Hour 1 - Fourth Branch of Gov't?

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show podcast. Welcome in, everybody, to the Monday edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate you being here with me, everyone. Clay is on vacation for this week as well. I think until Thursday. Until Thursday, the team tells me, His new name, Clay, the Big Kahuna, Travis. He is showing the Hawaiians how to surf. He's picked it up very quickly. Almost as good at surfing as he is at golf, I am told. Some people are saying. But he misses you all, and he will be back very soon. It's just me today. We have a ton of news, which is a little bit unexpected, honestly, because the week before a big holiday weekend, America's 250th, you would generally think things start to slow down. As I always tell you, news is a... narrative for the most part it is stories that people choose to tell it's not things that happen in a vacuum that everyone must know so when the journals go on vacation there tends to be less stuff talked about not here though we have a ton to discuss with you and and i i want to just lay out some of where we're going today A couple of, I would say, pretty important Supreme Court, not mega cases, but some pretty important Supreme Court decisions came down today. A little bit of a mixed bag. We did not, unless it happened while I was in the elevator or something, we have not yet gotten the birthright citizenship case coming down, which I am prepared for disappointment on that. I am hoping for a better outcome that I am expecting. But I have a couple of things, including on can Trump fire deep state bureaucrats at some of these agencies, these agencies that are both quasi-legislative and quasi-executive, we are told, like the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. FTC, I might add. doesn't actually deal with trade in the sense of like U.S. China trade. It's really a regulatory body against fraud, which very few people, well, you guys look at me like I'm crazy. Why am I crazy? Am I crazy? No, okay. They're looking to me for something else. Maybe I'm just having a good hair day. I'm here with the team in New York. So I am in Mamdaniville and all is, uh, Well, it's very, I've got to tell you, the city is bumping. It is perhaps Zohran Mamdani proof so far because it is thriving despite some of his idiotic policies, decisions, and all the rest of it. We've also got updates for you on the Iran situation. The Iran situation, which is...

You know, it's moving along. I'll share with you what the latest is from the president on that. Let's just say it is not a totally done deal. It is not a totally done deal. Oh, and then the outrage from the left over the weekend. I spent a lot of time on this one. I've really been digging into the temporary protected status, particularly of Haitians, the history of this. What is going on in Haiti today? And our friend, Clay and Buck podcast host, David Rutherford, former Navy SEAL, guys of combat vet, did some really cool stuff, interesting stuff. He'll be with us in the third hour to talk about why is it that Haiti is a failed state completely run by gangs where whoever has the most AK-47s and PKMs on the back of pickup trucks is somehow the government. We'll talk to him about that in just a little bit. But I will begin today with some of the Supreme Court. decisions because those just came down. So that goes, we got to put those in the breaking news category. You had in a, should we do the good news first or the bad news first? This is always a, I don't know. I don't, I feel like if I go bad news first, some of you might, you know, change the dial or something. I can't have that. I'll give you the good news first. It's a Monday. We got to lead with the sweetener before we get to the sour. uh the generally speaking the supreme court has ruled that there is a pretty broad authority for the in the president in this case of course president trump to fire people who work in federal agencies And not just to fire them for cause, to fire them because, as the administration said in some of these cases, they do not align with the priorities of the current administration. Now, this is where things get a little bit muddy. A little bit murky. Well, are these executive branch agencies? Because then, of course, an executive branch appointee should be able to be fired, should be subject to the serving at the pleasure or lack thereof of the president. And in this case, some lower court said, no, how dare you? You can't actually fire people because you don't like what they... have done you can't fire them because this is a six three ruling by the way but federal regulators these are regulatory agencies including uh rebecca slaughter who is a commissioner on the federal trade commission

So Trump is allowed to fire her, they said. So that's the good news part of this is there is now clarity that at least a broader subset of the deep state than anticipated, or I should say then allowed by lower courts, is subject to the president's just saying, I don't want you to be running an agency anymore under my administration. The part of this that's a little bit weirder is that the Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, that one is still, well, let's just say he's not able to get rid of her quite yet. That one is still in that process of, hold on a second. Does she actually work for? Is she actually, you know, subject to presidential oversight, presidential jurisdiction? You would think that this would be the case. You would think that this is really straightforward. But sure enough, there are deep state elements that are burrowed in so deep that, for example, the Federal Reserve, it seems to operate almost as its own... branch of the government or something. It's not spelled out of the Constitution, but it is almost a fourth branch of government. You can't just come in and fire people from the Federal Reserve. So that's an important case that came down. The one that's disappointing, although that's maybe that's a partial. You could say that's a partial win. The one that is a bit tougher to handle right now has to do with what is Election Day? So, yeah, so far Trump can't fire the Fed Governor so far. But what is Election Day? This is a case that went down by 5'4. It's Watson v. Republican National Committee. And it has to do with can you count ballots in an election if they are actually received by the election, the state of Mississippi in this case, up to five days after the election? So this was five, four, and you can guess who was the five and who was the four here. Amy Coney Barrett, I believe, wrote for the majority on this one. And what they ended up saying is, yeah, in fact, election day just means the decision is made by that day. So if it's postmarked in time, you can count it five days later in that election. Now, in the dissent on this one, Samuel Alito made the point that from the founding of this nation into the last few decades of the 20th century, having an election on a particular day meant completing ballot collection on that day. This has now extended election day to be a multi-day process. The day is not it is done on the day.

Did you make your thought process known on that day or before? And then we got five days to gather it all together. We can all see why this is a problem, right? This is really about arguing what does an election day mean? Where does federal preemption come in for election laws? There is some complicated precedent-based analysis of this and all the rest of it. When push comes to shove, what it really means is in a close election, in a close election, there will be days where all of a sudden new ballots can appear and the Supreme Court that were not counted initially for five days later. New ballots can show up and oh, those. can tip the election, and we are told that that is supposed to be fine. As you can imagine, the justice is on the foreside of the 5-4 decision, including Samuel Alito, or just saying you are changing the definition of an election day, which they are, and you are also inviting through this. The single most destructive thing that can occur to the faith we have in our elections, which is people can just show up with extra ballots to close the gap after they know. Remember, it's a huge advantage. If you are trying to cheat to know that I don't need 50,000 votes, I just need 5,000 votes. Because if you get 50,000 out of nowhere, people might start to check. You know, the scale of the cheating, the gap you have to make up is critical information for anybody who wants to illicitly tip an election one way or another. Well, now they just got a huge addition to the toolkit, which is, okay, this election, this election for this House seat is, you know, one, you know, the Republican has 35,000 votes. The Democrat has 32,000 votes. We got five days, team, to show up with 3,000 more votes. We'll call it 3,213, just to make it seem a little bit odd. and, you know, odd numbered. And boom, that's totally valid, totally legit. Supreme Court now says that that is fine. Amy Coney Barrett writing along with the communist wackos in judicial robes. So that's a disappointing one. You will note from my voice from the way I'm talking about this, that is a disappointing one. And I think election integrity, now a lot of people are going to say this might charge up the Save Act a bit. We'll see, you know. Call John Thune's office. Send in your letters to his office. Let's see if that happens. But it certainly does raise for people. Yet again, there are far too many ways that it's easy to cheat and hard to get caught. And the Supreme Court just gave them another one. So I agree. That's a bit of a bummer. I wish it was not the case, but that is a bit of a bummer.

I also am waiting, as everyone else is before, and I think it will come down this week for the birthright citizenship case, which if I were a betting man, I would not bet on the reasonable, I would not bet on the rational. I would bet on the political, as in, yeah, even if you're a birth tourist who comes here explicitly to violate our laws. Anyway, I don't want to get ahead of it, though, because I could be wrong. I could be wrong on that one. Maybe the court. Yay, maybe the court does the right thing. We'll see. You know, there are people going through life with constant stomach aches and no idea what's causing them. Every meal is a gamble and the bottle of tums is just an uncomfortable crutch. Some foods are fine while others leave us feeling just awful. The truth is, we don't know. And guess with the little info we have. This was my life for a while so I can relate. If your DNA is the blueprint, your RNA shows what's actually happening. That's where Viome comes in. Viome is a simple at-home gut health test that uses advanced RNA technology to analyze your gut microbiome and understand how your body really functions. From there, Viome creates a personalized food and supplement plan designed specifically for your body. Instead of guessing, you get guidance based on real data. And when people follow their plan, many report better digestion, more energy, and improved mood. Go to Viome.com. That's V as in Victory. I-O-M-E.com. Use code CB-50 to get $50 off. That's Viome. V as in Victory, I-O-M-E.com. CB-50 is your code for 50 bucks off.

Because I was saying some big Supreme Court cases that came down today and we're still waiting on the birthright citizenship case. People have a lot of questions about these two cases and whether there will be any further implications. The one thing that comes to mind for those who are saying, oh, what's the big deal? Five days. Okay, why not 30 days after the election? You can still keep counting ballots. You say, oh, well, as long as they're postmarked, how hard is it to, and this is an actual question, not a rhetorical question. I don't know. How hard is it really to counterfeit a postmark? Probably not that hard. It's not like counterfeiting bills. I don't think postmarks have quite the security measures in them. But I can say I don't have expertise on this. I've never tried to counterfeit a. Postmark. So, yeah, that's some of what. But really, I think, is just more this opens the window. So now we're not going to have the basic regularity of expected of an election day. On the Iran front for a second, because I mentioned this, this is changing really hour by hour. But over the weekend, I can tell you the following. Trump shared this on truth social. United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile. This was again over the weekend. Just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites for violating the ceasefire agreement again, all caps. It is very possible that they will never learn. There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist. They are not – I'm just – again, I'm rooting for Trump on this one. I'm rooting for America on this one. But the – we're going to make Iran no longer exist is not a threat that in any way concerns them. We've gone way past that kind of – Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to hit you so hard. You're going to, you know, you're going to feel it through next Wednesday or something. That's not, that's not doing anything. So we just got to keep this thing on track for our own, let's just be honest about it, our own oil and gas and domestic. political purposes. Got to keep that oil price low or it's going to be ugly in the midterms. That's really where we are now. I'm not even looking to get too deep into the deal. A ceasefire where neither side has really ceased firing for any length of time is a shaky thing. By the way, Iranian state media also said it has, quote, no choice but to obtain the atomic bomb to remove the military option for the occupation and partitioning of Iran. arguing Iran must absolutely reach nuclear deterrence before current negotiations can be conducted from a correct position. That's from the Fars. That's like their state news agency. So the Iranians are talking tough too. Like I said, where does this go? Let's just hope the thing stays on some pathway and the gas prices stay low and we won't have to focus on too much of this beyond all of that. You know,

If I asked 20 of you right now or 10 of you right now, what was the fraud? We would all say there was fraud, but what would the specifics of it be? How was it done? Where was it done? What were the numbers? Until we have, I think, a moment like that where an election is essentially stolen and the people stealing it are caught red-handed, and we're all clear on that evidence, and there's a Republican in a position to do something about it with the courts, and the courts don't shut it all down. This is starting to feel pretty remote. Then maybe attitudes on this will change because one of the big challenges that you have on all of this is always going to be. Well, there's like some fraud, but there's not that much fraud. There's a little bit of fraud, but it's not that much fraud. Actually, the first thing that they tend to say is there is no fraud. And this is just gaslighting because there are people who are sitting in prison for voting fraud of different kinds, vote fraud of different kinds. So we know that it exists, but they'll say that as sort of a first line of throwing people off. And then they'll say, well, there's not much. And then they'll say, well, there's not enough to change in election. And then they'll say you can't actually prove that there was enough to change that election, even if you, and so on and so forth. It's always changing the goalposts. You know, that's the way they do this. But something that I was thinking about over the weekend, just to have a little fun with all of you, which I love to do. We're approaching America's 250th, which is exciting. There's going to be a lot of revelry, American flags, fireworks. Please let the pros handle most of the fireworks, okay? There's always somebody who does something somewhere with it. Usually involve some kind of M80. Okay, be very careful out there with your fireworks. Go to a fireworks show where people are doing this for the most part. I know a lot of you're like, I'm great at fireworks. I got a whole shed full of them. Eh. I'll tell you, I had very limited explosives training in the CIA and a pretty good amount of gun training. The gun stuff, I always felt, and I enjoyed that training. I enjoyed learning and getting better, explosives always freaked me out, man. And I was, you know, on a scale out of 1 to 10, if 10 is like an EOD, I was like a 1 or a 2. You know, I knew very little, but I was around them, built some explosive stuff. Man, once you've built something with C4 and clacked it off and seeing what it can do, you're like, oh. So just be careful with your fireworks, please. Little public safety tip there. That's coming up. But there was another anniversary that just passed. No, not Juneteenth. Of course, we celebrated that. Clay and I celebrated it in our own ways because we did the show that day. You could say we did a quiet Juneteenth celebration. A subtle one. But that is not the celebration that I have in mind. That is actually not the commemoration that is in the forefront, if you will. It is the two-year anniversary of the greatest presidential debate, maybe of all time, certainly the most memorable, and I think the one that had the greatest impact.

You'll recall it was on June 27th, the year of our Lord 2024. that this moment on live national television occurred. And so over the weekend, we commemorated the two-year play. Cut two, please. Making sure that we continue to strengthen our health care system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. Look, if we finally beat Medicare. Thank you, President Biden. President Trump. He was right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death. And in that moment, President Trump essentially sealed his second term. We knew at that point. I was watching that live as it happened. And I don't think we should ever, we should commemorate this. Because you will see, as we go forward into this midterm, the Democrats will say a lot of things as a party about Republicans. I think they will lie. They will smear. They will slander. Will they apologize? Will there be one moment where any Democrat of any standing looks at the American people and says, you know what was really wrong when we had a president with clear dementia who was not mentally... of capacity, not of sound mind, truly, not of sound mind to be president. And we all just chose to lie about it. And we all chose to cover it up. We, meaning the Democrat Party, their allies in the media, the NGO industrial complex, the purple-haired nose ring ladies who are always unhappy about everything. They all chose to cover this up. And then they got their... come up in all at once two years ago almost to the day it was over uh it was a saturday this past saturday was technically the june 27 so we weren't on the air for it but i wanted to commemorate the most important presidential debate the only presidential debate that has ever caused a not just a contender but a sitting president to no longer be an actual nominee for the presidency I mean, you've never seen anything like this before. And I'm going to tell you, there aren't that many moments where you get to really revel, where you get to, as I say, joyride in the wreckage of Democrat hopes and dreams, quite the way we did on that night. It was, honestly, like a near religious experience. It was incredible. I drove home with my wife after watching the debate, and we turned on the live stream. Not a Fox. I don't need to know what Fox thinks about it because Fox thought about it what I thought about it. And you thought about it. I don't even hear that, right? No, no, no. That's not the pro move. The pro move in a moment like this is to turn on the home team.

media for the communists to go right over to MSNBC and CNN and just what was Conan's line you know hear the lamentations of their women Well, this was like, hear the lamentations of Chris Hayes. This was going over to MSNBC to watch the tears flow down from Don Le Mans and Anderson Cooper and all the rest of them. This was, oh, Joe Scarborough, too. We have the montage, right? Which one is the, we have, listen to this incredible montage from that 24-hour news cycle after Biden's massive disaster debate. There is a deep. a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. The panic that I am hearing from Democrats is not like anything that I have heard. They're in a, I won't say a full-fledged panic, but it's getting there. The party is in full-blown panic mode. That was painful. He didn't do well at all. I don't think we should sugarcoat this. This was not the debate performance that the Biden campaign team wanted. Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight, and he didn't do it. It's kind of a DefCon one moment. Is that how he is every day? Tragically did not rise to the occasion last night. There were going to be a discussion about whether he should continue. Whether or not Biden can effectively go on with this campaign. Calls to replace him at the top of the ticket are getting even louder. It's not just panic. It's pain of what he's on night. I can't overstate the degree of freak out about what they were seeing. This is the last chance for Democrats to decide. whether this man we've known in love for a very long time is up to the task. Can I just tell you something? Notice the, not just the, sort of melodramatic nature of this, but also the feigned shock. They all knew. Everybody knew because I knew and you knew, and we were saying it every day for years. But now it became too much. Now it's like he really got caught and there was no way around it. And good old Joe Scarborough, whose show, as you know, I was watching leading up to that 2024 election, I was watching that show regularly. I mean, I was probably a top viewer. I don't know if anyone was watching more Morning Joe than I was. because they were telling us about it was the rise, the end of the Republic and the rise of Nazism if Trump won. Every day. Every day. But they also told us, again, I'm just, this is like great moments in basketball history where they show you the coolest dunks or, you know, the greatest, like, long touchdowns. I just wanted us all to enjoy this together. Two years ago was one of the greatest moments in American politics in my lifetime because the jerks, the liars, the frauds, and the fakers all got a giant pie slammed in their face simultaneously, courtesy of stumbling, mumbling Joe Biden. That was what happened. It was a beautiful moment for truth and justice and America. Overall, a beautiful moment.

And never shall we forget that Joe Scarborough, just a few months before that event, and as you know, I was a morning Joe Super fan. He said this about 81-year-old Joe Scarborough, play three. Start your tape right now because I'm about to tell you the truth. And F you, if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I've known him for years. The Prasinski's have known him for 50 years. If it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it. I will tell you this. That goes down as one of the biggest own goals and the most appallingly condescendingly. Just blatantly dishonest. One of the biggest, most absurd lies ever told by anyone in media at any time. I mean, that goes up there with like the Russia collusion hoaxers. That goes up there with the Bush National Guard documents in Dan Rather. This goes in the pantheon of journo fakery. This gets its own statute. And it was two years ago, almost of the day. Why am I talking about it now? One, because it's just so fun. All these people who sneer at you and me and pretend that people like Gavin Newsom are honest and patriotic and care about the Republican, blah, blah, blah, and Kamala Harris is up for the job. Oh, yeah, Kamala Harris's really smart. Everyone loves Kamala Harris. They don't believe any of this. They will say anything for power. They will openly humiliate themselves in front of anybody with an IQ over 60 and just the least bit of accountability and wisdom. They will say anything. And this Biden moment two years ago was proof of that, beyond any doubt. And all at once, all of a sudden, the crazy... ancient emperor was dancing around the street naked with no clothing on and everyone's like oh wow the naked guy doesn't have any clothes on what a shock and i'm sorry that's an image that i can't wipe from your mind now naked biden dancing i'm sorry and it wasn't i was just trying to do the metaphor thing and it got a little got a little crazy When July arrives on Wednesday, it is the kickoff of National Grilling Month. Whether you're cooking burgers on a Tuesday, steaks on a Saturday, or hosting a backyard barbecue with friends over the weekend, you're going to want good ranchers, meat, chicken, and pork for the grill. I love good ranchers. You guys know this. And they partner with local farmers and ranchers to deliver 100% American meat straight to your door. Everything they offers, pasture raise, no antibiotics, no added hormones. It's a kind of quality you can feel good about serving to the people gathering around your table for a meal. We've been cooking at eating Good Ranchers meat and chicken for a couple years now. Month after month, we get a great delivery of their products. And for steak lovers like me, feels like Chris this morning opening that steak box, I've got to tell you, really, really good stuff. The rib-eyes, ah, delicious. This July Good Ranchers is celebrating all 50 states with $50 off your first order.

Go online to good ranchers.com. Use my name buck at checkout. Get $50 off anything on their site. Remember, that's code buck for $50 off. You can also get free meat with every order on top of the $50 off if you decide to start a plan like we've had at our home. Make this summer one to saver. Start with good ranchers at good ranchers.com. Good ranchers.com code buck for $50 off. Oh, Hey Buck, one of my kids called me an unc the other day. An unk? Yep, slaying evidently for not being hip, being an old dude. So how do we ununk you? Get more people to subscribe to our YouTube channel. At least that's what my kids tell me. That's simple enough. Just search the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show and hit the subscribe button. Takes less than five seconds to help ununk me. Do it for Clay, do it for freedom, and get great content while you're there, the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show YouTube channel. We've got a bunch of calls. Let's do the calls thing now. Let's see here. Bob in Louisiana. What's going on, Bob? Good morning. How are you, sir? I'm great, sir. Thank you for calling. Terrific. This morning's discussion, I think, and also when I heard the beginning or the first interpretation of what happened today at Scotus. I was reminded to something that Stalin said, and I think it's very important for us all Americans, to know this and to be very concerned about it, because Stalin said, those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. We've got to be very careful. about what's happening in our country and what we're allowing to happen with our vote. So, Bob, can I give you a, one, I agree with the sentiment. Two, as somebody who's read a few Stalin biographies, that's actually a misattribution. Stalin never said that in the historical record. The closest thing to it comes from the memoirs of his former secretary Boris Bosanov. that Stalin said at a Communist Party meeting, I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote or how, but what is extraordinarily important is who will count the votes. So it's not really an exact quote, and the sourcing is a little sketch.