Bonus: Daily Review With Clay and Buck - Jul 01 2025
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Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show podcast. Welcome, everybody. Tuesday edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show kicks off now. It is big, it is beautiful, and it is now...

The big, beautiful bill has just moments ago passed in the United States Senate. OK, I know Trump has to sign it, but, you know, it's happening. Trump's going to sign his big, beautiful bill. So the big, beautiful bill has gone through. It will be on the president's desk.

This is huge. It is huge. We will get into some of the final items that were in this. We will discuss some of the no votes. There were some no votes. We'll also talk about how Elon Musk, formerly of Doge fame,

Pretty unhappy with the situation here of the $5 trillion debt ceiling raise. I think they're still potentially buck a little bit of drama because I think the House will now have to come back

and agree to some of the changes that were made. Oh, they have to go on the reconciliation side? I got ahead of myself there. Too excited, too excited. So there will be some drama still to come. That's the reconciling. It's going to go through. The House has already passed it. It's going to go through. But thank you for the... Yeah, so here we go. For the nerdy edition where there will continue to be drama for a short period of time. How long is that going to take, though? I don't know. I...

I just we have not spent a ton of time on the minute by minute because we knew that this was going to pass and it will pass on some level. But they still have some maneuvering. I think Trump wants it by July 4th. Right. Is the ideal day that he would sign it, which is Friday. And so I imagine that they are hoping that the House will sign off on the changes made by the Senate at some point in time in the next several days. But.

That's the time frame. So that is the last drama to be had before this thing is officially signed and underway, which is not going to be, it's not going to be any drama. I mean, they're going to, you know what I mean? Like, come on, what's the drama going to be clay. Someone's really, the Republicans aren't going to actually do the thing that they've already said they were going to do. I don't, I don't see it, but yes, procedurally speaking, they have to reconcile it. Right. So the house has the Senate, the Senate says, how's that? Okay. So let's get into what is in the,

The big, beautiful bill, which I do believe is its official name.

is its official name. I'm just seeing now, I think it happened so recently, Clay, that all the news sites live and in real time here are still updating. It legitimately passed as we came on the air. Like, that is the absolute latest breaking news. That's why I got all excited, okay? So it was happening in real time. We got to open the show with, ah, it has passed the center. 51-50, and J.D. Vance had to step in to,

Right, J.D. Vance? I'm reading this in real time because it just happened, just so you understand. This wasn't like an hour ago. It happened seconds or minutes ago.

Three Republicans, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Tom Tillis of North Carolina, not running next year, Susan Collins of Maine, joined Democrats to vote against the bill. Paul opposed the legislation's $5 trillion debt limit, etc. Okay, so Susan Collins, not a surprise. Rand Paul being Rand Paul. Trump's probably going to have some truths for him that are not very nice. And Tom Tillis here.

Lisa Murkowski was the final piece. She backed the bill after discussions with Thune. 24 hours of motions and amendments. Senate Republican leaders altered the bill right up to the final moments. So this was down to the wire, everyone, to get the things they wanted to get in here. Hundreds of billions for border security, national defense.

increased budget deficit by about $3.3 trillion through 2034. Yeah, look, I'll tell you, the White House is very excited about this. I think the economy is going to look really good as a result of this, or rather there's going to be a lot of good things that happen. Clay, we knew it would get through. Yeah, tie-breaking vote from J.D. Vance. So it was a close-run thing here.

We knew it would get through. It's getting through now. OK, the House reconciles it on their end. What are your thoughts as we sit here and bask in the glow of MAGA? Another win up on the board. So I think the big question is going to be how fast can the economy grow? So now that this bill is done, the ability to grow the economy is how we end up.

keeping from having to massively increase the overall debt. And so that is my biggest question. Can we get this economy moving at 3% growth? Doesn't sound outrageous to me, but it is better than we have been growing the economy over the past decade or so, 15 years on average. And so to me, the biggest question out there is how fast can we grow the economy?

To me, the secondary question on this is, can we get the Fed to lower interest rates? Our interest rates are about 2% above where the EU is right now at 4.25, 4.5. You guys can correct me in the studio if I get the percentages wrong. I think the numbers need to be around 2.5%.

frankly, where the EU is. If that were to happen, then mortgage rates in theory are going to come back. That would unlock the housing market, which is, I think, the most frozen aspect of the American economy right now. So many of you got the 2.5% or 3%, 15- and 30-year mortgages. Congrats.

But it's been several years, and we accelerated those so rapidly that lots of people are unwilling to sell their homes or move despite changing life circumstances because the difference between a 2.5% and a 3% and a 7% mortgage rate is so massively substantial. If that starts to get unfrozen, then I think a lot of the other aspects of the economy will start to fire on all cylinders.

So the House Freedom Caucus, I was asking who's going to cause drama here. I was all excited. Like, OK, this is finally happening. We're looking at a holiday coming up here. Great holiday weekend. Country's kicking ass. Things going really well. House Freedom Caucus says and this is as of the last 24 hours.

House budget framework was clear. No new deficit spending in the one big, beautiful bill. The Senate's version adds $651 billion to the deficit, and that's before interest costs, which nearly double the total. That's not fiscal responsibility. That's not what we agreed to. The Senate must make major changes and should at least be in the ballpark of compliance with the House budget framework. Are they really going to do this?

Are they really going to do this? I think there's going to be some drama associated with this. I think ultimately everybody is going to say... If the drama is just so they get attention and then they let this go through, they're just being annoying. We've already had this discussion.

I get it. This is the best you're going to get. And there's people out there who are going to say, look, Rand Paul's right about the deficit. I think he is. Chip Roy is right about the deficit. I think he is. This is the best bill that's going to pass. And you just saw...

I have yet to see anyone come up with a bill that could get passage in the Senate and the House and do as much of this bill does. Politics is the art of the possible. I get people out there that are upset about the deficit. I am. Look, the reality is nobody wants to address the fact that

that entitlement spending, Social Security and Medicare, make it virtually impossible to largely restrict the size of the federal government. And as soon as you mention that, we get flooded, and every politician does, with, hey, that money is mine, I want it back,

And so the structural issues we have at play here, and this is a challenge and I don't want to be the, the walk, walk guy, but the structural issues we have in play is there are way more older people now than there are younger people in many advanced countries in the world. And entitlement programs are predicated on there being way more younger people than there are older people. And if you are around our age,

The math doesn't add up for us to get the Social Security dollars back that we put in. And that's just the reality. Without adjusting, based on retirement ages, based on just looking at population tables, I presume that I'm going to get virtually nothing from Social Security. That's me. I'm 46.

You know, people can start taking Social Security, I think, at 62. So I'm not that far away. Well, I don't think it's going to be there. This is why I find the whole thing frustrating. And and I appreciate that Rand Paul wants to Senator Paul wants to have his voice heard on this. And mathematically, he's right. But politically, he's wrong because no one's going to do anything about this right now. And there's no willingness among the American people, even people who say they want to tackle the debt to do it. It's like having a debt ceiling fight.

It's a fake fight because we always raise the debt ceiling. And then if they default, they don't really – rather, there's discussion about default. They're not really going to default. So it just becomes tiresome, and you lose. It's the boy who cried wolf. You lose public interest. And I think that, yeah, until people want to talk about entitlements, just keep spending the money we have to spend to achieve the priorities of the Republican Party. If we don't have a secure border and we don't deal with the illegal immigration issue, Medicare and Social Security in 30 years is going to be the least of our problems.

Because we're not going to have a country anymore. So the hundreds of billions of dollars that are going toward border security and the deportation efforts of the illegals who pile in under Biden, it's absolutely essential. A lot of the things that are covered in the big, beautiful bill are going to be, I believe, rocket fuel for the economy. Growth is also really important.

Remember, nobody's factoring in the Trump wasn't, I should say, factoring in Trump's tariffs into financial and fiscal matters for the country. It's already one hundred twenty billion dollars and it's just getting going. So, you know, there are other pathways maybe that could be considered here that might make the situation better.

Now, I mean, I did, I'll say, I know that Trump had to sign it, so I forgot, and now the House has to reconcile on their side for a second. I think they're just going to do what they did. We're going to get a bunch of windy speeches about, oh, the debt, the debt, the debt, and then they're going to vote for it.

I don't understand. We all get it. We all understand. There's nothing else to be said. Until you want to deal with entitlements, everybody, you don't want to deal with the dead. End of story, full stop, end of conversation. And nobody wants to deal with entitlements, so let's just do what we can to achieve the agenda we've got while Trump's running things. I think that there's going to be a recognition that

entitlement spending is out of control and everybody's going to have to get their benefits cut. And we should have, we should have a real conversation about social security and the fact that it's actually not a very good deal. And most Americans just don't really look into it because it's been established for a long time. The government takes your money. They give you a 3% return roughly on it. And if you die, you,

If you die, you never get it. You know that. This is all falling on deaf ears. People love their people love Social Security. You know, the problem is, Clay, the lunatic communists who are certainly right now sitting around a lot of them praising the Mamdani wing of the Democrat Party. They're not going to get into what you're talking about. They're just going to tell people they're taking your Social Security and then you lose. And then the communists are in charge and then they ruin everything.

So this is the political reality of America right now. And Trump sees it. And that's why I have my patience for this thing and my patience even for beyond. Yeah, of course, hear it out. Make the case. Tell everybody the numbers. But standing in the way of the Trump agenda because you say that you're not getting the cuts you want, you're not getting the cuts. It's not happening. You're not actually going to deal with the debt. It's $37 trillion. It's not happening. How many people do you think even understand Social Security? What percentage of the American population?

I mean, they know that they get money when they're older and they need it. I mean, that's all they care to know. But...

The fact that it's an awful deal, and if you got to keep your own money and you just put it in index funds, you would like... People don't trust themselves. People would spend it on a jet ski, and then they'd say, oh, but I need help now. This is the problem. Everybody wants somebody else to pay for their stuff, not realizing that they're the ones paying for the stuff they think is coming from other people. I think the biggest challenge is it's so embedded now that

that most people don't even examine the underlying concept, which is basically a big pyramid scheme. And it's predicated on there always being way more young people than there are old people, and we're not in that era anymore. Clay, the average person pays into Medicare less than half of what they take out of Medicare in terms of the actual cost of their care.

But if you tell anybody that you're going to change Medicare, you know what they say? I paid for that. It's not welfare. It's an entitlement. I've paid for it. I deserve it. Okay. Well, if I give you money for one ice cream cone, but you keep giving me two ice cream cones, you're going to run out of ice cream cones.

Nobody wants to hear it. And honestly, I'm excited about the border. I'm excited about saving the country. I'm excited about the Trump agenda being funded. You know, I'm with Stephen Miller on this stuff, man. Like, we got to save the country now. And we'll figure out the debt later when people want to have big boy conversations about it. They don't, actually. The American people do not want to have the conversation. The answer then becomes the growth rate is everything.

Because the growth rate of the country is what can turn this into a net positive bill. So if you are optimistic on AI, if you want to unleash individual American meritocracy,

If we ever got the country growing at 4% again, all of these issues vanish, basically. 4% a year, 4% a year, 4% a year. We're growing at like 1.5% a year, 1.8% a year. The overall growth rate of the American economy is the key if overall...

overall spending is not going to be addressed, and there doesn't seem to be a political will, unfortunately, as you and I believe there should be. If you look at just the basic books, the political will isn't there to address the spending. And so we live in a magical world. We have to understand, it's not convincing Republicans to tackle the debt. It's dealing with the fact that Democrats will call you...

heartless, you know, ruthless, throwing old ladies off their Medicare and taking away Social Security from hardworking Americans so they can seize power and act like communist maniacs. That's the problem. So this is...

It's not just like we're having a talk on our side. And also the concept of cut, which the media, I think, does a poor job of. Slowing the rate of growth is not a cut. It's still a growth. But they have managed to create this idea, well, we're going to dial back the growth rate.

of the overall spending, and that is seen as a cut. Oh, you're cutting spending. No, spending's still growing. It's just not growing at the same rate. And honestly, I think a lot of this is just communication failure. I don't think people know the details. I think a lot of people don't care to know the details. Spoiler alert, it's going to pass, and Trump's going to end up signing it, and everyone who's chirping about this from the Congress in the meantime is going to go along with what's basically there. Just throwing it out there for everybody.

But the debt is not being dealt with, that is for sure. And that is why the BRICS conference is so interesting. It's going on next week right around this time. Brazil, Russia, India, China. You know what they're trying to do? Get off the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Why does that matter? Well, that would be a huge lifestyle change for all Americans if that happens. And as it happens over time, it means that we can't fund the things that we fund right now with money printing the same way because other countries aren't going to buy our debt and we can't just...

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The Senate has passed the big beautiful bill that happened right at the start of the first hour of today's program. It will now go back to the House. End result is going to be passage.

Seems to be, I would say, general happiness over this passing. But also a, I don't know that I've picked up on this before, a demand for perfection in bills the likes of which I have not seen in the past. All bills passed by Congress are imperfect.

Many of them are unfortunately awful, which is why in many ways I would just like less government. I think most of you out there would like less government. Just get out of the way and let individual excellence triumph, which is how you get the economy growing. But this bill, I think, will aid substantially in getting the economy growing. It will provide certainty for

On tax rates, it will further shut down the southern border. It is imperfect, as all acts of Congress are, but I believe the net benefits are very much in a positive direction. Now, for those of you out there that are concerned about government spending, you're right. The government spending is out of control.

There is not, however, the political will to address government spending, either on the Democrat or the Republican side. It doesn't exist. If you argue for it,

in cutting government spending, cutting entitlements, all these things, you don't get elected. And to Buck's point, eventually communists take power and they spend more money and they tax you at a higher rate. So I don't know who the great communicator is going to be that can actually sit down. I feel like in many ways back in the day, some of you will remember this, Ross Perot used to just buy money.

commercial time in 1992 and he had his lectern can't finish

He had his lectern and he had his like a pointer and he would stand there and just make the case as a executive would about how government spending was out of control. I think Ron Johnson is right on this. I think Rand Paul is right on this. We have allowed embedded spending excess to be continued from COVID. I agree with all of it. The political will to address it isn't there.

And Democrats, this is where they win a lot of these arguments because they have established the definition of a cut is actually slowing the rate of growth. I've never heard of this being applied anywhere else. This is really this was true of Republicans in the Tea Party era trying with there was that there was a huge fight and it was about slowing the rate of the increase of spending.

It was about spending less of a, you know, bringing the trajectory of increased spending down just a little bit. A decrease in the increase. Yes. And this was a huge political fight back in the Tea Party days a decade ago. So, yeah, I, you know, I don't want to be dismissive or cynical about it, but usually when I say that it's because I'm about to be. We just haven't suffered enough. People haven't spent enough money.

They haven't seen enough of their grandchildren not living up to the quality of life that they themselves had, or we haven't seen enough money going to paying interest and having that crowd out, private spending. We haven't seen enough of the tax raises that eventually are going to be a part of trying to stabilize this. Or happiness, because we're going into a holiday weekend, and I already have holiday brain going on here a little bit.

Or, Clay, we find ways that AI and productivity and growth are so profound that it's something of a fiscal miracle, right? I mean, we become so productive and so efficient as an economy that we're able to grow our way, if not out of it, grow our way to continued stability with it. That's a possibility as well.

I don't think that that's – there are people who believe that AI is going to be more transformational than even the Internet has been. Think about that for a second. So no one really knows what that means in terms of how much wealth – people think of wealth as zero-sum, and it's not. Now I'm borrowing from Naval Ravikant. He's a very smart guy. Status is zero-sum. Wealth can actually be –

something that is real and that is broadly shared, we are all a lot richer than the richest people were in the 1500s. Why is that? The world has gotten a lot wealthier, not just individuals. Status is a different thing. That's zero-sum.

So I just don't know if we've reached the point. I don't think we have reached the point as a country where we want to tackle the problem. Maybe we want to see if we can grow our way out of it, and that's where we are. So any noise to the contrary right now is unfortunately just that, noise. I think the argument that might cut through from a communication perspective is if you put on 10 pounds of weight every year and then suddenly you only put on 3 pounds,

You're getting fat slower, but you're still getting fatter. And the whole idea that slowing the rate of an increase or slowing the rate of growth as a cut is one of the most pernicious, I think, realities that has been allowed to exist in the way we even have conversation. This is where the left does a better job with language.

Because defining a cut as something that actually leads to something being greater is really what they do in essence. Because what it means is once they get the money spent, they never dial back from the money that has been spent. They embed it. It's also like revenue versus taxes. They don't use the word tax, really. If they can avoid it, they'll say revenue. Because revenue is just money the government has, which is good and goes to investing. That's what they'll also say.

We need to invest more in the following programs because investing sounds good. What they mean is take your money under the threat of fines and or imprisonment and put it into things that the government decides are payoffs for the constituents that they need to pay off. That's what that's what it actually is. But they play games with the language. I said this to Clay offline. I mean, off off air. I'll say it to all of you. It's the same thing we talk about minimum wage.

Minimum wage is economically a flawed concept. It does not work the way it is intended to work. It never has. It never will. It doesn't matter. People like it. And if you say don't pay minimum wage, you know what happens? You lose. So it's very hard. And you could say, well, I'll just convince people, make a better argument.

You can convince some people. Can you convince enough people that the communists who are just going to shout, you're a fat cat, they play the politics of envy, the Mom Donnie routine. Look, this Mom Donnie stuff is, none of this is new. It's the same thing with Bernie Sanders. Did you see Bernie Sanders sitting down with Joe Rogan recently, I might add, talking about the lawsuits that Trump is filing? You know what Bernie Sanders does whenever he's cornered with a stupid argument? He pretends he doesn't know the details.

This is what he does. He does this with economics, too, I might add. Well, you know what? I don't have the facts and the figures on that, so I can't get into it. No, it's because his arguments are trash, Clay. But Bernie Sanders, Mamdani, AOC, they're all doing the same thing, which is ignoring history, ignoring math, and telling people they have a secret sauce, a secret formula that's going to make everybody feel like they're getting enough and they're good enough and everything is fine. It is always a lie. But it's a very appealing lie.

Something that Trump is going to focus on, Buck...

that I'm starting to see attention on that I think could be transformative. Okay, we've talked now the big beautiful bill is eventually going to pass in some fashions, pass the Senate, pass the House. They have to reconcile them, but I don't think it's going to suddenly blow up. There's going to be some form of a bill that passes. Okay, so that is now moving forward in the agenda. There is now, and I think this is going to be potentially transformative, momentum for

to not count illegal immigrants for purposes of the house seats have you seen this this could be hugely important and it's structural and it's massive first of all we need a new census because i think they screwed it up um and it would change the way that the 2028 election map is set up um

because it would mean that even if Democrats won Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, the electoral votes are not there to allow them to,

be able to win 270 to 268. Unfortunately, the electoral college is not going to be shifted. It doesn't appear until after 2030. But what no one talks about that I think Trump could get behind, and this could be really important too, is they count illegal immigrants for purposes of House seats.

And the number is roughly 730 or 740,000 congressmen represent individuals. If you said, hey, we're not counting illegal immigrants at all for purposes of House seats, this would mean that the House was not winnable for Democrats. Right.

They may win the House back in 2026, but structurally, if I were now the Trump team and I were giving them advice on something that I think would be transformative in the illegal immigrant space, it would be let's

Make it clear that you cannot count illegal immigrants for purposes of redistricting house seats and districting house seats. And this would probably knock at least 10 Democrat seats out of control. Why in the world should these people be counted? And it be the case that Democrats benefit overwhelmingly off of people that are not citizens, not them voting, right?

but just them being counted for census purposes, this means that big cities and blue states that have encouraged illegal immigrants to come into their locations would be dialed back in their impact, and this would have a substantial impact going forward. I think it's one of the big things that I would say, hey, now that we got this done, let's focus on that. Well, it also goes to the perception people have, which I think is, in this case, correct,

which is that the system is rigged. Because if you're a political party that is benefiting from violations of law, you are benefiting in terms of cold, hard facts of power when it comes to leveraging something that is the mass violation, the serial violation of American law. That's not the way the game is supposed to be played. The refs have been paid off. This is a problem.

And and it's as you point out, a substantial one, a big one by the numbers. So, yeah, this is why I keep saying, though, with the big, beautiful bill, the illegals situation. This is why Trump this is the number one reason in my mind that Trump won the election as convincingly as he did. I know there's other stuff. There's a million things. OK, it's always you're taking a snapshot of.

the way that 150 million people decided to click one box or the other. But immigration is the single issue that I think motivated more people to get behind Trump. And this has to start getting fixed right now.

because what we saw under Joe Biden, that is truly unsustainable if you want to consider this to be America going forward. Not in 50 years, in five years. You can't have another 10 million illegals pile into this country on top of the illegals that are already here and think that this is still going to be what we've thought it is. And Clay...

It's already having a huge political effect, as we see. You have all these cities that are trying to thwart federal law enforcement. Well, that's because the political power of the illegal constituents in those cities is huge.

And they know that they have to try and preserve it. We'll take some calls on this, and we'll take some of your calls. We don't have any guests scheduled today, 800-282-2882. You can always talk back. Lots of emails rolling in. We'll dive into some of those because a lot of you have big takes on all of that as well. Clay wants to cut your Social Security, so call in and yell at him.

This is why I don't have to run for elective office. I can actually tell you the truth as opposed to having to lie to everybody and be like, hey, it's a magical world. Everybody's going to get more money than you ever put in, and there's not going to be any consequences. Hey, yay. Everybody gets ice cream every day for meals. Let's eat birthday cake every day for breakfast, and you're not going to get fat.

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262 bucks. Check it out. Ease for everyone. Dot com slash clay. The big news of the day at the top of the show. Just to recap, right as we came on air, I mean, within moments, the Senate had passed on a 5150 vote. The big, beautiful bill. J.D. Vance had to be the tiebreak on that one. Tom Tillis, Rand Paul. Who's third? Somebody else didn't get. Oh, Collins. Collins.

Didn't vote for it. So, yep, that was what happened there. Now, thank you, Clay, for the catch. It goes back to the House side before it goes to the President's desk for signature.

The House is going to... There's going to be some squawking from the Freedom Caucus about it. I don't think they're going to sabotage the Trump agenda at this late moment on the big, beautiful bill. But they're going to... You know, look, they're allowed to have their say on it, and they will. So that will be a thing that occurs in the next few days, and we're probably going to get to a signature before the holiday. Hopefully, that is how this will go. So that's the big news. And then we have the...

Most interesting visit of the day was Donald Trump going down to Alligator Alcatraz, which is in Ochopie, Ochopie, Florida, which is near Everglades City, which I can tell you is not really much of a city. It is really middle of nowheresville. I think Ochopie.

It has 100 people, something like that. It is unincorporated territory, so it's not even, I think, a township per se. It's quite small, but that was the one.

If you're wondering, it wasn't Lake Okeechobee. I know Lake Okeechobee. Oh, Choppy was the new place. So that's where they have this airstrip that is a place to put illegal migrants, illegal aliens before they are deported.

And Trump is saying if you try to run from the Gators or swim from the Gators, it's going to be a bad day for you. So there's all that going on. And then he got into Kami Mamdani. Do you have anything in the alligator Alcatraz? The team is saying that all you have to do is be able to not zigzag, but outrun the nearest person to you, which is always true. And that is mean. That's very mean. Clay would Clay would not leave me behind to get eaten by Gators. Right, Clay?

Correct. Correct. I would be, um, again, I I've said on this program before, I am prepared to save anyone from an alligator attack. If you see me near a swamp, I've got your back. So, uh, just don't go in the water. Um, but if they come out of the water, like in crocodile Dundee, I know that's crocodile versus an alligator. Then, uh, I'll be like Mick Dundee right there to, uh, to protect you. Um, by,

By the way, that movie also still a lot of fun. If you've got kids and you want to watch some movies during the July 4th holiday, weather's not great. Maybe you're sitting around. We've been watching all the Harry Potter movies in the Travis household and they're still really good. So props, JK Rowling. I think she may have a future in this creative industry space. But that alligator Alcatraz thing. And I think, I know we said it last hour, but I do think it's so important that

Trump and DeSantis are a whale of a team. And I know Ron DeSantis only has, whatever it is, a year and a half left, basically, as the governor of Florida. But I would not be surprised if DeSantis ends up in some form or fashion as a part of Trump 2.0 cabinet. And what I mean by that is,

Doing these jobs takes a lot. So far, we have had pretty great stability in Trump 2.0 cabinet universe, but at some point, some of these guys, probably after NGALs, after the midterms, are going to start to say, hey, I want to do something different. I'm burned out. Two years of going full speed, doing X, Y, or Z. There's something else that I want to do. It wouldn't shock me if Trump comes back to DeSantis. Remember, there was some talk

about DeSantis potentially being the Secretary of Defense when it was uncertain about whether Hegseth was going to be confirmed. And that's another example of J.D. Vance breaking a tie 50-50 in the Senate. J.D. Vance gets the vote to get Hegseth in, and Pete has done a very, very good job since. This is also an example in the big, beautiful bill. You've got J.D. Vance breaking the tie 50-50

This is why having a little bit of a buffer in the Senate, 53-47, man, it would be great to be up to 54 or 55 or 56 as it pertains to where we're headed on next. But the Trump-DeSantis relationship, very strong, and I think it's important to point out that by and large, most of you out there who voted Trump

I really can't hardly point to anything in the first six months and say, hey, I think Trump could have done a better job on this. Politics is the art of the possible. So I understand that people are saying, oh, this is my number one issue and this hasn't been addressed completely to the ability that I would like.

You can't make people do what there is not the political will for them to do. So you and I, Buck, we talked about this some earlier, we're very troubled by the national debt. When the Tea Party got its start, national debt was $10 trillion. National debt is soon going to be $40 trillion.

That's untenable. But until there is a political will to address it and you can't solve it by increasing tax rates, that doesn't work. Ultimately, I think you're going to have to dial back spending. This is inevitable, but that political will is not there yet. So in the meantime, you have two options. You can either whine and complain, and some people are choosing that because it's not kick your legs, scream like a child.

have a temper tantrum, or you can do what you and I are talking about now. Hey, this bill is going to pass, and now it's time to try to figure out how do we grow the economy as rapidly as we possibly can to help to lead to a surplus through growth as opposed to a surplus through cuts. That is the new hope, and to me, if we can get it to 3%, 4% growth, everything changes.

Yes. So that's the that's the case for optimism. And I agree with you on that. The case for optimism is not that everyone's going to see the wisdom of Ron of Iran. Sorry, Rand Paul's math and and make massive changes to the biggest spending programs and priorities of the United States government now and for the last, well, all of our lifetimes. So, yeah, that's not going to happen.

So hopefully Trump just has the economy so juiced and so en fuego that some very good things can happen. What will make things a lot worse is if the commie Mamdani is able to take control. Trump spoke about this. There's some Marine One noise in the background. We wanted you to hear this. This is cut seven. This is look, even President Trump's win. And we all see this. This is concerning when somebody gets the wind at his back in some someplace as Trump.

as New York City. Play it. I think he's terrible. He's a communist. The last thing we need is a communist. I said there will never be socialism in the United States. So we have a communist. I think he's bad news. And I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with him watching him because he has to come right to his building to get his money. And don't worry, he's not going to run away with anything. I think he's a... Frankly, I've heard he's a total nut job.

I think the people of New York are crazy. If they go this route, I think they're crazy. We will have a communist in the for the first time, really a pure, true communist. He wants to operate the grocery stores, the department stores. What about the people of that? I think it's crazy. Yeah, Clay, it is crazy.

And I understand that there's this sense that it's limited to New York, but AOC and Bernie Sanders...

They co-sign really all of this stuff, and they're the Democrats that have the most currency with the base, and it is a Democrat party that came within a few hundred thousand votes of Trump, even after lying about Biden's dementia and putting forward the worst candidate in our lifetime in Kamala Harris. So, I mean, I would argue even worse than Dementia Guy, which tells you a lot. So we have to take this seriously. People ask, how does the Democratic Party come back

It's not hard. They were close even in this election in aggregate numbers. When you really look at it, there are a lot of people who are voting Democrat, no matter who they put forward, no matter how crazy the ideas and Mamdani, I think, is just a symptom of that larger malady. And again, I'm going to keep hammering it.

If there is not a coalition that arises to all come together to oppose Mamdani, if you have Eric Adams running as an independent, Andrew Cuomo running as an independent, and you have a situation where Curtis Sliwa is the Republican, that trio is going to assure that Mamdani wins.

So the only way New York City rejects Mamdani and has some form of sanity in terms of who it's selecting as its next mayor is if there's a understanding that they cannot all run and there is a coalition of opposition that comes together to try and defeat Mamdani.

My concern is everybody's going to look out for their best interest, meaning we're going to get more attention if you stay in the race and everybody else loses. And there isn't a coalition brought together to come against him. And I think what Trump is talking about in general is that the opposition that he sees from all these sanctuary cities,

as the process is underway to deport so many different people, is a direct opposition to the federal government and should not be acceptable. And at some point, I think there's going to have to be a test case of someone, probably a mayor that is one of these sanctuary cities that is directly defying federal law,

And we're going to have to have the courts rule about whether or not that is permissible or appropriate, because I don't understand...

we made this argument and the Supreme Court has said it quite clearly the President of the United States is in charge of border related policies immigration all of those things how can we allow all of these individual cities and certainly governors of states but it's really being driven more by mayors of cities that have decided that they are sanctuaries how can we allow them to directly defy federal law at

At some point, that conflict is going to have to be resolved in some way by the larger court system. It feels inevitable to me. We'll get some calls and some talkbacks coming up here in a second. I want to hear from all of you before Clay and I sign off for the holiday. Like I said, Tudor Dixon and tomorrow.

Brian Mudd in the next day. Got great guest shows. We got live shows coming up for you with fantastic content, but Clay is going to be on the beach. I might even get to the beach. It's funny. I live next to the beach.

I don't really get to the beach very often, which is weird considering I live next to one of the nicest beaches in America, some would argue, for an urban beach. For an urban beach. Okay, don't be like, well, what about Tahiti or what about, you know, the Seychelles? One of the nicest urban beaches anywhere in the world. So, yeah, I should get to the beach too. We'll talk about it. Take some calls, 800-282-2882.

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Your dream body is just a few months away. SlimRank.com. You're having a great time. We appreciate you being with us. Want to remind you to please subscribe to the Clay and Buck Podcast.

Network, because you're going to want to have stuff to listen to as you are cleaning the grill in preparation for cooking on the grill, which is a thing you should all do. You don't want to get too much of that kind of carbon gristle buildup on the metal grate of your grill. But if you want something to listen to, or if you're going to be out there, I don't know, on the boat, in the yard, whatever it is, listen to Clay and Buck Podcast Network. Fantastic people there. David Rutherford, Tudor Dixon,

Carol Markowitz, lots and lots of great people to listen to. And like we said, Tudor Dixon will be in for us tomorrow, and our friend Brian Mudd will be in for us the next day after that. So you've got great shows coming up your way. We have, wow, a lot of talkbacks and a lot of calls, a lot of good things going on here. Joe from, let's take HH, Joe from Mesa, Arizona. Hey, Joe in Mesa. Hi.

I was trying to explain to my friend just like why most of America doesn't even care about the deportations that are happening. And he flipped out on me and was saying that I needed to admit that I hate every other race other than my own. Anyways, so in the end, they're just totally brainwashed and there's nothing you can do. The law either matters or it doesn't. It has nothing to do with race. It has to do with being a rule of law society, Clay.

Yeah, and look, I think that a lot of people are dialed out and just randomly buy into all of the histrionics. I mean, I think a perfect example of this is, you know, we're going to hit right now. The stock market is up again today for another high. It was only two months ago that they were telling you that everything was going to collapse.

and that you needed to make sure that you sold all your stocks and that we were headed for basically a nuclear winter from an economic perspective, and it just hasn't happened. And so I think the total fear there is it works on a lot of people, and they are aware that emotionally they can play on people's failings as it pertains to that, basically. We have next up here...

A lot of Lord of the Rings nerds in this audience. Oh, we didn't get, we said we were going to do the movie thing. Yeah, that's what I thought. I was doing my research here. New York Times best. Now, this is a little bit of a frustration because people don't pay. It's like when you had a teacher that said, make sure you read the instructions for the exam before you take the exam. It's the best movies of the 21st century.

So anybody who's jumping in with Braveheart, which I love and would be my overall choice, overall favorite movie of all time, that's 1998, I think, or 6, or I forget when, 9? I don't know. But it was definitely...

in the 20th, 20, 2-0, 20th century. 21st century, best movies of the 21st century. This is the New York Times list that came out. We got a producer. I got all of you to tell me your picks, and I thought they were pretty solid. And when I say all of you, I mean our team in New York. New York team, let's start with you. Ali, producer Ali, what was your best movie of the 21st century? You had time to think about this, so you're on the hot seat now if you forgot. What is it?

Oh, no. I'm totally on the hot seat. I had gone with Gladiator, but I had the years all wrong. Yeah. Gladiator came out. Hold on. Gladiator. 2000. Yes. It counts in the New York Times list. It does? Because that's technically the 20th century. They have it down at 92. So they are counting anything that's 2000 and beyond. Okay.

Well, that's an outrage, first of all. The fact that they're counting it and they're putting it at 92 is an outrage because, Ali, it would be a top fiver for me, top fiver for sure. They put Parasite at number one, a foreign film, as the best movie of the 21st century, which I think is mad. Producer Mike, what was yours? You had a good one. Dark Knight? Were you Dark Knight or was that Greg? What does Producer Mike say? Dark Knight.

Dark Knight, yeah, he was Dark Knight, solid. I can't quibble with that. I have watched that movie probably a hundred times. I enjoy the Dark Knight. He really brought back, people think now, oh, the Batman franchise, huge franchise. That was, it was on the ropes after a couple of really bad Batman movies that bombed big time.

including one with, I think, the girl from Clueless was in it, Alicia Silverstone. There was a George Clooney. No one even remembers George Clooney played Batman. And it was such a bad movie that people don't even remember that he was Batman. So The Dark Knight came back from that. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both great, great options. Remember, 21st century we're looking at. Clay, what was yours? I broke it down trio, meaning, because to me there is...

There's a difference between a kid movie, there's a difference between a comedy, and there's a difference between a drama. So I went with, I agree, the whole Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight, that is really phenomenal, well done.

Up, I think, was the best of the Pixar movies. Up is so well done. And then I think the funniest movie of the 21st century, I think, is Old School. I just think it is absolutely hysterical. Well, that's not even a category. Now you're making up categories.

Do you think Old School is the funniest movie of the 21st century? What's funnier than Old School? I mean, I think 40-Year-Old Virgin is funnier than Old School. 40-Year-Old Virgin is very funny. Superbad is very funny. There's a series of four or five movies, I think, that you could argue. I think the combination of Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn is tough to beat. Wedding Crashers, also really, really funny and well done. But I think you have to consider what...

Again, best doesn't mean Citizen Kane is a phenomenal movie. We talked about yesterday. Schindler's List is a phenomenal movie. It's hard to sit down and just be like, hey, let's have some popcorn and watch Schindler's List. Well, this is like how I feel about the pianist. P-I-A-N-I-S-T, to be clear. The pianist is a, or the pianist, maybe some people say it that way,

is, I think, a perfect movie, meaning it is incredibly well done, and every aspect of it, from the acting to the writing to the soundtrack, I think it's a perfect movie, but it's intense. It's World War II. Yeah. It's a Jewish guy who's trying to flee the... Well, at one point, it's his neighbors and the Nazis and...

The Pianist is an incredible movie, but I can't say it's my favorite movie because if the Dark Knight trilogy or the Lord of the Rings movies are on, I'm watching those instead of The Pianist. I'm not going to lie and be that guy, which brings me to, I think, Producer Greg, what was your pick? You didn't give us your... We're trying to help you, by the way, for the holiday weekend, everybody. If you haven't seen any of these, we're giving you great recommendations for...

I would argue The Lives of Other is a pretty perfect movie, although it is German language, and that is 21st century. But again, you still haven't even watched it, have you? No. You and Laura haven't watched The Lives of Others, and you have... Okay, maybe that one, because it's foreign language, I could see Laura being like, Clay, don't torture us.

You guys haven't watched Hacksaw Ridge, which is insane. Because I gave you that assignment a long time ago. That movie is wild. To be fair to me, I barely see anything. I watch stuff with my kids, which is why I've been watching Harry Potter. You watch hundreds of hours of college football. Hundreds of hours. That's what I was going to say. And I watch a lot of sports. Let me give you an underrated movie that I think seems even more...

Contemporary than it was when it came out. Minority report. No, I'm telling you, go back and watch it now in an age of AI. It seems eerily prescient in terms of its foreshadowing of where we are. Producer Greg is going to weigh in. He wanted to get on this. Producer Greg, best movie of the 21st century. If you were making this New York Times list, what's number one?

Dark Knight. I'm with Producer Knight. Oh, you're Dark Knight. I thought we had Double Dark Knight. Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker is the best bad guy performance ever.

That I think you, it's that, it's the no country for old men with, what's his name? Bargain, Javier Bardem. Javier Bardem. Javier Bardem and Hans Gruber in Die Hard, which was the first time that guy was ever in a movie, which is still amazing. Does watching The Dark Knight, knowing that Heath Ledger was going to in some way kill himself,

I watch it now, and you're right, the performance is incredible, but when I watch it, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, in order to become this good, he had to go to such a dark place that it felt to me... A lot of people who are actors and actresses, it's not actually that talented. You know what I mean? There are lots of people who are whatever...

Heath Ledger, that was actually an artistic performance as the Joker, but I think it led him into a world where his brain almost broke. Yeah, he went into the darkness too much. That has happened with people that get too into a role. A lot of people, very high, because I saw a lot of comments about this, because I was on with Will Kane and Carol Markowitz on Will's show on Fox Clay, and that's where this got...

A lot of people have as their top movies. I would say the ones that I saw the most, for all of you out there, I'd say the one that I saw the most as a number one choice was either There Will Be Blood or No Country for Old Men for Best Movie of the 21st Century. I view those as both...

excellent movies, but it also goes in that category of there will be blood for me is like watching a master class of acting. Obviously, Daniel Day-Lewis is phenomenal and the performances are... But do I care about anybody in this story, really? No. Do I like anybody, really? No. And then I think that, unfortunately, No Country for Old Men, again, very well made. And I'm not saying it's not a good movie. I'm just saying...

If it's on, am I going to watch it? It's so bleak and kind of nihilistic for me. So I can't get too excited about either one of those as a top 10 of the 21st century. They're both excellent movies, to be clear, but they're not movies. I've only watched each of those maybe twice, which for me is not very many.

I also, to me, when it's a book being made into a movie, I think the excellence of the movie in many ways reflects the book. And Cormac McCarthy is probably the greatest author. Now I'm really going to get people fired up. Probably the greatest author of the last...

30 years and I know he died a couple of years ago, but if you look at his production In terms of his talent and you go all the way back He moved eventually his fiction to basically the border with Texas and Mexico But he started off as a Tennessee based writer And I think he's probably the most talented writer in America in the last 30 years. I

And so no country for old men is a novel by him. And I think it just reflects the world that he created on the screen. And, and,

is actually an illustration of his excellence as a writer more than it is as a film. Does that make sense? Like if you said, hey, The Great Gatsby, which it isn't, and it's been made multiple times, most recently with Leonardo DiCaprio, if you said The Great Gatsby is the best movie that's ever been made, I would be like, well, it's a

a phenomenal novel. And so to me, I strip out anything that isn't an original movie as a great movie. Does that make sense? Because it's a reflection of, of the, of the book more than one talk back here before we get into more talkbacks and calls, close us out. A podcast listeners, Zeb from Texas plate, Clay and Buck. This is Zeb from Texas. Love your show. Listen to you every day. Since y'all took over for rush ditto, maybe.

Hey, listen, I'm so disappointed that y'all would question Producer Greg after he's led you right so many times. Minas Tirith is the capital city of Gondor after Osgiliath was destroyed by the orcs in the Battle of Sauron. Trust your man.

This is the nerdiest thing that has ever been said on the show. I love that we have listeners who clearly have a 12-gauge across the backseat of the car, have a Stetson on and cowboy boots, and they're lecturing us about Minas Tirith as the capital of Gondor after Osilius, of course.

was destroyed by the orcs in the Battle of Sauron. That is our Texas audience, rolling around in a pickup, ready for any javelinas they have to take out, but you get Lord of the Rings wrong, and they're dropping knowledge on you. The correction yesterday that I read is the nerdiest thing that's ever been said on the show. That talkback and Bucks analysis of it is the second nerdiest thing that's ever been said on the show.

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