BONUS: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show - Daily Review Mar 25 2025
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Wow.

Welcome to the show.

Feels like I should just bail on the show right now, Buck, because we have Dr. Laura, famous Dr. Laura. Is it Schlesinger? Is that her last name? I think if I'm not mistaken, many of you know Dr. Laura. She's a relationship expert. Producer Ali sent messages to our wives saying, hey, can you potentially fill out, you know, do a 30-second talkback question for Dr. Laura, relationship expert.

I am told that my wife said 30 seconds is not enough and sent in a two-minute long question. And a part of me feels like, fuck, I should just wave right now and just go ahead and leave. I have no idea what the question that my wife sent in was, but she needed two minutes instead of 30 seconds. So...

Anyway, that's our two. Our only guest today, Dr. Laura, featuring a question from my wife, Laura. And your wife, Carrie, like, wanted less, had less, she hasn't been married 20 years. But she has written a question, correct, for Dr. Laura? She preferred to just write it out, and I will read the question to Dr. Laura. So both of our wives took different questions.

different pathways on this one. I would just say, though, the reason I know... I had heard of Dr. Laura before. I know she had a very big show for a long time on radio, but it's because sometimes my wife... Right after we got married, for example...

You know, Carrie would I would come home or there'd be dinner on the table and she would say things like, well, you know, Dr. Laura says. And I noticed this trend of whenever Carrie would say Dr. Laura says about a relationship, I was like, yeah, that's good. I like that. That's good. So you are you are you think she gives good advice in general based on your experience? Excellent advice.

From my own experience of a wife who's been listening to Dr. Laura for many, many years, everything that she has picked up from Dr. Laura, including some of the tough love stuff, for the audience, is very solid. Well, I'm excited for that. That is our two. Speaking of tough love. All right. So, newest story.

If you have not heard, is that as we prepared to bomb the Hooties, which, by the way, I think was totally the right decision to try to free up shipping lanes and send a message to Iran, there was a group chat based on my research, Buck. You can correct me if I'm wrong on any of these facts. I think there were 18 people involved in a group chat on the Signal app, which is designed to be a...

high privacy way to basically send text messages outside of

doing so from a regular cell phone network or an Apple cell phone network. I would imagine most of you probably are sending text messages, and if you have an Apple phone or an Apple device, they're blue. If you're sending outside of the Apple universe, they're green. I don't know. What do you think? Maybe 10% of our audience has downloaded the Signal app. The Signal app, I have it on my phone, is sometimes ways that people... I've noticed it in media in particular, particularly

that want to communicate things, but they don't want to send them on a traditional text message network because they're concerned about somebody else surveilling them, for lack of a better way to describe this. Now... It has end-to-end encryption. It's considered one of the better platforms for privacy and security out there, but...

There's what's good for your privacy and security versus what a nation state entity can break into and can surveil. Right. So it's it's one thing for you and me to sit here and say, well, I'm not worried about some random hacker getting our information. It's a different thing to say. Can the Chinese Communist Party's intelligence apparatus get our information? That's the question. So in this, I believe it was 18 people.

Accidentally, this is unfortunate, it appears National Security Advisor Mike Waltz added Jonah Goldberg, who is the editor of The Atlantic. And in general...

Probably there are a lot of people you could have added. The editor of Atlantic to this group chat was not the person that you wanted to add. And now that the price of eggs are back to normal, remember that talking point, and now that the stock market, S&P 500 at least, is back above where it was on Election Day, they need a new talking point for Trump is awful, and the new talking point is this encryption failure.

Did you say it's Jeffrey Goldberg? What did I call him? I think you said Jonah, who has made jokes about how he is not Jeffrey Goldberg. Jonah Goldberg is a different media Goldberg. I thought you were making a joke there. I was waiting for you to point this out. It's Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. My bad. Not the actor from The Big Short, right? No, that's...

Is that the wrong guy? Jonah Hill. That's a different clay. Get your Goldberg straight. I am. I am. I am out to lunch here already on the start. Anyway, this guy is the editor. He's not a movie star. He is not a fat person who has the same name, Jonah, that got skinny and then got fat again because his career collapsed when he got too skinny. This is not Jonah Hill, not Jonah Goldberg, Jeffrey Goldberg editor at the Atlantic. All right. So he is on this text thread, um,

And he decides that he's going to write about the security failure for the Atlantic. Does it yesterday afternoon, about time our show ended. And so it has been the biggest story in the last 24 hours. Okay, so clearly I'm not the intelligence expert here. Let me go to you first, Buck.

Uh, like we know Pete, we know JD, we know probably most of the people on this text thread. You certainly know everybody probably on this text. Yes. And then these are some of these individuals are, are friends of ours. And we just say that by way of disclosure, like, or there, there are people that we are friends with have socialized with. So, uh,

You know, I'm going to be as unbiased as I can in this situation. Right. But when I'm talking about someone like Pete or Tulsi, their friends, their patriots, I know where their heart is. I know what they're trying to do for the country. And so I comment everything from from that perspective first. But let me just I'll back back into this clay for a second. First up.

I don't want to help the Democrats in any way in this moment in time by giving them more than they should have in terms of political ammunition. All right. So that's we are cognizant of that here. It was, as you mentioned, the price of eggs or the price of eggs or the stock market. Now it's all national security, please.

They need to calm down, take a step back and recognize that the situation they're in right now as a political entity, the Democrats are in this situation because their party went insane and they deserve exactly what they're going through right now. The sort of excruciating humiliation of Democrats.

Trump doing all the things that he's doing to better the country. Okay. They should like it, but they don't. They find it humiliating. National security and classification. Classification is broken down by the expected possible harm that could be done due to unauthorized disclosure. So I think that's an important foundational understanding of this. Right, Clay? So when you talk about confidential, secret, top secret, compartmented, that's

These things exist. They're separated based upon the sensitivity generally of the sources and methods of the collection. Right. So if if some guy on the street somewhere shares his opinion about whether there's going to be like another Arab Spring Revolution, you know, that's going to be confidential, maybe because if he told it to people in a public forum, but you don't want his name to be out there too much or, you know, he said it out in public.

Anyway, you go all the way up the chain. If we have some super secret squirrel laser from outer space that could zap all of the information they have in, like, the Kremlin, okay, well, that's going to be very high level. The stuff that I have seen so far that they have talked about here, we have to keep in mind that Pete and others have said it's not classified. And now here's the thing. I don't think that they would lie about that because it's...

It's something it's something that Jeffrey Goldberg, Jeffrey Goldberg could make them look particularly foolish and dishonest on top of everything. If they said, oh, this isn't classified. And then he shares the screenshots, which I'm sure he has. He's already shared some that shows it is clearly classified. This information did not get out before these strikes were taken. So from a national security harm perspective.

there was no harm let's start with that there was no harm and you know jeffrey goldberg i think recognized you are an american like this is important stuff do not mess with an impending military strike because you think it'll get more clicks that is just that is true that is fair right he didn't try to and sometimes journalists really do like the new york times has done things in the past where i've said they are sabotaging american national security i do not think that that happened here and

And I think that that's to all of our benefit. And I'm not sure that it could have happened because I'm not sure that the information that was that could have been shared would have been sensitive enough to change things around. So nothing bad happened here in terms of U.S. national security. The harm was non-realized. Whether it could have been realized or not is a question whether there was anything classified in there. OK, Clay, then we get to the next part of this, which is operational security, OPSEC.

This is a blunder, obviously. There's no way around that. You don't want a journalist that you don't know is on the text thread getting access to anything that you're talking about as a senior policy official. So this is where Trump has already come out and said there was a lesson learned here and we're going to tighten things up going forward. This is not the, oh my gosh, Watergate moment that the media is pretending that it is because they want to attack the administrations.

I got still a lot of questions because I'm a regular, you know, sort of not super sophisticated person when it comes to sharing information like this. So let me ask you this question. And I think we can probably take some of the questions from from listeners because you're an expert in this. How much of this buck is about the fact that it's very difficult to get all of these people in one room when they're presumably traveling all over the world?

And shouldn't we have a method of communication given that these guys for the most part are around our age? People like you and me and a lot of people our age are used to communicating on rapid fashion in these group text chains, whether it's serious things or not serious things.

And to me, it oftentimes I would think would be difficult to get everybody on secure lines so that 18 people all over the world could have a conversation about this. Does that make sense? This is where. Yeah, absolutely. This is where operational security comes in. And I will say at my time in the CIA, this was taken incredibly seriously and with good reason.

Because we were doing, we the U.S. government, maybe we the CIA, who knows, we were doing...

Drone strikes. We were doing operational hits on high value. I mean, you know, we were doing takedowns of cells that were going to try to blow up a whole bunch of planes. I mean, there was and we knew about that stuff before it was happening. Right. If we're working with a partner nation, if JSOC is going to go in and do a raid, I mean, look at something like the Bin Laden raid, for example. So there was a need for operational security at a very high level. We understood that.

Everybody is always their own really first and last line of classification in reality, meaning I'm not saying that that's technically true, but meaning you determine in all of your communications. If I'm talking to somebody on the phone and I'm not being careful, I could bleed over into classified talk instantaneously. Right. So it's on everybody to be protecting sensitive information all the time who has access to it.

because there's no such thing as I'm only, this I think goes to your question, Clay, I'm only operating on the high side. I'm only operating on classified networks. No, you have to be taking phone calls. You have to be calling your wife or your husband and saying, I'm going to be home late tonight, honey, right? So you're always going to be interacting in the low side, the high side, classified and unclassified world. Did they bleed over a little too much here? That's part of, that's a question that people are fighting over right now. I haven't really seen anything

much to suggest that they did and i and again i think that they this isn't like they can get away with lying about it because goldberg uh would have had the the screenshots but i do you want there's more here yeah i want to i just i have a layman's knowledge here and i actually just have a lot of questions i also think there are people out there if you know that you are on a group chat that you shouldn't be on

Shouldn't you leave it or tell people, hey, like the fact that he stayed on this thing and allowed all these text messages to come in seems suspect to me as well? Well, absolutely. But, you know, journalists, it's interesting that you realize the journalists are really mostly activists, Clay. And I would say one thing that has always been it's kind of funny to me is when people will say to me,

Then I'm talking to, you know, we're off the record here. Right. And I sit there and I go, I have to say we're on the record for if anyone's talking to me as a human being and they think that they have my confidence. I don't break that. I don't care. You know, government official person in my private life, you know, whatever. If you think you're talking to me, Buck, as a person that you can trust, you can trust me.

But journalists operate in this other space of they get to determine what the public needs to know and not. And what we find out is that really it's whether it hurts my party or not, which is where the Goldberg situation comes in. This is why I've never been an anonymous source in any story that I'm aware of. Like, if I'm going to be quoted, I just tell you exactly what I think. For better or worse, I tell you exactly what I think. I don't want to be somebody who's giving an anonymous quote. I don't think I've ever done it.

But yeah, to your point, let's have more conversations about this. By the way, if you have talkbacks and you have questions for Buck in particular, because he's the expert on a situation like this, and I'm kind of fascinated by it and intrigued to learn more. Look, did you know your cell phone service bill will shrink to about 50 bucks a month when you switch to Pure Talk and you won't sacrifice any quality at all? In fact, with Verizon AT&T or T-Mobile, you can make the switch and immediately save

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Saving America, one thought at a time. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Welcome back in, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show. All right, good news coming out of Ukraine as that continues to move, we hope, towards a resolution and a ceasefire. We are talking about the Signal story, the discussion that involved Jeffrey Goldberg, an Atlantic editor and writer, and some people, including Brian here. When we make a mistake...

your job is not to keep the story alive. Sometimes you should just shut the F up. Appreciate Brian sending me that email. I have a very different opinion. I think our job is to be honest with all of you about big stories. And sometimes when big stories...

are being talked about in a way that we think is dishonest, we should explain to you why when you're getting on Facebook and you're seeing somebody sharing a story that isn't representative of what actually happened, or when you are out and about and somebody in your social circle brings something up, we want to make sure that you are well-informed with every possible argument. This is the biggest story of the day so far, and I think we have

a responsibility obligation to talk about it intelligently even if it's not the perfect story and so um you know brian i appreciate the email but my job is to tell you exactly what i think good or bad and if you don't like that there's lots of people who will tell you only what you want to hear every minute of every day i think it will keep you worse informed but i

That's just, I think, a fundamental disagreement that we have about what exactly we're doing here. So I think that we always have, you know, there are a few things that we have to serve this audience daily, right? And that's always, you know, we just did an interview recently about crossing 555 stations, you know, no big deal. And Clay and I were talking to people in the media about how, you know, we work for all of you, right?

Day in and day out. And we want to bring you the best information we can. So if you listen to this show for an hour, you're going to know everything that's going on. And if you give us three hours, we're hoping to, you know, give you a tremendous analysis and fun and tell stories and right. Give you a fully immersive experience. But one of the things, Clay, that I think we do. Sorry, I was I was weaving there a little bit, guys. But, you know, as one does.

One of the things that we do is I never want anyone who listens to this show to feel like, oh, but if I'm at a party or I'm at the office or wherever and someone challenges me on this issue, I'm not ready for it.

Yeah. So I don't want you to be in a situation where you're annoying sister in law or, you know, you're you're, you know, Bob from accounting or, you know, Sally from from H.R. is like, did you see the big national security mess up, whatever? And you go, well, I don't know. I've told we're telling you everything you need to know about it.

These are patriots. They didn't mean any harm. There was no harm done. Better practices next time. Sometimes mistakes happen. They will adjust, and it's not that big a deal.

Okay, so that's well said, I think. And I was in the CIA and faced imprisonment if I messed up these rules, so I know what I'm talking about. Okay, so my thoughts, couple of things as a layman here. One, why do we not have our own version of a signal app that could, and I want you to explain this to me because I've been doing reading because I want to know more about it.

it's hard to get everybody in a secure location when you've got people traveling all over the world. And I think this is important and you want to make sure that everyone is well informed with what the United States government is doing so that Tulsi Gabbard doesn't turn on the television and find out on Fox news that we have attacked the Houthis, right? And maybe she's in Yemen, uh,

or wherever the heck she might be. And Pete Hegseth right now, I know because the pictures are out, is touring the Pacific. And these 18 people are in six different time zones. And actually the easiest way sometimes to communicate is text message. So point one, shouldn't we have a design system that...

That is forward thinking from a security perspective for younger people who are used to communicating in this manner. And by the way, take it back 100 years or 80 years or whatever it was. And I'm sure people were like, we can never communicate on the telephone any secret knowledge anymore.

oh my goodness, this is crazy. And then everybody who grew up using the telephone expects for the devices to be created that are able to be used in this method. Step one. Step two. And this is just a layman question. This guy, Goldberg,

I think he should have had to... I mean, it feels to me like a big part of this story is his dishonesty and also staying involved in a conversation that he was aware he was never intended to be tagged on, and yet he stayed in there and continued to receive these messages. In your own lives, if you were a part of a group text chain that you were not intended to be on, which I bet...

If you're under the age of 50 is something that has happened to almost everybody out there at some point in time, certainly if you're under the age of 40, wouldn't you just leave the group chat, either publicly say, hey, wrong guy, or just leave on your own volition? The fact that he stayed in there and kept receiving all of these messages makes me think that his behavior was quite nefarious to say nothing of waiting to drop the story like he did.

Well, this is where journalists like to have it both ways, right? They're patriots and they care about the country too. And when I say journalists, I mean the journos, right? This guy is an activist. He's a left-wing Democrat. This has been clear for a long time. He was the one who had his fingerprints all over the Trump suckers and losers thing from Arlington Cemetery, which I never believed for one second. You know, I'm not saying Trump is perfect, but Trump does not think people who gave their lives fighting for the military are losers. That was just total...

I mean, I can't even say on radio what it was. It's total nonsense. But, Clay, what they'll say is, well, I have an obligation as a journalist. I need to know whatever I can find out about the upper echelons of government and the sharing of information and everything else that's going on there.

You know, I look if I were on this and I'm in text contact with some of these people, to be clear. I mean, this is the thing. This is what happens when you have people from the media and that you've known for many years who are now running massive departments of the government. Clay and I know these people. I know them personally. Just this is how people who are under the age of 50 overwhelmingly communicate. We don't get on phones and have long form conversations. Most of our communications is via text.

Right. But what I'm what I'm, you know, shining a spotlight on is is just that, you know, these these are individuals who are doing the best practices that they can to speak quickly to each other about info about things that matter. And if I were on if I felt like I was in, you know, in the room when I shouldn't be in the room, so to speak, in this case, the chat room, I'd be like, hey, guys, hey, guys, I'm out because I wouldn't want them.

As senior government officials who've clearly made it, I'm not a nefarious foreign actor, right? I'm not trying to run information ops for Al Jazeera over here. If I'm in this, I would say, hey, guys, I'm going to duck out now. I know you've got to talk about stuff. Because I'm an American, and this is the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, and my desire to get a scoop is...

It's infinitely less important to me than, especially when talking about something like a military strike, than my desire to protect U.S. national security secrets. I mean, look, I'll tell you, I mean, I had an example of this, Clay. When the Benghazi story broke on TV, I was actually on air at The Blaze when Benghazi broke initially. And we went live for hours on it. I had to sit there and be like, I don't know what's going on. I knew exactly what had happened.

In terms of like a lot of stuff that came out, I'll just put it that way. And I had to just sit there and be like, no, because I had classified access before and it wasn't my place to blow in. So I just sat there and was just as things were coming on the news where I'm like, oh, look at that. Look at that. I could have been. Oh, let me tell you what's really going on here and really what the operations are. And I know. Hey, you guys know I was in CTC and the CIA. And here's no. No.

Nothing, because my obligation to my to my clearance and to my country matters a heck of a lot more than breaking the story and getting some attention. And this is a different thing in this era where we have a lot of people that work in public facing jobs who have had access to high level national security information. Right. It's on you as an American to always put country first over job access.

You know, I mean, like like role in I'm not talking about job in the Pentagon. I mean, job in like a media organization. I could have been out there telling everybody stuff about Benghazi that would have made me the first guy. And they're like, oh, what's the people like? What's the annex? And there's all this stuff. And I'm like, I have no idea, guys.

I had to sit there and be like, I don't know. And it was early in my career and I could have made a big thing of it. But I knew with those guys the risk that they had taken by being there. I didn't know what the following operations were going to be. I didn't know what was blown. I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know anything. And so I just sat there and had to just read information that came across the newswire like everybody else. And I'm sure, you know, Jeffrey Goldberg is like, oh, no, I need to get the information as much of it as I can. And then I'll make the determination about this.

Is that in the best interest of national security? You don't think you want to give these guys a heads up that, hey, I'm not supposed to be on this chat? I mean, to your point, what really matters to him?

I mean, my initial reaction when I'm on a group chat that I don't think I should be on is, hey, I want to get out. First of all, a lot of you probably get dragged into group chats. If you're a mom or a dad, little league group chats, gymnastics group chats, dance team group chats, like, oh, my God, do I need to be on this, right? You might want to get out. But if you're dragged into something that you know you have no business seeing, you

I just, it feels like to me, like you would immediately withdraw and not stay there. Second part, and I want to get your answer on this when we come back in the next episode.

Do we need to update communication capabilities and standards for people involved in defense industries? Because I was actually just looking at Elon Musk, and he was talking about just the government is so far behind in the tech that often it has relative to what other companies

private sector organizations might have. In other words, whatever you do for a living, if you're in defense industries or something like that, I'm sure they have high-tech communications capabilities. How would these 18 people have been able to talk if they're in four or five different time zones all around the world? How can they communicate easily? Well, we have this. We have HiSide.

Meaning we have classified channels. I guess my question for you when we come back, why would this conversation exist in the way that it does? There are the equivalent of, let's say there's the equivalent of text communication within the national security sphere that is real time and that you can, it is classified, classified. You can talk about what you need to talk about. Right.

When we come back, then, why would a communication like this be taking place in your mind? What does it suggest? Again, I think the ultimate result here is that nothing, thankfully, very significant happens.

happened other than the embarrassment. And I think primarily this is being played because it is relatively insignificant in terms of its impact in this situation, more for humor than anything else. And I think it's probably a 24-hour story that will go away.

But I do think it's worth talking about what exactly should happen to ensure that something like this doesn't become a bigger story in the years ahead. Look, you need energy to thrive during the course of the day, and that's why you need chalk. We were talking with our buddy Seton yesterday. Buck got back in shape to a large extent thanks to being able to use chalk. Male vitality stack, man, it gives you more energy. It can increase overall your testosterone by 20%.

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Making America great again isn't just one man. It's many. The Team 47 podcast. Sundays at noon Eastern in the Clay and Buck podcast feed. Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back in. Clay, Travis, Buck, Sexton show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us as we are rolling through the Tuesday edition of the program. Jasmine Crockett.

Congresswoman from Texas. Texas has given a lot of good things to the world. Jasmine Crockett, not one of them. She has become one of the leading spokespersons for the Democrat Party. And, you know, her background is interesting, Buck, because she's a little bit like the rapper. Remember back in the day on 8 Mile when Eminem goes head-to-head in the rap battle?

Buck may not remember 8 Mile as well as I do, but he delivers the culminating knockout punch. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen 8 Mile yet in the 20 years that it's been out.

against a other rapper by pointing out that his family is actually super rich and he went to a very high-end private school called Cranbrook, which is one of the richest kids' schools in the Detroit area. I know this. My wife is from the Detroit area. Cranbrook, very good school, but very expensive school, private school.

Jasmine Crockett, it turns out, Buck, went to a high school that cost over $30,000 a year.

And she now cosplays as if she is someone from the streets, which raises a lot of interesting questions about the Democrat Party, I think, in general. When you pretend to be something that you are not in order to try to draw attention to yourself and gain political prominence, what does it say about her that instead of being educated, forthright, and educated,

an advocate in some way in a public manner for what she believes that she would basically turn into. Remember we played her a couple of weeks ago saying Trump is Putin's hoe, uh, that she would basically turn into a version of herself that is not representative of how she was raised. Well, here she is going after the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, uh,

And this is what she said a little bit earlier at, I believe, of all things, a human rights event. Listen, because we in these hot ass Texas streets, honey, y'all know we got Governor High Wheels down there. Come on now. And the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot ass mess, honey. So. So, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Okay, now, I would lean into this if I were Greg Abbott. For those of you who don't know, that's an insult because Greg Abbott is actually confined to a wheelchair because a tree fell on him when he was in his 20s.

So when she calls him Governor Hot Wheels, she's actually insulting him because of a disability that he has. And then she attacks in some way, for those of you who don't know, his physical appearance. The only thing hot about him is the fact that he's a hot mess. He's actually a really good governor, I think, by and large, has been. Certainly the average Texan agrees based on the voting returns.

But to go after a guy who's in a wheelchair by mocking the fact that he's in a wheelchair, again, I would lean into this if I were Greg Abbott. I'd probably roll out in a Governor Hot Wheels t-shirt the next time that I did a public event because I would mock her mockery by mocking it that way.

But I do think it's emblematic of the failure of the Democrat Party to have a real message that ridiculing a popular statewide elected governor of the state that you represent for being in a wheelchair is their go-to line of attack. And that Jasmine Crockett would be regularly on the front lines as an outspoken advocate for the Democrat Party is frankly the best thing I can think about for Republicans.

Look, I think that she's largely a political distraction insofar as she's never going to be. You know, AOC and the squad were, there was a lot of media attention because some of them, and particularly like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, you know, they represented this young, diverse, far-left part of the party, right?

But I think, Clay, it was very obvious early on that AOC was the only one who was going to try to elevate. And we see that happening right now. I mean, it's still in process or in progress. But she was the only one who had aspirations of maybe being Speaker of the House, maybe being president. Or aspirations is the wrong word. Possibility, right? Within the Democrat ranks, she's become...

You know, our friend Jesse Kelly says she's no longer a street communist, right? She's more of an organizer. I think that's a very good term he's come up with, right? She's no longer a street communist. She's more of a, you know, Politburo communist. Like, she's elevating herself. She can sit in the boardroom meetings. Yes, exactly. She can sit there with Stalin and the rest, deciding, you know, what happens to everybody. But I think that Crockett is...

Getting a lot of attention, but has no there's no way that she's going to find herself in a leadership position within the Democrat Party, in my opinion. So I don't spend too much time and saying something like like Governor Hot Wheels.

I don't even think Greg Abbott cares because I don't think that anyone expects more from Congresswoman Crockett than that. The only thing that upsets me is that she shares a name with the greatest coffee company of all time, which happens to also be named for a great American hero. It's a great name. You know, it's a Scottish, a Scottish origin name, which I looked this up. Crockett is. Crockett. Yeah, yeah. There's different spellings of it. In fact, Davey spelled his name or there are different spellings of his name during his life.

because of the sort of derivation of it from the Scottish Highlands. Yeah. Fun fact for everybody. There you go.

I'm not the kind of person who, obviously, a lot of people say awful things, going to shock you about me or Buck. I'm not the kind of person who grabs my pearls and falls onto a fainting couch. So I wouldn't encourage... I understand some people are like, this is beyond the pale. This is outrageous. I think the way to deal with something like this, again, if I were giving advice to Greg Abbott, would be with humor. Because Governor Hot Wheels is actually kind of a funny nickname. And you can throw it back on her by leaning into the humor and proving...

that you are going to mock her by doing so. I think that's a smart way to attack it. But I do think that

This is emblematic of them not really having a strategy. The fact I agree with you that Jasmine Crockett doesn't have a next level, right? If you think about it in a sports term, you're like, okay, you're the kind of boxer that can knock out somebody who's a so-called tomato can, but you don't have heavyweight title aspirations. Like you're kind of just a mid range guy in the boxing world.

I think that's where Jasmine Crockett is. I think they have aspirations that AOC could be their heavyweight. I think they think, I agree with you, that they could elevate her. I think Chuck, this is my prediction, I think Chuck Schumer is going to announce that he's not going to run for re-election. Remember, he won re-election in 22, so he doesn't leave until 28. I think he'll announce he's not running and endorse her. 23 here, Chuck Schumer is like, I'm not stepping down. Play 23.

Look, I'm not stepping down. And let me just say this. I knew when I cast my vote against the government shutdown that it would be that there'd be a lot of controversy. And there was. But let me tell you and your audience why I did it, why I felt was so important. The CR was certainly bad, you know, the continuing resolution, but a shutdown would be 15 or 20 times worse.

Under a shutdown, the executive branch has sole power to determine what is, quote, essential. And they can determine without any court supervision. The courts have ruled it's solely up to the executive what to shut down. With Musk and Doge and Trump and this guy vote, they would eviscerate the federal government.

Clay, he's saying I'm still the best shot that we have for leadership on the Democrat side. I'm not stepping down. And I don't see anybody who poses... The option here would be, and this is what Bernie Sanders, I think, was referring to, who could run in the Senate against Schumer from New York, AOC. But I think Democrats are very...

They're hesitant about this. Remember, Bernie, Clay, this is kind of a little funny anecdote. I was at CNN in 2015 when the Democrats were running their primary, you know, into 2016 when Democrats were running their primary.

And all of the CNN commentators would say out of the side, the Democrats would say out of the side of their mouths, man, Bernie's really got the base and Bernie's really. And then they'd go on TV because they were scared of the Hillary apparatus and they knew it was going to happen to be like, well, we know that Hillary is really Bernie's great, but Hillary. But off there, they're like, oh, man, Bernie's really where the base is.

They totally they they scammed Bernie out of the nomination twice and it's twice. And it's because we all saw this. Right. And it's because came out in some of the WikiLeaks stuff. And it's all because they recognize that the whole game Democrats have to play is to be socialists who call themselves something else.

And you can't be too honest about this because you can't win 51% of the electorate if you tell people you're actually a socialist. But with AOC, do they think that there's some new era they are entering where they can do a rebrand? I don't know. I think what's going to happen with Schumer is Republicans, if they get the right candidates, and I think they are, are going to pick up seats in the Senate, I believe, in 2026.

I think Georgia, if Brian Kemp, the governor, will run. I think that New Hampshire, if they can get Sununu as the governor right now, right? Whatever the governor's name, the Republican popular governor. I think it was him. I might have screwed up his name. Michigan's in play. We've got multiple different states out there. I think if I were setting over-under on pickups in the Senate, I would set it at one and a half.

I think there's a good chance that Republicans come out of 2026 in the Senate with 55 senators versus 45. At that point in time, with only two years left on his term, I think Schumer will announce this is his final term, and I think he will set the stage for AOC to become the senator from New York. And to your point, Buck, I think that will then set the table for her to be president. Now, to run for president. Now.

She may not even want to be in the Senate because the argument is, does she need to be in the Senate to run for president in 2028? Remember, everybody's running for the Democrats in 2028. They're going to have 25 names out there. Republican side, maybe not as many because it looks like J.D. Vance is going to be gobbling up if things keep going well, a lot of money and a lot of endorsements. But the Democrat side, everybody is running. I'll just say it. AOC is a political brand.

Just the fact that we have initials for her and everybody knows who we're talking about. She has huge social media recognition. This is as soon as we were talking about this, I think it was in January after the election. I was like, you know what I think it'll be? And occasionally I waver on it because she'll have such a stupid soundbite. But stupid doesn't stop you from becoming president. Look at Joe Biden. But AOC has the media profile.

And I think increasingly Democrats view this as just an all out. It's when I say media, I don't I don't mean who can get on CBS News. I mean, social media, Internet recognizability, ability to direct a news cycle, ability to kind of capture public attention. It's really hard to win in politics. Look at Trump is a is an entertainment phenomenon as much as he is a political phenomenon.

And those two things, I think, go hand in hand now. This is why I don't think somebody, you know, people say, oh, Gretchen Whitmer,

No, you know, she plays well enough with Democrats in Michigan, but I just don't think that she's she doesn't have the name. She doesn't have the profile. She doesn't have the sizzle, if you will. And I know you tell me you will laugh at me. I'm going to remember who was laughing at me. But AOC is a it's like she's a character in American politics. It's different. She's not just a politician. She's a politician celebrity. She's pretty. Yeah.

She may. Clay's here. She's pretty. I mean, look, I think you have to talk about cosmetic aspects. Yeah, no, no, no. It matters. You're right. I just think it's funny. Like she's pretty. Yeah, she is pretty, but I think she also could have a kid. Um, I mean, some of you are going to laugh at some of this, but it makes, uh, she's married now, right? If she has a kid, it makes her, uh,

relatable for a lot of people out there. I think she'll probably have kids at some point, I would bet. And my biggest attack on her would be, I don't think she's very smart. I think she gets exposed sometimes, and you're right, that that may not matter. But I think if she's going up against, let's say, like, I

I think Mayor Pete has almost no chance because he's a gay white guy and black guys are not going to vote for a gay white guy. But I think Mayor Pete is actually a pretty smart guy, right? Like, I don't think he's a moron. Elizabeth Warren, she's too old now, but she's intelligent. There are...

Gavin Newsom is evil, evil Keanu Reeves, but I don't think he's a moron. I think he's just an inveterate liar. There are people, I think, that would expose AOC in an intellectual game. Again, I know I sound like, and you can throw whatever heat you want at me, everyone, but I think AOC, she is ignorant, but she is savvy.

And savvy may be a meaning she doesn't know very much, but she's cunning. And that may be enough. I just keep an eye on it. I think a lot of smart people who could be around her and write the speeches and tell her to memorize the talking points. So, you know.

And she doesn't have dementia. She's got that going for her. She does have that going for her. That is very nice. We'll come back. We'll have some fun with this. Hillsdale College faculty and administration, they have the perfect way for you to learn from their classes without having to visit the Michigan campus. They've got a great series of online video courses you can watch on your computer phone on demand, free of charge. I'm telling you, you're going to love these.

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the parts of history that you feel like you would wish you knew more about. Clayandbuck4hillsdale.com. One more time, Clayandbuck4hillsdale.com. Have fun with the guys on Sundays. The Sunday Hang Podcast. It's silly, it's goofy, it's good times. Fight it in the Clay and Buck Podcast feed on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Welcome back to Clay and Buck, everybody. We are very pleased to welcome onto the program Dr. Laura Schlesinger, who recently celebrated 50

50 years on the radio. She is a best-selling author. She's also auctioning off some handmade items to support children of fallen patriots. Go to DrLaura.com for more of that. Again, DrLaura.com. Dr. Laura, I just say it's an honor to speak to you because I've been hearing your voice ever since I got married because my wife is a longtime Dr. Laura listener. Let me tell you, I'm very thankful. I'm very thankful for it.

Well, then she's your girlfriend. She's the best. She's fantastic. You know, I come home and we got married and I came home and there's dinner on the table and I say, honey, I want to go to the shooting range with the guys. She says, you need guy time, you know, all these rules and lessons. And then I found this book, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, which is dog-eared and

underlined and everything else. I tell you, I got married a little later in life, Dr. Laura, so I got married around 40. I think it was 41. And my wife has absolutely loved my life. She's absolutely fantastic. We're about to have a baby in a couple of weeks. So everything is going. I really wanted to have you on in part just to thank you because, and this comes from my wife as well, I think you give so many women such incredibly important and powerful advice that

um for them to have great meaningful lives as as wives as mothers is so i'm always whenever carrie starts saying dr laura says i start nodding my head yep that's that's great she sent in my wife's sorry i just got to tell you this is the truth my wife sent in a question for you and clay's wife um uh laura has a question too she says uh hi dr laura i'm a long time listener and read the proper care and feeding of husbands i also took the online course

Your wisdom has not only made me the wife I am today, but also led me to find an incredible husband who adores me. Fact check. True. In a couple of weeks, we will be welcoming our first child. We're so thrilled to grow our family. But what is your advice for ensuring our solid and healthy marriage stays intact after the first baby comes? Thank you for all you do.

You don't stop having your hands all over each other. That means when you're walking around. That means when one of you takes a shower, maybe we could save on water. We could both be in the shower. It's really the physicality and the silliness. Everybody thinks it's got to be marital therapy and heavy-duty conversations, which you and I both know guys don't enjoy. So the more physical you are with each other and the more cute you are with each other, that's really all you need.

I love it. That's really good advice. Now, I don't even know what my wife has sent in, but there is audio. She went and used the app, and then she needed more space, so she sent it to producer Allie. Can we just give context, Clay? How long have you been married? Tell Dr. Laura. How long have you been married? Yeah, so I've been married, oh, man, 21 years will be August. So I've been married over 20 years now.

We have three boys, 17, 14, and 10-year-old. And here is what my wife, Laura, wanted to ask you. Listen. Clay and I are parents of boys. And thus far, I think we have weathered adolescence.

fairly well. However, some of our friends who have daughters, their experiences, the way they talk about it, sound very different. In fact, some of them say raising daughters through adolescence is a complete nightmare. I had a friend this morning tell me that she feels she's coming home to a bag of snakes every day when she comes home to her adolescent daughters, which is funny but harsh. So,

In general, do you have some great advice for parents going through adolescence with their children? Obviously, the children are going through adolescence. And do you have different advice for parents of girls weathering adolescence versus parents of boys weathering adolescence? Thank you.

I thought you were just going to have me on for a few minutes. That's going to take me about half an hour to get through. Let me try to bring it down. Number one, whether it's a boy or a girl, that it's a tight family that does things together, that is sweet with each other, that the father spends time with the daughter, the father spends time with the son, the mother spends time, and the family is always together for dinner if they have to go do sports things or what have you, that...

you know, that's a very important part of the family. People keep divvying it up. Yeah, there are differences in how you raise girls from boys and I'd have to come back another time to go through that. But the first and foremost thing, just like I spoke about husbands and wives and the physical and the cuteness, the, I was with a family and I thought, and I talked about them on my air, that this was the best family I had seen in decades.

Anytime anybody got something, would you send me, could I have, yes, please, thank you. Everybody was so concerned and polite to one another. That is not something that families do. You have two career families, you have all kinds of other stuff going on in the house, and it's not a family. It's mother and father and kids.

But when it's a family, when people are always saying please and thank you and show concern for each other and discipline in kind ways with understanding and compassion, you'd be surprised how it minimizes how crazy it gets. And also take your kids out of public school.

Wow. Dr. Laura, we're definitely going to have to have you back, and I'm really looking forward to all the questions and comments we're going to get from the audience about you coming on and just beginning this arc of wisdom. And like I said, as a husband and a very happy husband who does completely adore his wife,

And, you know, it's it's so important that I think women get a lot of the messaging and men and men, but that we both get a lot of the messaging that you're putting out there. And I wanted you to address something that's more just sort of general for the country right now. You know, we talk here about politics and national security and education, all these different things.

But the importance of family and marriage is central, should be central, maybe should be is a better word these days. You know, there's a story just out today and it says and the headline is American women are giving up on marriage.

And one of the lines from it is American women have never been this resigned to staying single. They are responding to major demographic shifts, including huge and growing gender gaps in economic and education attainment and beliefs about what a family should look like. What is going on and how do we fix it?

Not enough fathers in the home raising sons to be men of honor and courage and principle. And that's basically, again, the women have gone through the feminist thing where men are the evil empire and all this negativity toward masculinity. It's all toxic. I think it's wonderful. Give me a guy with a cowboy hat and boots and I pay attention and

because there's a sense that there's a strength there. And women like to feel protected. That's probably the number one thing women don't admit. They want to feel protected. And that's why they like those silly books where there's this ripped guy on the cover and...

She's being carried, you know, into safety. Why do they read those things at such large amounts? Because ultimately, as smart and competent as we can be, we want to be protected. And men have not been brought up to be that anymore.

Are you more, you've been doing this for 50 years and Buck just laid out a marriage is becoming less common. A lot of men are not present in homes. Unfortunately, the overall birth rate in many Western civilizations is collapsing. Are you more or less optimistic about the future of the family unit today than when you started? How would you analyze the scope of relationship that you've seen over 50 years?

Oh, no, I was more optimistic then than I am now because there have been so many forces. We have like one or two generations now I think are lost.

These are young people who are not being brought up that you finish school and you aim to be and do things and you make a family and you raise kids and you have communities. And that was how I was brought up. And it was all this optimism. Now you have throngs of kids who have no idea where they can go and what they can be. And so they get involved in all of these cliques.

like non-binary and, you know, I belong now to a group of people who are equally lost and

and don't have an identity and don't have a direction and don't have a sense of self other than I can belong to this community. It's like what we used to look at with groupies with rock stars. This is what's happening. So I'm, I'm worried. Be honest with you. I'm worried. But the one little piece of optimism I have is I'm still here. People are still calling, uh,

Somebody wants the help to pull it back together again and make life meaningful and something you can feel comfortable and safe with and productive and loving and receive all of that. So as long as I still get that response, I keep my optimism up.

Dr. Laura, that's a great line. You just laid out some of the challenges. How much do you think it has to do with kids getting phones too young? What advice would you give parents out there? My wife asked a question about adolescence, but what advice would you give to parents about social media and about what they allow their kids to be exposed to, particularly on the Internet?

Well, everybody tells me I'm insane to think, you know, you can push up against a tsunami, but it takes just everybody lining up. I tell people that they're irresponsible parents if they give smartphones to their kids, any minor child, period. Get them a flip phone that takes calls. That's it. No texting, no internet. And instead of spending one's time with screens, how about we actually have families that do stuff together?

I mean, when my kid was talk about a screen, though, we would watch Law and Order as a whole family. And then we would sit here and we would go, I think he did it. No, I think she did it. And so it was all of this thinking through using pieces of information. And I just read today that our children are really suffering the inability to have fine motor skills because they're not playing with crayons. They're not playing with scissors. They're just sitting there like that.

And so we're actually losing physicality. I mean, is that not shocking?

And it's it's amazing. And we think about all the influences that are on kids these days and what they're being told and how I think a lot of them are being set up for for misery. I mean, Dr. Laura, you know, you have I agree the the metrics these days and the metrics for young women in particular in terms of happiness, self-described happiness. It's terrifying in terms of how bad it is. How do we start? Oh, yeah. Turn again. It's you're going up against a tsunami. But how do we start to turn that around?

Well, it popped into my head as you were asking me the question. Look at all the very intelligent people

and very attractive women that are now in positions of power in our government. I am so enthralled with that. And I think that's wonderful for young women to have something to aspire to. Keep my act clean, no more shacking up, using drugs, this and that and the other thing. I want to be like that lady who's now running the whatever it is. So having role models like that, uh,

You know, I have people calling who say I was in a car seat in the back of my parents' car listening to you. And now I have kids and I'm using what I've learned. So anytime you can be a positive influence, do it.

My wife makes fun of me because I just always sit there in the car when she turns you on. I'm just like, Dr. Laura's right. So I was like, we have to have Dr. Lawrence. I'm like, Dr. Laura's right. And Carrie looks at me. She goes, oh, I know. Clay, go ahead. Last question for you. And we appreciate your time. And you're certainly a radio legend. You've been so influential for so long. When you...

The modern era, like I was reading the other day, the number of successful women that are choosing to go find a sperm donor to have a child with instead of an actual man is staggering to me. What kind of world are we in? It infuriates me. Okay, I wanted to get your take on this. It infuriates me. It makes me angry because kids need a dad. And I just say to these women, oh, that's not, well, I have money and I can take care of, I don't care about that.

You had a mommy and a daddy, and I'm sure that meant something to you. Now you're going to rob a kid of a dad because it's convenient for you not to commit and give of yourself and be vulnerable to another human being and be invested in each other's lives beautifully. That's a real shame. That's a real shame. That is so selfish. Yeah, I don't like it.

Dr. Laura, we got to have you back because for you to solve all problems of relationships and family and child rearing in about 10 minutes is asking a lot, but you did a remarkable job. Guys, there's so many books. I mean, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. I've actually got Carrie's very dog-eared and underlined copy in my hand. Great book, and go to drlaura.com because she's doing some great charity work, too. Dr. Laura, we'd love to have you back, and thanks for being here.

I would love it. Thank you, guys. And I love listening to you, too. Oh, well, thank you so much. Thank you very much. You're very strong. I like that. That's right. That's how we do it.

I'm kind of blushing now. All right, that phrase, there are only two things that are certain in life, death and taxes, might need to be slightly modified. Add this to the items that are certain. When you switch your cell phone service to Pure Talk, you will be saving money. If you're with Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile, make the switch and immediately save $50 or more. For just $25 a month, you can get unlimited talk, text, and 5 gigs of data on America's most dependable 5G network. Just to give you perspective, the average size family of four saves more than $1,000 a year when they switch to Pure Talk.

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