iran. These countries, the non-aligned countries or whatever you want to call them, that will work together. These are places, you know, Putin's right-hand man can't trust Vladimir Putin. You think the Iranians, these people will only, these are countries that only will work together insofar as it is zero cost to them and in their immediate interest. No,

interest as long as the oil flows these countries don't give all they don't care who's in charge in iran that are the chinese get a lot of oil for on because the sanctions uh... and and you know they want that or the key flowing and uh... you know that the the russians i know this seems strange to the russians actually by a lot of iranian oil to even the russians have a lot of oil their own right this is has to do with refining and and the global markets

But, Clay, the World War III thing never made any sense because there's no countries that are going to come to the aid of Iran.

that want to lose their own soldiers in some conflict with Israel and or with the United States. That's not going to happen. The thing for me that's the biggest open question right now is what do we want? If we're going to take this forward beyond where we are, it is possible, folks, we wake up tomorrow and Iran has managed to do something horrible and kill a lot of people somewhere, and that will change the dynamics in this conflict dramatically.

I mean, that is possible. So far, we haven't seen that, and what we've seen from Iran has been pretty contained and pretty predictable, right? So what do we want? Meaning, what do we truly, the American people, want? Now, the first thing is we want this to not be our problem and for us not to be involved. I get that. That's like first principle. That's numero uno here is, okay, we don't want to make this our problem. But in terms of if we can...

to foresee a future where we don't have to. How often do we sit around talking about the future of Kazakhstan, which, by the way, has a lot of natural resources? People think of Borat. It's actually a very large country, a lot of natural resources. I think it has a tremendous amount of, not potassium is what Borat always says, I think it has a lot of natural gas. Someone check me on that.

But my point is we don't care about that. You know, Kazakhstan does its thing. Yeah, they don't have free speech. But whatever. It's not our problem. We don't have to worry about this. We really want Iran to be in that category. It's just not our problem. And so if not our problem is what we want from Iran, what does that look like? How do we get there? And is that...

Iranian regime just kind of sputtering along as it is defanged as I've said or do we really want to see what happens if people start dragging the you know the IRGC and the besiege which is their really their brown shirts and if I mean they're their street militia if you will of the regime if we start if they start getting dragged out in the streets and beaten by you know the civilians with pitchforks and torches so to speak is that what we want you know I

I don't know. This is where we get into the I don't know. Again, not us doing it. I'm just saying, what do we really want in Iran? I think that's the question at this point going forward, and we can spend some time on it in this third hour because, to me, the question that...

And by the way, Elon Musk, turn on Starlink. Let the Iranians actually see what's going on in the rest of the world. Because, Buck, what they're going to say internally is we responded in kind force and wiped out the United States forces in the Middle East. Right. This is what Iranian state television is going to say internally.

But bigger picture, what a lot of these young people in Iran are saying, when I say young, I mean people 35 and younger, either you're having kids or you are. That's where we are now in life, Clay. We're like, we're all these whippersnappers in their 30s. Yeah, all these young guys.

They are looking around now. At some point, embarrassment and anger starts to set in in Iran because you see people in Saudi Arabia having a better life than you. Bahrain. Qatar's having the freaking World Cup. Saudi Arabia is going to have the World Cup. They love soccer.

Why is Iran getting left behind? It's one thing if the U.S. and Israel are better off, okay, but when your fellow Arab and Muslim countries are leaving you behind, and you, to your point, Buck, used to be a proud member of the Persian Empire. Go study world history, ancient history. They were ahead of the curve.

They were long ahead of much of even Europe back in the day, and now they're falling behind quality of life. They can't even keep the power on so they can take elevators in buildings. These are real questions that I think are going to start getting asked by the Iranian people, and where does it lead? That's the question. What comes next? What should come next? That's the question for all of you. Call us.

talk backs on the iheart app you know what to do if you have a family you have a responsibility to think of their well-being long after you're gone you should have a will maybe both a will and a trust as well only a third of americans right now have a will when there's not a will oftentimes your assets end up in probate delaying the release of those assets to family members and costing everyone time and frustration and money

It depends on the state you live in, of course, but you'd be surprised what percentage of your assets can be claimed by the state.

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If this guy, Mom Donnie, wins this election. So we're going to dive into that coming up in just a second. It is madness that the biggest city in America may go in that direction. Michael in Palm Beach wants to weigh in. What's going on, Michael? Palm Bay, Florida, but Palm Beach is close enough. Yeah, cool. Here's my fear on this.

This has been done seven times now, nine times, 11 times. Who knows how many times we bombed them into oblivion and they went, okay, we quit. My fear is we have to bomb them until they literally beg us to quit bombing them.

Hmm. All right. How many bombs that's going to take? But I think we're only bombing precise facilities right now. I mean, this isn't like Dresden in World War Two. I don't know if that's really going to. We haven't Hiroshima and Nagasaki to anybody here, Buck. Yeah. Look, we should mention Iran has also said they fired back the same number of missiles at us that we fired at them on Saturday. This is their attempt.

to keep us from continuing to rain down on them. I know I've been saying that you can pick your historical analogy to support whatever point of view you want. I will say this. It is possible for a country that has gone down a path of extreme darkness, malevolency, and militancy to turn around. I mean, you mentioned Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's a pretty extreme situation, but, you know, Japan...

Japan's a good friend of the United States now. The Japanese, what they did in World War II was on the same scale and level of horribleness as what the Germans did. They just did it in a different place.

And anyone who knows the history knows that. So it's possible for countries to turn around. Now, it's way early in the game to be saying, well, Iran is also going to be like a representative democracy with a lot of people who love pop music and Hello Kitty or whatever. I mean, it's not going to turn into Japan tomorrow, but it is possible for a country to get...

and for things to improve. It does not have to be this way. That's my only thing, Clay. Iran does not have to be this way. We should remind ourselves of that. And maybe some of the Iranian people are starting to realize that as they get left behind by other Arabs and Muslims in their region, that maybe it's not Israel and the United States doing that. Maybe it's your awful government and your awful leaders.

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