Daily Review with Clay and Buck - Jan 12 2026

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. If you're trying to grow spiritually while juggling a busy life, Intouch.org is a great place to pause and refocus. You can dive into practical teaching from Dr. Charles Stanley, read a quick devotional or check out free study guides that speak to real life situations. Whether you need direction, comfort, or just a little encouragement, there's something helpful waiting for you. See how it can support your day at intouch.org. Little everyday frustrations adding up. Elite checking from NASA Federal can help. Get your paycheck up to two days early. Enjoy cell phone protection, roadside assistance, and identity theft aid for peace of mind. Even earn dividends on your balance. If your checking account isn't working hard for you, switch to elite checking from NASAFederal at NASAFCU.com slash elite. NASA Federal Credit Union. Smart. NASA Smart. Federally insured by NCUA. Welcome back in. It is the start of a new week. We appreciate all of you who are beginning Monday with us. Let's have some fun as we roll throughout the course of another week here. with all of you. We appreciate all the time that you spend with us. And it was a bombshell of a week last week with Minneapolis News, Iran News, the Greenland talk, the continued fallout of Venezuela. All of that still continuing. Several things will be tracking over the course of this week. There's actually a Supreme Court case, I can't believe it has come to this, on whether men should be able to compete in women's sports that is being argued tomorrow. There is the possibility we could get some rulings from the Supreme Court on the tariff case this week as well. But Buck, the... A larger context of the Minneapolis ice shooting took over much of pop culture over the course of the weekend, whether it was sports, whether it was the Golden Globes. And I thought I would play some of this for you because the dishonesty that is coming out across the pop culture landscape, I think deserves to be called out. And frankly, I think you need to know what your kids or grandkids might be hearing inside of the world of entertainment and sports, pop culture writ large. Here is Wanda Sykes. She is a comedian wearing a pen to honor Renee Good, who she says, well, just listen to what she had to say. Cut 11. This is last night in Hollywood.

Of course, this is for the mother who was murdered by an ICE agent. And it's really sad. And, you know, I know people are out marching and all today. And we need to speak up. We need to be out there and shut this rogue government down because it's just awful what they're doing to people. Okay, that was in the Golden Gloves. Buck, I want to play a couple of these. This is crazy, and I'm not surprised by it, but I think a lot of you may be sort of in disbelief that this would happen. Golden State Warriors basketball coach Steve Kerr, in the aftermath of an NBA game, had this to say. This is cut 19, him going after ICE. Again, this is a sports press conference. After a basketball game, cut 19. I'm glad that the Timberwolves recognized her life and the tragic nature of her death. And it's shameful, really, that in our country, we can have law enforcement officers who commit murder and seemingly get away with it. It's shameful that the government can come out and lie about what happened when there's video and witnesses who have all come out and disputed what the government is saying. So very demoralizing, devastating. to lose, you know, anyone's life, especially in that matter. So it's terrible, terribly sad for her family and for her and for that city. And I'm glad the Timberwolves came out and expressed that sadness. All right. And then here is cut 20. This is Milwaukee Bucks head coach, Doc Rivers, another NBA coach, and another post-game press conference. For those of you who are not sports fans, this is where the coaches come. And just answer questions about what happened in the game and answer questions players do typically. Here is Doc Rivers. He is the Milwaukee Bucks head coach. Listen. What happened in Minnesota was a straight-up murder, in my opinion, and it's awful. You know, this lady was probably trying to go home, and she didn't make it home, and that's really sad. So the whole ICE thing is a travesty. You know, it's clearly, to me, we're attacking brown people, and I just happen to be brown. And I don't think it should just be brown people who are upset at this. I think we all have to be. I don't care what side of this thing you are on. politically what's going on in our country right now is absolutely wrong as far as the race stuff the politics i'm not going to get into the race stuff i will and and it's just wrong and we have to do something but the only thing we can do right now is keep speaking up because it doesn't seem like they care and that's troublesome Okay, Buck. That is Golden Globes and the NBA. So entertainment and sports craziness, much of what those guys said was factually inaccurate. In particular, Doc Rivers saying she was just trying to go home. I mean, there's a video of her parking or car perpendicular in the road and blowing the horn for three minutes. But how do you respond to this? What should happen here?

I got a couple of big thoughts on the NBA front, but I'm curious your reaction to all three of those clips that obviously took over the pop culture weekend. Oh, there's so many things, Clay. One is that it is certainly possible to be a top-level NBA coach making tens of millions of dollars in your career to coach a kids game. And I say that with love kids games can be great, but you can also be a moron. and be a head NBA coach. That is definitely the case. Or it's true really of any professional sport, but the NBA is showing us that you can be a person of no virtue, wisdom, or knowledge whatsoever about the world around you, but you can still be good at coaching basketball. It's also a reminder of why I don't watch the NBA. And I understand it's some people might argue, well, it's not fair to punish all the players. Well, okay, we're the players who think that this is gross. By the way, there are none, really, who will speak out. We all know that. And if one does, we'll all hear about it because it would be so rare. So I don't like the NBA, and this is a large part of why, although I also think it's turned into a kind of boring pick and roll three-point shooting contest. That's a whole other part of the conversation. I miss the NBA of the 90s, the Jim Jordan era, and I've abandoned it as a result. Clay, the other part of this that really bothers me, though, is that this has nothing to do with people who are morally outraged at what they call murder. If I walked around and sat with every single person that we could play clips from over the weekend, what they think about Harold Harper's murder, they would have no idea what I was talking about. Absolutely no idea. And you might sit there and say, well, hold on a second, Buck. I don't know either. Yeah, and that's on purpose. Harold Harper was killed here in my home state of Florida just a few days ago. He was gardening in his yard. He's a white guy, 64 years old. A random black guy, 29 years old, walked up behind him with a pistol and murdered him execution style in his own yard while he was gardening. No contact, no conversation, nothing. Nothing. And you might say, well, hold on, that's like the most horrible thing I've ever heard. By the way, state of Florida, we don't mess around here, second-degree murder. This guy's going to go away for the rest of his life. But this situation happens thousands and thousands of times over across the country. This situation of a random person murdering somebody, in this case, black-on-white crime, is a far, far bigger issue by the numbers than this woman who... Not only was shot and it was lawful, but the more information we find out about this, she was kind of a lunatic agitator. There's video that shows this quite clearly. The ICE officer did nothing wrong. So, Clay, why is it then that they focus so much? Why does this thing that happened in Minnesota capture the imagination, the attention of all these idiot celebrities in Hollywood and all these moron NBA coaches and all the rest of them, it's because they get to be make-believe civil rights hero for the day?

They get to pat themselves on the back. This is about standing up against a policy that is targeting brown people. It's racist. Therefore, I'm the good guy. That's all this is. The actual facts of the case mean nothing to them. They will not change their minds. And they're actually not outraged by heinous murder, which is not what happened in Minnesota anyway, because heinous murders happen every day that they could care less about. I think that's all very well said. On the NBA front, I actually have a potentially provocative go-figure take on this that I think would be really interesting. Both of these guys said that this ICE agent committed murder. That's a pretty defamatory thing to say. Now, the standard of the standard of legality when it comes to defamation in public cases like this is quite high. But the NBA mandates that coaches do post-game press conferences. This is a part of their contract. They have to show up. They have to answer questions. If they do not do it, they get fined. I think there is an argument to be made. And I'm not sure again that he would win, but if this ICE agent filed a defamation lawsuit against not only these NBA coaches, but also their teams and the league. I think it could lead to some really interesting outcomes here. Because, look, I think there should be consequences when you say inflammatory things that are not supported by the evidence here. Okay. Murder, in this case, it should not be charged. And I think it quite evidently, based on the videos that have come out, should not be charged. Doc Rivers was 100% wrong when he's saying, oh, this woman's just trying to get home and she gets murdered. That didn't happen at all. There's no basis, in fact, whatsoever for that. She blocked her car for minutes aggressively on video. She blocked rather ice agents with her car. She was obstructing. She was breaking the law. And really, Clay, what this comes down to is that Democrats have convinced themselves. That laws they do not like don't count. Yeah. That's it. And think about what the law they don't like is. It's that people who are illegally here, oftentimes having committed violent crimes, shouldn't be arrested by ICE and removed from our country. I mean, that's a crazy thing to try to stand in front of and keep from actually happening. You could add to that, they think that if they don't like a cop enforcing the law, you can just stand and, you know, think of the way you can play this game, right?

Oh, a cop is chasing somebody down the street, fleeing felon. And I run and I play the like, oh, I play like defensive linemen for the fleeing felon. That's obstruction. Yeah. Okay. It's not okay that I run and try to block the cop from tackling the bad guy. That's exactly what they're doing here. And they think they have some moral right to do it. And they don't. And we saw how they treat people that trespass on their sacred day of January 6th. The only thing the FBI was apparently able to do of any consequence during Biden's four years in office was tracked down nonviolent J6 protesters and the ones who assaulted the cops. Because people get assaulted, or rather, cops get assaulted by leftist lunatics day in and day out. And they don't send the FBI after them. In fact, Kamala Harris raises money for them. Not only that. They want more of these situations. I saw this clip, and I figured we would grab it. This is a woman standing, several women, standing in front of an ice agent, making loud noise, banging drums, screaming directly in the face of ice agents as they're trying to do their job. Listen to what they're having to put up with right now in Minneapolis and other blue cities out there, cut 21.

I mean, this is organized protest chaos, and it's designed to try to lead ICE agents to doing exactly what happened. They want people to get shot and killed. That is their goal here. And they're putting people in these situations and trying to create them. They also recognize that their plan. which was to replace the American voter with third world worlders as fast as possible. People say, oh, but they don't, they can't vote. Really? Okay, let's put aside the voter fraud component for a second. They have kids here, and then guess what? They raise the kids to vote for amnesty. They push the Democrat Party in whatever way they can to vote for amnesty. You have states that are giving illegals money for health care and a whole range of other things. that rely on federal dollars. So you're paying for it, too, I might add. The whole scam is starting to come apart because the Trump administration is, in fact, keeping its promise. One, securing the border. That's a plus. They've already done that. The harder, longer part is the deportations. They're doing it. It's not as fast as I would want it to be, but, you know, I'm not going to complain when they're the only ones that have been willing to take up this fight in a meaningful sense. And they are. And they're ramping it up, Clay, and they're getting better at it. And it's only year one in the book so far. Yeah, look, it's 2.5 million, it seems, of the 20 million. That's a number that Tom Homan told me, so that's the one I'm referencing. He thinks 20 million illegals were in the country when Donald Trump came into office in January of last year and that so far we have gotten rid of about 2.5 million of those illegals. That would suggest, Buck, that even if we kept this exact same pace, that... half of those illegals would still be here at the end of the Trump term. And you have to be concerned. And this is the big part, too, that they'll just open the border back up as soon as they end up president again. I usually I'm the one that throws the citizen out there. So I appreciate that Clay is pointing out this time that this could be a mess. However, Clay, I do think what you said is absolutely true. But what is really important is just as with border security. Now we see what is possible. Now it is beyond a doubt that they made a choice not to secure their border before. It can be done because it has been done. If Trump deports and helps or, you know, pushes for self deportation, 5 million, 8 million, whatever the number ends up being. The next presidential election happens with us saying, hey, guys, we got six million illegals to leave. How about six million more? Do you see what I mean? Yeah, no, I just think. We've been told up to this point, it's impossible. We can't do anything. I just think that they are going to immediately go right back to open borders. I'm slapping that black pill out of your hand. No black pill here. We're not giving up, Clay. We've got to win multiple races in a row because I think they will go right back to the same policies if they end up in a position of power again.

A new year gives you a perfect opportunity to reset your financial goals, big ones, like increasing the size of a retirement account, your 401k, your IRA, and you can do that by investing in precious metals like gold or silver. And the company you can rely on for your gold purchase is the one that I use, Birch Gold Group. Look, these are really good people, the team at Birch Gold. I appreciate that they really want to work with long-term investors, and they're wanting to educate people about the long-term thesis of gold. And that's part of the process. So you're learning about why gold matters when you work with them, as well as building your investment strategy in gold and silver. They believe every American. Birch Gold truly believes every American should own some physical gold. Look, I own gold. I wouldn't tell you to own gold if I didn't own gold. I own gold, and I've gotten my gold from Birch Gold Group. Until January 30th, if you're a first time gold buyer, Birch Gold is offering a rebate of up a $10,000 on qualifying purchases. To claim eligibility and start that process, text my name Buck to 98, 98, 98. Birch Gold can help you roll an existing IRA or 401k into an IRA in gold, and you're still eligible for a rebate of up a $10,000. Make right now your first time to buy gold and take advantage of a rebate of up a $10,000 when you buy by January 30th. To get started, text my name Buck to $98,98, $98. Claim your eligibility today. Text Buck to $98,98. You ain't imagining it. The world has gone insane. Reclaim your sanity with Clay and Buck. Find them on the free I-Hard Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back in here, Clay Ann Buck. So they've decided to make this a big issue. I think it's the ICE shooting in Minnesota. Notice the Portland shooting. Well, no one died. That's a big part of it, to be fair. I think they were just wounded. But there were also Trend to Aragua members. So you have people that aren't even supposed to be in America at all, who are also, while illegally here, breaking a whole range of our laws in addition to their illegality. And the Democrats don't want them to leave either. The Democrats are on the Trenna Aragua gets to stay team over the ICE gets to enforce the law. and this is this is showing the american people something very important we've said this for a long time democrats have pretended to be largely in line with Republicans when it comes to things like broadly speaking, wanting border security, broadly speaking, wanting to deport illegal alien criminals, right? So we have to add that that's, so that's your here illegally and you, you know, killed somebody with vehicular homicide because you were blowing, you know, 0.25 or something, right? I mean, these are the things that... We thought we were supposed to have agreement with. We don't at all, actually. Democrats don't want any of that. They want to import the third world. They want to change the country as rapidly as they can. They want the lawlessness. They want the fraud. They want the government dependence. They want gender, race, communism. And this is how they think they can bring it about. And that's what's going on. But I bring you, Clay, some of the leading spokespersons of the left, including members of Congress.

and how they speak about this. Representative Ilhan Omar, you know she's going to take a radical view on this one. She's a Somali refugee to this country. Doesn't really, do you ever sense that she is grateful for America? I do not. In any way. Have you ever seen her give a speech where she's like, you know, this country's amazing. Somalia is a hellhole, which it is, by the way. But this country's amazing. Thank you, America for, no, no. Not how she approaches it. And yet here she is speaking about our law enforcement agents. This is cut 14. Play it. This agent, as you see, gets out of his car, automatically starts running towards her, trying to open her door. She feels scared. She tries to turn the wheel away. And then you see the other officer who can clearly see the car's moving, move towards the front of the car, which... If they are saying that he has 10 years on service and is trained, he should know that you shouldn't be trying to get in front of a moving car. And so it is not acceptable for Kristi Noem and the president and the vice president to make these kind of judgments without there being a full investigation. Clay. She just said the problem here is the ICE agent should know to dive out of the way of the car that's trying to run them over and get away. This is now where we are. This is a step away from the cops should know to dodge the bullet when the gang member fires it at him. Like it's on him. Here's my big take here as we have surged a thousand more ICE agents. I've got two potentially controversial, so get your popcorn takes here. One, everyone who shows up and tries to obstruct an ICE investigation should be arrested on the spot immediately. because what they are trying to do is create the situation like occurred that cost this woman her life. So there should be, number one, no lenient treatment at all for people who decide that they're going to show up and try to combat the ICE agents from being able to do their job. Just like, again, I've made this argument. I haven't heard anybody point back and even argue otherwise. What would the reaction be if this instead of ICE had been the Minneapolis police and they were conducting a raid to arrest someone in Minneapolis who had violated the law? And this woman had shown up and parked her car perpendicular on the street and started honking her horn. I think she would have been arrested for obstructing the investigation by the Minneapolis police as well as she should have. Why would she not be arrested? Why should everyone of these individuals not be arrested? That's point one. Point two. I think the wife should be arrested. I haven't heard a lot of people talk about this, but drive baby drive while also obstructing the ICE investigation, this woman who, it appears her partner was listening to and then took off.

She was the incentive. She was the part of the culprit of the way this incident went down. And so to me, she committed a crime too. Now, I'm not sure they're going to arrest her because I'm not sure they want to sort of accelerate this story. But to me, she is guilty of a crime as well. And I don't hear very many people talking about this, but. To me, this compulsion that it seems to be mostly white liberal women. feel to show up and try to combat ice, it's a crime. And we should start treating it as such. You should be arrested when you show up and you in any way try to inhibit the ice agents from being able to do their job. And by the way, here's a cut from Chicago. Now, this is from October. Our team pulled it. Superintendent of Police, Larry Snelling. He's telling city residents, basically what I'm telling you, which is do not create these situations. This is a threat, and it can be lead to a response of deadly force. Again, this is from October, and I don't know what he'll say now if he were asked about it, but I thought this was well said back in October. Federal agents, ICE, HSI, are officers. They are agents of law enforcement. If you box them in with vehicles, it is reasonable for them to believe that they are being ambushed. and that this could end in a deadly situation. And it's reasonable for them to use force based on those conditions. Do not box in any law enforcement officer. You are breaking the law when you do that. And you are putting yourself in danger. If you ram any vehicle, especially that one, that contains law enforcement agents, and that's any law enforcement, local, state, federal, county. And you do this intentionally. This is considered deadly force. And they can use deadly force in response to stop you. And Clay, when I was in the CIA a long time ago. A young agent getting my, not agent officers, we know, but people say agents so much, it even creeps into my verbiage, a young CIA officer, and you go to the farm, which is our training facility, there have been books and movies written about it. There's a whole series of driving stuff. I know Clay's going to be like, you learn that stuff? Clay, just because I don't deploy it, because I'm worried about your safety and trying to go the speed limit, like a law-abiding fellow. Doesn't mean I don't know how to do these things, although it's a perishable skill. I'm not going to pretend like. If you don't do that stuff and you aren't out there and you're not involved in driving in the third world and doing these kinds of things, you will forget. I mean, it's like a sport. It's like anything else. It's like high speed precision driving stuff. But, Clay, part of what we learn and part of what anybody will learn in a government kind of secret agent man driving class is your car is a very effective weapon. I don't know why these Democrats pretend like we don't know this. Cars have been used exclusively, meaning just cars.

In mass casualty terrorist attacks. A car used as a weapon is incredibly lethal and can cause a mass casualty. It just happened in the Milwaukee suburbs not very long ago. I know nobody wants to talk about it, but you remember the black guy who decided that he wanted to pour through and kill all those innocent people at the parade? Yeah. Yeah, 80 people died, it was a truck, but 80 people died in Nice, France during the Bastide celebrations because of a terrorist. There was a terrorist in New York City, I think it was just a pickup. It was a rented U-Haul pickup truck, and he drove on near the West Side Highway and ran over a bunch of people. My point is, it is clearly a lethal incident if somebody decides they're going to run you over. And you, as a law enforcement officer, don't have to make the determination. Are they trying to run me over or are they just going to run me over because they have forced this situation? You are allowed to defend yourself? Yeah, look, and it was only a year ago. We had the awful terror attack in New Orleans on New Year's Eve, right? As New Year's Day began, remember in the French Quarter, I think it was 14. We can't even remember all the vehicle terror attacks. There's so many of them. Vehicles are a very effective weapon. Yeah. Yeah. And so in conjunction with that, and I think this is an important part of the story as well. The guy got dragged by someone in a car trying to obstruct an ICE procedure just in the last year. So do you think that he might have been uniquely aware of the dangers of vehicles more so than most? And again, I think when you watch this entire thing in context, and I don't know if anybody has put all these different clips together so that you could go watch it. showing up and honking her horn for three minutes while being perpendicular on the road as they are conducting the ice raid, the ice investigation, honking her horn, dancing along to it, the fact that she got trained to try to. I mean, why are we not prosecuting these people who are training these activists to show up and try to obstruct ice procedures, ice raids? Like all of this seems very clear. Like who's paying for this? How is that not a grand criminal conspiracy? It was lied about on purpose. They lied about her being a legal observer. They lied about her being a mom on her way to the grocery store. None of that, if you saw the video, made any sense at all. It was clear very early on. This was an intentional confrontation staged by the woman and her partner. And the whole point, though, Clay, is that they have 24 hours to get people who are low information, who are emotionally easy to manipulate, to get them all riled up about this stuff. And then they're committed. And it's very hard to get people to admit that they were fooled and that they were wrong. 100%. You're seeing a lot of this with this incident where people that made this, their big cause before knowing anything.

They don't really want to look themselves in the mirror and be like, hmm, I'm kind of a moron and didn't wait for the facts and couldn't figure out what was going on here early on because it was pretty clear. Remember, and I give credit to Aisha Hasney. I was on her show Saturday. She got a new show on Fox News. But Axios had a story up in the summer saying that the goal of Democrats was to get people shot at these protests. Their goal was to get activist shot so that they could try to shut this down. They wanted this to happen. That is the goal under which they are doing all of this training and why they are engaging in the behavior that they did because they want something just like this to happen. We'll take some of your calls here coming up. I want to hear from you, especially if you live in the Minneapolis area, curious how this is playing out in front of all of you. Look, 25 or 30 years ago, one of the hottest products out there in the electronic store was the video camera, VHS tapes, birthdays, first steps, holiday meals, school plays, concerts. All that was recorded on VHS tapes. I remember this is true in my family for sure. But fast forward 30 years later, do you have a working VCR in your home? Very few people do. And even if you do, it's going to break and those tapes are disintegrating. So why you need Legacy Box, it's a company dedicated to digitally preserving your precious memories. Legacy Box and their team of technicians transfers old media onto brand new digital files. No more clunky tapes collecting dust in the attic where boxes full of photographs. Send everything to Legacy Box. They do the rest. Don't worry. You'll get all the originals back along with digital files on the Legacy Box cloud, a thumb drive, or both. Legacy Box has done this for a million and a half families. Go online to LegacyBox.com slash buck. Save 55% off when you preserve your pass with LegacyBox. Kick off the new year by rescuing your family's most cherished memories that haven't been watched or enjoyed in years. Go to Legacybox.com slash buck. That website one more time is Legacybox.com slash BUCK to save 55%. Two guys walk up to a mic. Anything goes. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Find them on the free I-Hard Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back in. Hour number three, Monday edition, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton show. We've talked about a lot so far the continued fallout in Minneapolis, the way that it has been responded at the Golden Globes in the NBA.

report coming tomorrow on a transports case, but we haven't talked about very much yet, Iran. And I want to jump in here now and talk about why I think, and I bet Buck will sign off on it. This could potentially be the biggest story going on in the world right now, depending on exactly how it is going to go from here. There have been roughly two weeks of anti-fascist, anti-fascist. anti-theocratic government leadership against the Ayatollah, who has been in power in Iran since 1979. And Buck, I want to start with this idea that I want everybody to just think about, because I think it ties in with what you and I have correctly deduced as the identity politics governing much of the choices being made on the left in America. Have you seen a single major campus protest in support of the Iranian protesters anywhere in America so far? And I say that because the Iranian government has killed, it appears, thousands of innocent protesters who have taken to the streets of Iran. They're furious because the overall inflation rate has gone out of control. in the wake of the 12-day war against Israel, which demonstrated just how futile Iranian military power truly was. Many people are saying we are fed up. This protest started among people who are selling goods in markets, and they basically said the inflation rate has skyrocketed to such extent that they're having to change prices so often that the Iranian currency has become effectively valueless. And all of these merchants, all of these retailers said were over it. They shut down. They refused to sell their goods. That's where this protest started. It has since spread everywhere. But I want all of you to take note who saw campus protests from UCLA to Colombia and just about all points in between. There hasn't been, at least that I've seen, any campus protests that have taken over at all in favor of the Iranian people. And that is, I think, and I bet you would sign off on this buck, because the Jews are seen as white and they were the bad guys when it came to Palestine and everything that was going on in Gaza. And when it's actual brave Iranian standing up against the Iranian government, there isn't an identity politics coalition for stupid leftist in America to be able to jump on the bandwagon of. And so a lot of people are just pretending this isn't happening. Granted, it's also difficult because we don't have a ton of footage because they have shut down the internet. They've shut down phones. They've shut down the Iranian theocratic leadership under the Ayatollah has. So people aren't able to get information out as easily. But it is really markedly different when we compare the way that these two situations have been treated. The challenge for so many on the left in this country, and the Democrats, all of them, is in some of these international incidents. There are clear echoes of domestic policy and narratives that proliferate among Democrats here in this country.

And it causes problems for them. Example is Venezuela. What happened to Venezuela, right? I'm going to get to Iran in a second, of course. But what happened in Venezuela is socialism and social justice, essentially. Class warfare. The country, unfortunately, through democratic processes, embraced a platform of central planning, class warfare, and social justice that took the largest proven oil reserves in the world and made them essentially a pittance when it came to dealing with because they can't actually pump the oil out and all these other problems. But they can ruin anything. Communism can destroy anything, right? Well. The other side of this is that in Iran, you have a country that was never colonized. So there's really no anti-colonial rhetoric that makes any sense. It's never been a colony of the United States. And you have Persians, not Arabs, but that's a distinction that a lot of people won't even get into. But they've been running their own show there for quite some time, and they've ruined it. And in Islamic Theocracy, unfortunately, is going to run into these problems. And Iran has done things to its own people. You know, we're always in this world of whatever America does and however America messes things up. It's always our fault. It's always our fault. What you see in Iran and with the uprising, Clay, is the people of Iran. Yes. Are saying that this revolutionary, very Islamic, by its own designation, government is a disastrous tyrannical failure top to bottom on all counts. Now, given that reality... Why is it that there has been so much of a focus in the UN, for example, on resolutions against Israel? Why has there been such a focus on the misadventures of America in the Middle East without taking into account the fact that Iran has been a state sponsor of terror all over the world, and especially in the Middle East, for longer than you and I have been alive? While ruining the country for its people, while being a disaster. Basically, it's an Islamic state. Different kind of Islamic State, but it's an Islamic State failure, and it can't be avoided anymore. It also reminds everybody the Obama administration gambit on the Middle East was anything, Clay, anything to get a nuclear deal with Iran, and then things will get peaceful. Because the alternative to that is World War III. The World War III people are wrong. The World War III people are actually consigning the Iranian people to perpetual misery unless there is an uprising like this.

Not only are they wrong, they are exactly, it's one thing to be wrong. Like you can think what's going to happen in an event ends up being different. There's different levels of wrongness. They're so wrong that they're actually working against the basic interests of the Iranian people and of global freedom around the world. And now here is the next question that is going to come out. Iran has shown that it will kill thousands of protesters when they take to the streets, that they are willing to indiscriminately rain down holy hell and their citizens who are fighting for basic freedoms and also pointing out what I think is really significant, which is it's not as, you go back and watch, and I would encourage people to just do Google searches on this. Go back and look at what Iran in the 1970s under the Shah was like. Women walking around in dresses and skirts, not having to wear hijabs, high levels of education for the citizenry there. The theocracy of Iran has not only been a complete and total failure when it comes to the basic freedoms of the people of Iran. It's destroyed the entirety of their economy. And again, it's somewhat similar, I would say, to Venezuela because this is a country that is incredibly benefited and it is very fortunate to have huge natural resources of oil. And so they have the ability to have a successful society. They've had one before back in the 1970s, much like Venezuela. It is evidence of how far left-wing politics destroys everything that it touches. And so what should we do, Buck? when it comes to trying to support the protesters, which President Trump has said he is willing to do. Should we have more strikes in Iran? Should we, what is the actual tangible, if any, result that you think the United States should be involved in in Iran going forward right now? Because, let me also lay it out for people out there, there is an argument, and it may or may not be true, I don't know, that if the United States gets involved in any way, It could strengthen the Iranian government because it allows them to say, oh, this is just external factors trying to diminish the success of the Iranian government. This isn't a organic growth opposition from inside the country. This is the United States. This is Israel going forward. Already, I think these protests have come about because of the strikes. What should we do now? That is what the president and his advisors are weighing. That's a very, that's a legitimately, very tough question. Yeah. I would like to say, well, I'll say this first. It is okay to say that something like this, and it's not just because I'm saying it, I say this about a whole range of things. It's complicated. It's hard because you can make a decision with the best of knowledge and intentions that based on the extreme variability of these circumstances could blow up in your face. So you can have some guiding principles, but even the best guiding principles about whether it's non-interventionism or an aversion to coup involvement or coup plotting or all these different things. Okay, well, we also know that we blew up the nuclear program and nothing happened, right? So there's, it's not as easy as just this is what the smart people think and therefore it's right or wrong. I think in the case of Iran, it would be.

Obviously fantastic for the Islamic Revolution to fail and collapse at the hands of the Iranian people. And, you know, you hear this because you have a really robust Iranian-American community of people who fled. A lot of other people fled. I mean, you go around the L.A. area, for example. Legitimately fled because they might have been killed if they had stayed in the country. This is real asylum seekers. So they're refugees. I mean, there are people that had to take refuge, just like the Cubans here in South Miami, who left because they didn't want to be part of Castro's authoritarian dictatorship. I mean, you'll notice. There's this belief in left-wing circles that all, well, America is bad and all other governments are better than or at least as good as America. And that's a crazy belief, not rooted in any actual reality. The Iranian regime is an evil regime. They do evil constantly. They have ways of rationalizing it, but they do evil externally and internally. and they're bad at what they do. You know, you can talk a lot. I mean, people will say, what about Saudi Arabia or like, what about China? Those countries do things that I also think are immoral and bad and wrong. But those countries aren't run by complete and utter morons. Yeah. I'm just saying in terms of the results, it's not about IQ, but it's in terms of the results. Iran is a disaster. Yes. It is a disaster on the scale of Venezuela is a disaster as a country. So at least in the case of something like Saudi, which is, by the way, in the process of liberalizing, not a lot, but it is under Mohammed bin Salman, it is allowing women some greater freedoms. And there are some things happening there. It's a little bit of a more nuanced picture. but it's still an authoritarian theocracy. But they're building a lot of stuff, Clay. It is safe. It is clean, and it is a very robust economy because of its energy exports. Iran is a disaster. Yes. So it offers even the people of Iran nothing. And this is where the left in this country, which loves to blame America, Iran is not America's fault. Iran is the Shia-Iranian Islamic Theocracy's fault. Here's another angle on that buck. A lot of the countries, I believe, in the Middle East, actually prefer the Ayatollah in control because they know he's an incompetent leader and that Iran offers no actual danger or threat to them because of their incompetence. In other words, you don't know who's going to replace the Ayatollah. We always like to think, oh, it's going to get better. Sometimes the leader that replaces the bad leader is worse. Now, this is much less significant, but Chicago did it. Everybody's like, no, there's no way they could do worse than Lori Lightfoot. And then they went and got Brandon Johnson, right? Sometimes replacing a failed leader does not lead to a better place. So you also have to, to your point on the uncertainty.

I don't know what the situation is in terms of who would rise up to be the next leader. Now, we've reached out to the Shah of Iran, who is. We have. We have actually reached out to Reza Pahlavi. I'm probably mispronouncing his name, as I always do for these names. But. He is saying, based on what I have seen, hey, I'm willing to be sort of a bridge to a more democratic Iran because people have a fond recollection now of the Shah's leadership because there were basic human rights that did exist when that happened in the 70s. To your point about things and what will happen afterwards. It is hard in this case to imagine a regime that if, this doesn't mean that like someone else takes over as the mullah, right? This isn't, it's not like, oh, we have another Khomeini. If it's somebody from the established regime right now, that it's not actually a new regime, right? So if you have, though, someone who's truly outside the system right now governing, or even a temporary. disintegration of governance at some level, which I think is what really is concerned, a Libya, like a post-Kaddafi Libya, or a pre- and post-Bashar al-Assad, Syria. I mean, these are the things that people weigh on their minds when they're looking at all of this. But, Clay, it is hard to imagine a regime that would be worse than what Iran has been suffering under since 1979. It's hard to fathom how that could be possible. I agree. And so that comes back to what should we do. And hey, I bet we have a bunch of Iranian listeners. If you are listening to us right now and you are, have family in Iran, or you feel like you are fairly well plugged in with the situation in Iran, we would love to hear from you because, Buck, you and I were talking about this off air before we started the show. I said, hey, do you have anybody who's really good on Iran and that we could come on and bring on as a guest? You said no, and I don't know any. The challenge is information is so difficult to get out of Iran. You made the analogy. It's somewhat similar. It's like North Korea. Like who's a really great expert on North Korea? Well, it's basically a closed, you know, sphere. You know, I'm not going to get a lot of people in media that know much more than other because we're all just reading and observing and learning. There's not a lot of firsthand experience that many people bring to there. And even those will say, oh, like CNN, I'm sure Anderson Cooper's like, I've been to Tehran 10 times. Yeah, with handlers going to the places you were allowed to go, seeing what you were allowed to see and not able to say what you wanted to say. So it doesn't really, there's not a lot of great voices on this one in the media right now. to point to who have deep expertise. But we'll see. We'll see if we can get somebody on that's particularly astute on this. We have a high bar. Yeah, and maybe you're listening to us right now and you have friends and family that you've been listening to and you're able to sometimes get in touch with 800 282-282. Families that own rapid radios are ahead of the game. They look like walkie-talkies, but they operate with modern day technology that lets you talk to anyone anywhere across the U.S.

that happens to be holding one. They're particularly helpful if you're affected by a service disruption like a power outage. What these small handheld devices can do, flat out awesome. You get great audio quality, instant connection nationwide coverage. That's because rapid radios operate on an LTE network nationwide so you can connect with anyone virtually anywhere. Save up to 60% off on their most popular models right now, no contracts, whole year of service included. Now's the perfect moment to experience why Rapid Radio's are trusted by hundreds of thousands of customers, including us and why they're backed by over 15,000 five-star reviews across the nation as well. Go to Rapid Radio's.com. Find out why they make so much sense for so many people. That's Rapid Radio's.com. Rapid Radio's communication redefined. News you can count on. And some laughs to Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Find them on the free I-Hard Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back in. Ask and Ye shall receive a lot of Iranian callers, people who were born in Iran or... have fled Iran in the wake of the 1979 revolution that put the Ayatollahs into power are weighing in. And we've got several callers who want to give us their perspectives on the situation that is currently playing out in Iran. Up first, Shaw in Clarksville, Indiana. You said you've been in the U.S. since 1975, but lived in Iran before that. What are you hearing from friends and family back in Iran? What is the best thing that the United States could do from your perspective? I was born in Iran. First of all, it's an honor to talk to you, gentlemen. I was born in Iran, immigrated to the United States, becoming a legal citizen. and have been rooting for a regime change in Iran ever since. Iranians made a blunder by bringing this Khomeini to power 40 years, 46 years ago now. But now they want to correct that course. And we're looking at the Berlin Wall moment. If this regime falls, and they need the help, if this regime falls, not only Iran would become a calm, cruel country, not investing in terrorism and all that, but I think it's going to be a seismic change in how the world views Islam and leftism. Because what brought these two in power was the communist leftist organized by, you know, throughout the Soviet years, being Irish Germany and all that, as well as the Mullahs, who had the influence within the society. But Iranians have grown out of it. Those people are in power because of...

of sheer force and brutality. And Iranians are peaceful people. We've been, there's 90 million Iranians back home, and we want to change. We cannot, it's a failed state right now. And if the United States and Israel can help us bring about a change, and I'm not talking about boots on the ground, but strategic strikes against this structure of the regime in Iran. I'm telling you, Iran would be a shining city on the hill in the Middle East. So if that means, just to be clear, if, for example, and I think it's very important and why is that you establish that boots on the ground, you're not asking for that, you don't want that. And we, you know, I think America, the lesson we learned is in Iraq and Afghanistan, you can't have 10th Mountain and 82nd airborne and the Marines, the Army, all these guys walking around villages, trying to build them for the people that live there. Like, that's not what we're doing, right? And everyone agrees, I think that, or everyone should agree that in Iran, that's not what the Iranian people want. That's not what we want. But hitting the besiege, headquarters, IRGC facilities, things like that in response to, I mean, they've killed hundreds, probably thousands now of protesters just opening fire on them. So going after some choke points, if you will, or some precise strike points. against the regime. You want that. If Trump did that, you and many Iranians, I assume, that you're friends with, Iranian Americans are friends with, would be clapping for that. Is that right? We would put Trump statue in the main streets of Iran. We'll praise him. We would do the second Cyrus the Great Moment for Iran, for the world history, for the Jewish people, for the whole civilized world. And there is a plan in place. You have 10 million Iranians that fled. 90% of them are willing to invest in Iran. They're technocrats, and they're supporting Reza Pahlavi Shah Reza Pahlavi. We want to give back to Reza Pahlavi Shah Reza Pahlavi to the opportunity. for Iran to become a progressive nation, a pro-Western nation. And he has had conferences. He's got connections within the Iranian community and elsewhere. He's the international figure that Iran can easily become a civilized country. I'm telling you. Thank you so much for the call. We've got several people who want to weigh in. That was an Indiana caller who was born in Iran. You could hear the passion in his voice. Mansour in New York City came to the U.S. in 1979, right about as the revolution happened. Masur, what was Iran like before the revolution? So when you were in Iran...

Prior to 1979, what was the country like then? What should in your mind it be like going forward? And what can the United States do to help get Iran to where it should be? First of all, guys, thank you for having me on a long-time wrestler of Rush, and Rush will be happy to have smiling what you guys have done in the past few years on this show. Thank you. But I came here in 1979, right around January, actually exactly on January 11th of 1980. We left Iran in December of 1979, after all the schools closed down. First and foremost, all day long I've been listening to TV and radio, and a lot of people maybe misinformed saying that the Shah was a brutal dictator. He killed a lot of people. Let me correct that. If you go back to 1976, there's an interview of Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, the Shah of Iran, where he basically came out and explained this situation in Iran, where Iran was, where it is right now, and where it's going. the points that he made in regards to what's going on with America. He said in America, the media, which you guys know very well, the media, Hollywood, TV is controlled by the Jewish alliance. This was in 1976. One year to date, all the problems in Iran started. Now, the Jewish alliance that he was talking about is the same Jewish alliance that put Zohran Mamdani in office in New York City. the same Islamic communist that took over Iran. The second point I want to make is when the trouble started in Iran, it was not a revolution. This is not a legal government because the Majlis, which is the Congress of Iran, never elected this group to come in. So this was a propaganda to get rid of the Shah, who was a very popular figure in Iran and very powerful figure in the past. seven years before he left Iran. And as a result, they needed to get rid of him, because with this regime that came in, or this occupying regime that came in, Iran gave away a lot of its resources to the world, to Russia, to the United States, to Europe, which there's none left for us, plus all the money that the Mullahs made went to terrorism. And there are people living in the streets right now in Iran. So would you like to have the Shah back? What would in your ideal situation Iran look like next year if everything could be, you going back in time and the Shah is a bridge to a new more democratic Iran? What should happen? I think millions of people are giving us an answer. They're saying Javid Shah, which means long leaves the king. If Muhammad Razzar Shah, the father was so bad, none of these people, old, long, and new to politics, would never ask for Razzar Shah to come back. They want Razzar Shah to come back. Yes, and as Razzar Shah has mentioned, he wants to be a bridge for the people to vote.

and what they want do they want a king do they want a democracy like it is in the united states presidency He's putting that choice on the hands of the people. You can't ask for anything more. As an Iranian who's been here for 47 years, okay, I can't ask for anything better than this. He's giving all the choice to the people of Iran. Thank you for the call, getting a variety of perspectives. John in Long Island, say you're a first generation American, but your dad came to the USA from Iran. What do you hear from your friends and family? What should America do? What should happen to Iran based on the conversations that you have with people from that country who are now here? Well, what I'm hearing is that one of the biggest problems is the military over there is really financially taken care of by the Molas and the Aitolos over there, which is what's protecting the government there. So obviously they don't have a Second Amendment in Iran, so these protests go on, but they don't have any other way to defend themselves. So, I mean, from my perspective, I mean, I look at a place like Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood came in there, and that people were running over there were basically the Ayatollahs and suits, and the military had to come into Austin because the people weren't having it. I wanted to know from Buck if he thinks there's any way that the military could possibly turn on the government there, because I just don't see how. like the Crown Prince could come back and just have a smooth transition into having, you know, elections or a referendum or something on a new government. Shouldn't there be some sort of way for the military to turn on them? Because my understanding is the Aitole's son seems like he wants to take over if he flees to Moscow. Well, it's a very, look, you ask a great question. And, of course, you're talking about Iranian regimes. You want to talk to the CIA guy about coups, which is fine, which is fine, as one does. I would say one of the big, you know, the biggest to, historically, I've actually read some academic treatises, I guess, on this, like books that have been, like, multi-lifts or multi-lifts is what they call them, right? Don't really get published, but kind of get published. You can find them on J-Store in those kinds of places. The biggest threat to authoritarian regimes is a highly placed insider. Historically, it's actually not external intervention, and it's not even an uprising of the people. The biggest threat by the numbers is, you know, the guy who's the dictator or El Capitan or El Comandante or whatever. The palace coup. His brother who runs the security service is like, you're done, you know? And maybe he gets sent to exile or maybe he sleeps with the fishes. But that's usually the biggest one. So the question in an Iranian context is, okay, you want the removal of this regime, but the regime is an apparatus. It's not an individual. It's not just the IRGC. It's not just the besiege who are like the street thugs. In Syria, they were called the Shabeeha.

And in Iran, they're the besiege who are like the Hitler youth is broad, you know, that's not really, but it's kind of like that. It's like the young thugs that beat people up for not obeying the Islamic Revolution, yada, yada. So the besiege are bad dudes. They're like a militia. And you got to get rid of the people that run all of those things, is my point too. Right? It's not just like there's one guy who goes. In other words, if you get rid of the Ayatollah, you can't, the government structure is still there. It's like the next guy comes up and it's a very similar system probably. And this is one of the concerns about Venezuela, right? Yes. This is the problem becomes, well, now do you want someone who's already highly placed who's willing to? dramatically change course for the regime is in a position where they're powerful enough to do so, get compliance from the existing apparatus to change course, not be killed or whatever themselves. This is where it gets very tricky because a lot of people have been not only bought into this because of their benefit from their access to the regime, but also their hands are dirtied by it. Yeah, meaning that they were involved in the repression. They were, and those people get very, now look, it is possible. The people will point to like a, what happened in Nazi Germany, for example. Yeah, we had trials and hanged people after the end of the war and we slaughtered a whole lot of SS. And I mean, that's like decimation, not more than decimation, but that's the annihilation of the regime. That wasn't just like, oh, Hitler's dead. Everything's fine. Hitler, all of his buddies, they were all dead. Or we killed them. That was what... Or they went to prison for the rest of their life. Right. But, you know, they all got dealt with them. Nobody was like, you know, this Himmler guy, let's give him a shot as Chancellor of Germany, right? So you have a similar situation with the Ayatollahs and the Iranian regime. What's the... Is there a off-ramp that would work with the existing structure? And this is just sort of general coup 101 stuff. Not that I know about that. CIA stuff. We don't know. But the coup 101 step, is there an off ramp? Venezuela, we're taking that. Right now, we're doing that off ramp thing of, okay, we're going to use what's in place because we don't want Iraq getting rid of the bath party, which was like everybody, from the generals to the traffic cops. Oh, sorry, you can't have a hand in this. Well, that was a terrible. So in Iran, clay, it's going to be, it's tricky. But the more it is indigenous and authentic from within the Iranian people, the better that is for sure And the problem we ran into an Afghanistan is we're like, hey, we used to work with this guy back of the day against the Soviets. Let's just like put him on a motorcycle and like drop him over the border in the country. And, you know, hey, Hamid Karzai, what's going on, buddy? I mean, that doesn't work well. Not only that. I mean, that wasn't one of the big hopes of Iraq. Was it a Maud Shalabi? Like this guy sold that everybody. Sold everyone on, hey, I can run the country. There's actually a huge demand for Saddam to be replaced.

And the reality was obviously the ethnic divisions, the different Muslim backgrounds, and then the Kurds, it turned into a huge disaster. I still kind of think that the way to have solved Iraq from the get-go was actually to divide the country up into three different unique ethnic groups, give the Kurds their freedom, and divide Iraq in some way. I know there's lots of challenges. But that is why a lot of people out there are like, okay, what is the solution if the... If the Ayatollah gets overthrown, what is the next step? By the way, great calls, wide variety of perspectives. That's why I love opening up phone lines because there aren't a lot of people with a great deal of expertise when it comes through with all of this. All right. We'll play a couple of cuts more to close up shop. As this story continues to play out, I would encourage you guys to pay attention to it because I do think it could be in a Berlin wall type moment. uh if things were able to uh to end up uh with the iatola going away and the shock coming back and all these different moving parts it could be transformative in many different ways but i want to tell you uh very easy uh and fun thing going on monday night football the final wild card game of the weekend i bet buck didn't watch any of them but my goodness the NFL playoff games over the weekend were fantastic so enjoyable. And if you want to have a little bit more fun, I'll have picks for you with divisional round games coming up, four of them this weekend in the NFL. And you can now play prize picks in all 50 states. All you have to do is go to pricepicks.com. Code clay, priceless.com slash clay. You can get hooked up. $50 deposited in your account nationwide. Everybody can play when you play $5. Florida, Georgia, Texas, Florida. I think I already said it once. California, if you're feeling left out, you can play now in all 50 states. Pricepix.com. Code Claypricpix.com slash clay. Get in there. I'll give you a pick this weekend. Let's have some fun with Price Fix. 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 IHeard Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.