Hour 3 - Covid Created a Conspiracy Culture

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Welcome in, hour number three, Clay and Buck. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us. Buck will be back with me tomorrow. We will be in New York City together as we will be taking care of a lot of different. Challenging media-related opportunities. We have been talking quite a lot about the latest in Iran, about the death of Lindsey Graham unexpectedly over the weekend and the overall impact of that death. And I did want to dive in here. Over the weekend, I was reading... Catching up on my Wall Street Journal reading. I like to read the print publication of the Wall Street Journal for those of you who are watching on video, as increasing numbers are of you are, as we are slowly starting to work in three hours of live video for everybody to be able to watch. Go subscribe to our YouTube channel. Make sure that you don't miss that. And there's a poll that they ran for America 250. Wall Street Journal did. And I read this and I said, my goodness, this matters so much. And I want to make sure I share the results with everybody as we've been celebrating America 250. But I also think it tells an important story, which is no politician, no matter how good, can save us from the culture that we have created. And the headline of this article, and again, I'm old school. I like to read my print newspapers. Poll finds America in dark mood at 250. And the first two questions are so integral and directly connected. I just felt that I had to share them with you. How important is patriotism to you? and it breaks it down from age. But the second question is, how proud are you of United States history? And I want to start with that second one. I talked off the top of the program about Lindsey Graham, and one of the big topics that we kind of dove into, and a lot of you were reacting to, is the question of... whether or not you trust the leaders of America to be honest with you. And I said off to start of the show, for those of you who weren't listening, encourage you to go download the podcast, maybe go subscribe to YouTube. I said off the top, and I tweeted this too, and some of you may have seen the tweet, the legacy of COVID that is going to be the most lasting. is not the kids who lost all of the time in education, unfortunate and significant as that is. And it's not even going to be all of the additional debt that we took out in expanding the government, which has led us to $40 trillion in national debt as significant as that is.

We would still be deep in national debt. And unfortunately, I think our education department in terms of educating kids would still be struggling. No one trusts the government. And I said off the top of the show, when I saw that Lindsey Graham had died unexpectedly and that he had just come from Ukraine and that he was working hard to try to solve the issues. with peace in the Middle East, my first thought was Russia or Iran killed him. That was my first thought. When I saw that people said he died unexpectedly and I saw the report that he had been talking to President Trump just a few hours before. Now, they say that he had a heart attack and they are going to dive through and examine all of it. They say he had an aortic rupture. And at 71 years old, he might well have had, as unfortunately some of you, many of you, have experienced in your families and friends, he might have just had an unexpected heart-related condition that killed him almost instantly. It might well be the case. And in fact, the evidence all supports that that's what happened. But my first thought was, there's something else going on here. And I talked about it with the Charlie Kirk case. And I think you can go into any of these stories, and they're all deeply rooted in distrust for the United States government because every conspiracy theory that they told you you weren't allowed to talk about during COVID ended up being true. And so it's the two-year anniversary of Butler, Pennsylvania, as I was telling all of you. The near death of Donald Trump, a lot of you still don't believe that that random 21-year-old or whatever the heck he was climbed up on the roof and got that good of a shot at the president of the United States, and it wasn't a part of something bigger. Conspiratorial culture has taken over, and there isn't pride in the United States. And I saw this. How proud are you of United States history? 18 to 34 year olds, 23% are proud of United States history. 18 to 34 year olds. Also, how does that compare to ages 65 and up? 59% of people 65 and up. are extremely or very proud of United States history. 18 to 34 year olds, just 23% are. We have failed when it comes to teaching history as a positive experience for young people in the United States today. And I think it's actually the most significant failure in the country. Because if you do not have pride of country, then nothing else matters. The culture of young people today, because we have failed to teach them history properly, is such that they are ashamed of the history of the United States. 65 and up, 59% extremely very proud, 18 to 34-year-olds, 23%.

How do we fix this? Last week we were talking some about one of the issues that I think most troubles me in education, it's that we don't teach financial literacy. People don't understand how mortgages work. People don't understand interest rates. They don't understand what the interest rate is on a credit card. They don't understand how to pay off credit cards. They don't understand that a minimum balance payoff doesn't actually help you very much. Many of you have struggled through this. You've seen these numbers pile up. Certainly with student loans, people don't really understand how much they're taking out. You can end up six figures in debt going to school for a job that's only going to pay you $40,000 a year. The basic math doesn't add up. Financial literacy matters, hugely. But I would argue for the nation, the single most important other than literacy itself you need to be able to read is historical literacy. Because if you do not understand what this country has been, then how can you possibly understand where this country might go? And this was question two in the Wall Street Journal. How proud of you are of you are United States history? That huge gap between 18 to 34 year olds and 65 and up. And it directly ties into this. How important is patriotism to you 18 to 34 year olds just 18%. 65 and up 55%. You can't be patriotic. if you don't love American history. And I think this is such an important aspect. All of us. I went to an 80th birthday party yesterday. One of my old law professors was turning 80 years old. He's a practicing attorney in Nashville. He was an awesome event. His name, by the way, is Lee Barfield. Great, successful attorney. Saw Senator Marsha Blackburn there. She's in the middle of running for governor, but she took the time to come to his 80th birthday party in Nashville. And he was talking a lot about his personal history, as one does when they're about to be 80 years old, turning 80. My mom's going to have a birthday on Friday, by the way. People around that age are very, very proud to be American, and they're incredibly patriotic. Think about the world in which they grew up in. They were born immediately in the aftermath of World War II. When those guys, Trump, Clinton, and George W. Bush were five years old, right as they were beginning the 1950s, everyone around the world saw America as a unique force for good. Much of what Trump is arguing make America great again is really just about trying to reclaim the moral authority and the patriotic feelings that characterized his youth, but also Bill Clinton's youth and also George W. Bush's youth. If you are 80 years old, like those three guys are, and like Lee Barfield, we were celebrating yesterday, like my mother-in-law, who also turned 80 this year,

I bet if you are 80 years old, we are nearly white, black, Asian, Hispanic, whatever age you are. I bet you're overwhelmingly patriotic, and I think that's connected to how history was taught to you. You can't be proud of your country if you're not proud of your history. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't recognize that there are tremendous amounts. of things that are imperfect, that didn't go as exactly you might have hoped that they would. All of us are flawed. All of us, I think more and more the older I get about the way that you characterize your life. Do you think about the ceilings? Lindsey Graham passed. And overwhelmingly, you're seeing people from across the political spectrum come out and say that he was a uniquely kind person. Uniquely in this country, of all countries, we believe in risk-taking and in the frontier pushing into new worlds. If we are teaching our kids that America can only be looked at through the prism of slavery. or that America can only be looked at through the times that we have failed, is it any wonder that only 18% of 18 to 34-year-olds are patriotic? Is it any wonder that 23% are extremely are very proud of American history? These are directly connected. I really do believe that we need to have a national focus on what is being taught to kids in history in particular. You know, math, but math isn't that complicated to teach. Everybody agrees what the quadratic equation is. Everybody remembers, I think everybody got taught, but in history, there's a lot of play in the joints. Some of you are history teachers, and you're listening to me right now. Just about everybody learned some history in school. You got that big book. You can teach anything. You can focus largely as you see fit. And if you choose to focus on the floor, the 1619 project. My goodness, I don't think we recognize enough how calculated this attempt is to drive down patriotism by making people ashamed of United States history. I'm just telling you, when I saw this in the Wall Street Journal, it was a light bulb going off. How many people are even talking about this? How many people are even having a conversation at all about this? and the way that it is set up. I just see it. It's so clear to me. And leadership is important. Who the president of the United States is, who your governor is, who your senators are, your congressmen, your state reps, all those different things. But if they're speaking to an audience of young people that believes that America has failed,

that believes that America is a story of futility and not a story of heroism. If they believe all of that, none of this else hardly even matters. Tearing down American history and our heroes, sometimes in 2020, literally tearing down the statues of our heroes and those who came before us. It is so intentional and it's working. And it's a long-range play. And if we do not focus on this, you can't protect or long survive in a country where people are not proud to live here and do not celebrate the successes of those who came before us. So I'm thinking about that in a big way. Part of it is America 250, but again, old school me looking at this Wall Street Journal poll. My goodness, it just jumps out right off the top, and it is so incredibly important. We come back, there's another little part here that I think is secondary to this. It's a question. America is a nation where people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. That used to be something that a strong majority of Americans agreed with somehow over the last 12 or 14 years, and I think it's directly connected to history and the impact that we are having there. That overall situation has collapsed. So all of that you guys can react to, but I do think it's important. We'll share on clay and buck.com the story there. of exactly what's going on with that article so you can see this evidence for yourself, and so hopefully you can punch back against it. I want to tell you right now, if you were trying to make everything safer in your home, this can be very, very important, but you have young kids and you're somewhat a little bit concerned maybe about what might happen with those young kids. This is exactly what Sabre is designed to do. FBI study reveals home break-ins occur every 26 seconds. Hopefully you have protection tools from Sabre to help make your home safer. The Sabre Home Defense Launcher fire seven powerful pepper or impact projectiles, two more than other leading brands. When every second counts, those two extra projectiles can make all the difference. If you miss, the Pepper Cloud acts as an effective deterrent. Trusted by police and millions worldwide, Sabre is America's number one pepper spray brand. We've got Saber products in our home. As does Buck's family, we got young kids in the house. We want to be able to protect them with non-lethal if you've got kids or grandkids coming around. Right now, save up to 15% on select Sabre bundles. Don't wait until you wish you had protection. Visit saberprotect.com. You can also call 844-824-824-S-A-F-E. That's 844-824-S-A-F-E. SabreP Protect.com. Hope for the best be prepared. with Saber. Looking for normal in a world of crazy. Clay and Buck have your back. Looking for normal in a crazy world? Clay and Buck have your back.

Welcome back in. We are rolling through the third hour of the program. I'm Clay Travis. And we are going to play a little bit at the bottom of this hour. We played it in the first hour to what I would say are a couple of the best moments of Lindsey Graham's life. But a little bit of an update continuing on what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz. It's Groundhog Day. I mean, the reality is... Every single day you wake up and Iran has fired on a ship and the United States is saying, well, we're going to control the straight of war moves. And Iran is going to say, well, no, you're not. We're going to go ahead and continue to extract some form of fee for everybody to go through. President Trump seems fed up with everyone in Iran, which does not speak very well, I think, going forward for what's going to happen to Iran, but we will continue to break that down and we'll continue to dive into what I saw here about patriotism and history and more. But I want to tell you, acknowledging the important work being done by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, easy to do. I've seen it firsthand when I traveled to Israel to witness it for myself. The IFCJ has built a bridge of trust between Christians in this country and those who are Jewish around the world. International Fellowship of Christians and Jews uses your donations to provide aid assistance and resources for the most vulnerable parts of those societies. No red tape, no bureaucracy, just hard work and dedication. They've built on the trust and alliance that exists between the U.S. and Israel in particular. The IFCJ has created a symbol to share with you and others in this audience. It's a flagpin, including the flags of both the U.S. and Israel, two countries that pursue personal freedom. Flagpen is yours. Free when you go online to flagpen IFC.org. That's flagpen IFC.org. Common sense never sounded so good. Clay and Buck owning the airwaves.

Welcome back in, Clay and Buck, rolling through the Monday edition of the program. A ton of different stories we've been talking about. I got on a big... Stimwinder there about the importance of history. And I did want to make sure that we talked about the importance of Lindsey Graham's history and unexpected death. Reports are that he had a heart attack and aortic rupture is what has been put out based on preliminary discussions surrounding that. And I did want to play Lindsey Graham. We played this in the first hour, but to me this was one of the greatest moments of Lindsey Graham's political career. This was during the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh. Senator Lindsey Graham went absolutely off on the sham proceedings and attacks that were raining down on Brett Kavanaugh. And I think he was a big reason why Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court right now. Here is cut six. If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come to us. What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open, and hope you went in 2020. You've said that, not me. You've got nothing to apologize for. When you see Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, tell him that Lindsay said, oh, because I voted for them. I would never do to them what you've done to this guy. This is the most unethical sham. Since I've been in politics, and if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn't have done what you've done to this guy. Are you a gang rapist? No. I cannot imagine what you and your family have gone through. Boy, y'all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham. What Lindsey Graham hit on there, and man, that was powerful. And for those of you who were watching this hearing live back in 2018, as powerful as those words are here today, eight years later, they really landed so much stronger then because, frankly, a lot of Republicans were not doing a great job of pointing out just how much of a sham all these Christine Blasey Ford allegations were against Brett Kavanaugh. If you remember that hearing, there was fear from Republicans that if they questioned her too aggressively, oh, they would be considered sexist. And so it was a super weird hearing. They had a prosecutor basically. asking questions, a woman that they brought in, and they yielded all their time to her. And it was discordant and it was not particularly effective when it was asking questions. And so her jumping, him jumping in and defending Brett Kavanaugh as he did was, I thought, one of the foremost moments in Lindsey Graham's career. And here is President Trump saying,

He agrees. I think the finest moment of Lindsey Graham's career was when he defended Brett Kavanaugh. That's cut 11. I think his finest moment was his defense of Brett Kavanaugh, who's a terrific guy, and was treated very, very unfairly by the Democrats, very unfair. I've never seen anything like it. Maybe the worst I've ever seen anyone treated. That includes me. Well, maybe not me, but it includes just about everybody. He was treated so unfairly. And Lindsay, as you remember, had that moment. And, you know, I'll tell you, Jake, I think it was the top 10, maybe a top 5 moment in the Senate. It was an incredible display. And he did it from the heart. He felt strongly about Brett, and he did it from the heart, and it turned that whole thing around. He was really amazing. That was one they should replay. I agree, and we just replayed it. I agree with President Trump on his take about that moment being so profound for Lindsey Graham. I think the reason why it registered to the degree that it did was what President Trump just said. It was unscripted. So much of what we hear from politicians is somebody else writing a speech that they put on a teleprompter for the politician to read. And Sometimes you get situations that really good actors and actresses, which is what a lot of people in politics are now, where they can grab the emotion of someone else's words and they can convey it to you in a way that is particularly striking. But I think one of the reasons why President Trump has had the success that he has is he's largely going off his teleprompter very often. And I think the reason that Lindsey Graham moment captured and captivated so many was because it really got to the essence of the absurdity of the Brett Kavanaugh story, but it did it in a way without talking points, without being read off of a pre-printed series of questions. And... For Lindsey Graham, I do want to play this because we talked about it some off the top of the show, and I played it earlier too, and we're getting a lot of feedback on this, and many of you are skeptical. Here is the report, by the way, of Lindsey Graham there being no foul play in the way in which he passed. This is Cut 13, Alex Hogan, on Fox News. I understand why so many of you. in the wake of COVID, as I said off the top of the program, why so many of you feel as if it's hard to trust the official word because you've been lied to. We've all been lied to so much by governmental figures, particularly as it pertains to COVID. So much skepticism is out there and was out there and remains out there associated with Lindsey Graham. And unfortunately, that is the world in which we live. And it's why I said off the top of the program,

This is why not prosecuting Anthony Fauci is so significant. Because he got away with lies. He got away with covering up the fact that much of the escape of COVID from the Chinese lab was directly connected to American tax dollars at the behest of Anthony Fauci. And they lied to you. And nothing happened to them. And so every time you see a story, this is what happened when the news came down. on Sunday morning and I'm waking up. I'm texting with the show. This just sounds skeptical to me. Like I'm just skeptical. of everything now because we've been lied to so much. But I do want to pay you cut 13. They're doing an autopsy. They're doing a toxicology reports. Everything else. Here it is. It was early this morning that the senator's team, their official office, releasing that he had died of what they are calling a brief and sudden illness. The FBI are at Senator Graham's residence, although there is no indication of foul play according to the federal law enforcement. Earlier today, FBI Director Kash Patel said that the FBI would assist local authorities. and make every resource available. And so again, that investigation is continuing. Hopefully it will, you hate to say hopefully, but at this point, hopefully it confirms what has already been reported that it's a heart attack and aortic rupture. And that can happen unexpectedly for anyone of any age. And certainly it's an untimely unexpected death because of everything that Lindsey Graham was involved in. trying to do to make the country better and he had just won we talked about this some earlier in the program but it's worth mentioning as you start to turn the page and contemplate where we go from here he had just won his six-year extension on the South Carolina Republican Senate race. So he just won the primary last month, if I'm remembering correctly. And so he was going to serve for six more years. And at 71. even though it's not a youthful age. At 71, he's nowhere near the age that many of his fellow colleagues on both sides of the aisle are in the Senate. 71 years old is somewhat of a reasonable age for a senator. Now he was going to serve for six more years, but we've gotten so used to the gerontocracy to the number of people out there in their 60s, high 60s, 70s, and 80s who are continuing to represent the United States government.

Well, Trump himself is 80, as we were just talking about. And he's the same age Trump is, as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, those guys, president feels like forever ago. And so this, unfortunately, is the reality. Now, in terms of larger political ramifications, we're talking about a real difficulty existing in the Senate getting anything passed going forward. because we're going to have to figure out who's going to replace Lindsey Graham. There's already only a 53 to 47 lead right now for the Republicans. There's a lot of states out there that are going to be battlegrounds going forward, but several of the senators now that are serving until January are not going to be back. We know that John Cornyn's not going to be back in Texas. How much incentive is he going to have to get things done? We know that Bill Cassidy down in Louisiana is not going to be back. How much of an incentive is he going to have to get things done? And we know that in North Carolina, Thom Tillis is not going to be back. That's three guys who are sitting senators right now that are on their way out. And we've got a tiny majority. Mitch McConnell put out a picture and talked about this a little bit earlier. They had to do a proof of life photo for Mitch McConnell where he was posing next to the Washington Post sports section. I saw the picture this morning, and I couldn't believe that they had to do a proof of life of a United States senator. I certainly hope that Mitch McConnell gets well, and he's only going to be serving for the rest of this year. He's going to be replaced in January by Andy Barr in the state of Kentucky barring some huge, tremendous upset. But the fact that he had to do a proof of life is a sign at 84 years old of where we are. And it's not just Republicans. It's also Democrat side. There's just a lot of people that are struggling when it comes to their health. And they have an incredibly important part of running this country. And we're just not going to have much of a majority at all. So we've been talking a lot about Lindsey Graham's legacy. But going forward, the challenge that we're going to face is there's just not that many senators to be able to get anything passed for President Trump. And that's presuming even that the Senate is able to stay in the Republican camp after the midterms coming up. Got a busy summer. You want chalk supplements. Chalk is spelled CHOQ. Website, chalk.com, supplements specifically formulated to provide men and women more energy throughout the day using only natural ingredients. For the guys, we represent chalk smell vitality stack, which boost testosterone, one of the primary sources of energy. For the gals out there, female vitality stack helps with hormone health, which is also connected to your energy levels. Chalk has tons of other products, too. If you want to know more about how supplements can improve your overall health and well-being, check out...

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Welcome back in closing up shop here on Clay and Buck. Encourage you, as always, go subscribe to us on YouTube. If you haven't already, and I believe there are 131,000 of you pioneers, we are going to be adding more and more live video and you are going to be able to jump in and get hooked up and be able to watch all three hours of this show on video going forward. We're not sure exactly how flawless this is going to be. But we want to be as many different places as possible. We want you to be able to find us on podcast. We want you to be able to find us on satellite radio. I want you to be able to find us on the 600 AM FM stations that we are available on right now. We want to be wherever you guys are. So you can find us on social media everywhere. But this is a new edition. And we are super excited about being able to be everywhere. for all of you and we would be excited if you would go join us on the YouTube page. Good place, by the way, to be able to share clips, videos with your kids or grandkids. We were talking about the top of this hour, the fact that patriotism has collapsed and it's directly connected to how we teach United States history. If you've got kids or grandkids out there, maybe you're hearing from them. things about American history that you don't particularly like that you don't think is representative of the great history of this nation. I think it's worthwhile to dive in. I tease this and I do want to make sure that I don't forget to mention it. This was also in this same Wall Street Journal article. America is a nation where people are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. 2008. 60% of Americans strongly or somewhat agree with that position, right? The goal of America should be to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. That was primarily occurring in 2008, 9, 10, 60% of people said, you know what? I think that's going on. Right now, this year, It has collapsed to only 41% of Americans believing that. Meanwhile, the fact that you strongly somewhat disagree, that has gone from 6040 Americans agree to basically 6040 Americans disagree. And again, I think all of this is part of an intentional desire to create division, which the media has excelled at. How about the fact that the use of the term white supremacy, as we were talking about in the second hour of the program, it is skyrocketed. It's crazy to me that in 2008, 2009, 2010, everything was going pretty well. in terms of race relations. I think most of you would agree in the country. And then the bottom just completely fell out of it. Again, I think it comes back to how we teach history to whether or not we embrace the idea of American exceptionalism or if we create a world where people feel like they are victims, even as there never has been a time when people are being victimized less. As I talked about in the second hour of the program, the data out there,

end-wokeness put out that great data point on the fact that crime where black people are victims of white people almost doesn't exist in this country, yet the media overwhelmingly covers it as if it is in fact the case that black people are in danger from white people. It isn't true at all. But that's the world that they have created. All right, let's try to end on some positivity here. We have got Talkback Lesson, podcast listener, Danny, in South Carolina. This is cut A. I flew a lot in my younger days, and I'll tell you, the easiest way is just to sit there and let everybody go, let all the Yahoo's go first. And then when pretty much everybody's gone, you can get up, get your stuff. There's no pushing or nothing. A lot easier that way, buddy. So many people, we had some fun last week talking about how we fly. I'm headed up to New York this afternoon to be with Buck in studio tomorrow in New York City. And in general, when I'm on my Southwest Airlines flights, I try to always sit near the front of the plane just so I can get off as fast as possible. Because I think the older I get, the less patient I'm getting. But I am thankful that we had three fun hours today. Hope you enjoyed it. Encourage you to go subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to us on YouTube. And we will be back tomorrow together in our New York City studio. I am Clay Travis. Buck will be back with me tomorrow. Have fantastic rest of your days. And remember, we're all very fortunate to live in the greatest country in the history of the world. Let's get better at teaching that history. See you all tomorrow.